Saving Grace

But I am lowly and hurting.  Your rescue, O LORD, will protect me.  Psalm 69:30 [Hebrew Bible]  Robert Alter

Rescue – By far the most common English rendition of this word is “salvation.”  Virtually all the popular English Bible use “May Your salvation” or something similar.  Given that the Hebrew is yĕšûʿât, it’s easy to see why this is the popular choice.  But Alter deliberately uses a different English verb.  Why?  The answer comes from the difference in the paradigms that govern reading the Tanakh as a Hebrew document or reading it as a Christian document.

The verbal root (yāšaʿ) means, “be saved, be delivered (Niphal); save, deliver, give victory, help; be safe; take vengeance, preserve (Hiphil).” ^[1]  But what that means in a Hebrew context is immediate relief from threat.  This, however, changes with the absorption into Christian thought.

Note the following: “. . .generally in the ot the word has strong religious meaning, for it was Yahweh who wrought the deliverance. Thus he is known as the ‘God of our salvation’ (Ps 68:19f. [H 20f.]). Although salvation could come through a human agent, it was only because God empowered the agent. In the nt the idea of salvation primarily means forgiveness of sin, deliverance from its power and defeat of Satan. Although the ot begins to point in this direction, the majority of references to salvation speak of Yahweh granting deliverance from real enemies and out of real catastrophies [sic]”^[2]

In other words, yāšaʿ does not take on the theological overtones of forgiveness, nor the implication of righteousness before God, until it is reformulated in the apostolic times.  In the Tanakh, yāšaʿ has the same practical, tactile, earthly context as any other social/communal action.  God is always behind it, but it is never about getting to Heaven.

Now you know why Alter uses “rescue” rather than “salvation.”  “Salvation” has become so Christianized that it no longer communicates immediate, practical intervention in earthly living.  But that’s what David expected.  After David confirms that he is ʿānî—“afflicted—or as Alter chose, the alternative, “lowly,” that is, humbled, and that he is koʾēb—“sorrow”—“hurting,” he announces (it is not a plea) that God is his rescue.  This isn’t a claim of life after death or of paradise after the grave.  This is right now deliverance.  It is the confident declaration that the God who cares will watch over him and lift him up (śāgab) to a place where life’s current struggles are resolved.  But not on the other side of the tomb.

This is worth remembering.  God is the God of rescue—immediate, experiential reinforcements.  When He acts you don’t sit around wondering what happened.  You know it—just as surely as you saw the lightening bolt from the sky.  That’s David’s prayer.  Maybe it needs to be ours.  Do it now!

Topical Index: yāšaʿ, rescue, salvation, deliverance, Psalm 69:30

^[1] Hartley, J. E. (1999). 929 יָשַׁע. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 414). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Ibid.