Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast
Welcome to a podcast that bridges the past and present in a transformative exploration of the Bible and faith. At Navigating An Ancient Faith, we delve into the original context of Scripture, mirroring the perspective of its first listeners. Our travels have taken us to Biblical lands, such as Israel, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. Through insights from these travels, as well as engaging discussions around philosophy and mythology, we traverse the journey toward our own spiritual transformation. Join us on this journey from ancient faith to modern devotion.
Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast
Symbolism in the Psalms: Ancient Trash Talk
Questions or Comments? We'd love to hear from you!
Unearth the unseen battles within the Psalms! It might be easy to associate the Psalms with worship music and poetry. Yet hidden beneath obscure references and our modern translations are numerous polemics against the pagan gods of other nations. Make no mistake: when Yahweh led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, the surrounding deities trembled. In this episode, we survey several of the Psalms that declare that Yahweh is the true King of glory.
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Read the Baal Cycle Text: The Baal Cycle
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Hello, good day, everyone. Thank you for listening to the Navigating An Ancient Faith podcast. My name is David. I am coming to you from Florida and with me is J.R. from Tennessee. We are not in the same room.
J.R.:No, not again.<No> I was I was I was in your old stomping grounds this weekend. Spent the day in Nashville, downtown Nashville.<Oh, OK.> How long has it been since you lived there?
David:Well, your son's wedding, but.
J.R.:Well, no, no, lived there, lived there. That's right. All right. Well, yes, I did catch up with my son. That was good catching up with him. But, you know, my point was is that it has certainly changed from when you were here.
David:Oh, yeah, yeah.
J.R.:I mean, it was booming, you know, it was growing when you were here, but it's just kind of going crazy. If you go downtown, it's just completely unrecognizable from when you were there. What, 10 years ago, something like that.
David:Yeah, yeah, it's 10, 11, 12 years ago. Yeah. And you're right, I mean, uh, we were up there for your son's wedding a couple years ago, and we were just amazed that it's so, it's so crowded, things got so expensive, it almost used to be a little small, I won't say sleepy town, but I mean, you know, you, you, you've always lived close to Nashville, so.
J.R.:Sure, sure, yeah, it's always had the music scene and things like that, but no, it didn't feel like New York City, or it didn't feel like, uh, you know, these, overcrowded towns, you know.<Yeah, yeah.> But yeah, it's feeling that way now.
David:Yeah, it is.
J.R.:Yeah, and I guess that's a good thing, you know.
David:Yeah, it's a happening place. It's that it's the new place in the south where all the young people want to move to right? That's what I've heard.
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah, you bailed on it too early.
David:Yeah or just in time. Whatever the case may be. Yeah.
J.R.:Yeah, that's probably better.
David:Well, we're on our second episode of our series on Symbolism in the Psalms, and in the series we are talking about ideas and symbolism in the Psalms, as the name suggests, that run throughout the Psalms. But when you start to see these images, when you start to see some of these... bigger ideas that run throughout the Psalms, you start to read the Psalms different. And we won't do the whole introduction to the Psalms like we talked about last week. But last week we talked about the mountain of God and how the Psalms frequently reference a mountain and a holy mountain or a holy hill, things like that. And we just talked about how, you know, the mountain of God is wherever God resides. It's not necessarily a specific mountain, although in some places it is. But yeah, the mountain represents that intersection between the physical realm and the heavenly realm, right? That's what the mountain represents. And it made sense in the ancient mindset because gods lived on mountains.
J.R.:Sure. Yeah. You, you've just picked out several things in Psalms that create a pattern that you can see when you read through the Psalms.<Yeah.> And that's what we're kind of trying to highlight a little bit.
David:Yeah, yeah. So that's what we talked about last episode. Today we're going to talk about one that I think is going to be fun. We're going to talk about ancient trash talk. And so it's odd to think about last episode, we talked about how we view the Psalms as poetry and worship music. And it's odd to think about there's a lot of trash talking going on in the Psalms.
J.R.:Yeah. I just pictured the Psalms as David in this field playing the harp to his sheep. Yeah. If he's, if he's throwing some burns in there, it doesn't coincide with the music style, maybe.
David:The picture. Yeah. The mental image we have of, of, yeah. Yeah. The young shepherd boy strumming his harp to sheep. Right.
J.R.:Yeah. Just dropping bombs.
David:Yeah. Well, to get in the mood, I watched a YouTube video a couple of days ago on NFL mic'd up, you've ever seen one of those videos?
J.R.:Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
David:So, I wanted to, uh, take a look at that to kind of get in the mood. And, you know, of course most of them are cornerbacks. And it was guys like Jalen Ramsey's a big trash talker, right?
J.R.:Oh yeah, he's our guy, sure. Yeah.
David:Uh, Tyronn Mathieu, the honey badger, and I forget the other one, uh, Sherman. Maybe that's the other.
J.R.:Oh yeah. Richard Sherman. There you go.
David:Yeah. So just, you know, and the idea is they, they actually, you see these guys play in the sport, but then they put a mic on them throughout the game and you just hear how much, you know, junk they talk to each other. Always, always jabbering at each other.<Right.> Um, so I thought about this episode is maybe like King David mic'd up, you know, we get to hear what's actually going on. Actually, one of the funniest ones I heard was this cornerback and it wasn't one of the ones that I mentioned, you know, he's just blanketing the wide receiver all day long. And finally he goes up to the line of scrimmage and yells at the quarterback and says,"Hey man, I thought you were a first round draft pick." He goes,"This is embarrassing, man." And it's just funny because you know that happens all the time during games, you know?
J.R.:Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you can talk trash, but you got to back it up. You got to back it up. You know, yeah. So I apparently that guy backed it up all day. So
David:I guess so. Yeah. Well, the other thing that just happened is in baseball yesterday, a guy who I guess is pretty known for trash talking, lingered a little too long in a slide at second and, the runner jumped up and decked him like punched him. I don't know if you saw that, but
J.R.:No, no, I didn't. Wow.
David:And it seemed a little bit unprovoked, you know, he kind of stood over him, but the runner got up and they shoved a little bit, but then he just, like, landed a right hook across the guy's jaw, and the guy just dropped.
J.R.:Wow.
David:But after the game...
J.R.:Yeah, see, this is why I don't follow baseball, because there's not any good action like that.
David:Well, yeah.
J.R.:You know, you gotta go back to the 80s for the charge in the mound, you know.<Yeah.> You just don't see much of that anymore.<No, no.> Alright, I'll start picking it back up. If you get, get, bring the MMA into it, I'm, I'm game.
David:But I guess, yeah, so to your point about backing it up, I guess one of the things that the guy said afterwards is, you know, basically he, he had it coming. Like he's been talking trash all game and he's known for it too. And it's funny cause the comments under the video were all like, you know, where do I get in line to punch this guy? So apparently he doesn't have a big fan base, but
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good though. All right. So there's, trash talk like this in the, in the Bible. When I think of, you know, ancient trash talk, I think more New Testament where you, you see some good burns, you know, Jesus calling the Pharisees, you know, the whitewashed tombs, clean and nice on the outside, but dead on the inside. And it's just like, Oh, okay. John the Baptist, you know, the brood of vipers. So you see some of this, but kind of what we're going to talk about today, you know, when you see it in the Psalms is that there's a bunch of trash talk in the Psalms, but it's usually referring to other gods. Right?<Right. Yeah.> I kind of looked through your whole list, you know, you laid this out for me and I looked through it and it's all having to do with referencing with other gods. And so as we kind of start off, I guess, one of my questions, one of the questions that popped in my head before we even get going was, why does worshiping other gods in the Old Testament matter? Meaning that, yeah, I realize why it matters for the Israelites, but Jesus hadn't come yet, so we're not converting people, we're not trying to convert the Canaanites to Christianity. And so I'm kind of wondering as I read some of these things, and there, there's some great, there's some great Psalms here, but, uh, yeah, is it all just smack talk about other gods? Is it to keep the Israelites focused on Yahweh, or was there, is there a message in here for, I know that there's a message in there for us now, but was there a message in there for the Gentiles at the time, or was this primarily for the Israelites?
David:Yeah, that's a good question. I would say, I think it's primarily for the Israelites, because I can't imagine that, well, first of all, there wasn't a book called the Old Testament that everyone carried around, so when the Canaanites went to a hotel room, there wasn't, like, an Old Testament.
J.R.:They didn't have the Gideon Bible?
David:Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, the point is that a lot of this, we've got to imagine that a lot of these were not meant to be read by... other people, right? Other than the Israelites. So my initial reaction to that would be that it's mainly for encouragement for the Israelites to stay faithful to Yahweh, rather than hoping that, in our vernacular today, rather than hoping that some Mesopotamian is going to read this and disavow all their gods and pledge allegiance to Yahweh.
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. Good point guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm switching sides, right? Okay.
David:Yes That's what I would say. I don't know what you think about that. But
J.R.:Well, you know, yeah I knowing that it's songs and poetry and things like that that does make sense.<Yeah> As opposed to the rap battle type thing, you know now the Canaanites are gonna respond with their poetry or something like that. Right. Okay. All right. There you go. It's just a question as we kind of jumped into it.<Yeah. No.> Yeah. See where we take it.
David:That's a good question. I didn't even think about it that way. But yeah, that's a good question. Well, the other part that's difficult about this topic that we're going to talk about today is that these images are actually difficult to pick out in our English translations. And that's what we're going to talk about several instances of why that's the case. But, you know, you may be reading the Psalms all the time, and you might think to yourself, well, I don't see all this trash talk. Like, what are you going to talk about? One of the things we're going to talk about today is that it's difficult to pick out because of our English language, because of our modern versions, and sometimes just because even the people who put the Bible together weren't always sure what was being talked about, so they just went the safe route, right?<Right.> And so, a lot of these, I think you'll experience, uh, maybe they're psalms you've heard before. And I know even recently, there's a couple of these psalms we'll talk about that, man, I've read it my entire life, and I've never read it in a way that I read it now, right? So.
J.R.:Yeah. And the culture at the time, they knew all the subtleties when you're referring to somebody like Baal or Ashtaroth or something like that, you know, and so they knew all the things that we've kind of lost, unless you kind of dig into history and things, they picked up on all the subtleties and all the stabs. So we'll get into that.
David:Yeah. So let's jump in. Let's go to Psalm the first one we're going to look at is Psalm 68. Alright, so Psalm 68:1 says,"May God arise, may his enemies be scattered, may his foes flee before him. May you blow them away like smoke as wax melts before the fire. May the wicked perish before God." Now that's kind of pretty obviously, we know what the vein, what the tone of this psalm is. Yeah, so then verse three, but then it kind of switches tones."May the righteous be glad and rejoice before God. May they be happy and joyful." And then we get down to verse seven, it says,"When you God went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, the earth shook, the heavens poured down rain, before God, the one of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel." So, right there, and this is one I'm learning to pick up, too. So right there, it says,"When you went out before your people in the wilderness," this is talking about being delivered from Egypt, right?<Right.> So we start to now to get a picture of this psalm, that this is actually God leading his people out of Egypt. So then, we're going to skip all the way down to verse 32, the end, because it, it talks about all these different things about what happened in the desert and all that. But then verse 32 says,"Sing to God, you kingdoms of the earth. Sing praise to the Lord. To him who rides across the highest heavens, the ancient heavens, who thunders with a mighty voice. Proclaim the power of God, whose majesty is over Israel, whose power is in the heavens." I want to focus on those last couple of verses, because what starts out to just saying, you know, God's gonna defeat his enemies, and you're leading us through the desert, you're leading us out of slavery, out of captivity. It kind of culminates with this idea in the last couple of verses, it refers to God"who rides across the heavens, and the ancient heavens, and who thunders with a mighty voice." Now this is the first allusion that I want to unpack. Because this is actually a reference to the Mesopotamian god, the Canaanite god, Baal. And this is one of those things that you were just talking about. They knew all these allusions that we've lost, or we don't understand. But this is one of those, because Baal was known as the god who rides across the heavens.<Okay.> So that's one of the things that...
J.R.:And they would have known that. They would have picked up on that right away.
David:Right, so that's one of the things that Baal is known as. In fact, it's not uncommon for gods to be known as riders across the heavens. And you can see this a couple of different places. In fact, in Greek mythology, Zeus rides a chariot across the heavens, right?<Right.> And that's kind of the explanation of the sun rises, goes across the sky, and then sets. But it's similar to that to Baal. So Baal is riding across the heavens as this image of the sun rising and the sun setting and the sun being kind of the image of the ultimate God, you might say. So, we're starting out with just this little allusion, but that's what this is really talking about when it says,"Sing praise to the Lord, to him who rides across the highest heavens and the one who thunders with a mighty voice." Now what's the thundering about? Well, again, that's another allusion to Baal, because Baal was actually known also as the Thunder God.
J.R.:Okay. So, is everything related to weather and things like that, is that right?
David:Yeah, well, in ancient religion, it was very common for a lot of natural phenomenon to be associated with gods.<Right, sure.> Yeah, so even in Norse mythology, right, that when it thundered, they referred to that as Thor's hammer.<Ah, yeah.> Right, because Thor, you know, yeah, Thor striking the anvil.<Right.> so that was thunder. And, you know, we keep repeating this, but it's more than just saying, well, did they really believe that Thor's up there with a hammer? You know, these things were meant to capture the larger phenomena going on and reflecting what's happened in the spiritual world.
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah, that's right Yeah, that's right.
David:So this is one of the first examples where it refers to God who rides across the heavens. And actually that's a phrase that you'll see several times in the Psalms: the God whose voice thunders and the God who rides across the heavens. And those are, again, those are direct references to Baal, because that's what Baal was known as. And so it's a way in the Psalms for them to say, no, that's not Baal's role. Baal answers to Yahweh. That's Yahweh's role. It's a way of saying that.
J.R.:Right, right. So sing to the Lord all you kingdoms that are ruled by other gods, and especially you there, Baal. I'm calling you out by name.<Yeah, yeah.> Right, right, and this wouldn't have been missed on the ancient listeners.
David:Yeah, they would have picked that up. They would have seen the end of Psalm 68, they would have been like, oh, throwing the gauntlet down to Baal there.
J.R.:Got him! Yeah, yeah, there you go.
David:So, that's kind of the stuff we're talking about.<Right.> Any more thoughts on that one?
J.R.:No, that's a good lead off. Okay. you're right that we start seeing these things subtly, but it wouldn't have been missed by the ancient listeners. So it kind of gives us an idea of what to, oh, where, where to pick that up because that's, that's actually all through the Psalms, right? This idea of the riders of the clouds and the thunder and things like that, so. Yeah, okay, so we'll pick up on that moving forward that, uh, it's pretty much a, a slam on Canaan's god, primarily Canaan's, is, which is Baal, right?
David:Yeah, and that's one of the first, I guess, symbols to pick up on, or the patterns to pick up on, is where God, Yahweh God, is described in some role, like rider on the clouds, or a thunder god, or something, it's likely referring to a Canaanite or a Mesopotamian deity. And it's saying, no, Yahweh is the true one who does this.
J.R.:Right, and in a lot of ways, this is uniting the idea that the pagan world had all these different gods for different roles and what we're going to see throughout this is you're going to see over and over again is that, no, that's also Yahweh. Yeah, yeah, that over there that you thought was this god, that's also Yahweh's domain.<Yeah, yeah.> And so it's kind of this uniting of the gods, so to speak. Whereas, the pagan culture saw the different roles for different gods. And so one of the things that the Psalms does is it sort of says, yeah, all those things is united under Yahweh God, and that all the other gods, quote unquote, are subservient to him.
David:Right, right. And we'll talk about a little bit more about that next week, but...<Okay.> So let's move on to, that was an easy one. Let's move on to Psalm 115.<Okay.> And you wanna, you wanna read the first two or three verses?
J.R.:Yeah, I've got that up. Yeah, verse 2."Why should the nations say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases."
David:Yeah, so, so first of all, this psalm poses the question, you know, why do the other nations say, where's your God? What are they talking about there?<Yeah, yeah.> Yeah, well, so in the ancient world, their gods lived in temples, and they were embodied, you know, by having these huge statues.<Right, right.> So if you think about the nation of Israel, you know, one of the first things God says to them is, you're not to make any kind of images of me.<Right.> Right? So in the tabernacle, and even in the temple in Jerusalem, there was not a giant statue of Yahweh.
J.R.:Right. That was unnecessary.<Right. Right.> Right.
David:And in fact, speaking of Nashville, you know, we went through the Parthenon in Nashville one time, right?
J.R.:Yeah, that's right.
David:Yeah, so, and it's a, well, it's a replica of the Parthenon in Athens.
J.R.:Sure, been there too.
David:You walk in, and yeah, and there's this huge, huge statue of Athena, right?
J.R.:Right, yeah, that's right.
David:And so, if you've ever been there, that gives you an idea of what kind of a typical pagan temple looked like, is the deity, the statue of the deity, the image of the deity was in the temple.<Right.> And so this is an interesting question, because Psalm 115 says"Why do the other nations say where is their God?" Well, because you know, as they're doing business or passing through town and they look at the temple, there's no images of Yahweh around anywhere.
J.R.:Okay, yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah, that's right. Sure.
David:Yeah. So they're going, well, where's your God, you know?
J.R.:Here's our God, right there. Point to, point to the statue, right?
David:Yeah. You know, like, hey, if you've been to the temple over in, you know, Babylon, we've got a huge statue. You should see it. You know, you might want to get one of those. And of course, the Israelites are going, no, no, no, that's not how this works with Yahweh. And that's where verse three comes in and says,"Our God is in heaven." And then,"He does whatever he pleases," right?
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:So I thought that was kind of an interesting question right there in the middle of the Psalms, you know, where's your God? Well, we don't have statues of Yahweh. In fact, because he lives in the heavens and he does whatever he wants to do, right?
J.R.:Right, we're not trying to, yeah, we're not trying to embody our God with these little... idols, or clay statues, or large statues.<Right.> You know, he lives in the heavens, and yet he still manifests himself in the physical world because he does all that he pleases.
David:Right. And one more, I guess one more nuance about this idea of, you know, why didn't the Israelites have a big statue of Yahweh? Well, in the ancient world, the reason they built statues in these magnificent temples and made sacrifices to them is they were actually trying to lure the deity to their temple in order that they could enjoy the blessing and protection of that deity, right?<Right.> So it's almost like, in a way they were trying to lure the deity to reside in their city. Hey, if we build a grand enough temple, if we build a really, really nice statue, and we're constantly making offerings,
J.R.:Right.<maybe the deity...> what God wouldn't want to hang out there.
David:Yeah. Maybe the...<Yeah.> And, and, you know, again, you see that in Greek mythology, like, Athena was so impressed with the temple that Athena wanted to reside in Athens.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:Yeah, so that's the idea behind this idea of images and temples in the pagan world.
J.R.:Well, he goes on in verse 4, and I probably should read the whole thing, but he goes on and says,"Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands," making that clarification."They have mouths but they don't speak, eyes but they don't see, they have ears but they don't hear, noses but don't smell, they have hands but don't feel. Feet, but will not walk." And, and just goes, he just goes on and on and they don't make a, yeah, they don't make a sound in their throat. Yeah. So what they're saying is that their physical embodiment is lifeless. You're trying to attract the god, and there's this physical statue there, but it doesn't actually do anything, and whatever you're trying to do to attract the spiritual embodiment, it's not working.
David:Right, right. Yeah. Even if you think your god is there, that statue just sits there.<Right, right.> I could, you know, chunk a rock at it and it's not gonna do anything, you know.
J.R.:Yeah yeah, and the mic drop line in verse 8 is,"Those who make them become like them."<Yeah.> So do all who trust in them.
David:Which is a nice way of saying, you know,"Your your statues are stupid and the people who make them are stupid, too."
J.R.:Yeah, and so is your mom, right?
David:Yeah, so one of the point, once you understand that, though, one of the point is that Yahweh says to the nation of Israel, like, hey, I won't be lured in by you, right? Okay. And that, which is one, uh, the reason behind that idea of, like, hey, our God is in heaven, right? We're not trying to contain him in our temple, even though they very much believe that the presence of God we talked about some of this last episode was in the temple, but our God is in heaven, and our God is everywhere, and we are not supposed to try to lure him in with statues and sacrifices and things like that.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah. Okay, so then the question is then why is idolatry such a hot button issue in the Old and New Testament?
David:Yeah, that's one of those... questions that, the more we see these patterns of, you know, trash talking other gods, you step back and you say, yeah, so what's the point of all this?
J.R.:Yeah, if there's no power in it, then why not just laugh at it and walk away, you know?
David:Yeah, it's like, saying I believe in the Easter Bunny. Well, you know, good for you, but it's harmless.
J.R.:Right, right. Yeah, yeah, sure.
David:And so I'll take a step back because I think first of all, the idea that there are other gods probably does not sit well with a lot of people, depending on how you were raised. In fact, one of the immediate comebacks might be, well, hold on, the Bible says there are no other gods, right?<Right.> And idols are worthless and idols are powerless, so why are they spending all this time talking, kind of trash talking about these things that don't exist?<Right. Yeah.> Yeah, and, and so that's an interesting question. In fact, I was on a message group earlier today at lunch and I saw this very question being posed. You know, trying to figure out the tension between, well, if they're trash talking all these gods, but they say they aren't even real, then what's the point of all this? Right?
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't acknowledging other gods kind of give them some kind of implicit power?<Yeah. Yeah.> You, you know what I mean? Like what does it mean that the Bible clearly acknowledges that other gods exist by claiming Yahweh's superiority?
David:Yeah, and I'll go back to what you always say is that there's a definite tension in the scripture between that idols are powerless, but look, there are other spiritual forces in the world, and you need to be careful not to mess with them. That's kind of the short answer, but I mean, do you have any thoughts on that question?
J.R.:Well, like Paul talks about this in Corinthians, you know, in 1 Corinthians 8, it says,"Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that, quote unquote, an idol has no real existence, unquote, and that there is no God but one." So if you stop right there, that, you know, he appears to be saying that, yeah, all these pagan gods are just man made stories, it's nonsense, you know, move on. But then he turns right around in the next verse and kind of elaborates on the idea, and he says that"Although there may be so called gods in heaven, or on earth as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us, there is one God, the father for whom are all things." And so he's kind of like, he's saying, no, no, there, there are lots of quote unquote gods, there are spirits. But when we say, God is one, he's saying that for believers, that's the only one that matters. All the others can be disregarded. And then later on in chapter 10, he says"That what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons." So clearly Paul has that tension right there that he recognizes on one hand that this physical embodiment of the idol is lifeless, but the spiritual influence is actually pretty huge. And that most god worship is an attempt to manifest spiritual power into the physical world. Like that's what idols represent. It's the attempt at leveraging a spiritual power for physical gain. And so that was going on very often, even though we've certainly got away from that in modern culture. But it's, it's important to recognize that that was common practice in ancient culture. And that had an effect on the culture and it affected your worldview.<Yeah.> And so it's not just yeah, it's not just this competing spiritual being it's the whole worldview that they often represent right?
David:Yeah. Yeah, We'll get into this much more next episode. I don't want to steal the thunder there, but what you and you alluded a little bit to this last week when you talked about the word Elohim, right? And so, you know Elohim is all throughout the Old Testament. We translated it as God. But a starting point to understanding this worldview and the spiritual reality, I would say, is that Elohim was a generic word that could refer to other gods as well, right?<Right.> And so the Old Testament differentiates between God Most High, Yahweh, the Creator God, and other spiritual beings that can be referred to as Elohim, that can be referred to as gods. So when we say there are other gods, we're not claiming there are other creator gods that are rivaling Yahweh. They think they are, but they're not. That's part of the message of all this.<Right.> But there's a spiritual reality to it, and I think the passage you read out of Corinthians was indicative of that, that Paul's like, look, I don't want you messing around with demons, right?
J.R.:Right. And not because they don't exist. It's because they're very real and that they can...<Right.> Right. Don't play with that. Don't play that game. And that's often the road that idols, or the worship of idols, that's the road that that can go down.
David:Right. Right. Do you remember, I don't know if this was popular when you were growing up, but it was popular for a while. We of course didn't have one, but do you remember Ouija boards?
J.R.:Oh, yeah, sure. Yes. It's a movie.
David:It was a movie?
J.R.:It's called Ouija. Ah, it's just called Ouija.<Oh, okay. I'm,> Yeah, something like that. Some horrible movie, but
David:Made a whole movie out of that, huh? All right.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:Well, so you know, Ouija boards were one of these things that, a lot of teenagers were messing around with, you'd hear going to a party and, oh, they had a Ouija board and we were playing around with it. And of course, as a, raised in a Church environment, you know, we weren't to mess with that. But, I kind of think of this in terms of a Ouija board. Well, it's just a, it's a stupid game and it's a board, right?<Right.> And if, someone brought one into my house, I'd be like, eh, alright, you know. Why don't you just get rid of it? But, uh, you know, it's nothing for me to be scared of. However, the way that it was being used to, you know, the whole idea behind a Ouija board is to channel spirits.<Right.> that's nothing to mess around with, right? And so I kind of think of that in terms of idols and the spirits behind them. It's like, look, you can make fun of the idol. It's just a piece of rock, right?<Right. Yeah.> But there's a spirit behind it. And, the other thing I would say is the more power you actually give to that spirit, the more dangerous it becomes. And so you'd better be careful about what power you give to anything other than Yahweh. Put it that way.
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good example. Because, you know, Parker Brothers or whoever, Milton Bradley, who made those things. It's just, it's just cardboard and plastic, you know.<Yeah.> In fact, you open the box and it's like, well, this is very anticlimactic. I'm wanting something more ancient, you know, to channel the spirit, right?
David:I pictured something more spooky when I actually saw one.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah. Something more like Jumanji. But, uh, yeah, this is kind of just silliness. But yeah, you're right. If you open the door and give that power, there can be real world effects of that.<Yeah, yeah.> You know. And, and it's also worth saying that in the ancient world, you know, gods, and, and even today, gods are often the foundation for, what, the development of accepted moral behavior. And so, you know, sacrificing children seems, you know, disgusting and horrible to modern sensibilities. But certain cultures in the past saw it as a moral act of sacrifice, established oftentimes by the gods, right, that they served. And so you see that these gods, whether real or not, the worship of them developed the moral behavior of the day. And so we see on one hand that idols, you know, were laughed at, you know, they're sort of laughed at since they have no physical power. But at the same time, worshipping other gods mattered enormously, right, because of the spiritual and the cultural influence that they had on the people at the time, and today too.
David:No, that's a good point. So, you know, the idol itself, like I said, you could hurl a rock at it, it's not going to do anything. But it's dangerous when, people groups in ancient times started developing belief systems around it.<Yes.> And that became very dangerous.
J.R.:Right, yeah. And and we don't have to go down this road, but the word ideology I think is interesting that it ties into that representation of here's what I believe and I will defend it at all costs whether or not the ideology makes sense or not, it's, it's just, you, you can kind of see that the wordplay of idle, once you set something up as the greatest good, it will definitely affect the way you live your life out. And whether that is politics, whether that's pleasure, justice, you know, so many of these things are perfectly fine, but when you set them up to be the greatest good, that becomes an ideology is what we call it, but the Bible might even say that becomes an idol as well.
David:Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's interesting. So is ideology derived from the same idea?
J.R.:I just pulled that. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I just pulled that outta my brain. It sounds the same. It's, it's probably a little bit more the from it. It is interesting though. I'd have to dig.
David:It's more like an idea or ideal, probably.
J.R.:Idea, but yeah. The, the, yeah, the absolute following of an idea at all cost. The blind following of an idea at all costs. Uh
David:Which is, yeah, you know, which is idolatry, whether or not the words are semantically related or not. But we'll go with that.
J.R.:Oh yeah, no, the, ancient English professors are going crazy right now.
David:Well, so Psalm 115, you know, was this example of kind of making fun of idols and saying they're powerless. You actually see this a lot in the prophets too, in the Old Testament. Very common. Isaiah has a whole chapter or two just ripping on people who make idols and, you know, there's this one funny part, if I remember correctly. He's like, the same one who carves the idol takes the other half of the wood and then like roast hot dogs on it.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:So, which is just, you know. How powerful can this god be that you're roasting hot dogs over the other end of him over there, you know?
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:So, but that's a very common theme throughout the Psalms as well, is this idea that idols have no power. But hopefully we've really talked about the idea that, what you have to be wary of is the spirits behind them, the belief systems that's Incorporated around them. That's what becomes dangerous.
J.R.:Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
David:Alright, let's move on to Psalm chapter 19. This is another pattern you'll see and want to point out, actually you want to read that one too because I think I'm gonna read the next two.
J.R.:Alright. Yeah, Psalm 19, and this is one that I've read plenty of times. Says"The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals his knowledge. There is no speech, there are no words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber. And like a strong man runs his course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit is to the end of them. And there is nothing hidden from its heat." So the first part of that, I've heard sermons on, I've read it many times. But then as I kept going into, you know, to verse six, I was like, okay, I don't remember all this.<Yeah.> Yeah. What is, what is this meaning here?
David:Well, so there's a couple things going on here. And first of all, this one's not so much trash talking, at least in the beginning, as it is just pointing out that, you know, again, this sounds like a nice Psalms, the heavens declare the glories of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands. And a lot of other Psalms you'll read about stars, all those things. Well, in the ancient mindset, heavenly bodies things like, um, you know, the stars, the heavens, the moon, the sun those were actually spiritual beings, okay? At least there were spiritual beings behind those things.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:Yeah, so again, they didn't believe that the moon was just some giant god, but they actually believed that there was kind of a god that the moon represented that basically, directed the moon and the stars on its paths, right?<Right.> So, first thing I just point out here is that when we read psalms that say, the heavens declare the glory of God, there's a little bit more going on to that than we just realized, the nice poetic words, because they really did believe, and Israel even believed this as well. You can see this in some of the prophets, that there were spiritual beings assigned to different heavenly bodies, right?<Okay.> And so, when we see something as simple as the heavens declare the glory of God, a lot of times behind that is the idea that, no, those spiritual beings, those spiritual entities behind things in the sky, they are giving their worship to Yahweh.
J.R.:Just through the act of doing what the ancient people believed that they did.<Yeah.> They're, yeah, implicitly, yes, acknowledging Yahweh.<Yeah.> Okay.
David:Yeah, it even says, verse three, they have no speech, they use no words, you know, and yet their voice goes out to all the earth. Those spirits are doing their job, and that itself is proclaiming glory for Yahweh.<Okay.> So that's the first thing I'd point out. But then the second, we already hit on this a little bit, he talks about the sun. God has pitched a tent for the sun, and it's like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. That's the morning, right? Then he runs his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and make its circuit to the other. Now we already talked about this a little bit too, but that was typical of a lot of gods.
J.R.:Right. Yeah, Sun God. Moon God, perhaps. Yes. That's right.
David:So, for instance, you know, in Egypt, Ra was the king of the gods, and the sun was his manifestation, you know. So, again, there's this story with Ra, and we already talked about this with Zeus as well, you know, that Ra starts his day by sailing, I think it's an Egyptian ship across the sky. It's not a chariot like it was Zeus, but he sails across the sky. And so the sun moving across the sky during the day is actually, that's Ra, right, doing his thing. And then when the sun goes down, again, that kind of represents death to Egypt. Knowing that the cycle would start again. But we see this pattern again in other religions. And so, again, something as simple as saying, God talking about, or the psalm talking about, you know, the sun rises and God kind of puts it on its course and it makes its way across the heavens. That's more than just poetic language.<Yeah, yeah.> Right? It's very much kind of saying, again, no, Yahweh is the one who puts all this in motion. You know, Egypt, no, it's not Ra. Greece wasn't around yet at the time, but you know, we're not talking about Zeus. We're not talking about Baal. Yahweh is the one who puts all these things in motion and all these things answer to Yahweh and they are giving him glory, right?
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting because it's another one of these implicit acknowledgments of other gods. And again, like you said, we'll get to this next week, but it's sort of like setting the structure of, if these other gods exist, recognize that Yahweh is over all of them. So the question that's being, essentially being asked through these verses is why would you worship a lesser god?
David:Yeah, yeah. If your god is the... the sun that rides across the sky, you know, look, that, we know the sun just answers to Yahweh. So your God answers to Yahweh.
J.R.:Yes, that's right.
David:You know, that's basically what it's saying.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's, okay, that's interesting. I like that. That's interesting.
David:Yeah, so just another example of subtle symbolism that you start to see the pattern of this all throughout the Psalms. And again, there's a lot of examples of the Psalms that will mention how the sun and the moon and the stars praise Yahweh. And again, that's not just poetic language. There's more behind it than that.
J.R.:Right. Yeah. And it's just interesting that, it's not this scientific treatise of, yeah, your gods don't exist and here's why. It's just kind of this interesting, yeah, all the gods, however you envisioned them and created them in your own mind, Yahweh is over all of them. And, it's not, you know, as opposed to, the trash talk that we've, some of these that we've covered, it's almost like it's saying, yeah, look, that's all part of the belief system of the culture, and recognize that that's all under the banner of Yahweh.
David:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there's a, there's a lot of, there's a larger storyline going on all throughout the Old Testament. This is some of what we're going to talk about next episode. But there is a storyline throughout the Old Testament that, look, all of these spiritual beings answered to Yahweh, but then they rebelled, right?<Right.> And so when it says that, you know, other nations were given over to these gods, like the Bible, it means that quite literally. And one of the things Yahweh is doing is saying, okay, my plan is to gather all these fallen beings back under my reign. And in fact, that's very much the message, that's the gospel message that comes with Jesus, right? That all things will be gathered together in heaven and on earth under the reign of Jesus. And it's very much a reclamation of everything that rebelled against God.
J.R.:Okay, you're giving too much away now.
David:Yeah, I know, like, we'll stop there because it's a whole storyline that's happening behind the scenes. And so I guess my point there is, look, there's a reason why the Bible, why the Psalms in this example kind of is addressing these heavenly bodies and seem to give a little bit of credence to, you know, look, you may worship the moon, but the moon is going to end up being under Yahweh's control, right?
J.R.:Right. Yeah, and the point of it again is not a debate. We're not, we're not debating whether they exist or not and things like that as far as this psalm is concerned. It's just saying that Yahweh's over all of it.
David:Yeah. Yeah, right. And they, ultimately they will all answer to Yahweh.
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
David:All right. So Psalm 29. I'll read this one and I got to say this is an example of a psalm that I had read several times. So I mentioned, I think, last time that I have this prayer book that every prayer has a section of psalm in it, and some are reoccurring, which I like because it actually forced me to go, okay, yeah, Psalm 29 again, here we go. But one of those things, and I mentioned this last time, that it bothered me because I didn't know what was going on in this psalm.<Yeah.> And I mentioned last time that that's a clue that that's what you need to pay attention to, right?
J.R.:Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's the
David:That's what I started paying attention to in this Psalm. And so, we'll walk through Psalm 29.<Okay.> So it says,"Ascribe to the Lord, you heavenly beings." There's another reference to exactly what we were talking about, right?
J.R.:Right. Yeah.
David:"Ascribe to the Lord" Yeah,"glory and strength." So again, it's not just saying, hey, the stars are nice and pretty for God. It's saying the heavenly beings, right? Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Worship the Lord in the splendor of His holiness." Verse 3 says,"The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of the glory thunders. The Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic." Now I'll stop right there too, because there's that idea of thunder again, right?
J.R.:Right, yeah, that's right. Right.<The God of...> Automatically, I popped right onto it.
David:Yeah, okay, good, good.<There it is.> You're seeing the pattern, right?
J.R.:Yeah, that's right.
David:So back to verse three."The voice of the Lord is over the waters." This will become more evident, but in the ancient mindset, the waters represent chaos.<Okay.> And there were a lot of water gods.<Right.> Right?<Right.> And we'll see this as this unfolds, and in the next psalm we're gonna go to, but just kind of keep that in the back of your mind, that the voice of the Lord is over the waters. I'll get back to that. But then, yeah,"The glory of God thunders. The Lord thunders over His mighty waters." Okay, so... Well, Yahweh is stealing Baal's thunder here.<Oh, okay.> Right, so that's what it's, that's what it's doing, saying, Nope, it's not Baal, it's Yahweh, right?
J.R.:Yeah, that's right.
David:"And the Lord is thundering over the mighty waters." And again, the waters usually represent the ocean, and the ocean represents chaos.<Right.> And a lot of early creation myths, well, in Genesis too,<Yeah.> You know, what, the earth was just water, it was chaos, and the Spirit of God came and hovered over the waters.
J.R.:Hovered over the waters. That's right.
David:Right? So that's that idea. And what the Spirit of God hovering over the waters was doing is it was, pulling order out of the chaos. So, again, we'll see this as we progress through this psalm, but there's, this idea is the voice of God is hovering over the chaos of these other gods, and He's going to bring them to order.
J.R.:Okay, yeah. Okay? No, that's, that's interesting.
David:Yeah, yeah.<Yeah, okay.> Alright, so, we'll continue on. And this is the part that always kind of bugged me, and I'm like, I don't know what's going on here, but then it started clicking with me. Verse five says,"The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon skip like a calf, Sirion like a young wild ox." Now I'll stop there too because I'm thinking, you know, what's God got against cedar trees? He's just,
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.<He's just,> Well, the cedars is about the biggest, what, naturally growing thing in the, in the area. It's got to be, you know, cedars to this day are huge, but<yeah, yeah> yeah, they just represent this huge natural strength, right?<Right. Yeah.> Yeah. And, and he just breaks it with his voice.
David:But verse 6, and you'll pick up on this, verse 6 it says make,"He makes Lebanon skip like a calf and Sirion like a young wild ox." Well, I have a little note that Sirion is actually a reference to Mount Hermon.
J.R.:Oh, okay.<Dun, dun, dun.> Yeah, there we go.
David:That's the big clue right there, what's going on.
J.R.:Yeah, you're right. Okay.
David:Yeah. Do you have that, do you see that note as well?
J.R.:No, I don't. Well, I'm online, so I'd have to take a look.
David:Yeah, but your Bible might have a note, and it may even say Mount Hermon. I don't know. The version I'm reading has a note that says that is Mount Hermon. Okay, so Mount Hermon tells you this is what's going on now, right?<Right.> God is encroaching on the territory of the sacred mountain to Baal, basically.
J.R.:Yes, that's right.
David:Yeah, and so now we understand why the cedars are breaking. And why Lebanon is leaping like a calf, like a startled animal, right?
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, we talked about this last week, about the mountain of God, right? There's also a mountain, Mount Hermon is, similarly the mountain of the gods, right? That's, that's traditionally where the gods came down, is at Mount Hermon. And so, yeah, Baal is, that's his territory, that's right.<Yeah.> Okay, no, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know Syrion, that's what that meant.
David:Yeah, and again, some, some versions may actually just say Mount Hermon, but, that idea that this is Mount Hermon we're talking about, kind of makes everything fall into place now, right?
J.R.:Okay, yeah, I like that.
David:So, verse 7 then continues on."The voice of the Lord strikes with flashes of lightning." There again, we're talking about lightning, thunder. He's stealing Baal's thunder here."The voice of the Lord shakes the desert. The Lord shakes the desert of Kadesh, or Kadesh. He twists the oaks and strips the forest bare, and in his temple all are crying glory." So if you look where Kadesh is, so we know now that Mount Hermon is north. We know that Lebanon is north. And then he talks about the desert of Kadesh. So what, what it's doing is basically describing the landscape that surrounds Israel and the gods that rule them. So really what this is, Psalm 29 is God is kind of going area by area and all these other gods are trembling.<Yeah.> Right? Because God has come to Israel.
J.R.:Right, yeah, that's right.
David:Yeah. And so just to finish up, verse 10 says,"The Lord sits enthroned over the flood." Again, there's a reference to chaotic water.
J.R.:Chaos. That's right.
David:Yeah."The Lord is enthroned as king forever. The Lord gives strength to his people and he blesses his people with peace." So again, what sounds like kind of a nice sounding psalm with some stuff they don't know what, you know, I don't really know what that means, but okay. All of a sudden has this different tone to it. Where God is coming to Israel and all the surrounding gods are quaking.
J.R.:Yeah, right. Yeah, that's right. And it's not just it's not just a matter of because Yahweh is more powerful than all these other gods. It's that it brings in that idea of chaos and that you've got this chaotic world where different gods rule different things and Yahweh God is about to come and bring order to all of that and bring it all in, you know, in the last verse,"May the Lord give his strength to his people and may the Lord bless his people with peace." And all through reading that, you know, it's just this, this absolute power, you know, and, it's interesting that peace often comes through the threat of power, right? Because I have the power to destroy it, it actually brings peace, you know, kind of, fights between the kids are over when dad gets involved, right?<Yeah.> And so it's kind of this, interesting, imagery of bringing the gods who are creating this chaotic environment. He's about to, dad's about to get involved and, peace is about to, he's Lord's about to bless his people with peace. Right? You know, because the power is behind it. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm seeing out of this.
David:That's an interesting image of, you know, the house is chaotic, but dad gets home and there will be peace tonight.
J.R.:Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
David:One way or another there will be peace tonight, right? You know.
J.R.:Yeah, and it's again. It's it's kind of this as moderns we read this and it's like well aren't they just implicitly giving all these quote unquote, god's, power by acknowledging them. And it's like, that's, that's kind of not the point, right? Well, it is, it is somewhat the point, but, it's basically saying that no, God is about to bring all of this chaos into order. You know, dad's about to come home. That's a good way of saying it. And again, the pagan gods, there was power behind them. But when you bring Yahweh God into it, you recognize that, no, this is what absolute power looks like, right?<Yeah.> And by threatening that peace is going to come and order is going to come out of that.<Yeah, yeah.> Yeah. Ha! Okay, I like that. That was a good one.
David:Yeah, and so there's one more layer in here that occurred to me that I want to point out as well. Because we see in verse 3"The voice of the Lord is over the waters." Which again takes you back to Genesis 1 where like with the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, right? And then again verse 10 says,"The Lord sits enthroned over the flood." And again, that idea of God is going to he's about to bring order to chaos here. But I was thinking about we talked about this in our Colossians series. You remember the in Colossians where it says, in the beginning, Jesus was the Creator?<Yeah.> Yeah, you remember that?
J.R.:Yes, yes, that's right.
David:Yeah, so very much in Colossians and in the Apostle Paul's mindset, Jesus was there in the beginning. Jesus was actually doing the creating, and that aligns with John 1:1, where it says,"In the beginning was the Word." And then the word becomes flesh and, you know, tabernacles among us.
J.R.:Yeah, that's right.
David:So, Jesus in the New Testament is actually equated with this idea of the Spirit of God or the Word of God, right?<Right.> It's just another interesting take to me, then, to go back and read this, and it says,"The voice of the Lord is over the waters." Well, I think Paul might say, hey, you're looking at Jesus right there.
J.R.:Yeah, well, we talked about this before. But yeah, the idea of the voice. Well, the idea of the word, you know, cause, early on, I would read John,"In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God." And I never really understood why pastors and teachers would say, yeah, that's, acknowledging Jesus, right? Because I'm like, well, what, what, why don't you just say Jesus or what do you know? Where did you come up with that idea of the word? And it's later on that you kind of understand that, yeah, Jesus is the creative force in the physical world behind God. Is that something like that, right?<Yeah. Yeah.> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So no, you're right."The voice of the Lord," when it says that you're right, Paul and the gospel writers would look at that and almost just immediately translate that to, yeah, Jesus.
David:Yeah. That's the pre incarnate Jesus right there.<Right.> Side by side with the father, you know? And so it's interesting too, because when you see that, then it's like the voice of the Lord breaks the cedars. The voice of the Lord is powerful and the voice of the Lord is twisting the oaks. And you almost almost get this, humorous picture of God saying, yeah, son, Jesus, like, yeah, go destroy that forest over there. Let them know I'm here. Okay, father, I'm on it. You know?
J.R.:Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
David:Yeah. So Psalm 29 was, again, I, I, I like this one because lights came on for me, because it was one of those that I've read, you know, a hundred times. I didn't know what I was talking about, and suddenly I'm starting to see these patterns, and suddenly this whole new meaning just emerges from Psalm 29, at least for me, so that was one.
J.R.:Yeah, well, and it's the type of thing where, you know, you and I may not have all the answers. But at the very least, it's one of those big highlighter moments where you're like, okay, let me go back and think about this. Let me go back and dig a little bit deeper. And it's just an invitation to think about the, this psalm in particular in a little bit different way. You know, inserting Jesus, what does that mean, you know? And kind of going down that road. But yeah, once you start seeing these patterns, it's at the very least, it invites you to, to go deeper.
David:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. We got a couple more to go. And this next one is, I'll be honest, this next one blew my mind. This is not original to me, okay. Father Stephen De Young, I have to give credit to him, but when I heard him walk through this, it blew my mind. So we'll see how this goes.
J.R.:Okay. You're going to have to take this because I actually read it and I was thinking, well, I'm not sure where your going with this.
David:Okay. You didn't understand it either. Yeah.
J.R.:Yeah. Right. Right. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll be a student here.
David:So this one, yeah, there's a little complexity to this one. There's a lot of background you got to understand. But it's mind blowing when it clicks and you start to see the picture. All right, so we'll walk through this one. So Psalm 24:1."The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. For He founded it on the seas and established it on the waters." Now pause right there, because verse 2 particularly, this starts out innocently enough, right?<Right.> But verse 2 is an example where if you don't know what's going on behind the scenes, you'll, it's very easy to miss. Okay? So in verse 2 when it says,"He founded it on the seas and He established it on the waters."<Right.> Alright, now seas and waters, we already talked about this a little bit, that seas and waters, bodies of water are often deities in like Mesopotamian religions, right?<Right.> All right, so, the original language behind this, and this is another pattern that you'll see that's why it's so difficult to see in English, but, the word for seas that's used here is the word yam in Hebrew.<Okay.> And the word for waters, at the end of this verse, is the word nahar. Okay.<Okay.> So he founded it on the yam and established it on nahar. That doesn't mean anything to people, but we're gonna unpack why that's profoundly meaningful. But I will pause here and say that a lot of times when the Bible or when the Psalms are talking about something like the sea. And you understand that the Hebrew word behind it is yam, and then you realize that other gods are called Yam.
J.R.:Oh, okay. Okay? All right, that's a proper name, then.
David:Yes. So a lot of these things, sea, river, waters, mountains, a lot of these can be both just it can be a natural feature.
J.R.:A natural descriptive word?
David:Yeah, a natural descriptive word, but it can also be the name of a, the proper name of a god.<Okay.> That is represented by that thing.<Okay.> Okay. And look, you don't have to be a biblical scholar. Like, I go to the website, Blue Letter Bible, because you can click on a verse and see what the Hebrew says behind it, and it'll go through and tell you. You know, both in the Hebrew and the kind of the transliteration. I guess my point I'm saying is you don't have to be a Hebrew scholar to pick some of this up. You just got to be able to go online and do some of the work yourself.
J.R.:Yeah, there's no better time to be able to dig deep into the original language if you don't speak it. Right.
David:Yeah, so that's the first thing to keep in mind, Yam and Nahar, okay? Okay. And then we get to verse 3 where it says,"Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord, who may stand in his holy place, the one who has clean hands and a pure heart." We talked about this last episode.<That's right.>"Who does not swear by an idol or false gods." Okay, then I'm gonna skip down to verse 7, and this is where the real action takes place. And this is another one I read a hundred times, and I'm, I'm thinking, I don't know what this is talking about. Verse seven says,"Lift up your heads, O you gates. Be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord Strong and Mighty. The Lord Mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O you gates." Repeats it."Lift them up, you ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in. Who is He, this King of Glory? The Lord Almighty. He is the King of Glory." Alright. I read that a hundred times. It doesn't make sense to me, right?"Lift up your heads, you gates." Yeah, now I actually looked in some commentaries just to understand this better before I really stumbled on to the answer. And you know, they would say things like, well, that's just symbolic of opening the gates.
J.R.:Yeah, it's just a flowery way of saying prepare the way.
David:Well, the problem is that's not the way gates opened in the ancient world.
J.R.:Oh, okay.
David:You know, lift up your heads. That sounds like you're opening a garage door, right?
J.R.:Yeah. So if They didn't have garage doors back then? No?
David:Yeah, if they were talking about garage doors, I could see how lifting up your heads, O you gates, might, you know, be a nice imagery.<Right.> But it's not how gates open, right? They were on hinges and they swung open. There wasn't this idea of lifting up your head. And that's symbolic of opening a gate.<Okay.> All right, so that bugged me, and then it kind of repeats the process again. Verse 9,"Lift up your heads, O you gates. Lift them up, you ancient doors." All right, so there's a whole backstory behind this, and then all this falls into place. And this has been a recent discovery, okay? But in the last, say, 50 years or so, they've actually found a lot of writings of documents in the city of, of Ugarit. Right. You might have heard of Ugaritic texts.<Yeah. Yep.> Yeah, so, a lot, they found a lot of these documents recently. Which, I, I say that to say that, for most of the last couple thousand years, this background information was not even known to people.<Okay.> Which under, you know, which makes sense then, why people are trying to make sense of this psalm, and no one really made good sense of it.
J.R.:Right, it had just been lost to the sands of time.<Right, right.> You know, until, until more recently.
David:Yeah. So one of the documents that they found describes something called the Baal Cycle. And the Baal Cycle describes how this Mesopotamian God, the Canaanite god Baal came to power. And it, I mean, it's a whole document. In fact, I'll put a, I'll throw a link online. If you're listening to this podcast in a way that you can click on links, I know I can insert links, so I assume people can click on them somewhere. But there's this whole document, and, and you can just go online and read it. I did. I went online and read it. There's this whole document that describes the Baal Cycle. And the Baal Cycle starts out with Tiamat was the ocean, the chaotic ocean.<Okay.> So we see that imagery. We've read that in the Psalms.<Right.> So Tiamat is the ocean, and then there are two gods that come to power that kind of overthrow Tiamat. They start to bring order out of Tiamat. Okay.<Okay.> And their names are, you're ready for this?
J.R.:Uh, yep. I see where you're going.
David:Yam and Nahar.
J.R.:Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
David:So Yam becomes one of the chief gods, and Nahar becomes basically the spokesperson of Yam. And again, it's right in the text.
J.R.:Oh, wow. Okay.
David:They call them Yam and Nahar.<Okay.> Alright, so right there you go back to Psalm 24, verse 2, and when you say, God founded the earth on Yam, and He established it on Nahar.<Okay.> Now that's pretty cool.
J.R.:Right, no, right. Yeah, already.
David:Right? Already. That's pretty cool. So, right. That, so that's one of the big things to take away from this Baal Cycle is Yam and Nahar now have power. Okay?<Okay.> So Baal then, goes to the underworld and inhabits the palace, or he inhabits the underworld, and Baal's gonna make a power play here. Alright. So, in this Baal Cycle document that we have, Baal, and I'm, summarizing it because there's a lot to it, but Baal goes to the Underworld, and he inhabits this palace, and he basically says, No, I'm the new king of the gods now, right? Okay. So, what happens next is that Yam and Nahar, send messengers to Baal in the palace. So, Baal now inhabits the palace and Yam and Nahar send messengers to basically tell Baal, Hey, give up your power. Let's end this peacefully. You know, you're not the one in control, okay? So now I'm gonna start reading directly from this document. And the picture is that Baal has an assembly around him and that there are gods standing at the front of this palace guarding it. Okay. All right. So that's the picture."As soon as the gods saw them, they saw the messengers of Yam, the emissaries of the judge Nahar, the gods lowered their heads upon their knees. Yea, upon the thrones of their lordship. Baal rebuke them." Now, this is the key."Why, O gods, have you lowered your heads on the top of your knees upon the throne of your lordship? Let a pair of gods read the tablets of the messengers of Yam, of the emissaries of the judge Nahar. O gods, lift up your heads from the top of your knees. Yea, from the top of your thrones of your lordship. And I will answer them. The messenger of Yam, the emissaries of Nahar. So the gods lifted their heads from the top of their knees, from their knees, yea, from the throne of their lordship." Alright, now that whole idea of the gods, first of all, lowering their heads to their knees, and then Baal says, Guys, don't be worried, I got it under control, lift up your heads from your knees.<Okay.> Alright, so basically that's a mirror, almost word for word, with the exception of one word, of what this Psalm 24 just says. Right. The story... The rest of the story is that Baal actually kills the two messengers, to leave no uncertain terms that he has no intention of vacating the palace.<Right.> And basically takes control from Yam and Nahar.<Right.> And that's the Baal Cycle. That's how Baal rises to power. Okay. But there's this moment again where the messengers come and the gods who are guarding the palace basically start to tremble because Yam and Nahar are showing up. So something bad's about to go down, right? Baal thinks he's in control. Yam and Nahar are saying, No, we're the ones who are gonna take the palace back. And what do the gods do? They bow their heads lowered to the top of their knees, right?<Right.> And Baal says,"Lift up your heads Oh you gods lift them up." That's his response, right? So we go back to Psalm 24 now.
J.R.:You see, you clearly see that same language.
David:Right. Psalm 24:7 then says,"Lift up your heads, you gates. Be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in." It's, and it's almost word for word what Baal says to the gods guarding the palace.
J.R.:Right. Okay, so that's, that's super interesting, but why would they change the idea of gods? Lift up your head, oh gods. Why would they change that to gates and open doors? What's the, what's the significance of that?
David:Well, I, I'm only gonna guess here, but, because I'm not gonna pretend to know things I don't know, but yeah, I'm only gonna guess. But my first thought was that basically the Psalms is trying not to give too much credence to gods. But you also gotta understand the perspective from where the action is taking place. So, in the Baal Cycle, Baal is inside, right?<Okay.> And the gods are standing guard at the gate when the messengers from Yam and Nahar show up. And so, Baal's words... And I'm just kind of reading into this, but Baal's words are,"Lift up your heads, O gods, lift them up," and go ahead and let the messengers in, right? So we flip the perspective then to Yahweh, who's basically approaching the palace, and he sees gates, right? And so... So you can almost understand where they switch that out just because kind of like, Hey, let's not give too much credence to the, uh, these gods here. But then from the perspective of Yahweh, Yahweh is actually saying, Hey, open the gates. I'm here.
J.R.:Okay. Yeah.<You know?> So it's clearly a play on words, but at the same time, we're going to, we're going to change the words to make it a secondary meaning.
David:Yeah, it's a matter of perspective, you know, if the gods are inside guarding the gates, then when Yahweh approaches, he just sees the gates.<Okay.> So he says,"Open the gates." You know, now, maybe off base, but I think that makes sense that it's a matter of perspective.
J.R.:No, it does. Yeah, I think, I think you're probably right about that.
David:The picture then, of Psalm 24 is God, Yahweh you put all this together Yahweh is going to the palace of the Underworld to Baal and saying, Okay, Baal, you wormed your way in, but I'm coming in now, right?<Okay.> So this is from the perspective of Yahweh in verse seven. Yahweh says to them,"Lift up your heads, you gates. Be lifted up, that the true King of Glory may come in." And then this makes then the response in verse 8 make more sense."Who is this King of Glory?" And the answer is"The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle," not Baal.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. No, this is like that moment, you know, when you're watching something like The Sixth Sense and your mind is putting together. You know, it's like, yeah, it's like the ring has fallen, the door in the house can't be opened and is blocked. It's like, I just remember watching that movie and thinking, something huge is happening, but I don't, I can't quite put it together quite yet, right? You know? And, and so, yeah, I just had that, uh,
David:And there was that moment in The Sixth Sense where it was that same moment where everyone who watched the movie was like, Oh my gosh, that's what's happening here.
J.R.:Right. I would have loved to. I don't, I don't think I saw it in the theaters.
David:Oh really?
J.R.:Yeah. I would have loved to have seen it in the theaters where I, maybe I did. But yeah, where everybody's looking around and like, and I think that's what it was is probably when the ring fell, people were gasping, people were getting it before I did.
David:Cause it all clicked. Yeah.
J.R.:And I'm like, wait a second, what's going on here? So yeah, it's that same moment. It's like, wait a second. Okay. Lift up your head. Okay. Okay. So now all of it just clicked. Wow. I think, I think that's exactly right. Uh, you know, this idea of God now going into the underworld and ousting Baal.<Yeah. Yeah.> Because that's his story. And obviously, again, that would have been common knowledge to them. And it's almost like them saying, well, here's our story. Yeah, here's our cycle of Yahweh comes in and is about to oust him.
David:Yeah. And as if to say, so, as if to just clarify that this is totally on the right track. You know, Psalm, verse 7, he says,"Lift up your heads, O gates, be lifted up." And then he repeats it in verse 9."Lift up your heads, you gates." It's like, well, why is he repeating it? Well, when you go back to the document of the Baal Cycle, the same thing happens in the text. Because twice, Baal says,"Lift up your heads, you gods."
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're taking the other team's fight song and changing the words around to mock them.
David:Yeah, and they say it twice, and so Psalm 24 says it twice, you know, just to be clear.
J.R.:Wow. Okay, yeah, this is one that I'm going to have to, once we're done here, I'm going to be going to my Bible and writing these thoughts down while I've got it in my head.
David:Yeah, so this, again, innocent sounding Psalm is actually a picture of Yahweh storming the underworld palace of Baal, and saying the true king of glory is coming.<Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.> So that's kind of the ultimate one in trash talk right there.
J.R.:Yeah, that is so interesting because, you know, that idea of the sea being the proper name of Yam. That's also found in Psalm 95:5, where it says,"The sea is, is his, for he made it and his hands formed the dry land." And so you're saying that's also an example of that, that kind of proper, the, the word yam is also a proper name for the god Yam.
David:Yeah, and in that case I think too, yeah, the word for sea is yam there. But, so you, you know, sometimes a river is just a river. But, a lot of times I think context dictates. But yeah, I mean, it's, is God just saying, Hey, I made the sea or is God saying, you know, Hey, your God, Yam, I created him? I created everything. Right. You know, right. And so there are definitely spots where that layer is in there that it's totally easy for us to just blow by and miss it.
J.R.:Yeah, no, well, and, and we would obviously would have missed it without the recently discovered texts.
David:Yeah, yeah. Something that intricate. Yeah, it makes sense that no one knew that what that was talking about till we actually found these texts of the Baal Cycle. Yeah.
J.R.:Yeah, no, that is absolutely fascinating. I love that. Wow.
David:All right, yeah, let's do one more and then we'll wrap it up. So, okay, Psalm 74. This, I think, another example of what we just talked about. All right, so I'll start reading in verse 13. He's talking about"God my king from long ago. He brings salvation to the earth." Then verse 13 says,"It was you who split open the sea by your power. You who broke the heads of the monster in the waters. It was you who crushed the heads of the Leviathan and gave it as food to the creatures in the desert. It was you who opened up springs and streams. You who dried up the ever flowing rivers. The day is yours. The night also is yours. You established the sun and the moon." There's a lot of these different themes that we've already talked about that are being brought in to this psalm.<Right.> But I want to go back to verse 13, where it was you who split open the sea by your power. Now, again, if you read the sea as yam,<Okay.> okay.
J.R.:That's what I was about to ask.
David:Yeah. Double checking and yes, that is the Hebrew word behind that word. So it was you who split open Yam by your power, right?<Right, right.> So, I mean, that's like, you could say it as, well, you split open the sea. And I think there's a couple things going on here. You can split open the sea, but he's like...
J.R.:Well, I got the imagery of the Red Sea.
David:Yeah, I think that's there too, because I think this is an image of God leading the people out of Egypt again. But then along the way, again, back of your mind, you split open the sea. Why does it say it like that? It doesn't say you parted the waters. It's almost like it's saying, you know, you laid the smack down on Yam on the way through, right?
J.R.:Right, right. Yeah. And then goes on to say that broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. So it's clearly that same imagery going on.
David:Yeah, which is kind of another clue that that's kind of what is meant by that language.
J.R.:Right, more than the polite parting of waters. Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's right.
David:Breaking the leviathan and, you know, dragging it onto the desert and giving it for food to people. And this is kind of Yahweh, the picture of this psalm is Yahweh going through Egypt, and as he's going, he's announcing to the other gods that things are about to change.<Okay.> And remember in the Exodus series that you and I both listened to, there's very much that idea that the plagues of Egypt were direct assaults against Egypt's gods.
J.R.:Yeah, they corresponded specifically to the primary gods of Egypt at the time.
David:Right. And so this is almost just an extension of that. God just put down the law in Egypt, and now he's traveling through the desert. Yam, see you there, God's gonna split you in two, you know, and he's just, we might say, uh, kicking butt and taking names, we used to say that, right?
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
David:The Leviathan, yep, he's dragging you on the shore, and so it's very much a picture of God going through the desert in order to establish his reign in Israel.
J.R.:Well, is there any significance to the Leviathan? I mean, I've always heard of Leviathan as just sort of a nondescript, well, sea monster. But it's, what is, what does that represent? Anything?
David:Well, I'm not totally sure, but I've heard it talked about, well, you know, sometimes we talk about, well, it's just a whale. It's clearly more than just a whale or a giant fish, but a lot of times the Leviathan, can also be a mythical creature that basically drags people down to the underworld.
J.R.:Right. Yeah. In ancient times, you know, they obviously traveled on the water and things like that, but there was a fear going too far out in the water because that's where the mythological creatures, that's where the Leviathan, that's where sea monsters essentially, existed. And there was a fear of, what falling off the edge of the earth. So, Leviathan is clearly a reference to being further away from the land and further into chaos. Further into the unknown.
David:Yeah, yeah. So, and so, yeah. Yeah, so the water, the ocean is, is chaos, right? And where, you know, in chaos you can find the sea monsters, you can find all the monsters. Leviathan in particular, you think of like, ships being lost at sea, uh, you know, Leviathan is dragging the boat down to the underworld is kind of the mythological image.<Yeah.> And so it all fits this, this picture here. But what's funny then is it's like, so you think of this Leviathan as this terrible creature that drags ships down to the underworld. But this psalm says, no, it was you who crushed the head of the Leviathan and dragged the thing on shore, and it's like, eat up everyone, you know.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah. But even that idea of the proximity, of being at the edge of the world. I just read an article about Christopher Columbus, and it was basically saying that he had to essentially lie to his crew, and getting them on the boat because he wouldn't have been able, he couldn't get anybody on the boat because he's saying I'm sailing to whatever, we're looking for this new world. We're looking for riches. And too many of the crew were saying, well, yeah, I'm not, we're not going out there with you. You know, unless you know where you're going, I'm not going past this map, right? Because that's the edge of the world. Yeah, but yeah, so it's just kind of this interesting idea of the edge of the world, and that's where Leviathan's at. So again, if you read it as, yeah, God's powerful enough to reach down in and pull out the blue whale and throw it up in the Gobi Desert. Well, that's interesting, but even the words that they're using and the imagery that they're using is even more extreme. It's like, no, no, no. He's gone to the depths of the sea, the edge of the world, the complete unknown, and drug that up onto the desert and the land where it's completely exposed. And yeah, the creatures of the wilderness are just going to eat it for food. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.<The terrible it's deeper than, it's deeper than I realized at the first time.
David:Yeah, and I think you said at the beginning, when you start to see these patterns then, there's, there's these patterns that happen over and over again in the Psalms, and one is that Yahweh is a God that tames the chaos, right?<Right, right.> And the chaos is caused by these other gods. God is coming in and he's taming the chaos. God is killing the scary monsters. God has traveled to the, like you were saying that, you know, the edge of the known world. And he's slaying the beasts that strike terror in everyone, because God is establishing his reign. And again, you see that language all through the Psalms. All through the Psalms.
J.R.:And then verse 15 to continue on with the Sinai imagery, and I might be wrong about this, but you know,"You split open the springs and the brooks, you dried up the ever flowing streams. Yours is the day. Yours is also the night." I mean, that right there says to me, we've divided the seas. We've, you know, that's the Red Sea analogy. You split open the springs and brooks. That sounds like Moses striking the rock.<Yeah, sure.> And the, yeah, the streams flowing out."Yours is the day, yours is also the night." I see that as, you know, the cloud, the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night.<Yeah, yeah.> Yeah, so it clearly has that imagery of reminding the Israelites or reminding the singers that he's also the God that brought them out of Sinai. And at the same time you have this kind of overlay of while he did that, he defeated, he defeated the gods, not just Egypt's gods, but often even at the edge of the world, you know, the unknown gods.<Yeah. No, I So there's several layers to this. That's interesting.
David:Yeah. And I think that imagery is right. That you just, you pointed out, because if this is God leading his people out of Egypt, then, then yeah, he's, uh, he opened the springs along the way, water from rock, you know, he dried up rivers. He's parted waters. Just like you said, you know, there's a pillar of smoke by day. There's a pillar of fire by night. So, God owns all this. He's going to lead us through, right?<Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.> And there's all these other references to these other gods and terrible beasts. But look, you know, He just left Egypt in carnage, right? So, what are we fearful about? You know?
J.R.:Yeah, exactly.
David:And in fact, verse 18, I'm reading it now,"Remember how the enemy mocked you, Lord, how foolish people have reviled your name." And it's almost just that reminder, you know, and look at them now.
J.R.:Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. They're at the bottom of the Red Sea.
David:Yeah. They're at the bottom of the ocean.
J.R.:Wow. Okay. Well, yeah, I don't know if you have anything else, but it makes me want to, uh, run, grab my Bible and make some notes while I've still got this in my head.<Yeah, that's And I'm certainly going to be reading some more. And digging through, I'm sure we'll have a conversation off air about, uh, you know, things, what we read going forward, but
David:Yeah, yeah, a couple of these, I think I, like a month ago, I was like, Oh, you got to read Psalm 29, you know? And so I couldn't wait to start talking about this. But the other thing I'll say just to kind of conclude is, you know, not every Psalm is like this, you know, there's just a lot of Psalms that are worship for God. We, we walked through a lot of examples of how a lot of Psalms are much deeper than that.<Sure.> But yeah, I would encourage everyone to, you know, start working your way through the Psalms, if you're not already, and see if you could start picking these patterns up. And again, I'll always come back to this idea of, if you see something that doesn't make sense, pay attention to that. And do a little research because there's a lot more there to discover.
J.R.:It means more than you realize. That's right. Yeah. Well, this will be fun to, uh, hopefully start a conversation, maybe online or something like that. I'd love to have other people's, because, you know, it's obvious that there's imagery like this throughout. And, yeah, I'd like to have other people's opinions on some other images that they see in the Psalms.
David:Yeah, we'd love to hear from you, Navigating an Ancient Faith, that's the name of our Facebook group, that's the name of our website, that's the name of the podcast, so you get the idea. And we really would love to hear from you, any kind of support, rating, thumbs up, we'd love to, we'd love to get the word out too about this. So, I think that's all I got.
J.R.:Alright, there we go. I'm grabbing my highlighter, I'm heading out.
David:Next episode, we will be talking about the Divine Assembly, and we've already given a lot of hints about that, so we'll talk about that next episode, so we'll see you then.
J.R.:Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. We'll see y'all.
