Psalm 30

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:33:24utc

David wrote this beautiful psalm for the dedication of the temple, as the heading indicates. David himself never lived to see this day, but he had lived for it all his life. And, at the end of his life, when he gave the actual task for the construction to his son Solomon, everything was ready. We read in First Chronicles how he did this, and in this psalm how God should be praised at the dedication.^¹ What the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews says about the heroes of faith can be applied to David here also: "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect."²

We may see in this psalm a prophecy about the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our life in Him. David starts out by saying that God gave him victory over his enemies. The fact that his enemies did not gloat over him, speaks of this. He had come to the deepest point of his life, but God had lifted him out of it. He does the same for us.

The way in which David declares this is very original: "I will exalt you, O LORD, for you lifted me out of the depths." God's elevation of David out of the depth, and David's elevation of God are, of course, two different concepts, but they make for a beautiful play on words. God was not in the depths when David exalted Him; David's lifting up of God was simply the acknowledgment of a fact, not an act of salvation. It is the justification of God's character and deeds by a man who had experienced salvation from God.

We may see in everything God did for David an image of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This psalm is full of Christ's bitter suffering, and of His victory over His enemies, through His being raised from the dead by the Father. This makes this psalm very fitting to be sung at the dedication of the temple: the place of God's revelation of Himself, and of our fellowship with Him, the place of our praise. The basis of all we experience in our fellowship with God is the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Yet, David speaks in this psalm about personal emotions. Although Christ is the actual subject of the psalm, it is not an impersonal prophecy about Christ. The prophecy in all its details is reflected in David's personal life.

The verses 1-4 are a hymn of praise because of answered prayers. What David experienced emotionally when God lifted him up out of the depth, Jeremiah felt physically when Ebed-Melech pulled him up out of the cistern.³ If Jeremiah had remained in the cistern, or the dungeon, as the KJV renders it, he would have died, and his enemies would have gloated over him. But God pulled him up, and Jeremiah's enemies could see the man they had thought to be dead, walking through their city. Jeremiah's experience is a picture of what many people go through emotionally.

The Apostles in the book of Acts had a similar experience, when God delivered them supernaturally from their imprisonment.⁴ God not only helps us when we are down emotionally, but He supports us supernaturally. Our being lifted up out of the depth is no mere stimulus to our feelings and nerves; it is resurrection from the dead. With this kind of song the dedication of the temple begins. Our life of service for the Lord begins with this victory over our enemies.

David mentions three things God did for him: He lifted him out of the depth, He healed him, and He brought him up from the grave. This brought three domains of his life as a human being under the authority of the Holy Spirit: his emotions, his body, and his spirit. When we say "emotions," we limit the concept to one part of the soul; actually the whole soul is involved in this, that is the intellect, the emotions, and the will. When we are raised spiritually by the resurrection power of our Lord Jesus Christ, our thought life, our emotional life and our will come under the rule of the Spirit of God, and we experience healing in our body. Thus the temple of our body is dedicated, and the enemy is denied his claim upon us.

The beauty of it all is that it is so personal. The dedication of a building would have little or no value if it did not lead to a personal experience with God. Only if we can worship privately, can we worship God in fellowship with others. And inasmuch as the temple is the place of God's revelation of Himself, we can say that it is not God's intention that His revelation would leave us unaffected. When God reveals Himself, He wants to reveal Himself in and through us.

Vs. 4 emphasizes our relationship with others in connection with communion with God. The others are "you saints of his." It sounds as if God might have favorites, as if He would not be impartial in the demonstration of His love. But it is good to experience God's love as if we are the only individual in the world who is the recipient.

"Sing" is the translation of the Hebrew noun tehillim, and the Greek psalmoi, which means the singing of a hymn under the accompaniment of stringed instruments. David offers us his own poetry to use for singing praises to the Lord. The Apostle Paul admonishes us to "sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in [y]our hearts to God."⁵ And the way to do this, he says, is to "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." This means that our hearts and our heads should be filled with the Word of Christ. The written Word of God occupies an important place in the dedication and the use of the temple.

We can define the function of the temple in two ways: It is the place where God reveals Himself, and it is the place where we serve and worship Him. The One we worship and praise is the LORD, that is YHWH, the great I AM, who revealed Himself to Moses, to Israel, and in Christ Jesus, to us.

When we read: "praise His holy name," it presupposes some personal knowledge of God's character and of His attributes. The Name of God stands for His character. Without this knowledge, praise would be impossible, and without revelation there would be no knowledge at all. Our praise on earth is imperfect, because our knowledge is imperfect. In heaven praise will be perfect because we will have direct access to the person of God. If human personality is already so fascinating, how much more will it be when in heaven we will see, and understand God as He is.

It seems as if the mention of the wrath of God is out of place in this psalm. God's wrath is always revealed in connection with sin and unrighteousness. The Apostle Paul says: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness."⁶ I believe, though, that in this context God's wrath is not directed towards us, but that it refers to what He did with the sin of men in Jesus Christ, and in the shadow of the Old Testament pictures, with the sin offering and guilt offering. When Jesus died on the cross, God's anger only lasted a moment. What is three hours in comparison with eternity? And what is the night of Jesus' suffering in comparison with the morning of His resurrection? How could the temple then be dedicated without weeping and rejoicing? Isn't it only natural that we would react with tears in the light of our sin, and with rejoicing in connection with our salvation?

The gist of verses 6 and 7 seems to be that David had fallen into a false sense of security. The NIV renders this with: "When I felt secure, I said, 'I will never be shaken.' O LORD, when you favored me, you made my mountain stand firm; but when you hid your face, I was dismayed." TLB, probably, catches the meaning best with: "In my prosperity I said, 'This is forever; nothing can stop me now! The Lord has shown me his favor. He has made me steady as a mountain.' Then, Lord, you turned your face away from me and cut off your river of blessings. Suddenly my courage was gone; I was terrified and panic-stricken." The psalmist seems to have suffered from a lack of sense of reality. On the other hand, the image of the mountain, which was made to stand firm by God Himself, would speak of real invincibility. The real objective of the words is, probably, a prophetic utterance, which expresses Jesus' experience on the cross when He felt forsaken by God. At the critical moment God hid His face from Jesus, because He had taken upon Himself the sin of the world.

The thought is parallel to the one in the preceding verse: "For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." The psalmist speaks here about the moment of God's anger and the night of weeping, which precedes the morning of the resurrection. The intent is to emphasize the contrast between the normal position of man under God's grace and favor, and the abnormal condition, which is brought about by sin. In the objective sense of the word, God never hides His face from us. If sometimes we have the feeling He does this, we can attribute it to an atmosphere of unreality which sin creates within us and around us. The only time God really hid His face was during the crucifixion, when the sun was eclipsed and darkness fell. We may, therefore, see in the verses 8-10 the prayer of Jesus when He hung on the cross. David's words are a commentary on: "Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani."

The Son calls upon the Father; the man Jesus prays to YHWH. The NIV renders vs. 9 with: "What gain is there in my destruction, in my going down into the pit?" KJV is closer to the original by saying: "What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?" This sentence acquires a deeper meaning in the light of the above. What profit is there in the blood of Jesus in which we are cleansed and sanctified? It is the blood of the eternal covenant.⁷ Woe to him who says: "What profit is there?"

God called David to express in his own life something of the greatest event that ever took place in the whole universe, but it is impossible that he could have understood the meaning of the role he played. Vs. 9 also demonstrates the limited vision David had upon death. With the question: "Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?" he shows that he does not see more in death than meets the eye. He sounds as if he believes that, at the death of his body, his relationship with God would cease to exist also. Yet, this same David says elsewhere: "If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!"⁸ So, evidently, David does not promote a naturalistic philosophy of life, as if man would cease to exist when he dies. The point is that death is the enemy, both of man and of God. God hates death even more than we do. Dying in itself does not glorify God; and yet man can glorify God with his death as the Apostle John indicates in his Gospel.⁹

David's groping for an answer in the midst of this enigma guides our thoughts to the greatest of all victories ever won: the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Without this historical fact no temple service would be possible, and the dedication of a temple would be meaningless. Our relationship with God is based upon the resurrection life. David is right: without the resurrection no one can praise God or proclaim His faithfulness. The dust does not praise God.

God hears us, and is merciful to us, and He is our helper in a much more glorious way than David ever knew. The name of the Holy Spirit is paracletos, which means "helper." He stands beside us to take upon Himself our defense against the enemy and the accuser. "Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign LORD comes escape from death."¹⁰

It is startling to see that, facing death, David speaks about dancing. Dancing is a spontaneous, ecstatic demonstration of joy, in fellowship with others. One does not dance alone. In his book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis lets Aslan dance after his resurrection from the death together with the two girls, and it is a rather wild dance. Only the joy of the resurrection from the dead can bind us together with others in this ecstasy. We may live in a world of sackcloth and ashes, and our physical eye may not be able to look beyond the grave; but we know that the resurrection of Jesus took place on our planet, in the midst of mourning and sackcloth. We believe that the hope that is within us is a reliable one.

David sees himself "clothed with joy." Older translations, such as the RSV and KJV use the phrase "girded … with gladness." The verb "to gird" is always used in the sense of preparing oneself for action. The joy of the resurrection is the impetus for our actions. Sackcloth reduces a person to inactivity, but the belt of resurrection inspires us to work, not only here on earth but throughout eternity. God makes us taste the joy of resurrection here and now so that our hearts may sing and never be silent anymore, but give Him thanks forever. "The joy of [y]our master" into which we enter ¹¹ is the feast of resurrection. Jesus says to the Apostle John: "I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades."¹² In this way David sees in this dedication of the temple through the walls of the building and he beholds the eternal home, the real tabernacle, the true service of God, where we will serve Him, and love Him, and praise Him eternally, and where we will see His face.

¹ See I Chr. 22:1-19

² Heb. 11:13,39,40

³ See Jer. 38:7-14

⁴ See Acts 5:17-25

⁵ Col. 3:16

⁶ Rom. 1:18

⁷ Heb. 13:20

⁸ Ps. 139:8 (RSV)

⁹ John 21:19

¹⁰ Ps. 68:20

¹¹ Matt. 25:21(RSV)

¹² Rev. 1:18