Back to the Beginning
“With reproofs You chasten a man for iniquity; You consume as a moth what is precious to him; surely every man is a mere breath.” Selah. Psalm 39:11 NASB
Precious– By now we should have noticed that David’s vocabulary pushes us back into the history of Israel. From allusions to Moses, we returned to Egypt. From Egypt we made our way back to Jacob and the Jabbok. Now the word he chooses for “precious” (ḥāmad) moves us further into the past, back to the Garden.
From its initial occurrences, the verb ḥāmad describes on the one hand God’s “pleasant” trees in Eden (Gen 2:9); but on the other, the tree forbidden to Adam, which became sinful when “desired” (the same Niphal participle) to make one wise (3:6).[1]
How skillfully this poet weaves his plot! From the internal trauma of silence, we have arrived at the Garden in a word that includes both the delight and the destruction of human beings. Perhaps that is David’s intention. By drawing us back to the Garden, David forces his audience to confront the basic flaw of human being, namely, desire! What do reproofs really consume? We could write a long list of individual sins but this isn’t what David addresses. We could repent of our past disobedient act, but this is also not what David wants us to confront. What we need to tackle is desire, the two-edged sword of human existence, the realm of the yetzer ha’ra where the animal is fed. Until we let God’s reproofs consume that beast, we will retain the deep-seeded rebellion introduced by Adam. Delight will always become disaster.
David’s reminder, penned at the end of this poetic flashback, points toward the answer to our mutiny. “Surely every man is mere breath.” hebel again. The final result of ḥāmad is vapor. Perhaps we need to expand the word’s meaning to appreciate its impact.
Two inexorable principles are illustrated here [in this word]: (1) every man takes on to some degree the character and nature of the God he worships; (2) the characteristic of all false gods is that they destroy their worshippers.[2]
The characteristic of all worship of self-desire is hebel and it always leads to destruction. For David’s audience, nothing more needs to be said. The poem makes it abundantly clear that if the wicked in the audience continue in their twisted ways, they will destroy themselves, just as Adam’s choice for self-fulfillment led to expulsion from the place of God’s delight.
David transports his audience back to the Garden. We stand there too. What will we do?
Topical Index: hebel, vapor, vanity, ḥāmad, delight, precious, Psalm 39:11
[1]Payne, J. B. (1999). 673 חָמַד. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 295). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2]Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 463 הָבַל. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 204). Chicago: Moody Press.
