“The Song of Divine Justice—Psalm 34” (Part One)

Introduction: Snapshots from life….

• A mother weeps outside a courtroom where her daughter’s murderer has just been released on a technicality and pleads, “Is there no justice?”
• A father struggles to feed his family by doing the right thing while knowing of those who are wealthy by illegal means and wonders, “What’s the point of trying to do right? Maybe nice guys do finish last.”
• A child is rushed to the hospital—the latest Jerusalem Jew to be the victim of a terrorist bomb—and wonders, “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?”
• A widow sits beside a freshly dug grave and struggles, “It’s not fair. Why couldn’t the drunk driver have been killed instead of my husband? He hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Tough questions. Painful questions. I would like to suggest this week that the answers, in part, are found in Psalm 34—a wisdom psalm teaching us how to live. Like Psalm 32, it is based on David’s life experiences, and like Psalms 22-24, it is part of a trilogy of psalms. This trilogy of psalms (Psalms 34, 37, 73) deal with the OT “Law of Retribution.” The doctrine/law of retribution, as believed by OT Jews said…

The righteous are rewarded in direct proportion to their righteousness, and the wicked to their wickedness.

It is the OT counterpart to the NT law of sowing and reaping (Gal. 6:8), and is a common teaching in the wisdom literature of the OT. To some degree, it reflects the fact that, due to their limited understanding of the after-life, they viewed all retribution as being resolved in this life. The problem (which forms the backdrop for Psalms 34, 37, and 73) is this…

What happens when the wicked seemed to be blessed and the righteous seem to be cursed?

We must understand the book of the Job in this same context. His so-called friends (accusers, really) assume that the law of retribution works. The problem, however, is that they assume that it is the ONLY way that God works!

We must understand that the doctrine of retribution carries with it a “governor” (a limitation)—for it is governed by God’s unique purposes for an individual life! From this side of the Cross, we see the doctrine of retribution waiting to be resolved in the future—but that is of limited value when the bad guys seem to be winning. Our focus of life is so much on the here and now that we sometimes struggle with the delayed gratification of waiting for heaven.

Psalm 34 gives us a summation—an overview from an objective perspective—of the doctrine of retribution. Remember, however, that the psalmist cannot give us “the whole counsel of God” in one psalm. This teaching must be filtered through all of the Word of God. We will see it begin this week, then explained more in Psalms 37 and 73 the next two weeks. (By the way, Derek Kidner’s excellent commentary on the Psalms was a great help in these studies)

Background: Two interesting elements to keep in mind as we look at Psalm 34…

• It is written in an acrostic, with each verse (except the last) beginning with a succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet;
• It is written after David narrowly escapes with his life from Gath by pretending to be insane (cp. 1 Sam.21).

It is in response to this near-death episode that David describes these amazing truths. And, his description takes the form of testimonials that we will see, starting tomorrow.