Plenty to Go Around
Those who trust in their wealth and boast in the abundance of their riches? Psalm 49:6 NASB
Boast – If you read this verse in Hebrew, you’ll discover that “boast” is the last word in the text. You’ll also discover that “those who trust” is the first word. The verse creates a kind of verbal envelope. First these people trust in wealth, then in the abundance of riches they boast.
We seem to have plenty of this in our world. The social and political landscape is strewn with the powerful and wealthy, trusting in their status and flaunting it before the rest of humanity. It doesn’t take much reflection to recognize the arrogance when 250 individuals have more financial assets than 2.5 billion of the world’s poor. But this is not an indictment of capitalism, hard work, and achievement. The song of the sons of Korah doesn’t say that wealth is evil. What they say is that it often leads to trusting in material possessions and gasconade (yes, you will probably have to look that word up—but then you will have learned something new today). In Hebrew, the wrong sense of bāṭaḥ and hālal. Both verbs have a positive sense, but not in this verse. In this verse, what was supposed to be honorable and praiseworthy has become a form of idolatry.
bāṭaḥ is the verb “to trust in, feel safe, be confident.” Notice the nuance in the LXX:
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.”[1]
The only sense in which bāṭaḥ expresses something positive is in its connection to God and to a wife. “In general, the ot contrasts the validity of that sense of confidence which comes from reliance upon God with the folly of any other kind of security. It is made plain that all such trust will end in disgrace and shame. . .” [2]
But, of course, if we put our trust in the wrong place, we step on to the path that leads to hālal. This verb (hālal) means both “to praise,” and “to boast,” the latter being the misuse of the former. When we are sincerely thankful for God’s protection and provision, hālal is the action of praising Him. When we place our trust in those things that have no real substance, hālal shifts toward self-congratulation and we end up denying God’s goodness.
Here’s a test you can perform. Examine the words of the rich and powerful. If God is absent from their vocabulary, can this line from the sons of Korah be far behind?
Topical Index: hālal, praise, boast, bāṭaḥ, trust in, Psalm 49:6
[1] Oswalt, J. N. (1999). 233 בָּטַח. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 101). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Ibid.
