Psalm 30 is a Psalm of Individual Thanksgiving. The date is uncertain. Scholars date this psalm to the period of postexilic restoration subsequent to Nehemiah, after the collapse of the Babylonian Empire and the emergence of Persia as an imperial force, so it would not be surprising to detect an early stage of biblical dualism in it (see also Psalms 49:15; 86:13).[1] It reinterprets an individual experience as a community one. Before then, it was for corporate worship in the Temple, part of a festival pilgrimage. The poet is at the point of death, an experience that helps him see the false foundation on which his life rested. He did have pride for that which he should have simply been humbly grateful. All of life comes from God, just as the eventual deliverance is from God. Barth discusses the Psalm under the theme of respect for life, stressing that human beings will and act with God when they move against disease. They are already healthy in the desire to be so.[2]
The superscription, identifying it as A Psalm, A Song at the dedication of the temple, bears little relation to the content of the psalm, It probably refers to the rededication of the second temple after Judas Maccabeus purged it of pagan infiltrations in 164 B.C. The Jewish people used it during the Feast of Dedication or Hanukah, commemorating the deliverance of the people from Syrian domination in 165 BC after Judas Maccabeus purged it of pagan infiltrations. The superscription also says it is Of David.
The first section, Psalm 30:1-3, he encourages himself to give an account of the deliverance he has experienced. 1 I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up (dalah, an uncommon verb, usually referring to the act of drawing water from a well or cistern, as in Exodus 2:16, 19.). Used metaphorically, it can describe drawing counsel from the heart (Proverbs 20:5). Only here does the verb refer to the Lord drawing a person up from Sheol. He also says that the Lord did not let my foes rejoice over me. 2 O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. Healing in this case is physical recovery. Yet, healing becomes a metaphor for how the Lord helped him to think differently about his life. 3 O Lord, you brought up my soul (nephesh), the Hebrew noun meaning simply "life" or "self" or "essential identity." In Psalms 49:15 and 86:13, "me" is the poetic parallel of "my soul," and Psalm 88:3, where "my life" functions as that parallel. The psalmist's assertion that his soul had gone down to the Pit (while his body continued to languish on his sickbed) reveals one of the early stages of that development in biblical thought in which persons were thought of as being composed of body and soul. This bifurcation of the individual into two "parts" will be a more pronounced influence on biblical thought as it encounters first Persian and then Greek notions of dualism. The Lord brought up his soul from Sheol. The psalmist's illness or injury was sufficiently grave to shift the balance of the psalmist's mode of existence from the land of the living to the abode of the dead. For an unspecified period, the psalmist found himself in Sheol, the destination of all the living. Sheol, referred to more than 60 times in the OT, is the realm beneath the earth where all living eventually wind up (see Psalm 89:48, "Who can live and never see death? Who can escape the power of Sheol?"). Although ideas about life after death varied in ancient Israel and across time, in general Sheol was simply where the dead went. The concept had not developed into the notion of a punitive hell until after the latest writings of the Old Testament. By the time of the New Testament, the idea of punishment after death in hell/hades/gehenna had taken firm root in Judaism. An example is in II Esdras 7:36, "The pit of torment shall appear, and opposite it shall be the place of rest; and the furnace of hell shall be disclosed, and opposite it the paradise of delight." This writing is contemporaneous with the New Testament. One could also see Matthew 5:22, 29, 30; Mark 9:43, 45, etc. Sheol, for most of its history in the OT, was the dark, dusty place you went to when you died (see Job 17:13, 16). However, in the period during which our psalm was likely composed, when biblical writers speak of being in anguish or distress in Sheol (as, for example, in Psalm 116:3), the issue is not death, but premature death. As ample evidence attests (e.g., Genesis 25:8, 17; 35:29; 49:33, etc.), death was the entirely expected end to a good, long life, and people met that end without fear or resentment. Only when struck down violently, dying young or dying without descendants did the ancient Israelite fear and seek to avoid death. In contemporary thinking, life and death are mutually exclusive -- one is either alive or one is dead. However, to the ancient writers of the Bible, including the writer of this psalm, life and death are engaged in an interplay based on the continuum that makes up the former. One can experience death and live to tell the tale, which is what has happened to the psalmist here. The Lord restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit. The psalmist has two enemies: death, represented by Sheol/the Pit, and the foes whom Yahweh thwarted before they were able to rejoice over the psalmist's permanent death. The language suggests that there were people hoping to get the psalmist out of the way for good, and they almost got their wish. Nevertheless, not quite. Before this experience had completely extinguished the life of the poet, Yahweh came to his rescue.
In the second section, Psalm 30: 4-5, the writer recognizes deliverance, recognizing the close connection between individual and corporate life. The poet urges, 4 Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones (the congregation),and give thanks to his holy name. 5 For the anger of the Lord is but for a moment; divine favor is for a lifetime. We can see the distortions of thinking in the psalmist through the correction he must make in his thinking. He went through a time when he thought the anger of the Lord was for a lifetime. The Lord taught him that the purpose of the anger of the Lord is to educate rather than destroy. Patience is an expression of the love of the Lord, the Lord constantly turning back to patience with the people of the Lord.[3] Thus, anger from the Lord will never last. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. He thought that weeping would be 24/7. The Lord helped him change his thinking, reminding him that life contains both suffering and joy. One must be willing to take the journey through the night, through the valley of grief, to move through a time of great struggle that will lead to a re-created life. One may well need to lay aside destructive thinking about oneself to embrace something healthier. The joy that comes in the morning does not come without cost, but it will come as we realize that the Lord is our help through the process. The night has long been a source of fear for human beings, and rightly so. The poet refers to suffering from segmented sleep. One may weep at night due to wrestling with some issues in our lives.
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i'the centre, and enjoy bright day;
but he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the midday sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.[4]
Yet, we might also ponder why the night is so difficult for so many of us.
Why fear the dark?
How can we help but love it
when it is the darkness
that brings the stars to us?
What's more: Who does not know
that it is on the darkest nights
that the stars acquire
their greatest splendor?[5]
Before the time of electricity, people often experienced segmented sleep during the night. They even called it a first and second sleep. People might read, get up and do a few chores, reflect upon the past day, plan the next day, and so on. Prayer books from the 14-1500s include prayers for waking up during the night. Hebrews had three four-hour watches during the night. In other words, if we awaken briefly during the night, we are not doing something that humanity just invented. Humanity has done it for a long time. We will need to learn how to manage this experience.[6] Honestly, though, human experience may well seem like the opposite of that which the poet describes. Joy is only for a moment, while weeping is far more constant. It at least seems like divine wrath is the constant, while divine patience is temporary.[7] However, as a person of Christian faith, the truth of such a statement is that Jesus has received the outburst of divine anger on the cross, and thus, belief in the word of God means we do not have to suffer divine anger for even a moment.[8]
In the third section, Psalm 30:6-10, the poet describes the affliction. 6 As for me, I said in testimony, that in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” 7 By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed. The poet had much self-confidence, charting the wrong course for his life. Now, the poet realizes that all he had was a gift of God, and thus that he had no room for pride. His life depends upon the Lord. Only the experience of suffering sensitized him to the condition of his soul. He recounts a Job-like life lived by the psalmist that doubtless many hearers of the psalm could understand and appreciate: The psalmist, secure in his prosperity, says to himself that his comfortable existence would be his life forever. However, the sudden onset of calamity (perceived as divine displeasure, v. 5) deprived the psalmist of all those graces and favors that constitute the good life. 8 To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication. He is expressing the belief, widespread in ancient Israel and neighboring cultures, that death dramatically alters one's mode of existence, but does not irrevocably end it. From Ugarit, one of Israel's closest neighbors, we have clay tablets depicting the rapi'uma, "healers" or "shades," who eat and drink for seven days (Tablet II, lines 21-24), and the biblical story of the medium at En-dor depicts a necromancer summoning the shade of Samuel to appear to Saul after the former's death.[9] So we know, based on this psalm and elsewhere, that the people of the ancient Near East, including Israel, believed that the living and the dead interacted with each other in ways we, maybe I should most of us, no longer consider possible. He offered repeated prayers to the Lord: 9 “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? He wonders about the value of the Lord allowing this experience to take his life now that he has come to a fresh experience of the Lord. Among the graces of the good life was the ability to participate in the worshipping community in the temple. The victory of death at this moment will deny to the Lord such praise. 10 Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!” Although there was no torment in Sheol/the Pit, there was also no participation in those activities that characterize the life of the living (cf. Psalm 6:5, "For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?"). The psalmist had tasted death and found it not to his liking, and he pours out his gratitude to Yahweh for having delivered him from premature death. The Lord is the focus. He commits himself wholly to the Lord, indicating the change of heart has taken place.
In the concluding section, Psalm 30:11-12, he refers to answered prayer. 11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy. This does not mean naïve optimism. Rather, facing the reality of human need and the human condition, the focus of joy is the Lord.[10] The answered prayer is 12 so that my soul (nephesh)[11] may praise you and not be silent. It concludes with the affirmation, O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever. Thus, the change of heart takes an external form, the clothes of penitence replaced by clothes of dance. Nothing will stop the gratitude of the psalmist. The Lord gave him new life in order to witness, and that is what he will do. The psalm concludes, as many psalms of thanksgiving do, with a votive to give thanks to the LORD forever. One can also see Psalms 45:17; 52:9, 79:13, etc.).
The psalmist uses critical thinking to put troubles of life into perspective. Some of the most emotionally balanced people we know seem to have learned to examine their thoughts and recognize cognitive distortions for what they are. They may call such thoughts simply "illogical" rather than distortions, but the point is, once the notions are seen as mental spins, the person is able to at least lower the volume of those internal troublemakers, if not turn them off altogether. Whereas people sometimes refer to psychotherapy as "the talking cure," we might label this kind of individual mental processing "the thinking cure." In some forms of psychotherapy, the primary role of the therapist is to accompany the counselee in learning how to think differently about their lives, a process that will lead to the needed changes in behavior as well. Grief often leads people down the path of thinking that the rest of their lives will consist only in grief and suffering. The thinking in which a depressed person engages is often the illogical and distorted thinking that perpetuates depression. It becomes difficult to envision life without it. Yet, such thinking is a mental trap from which people need liberation. The psalmist allowed the Lord to teach him that joy would come in the morning. The battle we fight here is that unwanted feelings and irrational thoughts will come. However, as this psalmist illustrates, we may be able to modulate how long they affect the way we live. Shakespeare had an insight into this process.
Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with thick-coming fancies that keep her from rest.
Macbeth: Cure her of that! Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon her heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient must minister to himself.[12]
[1] (see C. A. Briggs, The Book of Psalms [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1907], vol. 1, p. 258)
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4 [55.1] 369.
[3] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 440.
[4] John Milton, Paradise Lost.
[5] Archbishop Dom Helder Camara.
[6] A. Roger Ekirch in his book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past
[7] Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1 [30.3] 415
[8] Barth, Church Dogmatics, 421.
[9] (I Samuel 28; on the Ugaritic healers, see M. D. Coogan, Stories From Ancient Canaan [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978], 48-51).
[10] Barth, Church Dogmatics II.1 [31.3] 654.
[11] Where the Hebrew has "glory" instead of "soul," which is read by NRSV.
[12] --William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 3.
can you recommend some books on the development of after life in Judaism? Are you placing this document in the Maccabeen period solely on the reference to Sheol? Why can this not be a David Psalm? When I read the Psalms I see warrior god psalms, personal relationship psalms and Psalms that speak of God's justice. do you disagree or would add to this? I see this as a personal relationship psalm. I see the psalms as a major step forward in God's revelation of Himself. agree? Lyn Eastman
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