Today’s reading is Psalm 128.
Reading While Caught in Culture
Regrettably, we find it hard to separate ourselves from the cultural stream in which we swim. We are surrounded not by a culture wishing to right wrongs, correct excesses, find God’s right way, but by a culture rebelling against all that has gone before. We are surrounded by a pendulum-riding culture committed to opposing anything that resembles past generations. I bring this up specifically with this week’s reading because our modern, pendulum-swinging, rebel-against-all-that-precedes-us culture cannot see the blessing of Psalm 128.
The ancient culture of Israel was patriarchal. That is, the father/patriarch, led the family. The fortunes of the family rose and fell on the leadership of the father. Have many fathers through the generations abused that path? No doubt. Do course corrections need to made by many patriarchs? Obviously. But today, our culture doesn’t want to course correct, it wants to abolish the patriarchy. And actually, not only abolish patriarchy, but abolish patriarchs. That is, abolish fathers and fatherhood. If we are not careful, we will breathe in this cultural air, swim in this cultural stream, grow in this cultural soil (write your own cultural metaphor here) in such a way we will be unable to see the incredible blessing our pilgrim expounds in Psalm 128. I not only mean we won’t be able to see what the blessing is while reading the psalm, but also we won’t be able to see the blessing in our homes by living the psalm.
Those caught in the eddies of the present cultural whirlpool see a husband and father who is blessed because his wife has lots of children and his children all sit like prim and proper olive shoots around his table. They will see this as nothing more than a master of the house with a trophy wife and kids.
And that, of course, is no blessing at all.
As we get whirled around by the undercurrent of our present culture, we need to grab the lifeline thrown by God’s Word offering to draw us to safely read this psalm from the cultural perspective in which it was written. We find it hard to read Scripture from a cultural perspective placing more importance on family, tribe, and clan than on individual. First, we hardly know what is like to be part of a culture in which survival for anyone depends on everyone in the family and community working together every day to simply subsist. Second, we neglect this poem is the product of an Israelite mind in whom the very concept of a family struggling to have children but the promised blessing on Abraham is finally passed on by God granting the birth of a child is baked into their communal memory. Third, we forget we are reading a poem written from within a family which became a nation whose greatest hope was a coming Descendant who would crush the head of the serpent, be the ultimate Prophet and new Moses, reign as the ultimate King and new David, be the High Priest and new Melchizedek. Therefore, in our fixation on individuality and individualism we read this psalm as the story of three individuals–man, woman, child–but only one of them is blessed: the man. That is not true. This psalm presents a family. The whole family is blessed.
If we can escape the pull of our modern culture and read from the standpoint of that ancient near east, agrarian, tribal culture, we would see this psalm is not “patriarchal” at all. It is familial. This psalm doesn’t talk about how a man gets blessed by an oft-pregnant wife and smiley, happy children. This psalm talks about how a family–husband, father, wife, mother, brothers, sisters–is blessed.
To grasp the blessing in this psalm, we shouldn’t read it with modern debates and perspectives as the background, but the ancient perspectives. Think of Sarah, so desperate to have children she would be complicit in taking advantage of her handmaiden, Hagar, in order to claim she had children (Genesis 16). Recall Rachel crying to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!” (Genesis 30:1, ESV). Think of Hannah weeping and fasting because she had no children, begging God to give her some (1 Samuel 1). In a culture thinking of children in this way, Psalm 128 falls into place. Sure, men in ancient Israel wanted fruitful wives and healthy children. But guess what. Women in ancient Israel wanted to be fruitful. And, surely, everyone wanted to be healthy–including children.
The blessing becomes clear. With those ancient perspectives and ancient goals in mind, we see the reciprocal nature of blessing and why the psalm begins, “Blessed is *everyone* who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways!” The man who feared the Lord and walked in His ways was blessed by having a fruitful wife and healthy children. But the woman was blessed to be fruitful by having a husband who feared the Lord. The wife was a blessing to the husband, yes. But the husband was also a blessing to the wife. The children were a blessing to the father, yes. But the father was also a blessing to the children. In other words, the woman who feared the Lord and walked in His ways would have the kind of husband that allowed the family to be blessed. Because this family was led by one who feared the Lord, the family was blessed.
And the true blessing to the family is found in the final verses of the psalm. We can hardly fathom this today. For us, we think of blessing as living in a nice house, having a nice retirement, living as long as possible. Whatever happens after that doesn’t matter to us. For the ancient Israelites, blessing meant the perpetuation of the Israelite nation until God brought about the blessings He promised on all through the seed of Abraham. In our psalm, because the man who fears the Lord is blessed, his whole family is blessed. Because the whole family is blessed, Jerusalem is blessed. Because Jerusalem is blessed, all Israel is blessed.
Of course, at this point, we need to recall under the New Covenant, Mt. Zion, Jerusalem, Israel are all fulfilled in Christ’s church. And this gets to the point we need to think about in our modern, individualistic, democratized culture. Do I only think of blessing selfishly as me getting blessed? Or do I see that my family and I fit in a bigger picture of Christ’s people? Do I see blessing as the mutual and reciprocal blessing among a group of people who fear the Lord and walk in His ways perpetuating Christ’s kingdom throughout the world and therefore blessing the whole world? All those who dwell in the house of the blessed are blessed.
Praise the Lord!
Tomorrow’s reading is Psalm 128.
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PATHS:
Discuss Today’s Meditation with Your Family
How does Psalm 128 prompt or improve your hope in God?
Read the Bible 