Psalm 17

The last few verses of this Psalm struck me just now as staggeringly beautiful – here they are in the King James:

¹³Arise, O LORD, disappoint him, cast him down: deliver my soul from the wicked, which is thy sword:

¹⁴From men which are thy hand, O LORD, from men of the world, which have their portion in this life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treasure: they are full of children, and leave the rest of their substance to their babes.

¹⁵As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.

I found Psalm 17 looking up the concept of “reward,” to see what I could find to clear up some nagging issues.  There are those who argue that the Old Testament isn’t as concerned with the afterlife as the New Testament is, or that we put too much pleasure in the hereafter rather than the here and now.  They may be right or wrong to whatever degree.

But all the intellectual ponderings and struggles occasionally fade away in sheer bliss when you read a verse like 15 – no excess of words, beautifully balanced, loaded with layers of meaning, a perfect poetic expression of astonishing faith, contentment, and joy.  Maybe I’ll just bask in it for a while.

Too sentimental?

I don’t care.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 12:59 am and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.