The Wide Way
That Your beloved may be delivered, save with Your right hand, and answer us! Psalm 60:5 NASB
Save – YHVH saves those He loves. “Your beloved” is yedideka. TWOT’s analysis is worth reviewing:
This noun is primarily employed to describe the nation of Israel (or Judah) and individuals as those who are greatly loved by the Lord. Such love by God brings protection (cf. Benjamin; Deut 33:12) and prosperity (Ps 127:2) upon the beloved people. This love demonstrates the reason for God’s continual faithfulness to his people Israel, even when they were disobedient and unfaithful (Jer 11:15). It is upon the basis of this love of God for Israel that she petitions for the Lord to hear and deliver her from judgment (Ps 60:5 [H 7]; 108:6 [H 7]). [1]
Why does God save any of us? Why does He care enough to involve Himself with people who are rebellious and disobedient? Because He loves us. The analogy of a father is fitting. Do fathers require some external characteristic or performance in order to love their children? Hardly! In fact, a biological father who asserts his love of his child only on the basis of the child’s “worthiness” is seen as an inadequate representation of being a father. Fathers love, no further explanation needed.
Perhaps we need to reflect on David’s claim for David presupposes that Israel (the noun is plural) is YHVH’s beloved. Israel did not earn that position and in this poem Israel might not deserve that position, but Israel nevertheless is loved by God. Just as David reminds Israel, and the Lord, that the Father-child relationship is still in place, so there are times when we need to be reminded that we are His beloved. There are times, especially hard times, when we feel abandoned. Or worse, times when we feel that we should be abandoned, that we are completely undeserving of rescue. That’s when we need to hear yedideka.
And what does YHVH do as a result of our being His beloved? He saves. He brings us out of the narrow place, the place where all we see is the tunnel of our unworthiness, the confines of our sins. His act is described by the verb yasha.
“That which is wide connotes freedom from distress and the ability to pursue one’s own objectives. To move from distress to safety requires deliverance. Generally the deliverance must come from somewhere outside the party oppressed. In the ot the kinds of distress, both national and individual, include enemies, natural catastrophes, such as plague or famine, and sickness. The one who brings deliverance is known as the “savior.”[2]
Hemmed in by sin. Perhaps even hemmed in by YHVH in His attempt to make me aware of my sin. The heavy yoke prevents freedom of movement. It prevents me from enjoying life to the full. It leaves me burdened. And the weight reminds me that God cares for me. Yes, that’s right. The burden I feel is the sign of His love. If He did not love me, He would not attempt to correct me. I would feel nothing. Not joy. Not sorrow. Not heaviness. Just like David, I realize that my constriction is the indication that I am beloved—and on that basis alone I can cry out for deliverance. I know He will hear me because He is the One who is pressing me to cry out. Perhaps there are times when all we can do is cry out. But the Father is waiting for that cry—and it is enough for Him to spring to rescue.
“Abba, deliver me!”
Topical Index: beloved, yedide, save, yasha, Psalm 60:5
[1] Alexander, R. H. (1999). 846 ידד. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament .
[2] Hartley, J. E. (1999). 929 יָשַׁע. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament .
This is beautiful. This is the basis of all my faith. My part of deliverance is to believe that He does it. And then, want Him to do it. The years of my heaviness were the years that I had to learn HOW to want deliverance. I had to feel the weight in order to want the freedom. Sin is all about excusing my fear, guilt and shame (pretending it is ok), or ignoring it, or agreeing with it (giving up), or attempting to appease it (idolatry), or running from it (which I do by rolling the dice again for higher stakes), or fighting it (witchcraft), or attempting to alleviate the symptoms of it, which is also witchcraft. In my experience, this can (and has, in my life) include pharmakiea, which Paul lists as a sin, too. The pharmacists of his day mixed witchcraft with their practice, as they recognized that they were chasing symptoms of a problem, and they were attempting to negotiate with the problem. But I have a question for us today: if fear raises my blood pressure, and excretes extra sugar in my blood to feed my large muscles, and shuts down my immune system so as to use that energy to fight off external intruders, and I NEVER STOP being afraid, don’t you think one day I am going to wake up with even more reasons to go back to the pharmacist? I am not being facetious. Stress does all of this, and more, and yet we still sit there and do not recognize that stress is the opposite of shalom. We never think to ask why we do not have that peace! Not until we are at death’s door, so many times, can it even occur to us that we might need a Saviour! Sin makes life heavy (curses), but how I respond to the weight can either be further sin (in the twelve-step circles this is referred to as going back for more information) by doing the last action – or inaction – again, or by doing further sin (see above) in an attempt to alleviate the problem.
But, all, all of this is NOTHING in comparison to the one thing – yes, the one thing – that I should have done at any point at all that I feel or sense or see that life has gotten harder; that I am lacking 360 degrees of choices, and that one thing is to do what Balaam’s donkey did. Stop. That’s it. Stop, drop and roll. Even a stubborn donkey got this one! The heavy yoke is intended to stop me in my tracks. Pride is muscle that is entirely devoted to digging my hole deeper. Humility says, “I am wrong”. Weight is perceived in my flesh as a challenge to My Way, and so I respond like Pharoah, and develop more resistance, so as to continue in my chosen direction. That more resistance is further sin, and all of it is because I want the wrong thing.
To be delivered from evil is all about giving up on My Way, for that is the evil that is eating up my landscape and piling up my disaster. The heavy is not about anything else but convincing me that I need deliverance. That’s it. There is no other motive for the curses other than getting me to stop going that way, drop what I have (not) in my hand, and roll out from under the weight. I do that by trading in yokes. I was yoked to my own disaster; tied to my own corpse, literally. It was my OWN dead weight that was killing me! Sin is a liar, for it tells me that the disaster exists because I am NOT getting My Own Way. The truth is, of course, that there is no such thing as My Own Way. Disaster is because I dropped the bone in my mouth for the bone I thought I saw in the reflection of my own ignorance. The desire for My Own Way, I am convinced, comes from ignorance of the fact that, in reality, there is no such thing. It is an illusion. But, I digress. Enough talking about nonsense: back to the real Subject. His yoke IS better! It has a Living, Risen Person on the other end! Deliverance is the very thing the flesh does NOT want, as it means being separated from My Way. At some point, things need to get difficult enough that I want something else NO MATTER WHAT, for it is going to take every bit of that want to get me separated from my Self. Sigh. Deliverance is all about cutting me loose from My Own Way. The weight is just to convince me to consent to the operation.
TO THE AUTHOR, AND LAURIETTA,& ALL THE REST OF YOU, ***** ( ESPECIALLY BRIAN AND KATHYRN,) THIS IS SO ON TARGET AND DOWN WHERE WE ALL ARE, OR HAVE Been or will be at some point in life. Isn’t this a marvelous picture of the Father’s Love? How we need to also apply it to remind us to keep on keeping on, with truly loving our own children, grandchildren and now some of us for great grandchildren, and even our neighbors’ children! I have eight-greats, and one more to come before the year is over. I try to embrace them in whatever ways are natural and workable with each individual one.
*** And to Brian and Kathryn, I wrote you a long e-mail on the e-mail address you gave me, it was correct, but came back from one of those Mailer-Damon things saying that Brian had no e-mail account with them. So I am today sending my personal e-mail, and if you will write me, perhaps my lap top can pick yours up and I will forward that letter to you. Thanks! here it is LaVaye Billings (melshad@aeseng.com) . Please try, thanks.