Psalms Part 1(Re-run)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add On Education Network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly Come follow me discussions and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host here in the studio. I am your. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Well, what? [00:00:31] Speaker B: I am your host, Jason Lloyd. Yeah, here in the studio. Doesn't matter how many times I say that. Sometimes you just gotta stumble here in the studio with my friend and the show's producer, Nate Pyfer Hey, I know at home you can't see me in the studio. Maybe you can hear it. But I am smiling ear to ear tonight. Like Psalms. Ever since we started Old Testament, this has been an episode I have been looking forward to all year long. When I was studying at byu, I've got to give credit where credit is due. I had Professor Donald Perry and he taught me Hebrew and he taught me the Old Testament. I love Donald Perry. This guy Dr. Perry, if you ever see anything from him, books, lectures, education week, seminars, whatever the case may be, highly recommend it. There are two things that he really instilled in me throughout the year, the years that I was there. One, being looking at the atonement of Jesus Christ through Old Testament lenses. Being able to see, or maybe even better said, looking through the Old Testament through the lenses of the atonement and being able to see how the atonement is symbolized and how everything points and testifies to Christ. And I felt the spirit so strong as he would teach us and testify about the role of our Savior. The other thing is he loved Hebrew poetry and he taught us how to understand Hebrew poetry and appreciate Hebrew poetry. And my hope as we're teaching Old Testament, going through this podcast with you guys this year is hopefully give you some perspective, perspective in understanding the atonement of Jesus Christ through these scriptures. But also particularly right now, as we're getting in Psalms understand the poetry and the art and the beauty that is Hebrew writing. These guys take wordsmith to another level. They have an ability to craft with their words layers of understanding and depth and profoundness and just paint a picture as beautiful as any art I have ever seen. So I'm excited to be getting into Psalms and to kind of take an introduction for you guys to introduce you to Hebrew poetry. If you don't know what it is, if you do, then, I mean, bear with me. Maybe you understand what I'm talking about. I mean, this is just beautiful stuff. [00:03:12] Speaker A: Can't wait. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Let's dive. Maybe the best introduction is actually Psalms 1:1 itself. So I love how the Book of Psalms even starts as we get into the Book of Psalms. Let me preface it with this. We're going to be talking a lot about parallels. Parallels, as you guess, with parallel lines, two lines that run next to each other in the same direction, essentially the same line, just a little bit off from each other, right? In the poetry, you're going to have all sorts of different parallels, where you're going to have a line and then you're going to be repeating it with another line, and the two lines are coupled together, running together to convey a point. And you have synonymous parallels where you have words that match each other and are synonyms. And this was very powerful because Hebrew for a long time was a dead language that wasn't spoken. And they started to have a hard time understanding the Bible because nobody spoke the language as they were trying to read it and understand it. These parallels helped give meaning to some of these words and understand what these words really meant, because you would look at it in context of what the next line is saying. And then you also have some that are building on each other and showing kind of a progression. So in Hebrew, you don't have exclamation points and commas and underlining it and these font changes and making it bold and all these different things that we use to try to convey meaning in our text today. So they would do it with words to try to build on what they're saying. And better than trying to describe all of this to you is to just dive in and look at examples and see what we learn. And this poetry, this is something you've probably seen already throughout this entire year, the layers of the Hebrew text, because we have one layer that's literally what it's saying to us, right? You have the story of Elijah going to the widow and taking her and asking for that very last meal and having her feed him first. And really, he's asking her to sacrifice his son, Right? That's the literal meaning. But then you take and you look at it from a symbolic sense of her having to sacrifice her son and Elijah saving her. And you can look at, what does this mean outside of just what's literally happening? What can we see figuratively, or what is this teaching us? And you see the symbol of Elijah to coming back to a Gentile. And when you have, on the day of Passover, when you have Jews the world over who are waiting for him to come, but to none of the widows did he appear. So you have all of a sudden different layers, historically speaking, across time, that paint all of these different pictures and connote all of these powerful symbols with the story. We're going to get into that here with some of these poems. As you look at some of these verses, they're just powerful. And so rather than just gush on and on and on about this, let's dive in. Let's look at Psalms, chapter 1, verse 1. We could probably do an entire podcast just on this one verse, Nate. Here's what it says. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. Now, in this, you have three different lines, and let's break this down a little bit. You have three different verbs, and I hope you're noticing a pattern with these verbs. Let's look at them real quick. You have to start with walketh, standeth, sitteth. So if you were to take these three walks. Stand, sit, and you were to continue with this verse and write two more lines, what verbs would you use, Nate? [00:07:17] Speaker A: I'd probably use lie. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Lie. [00:07:22] Speaker A: Maybe run. Or is that pre walk? [00:07:26] Speaker B: If you go pre walk, you can go run, Right. [00:07:28] Speaker A: And that would fit. I'm going walk, stand, sit, lie. [00:07:31] Speaker B: And then can you get any less than lying? [00:07:34] Speaker A: I mean, dead. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Dead. I think dead is. [00:07:37] Speaker A: Okay. [00:07:37] Speaker B: I think dead is as far down as you can go, right? [00:07:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:41] Speaker B: Now, what is. What is that. What is that imagery like? [00:07:44] Speaker A: Well, that's. That's a. That's a human being right there, dude. That's what we do, right? [00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:49] Speaker A: That's the progression of life and death. Right? [00:07:52] Speaker B: It's a progression of life and death. But it's. I mean, it's. It's taking you from a state of being alive, and you are falling, descending. Right. You were decaying. You're getting to. [00:08:03] Speaker A: You're getting older. [00:08:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And you can look at. As you're getting older and dying. Right. But this is. This is definitely. I look at this almost like falling down a hill. Right? You start at the top, and now you're kind of falling down this hill. Okay. And now those are the verbs associated with it. So now if we look at what's. [00:08:20] Speaker A: Wait, how does. Wait, hold on, though. [00:08:22] Speaker B: Yep. [00:08:22] Speaker A: I'm not sure. I'm just. I'm only just saying so that you can add some detail to this. How does. How is like standing or sitting falling down a hill? Are you just saying the motion of the motion? [00:08:32] Speaker B: Okay. And maybe not even the human body. I just. I'm almost visioning Like a digression. Okay, right. [00:08:39] Speaker A: That's why. That's the only reason why I'm saying this to me. Looks like a child growing up, then getting older and then. You know what I mean? And then slowing down. That's the only reason I brought it up. Because, like, it looks very much human. Walking, standing, then sitting, whatever. But okay, I understand. [00:08:54] Speaker B: And even if the human, though, I still look at it like in a human, you start laying and then you sit up and then you walk. So you could. Even if you're talking human, you would be going from. I understand now, at the bottom to the top, and then from the top back to the top. [00:09:06] Speaker A: Y. [00:09:07] Speaker B: But this one is starting halfway in the cycle. Right. [00:09:09] Speaker A: That makes sense now. Okay. [00:09:10] Speaker B: And it seems like a descent. You're a decline. Because at first you're able to move and now you're stopping. And now you can't even stand on your own two feet. Like when you're taking a stand for something, now you're not even standing up for anything. You're sitting down. Right. It's lack of ability, lack of power, lack of motion, lack of life. I like that. You said even dead. [00:09:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:31] Speaker B: If you were to take it to lie. And then one more, even further, maybe death, this is a path towards death. And lack of power, lack of ability. Okay, now let's look at these verbs in association with what they're describing. Blessed is the man. So it sounds like it's going to be positive. Right. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. So you have this negation here. So he's blessed if he does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners. So let's go to our. It's not. Is it noun. It's got to be a noun. [00:10:10] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Where they're doing the action. [00:10:12] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a place. [00:10:13] Speaker B: Their place. Okay. One is counsel of the sinners. Excuse me, Counsel of the ungodly. The way of sinners. The seat of the scornful. Right. Now if we were to take that and descend that. Two more steps, Right? Because first we're talking about in an assembly, a council, a group of people that are actively doing something, participating. Right. And now you have a way of sinners. So instead of coming together, it's on a path towards it. Right. Now, Sitteth. It's just. Instead of going, it's down into a chair, the next place would probably be like the bed of. And then if we're talking about ungodly sinners, scornful, the bed of whores, maybe, because you're talking about lying in bed and you're talking about people that are participating in unrighteous activity. Unfaithful in some sense. And if you were to take this down even one step further, as, like you said, death, then maybe the coffin or the grave of the. [00:11:19] Speaker A: Satan. [00:11:21] Speaker B: Satan. I'll take it. I'll take it. So this imagery, I mean, you can take it at a surface level and just say, hey, you're blessed if you don't walk in the counsel of the ungodly. I mean, yeah, obviously that sounds like good advice, but you're painting a picture here. If you choose to do those things, the path that you're taking leads towards death. You're stopping your progression, you're stopping your momentum, you're stopping your ability to become closer and to be more like God. And this introduces us into a different type of Hebrew poetry called a chiasmus. If you could take these lines. So if you were to say walketh is line A, standeth is line B, sitteth is C. And then if we were to keep going down or layeth in D and then dieth in E or whatever, right, Then a chiasmus is going to take all of those and going to reverse them and reflect them, but do it in reverse order so that your E matches with your E and your D matches with your D and your C and so forth. So if we were to go the other way, you would say and curse it, right? Maybe if you're saying blessed on one side and maybe curse it is the man that does not. And then reverse course on this and walk back the way through it. But this is not a full chiasmus. It's only a half chiasmus. So sometimes in poetry, it's not always about what you are saying or what you are seeing, but sometimes it is just as much about what you do not say and the piece that is missing, what goes unmentioned. So blessed is the man that doesn't do these things because he is doing what. And that is the other side of things, figuring out what needs to be done. And it is kind of interesting because we look at this descent, if you will, and I want to call it kind of a descent into chaos versus a rise into order. Because what takes more work, right? You look at the creation and God trying to separate the light from the darkness, and he is taking energy and putting it into entropy to create law, order. And he asks us to do the same thing. He Gives us commandments and laws. These are the measuring sticks. As we take these things, it takes effort for us to try to discipline ourselves, to be studying the word of God, to be trying to make the right choices, to be actively engaged in what he's doing, anxiously engaged in a good work that takes energy to impose order on the chaos and in our lives in particular. So instead of going from a state of death, now going to be rising into a state of laying, to sitting, to standing, to walking, to really, to rising. Right. So as one path leads to death, on the other hand, the other path leads to life, to resurrection. Even though we're all going to die, if we. And that's why we're blessed. If we don't do those things, because we will not die, we will have life. Kind of interesting, all that conveyed in one single verse. Am I reading too much into this, Nate? [00:15:00] Speaker A: No, but where's the rest of the chiasmus? [00:15:05] Speaker B: It's only half written. [00:15:06] Speaker A: But here's the thing. It's like if you read through the rest of the. If you read through the rest of the psalm, though, there's definitely a lot of kind of the flip side of that. I know that it's not necessarily presented, but it is interesting because look at the. You know, the tree that's planted is like, what is. What is. What does the tree do other than rise? Right. [00:15:26] Speaker B: You're right. [00:15:27] Speaker A: It talks about a lot of the. His delight in the law of the Lord. Right. So it's. It's interesting that they use the word counsel, the council of the ungodly, but he delights instead in the law of the Lord. It's like a council or a group of people. There is kind of almost, you know, maybe not a courtroom setting, but like a, you know, like a room full of people counseling. I just. I guess I'm saying it's like if you. If you look through the rest of the psalm, there's a lot of really amazing language that even still does kind of relate and kind of does really juxtapose itself against, you know, that first verse, the end of it, you know, the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, so instead of the way of the sinners, it talks about the way of the righteous. [00:16:13] Speaker B: You're absolutely right. The first verse kind of frames the discussion for the rest of the section. Right. Verse 2. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night. So when we were talking about parallels, you have one word that's going to Parallel. Another word over here. And so going back to that first one walk is somewhat parallel to the stand. Because this is talking about your state, your motion, or what you're doing. Just as much as scornful is going to be parallel with sinners. But look in verse two, his delight. What is his delight parallel to? He's delighting in the law of the Lord and in his law. So in his law. And the first goes within his law and the second does it meditate. That's it. He meditate day and night. So what does it mean to delight in the law of the Lord? Well, see, that's. You can learn that just by looking at this verse when he says delight in the Scriptures. Well, how do you delight in them? You just look at them and put a little pretty bow on it, take a Snapchat picture and send it to the world. Like, this is awesome. No, delight According to verse 2 is parallel to meditate day and night. So if you're meditating day and night, that means that you are delighting in the law of the Lord, verse 3. And he shall be like a tree. So this is going to. With what you're saying when you talk about what does a tree do? It's. The tree is not walking or sitting, but it's standing. Right. [00:17:49] Speaker A: Talking about how growing like it's doing the opposite of what's happening in that first. Right. If it's planted by rivers of water. [00:17:55] Speaker B: But yeah, excellent, excellent. Instead of decaying and falling and dying, here you have something that is growing and prospering because you're saying, you're right. It's not just like a tree planted in a desert or tree planted in the wilderness. He shall be like a tree planted by the river of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf shall also not wither. And so whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. [00:18:23] Speaker A: It's like the exact opposite of verse one. You know, I mean, it's like, it's the. It's the rising. It's the being being in the way of good things, right. By the rivers of water. It's like instead of, instead of standing in the way of sinners or in the council of the ungodly, it's. It's by flowing, you know, like life. Right. I mean, it's just, it's amazing. And then, you know, obviously the fruit means a lot to us as we've been kind of learning about it. But I guess, I wonder. And is that just like the miracle of it that the leaf doesn't wither you know what I mean? It's like, how does that happen other than, you know, by some godlike miracle? [00:19:02] Speaker B: And something to be said about life versus death is the idea that the fruit can. Excuse me, the tree can produce fruit, which is its posterity, that can live, that there's a continuation and ability to propagate. And there's this idea that heaven is going to be not just an eternity, but eternities, plural, right? This idea, eternal lives. Not just an eternal life, but this idea that you will be able to have children and your children will be able to have children so your seed will continue, that there is no end, that you won't be cut off, that there is a continuation of life springing from you. This fountain that does not end. As opposed to you cared only about yourself and not producing something greater than you, and that led to death. There was no seed. There was nothing that prospered outside of you. Killer, verse 4. The ungodly are not so, but are like chaff which the wind driveth away. So here again, like you said, now you got this juxtaposition. You're putting one comparison back to this other 1, verse 5. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. This verse is also powerful because look at the parallels here. The ungodly is paralleled with sinners, right? Therefore the ungodly in the first line. Nor sinners in the second line. Look at what's paralleled in the next part. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment. So what does it mean to stand in judgment? [00:20:42] Speaker A: I know. I was going to say, what is the. Well, I guess my question would be, is it just saying that they're. It's not that they're avoiding the judgment, it's just that they're not standing when they are in judgment. [00:20:58] Speaker B: So I think you can even take this two different ways. If you're standing in judgment, I think often it's because you're administering the judgment. So the wicked shall be judged by the righteous. Or the idea that the righteous shall judge the earth. You can look at it that way. You could also look at it. You can't stand in the judgment because you're too ashamed. You're wanting to crumple. [00:21:21] Speaker A: What? I was wondering. [00:21:23] Speaker B: You're wanting to hide, right? So however you're going to take it, the standing and judgment is parallel to nor the sinner in the congregation of the righteous. So the idea that the congregation of the righteous is the same as those that stand in judgment. [00:21:42] Speaker A: Also to verse one. It's the opposite of the counsel of the ungodly. Right? [00:21:46] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Another juxtaposition. And you've seen the assembly of the. You saw in Job, the Bene Elohim, the children of God. This assembly of the children of God, you'll see it play throughout the Bible. We'll see it a lot in Psalms. So it's interesting that verse one leads with the assembly of the ungodly kind of this counter position to the assembly of the righteous. The children of God, the righteous people that stand in assembly. For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. So this almost goes back to New Testament, the idea that any branch attached to the living branch is going to be giving life where a branch that's not is going to perish. And look at that in context of verse four, the chaff which is going to dry up and go away versus verse three, which is this tree planted next to a river which is continually producing fruit. So it's a beautiful psalm, a very powerful one, but also a great introduction into parallels and this imagery and trying to give you a sense of conveying so much more than just what's literally written there, but helping kind of stoke the imagination and reach our senses and help us see a lot more depth into what's happening. [00:23:09] Speaker A: Let's keep going. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Let's do. So I want to take Psalms 2. I'm not going to go through every psalm. Obviously we can't do that. We've got Psalms 1 through like 48. It's a huge undertaking. [00:23:22] Speaker A: We should just do this barn burner episode, just like a two hour thing, guys. Just be ready for the long haul. The thing is, is what's. I, I do actually really appreciate about, about our listeners, especially the ones that reach out and talk to us, is that there's actually a part of me that thinks a fair number of our listeners would be like, let's go boys, let's do it. [00:23:44] Speaker B: I think you're right. I don't think I'm ready. [00:23:46] Speaker A: I don't think I'm ready for it either. But I'd say to the, the, to the, to the credit of our listeners, thank you for being willing to. If one of these days we decide to. [00:23:55] Speaker B: Just for supporting us and going through the trenches with us. [00:23:58] Speaker A: I'm just Leroy Jenkins this thing and just go, just go wall to wall. [00:24:04] Speaker B: You guys are. [00:24:04] Speaker A: We're not doing it today, though. Thanks for listening. [00:24:08] Speaker B: Okay, so we. Yeah, we're not going through all the psalms like we did Psalms 1, but I did want to. I did want to get your take, nate, on Psalms 2. And I kind of ambushed you with this a little bit and didn't give you a lot of. [00:24:24] Speaker A: You totally ambushed me with this. [00:24:25] Speaker B: Didn't give you a lot of pretext, context or anything or even much time, if we're going to be honest. But I just wanted to kind of see your take on this and then see if I could take this and look at it and maybe offer a little different perspective and see what we can twist out of it or figure out of it, because. Well, I'll speak after you go. Give us your thoughts. [00:24:49] Speaker A: It seems to me that this psalm is about the idea that the worldly leaders, kings, and their followers that are going to be referred to as heathens are going to do what they can to, you know, persecute the Lord's anointed and. But that at a certain point, God, he gave us the only true king, and obviously that's Jesus. And as long as we follow Jesus, I do like in verse nine, where it says that thou shalt break them with an iron rod, dash them into pieces like a potter's vessel. I did kind of like the. The imagery of the word of God, the iron rod being the word of God, basically, that God or Jesus, the only true king, you know, on this earth, will and his followers will use his words to basically still, you know, defend themselves against worldly leaders, you know, persecuting them. And then in the end, when it's all said and done, you know, the earthly, earthly leaders will need to worship Jesus as well, more or less. I don't know what it looks like to me. [00:26:23] Speaker B: I like it. I like it. And as you look at the, the heading that you have in the King James Version, and this is going to be the Church of Jesus Christ, King James Version, it says a Messianic psalm. The heathen shall rage against the Lord's anointed. The Lord speaks of his Son whom he has begotten. And so setting the stage, as this is a Messianic and it's going to be talking about the Savior, I think kind of colors our perspective a little bit. And as we read this and try to understand it with that perspective, my impression as I first read it is it's almost a little bit disjointed or hard to understand all of it as we're coming through this. But there are moments of brightness where you look at it and say, well, that's Reassuring or that's good. And I think we can take some of these verses out of context and find comfort in them and strength in them where we don't always understand what's going on. But I also want to break this down and change the perspective a little bit and see if it makes more sense. But speaking to what you're saying, Nate, as we're talking about this as a Messianic Psalm, verse 6, when I first read this, really spoke to me. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. And I'm thinking, well, Messianic, this is talking about Christ, right? And I'm setting him upon this holy hill. Well, what holy hill did he set him on aside from Golgotha, Right. And here he is sitting on the cross with this plaque that says king of the Jews. And yet he sets my king on my holy hill is a very different interpretation than what we would see as setting his king on a hill that you're going to be worshiping and then going on, I will declare the decree. The Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. And again, it sounds like he's talking God talking about the Savior. But as you're looking at these other verses, why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. And his anointed. So, you know, in Hebrew is Masiach, which in Greek is Christ. So when they're taking counsel against the Lord and his Christ, saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. So trying to understand this from that perspective, what does it mean, let us break their cords asunder? [00:28:52] Speaker A: Wouldn't that mean to free them? [00:28:54] Speaker B: Yeah. So the nations are raging, saying, we want to free ourselves from the Lord and his Christ. [00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:04] Speaker B: And so as I start to read this with this Messianic idea and trying to understand this through the lens of Christ, I'm thinking maybe his commandments. We don't want to be bound by his laws, by his rules. We want to be free. In their minds, they see freedom as not being bound by those cords. Is that what you're seeing or man, I don't know. [00:29:27] Speaker A: I don't know any of this. [00:29:30] Speaker B: I don't know. It just gets a little bit hard. He that sitteth in heaven shall laugh. And the Lord shall have them in derision. He shall speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in Sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon the holy hill. And then you're like, well, wait a second. So if you're going to mock the nations, then why are you crucifying your son? To me, trying to understand it that way was kind of a hard flow. There was high points and stuff I liked, but it was kind of hard to understand. So I wanted to look at this again and let me try to break this down for us and see if we can't understand this a little bit differently. Something important for us to know is that David wrote most of the psalms that we're reading. And so look at this from the perspective of David. Why do the and then heathen here in Hebrew is the goim, and goim is the word translated as gentiles or nations. So it doesn't have to necessarily be heathen. I don't. I don't know why we throw heathen in here in the translation. Why do the nations rage? And the people. And in Hebrew, this. This is communities, the group gatherings of people imagine a vain thing. So look at verse one. Rage is compared to imagining a vain thing. And heathen is compared with nations is compared with communities. So nations and communities make sense. Gatherings of people, that's synonymous. We get that rage. And imagining a vain thing, that thing, that's a disconnect for me. I don't usually think of raging as imagining silliness. So I looked up rage in Hebrew and the word is ragash, and it means to conspire or plot. So this isn't raging. He's saying, why do the nations conspire and the peoples imagine a vain thing or plot against me? Okay, the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers. So kings of the earth, parallel with rulers, they're setting themselves, they're taking counsel together. So they're establishing this assembly. They're conspiring, just like I said in verse one, against the Lord and against his anointed. Who is the anointed one? Think about David and Saul. Why wouldn't David lay a finger on Saul? Because Saul was the Lord's anointed. So who is the anointed one in this verse in this psalm? No, no, no. The Lord and the Lord's anointed. So who did the Lord anoint? [00:32:09] Speaker A: So you're not saying the parallel, you're [00:32:11] Speaker B: just saying, oh, right, right, right. Sorry. I can see where you got Lord. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:15] Speaker B: The Lord is going to be in parallel with the Lord's anointed. Who is David saying that the Lord's anointed is Saul, and that would have been Saul. But now Saul's dead and David's king, so he's writing the psalm. David's talking about himself, because now he's the Lord's anointed one. He's the king of Israel. So the nations are conspiring. The different gatherings of people, communities, nations. Really, it's just another way of saying nations are conspiring against the Lord and against the Lord's king. The Lord's anointed against David, saying, let us break their bands asunder and let us cast their cords from us. So when Saul was king, he had conquered a lot of these different kingdoms, and now they had to pay tribute to them now that David has taken over. And remember when David took over, it was a time that was a little bit sketchy because Judah supported him, Benjamin supported him, but Israel supported someone else, and he had to kind of win them over. You had Saul's son and all the kind of intrigue that was going on until you finally get a united Israel. So Israel's going through a period of weakness. And if your nation that's ruling over you looks weak, then what do all the nations that are underneath Israel start to do? Conspire to throw off the bounds of that vassal kingdom relationship. Israel has abused us, they've subjected us. But now Israel's weak, we can band together and throw off those bounds. That's what David is writing about. Then let's see. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. And the Lord. So who sits in the heavens, the Lord is parallel with that, shall have them in derision. And derision is kind of like mock. Making fun of them. He's. He's going to like. He's. They think they're going to have it, but the Lord's going to mock them. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in sore displeasure. I have set my king upon the holy hill of Zion. Who's his king? This isn't talking about Christ. This is talking about David. Yet I have set my king. But where did he set David? Upon my holy hill of Zion. This is something important for you guys to understand. Zion in Hebrew history is Mount Olympus of Greek history. What has David just said? [00:34:52] Speaker A: He's a God. [00:34:53] Speaker B: He's a God. David has just said I am the Lord's anointed and he has established me on Mount Olympus with all of the other gods. If you will now look at the next verse, I will declare the decree the Lord hath said unto me so who's the Lord talking to? David? Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. What's David saying? I am the son of God on Mount Olympus. I am Zeus. How is this different from Alexander the Great when he goes and gets deified in Egypt? Or how is this different from any other kings that kind of take it and say, I am God's son and he's established my reign and I rule from Mount Olympus or from whatever I am part of, not just mortal men's. Now I'm reigning from God's mountain. [00:36:02] Speaker A: I mean, it's pretty arrogant. [00:36:03] Speaker B: It changes the tone a little bit, doesn't it? [00:36:07] Speaker A: I mean, especially when we keep reading on in the verse. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Ask of me and I shall give thee the nations. So heathen. Anytime you see heathen in this, it's goim. It's nations for thine inheritance and the ends of the earth, the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. So I, because I am the son of God and I am ruling from Olympus, the earth is mine. There is no limit to my kingdom. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel so David as king can have whatever nation he wants. To all of these little nations that are complaining about subjection and bondage, look, you're small fries. I'm going to dash into pieces greater nations than you and add to my kingdom from all over the place. Be wise now. Therefore, O kings, be instructed, ye judges of the earth. So again, look at the cool parallels, the poetry. Be wise, be instructed. They're synonymous. Kings, judges of the earth, synonymous. So why is he writing the psalm? He's writing it as a word of warning to all of the other kings that don't belong to Israel. Be wise, be instructed. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. And so I love the fear and trembling. You get this passage in the New Testament and you can see those as synonymous. What I think is very enlightening is that serve the Lord is put synonymous with rejoice. When you serve the Lord, it causes you to rejoice. I think that's a pretty powerful little insight. So if you're going to talk about serving the Lord, great. But now you have to talk about his ruler. Right? So verse 12. How does this end? Kiss the Son. Who is he talking about? This is not the Son of God. Christ. He's talking about himself. Serve God and kiss me. Kiss up to me. Join yourself with me. So kiss is to join to Join lightly. You know, your kissing is kind of joining the lips. Like, unify yourself with me, make peace with me, lest I destroy you, Lest he be angry and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled. But a little. Blessed are all they who put their trust in him. See, this whole psalm makes a lot more sense in context of David boasting about who he is and his position and trying to unify the kingdom. But it's. But it doesn't always have to be what it is. Literally. I think there's some value in taking this and looking at it at different layers, because Christ is a son of David. Right. And he takes some of that David imagery and Messiah imagery and uses it to explain his role, because David is a type of Christ. And so you do have this double meaning. But hopefully the psalm makes a little bit more sense to you when you understand the context of who's writing it and why he's writing it, and kind of helps it come to life and just give credit where credit is due for what it's actually saying. Nate, you and I were having this conversation before the podcast even began. I think we like to look at a lot of these psalms and twist them a little bit out of context in applying to Christianity, in applying to Jesus and what it's prophesying of. And I think a lot of Jews look at this and say, in the Hebrew, you guys are taking this out of context, and there's a disconnect between how they see it and how we see it. Right. And if we are able to kind of check our biases at the door and be honest about the text and look at it and understand it for what it is, and from their perspective on these ones that you can look at and kind of come to an agreement with and show that good faith that you're willing to interpret that. I think the Old Testament has plenty of references where you can't explain it outside of the idea of a coming of a messiah. If we can be honest about some of these other sections and psalms and parts of the Old Testament and what they mean, then maybe it opens the way for an honest dialogue about some of these other sections that clearly have reference to Jesus Christ. [00:40:40] Speaker A: Agreed. Let's keep going. [00:40:42] Speaker B: All right. Maybe we should just skip forward to one that talks about Jesus Christ. Psalms 22. This is. This is the most. Potentially the most debated scripture of the entire Old Testament. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:41:00] Speaker B: It's a. It's a huge one. [00:41:01] Speaker A: That's a big statement. [00:41:01] Speaker B: There it is. [00:41:03] Speaker A: All right, let's get in it. [00:41:04] Speaker B: And this is verse 16. For dogs have compassed me, and the assembly of the wicked, having clothed me, they pierced my hands and feet. And so you have this interesting parallel. Dogs have compassed me, assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. So they're calling the assembly of the wicked, in this case, dogs. It's pretty derogatory. And then it says, they pierced my hands and my feet. So this idea of piercing the hands and the feet, the word for pierced and the word for lions is almost the exact same word. One starts with a VAV and the other starts with a yod. And if you want to know how close these off or close these are to looking like each other at home, go look up a VAV and a yod. And the difference is a couple centimeters of ink is the only difference. One is a short, like a right angle, if you will. And then the other one is a right angle with a longer tail. And one means lions, and then the other one means pierced. And the Christians early on, the translators have taken that word and they said, nope, this is the word pierced. Where Jewish translators have looked at it and said, no, this is lions. And the Jewish translators look at it as lions based on the potential parallel with dogs. If you're talking about dogs have compassed me, and then they're like lions. That makes sense. So they're saying, this makes more sense. And it's lions. What the Christians are doing here is trying to take this verse and apply it to Christ who was pierced. His hands and his feet were pierced on the cross. And the Christians have argued and said, no, this was definitely from the word pierced, not from lions. Well, new light has been shed on the debate. So I think we've talked a little bit about the Septuagint and about the Hebrew Bible and about the Dead Sea Scrolls. Have we provided that context, date, or do I need to do a quick recap? [00:43:26] Speaker A: Maybe. Let's do a quick recap. [00:43:27] Speaker B: Okay. The oldest complete manuscript of the Bible that we had for a very long time was the Aleppo Codex and the Leningrad Codex. The Leppo codex was about 920 AD. The Leningrad Codex was shortly after 1000 AD these were Hebrew manuscripts of the entire Old Testament. We had some manuscripts, isolated manuscripts, like an Isaiah text or a Daniel text or whatever text, different isolated parts, but not an entire Bible that dated earlier than this date. The Septuagint, when the Greeks conquered the world with Alexander the great in 323bc and they spread Hellenization throughout the entire world. And Greek became the International language. And their influence grew and spread until about 200 BCE it was an extremely important. And they had the library in Alexandria, Egypt, and they were taking in the library and collecting the greatest and most important books in the world. And so they took scholars and the septuagint, sept means seven, and it comes from 70. And this idea, and I'm not sure the exact details, if it's 70 scholars, 70 days, or whatever the case, they translated this Hebrew text into the Greek text. And the Septuagint predated the Bible a couple hundred years. Even though they did it in 200 BC they didn't have a copy of the Septuagint that old. The oldest copy we had of the Septuagint was still a couple hundred years A.D. but it predated the Hebrew manuscript by a few hundred years. So they would look at the Greek and they'd look at the Hebrew. And these are the two important texts for understanding the Old Testament and the text. You had this disagreement in this word. And one text would have it as lions, and the other text would have it as pierced. And the Christian translators are taking it one way, the Jewish translators are taking it another way. And it became so divisive, any Jewish person, before buying a Bible, would open it up to Psalms chapter 22, verse 16, and just look at how this word was translated. If it was lions, it was safe to buy because they trusted it. If it was pierced, then it had too much Christian bias. And they weren't even gonna. They weren't interested. They didn't want that Bible. And it's just a. It's just a huge issue. But then we have a story of some goat herders who were throwing rocks in a cave. And he heard some shattering when he threw a rock in there. And he's like, well, caves usually don't shatter. So he climbed into the cave to see what was going on. And he found all these pots, this pottery that had rolls, scripts, manuscripts that were rolled up into the pots. And they thought, well, this is amazing. They pulled out these scrolls, these rolls, and then they would take it to the market and try to sell them. And then they realized that they could get more money if they were to sell a fragment of the roll, because then they could sell, like, 50 versions of just one if they just cut it up into 50 small pieces and get more money for 50 individual pieces than one whole scroll. So they started cutting them up and destroying them and selling them in little fragments here and there, which is. So somebody raised enough money went through and Just bought the whole collection to try to preserve it and maintain it. This is the birth of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls had the entire Old Testament, with the exception, I believe, of two books in it. But in the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, it predates the Septuagint that we had and the Masoretic and the Aleppo and the Leningrad Codex of the Bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls dated back to 200 to 300 BC. So you're talking over a thousand years earlier than the manuscripts we had. So obviously, one point of interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls was what did the original Hebrew say? So we turn to Psalms 22:15, and cool enough, it said pierced, not lions. So it seems like the original Hebrew. So now let's just read this verse. [00:47:39] Speaker A: Also, it's important to note that lions is used in this Psalm on other multiple occasions. And you would think that if it was the same word in all of the other instances, that they wouldn't have used lion versus pierced. [00:47:54] Speaker B: Good point. [00:47:55] Speaker A: Like, if it was the same word over and over and over, it seems like they would just keep using that word if it was written the same way. [00:48:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And this is an interesting verse as we start reading some of this context. Verse 14. I am poured out like water, and all the bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws. And you think of being dried up and the tongue cleaving to the jaws. Think of Christ thirsting on the cross when they take the sponge with the vial. And thou has brought me into the dust of earth. For dogs have compassed me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones. They look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them and cast lots upon my vesture. And you think about the soldiers that cast lots for his clothes as he hung on the cross. But thou. But be thou not thou far from me, O Lord, O my strength. Haste thee to help me deliver my soul from the sword, My darling, from the power of the dog. This perspective of suffering is very interesting in terms of Christ. And Christ uses this passage of Scripture as he goes through the atonement. When you look at verse one, Eloi, Eloi la mach Sabathani. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Which is the very line that Christ repeats in Aramaic as he's going through this process. For him, this Passage was very real and really kind of unique insight into what he suffered through the atonement. So kind of a cool little psalm. Not that it all fits, but it's interesting to see that perspective and put it in that lens and to be able to see. I don't know, that word even hold through in ancient times, which wouldn't make sense. Like, what are you talking about? Piercing your hands and your feet, but that's what Christ went through. Okay, you want to talk about Psalms 23? [00:50:18] Speaker A: Yeah. We're kind of getting close to the end here, so let's make sure we highlight the big stuff, the highlights. [00:50:29] Speaker B: Okay. Nate, Psalms 23 has inspired so much music, songs, poems, art, the good Shepherd. [00:50:41] Speaker A: Okay. [00:50:42] Speaker B: And. And I don't know if you're going to get much more descriptive language or powerful language. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take [00:51:09] Speaker A: a look at my life and realize there's nothing left. [00:51:12] Speaker B: Not quite. [00:51:14] Speaker A: No, not quite. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Not quite. [00:51:17] Speaker A: Because I've been maddening that so long that even my mama thinks that my mind is gone. Really? Is that not what the next line is? [00:51:25] Speaker B: Not quite. [00:51:25] Speaker A: What about, like, but I never met a man who didn't deserve it be treated like a punk. You know, that's unheard of. [00:51:33] Speaker B: Thank you, Nate. [00:51:33] Speaker A: Maybe, like, best wear watcher walking and who you're talking, or you and your homies will be lined in chalk. Is that the next verse? [00:51:42] Speaker B: Very much Inspired by Psalms 23. [00:51:46] Speaker A: Just wondering if those are the next verses. [00:51:49] Speaker B: And you know what? Honestly, I think it's a great usage of this verse because I can't think of much other lifestyles that take you through such a depressing situation and a fearful, terrifying presence, and yet, you know, try to instill that faith and confidence. And maybe they don't have the same faith and confidence of being delivered, but I do like. I do like the song. I'm not gonna lie. [00:52:16] Speaker A: I love the song. Are you kidding me? I'm just dropping bars right now, dude. Spitting fire. [00:52:23] Speaker B: Thank you. Me and Coolio spit that fire, man. Been spending most our lives. [00:52:31] Speaker A: All right, well, then what is the next verse? If it's not those awesome lyrics, that. If it's not those sick bars. [00:52:36] Speaker B: Can we. Can we just pause and appreciate. Though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of death, like, so great has. Has there ever been a greater line muttered than. [00:52:48] Speaker A: No, it's. It's awesome. [00:52:50] Speaker B: That's. That's powerful. [00:52:51] Speaker A: Let's see. I'm pulling up the. I have the verse pulled up. I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they come from man. Those are. I mean, those are nicer, for sure. [00:53:01] Speaker B: There's your rod and your staff that you were talking about here. [00:53:03] Speaker A: No, I love it. I love it. Yeah. This is a great Psalm, dude. Psalm 23. [00:53:08] Speaker B: Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth oil runneth, oil runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. [00:53:23] Speaker A: Beautiful. [00:53:25] Speaker B: And we do walk, I take it we all walk in the valley of the shadow of death. I mean, death looms over every single person that has ever been born. And for David, David was a shepherd. And not only was he a shepherd, but he was a shepherd that fought a bear and a lion to protect his sheep. And you see in psalms a very different David. As you start off, you see a psalm of a very confident, a very arrogant David who is stating, I am a son of God who belongs on Mount Olympus, and you better kiss me if you want to survive to my enemies encompass me about. And what you are seeing is a pre Bathsheba David and a post Bathsheba David. So David, it is cool that regardless of what happened in David's life, he never turned from the Lord. He always trusted that the Lord would deliver him. And some of these psalms get a little bit dark and they talk about him falling from grace and no longer is he the king that's on the hill. He's chased out. So you see some of these psalms when Absalom is ruling over the kingdom, his son, after the coup, and David's on the outs, and he's talking about all of his enemies are wanting to destroy me, and all of this is happening to me. Yet I will fear no evil and I will trust the Lord. And I know that somehow he's going to deliver me. And you're going to talk. David's going to be talking about going into the pit. And he takes the pit and puts it in parallel with Sheol, the spirit world, Hades. So Sheol, Hades. And you want to know where we get the word hell from? Hel is the Norse version of Hades, and Hades is the Greek version of Sheol. And Sheol is the spirit world, the world of the dead. So even though I go to the world of dead or to the pit, the Lord will deliver me and pull me out. And so I love the Psalms. I love that you get this. I think some of the best poets are the poets that are filled with emotion. And you see the emotion of David in the beginning of his reign as he's building confidence and he's trusting in the Lord and he's consolidating the kingdom and he's doing his deal versus the David that is shaken after Bathsheba, that is now questioning what's going to happen, who's going to come face to face with hell because of what he's done. And you see that reflected in these psalms. And I think it speaks to a lot of us as we go through various stages of sin or darkness or trials, maybe whether it's because we brought them on ourselves or because others around us are afflicting and trying us as well. [00:56:24] Speaker A: Sweet. [00:56:26] Speaker B: Anything you wanted to add on that, Nate? [00:56:29] Speaker A: No, I'm just busy looking up Gangster's paradise on itunes. [00:56:33] Speaker B: I do like Gangster's Paradise. [00:56:35] Speaker A: We can. [00:56:35] Speaker B: I hope that makes it somewhere in here. [00:56:37] Speaker A: Oh, you know, it's. You know, it's. It'll have already played by this point. [00:56:41] Speaker B: Okay, okay. [00:56:43] Speaker A: All right. [00:56:43] Speaker B: I know we're about out of time. [00:56:44] Speaker A: We are out of time. [00:56:45] Speaker B: I'm just gonna highlight a few. A few parts. [00:56:48] Speaker A: We'll do the rapid, rapid, speed round, rapid fire. [00:56:51] Speaker B: Guys, we're not going through any Psalms detail by detail anymore. If you want to look at temple recommend psalms, read Psalms 15 and Psalms 24. Those two are great, powerful psalms. As far as going into the mountain of the Lord, the hill of the Lord, and the moun of the Lord is, is this temple and this idea of this temple. Recommend interview. So those are two cool psalms for that. [00:57:13] Speaker A: Okay. [00:57:14] Speaker B: Psalms 8. There's some very interesting theological point in verse 4, 5, actually. So I'm going to read this. What is man, that thou art mindful of him, and the Son of Man, that thou visitest him. So man is parallel with Son of Man. So Son of Man is mankind, and that thou art mindful of Him. Being mindful of him means that he's visiting him. Because there you have that parallel, right? Or you can even look at this as a progression, digression type deal. Man progresses into the Son of Man, being mindful progresses into this visitation, which. Pretty cool. Verse 5. For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. And thou hast crowned him with glory and honor. Stop in here where it says the angels. I give you permission to cross that out in Hebrew. Interesting enough, the Hebrew text says lower than the Elohim. In no other place in the Old Testament is Elohim translated as angels. It's translated as God or gods. But somebody had a problem with the theology here. How can you make man lower than the gods? Just a little lower than the gods. What about all of these angelic beings? Let's take Elohim and translate it as angels in this sense and translate it as gods everywhere else. That's hilarious to me. And so you look at the theology, and they're saying, well, what about Michael and the archangels and the cherubim and the seraphim and all of the heavenly host? Like, surely God did not put man ahead of all of them. So you couldn't make them a little lower than the Elohim. You had to make them little lower than the angels, too. And they intentionally changed the translation or translated that to angels instead of Elohim. So I think that's kind of an important, cool little snippet to point out. Okay, moving on. In Psalms chapter 11, verse 4, again, this is something really cool to me. The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. So what's parallel? The Lord is parallel with the Lord's throne because the Lord sits on his throne, right? And the Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. So just like the presence of the Lord is associated with this throne, heaven is associated with the holy temple. Think about that next time you go to the temple. The temple is equivalent to heaven. And as you walk into the doors of the temple, imagine walking into heaven itself, as this psalm mentions. All right, I know I'm out of time. Psalms 15. Who shall abide in the tabernacle? Who shall dwell in the holy mountain of Zion, Mount Zion. We have this again, looking at that with Revelation 3:12, this idea that you shall be established in the house of God. But we're just going to keep moving, moving on, moving on. Psalms 19 is beautiful as well. There's a lot of really good things, and I don't know if I can point them all out. Maybe Psalms 24:6. When you're talking about those who are able to go to the temple, they say this is the generation. The Hebrew word for generation also can be translated as circle. In this case, this is the circle of them that seek him. And by seeking him, that seek thy Face, O God of Jacob. Yeah. And whenever you see these salah, there's a few words in here. These psalms were written to music, and you've got these notes like salah, and there's another couple words in there that they use. They're not. They're not translatable. They don't have a meaning. They're used in context with the music and the rhythm and how things go. So it's not. Don't worry about those. Okay. I think that's about it. [01:01:27] Speaker A: Just remember, like, in four years, we get to do this again, and we'll go through some different psalms. [01:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, the Psalms are rich, guys. And hopefully, I'll leave you with this. We're not done with the book of Psalms. We have two more lessons on them, and we get to learn about acrostic poems. We get to find missing verses that have been found and discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and we'll add some scriptures to what was originally in the Hebrew that got lost somewhere along the line that aren't in your scriptures now. And we'll get to see some really cool things. Still with Psalms to come, what I hope you get out of this lesson is understanding how these parallels work and a little bit about this imagery and the poetry. Apply that with your. With these psalms as you're reading them and kind of find these cool connections and how they define words and help you understand their meaning and kind of paint a broader picture than maybe how we understood this. Just on a quick read to begin [01:02:22] Speaker A: with, what are we talking about next week? [01:02:24] Speaker B: Psalms 49 to, I don't know, 100ish. [01:02:29] Speaker A: Sweet. Can't wait. [01:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's about 100ish. [01:02:32] Speaker A: All right, until next week. [01:02:33] Speaker B: See ya, [01:03:02] Speaker A: Sam.