Your Tent
For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. Psalm 84:10 NASB
Tent – David’s choice of ‘ohel (tent) might be considered typical. After all, the word is used 340 times in the Tanakh for dwellings of nomadic people. Nothing striking about that, is there? Except maybe one small cultural correction that we should notice. The tents of the Semitic nomads were not like the tents we use today. Today we have special fabrics, weatherproof, light-weight, durable that provide shelter as we travel. Today tents are tools of recreation, not survival. Tents of the nomadic tribes were made of animal skins, goat and sheep. The difference is important. A tent is not simply a temporary portable dwelling. A tent was once alive, once a skin of a living creature. Perhaps David wishes us to make this poetic connection. What are the tents of wickedness? Perhaps they are our own skins, housing a creature who rebels against the ways of the Most High God? Maybe we carry the tents wrapped around us.
“I would rather stand at the threshold than spend anytime in my skin away from YHVH?”
Is that what David might have wanted us to think about? Is it enough to look in upon the living God than to spend a single day in my own skin disobeying Him? Of course, we say “Yes!” but then the skin peels and we seek a little relief. We soothe ourselves with pleasures. We exfoliate. The dead skin comes off. Repentance gives us a new surface and we think, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad. God will certainly forgive me.” And grow a new tent instead of moving to a new dwelling. I’m afraid that we often carry the “tents” of wickedness with us because we have learned to be comfortable in our own skin. David knew something about that and he concluded that it is better to stand at the threshold of God’s tent than to keep dwelling in the one I made for myself.
I am often amazed at the genius of David’s poetry. He so subtly ties his thoughts to common experiences of the Hebrew culture and then, almost magically, reminds us of God’s gracious history with His people, of silken strands that connect one idea to another, of the nearly invisible hand of the Lord guiding our insights into the true mind of God. Perhaps it is worthwhile remembering that this is poetry. It is important to look behind the words, to search for their concealed connections, in order to discover some truth about God and about us. Today I realized that one of my great mistakes is believing that the skin I am most comfortable occupying might be a tent not made with holy hands.
Time to move to another dwelling, to the door of the courts of the real Tentmaker.
Topical Index: tent, ‘ohel, skin, Psalm 84:10
What an honor to have found a man who knows how to interpret God’s words and be able to explain them in a way that even I understand most of what is presented. Beyond that, this man is willing to share what God has shown him.
Thanks Skip. I can never repay you, but God will.
I appreciate your kind words and am glad it was helpful. But I must admit that there are days when I wonder if I am even up to the task. I struggle just like the rest of us to understand, and I am quite sure God is waiting for me to get it too.
Amen to John’s comments. Every day, without exception, I look forward to your posts, Skip – they are an encouragement during my own discouragements. Thank you, Skip.
David isn’t the only one who has a way with words. This is beautiful and humbling, Skip. This one will echo in my head for a while.
“Repentance gives us a new surface and we think, “Oh, that wasn’t so bad. God will certainly forgive me.” And grow a new tent instead of moving to a new dwelling.”
This is the part that got me. Ouch!
The integumentary system houses our integrity, or lack thereof. You helped me get that out of Psalm 84: 10. I fear many are courting disaster. I try not to dwell on it because I sometimes visit that camp. I’m often amazed at the level of genius in the Scriptures too. Your particular phraseology is often very catalytic. I hope you’ve recovered from your roof mishap.
My recovery is very slow. Not so much pain now, but still not able to do some things that should be quite easy. Another month, probably.
Thank you, Skip. When you can see it, then I can see it too. Thank you!
The skins that covered the First Pair’s nakedness were from animals slaughtered by the hand of God.
Perhaps the skins we try to cover ourselves with are all the various flavors and forms of Pride, Rebellion and Idolatry to cover our nakedness of Shame, Guilt and Fear.
So what was slaughtered to construct the tents over my shame, guilt and fear? When I went to look at myself, I found that it was me. I die a little inside every time I reach for one of those ‘skins’ of pride, rebellion or idolatry. It costs me a little of the life that I was given. It costs my spirit to believe the lies I have to be believing about that shame guilt and fear. I have to trade in my sense of worthiness, as a child of God, my understanding that I am forgivable, and my sense that I am secure in His love. It costs my brain to think the thoughts I end up thinking if I believe that I must employ to act on those false beliefs. I have to embrace the rationale that excuses that pride, rebellion and idolatry to convince myself that I can exist outside the circle of His Law and His Love. These, much to my consternation, all turned out to be forms of insanity! Ya gotta be crazy to think this stuff! And it cost my body to conform to those crazy thoughts and feelings and beliefs. Fear affects the body. What shrink does not know that? But so do guilt and shame. Ask most any chiropractor or endocrinologist!
What to do with those skins some helpful little demon was so johnny-on-the-spot to hand me in my low places? I ultimately had to go back to take another look at my beliefs that I had chosen to hold those sins in place, and what did I find? I found changelings in my cradle of beliefs. I was holding faith with a whole bunch of crispy critters that did not look like anything in that Good Book! I thought I had started out believing all the right stuff, but in my low moments new beliefs and thoughts had crept in. I found I was believing a whole bunch of nonsense about myself, God and others that did not look like love. House cleaning time!
Fear, guilt and shame are what I do when I am not faithing. Thus they are sins. When I repent for fear, which I was NOT given by God, then I can see my choices correctly again. When I repent for employing guilt to run on in my gas tank, then I can move freely in those choices again. I employ guilt as a form of self-repentance; repentance only to the idol of self. True repentance is when I am sorry to God, and the offense actually gets forgiven. When I repent for shame, which does not match my worth as a child of the King, then I cannot be moved anymore. Humility is the true gold coin of heaven. Shame is the devil’s counterfeit. When I fall for the lie of unworthiness, which shame tells me, then I can be moved by anything and everything.
Trust is what I should do instead of fear. Submission is what I should do instead of remain in my guilt. And humility is where I should be staying instead of in shame. Then the Fruits of the Spirit can be realized in me. The fruits of Love, Righteousness and Honor. It takes a trade-in, though, of that old tent. Not a bad trade, though, ya think?
Skip, if you think phytotherapy might be beneficial, let me know. It might be worth a try.
Today’s word reminds me of the Hebrew word for repent: shuv. The spelling of this word is the “sheen” and “beit”. The word picture tells us that in order to repent, we must “destroy” (sheen) the “house” (beit). What is the “house” in the time of these writings? The tent. In fact, in the time of David, he drew a tent on on the landscape for the “beit”.
As you point out in today’s writing, too many times we don’t destroy our old house when we repent (or in your terms, find a new tent). We are too busy locking up our old house, and we come back for a visit now and then. This is not true repentance. Only when we destroy our old house do we truly repent.
Interestingly, dwell in Hebrew is yashav יָשַׁב
לִשְׁכּוֹן (leesh-KOHN), meaning, to dwell
shakan (שכן) in its root. In Hebrew lexicons it defines this word as to dwell, abide, settle down, in His presence- Shekinah שכינה
Whereas in this verse, it is דּוּר which according to the Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon, the idea of going round and turning oneself was applied to turning aside to lodge. And in Strong’s- it’s to heap up, pile; to dwell.
to dwell.
How about-I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than to pile up in a heap, weighed down with baggage, in the tents of wickedness. ;- )
A need to jump out of the old skin!
“Time to move to another dwelling, to the door of the courts of the real Tentmaker.” Absolutely!! Amein to that! Shalom.
Would this also be a reference to abiding in the courtyard of the Tabernacle? No one but the priest actually went inside; his role was to represent everyone else outside in the courtyard, who usually ended up there when they came to sacrifice for sin or other reasons, or to worship. Wouldn’t someone positioned at that entrance be a person who either was convincing others to enter, or was in some way qualifying them to enter?
I really like the humility aspect of understanding the being outside the entrance still better than anywhere else (surely it is), but wouldn’t a reference to the House of YHVH, in the mind of a Hebrew of that time be a reference to the Tabernacle, primarily?