Psalms Book 4 (Psalms 90-106)Sample

The God who avenges

And now we come to holy ground.

If I take a knife and plunge it into someone’s body, I will be arrested for attempted manslaughter.

But suppose a surgeon takes a knife and forces it deep into a person’s body and carefully cuts away cancer so the person can recover and live many more years. In that case, that surgeon is rightly considered a brilliant doctor and is respected, loved, praised, and thanked.

Sometimes, the Lord himself takes such action to save a human being who is dying spiritually.

Psalms 94 and 102 describe this holy, eternal Lord who comes as Judge to intervene in human lives.

Psalm 94 is about the Lord who avenges sin. ‘O God who avenges shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve’, v2. (To avenge is ‘to take action in response to a wrong done to someone out of the desire for justice.’)

Read Psalm 94. It is a long and penetrating cry to the Lord to intervene and establish justice.

Now read Psalm 102, Psalm 94’s chiastic partner-opposite. It is the prayer of someone who has been severely corrected by the Lord. It voices the prayer of an afflicted person pouring out their lament before the Lord, a person who twice states that the Lord has intervened and broken them.

‘… for you have taken me up and thrown me aside’ v10

‘In the course of my life he broke my strength; he cut short my days’ v23

The Lord, the Judge of the earth, does not pretend everything is fine. It’s not. There is desperate wickedness and evil in the world.

Praise the Lord that he is a God who avenges and acts in order to bring men and women back to himself.