Somebody Else’s Mail (31)

There is no shortage of hills and mountains in scripture, but it seems to me that the phrase “holy hill” or “holy mountain” [קֹדֶשׁ הַר] applies exclusively to Mount Zion.

Psalm 2 is one of the more blatant examples (“I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill”), but there are others. Psalm 48 connects the holy mountain with “Mount Zion, the city of the great King”, as does Psalm 99. Isaiah writes of the “holy mountain at Jerusalem” and Psalm 43 associates the “holy hill” with the “altar of God”, something that would only be true in the years after the tabernacle moved to Jerusalem.

David’s aspiration was to be in the place where God had put his name and where the divine presence was to be most intensely experienced. When a local church operates as the Lord intended, gathering with God’s people can have much the same effect today.

Psalm 15:1 — One Question

A Psalm of David.

“O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?”

Times and Circumstances

Commentators like to speculate about the times and circumstances in which David wrote his psalms, and I’m not immune from the impulse when there are obvious clues in the text. Verse 1 refers to the aforementioned “holy hill” as the place where God made his dwelling with Israel in David’s day. If we take that holy hill literally, David spoke of Zion. That seems how we should take it. I cannot think of any reference to a holy hill in the heavenly realm.

2 Samuel tells us David was thirty when he began to reign over all Israel in Hebron, and that he reigned from Hebron seven years and six months before successfully taking the walled city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites and moving there. Shortly thereafter, he brought the Ark of the Covenant up from Kiriath-jearim to Jerusalem, where the tabernacle would make its home until Solomon built the first temple. So then, David must then have been 38 or older when he wrote Psalm 15.

With Whom Does God Fellowship?

Technically, there are two questions about the tabernacle here: Who shall sojourn there? and Who shall dwell there? I believe they are really saying the same thing. I suspect it’s yet another of those parallelisms that crop up so often in Hebrew psalms and proverbs. David is asking, “With whom does God fellowship? What type of man is God comfortable having nearby? Who is welcome in the house of the Lord?” The remainder of the psalm will give us the answer: twelve of them, actually.

Psalm 15:2-5 — Twelve Answers

“He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart; who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.”

I say David lists twelve qualities of a God-compatible person here, but there may be fewer if some are parallelisms. For example, walking blamelessly and doing “what is right” in verse 2 are saying much the same thing. “Walks blamelessly” is a negative and “does what is right” is an active positive, reinforcing the picture of a faithful servant of God. Together, they accurately describe the character of a person who pleases God, one with whom he is content to make his residence. I won’t work through all of them as some of these characteristics and behaviors are quite straightforward. We can take them at face value. For a blameless walk, doing what is right and speaking truth in one’s heart, Job 31 provides a fine illustration of what that looks like in action.

A Vile Person is Despised

If this sounds like foreign language in our present era in which love of one’s enemies is commanded, bear in mind that if God regards a particular human behavior as vile, we ought to as well. For Israel to express love for the Canaanites while they were offering their children to Molech or attacking Israel with swords would have been unfaithfulness to God, not to mention unconscionably stupid. One can show love actively to people who have injured us when it’s safe and appropriate to do so without liking what they are doing or passively giving approval to it.

I think of the command in Jude to “save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh”. Hatred is not always a godly response, but there are times when it is absolutely the right attitude. Confronting vileness is one of those times. A quick scan of the usage of the Hebrew word translated “vile” in the OT shows a vile person is one who publicly rejects the word of God, and has in turn been rejected by God because of it. Such a person is not merely weak, caught in a particular sin, hating it and wishing to be free of it. He has a rebel heart.

Swears to His Own Hurt

Scripture cautions repeatedly against taking unnecessary oaths and making unnecessary promises to God or man. However, once a solemn promise is made, a yes is yes and a no is no. A righteous person who finds himself at such a disadvantage never seeks to break a covenant unilaterally. He might negotiate to see if he can extricate himself but, in the end, if he cannot be free of an obligation he has taken on while maintaining his integrity, he must see it through. Such consistency displays the character of God himself, who always keeps his covenants even at the greatest possible cost to himself. In the ultimate case of swearing to his own hurt and not changing, God gave his own Son into the hands of wicked men, fulfilling his promises and absorbing the cost of doing so himself.

Does Not Put Out His Money at Interest

For a Christian enjoying Psalm 15 in our present era, the words “does not put out his money at interest” may present an apparent difficulty. Our entire secular economic system operates by lending money to make a profit. The response of many Christians is that we are no longer under the Law of Moses. True enough. Still, if we are concerned about what an ancient command or the commendation of the psalmist here might tell us about the Lord’s preferences for us as believers, we could remind ourselves that even the Law permitted Israelites to loan money to foreigners at interest. What the Law forbade was taking advantage of a fellow Israelite, one of God’s people. If we apply that principle to our present era, the distinction we ought to make would be between making a loan to a believer vs. a loan to an unbeliever. Nothing I know of in scripture suggests there is a problem in making a reasonable return on the latter.

If there is a lesson for believers in the present age in this, it’s one I learned early when I asked my brother for a loan shortly after he was restored to the Lord. He replied, “I won’t lend it to you, but I’ll give it to you.” That was a shocker, and I think it captures the spirit of the psalmist here. If your brother is in need and you have enough to help, be open-handed with it.

Works-Based Salvation

It hardly needs to be stated that David is not proposing a works-based salvation when he describes the sort of behavior that keeps a man in happy fellowship with God. A man who displays these twelve character qualities and behaviors is a man of faith. He cannot be anything else, especially if he “speaks truth in his heart”. His good works and avoidance of evil do not establish his relationship with God, they simply reflect its genuineness.