The Shakedown

Search me, God, and know my heart; put me to the test and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there is any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.  Psalm 139:23-24  NASB

Put me to the test – Does God really “test” us?  Is life an examination, a proving ground where we find out if we made the grade?  Are we just waiting for Him to say, “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me . . .” (Genesis 22:12 NIV)?  Maybe we should ask this another way: “Doesn’t God already know if we’ll make it?”  Or if we’re evangelicals, “Doesn’t Jesus guarantee we’ve made it?”  If we read David’s poem with modern theology in mind, it might seem as if the whole thing is up in the air until the last moment, that we’re constantly on the assayer’s table waiting for the final verdict just before we die—and hoping that it’s good news.  Why, oh why, would David want God to test him?  Measured against the standard of holiness, he (and we) can only fail.

But maybe there’s something else happening here.

Once more David employs a rare word.  Fortunately not so rare that we have no real information about its meaning.

This root and its derivatives occur thirty-two times in the ot, chiefly in Job, Ps, and Jer. It often appears in parallel with נָסָה [nāsâ] and צָרַף [ṣārap], its meaning falling about midway between the two. nāsâ means “to put to the test, tempt” (in the archaic sense), while ṣārap means “to smelt, refine.” bāḥan partakes of both of these in that it denotes examining to determine essential qualities, especially integrity. . . bāḥan in contrast to the other two, is used almost exclusively in the spiritual or religious realm.^[1]

 . . . the author of Ps. 139 is not primarily concerned with the fact that God tests man, but with his unlimited knowledge of man, of which he (the author) is fully aware.  Accordingly he uses yadha’, ‘to know,’ five times in speaking of God and twice in speaking of himself in this psalm. God possesses and realizes this knowledge in various ways, which is also clear from the different verbs he uses: to experience, to see, to search, to create, to lead (all occurring several times or in several variations).  bḥn, ‘to try,’ occurs only once in this psalm (v. 23), and it might well have become lost in isolation if it had not been protected by its repeated parallelism with other verbs . . .[2]

What do we learn?  “Essential qualities.”  Not every single act, every thought, every hint of the yetzer ha’ra.  It’s an examination, all right, but not of the details like our mistaken concept of the Supreme Moral Policeman in the sky.  The psalmist “is fully aware” that God knows.  His problem isn’t with what God knows.  It’s with what he knows—about himself.  He needs the assayer’s report to determine how he’s doing so he can determine where to focus his energies.  God looks for gold.  The psalmist needs to know the carat weight.  Is he 14 carat, 16 carat, more, less?  Why does he need to know?  Because God’s estimate is unbiased.  How much alloy is mixed in with my character?  8 parts alloy and 16 parts gold?  Then I better get to work on the alloy mix, right?  The “test” isn’t a multiple-choice exam.  It’s a purity percentage.

Ah, and now (at last) we see why the test is necessary.  Because of anxious thoughts.  Anxious thoughts are the alloy in the metal.  They are the interference with purity.  God knows them even if I don’t, even if I suppress them so that I don’t have to deal with all the emotional trauma.  I appeal to God to “test” my character because I’m generally blind to those unconscious determiners that distress me.  But He isn’t.

We’re back to śarʿappîm (anxious thoughts).  I don’t need God to tell me all my faults, all my sins.  I have a pretty good idea about those.  What I need God to give me is a report on my śarʿappîm so that I can see them like He does.  And, with His help, get to work.

Topical Index:  bāḥan, test, śarʿappîm, anxious thoughts, Psalm 139:23-24

^[1] Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 230 בָּחַן. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 100). Chicago: Moody Press.

[2] M. Tsevat, TDOT, Vol. 2, p. 71