Welcome to BibleBum where we are exploring the entire Bible in one year to better learn how to follow God’s instructions and discover the purpose for our lives.  The BibleBum blog uses The One Year Chronological Bible, the New Living Translation version.  At the end of each day’s reading, Rob, a cultural history aficionado and seminary graduate, answers questions from Leigh An, the blogger host, about the daily scripture.  To start from the beginning, click on “Index” and select Day 1.

Psalms 42-46

Questions & Observations

Q. (42): This sounds like Job, just a roller coaster of emotion.  Question, question, question, but then proclaim God.  God could be testing here?

A. We are certainly in the midst of great trials for God’s people — which we can see they’ve brought upon themselves — but it is possible they don’t see it that way.  Regardless, God feels distant (and remember who moved when He does!), and the writer longs to be close to Him again.

Q. (44): This psalm says the authors are upright with God, are true believers, have lived up to the law, but they are being destroyed.  Can you explain this?

A. This reads to me like emotional writing of a person who does not understand what God is up to.  I am certain that within each of these generations of people suffering the losses and devastation, which will continue, there were those who remained faithful to God and did not bow to other gods.  But the problem is that “we” word, as in “we have been loyal to the covenant.”  That’s a white wash at best.  Clearly many within the nation, including its rulers, have been completely unfaithful to God, and are suffering for it now.

My reaction to these verses is they sound like a child who is crying out in anger, knowing full well what they are being punished for by a parent, but saying, “I didn’t do anything!”

Q. (45:1): What king is being praised here?  I thought it was God, but then verse 2 says the king has been blessed by God.  I’m really not sure what’s going on in this whole Psalm.

A. The Psalm is written to the kings of the throne of David, i.e. Judah, it appears as a way of honoring them on a wedding day to a foreign wife.  It generates a powerful image of a king who is almost god-like in his abilities.  Of the actual kings who ruled Judah, only David came anywhere close to this description.  But, as we have seen with other types of writings, it establishes a “type” for a godly King, one that will be seen by Christians centuries later as having revealed an image of the Kings of Kings, Jesus Christ.