1. David’s, for the concertmaster.
In Yahweh I have taken refuge.
How is it that y’all say to my soul, “Flutter [away to] y’all’s hill [like] a gamebird?
2. Because, look, the wicked men will bend a bow, they set upon string their arrow
to shoot through gloom toward those who are upright of heart.
3. As for the righteous man, what can he accomplish,
because the foundations will be demolished”?
4. Yahweh is in the temple of His holiness. As for Yahweh, His throne is in the heavens.
His eyes see; His gazes will test Adam’s descendents.
5. It is Yahweh who will test a righteous man,
but as for a wicked man and one who loves violence, His soul has hated.
6. He will rain upon the wicked men net-snares, fire, and brimstone,
and [the] allotment of their cup will be a raging wind.
7. Because Yahweh is righteous,
He has loved righteous things,
[and] His face will see [the] one who is right.
About 18 years ago, my wife and I faced a difficult decision. We did not have enough money to pay next month’s rent. We had three children and were pregnant with a fourth. I was working full time for a mission agency, but was a miserable failure at raising money for my salary. All we could do was move our belongings out of the apartment into a friend’s garage except for just enough to live with, which we kept in our ancient minivan. That was a difficult season of testing for us. We went from house to house staying with friends from church who seemed wealthy by comparison to us and who seemed to have a lot fewer cares than we did. I found myself wondering, “Did God love them more than me because He provided more for them?” We had left our home churches and extended family far behind in Alabama and Georgia to follow God’s call to this mission agency, and now had God forgotten us? We felt that people even in our church were probably disgusted with us for having so many kids and then mooching off other people for food and shelter. Other people expressed disapproval of me continuing in ministry; it sure looked like God wasn’t blessing me in that mission work, why didn’t I get gainfully employed? We spent months of agonizing prayer, seeking God’s will as the stress mounted, moving house to house every few weeks. I couldn’t think of any alternatives. My bachelors degree in Physics and Missions was pretty much worthless, and all my work experience was in youth ministry, which doesn’t typically pay enough for a large family, and I really believed God had called me to work at this mission agency in Colorado. What to do? It felt like the end of the road, and there were times I thought it would be better to just die. In hindsight, however, I can see that God was providing an opportunity to trust Him and receive greater blessings. Looking back, I can see that God used that time for my wife and I to pay off all our college loans, to build deeper relationships with church friends, and to make me go to seminary when I did not want to, and to provide me with a seminary that was practically free and that happened to have one of the best Biblical language programs in the nation and where I could grow in preparation for a new direction of ministry as a church pastor. I see now that God was in control all along, doing me good, not harm, but when I was in the middle of it all, I could not see how it would all turn out, and all I could do was desperately hope God would deliver me from the threat of poverty and homelessness and unemployment which loomed so large in my mind.
As we look at Psalm 11, The exact circumstances David faced when he wrote this Psalm are lost in the mists of history[1], but the truths he articulates about God’s watchful care for His people apply to all of us in any situation when we feel threatened:
Took refuge (Perfect tense): We’ve seen what David believes already
· in 2:12 “Oh the blessings of all who take refuge in Him.”
· 5:11 “all refugees in You will be happy, they will sing out forever, You will even fabricate shelter over him, and lovers of Your name will exult in You! Because You yourself really bless a righteous [person]; like a big shield, Yahweh, you encircle him with favor.” (NAW)
· AND in 7:1 we see that David has taken refuge in the LORD legally to judge his enemies and deliver him.
PLURALS: The Hebrew words “say” “Flee” and “your” are all plural,
· so it is multiple people telling David to flee,
· and if David were to flee it would be with multiple people[2],
· and it appears that the mountain to which they would flee belongs to more than one person.
“Like” is added interpretively and comports with Ps. 26:2 which combines tsiphor + nud. [3]
What mountain is this?
· Ezek. 7:23 speaks of God causing Israel to nest on “its mountains.”
· It’s hard to imagine any other mountain for David than that of Jerusalem, but I can’t think of any time David was beseiged in Jerusalem.
· It may have been a time he was tempted to when threatened by a foreign army,
· or maybe it refers to the cave of Adullam where he retreated from Saul’s army before David became King.
“nodu harkem tsippor” sounds to me like a chanted taunt since it has a strong rhythmic pattern Remember the taunts of Rabshakeh before the walls of Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s day?
Not the Mountain:
· The implication of the first phrase, however, is that the mountain is not where David sees that he is getting refuge, rather it is the LORD that He is looking to, to provide refuge from this threat.
· Augustine paraphrased David’s response, “I trust in the Lord… I keep to one mountain wherein I trust, how say ye that I should pass over to yours…?”
· Now v.2 introduces two reasons given to flee
2 reasons introduced by the Hebrew word “Ki”
1. B/c you’ll get shot at (v.2),
2. B/c foundations will be destroyed (v.3).
3. These are countered by a “Ki” from David in v.7. “No, there is no reason to flee in fear because God is righteous.”
Who is talking? It’s not the threatening enemy; it is a group of people giving advice.
· There will always be people who will give you bad advice.
· David’s grandson Rehoboam fell prey to this very problem of following the advice of the young progressives in his cabinet over the advice of the older, wiser counselors, and he lost most of his kingdom as a result.
· Watch out for people who play up your fears and who do not encourage you to launch out with trust upon God. Avoid those kind of counselors like the plague!
· You are not the victim; in Christ you are the overcomer, “more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37, NIV)
· 1 John 5:5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. (NIV)
· Luke 10:19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. (NIV)
· John 16:33 "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (NIV)
· Matt. 16:18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. (NIV)
· Jer. 1:19 They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD. (NIV)
Ophel is translated gloom/dark/shadows here[4].
· (The KJV, which translates it “privily/ secretly” translates it “darkness/obscurity” in all the other 7 places in the Bible where this word occurs.)
· In Job 30:26 it’s the opposite of “light”
· and in Psalm 91:6, it’s the opposite of noonday.
· In Isaiah 29:18 it is synonymous with blindness.
· Nevertheless it conjures up the image of the fearsome black army of orcs from Orthanc in Tolkein’s Two Towers, converging on the hapless citizens at Helm’s Deep.
· The preposition “bmo” indicates (not “from” but) “during/through/within” the darkness of midnight, which seems a strange time for an archery attack because of the likelihood of missing in the dark (unless, I suppose, you are an army of orcs guided by a sorcerer, but that’s not what David was facing).
This connects back to Psalm 7, where God is the one with the bow ready to put an end to the wicked: 7: 10. My shield is upon God causing to save right-hearted ones. 11. God is one who judges righteously, and God is one who pronounces curses during every day. 12. Since He does not turn back, He will whet His sword; He will bend His bow and set it [at the ready]. 13. And for His [use] He caused to be set [at the ready] deadly weapons – He worked up His arrows for those in hot pursuit. 14. Look, he is in labor with iniquity, yes, he conceived trouble, and he will give birth to falsehood. 15. He dug out a hole and scoured it, but he fell into a pit he worked on. 16. His trouble will return in his head, and his violence will come down upon his noggin. 17. I will respond to Yahweh according to His righteousness, and I will hymn the name of Yahweh the Most High.
QUOTES: I think the modern versions are correct in continuing the quote of the faithless counselors to the end of verse 3.
The foundations being destroyed remind me of the battle of Helm’s Deep, where the bad guys use a bomb to destroy the foundation of the wall and then flood into the courtyard of the good guys’ castle. It’s scary when something like that happens, and it looks like all is lost.
Haras: The Hebrew word for “destroyed” is used to describe soldiers literally tearing down a city wall (2 Ki. 3:25), and it is also used figuratively, such as in the Proverb about the foolish woman tearing down her house with her own hands (14:1). We’re talking about “demolition.”
Satot: What exactly is meant by these “foundations” ?
· Cross-referencing doesn’t help much because stt only occurs one other place in the Bible, and that is Isaiah 19:10, where, depending on your version, it is translated “pillars,” “purposes,” or “weavers.”
· The great Hebrew scholar Franz Delitzsch suggested it meant David and his leaders which formed the foundation of the nation’s government.
· On the other hand, the early church father Augustine referred it to the foundational doctrines of Christianity which were threatened by heretics like the Donatists in N. Africa in his day.
· Marriage foundations: What comes to my mind when I think of “foundational things being destroyed” is the fabric of marriage which is being destroyed in our country with bold attacks by those who want to
o do away with distinctions between men and women,
o do away with any sense of right and wrong in how people relate sexually,
o and do away with any recognition of marriage by the state,
o as well as doing away with the role of parents in raising children.
o There are many “wicked” people today who have “cut loose” from submission to God and His laws and are intentionally trying to do these things, and they have made a lot of progress lately toward those goals, and that gives me moments of panic, “What can the righteous do?”
Tsadiq: Remember the context of what it means to be “righteous” in David’s theology.
· It is not about perfectly obeying a set of rules, although it does involve recognizing that God is the ultimate lawgiver and that we are accountable to His laws.
· Righteousness is a gift from God whereby He makes us righteous through providing a way for our sin to be atoned for through the death of a perfect substitute. That perfect substitute who died for our sin we know is Jesus Christ.
· Receiving salvation through Jesus’ death and submitting ourselves to Jesus’ leadership is the only human basis of righteousness. So the hope of the world is not in goodie-goodies fixing the world by “civilizing” everybody.
Trick question: Think about that question: “What can the righteous do?” It assumes that in order for things to be made right, those who are right with God have to DO something. Does this Psalm teach that we have to DO something before everything is made right?
· This reminds me of the debates in the 1800’s between the revivalists like Charles Finney who believed that God’s people have to DO certain things in order to start a revival and the conservatives like Asahel Nettleton, who believed that Christians just needed to BE God’s people and leave the timing of revival up to God. Nettleton wrote, or at least popularized the song, “Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing,” which focuses on God’s work in initiating revival.
· As we follow the rest of this Psalm, all we see the righteous doing is “beholding” God’s face. God is one doing the action of fixing everything!
· Now I’m not saying that beholding God’s face is easy or that it means doing nothing, but I am warning against the temptation to be tricked into believing that it’s up to you to fix everything in your own strength when you see things that are wrong.
· What are you going to DO about this problem? Begin by setting your eyes on God.
What’s with the “eyelids?”
· The fact that the Hebrew word is related to the word for “flutter” and the parallelism with the eyes here and the only other place it occurs in the Psalms (132:4) points toward the meaning of “eyelids,”
· Delitzsch and other Jewish commentators suggested that the “eyelids” imply squinting with concentration. Augustine, on the other hand, was a little further out there, suggesting that the eyelids are passages of scripture with varying degrees of obscurity… or else the death and resurrection of Christ.
· but if you look at the rest of the Old Testament, there are other passages which associate this Hebrew word with the light of “dawn” (Job 3:9 and 41:18),
· and then there’s Proverbs 4:25 where this noun is said to be “straight before you” – whoever heard of a straight eyelid? In that Proverb, the Hebrew word is instead translated “gaze” by most English translations, and I think that the word “gaze” fits well here in Psalm 11:4. The gaze is something that can flit around or be kept straight ahead of you, and the sunrise can look like a giant eye gazing upon the earth.
· The basic idea of this verse is that God is both the transcendent King in heaven who has power over all the earth, but He is also the eminent Judge who seeks to know everything that is going on, evaluates the integrity of every human being and then decides what is the most fair thing to do in everything that happens.
· 2 Chon. 16:9a "For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” (NASB)
· Psalm 34:15 The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous And His ears are open to their cry. (NASB)
· Prov. 5:21 For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the LORD, And He watches all his paths. (NASB)
· Prov. 15:3 The eyes of the LORD are in every place, Watching the evil and the good. (NASB)
· 1 Chron. 29:17a “…O my God, I know that You test the heart and You delight in uprightness…” (NAW)
· You see, once your eyes are in the right place, it’s not so scary anymore. If God is aware of the threats we feel and if God is powerful enough to preserve us through these threats, then we don’t have to panic. We have good reason to trust God and not be afraid.
God hates certain things:
· We already saw that in Psalm 5 (“The praiseworthy will not position themselves before Your eyes; You have hated all workers of iniquity. You will destroy speakers of falsehood; a man of bloodshed and deceit Yahweh will abhor.” Ps. 5:5-6, NAW) That is part of God being personal. There is no such thing as a personal being who doesn’t like some things and hate some things.
· God hates those who are rasha’ – wicked, unattached to Him, paying no attention to His laws, unwilling to acknowledge God’s authority, and God hates those who love violence.
· Mind you, Jesus commended certain kinds of violence in Mat. 11:12 “And from the days of John the Baptizer until now, the kingdom of the heavens is forcing itself, and forceful men are seizing it,” (NAW) God is not lazy in advancing His kingdom, and the ones who get into His kingdom will not be characterized by laziness either, but rather by vigorousness, but in Psalm 11, what God is saying He hates is people who love the violence for its own sake, who enjoy hurting and destroying God’s creatures – and I think that hatred even extends to those who love the virtual experience of violence in movies and video games, books and role-play.
· What is it that your heart loves? Is it in tune with what God loves? Jesus said that the greatest commandment is that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and that we love our neighbor as ourselves (Mt. 22:37ff).
Morison: "We here perceive the unspeakable difference between fatherly chastisements and the infliction of God's displeasure on his enemies. The one is for correction, the other is for punishment; the one is an expression of covenanted regard, the other is an intimation of righteous displeasure and approaching judgment; the one is the rebuke of a father, justly offended; the other is the uplifted rod of a judge, who will, ere long, smite down all his foes."
The bigger picture: God is testing:
· David’s lack-faith counselors could only see the threat that the enemy was presenting in the physical world, but now in v.5, our view zooms out to discover what is going on in the bigger picture: It is not the wicked who are testing the righteous man, it is God who is testing/ trying/ examining the righteous by presenting David with an opportunity to either forget God and panic or grow in faith by trusting God in the face of a threat and experiencing God’s deliverance.
· God did something similar to Job (7:18), allowing a good guy to be afflicted with disease and business losses and the death of all his children, but Job said, “When God has tested me I will come out like gold!” (23:10). Job matured in his faith as he learned about how much greater God was than he, a mere man was.
· God also did it to the Israelites when they were wandering through the desert from Egypt to the Promised Land and they ran out of water: Psalm 81:7b "You called in trouble and I rescued you; I answered you in the hiding place of thunder; I proved you at the waters of Meribah.” (cf. Ex. 17) This provided an opportunity for them to trust God for water rather than panic, and when God provided water from the rock, it strengthened their faith - somewhat.
· Prov. 17:3 “The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, But the LORD tests hearts.” (NASB) When metal is refined it has to get really hot. That means letting things get hot enough that the impurities that are not gold or silver burn up. That’s no fun, but when the furnace cools down, the precious metal is more pure and more precious. This is what God does to us too; He turns up the heat at a certain point in our life in order to free us from sins that would otherwise hamper our happiness and God’s happiness.
· Jer. 9:7 Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, "Behold, I will refine them and assay them; For what else can I do, because of the daughter of My people?” (NASB) What was going on in Jeremiah’s day? The Jews were not worshipping God wholeheartedly; they were involved in lying and cheating and adultery and image-worship. God didn’t want to leave them in that mess. He intervened by having the Babylonian army threaten the Jews and take them into exile, but it resulted in repentance (Dan. 9) and revival and rebuilding of the people of God (Ezra, Neh.).
· Psalm 66:10-13 NASB “For You have tried us, O God; You have refined us as silver is refined. You brought us into the net; You laid an oppressive burden upon our loins. You made men ride over our heads; We went through fire and through water, Yet You brought us out into a place of abundance. I shall come into Your house with burnt offerings…”
· So when you experience a threat, consider that this may be a test from God to give you the opportunity to trust Him more and bring greater blessing to you.
kosam: The “cup” (which unfortunately the NIV omits), literally is a container for what you will drink, but it also seems to be used figuratively in scripture as a metaphor for the experiences which a person will have in life.
Menat: In God’s economy, certain people get certain things based on who they are.
· In Psalm 16:5, The LORD Himself is what David anticipates as an inheritance.
· Priests would get a certain allotment of farmer’s produce (2 Chron.31:4),
· Temple singers and gatekeepers also had a certain allotment (Neh. 12:47),
· as did the other Levites (Neh. 13:10).
· Even dogs got a portion of the spoils of war (Ps. 68:23),
· and now David tells us what the allotment is for people who are wicked:
1. Pachim: Considering other places in the Bible where this Hebrew word occurs with more context, it is clearly a net for trapping birds (Job 22:10, Ps. 91:3, 124:7, 140:5, Eccl. 9:12, Isa. 24:17-18, etc.) or some other thing made to be flat (Ex. 39:3, Num. 16:38).
· I can understand why some translations tried to find another word that was more like the next two things rained down on the wicked, namely fire and brimstone (the latter of which is the same as burning sulphur), but they have to switch the last two Hebrew letters of the word to turn “snares” into “coals of,”
· and besides, there is a perfectly good Biblical basis for a hail of snares:
o Job 22:10 Therefore snares surround you, And sudden dread terrifies you, (NASB),
o and in Prov. 22:5 Thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse (NASB),
o and Jer. 48:43 "Terror, pit and snare are coming upon you, O inhabitant of Moab," declares the LORD.
o (And I notice that all the English versions which rendered the Hebrew word pachiym as “coals” in Psalm 11:6 render the same word as “snares” in these three passages.)
· Augustine said that these snares are the words of the prophets which fall upon the ears of mankind and convict sinners, but that seems a stretch.
· Calvin comments, “they continually mock God as if they could not be caught, unless he first entangle and hold them fast in his snares. God, therefore, begins his vengeance by snares, shutting up against the wicked every way of escape ; and when he has them entangled and bound, he thunders upon them dreadfully and horribly…”
2 & 3. Fire & brimstone, which recall God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen. 19:24 where these things literally fell from the sky to destroy towns which did not even have five righteous people in them.
4. In addition, this “raging, scorching, burning, tempestual wind” shows up in Lamentations 5:10, describing God’s wrath against the idolatrous Jews of Jeremiah’s day. In Jeremiah 13:24-25, God says, "…I will scatter [those who are accustomed to doing evil] like drifting straw To the desert wind. This is your lot, the portion measured to you From Me...” (NASB) and that’s exactly what God did in the Babylonian exile.[8] Instead of a substantial inheritance, the wicked have only wind which can’t be used or even stored up.
These allusions to God’s acts of judgment in the past (with Sodom and Gomorrah and with the Babylonian exile of the Jews) remind us that God has punished sin in the past, and therefore He will punish the wicked in the future.
· Ezekiel 38 (and Rev. 20) tells us of a future coalition of armies that will march against God’s people, seemingly invincible in their might, and testing the faith of God’s people in His salvation, yet God promises to destroy those enemies in yet another display of His saving power and execute His judgment on the wicked. God will punish those who live in rebellion to Him and who seek to harm those of us who love God.
David fairly crows here, “You say I should run away from the bad guys because they have destroyed the foundations and they are aiming arrows at me, but I say that God is watching these threatening developments, and He isn’t going to let the wicked prevail because God is righteous!”
I think that the KJV and ancient Greek, Latin, and Syriac translations are correct here by making God the subject of all the verbs in this verse rather than making the “upright” the subject of the last one, because:
· the third verb “see/behold” is plural in Hebrew, so the only plural noun that can be its subject is the word “face” which comes our singular in English but is plural in Hebrew.
· This also carries over the statement from verse 3 that God “sees” what is going on,
· and it results in a logical syllogism:
o starting with the nature of God as righteous,
o then concluding that things outside of Himself that are also righteous He will love,
o and then arriving at the personal application that He will keep His eye on this particular one who is upright.
· (Calvin wrote: " It is a strained interpretation to view the last clause as meaning that the upright shall behold the face of God.")
· Nevertheless, the translation of the ESV, NAS and NIV[9] does not contradict scripture because, Job 19:25-26 says, "…I know that my Redeemer lives… from my flesh I shall see God” (NASB). So God and those He had made right through Jesus’ atoning sacrifice will behold each other; it will be mutual.
By the way, this Hebrew word yekhazu is not the regular word for “see;” it is the word used for visions and oracles, so it implies not just “seeing” but also understanding what cannot be seen by the eyes. It’s a profound description of the depth of knowledge we will have in our relationship with the amazing God who loves us.
What can we do to get that kind of love and relationship with God?
· The New Testament writers tell us that righteousness comes by faith in the Lord Jesus (Romans 1:17; 3:22,25,26; 4:3-13; 9:30; 10:6; Galatians 3:11; 5:5; Philippians 3:9; 1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Timothy 2:22; Hebrews 10:38; 2 Peter 1:1)
· Romans 4:3-5 NASB For what does the Scripture say? "ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS." Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness…
· So the next time you see a threat to your wellbeing coming up on the horizon, place your trust in God to deliver you, He will credit that as righteousness and love it, and He will love you and deliver you, and you will see that what you feared isn’t such a big threat after all because God will deal with it justly.
· “There is always ground of hope to one who trusts in God. All is not lost, that is brought into jeopardy. While God lives and reigns, there is hope... We may boldly challenge all who would drive us to despair... However wild confusion may reign around us, and the true ends of government be forgotten, yet it may well make the hearts of the righteous to rejoice that God is not – and cannot be – dethroned (v. 4). All other sceptres shall be broken and all other crowns fall to the ground, but the pious shall ever shout, ‘Alleluiah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.’” ~William Plumer
[1] Datta asserted that the psalm is not David’s (and probably post-exilic) because of the mention of the temple, and, of course, the temple wasn’t built until after David, but the parallelism of the holy temple and the throne in heaven makes it pretty clear to me that this temple is in heaven, so this doesn’t rule out David. Strangely enough, the editor of Augustine’s commentary seemed pretty sure the Psalm was talking about Lot. More plausible suggestions I ran across include Absalom’s rebellion or Saul’s persecution of David.
[2] although the Qere suggests nudu could be corrected to a singular imperative nudi
[3] I’d like to translate “bird” as a vocative (flee birdie to your mountain), but birdie is singular and flee is plural, so the comparative seems the most sensible alternative. It looks like Delitzsch had the same sentiments.
[4] Augustine calls it “the obscure moon” and has quite an allegorical interpretation of the moon as the church.
[5] The NASB, following the LXX and Vulgate (but not the Chaldee or Syriac), does not essentially change the meaning by moving the break in the sentence.
[6] The LXX although making an ultimately true theological statement says something different from the Hebrew text by switching the subject and object of the last verb. The English translations are right; the Hebrew “soul” is singular and feminine matching “hates” as its subject rather than “wicked and lovers of violence, which are plural and masculine and therefore should not be considered the subject.
[7] Delitzsch argues that the shortened form of the verb “rain” indicates a statement of fact about the future rather than a wish for the future.
[8] (The zil’aph shows up in only one other location: Psalm 119 where it is an adjective describing wrath.)
[9] and Delitzsch, who contended that the paniym never “sees” in the Bible, but his contention is disproved by Gen. 9:23, Deut. 32:20, Judg. 6:22, Psalm 10:11, Ezek. 12:6