Psalm 10a “God
Opposes the Proud, but Gives Grace to the Humble”
(With
all due respect to the apostle James.)
NAW
translation
1. Why, Yahweh, will You stand in [the] distance [and] ignore at times
that include trouble?
2. With arrogance a wicked man hotly-pursues a lowly man.
They will be caught in schemes that they thought up 3. because [the]
wicked man boasted over his selfish desires, and it was the greedy he blessed;
Yahweh he despised.
4. A wicked man according to [the] stuck-up-ness of his nose will never
be a seeker; all his schemes [assume] there is no God.
5. His ways are circuitous during every moment; Your judgments are high
above the presence of his [mind]. As for all his adversaries, he blows them
off.
6. He said in his heart, “I will never be overthrown and thus never be
in bad [times] for generations and generations!”
7. It is a curse that fills His mouth – also deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are trouble and iniquity.
8. He sits in ambush by the subdivisions. In the hiding-places he murders
an innocent man. As for his eyes, they single out the weakest.
9. He sets an ambush in the hiding-place like a lion in a den. He sets
an ambush to nab a lowly one. He nabs a lowly one by drawing him into his net,
10. and the weakest crumple, are brought down, and fall by his powers.
11. He said in his heart, “God forgot! He has hidden His face; He never
saw a thing!”
12. Arise, Yahweh! God, lift up Your hand; do not forget the lowly
ones.
13. Why did the wicked man despise God? He said in his heart, “You will
not be a seeker.”
14. You saw, for You Yourself will take a look at trouble and grief in
order to take charge. To You the weakest will abandon himself; [to the] orphan
You Yourself have been a helper.
15. Break the arm of the wicked and evil man; search out his wickedness
[until] you find none.
Intro: The
Problem vs. the Prayer
Psalm 10 is about a godly man struggling with God over the bad things
that proud, wicked men are doing. Psalm 10, however is too long for me to cover
all of it in one sermon, so I want to break this into two sermons. In this first
sermon, I want to look at the problem, and in the next sermon, I want to look
at David’s prayer regarding the problem. I realize that the Psalm is primarily
about how to handle it when somebody else if prideful and doing wrong things,
but David shows remarkable insight into the problem of pride, and I think we
should begin with the log in our own eye by asking ourselves, do any of the
characteristics of the proud man in Psalm 10 describe me? In what ways am I
hurting other people knowingly or unknowingly by my own pride? Once we get the
log out of our own eye, then we can join David in dealing with other people’s
pride. In order to get to the first mention of pride in Psalm 10, I’m going to
skip verse one and go straight to verse 2. We can pick up verse one next week
when we finish out the psalm:
Exposition
2. With arrogance [pride] a wicked
man hotly-pursues [persecutes/hunts down]
a lowly [poor, afflicted, weak] man. Let
them be [taken] caught in schemes [devices/plots]
that they thought up [devised/imagined].
- This verse summarizes the verses at the end of
Psalm 9: “15. Nations have sunk into a pit they made; their foot has been
caught in a net which they hid! 16. Yahweh is known; He did justice,
snaring a wicked man by work of his hands. 17. Wicked men will turn in the
direction of the grave – all nations which forget God, 18. For it will not
be that the needy is forgotten indefinitely [or that] the hope of lowly
ones will perish for ever.” (NAW)
- Why will he get caught?
3. because [the] wicked man boasted
over his selfish desires, and it was the greedy he blessed; Yahweh he despised
[abhors/renounces/spurns/reviles].
- The Hebrew verb for “boast” is the same as the
Hebrew word for “praise.” (Hillel,
from which we get Hallelujah
“Praise the Lord”) The problem is not that the wicked man expresses praise
at all, but that what he praises or boasts about is centered around the
cravings or desires of his own human heart – his self – rather than
praising God and the things God desires for us.
- It was this same desire oriented around self
rather than God which got Eve into trouble back in Gen 3:6. She observed
that the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden was “desirable” and she
allowed her desire to override God’s desire that she eat from every other
tree but that one.
- Psalm 112:10b tells us that, “The desire
of the wicked will perish” (NASB).
- However, it is not the desires in and of
themselves, but the orientation of our desires that is the problem. Do we
want what our flesh craves, or do we want what God desires? Isa. 26:8b tells us that it is possible to
have good desires which are directed toward God: “…Jehovah we waited for
You: for Your name and Your
memory – the desire of the soul.” (NAW)
- The word picture for the Hebrew word
for “greedy” or “covetous” is that of “cutting in” and “breaking off”
something for oneself, “finishing it off” so that others can’t enjoy it. Imagine
Mother coming back from the store with a big piece of candy and saying,
“Kids, line up in age order, littlest first, and I will give everybody a
fair share,” but big brother barges in front of his little sisters and
grabs the candy and breaks off a really big piece for himself out of
mama’s hand and runs off and eats it all. That’s the word picture here for
“greedy/covetous.” Is that pleasing to God? Of course not, and it is
hurtful to the little kids too!
- This wicked man has it all backwards, instead of
blessing God and vilifying the greedy, he is blessing the greedy and
vilifying God.
- I am following the reading of the New King James
and NIV here because I think the translation of the NAS and ESV doesn’t
fit the grammar of the Hebrew. I don’t think the NAS came up with
anything heretical, but I just think it was unnecessarily creative with
the Hebrew. For instance, 98% of the time that this verb occurs, it means
“bless” not “curse,” and furthermore, the word “greedy” is not in the
normal word order for a subject in Hebrew. The NAS and ESV translations
do not provide a reason for this word being out of place because, of
course, the greedy curse God, but the KJV translation provides a reason
for the Hebrew word being out of place: blessing greedy people is out of
place in justice.
- Because of this, David says, God needs to arrest
him – let him get “caught”!
4. A wicked man according to [the]
stuck-up-ness of his nose [pride of countenance/haughtiness of his face] will
never be a seeker; all his schemes/thoughts [assume] there is no God.
- I’m surprised more English translations haven’t
gone with the literal meaning of the Hebrew words at the beginning of this
verse which talks about the wicked having a “nose” that is stuck up
“high.” The wicked lift their nose higher so they can look down on
everybody else. Have you ever heard the expression, “She’s so stuck up,
she’d drown if it started raining”?
- The Hebrew text uses a preposition (c-) which literally means
“like/as/according to,” but most English translations render it with the
English preposition “in.”
- It indicates that the more proud you are the
less likely you are to be a seeker – a seeker of God or of God’s truth.
- The more arrogant a man is about his sense of
direction, the less likely he is to ever ask anybody for directions!
- That’s what pride does to you; it prohibits you
from even finding out the truth, and you languish in a swamp of false
assumptions.
- And the more arrogant and self-centered you are,
the less you think about God.
- The fool says in his heart, “There is no God”
(Psalm 14:1). Talk about false
assumptions!
- “There is no fear of God before his eyes” (Ps.
36:1).
- They say “There is no salvation in God (Psalm
3:2, cf. 71:11).
- When King Ahaziah of Israel fell off the
upstairs deck in his palace and got sick, he spurned asking God to help
him get well. He acted like there was no God in Israel and tried to get help in Ekron from the false god Baal-zebub (2 Ki. 1:3-60. That was
wicked pride.
- King Hezekiah of Judah was also someone in the
Bible who is specifically mentioned as having a problem with pride (2
Chron. 32:26). After God miraculously delivered him from the siege of the
Assyrian army and miraculously healed him of disease that he was dying
from, and made Hezekiah very wealthy, Hezekiah did not remember to thank
God for these things; instead he showed off his wealth to other people and
focused on getting respect as a great king. Hezekiah had to humble himself
before God.
- Prov. 16:18
Pride goes before
destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling. (NASB)
5. His ways are circuitous [grievous/prosperous?] during
every moment; Your judgments are high above the presence of his [mind]; as for
all his adversaries [enemies, foes] he [puffeth/sneers/snorts] blows them off.
- That last verb is onomatopoeia in Hebrew – pykh, that’s the actual word – not
unlike what we say ourselves in disgust or disdain at someone.
- Who are these enemies that he so cavalierly blows
off? I’m sure he has human foes, but I suggest that at least one of his
enemies is God Himself. We already saw in Psalm 8:3 – where this same word
occurs – that God has “adversaries.” This proud, wicked man knows
that God sees him as an adversary, and he reciprocates by considering God
his enemy, which is why he “despises” the Lord (v.3) and makes his plans
without regard to God (v.4).
- Now, at the beginning of v.5, most modern English
translations read, “His ways are always prosperous” instead of “his ways
are grievous/circuitous,” like the oldest versions.
- To say that the wicked are “prosperous” is
consistent with what David (and also the prophet Jeremiah) said a couple
of times,
although on those occasions they used entirely different Hebrew words to
say that the wicked “prospers,” and they complained about the wicked
prospering in a temporary sense, recognizing that God would not allow the
wicked or proud to “always” prosper.
- The use of this Hebrew word in Psalm 10:5 to say
that the wicked “prosper” would directly contradict the way the same
Hebrew words are translated by the modern versions in the book of Job, “The
wicked man writhes in pain all his days, And
numbered are the years stored up for the ruthless”
(Job 15:20, NASB)
- This verb khiyl
is translated “writhe” – as in childbirth or in pain or fear – or simply
during an uncomfortable wait, but it also can mean to “dance” in a
weaving motion. I am interpreting it in the latter sense.
- The picture that comes to mind is that the
wicked is always ducking and weaving to avoid accountability with God and
to get the best of his enemies. I think this best supports the other
statements in this verse. His life does not lead in a steady, straight
line toward God’s glory; instead, it has to go all over the place to hide
from God and cover up sin and to keep his options open.
- Have you ever seen an ant crawling across the
ground? He can’t see the big picture, so he goes here and there and all
around before he gets to his destination. From your perspective high above
that ant, you can see what the most efficient route would be from point A
to point B, and if that ant could hear you, you could save him a lot of
energy. But you are too high above that ant for it to be able to relate to
you; it can’t conceive of relating to you. So it is with God and the
proud. God sees the best way we should go from His vantage point in
heaven, but if we won’t listen to Him and seek the wisdom He has given us
in the Bible, we will wander all over the place, because our perspective
is so limited.
v.6 He said in his heart, “I will
never be overthrown [moved/shaken] and thus never be in bad [times] [adversity/trouble]
for generations and generations!”
- As best I can tell, all the Hebrew manuscripts
and ancient translations have the words for “generations,” so I don’t know
why the KJV and NIV omit it. At least they have the word “always” which
gives a similar sense.
- The NIV takes the Hebrew pronoun asher
and renders it “I will be happy,” the root of which is spelled with the
same consonants in Hebrew, but it doesn’t fit the spelling here. Still the
NIV doesn’t destroy the overall sense of the verse that this proud man who
has cut himself loose from God thinks that he is not getting himself or
his children into trouble. He thinks he’s always going to be successfully
charting a straight course to prosperity and happiness.
- It is said that Benito Mussolini, the fascist
dictator of Italy and North Africa in World War II scoffed after an
assassination attempt, “The bullet has never been made that can kill me.”
That was some false confidence!
Mussolini is, of course, dead now.
- I see some irony in the wording of the Psalm
here. Verse 5, as I understand it, tells us that this wicked man is really
flapping in the breeze, following his own self-absorbed “circuitous/ grievous
path,” going every which-way but loose, but from the wicked man’s
perspective, like the ant on the ground, he thinks he’s holding steady,
not “moved/shaken” from his course. He thinks he and his descendents will
never be overthrown from their position of status and power, but they are
in for a rude surprise when the Lord shows up!
- Just a few generations after David, the
idolatrous Jews who would not repent of their sin and get right with God,
sure enough ended up “in trouble.” Nehemiah 1:3 uses the very word (bera’) to describe the people living
around Jerusalem after the Chaldean army destroyed its defenses, took most
of the population captive, and then burned up what was left of the city.
In God’s timing, they landed in adversity.
- Prov. 28:14 says, “Blessed is
the man who is reverent continuously, But he who hardens his heart will
fall into evil.” (NAW, cf. Ps. 107:26, 94:23)
- Now, we’ve seen what the proud person thinks.
What does he say out loud?
7. It is a curse that fills His mouth
– also deceit and oppression [fraud/threats];
under his tongue are trouble [mischief] and iniquity [vanity/wickedness/evil].
- Curses have to do with wishing someone dead. Job
was a righteous man who said, “I did not give in to sin [with] my mouth
using a curse to ask for the life [of my enemy].” (Job 31:30, NAW) That’s
basically the idea of the English curse word “damn” – which is in
all-too-common use today. Don’t let
that curse come out of your mouth!
- He doesn’t tell the truth. Even when he doesn’t
need to tell a lie, he (or she) will tell a lie. God is the source of
truth, so the heart which is estranged from God, gets filled with lies
because Satan, the father of lies, loves to fill our minds with thoughts
that are not true, and those lies come spilling out compulsively.
- The heart that is estranged from God also abuses
power and authority. Instead of using the power of words to make things
right and heal and reconcile and bless, proud people use words to belittle
and oppress and threaten and hurt others.
- But we saw back in Psalm 7 that God will judge
this kind of wickedness: “Look, he is in labor with iniquity, yes,
he conceived trouble, and he will give birth to falsehood...
His trouble will return in his head, and his violence
will come down upon his noggin.” (Psalm 7:14-16, NAW)
- Now we have seen what the proud, wicked person
thinks and says. Now, what does he (or she) do?
8. He sits in ambush [lurking place] by
the subdivisions [villages]. In the [secret] hiding places [from ambush] he
murders an innocent man. As for his eyes, [they are privily set/secretly
fixed/stealthily watching] they single
out the weakest [poor/helpless/unfortunate/victim].
9. He sets an ambush in the
hiding-place [lurks/lies in wait secretly] like a lion in a den [lair, thicket,
cover]. He sets an ambush to nab a lowly
one. He nabs [catches/seizes] a lowly one by drawing him into his net.
10. and the weakest crumple [crouch,
are crushed]; are brought down [humbled, lie low, sink down, bow down,
collapse], and fall by his powers [strong/mighty ones].
- It’s like David is watching this awful crime
happen right in front of his eyes. It makes anger at the injustice well up
inside of me when I read it.
- The villages in v.8 would be the suburbs around a
city which have some kind of enclosed space – perhaps enough to keep out
the wild animals, but not enough to keep out an invading army. They are
between the big city and the farmer’s fields, so I picture it like the
subdivisions of neighborhoods outside our modern cities. Here the proud
man finds hiding places – the kind of lairs lions might lurk in, as we see
in v.9 – covered by trees or rocks from which he can jump out and hurt and
steal from individuals who walk by.
- Not unlike modern cyber-criminals who maintain a
secret presence on the Internet and use their computers to mess up other
people’s computers.
- The description of the eyes of the wicked at the
end of v.8 reminds me a lot of my cats. They are “captivated” by the
motion of small prey. When our cat locks attention on a bird in the back
yard, she never takes her eyes off of it. She drops low in the grass to
hide and slinks carefully toward that bird, totally absorbed in the chase.
- In my pastoral role, I have had to deal with men
who became sexual predators. That same selfish pride can result in
singling out and grooming a victim over time, building trust and waiting
for the opportunity to take advantage of a weak girl or boy.
- David’s description is very fitting. They “draw”
their victim into a “net.” In our society, that net is not usually
made of rope fibers but rather of lies. Remember “his mouth is full of…
deception.”
- Now, you may not be a murderer or a
cyber-criminal or a sexual predator, but garden-variety pride is just as
wicked in God’s eyes. The proud maintain a strong awareness of who is
weaker than them, and they bask in how much smarter or stronger or more
prestigious or more spiritual they are than other people around them. (Like
the Pharisee in the parable that prayed, “I thank God that I am not like
that tax-collector over there.”)
- If that is something you see going on in your
heart, what can you do to fight that sin? Notice where the proud person’s
eyes are fixed. They are singling out those who are weaker than them, and
that fuels their pride. We can fight that by fixing our eyes upon Jesus –
as the apostles instructed us to do (Heb. 12:2, Col. 3:1-2). If we fix
our eyes on Jesus, then our pride will deflate because we aren’t better
than Jesus in any way, shape, or form! Keeping our eyes on Christ in
heaven will help us “walk humbly before our God” (Micah 3), whereas
keeping our eyes on other people will feed our pride and cut us off more
and more from God’s mercies.
- The question for translating verse 10 is, “Who is
the subject of these three verbs (crouch, sink down, and fall)?”
- In Hebrew there are only five words in this
verse, and the first three are these verbs “he crouches/crumples, he
flattens on the ground, and he falls.” Part of the problem is that these
verbs are all singular, but the nouns in the verse are all plural
(“powers” and “weak ones”), so it’s not obvious what the subject is to
these verbs.
- Although I can see the possibility of picking
back up the simile of the lion after the metaphor of luring prey into a
net - and
I respect the KJV and NAS and Septuagint translators who interpreted it
that way,
- sometimes plurals and singulars can get interchanged
in Biblical Hebrew, and I can’t help but think that the layout of verse
10 describes the victim being taken down incrementally by the wicked man
– that’s the way the NIV and ESV interpret it.
- In the four other places that the first verb appears,
it is not translated actively
“crouch” but rather passively “crushed” (Ps. 38:8, 44:19), “broken” (Ps.
51:8), and “contrite” (Ps. 51:17), and here, I think the picture is of
the hapless victim caught in the net, getting crumpled up and knocked
down to the ground and falling down dead before the villain and his
ruffians.
- But we know that the proud will not be able to
carry out their oppression forever against the poor and lowly and
afflicted. As we saw in verse 2, although he “hotly-pursues the lowly
man,” he will eventually “be caught in [his own] schemes…” God will bring
about justice in His perfect timing.
- But the proud man doesn’t know that yet. Just as
he boasts of his selfish desires in v.3, so he boasts in v.11:
11. He said in his heart, “God
forgot! He has hidden His face; He never saw a thing!”
- Is this true? Do bad things happen without God
knowing about them? No. This man is
deluded!
- Drop down to verse 13 where he says basically the
same thing again:
13. Why did the wicked man despise
[renounce/contemn/spurn/revile] God? He said in his heart, “You
will not be a seeker [you will not require].
- This recaps the statements in vs.3-4 that the wicked
are self-absorbed and abhor God and that the proud do not factor God into
their plans and do not seek to. Proud people think they know it all, so
they don’t seek new information; they also assume that God won’t seek
justice or hold mankind accountable for violating the moral laws in the
Bible.
- We’ll try to catch the rest of the psalm later,
but v.15 gives us a sneak preview of what’s going to happen to the proud
person:
15. Break the arm of the wicked and
evil man; search out [call to account] his wickedness [until] you
find none.
- “[T]he Psalmist’s experience of oppression at
the hands of the wicked is a result of anosh
[mortal man] gone wrong – an abuse of the power and authority given to humans
by God in Psalm 8 [where it says, ‘What is anosh/man that you remember him and… visit him?’) This
divinely-given power has been misdirected because of an arrogant and
prideful misunderstanding of how and why humans are to exercise that
power. Only a return to a proper understanding of what it is to be anosh [man] can set things right.” ~Gerald
Wilson, NIV Application Commentary
- “Let the nations know that they are mere men.”