Heaven Can Wait
Save me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of the wrongdoer and the ruthless, Psalm 71:4 NASB
Save me – The first thing we should notice in the Hebrew text is that the call of the poet isn’t the first thing in the Hebrew text. The first thing is the cry “my God,” the Hebrew word ʾĕlōhîm with the possessive suffix attached. Rescue is important, but not as important as addressing the personal connection between God and the poet. Without “my God,” the appeal would collapse. It’s not any god who will come to the rescue. It’s my particular God, the God of Israel.
Once that’s established, then the petition has grounds, but don’t think for a second that this is about “salvation” in our normal religious sense of the word. The Hebrew is pālaṭ, “save, rescue, deliver.” It’s very terrestrial. “My enemies are all around me. Rescue me.” Not forgive my sin and take me to heaven. Not remove my guilt and make me a better person. No, this is about escape from immediate danger. “If You don’t do something, they will kill me!”
It can be observed then that the verb pālaṭ in the sense of “rescue, deliver” is limited to poetry in the ot. In the Psalter the verb is always on the lips of the Psalmist addressed to God either in the form of a testimony of praise for deliverance or, pālaṭ is in the form of an imperative, seeking God’s deliverance. In 43:1 and 71:2 we find illustrations of pālaṭ in the imperfect, but with imperative function. Only in Ps 91:14 is God the subject of the verb, “I will deliver him.”[1]
The metaphors make this abundantly clear. The hand of the wicked is about their power, obviously here and now. The wrongdoer is the one who deviates from the standard, that is, doesn’t keep God’s Law here on earth. The ruthless isḥāmaṣ, found only here, implying a corrupt and impure man. These enemies aren’t spiritual powers in high places. They aren’t Satan’s minions. They’re the king over the river, the tribe behind the hill, the nation in the distance. The poet wants military intervention, not heavenly escape routes. That should give us pause. How often have we read this verse as if it were about our spiritual salvation? When we do that, we drag the words out of their original context and use our contemporary religious application to interpret them. It might be true that in some way they can be applied to us, but that’s not what the poet meant. His need was immediate, down-to-earth relief. Maybe that’s how we should really apply his words, i.e., when life is threatened right now.
So much of our typical exegesis is clouded with paradigm theology that it’s often difficult to recognize that the ancient followers of the God of Israel lived in a world without a heaven and hell. Their religious understanding was limited for the most part to their existential experiences. They prayed for the things that mattered where they were, when they lived. The future hope of heavenly bliss wasn’t expected. Maybe their connection with the Lord was much more real because of that.
Topical Index: salvation, immediate danger, pālaṭ, Psalm 71:4
ALASKA CALLING: Here’s the conference information for Anchorage. CLICK
[1] Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., Jr., & Waltke, B. K. (Eds.). (1999). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 725). Chicago: Moody Press.
