A Change in Direction

Save me, O God, for the waters have threatened my life.  Psalm 69:1 NASB 1995

Save – Seventeen years ago I wrote something about this verse.  I’d like to correct some of that.  Here’s the original with some corrections and comments (in red):

Free Me, Jesus

“and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).  But, of course, Mary did not call her son Jesus.  That is the Greek pronunciation of the name that she really called him – Yeshua.  The angel spoke to Mary in Hebrew (Aramaic), not Greek.  The angel told Mary to use this particular Hebrew name because this name is related in its root form to the verb yasha, a verb that we find in this Psalm for “save.”  Jesus’ name, Yeshua, is the word for saving.  The angel told Mary, “Call his name Yeshua because he will yasha his people from their sins.”

Almost half of the Psalms contain occurrences of the verb yasha (yāšaʿ).  Almost always the verb is a command, usually in the first person.  You will know it as soon as you hear the sound of it:  ho-shi-a, closely related to the word hosanna.  “Save me!”  God is always the subject of this request.  Hoshia is a word that implores only One Person to act as the Savior – God Himself.  Only the Lord God Yeshua saves.  But this, of course, is Trinitarian.  Today I would write, “Only the Lord God saves.”  Yeshua is His agent, the one who brings God’s salvation to the people.  He is empowered to forgive sin, but he isn’t the Savior.  He’s the Savior’s representative.

I need to know this truth.  No one else can save me.  Not my wife, not the government, not my church, not my possessions or my security.  God, the Lord of Yeshua, is my only savior.  I also need to know that, just like David, I can call on Him for rescue, over and over.  In spite of all the events, good or bad, in my life, David and I need hoshia time and again.  And just like David, I know that Yeshua hears me, because His name expresses the essential character of who He is.  He is the One Who saves me – the only One.  When I cry out to Him, and only to Him, He hears my plea.  I can utterly rely on Him for there is no other name under heaven that saves me.

Now that you know His real name, you might wonder what picture yasha draws.  You may recall the contemporary poster to the hand of Jesus reaching out to pull another from the waters.  Perhaps this poster was inspired by this verse, but yashadoes not paint a picture of rescue at sea.  Yasha is about moving someone from narrow, confined space to a wide, open place.  It is about pulling a lost sheep from a crevice in the rocks and setting the lamb on to a fertile, spacious pasture.  It is just the opposite of dire straits.  Yasha is about liberating space.

Yeshua rescues me from the claustrophobia of my sin and sets me free to enjoy the expanse of God’s creation.  He literally “turns me loose.”  That’s what forgiveness is all about.  Free at last.  Never again to be boxed in.  Yes, Lord Yeshua, come and hoshia – save me!

And now all you need to do is remove all the capitalized pronouns and remember that David calls on YHVH, the God of Yeshua. 

When I look back on this after seventeen years, I realize how powerfully the Christian paradigm affected the way I read this psalm.  I incorporated Christian doctrine into the words of a 10^th Century B.C.E. Hebrew without ever asking, “How could David have imagined anything about a first century Messiah?”  It took a long time for me to move away from such eisegesis.  Paradigm shift had to happen—and it’s still happening.  Perhaps it will never be finished, but at least I can correct some of these earlier devotional mistakes.

Topical Index: Yeshua, yāšaʿ, save, paradigm, Trinity, Psalm 69:1