I will give You thanks with all my heart;
I will sing praises to You before the gods.
2 I will bow down toward Your holy temple
And give thanks to Your name for Your lovingkindness and Your truth;
For You have magnified Your word according to all Your name.
3 On the day I called, You answered me;
You made me bold with strength in my soul.
4 All the kings of the earth will give thanks to You, O Lord,
When they have heard the words of Your mouth.
5 And they will sing of the ways of the Lord,
For great is the glory of the Lord.
6 For though the Lord is exalted,
Yet He regards the lowly,
But the haughty He knows from afar.
7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me;
You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies,
And Your right hand will save me.
8 The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting;
Do not forsake the works of Your hands. Psalm 138, NASB
Psalm 138 is a psalm of new orientation.[1] As we have already learned psalms of new orientation or reorientation are “not a return to the old stable orientation, because there is no going back.” Going back for the psalmist means the time of disorientation didn’t exist. The psalmist knows that if life goes back to the old orientation then it is a rejection of the new strength gained from trusting and knowing that God was with and for you during the disorientation. It is this joy and knowledge about God and life that the psalmist is celebrating in psalm 138; this is the new orientation, God’s “lovingkindness” to the psalmist.
Verses 1-2, is an expression of the psalmist’s gratefulness to God’s “lovingkindness.” The psalmist will thank God with all his/her heart. Israelites believed the heart held the essence of a person. “But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.” The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, But the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things.” Proverbs 15:28, NASB ” Matthew 15:18-19, NASB “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.” Luke, 6:45, NASB The psalmist will sing praises to the one true God (YHWH, Yahweh) before the gods that others worship. The psalmist will bow down towards God’s holy temple. The psalmist in his/her gratitude will also “give thanks to Your name for Your lovingkindness and Your truth.”
The psalmist’s (like us) knows of God’s lovingkindness because when the psalmist (we) called on God, YHWH answered. YHWH answers our cries no matter our station in life. God unlike people who sometimes exalt others based on status, looks at our heart not our status or position. YHWH is not so trivial. In I Samuel 16:7, “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Verses 7-8 conveys this new found assurance and knowledge of God’s lovingkindness in the psalmist’s state of new orientation. In other words, you have to go through something in order to gain this knowledge of God’s lovingkindness.
7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me;
You will stretch forth Your hand against the wrath of my enemies,
And Your right hand will save me.
8 The Lord will accomplish what concerns me;
Your lovingkindness, O Lord, is everlasting;
Do not forsake the works of Your hands.
I found psalm 138 like psalm 91. It can be used for orientation, disorientation, and reorientation because sometimes the unfortunate or even the fortunate beauty of life is that we can be in all three phases at once. What I don’t want is for us to limit one psalm to one category because what may be a psalm of orientation for me is a psalm of disorientation or new orientation for you. I don’t believe the Israelites used those categories and said that this psalm is only for this occasion, situation or period of my life. What I hoped to convey in this series is that the thoughts and prayers of the ancient Israelites expressed the gamut of human emotions/ situations to God (YHWH). I believe this is an art or mode of living that we have forgotten. We have been taught to believe that if we are truly express ourselves with God in the form of a complaint or lament then we lack faith. Faith is not that limited or narrow. The Israelites experienced faith as God’s lovingkindness. For the writers of the psalms, faith is also the ability to be truly human with God and know that YHWH will still love us and be with us.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, Spirituality of the Psalms (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002).