Today’s reading is Psalm 115.
The Invisible God
As I mentioned yesterday, most commentators place this psalm in either the days of the kings facing some military crisis or in the post-Babylonion exile period. The thought is God had been seemingly inactive and the nations had been gaining an upper hand against Israel. From this perspective, Psalm 115 is a call for God to act, demonstrating His presence with Israel.
That is, of course, possible. I have no idea when the psalm was written. However, this psalm seems less about what God has done and more about the fact that Israel has an unseen God. We are so used to the notion of the invisible God, we may miss how different this was, and therefore how difficult for the ancients to support. Remember, it only took 40 days of Moses being up on the mountain for Israel to decide they needed something to represent YHWH (Exodus 32:1-6) even though they had just been told not to craft such man-made representations (Exodus 20:4-6).
In that ancient time, if no icon represented the nation’s god, how could they even claim to have one? No doubt, Egypt, Moab, Edom, Ammon, Philistia mocked the unseen God of Israel. Psalm 115 provides a defense against them.
The Problem with Statues
The psalms and the prophets both respond to the taunts of the nations with a mockery of their own. The gods of the nations are nothing but carved wood and cast metal. They can’t move, can’t see, can’t talk. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk all take potshots at the silliness of people making their own gods (see Isaiah 40:18-20; 41:5-7; 44:9-20; Jeremiah 10:1-16; Habakkuk 2:18-19).
However, we must not see these taunts as the straw men many treat them as. The ancients did not believe the statues were their gods, but merely representations of their gods. Yes, they sometimes believed the deities behind the statues talked through the statues and even acted through them, but they didn’t believe their god was a piece of wood or metal that was nailed to the floor. If the psalmists or the prophets were truly trying to compare their invisible God to the statues themselves, then the pagans would merely dismiss the claims. A statue may represent Baal, the statue is not Baal himself. A pillar or tree may represent Asherah, but the icon was not Asherah herself.
If that is not the issue, what is? The pagan nations served deities that could be represented by the work of men and women. The problem is the moment they tried to represent their gods, the representations limited them. The pagan gods could be represented by lifeless wood that could also be burned in a fire. The pagan gods could be represented by statues that could not see, hear, talk, move, lift, smell, hear. YHWH is so grand and powerful, He cannot be represented by anything man can make. The Israelites were not even supposed to try. The lifeless simply cannot represent the living and life-giving. The deaf cannot represent the God who hears. The mute cannot represent the God who speaks. The immobile cannot represent the God who is everywhere.
By representing their gods with these impotent, immobile, silent statues, the pagans should learn what their gods truly were. Of course, the pagans believed the statues were only representations and not actually the real deities. But if their gods could be represented by such impotent objects, what kind of gods could they possibly be? The difference between Israel and the nations was not the pagans crafted representations of their gods, but Israel refused. The issue was Israel’s God was really God and therefore could not be represented. The pagan gods, by “asking” for representation, demonstrated themselves as nothing more than the inventions of the people who thought they could be represented by statues. The lesson for the pagans was any god that can be represented by what men or women hand make are actually nothing more than what the men and women make.
Our God is in the Heavens
YHWH is not only unseen and invisible, He is unrepresentable. Men and women cannot make anything to represent Him. Therefore, those who know Him don’t even try. Those who try don’t actually know Him. Our God is in the heavens. He does what He pleases. He cannot be represented by us, therefore, He cannot be limited by us.
He is not a God of our making. Therefore, He is not a God to be cajoled to our bidding. Our job, therefore, is to glorify Him without seeing Him or trying to represent Him by what we make, and to trust Him to bless His people.
Praise the invisible, unseen, unrepresentable Lord!
Tomorrow’s reading is Psalm 115.
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PATHS:
Discuss Today’s Meditation with Your Family
How does Psalm 115 admonish you?
Read the Bible 