Reward for the Conqueror

I rejoice at Your word, like one who finds great plunder.  Psalm 119:162  NASB

Plunder – The poet expresses a feeling we might find embarrassing.  We don’t usually relish in taking booty from invasions.  So, we’ll have to reach way back in that collective unconscious to resurrect the exuberance that comes from the destruction of an enemy and the appropriation of his prior wealth.  Of course, that experience wasn’t too distant for our poet.  Conquerors and pillaging were typical in the ancient world.  Now we do it with hostile stock take-overs instead of men with swords and shields, but perhaps the feeling is the same.  We’ve won, and to the winner belong the spoils.  Of course, the poet’s history is filled with such events, many at the direct order of God Himself, although we shouldn’t forget those unfortunate times when taking booty didn’t work out so well.  Nevertheless, the Israelite view “. . . is very clear that the downfall and spoiling of cities is not an accident of military or political history, but that here also God is in sovereign control.”[1]  Victory was always in the hands of YHVH.

Now take those feelings of conquest, those emotions of vindication, and apply them to another kind of captured treasure—God’s ʾimrâ, His spoken words.  The psalmist says that he rejoices (śîś) at the sound of God’s voice.  Here we have to correct a statement by Cohen in TWOT.  He writes, “In Ps 119, the Psalm that glories in God’s written word, the psalmist in exultation declares, ‘I rejoice at thy word’ (Ps 119:162).”[2]  But the Hebrew term isn’t about the written word even if the written word is large part of Psalm 119.  Here the psalmist rejoices over God’s speech using a word that most often describes direct conversation.  The written word is wonderful, but what thrills him to the point that he feels as if he’s just conquered the world is God’s conversation with him. I’m guessing that if you ever hear God speak directly to you, you’ll treasure those words more than any silver or gold.

Once we recognize the riches of conversing with God and hearing His reply, we still have another question to ask.  The poet could have described this experience without referring to spoils.  That carries an overtone of aggression.  Why does he use this particular word?  Šālāl is a word in the context of war.  The custom of taking possessions from a defeated enemy was typical in ancient conflicts, and there are occasions where God not only allows such behavior but actually uses it as motivation.  Nevertheless, the term also describes gains that were not achieved under godly authority.  Whether for righteous or unrighteous purposes, šālāl directs our thinking to the battlefield.  It is for this reason that psalmist chooses the word.  He experiences part of this life as the conflict between good and evil, as a combat zone where God’s enemies and his are fighting against forces that would harm him and sully God’s reputation.  Victory over these foes deserves reward and for the psalmist, the assurances voiced by God are as good as any plunder he might take because they guarantee the eventual victory.  The word is forceful, combative, and zealous, but how else would you describe a victory over evil?

Topical Index: šālāl, plunder, ʾimrâ, spoken word, śîś, rejoice, Psalm 119:162

[1] Austel, H. J. (1999). 2400 שָׁלַל. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 930). Moody Press.

[2] Cohen, G. G. (1999). 2246 שׂוּשׂ. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 873). Moody Press.

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Richard Bridgan

“…the psalmist rejoices over God’s speech using a word that most often describes direct conversation. The written word is wonderful, but what thrills him to the point that he feels as if he’s just conquered the world is God’s conversation with him. I’m guessing that if you ever hear God speak directly to you, you’ll treasure those words more than any silver or gold.” Emet!… amen.

“What then shall we say about these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?Indeed, he who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, together with him, freely give us all things?”

“Who will bring charges against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ is the one who died, and more than that, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?” Will affliction or distress or persecution or hunger or lack of sufficient clothing or danger or the sword?

Just as it is written,
“On account of you we are being put to death the whole day long; we are considered as sheep for slaughter.” No, but in all these things we are more than conquerors… we prevail completely through the one who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Cf. Romans 8:31–39)

Richard Bridgan

Sadly… and especially, disastrously… neither philosophy nor theology has been any such “conqueror”. Rather, these means have merely served the adoption and introduction of a specific terminology to describe the two partners whose asymmetrical relationship and activities are understood and represented in the doctrine of the concursus (accompanying”) in terms of a co-operation— the activity of God on the one side and that of the creature on the other.

In this frame we end up with a bilateral, yet asymmetric, relationship between God and humanity, wherein God decrees certain things to obtain, while the elect of God must discern these things and meet the conditions of the decree— of the covenant of works released through the so-called covenant of grace. However, this theological arrangement ends up “thrusting people back upon themselves” (as TF Torrance phrases it frequently), by thinking of a God-world relation from within a competitive frame.

Instead, it is essential (and consistent with Scripture) that people get thrust back upon God himself, who is their singular hope and the only means whereby what God decrees for man to obtain is actually and finally and in fact made possible to obtain—by participating in the only proper response. That is to say (once again), by participating in the response of repose in learning to rest and live in the life of God’s own triune life as we are participants with Him for all eternity—through and in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ—in learning the nature of faith as it actually is.