Wishful Thinking
The Lord will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. Psalm 121:7 NASB
You – I suppose there are two questions to be asked about this verse. The first is, “Who is the Lord going to protect from all evil?” Who’s “you”? The second is “When is God going to do this?” If we start with the second question, we might never get to the first. After all, we don’t have any experience of being protected from all evil. Nor does anyone we know, alive or dead. Even the Messiah was not protected from all evil. In fact, there isn’t a single person I can think of (maybe you’re not so unlucky) that was protected from all evil. Not even Adam. So maybe this verse is just “pie-in-the-sky-in-the-bye-and-bye.” Maybe it’s just a dream wish that will never come true during human life times. And if that’s the case, then who cares about the first question? It’s a moot point. If God doesn’t protect anyone from all evil, then there is no name for an answer to question number one.
But let’s ask anyway. Who’s “you”? Who is this person who is protected from all evil?
To answer that question, we need to understand the verb šāmar. Yes, it could be translated “protect,” but it also means “to observe (as “watch over”), to keep” and “to guard.” Not all of these possibilities imply protection. Furthermore, this verb is an imperfect. That means it is an unfinished action. It’s ongoing, still in process. The verb does not imply that God has, once and for all time, protected (past tense) someone (you). It means that there is a process going on here, one that involves God’s observation and careful attention with the intent to guard. How that occurs over a lifetime is unspecified.
So maybe there’s some wiggle room here.
But what about “all evil”? We can probably understand that the process is not yet completed, that God is doing something that will result in keeping your soul (wait on that one), but the “all evil” claim seems to be impossible. The only possible time when we would be protected from all evil seems to be in the ‘olam ha’ba, after we’ve died. Not much good now, is it? But maybe that’s really the point. Since the objective is to “save your soul,” maybe this claim isn’t about what happens to us during our sojourn between birth and death. Maybe the whole point of the Psalmist is that after everything is said and done, God will save us. We will, in the end, be protected from all evil, but on the way, God is watching over us so that we are headed in the right direction, despite the fact that we haven’t yet arrived.
“Keep your soul” employs the Hebrew term nepeš. It should not be translated “soul.” “Soul” is a Greek idea. Hebrew uses nepeš the way we use the word “person.” nepeš is all of us, everything about us, the physical, volitional, emotional, mental—the whole of who we are. God is not in the “soul saving” business. He is in the restoration business, and He is restoring all of the creation, including us, to His original design. When that is complete, all evil will be overcome and we will forevermore be protected from it.
We would like to think that this verse, and the surrounding verses about God’s protection, can be applied directly to us—to each of us individually. It’s true that the pronouns and the grammar are singular constructs, but maybe the poet is simply treating Israel as one. Like the verses where God addresses Israel as “my son.” We might even be tempted to say that these verses apply only to the individual who is the Messiah, but, of course, the story of the Messiah doesn’t bear out what these verses are saying. So we’re stuck with several interpretations (not the one about the Messiah) that might fit and might not make the verse applicable to us. At least not in the poet’s view. You can still think that this verse is the way you would like God to treat you, and it just might be possible to read it that way, but experience counts, and God’s protection often seems as solid as the evaporating morning mist. We’ll have to come up with another way of reading this if we’re going to make sense of what the poet meant when he wrote it.
But perhaps that’s really the point. The verse isn’t an historical assertion. It’s not a fact about our lives, or anyone else’s. It’s a window into the heart of God and His desire to protect us. It’s a hint at something far deeper than our individual or collective stories. It’s about the reality of God’s care. And maybe that’s enough.
Topical Index: šāmar, guard, keep, protect, nepeš, soul, person, Psalm 121:7
