Society’s Essentials (2)

In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for You alone, Lord, have me dwell in safety.   Psalm 4:8  NASB

Dwell in safety – Is God ruthless?  We’re quite comfortable with the idea of God’s benevolence, but we probably bristle at the thought that God might be ruthless.  Ruthlessness is such a negative concept.  We want a God who tolerates our indiscretions, who forgives our sins, who speaks kindly to us.  Those characteristics are certainly true, but I’m afraid they are only one side of the coin.  It appears that we have made such amazing cultural progress we no longer accept “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as any part of our religious vocabulary.  We’ve traded Jonathan Edwards for the Four Spiritual Laws.  The result, unfortunately, has been an almost total erasure of God’s sovereignty, because sovereignty implies ruthlessness.  The King of the Universe can’t be King if He allows competitors to continue to challenge His authority.

We have already examined the first part of this verse, but perhaps we need to take a closer look at the grammar before we tackle the last part.  Chabad provides a slightly different rendition:

“In peace together, I would lie down and sleep, for You, O Lord, would make me dwell alone in safety.”  Chabad

When we compare the NASB, we find a change of the verb tense, a change of case, and a rearrangement of the syntax.  In order to understand why this happens, we’ll need to look at the Hebrew:

בְּשָׁל֣וֹם יַחְדָּו֘ אֶשְׁכְּבָ֪ה וְאִ֫ישָׁ֥ן כִּֽי־אַתָּ֣ה יְהֹוָ֣ה לְבָדָ֪ד לָ֜בֶ֗טַח תּֽוֹשִׁיבֵֽנִי

The opening verb, שָׁכַב (šākab) “lie down,” is a Yiqtol – imperfect.  The action is incomplete, fluid.  The NASB treats this verb form as a cohortative, making it future, but the second parallel verb is clearly a waw-conjunctive imperfect, not a cohortative (future), as the NASB translation suggests.  That verb is שֵׁנָה (šēnâ), שֵׁנָא (šēnāʾ), שְׁנָת (šĕnāt) sleep.^[1]  You can see this change in the Chabad rendition, “I would lie down” rather than “I will lie down.”  But both verbs are incomplete actions, that is, both are transitory conditions.  Lying down, sleeping, waking up—all repeated over and over, not finished.  Whatever peace God gives, it is temporally conditioned on this side of the grave.  And as we learned in Psalm 3:5 (October 13, 2025), waking is a sign of God’s continuing grace.  Sleep becomes a spiritual act of confirmation.  It may bring peaceful repose, but the fact of its repetitive experience is more than rest.  It is the stamp of God’s shālômgranted to us.

Now let’s look at the second part of this verse.  What is the biblical concept of safety?  The word is beṭaḥ.  Oswalt comments:

The basic idea would then have to do with firmness or solidity. Be that as it may, in Hebrew, bāṭaḥ expresses that sense of well-being and security which results from having something or someone in whom to place confidence. It is significant that the LXX never translates this word with πιστευω “believe in” but with ελπιζω “to hope,” in the positive sense “to rely on God” or πειφομαι “to be persuaded,” for the negative notion for relying on what turns out to be deceptive. This would seem to indicate that bāṭaḥ does not connote that full-orbed intellectual and volitional response to revelation which is involved in “faith,” rather stressing the feeling of being safe or secure. Likewise, all the derivatives have the same meaning “to feel secure,” “be unconcerned.”^[2]

To “dwell in safety” does not describe a politically passive world.  It describes an internal emotional state of confident expectation without anxiety.  In other words, to “dwell in safety” is to discover and internalize the reliability of God regardless of external circumstances.  How is this possible?  It is possible because we trust that God will reconcile the creation to Himself.  He will make things right.  He will conquer all evil.  He will bring about full shālôm, and a restful sleep is our proleptic guarantee.  This promise is the second essential of society, that is, to provide a place of safety for its citizens and defend that place against all who would oppose it.  There is no safety without intolerance toward evil and there is no intolerance toward evil without ruthlessness.

Sweet dreams.

Topical Index:  shālôm, bāṭaḥ, šĕnāt, sleep, safety, peace, šākab, lie down, Psalm 4:8

^[1] Hartley, J. E. (1999). 928 יָשֵׁן. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 414). Moody Press.

^[2] Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 233 בָּטַח. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 101). Moody Press.