Psalm 66: worshipping God, old-style
To me, this psalm is a clear-cut demonstration of the way Israelites worshipped God. To others, it’s a resurrection psalm, and I disagree. Let me go through the arguments and show you each side. Then you’ll be able to decide for yourselves.
When we look at the plot of the psalm, it goes like this: A Jewish leader praises God for what looks like deliverance from captivity. Furthermore, he looks at this deliverance as God’s answer to his prayers. He now glorifies God, “who has not turned away my prayer,” and fulfills his vows, “that I pronounced when I was in trouble”, by sacrificing burnt offerings: “I bring burnt offerings to your house, I fulfil to you my vows…”
Those of you who’ve been following my commentaries on the Psalms know that I’m inclined to find parallels to end-time prophecies and eschatological references (when they’re there). That’s why I’m suprised I find none in this psalm, while others do. The footnotes in my Bible (NJB), refer to verse 9 as the reason this psalm is called a “Resurrection Psalm”. Plus, verses 10 through 12 could be interpreted as eschatological, and I suppose that’s what some people do, but to me, that’s too much of a stretch.
Why is it a stretch? Simply because the overall message of this psalm is too old-style. The writer talks about making sacrifices to God, and names them specifically: “burning rams”, “bullocks and goats”. Animal sacrifices were done away with when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, made Himself the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. The tone is also that of a leader speaking to his subjects, not that of a newly resurrected Christian, expressing praise to God. What also tips me off to the nature of this psalm is the author’s understanding of prayer, which is, once again, old-style: “To him I cried aloud, high praise was on my tongue. Had I been aware of guilt in my heart, the Lord would not have listened, but in fact God did listen, attentive to the sound of my prayer.” To me, this looks like the prayer of a Pharisee. We don’t pray like this nowadays. We don’t cry out loud, with high praise on our tongues. Our prayer is private, quiet. We pray on our knees, we are humble, and we are submitting ourselves to God. While we do praise Him, we don’t bring attention to that element of our prayer, as if God expects our praise. He’s not an earthly ruler whose ego must be stoked. He’s God, the creator and ruler of the universe. Any praise we give Him should flow naturally from our hearts, from the love we bear Him and His laws.
Furthermore, I doubt verse 9 refers to a resurrection. It’s much more likely that this is a metaphor, expressing the joy of the Israelites at being out of captivity, and when you look at it like that, verses 10 through 12 make much more sense, because they clarify how God worked to free them and bring them back to their own country. Do you see now why this isn’t a resurrection psalm?
This psalm offers a wonderful glimpse into the way people used to worship God. Even though the way they did it is not the way we do it any more, it’s still an insightful composition, one that teaches us a lot about God’s deliverance, and persistence in prayer. I hope you enjoyed reading it with me.
