Beware of Dog
“Moab is My washbowl; over Edom I shall throw My shoe; shout loud, O Philistia, because of Me!” Psalm 60:8 NASB
Because of Me – If you read this verse in ESV, you will find “shout in triumph.” The Hebrew is hitroai. The root is rua, spelled Resh-Ayin. As TWOT notes, “An unusual verb, although it occurs forty-two times throughout the ot, the most frequent usages are in Ps. The root is only developed in Hebrew, with a much later similar term appearing in medieval Judeo-Arabic.”[1] The primary meaning, “to make a noise,” is usually associated with an instrument including the shofar, but the idea is exultation. NASB may capture this in the exclamation point, but it’s difficult to understand the reticence to include some indication of noise. Perhaps the attempt is to remind us that YHVH shouts His sovereignty over Israel’s enemies. Whatever the reason, the combination of ESV and NASB tells us something important, and perhaps overlooked, about YHVH’s reign. Even God feels euphoria over his dominion.
Perhaps we don’t appreciate God’s euphoria. We are cognizant of His joy. We recognize His delight. But we spiritualize these elements. They become theological fodder for doctrines concerned with the salvation of sinners or the fulfillment of the Kingdom or the return of the Messiah. Jubilation, bliss and elation over God’s sheer majesty are suppressed by our inherited concepts of God as the moral authority of the cosmos. We rarely think of Him shouting for joy, laughing out loud or exclaiming delight about His creativity and power. In fact, were it any other person, we might consider such “noises” hubris. Except, of course, that YHVH deserves all possible accolades.
If David’s record of YHVH’s exclamation offers us any insight into the heart of the Father, the heart of the Creator and Ruler of all, then it should convince us that God is emotionally involved in His Kingdom. He is not the austere Judge, the detached Policeman, the transcendental Magistrate of our Western universalized God the Holy-Other. He is right in the mix, embedded in the fray, exuberant about what He has done and what He is doing. He is the King of this cosmos and it will become what He desires. Our confusion about His purposes and patterns is our confusion, not His. In fact, as David suggests, even what we perceive as chaotic or contradictory is not beyond the control of El Shaddai. The “shout of triumph” is “because of Me!”
Have you ever praised God because He is joyful about who He is? Have you ever blessed Him because He delights in His power and majesty? Have you been in the presence of the King when He exults in His sovereignty? We emphasize our finitude in the face of His magnificence, and rightly so, but perhaps we have failed to notice that YHVH Himself may deservedly boast of His handiwork and remind us of His supremacy.
Topical Index: hitroai, rua, make noise, triumph, sovereignty, Psalm 60:8
[1] White, W. (1999). 2135 רַֻע. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament .
YHVH swaggers.
Enter the hero. Everyone loves a hero. All of creation is geared toward the hero. The lone buried talent gets taken away and distributed; not to the have nots, but to the have mosts. This is nature’s pattern. We like to line up behind the winners, too. We judge, like the creatures, which buck we want for the sire of our progeny based on his ability to dominate the herd. We equate the relative value of the clothes on the runway with the confidence of the model, and we know who the hero is by how much he owns the situation. Winner takes all. And we cheer him or her on! Love IS the domination of the entire field. That’s what we look for to determine what it is! This is why we confuse control and power for love, for the best lies are the ones that lie closest to the truth. They are 99.99% pure ivory soap. They are almost right, those most egregious of sins. The anti-christ is an alter-christos, presenting himself as the real thing. What? You think he would show up in cloven hooves and horns? You think he’s stupid?
“You will know them (the lovers) by their fruits.” The bigger the pile of fruit, the better the lover. Enter the harems of the heathen. Even the heathen know this one! We shun the losers, too. Those who have not, we turn on and take away any chance of them ever getting any. We want to make sure there is not even a ghost of a chance at a come back. If you bobbled the ball, you are out, for we know that love sure never would! Love would never allow even a whisper of a chance that the beloved would be lost or overcome. We want total trust, and we establish it on the basis of total victory. See, even we know how it works!
Read 1Corinthians 13 if you want to know what a winner looks like (and read also Skip’s most excellent discourse on the chapter that he did in TW a while ago: you can search for it in the archives taskbar). Love is not the golden tongue or even the perfect prophet or the deepest understanding or the most productive faith, for those are still not enough! No, not until the pinnacle of achievement is reached are you going to find this stuff. And what is the pinnacle? (Be careful; it is disguised as a hole many times!)
Here is the hero: love suffers longer than anything else, for it simply has more to lose than anything else. Love is completely kind, and never wants what belongs to another (for it always has more!). Love never has to blow its own horn, for it is always instantly recognizable. It doesn’t have to make itself ‘bigger’, for it already is the biggest! Love never embarrasses itself, and never lacks anything, for nothing ever goes anywhere. Love always succeeds in protecting its own. Love cannot be bullied; conversely, it does not ever have to seek a leg up on the situation. If someone else drops their sword, love picks it up and hands it back to them, for it does not want to look bad when (not if) it wins. It also saves all its exultation for itself, and wastes none of it on its enemy. But the pinnacle of it all – the best way to tell that it is love – is that it never, never loses! The golden tongue and the perfect prophet are dependent on circumstances, and the deepest understanding still cannot even touch the mind of the Creator; He cannot even out think Himself! Faith only works when something is still not being revealed, either. But love wants most of all to share all this with the beloved; it wants to win it all so as to lay it at the feet of the beloved. Love shouts out itself, for it wants the beloved to make no mistake: love wants to make sure we know that it has won. This is something beyond our wildest dreams. It has never even entered our hearts or imaginations that the purpose of the hero was to accumulate it all – for us! I am speechless.
I love your stuff, little Laura! “YHWH has swagger”
Blessed Like That
~ The LORD your God in the midst of you is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy; He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing ~
(Zephaniah 3.17)
~ And when you pray, say — “Abba-Father..” ~
~ You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.. ~
(Deuteronomy 8.6)
~ it is we who [will] extol the LORD, both now and forevermore. Praise the LORD. ~
(Psalm 115.18)
~ But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place ~ (2 Corinthians 2.14)
~ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our LORD Jesus Christ!~
The Best Question Ever?
~Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
And the Answer Is?
NO!!, — in [the midst of] all these things we are more than conquerors* through Him who loved us!
[When did He, our resurrected Redeemer stop loving us?— He ever lives to make intercession for us!]
~ For I am [now, truly] fully convinced [ I now know] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our LORD ~
~ And [now] being fully assured that, what He has promised, He is able also to perform!
Though by sin oppressed
Go to Him for rest
Our God is able to deliver thee!!
~ Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest! ~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etcT7VRIAWA
Thanks for the YouTube view Carl, very uplifting