… a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (II Tim 2:15)
As you spoke in ancient times to real people in real settings, so, too, do you speak today to real people in real settings, and you use what you said to the ancient people to encourage and challenge us modern people. Praise your name!
We have been talking about how to read the Bible, and I have been saying that, in one sense, we ought to read the Bible in much the same way we read other books. The past couple blogs have given some examples. We talked about adjusting how we interpret the Bible according to the genre we are reading. We then talked about the importance of the writer’s situation and historical context and used two letters from Paul to illustrate. But the Bible contains more than Paul’s letters. So let’s continue talking about writer’s situation and historical context, except today let’s focus on one prophet and the psalms.
In the book of Micah, the prophet foretells the birth of Messiah in Bethlehem (Mic 5:1-4). We often bring this prophecy out at Christmas, but we rarely mention the writer’s situation and context, even though Micah states up front that Jerusalem is under siege when he writes (5:1). This fact adds significantly to the meaning of what God was doing with that prophecy. When God predicted a ruler who was from ancient days but who would be born in Bethlehem, he was sending a message of hope to a people who did not know if they would be alive tomorrow. God gave them encouragement in their situation by giving them something bigger than their situation. Micah did not write to give you and me information we could put in our Christmas programs. He wrote to encourage despondent people. You see, the message of a coming Messiah is hope in a desperate situation just as the message of the 2nd coming is today hope in our desperate situations.
The prophets are constantly addressing a people facing problems like invasions, sieges, injustice, corruption, idolatry, and more. When you read the prophets, they often describe their context for you just as Micah did. Listen to it and try to put yourself into the situation of someone facing the same issues. You will better understand what the prophet is doing.
When it comes to the psalms, each psalm has a historical context. Sometimes we know that context, sometimes we don’t. Some psalms come with a preface that states the context. Psalm 54 says that David wrote the psalm “when the Ziphites went and told Saul, ‘Is not David hiding among us?’” This story appears in I Samuel 23:15-29, and you will better understand Psalm 54 if you read that story first. The story helps you get inside the head of David.
Many psalms, however, do not have such a preface. Instead, some psalms refer to the context in their body. In Psalm 86 David says “O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.” (v. 14). When we read this psalm, we must understand that evil men are attacking David in order to kill him. When David then says, “All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord” (v. 9), he is making a great statement of faith because what he sees with his eyes is that men ignore God and want to kill the godly. The historical context helps us see David as a real man struggling with real difficulties, but it also magnifies his faith. This is not a nebulous “Preserve my life” (v.2). It addresses a situation just as specific as yours and mine.
Now all this talk of history within the psalms does not mean that the psalms are history texts, but neither are they ahistorical because they are songs. No one thinks Francis Scott Key was trying to write history when he wrote the “Star Spangled Banner.” At the same time, no one doubts the historicity of the battle of Baltimore Harbor, the event that inspired the song. When he wrote that he saw “in the dawn’s early light … the rockets red glare and the bombs bursting in air,” he is likely describing what he saw. If you think of the psalms as something like that, you will not be amiss.
Finally, sometimes historical context can give perspective on difficult texts. In Psalm 137, the author blesses him who takes the infants of Babylon and dashes them against the rock (v 9). Some people do not understand how the Bible can say such things. But we live in our antiseptic world, divorced from the realities that drove this psalm. The author is a Jew who has likely witnessed Babylon dash Jewish infants into the rock. He was likely there when the armies burned the city and put to death thousands of innocent men, women, and children. He has likely seen women raped and the temple razed to the ground. He has vivid pictures in his mind of Edomites shouting, “Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!” (v. 7) He has now been taken as a slave into captivity in Babylon (vv. 1-3), and in this psalm, he expresses his raw feelings, and asks God to repay Babylon with what she did to Jerusalem (v 8). The prayer is a cry for justice. The author expresses that cry with such a crude image (v. 9) because that may be the image that he cannot get out of his head. He will never forget what he saw.
The Babylonian destruction and captivity of Judah is the historical context of the psalm. It is so foreign to us. We cannot imagine anyone thinking what this author said about the babies of Babylon. But then neither can we imagine going through what this author just went through. We sit in our easy chairs 2700 years after the fact, sip our lattes, and somehow think we understand. We pass judgment on a man who just went through hell. The historical context, however, tempers our judgment. You and I will never completely understand the feelings of this psalmist. We haven’t walked in his shoes, and we don’t want to. But the historical context shows me where his feelings came from.
Imagine an African man in the 19th century who was forcibly taken from his family, put onto a boat, and shipped to America. He was sold into slavery on a Southern plantation. He was whipped and beaten. He eventually started a family in America, only to have his master take away his boy and finally sell his wife to someone else. He wished and prayed for justice, and he prayed that his master would lose his own boy and see what it is like.
Today, I may not wish such things on anybody, but I get it. I know why that man feels that way. The historical context he is in changes how I look at him. We need to see this psalm and many other psalms in much the same way. And we need to see that we, too, can express our real feelings to God, even if what comes out might sound crude. I think God is a big enough God to deal with our hurt.
