Somebody Else’s Mail (22)

To date our studies have treated Psalm 9 as another of many that only a future believing Israelite remnant may sing in the text’s absolute and final sense.

Two Saturdays ago, we compared the language of this psalm to the language of the historical books concerning David’s personal dealings with the nations, and found they were an uncomfortable fit. Whereas David subdued individual nations temporarily only to have them rise up again against future Israelite kings, Psalm 9 speaks of God’s final, annihilative judgment of national Israel’s enemies as a collective, something David never saw during his lifetime.

So then, either Psalm 9 is a study in pure hyperbole, or else it is literal and prophetic, in which case David is speaking in a voice other than his own.

That device is common in the prophetic scriptures, and I believe setting this particular psalm in the nation of Israel’s future is key to understanding it. As we come to the last eight verses of Psalm 9, I can’t help but notice another neat device David has employed here. Each of the four two-verse sequences has its pair (or trio) of echoing words, either reinforcing or contrasting ideas. In order, the four themes are gates, traps, forgetfulness, and the nations. These parallelisms can hardly be unintentional.

Psalm 9:13-14 — Two Sets of Gates

“Be gracious to me, O Lord! See my affliction from those who hate me, O you who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may recount all your praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in your salvation.”

From the gates of death to the gates of the daughter of Zion. The first set of gates is obviously figurative and the literal-ness of the second debated by the prophetic schools:

1/ The Gates of Death

The phrase “gates of death” first appears in the book of Job. In God’s reply to Job in chapter 38, he inquires, “Have the gates of death been revealed to you?” The rhetorical answer expected is “Evidently not.” In that passage, the phrase probably signifies the yawning void in human understanding during Job’s lifetime concerning what happens when we die. For the believer, today’s answer by way of revelation to the apostle Paul is that we go directly to be with Christ, which is far better. Job’s concept of sheol, or the grave, was far less informed, and that is probably the sort of thing David is thinking about here. For most OT believers, death was a scary concept, and to be lifted up from death’s gates a great blessing. Christians today do not fear these gates in the same way, though we sorrow with those who experience loss.

The expression also appears later in Psalms, likely intended in the same sense.

2/ The Gates of the Daughter of Zion

So much for the figurative, at least as I read it. In my understanding, when David speaks of the gates of the daughter of Zion, he’s talking about a geographic location that existed during his lifetime and will exist again during the millennial reign of Christ and perhaps even during the later great tribulation period. David is simply saying that having been preserved from the death his enemies had in mind for him, he will now be able to publicly glorify the Lord for his deliverance in the most natural place to do so. (Remember that in David’s day, the temple had yet to be built. The gates were where all Jerusalem’s important business took place.)

It hardly matters whether we think of this as David’s personal conviction in his own circumstances or, as I believe far more likely, that David speaks for a future remnant. Both interpretations work in these two verses, though the latter works better when we consider the entire psalm.

Some Christians do not accept these as literal gates to a famous earthly city. The postmillennial school reads such expressions figuratively and applies them to the present-day Church, which baffles me since the phrase is unabashedly Jewish in origin and continues to be Jewish even when looking into the future. We should note that even the reference in Hebrews to Christians coming to a heavenly version of Mount Zion was addressed to professing Christian Jews in the context of a warning not to turn back to Judaism, a caution transparently unnecessary for Gentile believers. Inserting the Church into this psalm seems to me both forced and unnecessary.

The Phrase ‘Daughter of Zion’

The phrase “daughter of Zion” appears 26 times in the OT, always in the prophetic scriptures. It is synonymous with “daughter of Jerusalem”. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Zephaniah use the expressions interchangeably, usually in the same verse. The phrase also appears twice in the NT, both times in OT quotations concerning the triumphal entry of the Lord Jesus into Jerusalem. It signifies not just the city of Jerusalem but also its people.

Psalm 9:15-16 — Three Traps

“The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid, their own foot has been caught. The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands.” Higgaion. Selah

David compares the final destiny of the nations to three kinds of trap: a pit, a net and a snare. All are devices used to trap others, and in every case the eventual victim was the hunter rather than the hunted.

Using the plans of the wicked to prepare their own doom is a tactic the Lord has employed repeatedly across history. Think of Haman hanged on the gallows he prepared for Mordecai the Jew, or Daniel’s malicious accusers tossed to the lions they hoped would eat him for lunch. Even the Pharisees who engineered the crucifixion of Messiah inadvertently set in motion the destruction of the religion and nation they were trying to preserve.

God always has the last laugh, and that laugh is frequently ironic. If David intended the Higgaion and Selah at the end of verse 16 as a sort of punctuation device, they come in an appropriate spot. (No, nobody else knows for sure what Higgaion means either. I’ll add it to our growing list of possible musical or liturgical terms.)

Psalm 9:17-18 — Two Things Forgotten

“The wicked shall return to Sheol, all the nations that forget God. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever.”

The Wicked Return

David earlier spoke for those who will praise God for preserving them from the gates of death. Here, the wicked who assailed them do not escape. They return to sheol, the grave. The word “return” is a literal rendering of the Hebrew, and reminds us that those who set themselves against God and his people are merely going where they always truly belonged. Death has always been their spiritual state. When it becomes their eternal environment, it will be by their own choice.

The NT reinforces this concept. Jesus taught that whoever does not believe is condemned already. Death is not an option but his current state of being. He does not have to await God’s verdict to seal his destiny. He has chosen to live under judgment for his entire life and resolutely refused God’s way of escape. Perhaps this is the idea behind the statement that the traitor Judas went to “his own place”. Acts 1 even speaks of him “turning aside” to go to it, just as we see here.

I can never help noting that though the rich man in Hades in our Lord’s story in Luke requests a drop of water for his tongue and a warning for his siblings, he never asks to be let out. Perhaps he knew it was impossible. Then again, perhaps he was home.

On Being Forgetful

The grave is not just the eternal dwelling of those who hate God, but also of those who do not factor him into their choices. The rich man in Hades was there not because he hated God and rebelled against him, but because he lived his entire earthly existence without considering what the Lord thought of his behavior. Like the nations in this psalm, he forgot God. Our current environment provides sufficient distractions that many go from cradle to grave never considering the big questions.

In contrast with forgetful man, we have a God who never forgets. He may appear to for a time, and many have wondered why he allows so much suffering in the world, especially among the impoverished. But God’s timing is not ours, and we can rest assured that the needy are not factored out of God’s plans and purposes. In his time, they will receive everything they missed out on in life. Again, we come back to Luke 16 and the story of the rich man and Lazarus, and the words of Abraham, “Now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.” I think we can safely infer Lazarus had no regrets.

Psalm 9:19-20 — Two Things About the Nations

“Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before you! Put them in fear, O Lord! Let the nations know that they are but men!” Selah

It is never enough simply for God to be right in his judgments; it is also necessary that he be revealed to be right. Likewise, it is not enough that the nations be judged for their centuries of evildoing, but that they have the righteousness of their judgment demonstrated to them. Scripture teaches that it is God’s purpose that every mouth be stopped, both Jew and Gentile. No man will contradict God when he enters his final judgment, not because God will censor his enemies, but because, like Pharisees confronted with the teaching of Christ, not one soul will be able to contrive a single legitimate argument against God’s righteous verdict.