The Five Words

Whom have I in heaven but You?  And beside You, I desire nothing on earth.  Psalm 73:25  NASB

Desire – A lot gets added in translation to fill in Asaph’s blurted exclamation.  In Hebrew, the text literally reads, “Who in heaven? I do not desire in earth.”  NASB, ESV, NIV and others add conjunctions, pronouns and negations to capture the sense of it.  There is probably nothing amiss with these additions.  The only thing that gets left out is the brevity and cryptic nature of Asaph’s declaration.  After all this poetry of twisted words and double meanings, Asaph comes to this succinct conclusion.  It’s God, only God, here or anywhere.  In the end, no one else will do.

We can get a taste of the power of Asaph’s exclamation if we look at the only verb in this sentence – hafets.  Remarkably, in a poem about the prosperity of the wicked, this is the first occurrence of the verb “to desire.”  It is a verb expressing great emotional delight or favor.  It means “to take pleasure in.”  Excellent examples may be found in the Song of Songs where emotional intimacy predominates (along with a few other delightful things).  We would have expected Asaph to use this verb in conjunction with the success of the wicked, but he does not.  They are driven by something other than desire and delight.  Power, perhaps, or avarice, cupidity or covetousness, materialism, prestige, pleonxia (you can look that one up).  But not delight?  Why?  James gives us the answer, thousands of years later.  “Every good and perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17).  Maybe James read Asaph.  Do you think?

Here’s the nub of the matter.  Delight belongs properly to what God gives.  Any misuse of God’s gifts does not produce delight.  It produces some twisted form of hafets, a form unrecognizable in the Kingdom.  In the end, God only is Man’s delight, and therefore Man’s highest desire.  Asaph confirms in cryptic poetry what the entire Bible asserts:  the chief end of Man is the enjoyment of fellowship with God.  Nothing else in heaven or on earth compares.  It takes only five Hebrew words to communicate this stunning conclusion.  Five Hebrew words are all that we need to direct our lives to their most satisfying ends.  Any more, any less and we’re in trouble.

By the way, Asaph absolutely proclaims that something is worthy of all desire.  He is not Stoic nor Buddhist.  Desire is essential to being human.  Desire is the proper use of yetzer ha’tov in its domestication of yetzer ha’ra.

Five words.  “Who (in)heaven?  And(there)(is) no-desire (in)earth.”  Mi-li vashamayim ve’eemha lo-hafatzti va’aretz.

Are these your words?

Topical Index:  desire, hafets, Psalm 73:25