Nielsen’s Nook

70:1 Make haste, O God, to deliver me!
O Lord, make haste to help me!
² Let them be put to shame and confusion
who seek my life!
Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor
who delight in my hurt!
³ Let them turn back because of their shame
who say, “Aha, Aha!”

⁴ May all who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you!
May those who love your salvation
say evermore, “God is great!”
⁵ But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, O God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O Lord, do not delay!

I have begun to despise those increasing brevities of my life in which it would seem to me that I have no resistance - when things are apparently going well. Inevitably, complacency seeps in - a slow, persistent ebb. Soon my very soul gurgles, weighted down, suddenly waylaid into oblivion.

No people or mere person has ever stayed on the mountaintop, none have ever sustained unbroken fellowship with YHWH. Moses came down Mt. Horeb only to be brought upon Mt. Pisgah to view the promise into which he would not enter on account of his personal failure. In regal grandeur did David - a man after God’s own heart - ascend. Only to be yanked down with a fiercely-barbed hook, rending Israel to pieces and David with her.

We come and have a taste of Jesus and skip back to our ghettos glowing over so little, having held an eye dropper under the waterfall of the River of Life. All the while, Christ would give us all. We have settled for fast food, the cholesterol of which corrupts the very arteries of our souls. We settle for shriveled parsimony, microwaved hot, served on placid platitude; when Christ has given a most laboriously prepared meal of everlasting love and kindness. He has given us himself and would that we feed upon him only, always and everywhere.

It is the rich man who cries out such prayers:

⁵ “But I am poor and needy;
hasten to me, Oh God!
You are my help and my deliverer;
O YHWH, do not delay!”

15. A prophet from among you, like me from among your brothers YHWH, your God, will raise up for you — to him you will listen.

16. As all things that you asked of YHWH your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when it was said, “Let me not hear again the voice of YHWH my God or see this great fire or else I will die.”

17. So YHWH said to me, “They are right in what they have spoken.

18. I will raise up a prophet for them from among their brothers like you. And I will give my words in his mouth and he will speak to them everything that I command him.

19. The man will be who does not listen to my words that this prophet will speak in my name I myself will require it from him.

20. Surely the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I did not command him to speak or which he said in the name of another god, this prophet will die.

21. And when you say in your heart, ‘How will we know the word that YHWH did not speak?’

22. — when the prophet would speak in the name of YHWH and the word does not come to pass or this word does not come true, then YHWH did not speak it. The prophet spoke it in presumption. Do not be afraid of him[1].”

__________________________

[1] The third person masculine pronominal suffix can be either referring to “he” the false prophet or “it” the word spoken by the false prophet.

Deuteronomy 17:14-20, regarding Israel’s future king is one that falls in a constitutional section of Deuteronomy (16:18-18:22). This is a fresh translation of the passage.

Nielsen’s Translation and Notes

14 When you come to the land that YHWH your God is giving to you and you take possession of it and dwell in it and you say, “Let me put a king over me as all the nations that surround me.

15 You may indeed place a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. You will place one from among your brothers over you as king, you will not empower to give over you a foriegn man who is not himself your brother.

16. Only he must not acquire many horses for himself nor cause the people the people to retun to Egypt in order to acquire many horses since YHWH said to you, “You will never[1] retun in this way again.

17. And he must not acquire many women for himself else his heart turn away and silver and gold he must not acquire for himself exceedingly.

18. And when he sits upon the throne and he will write for himself a copy of this Law in a missive[2] from before the face of the Levitical priests.

19. So the Law[3] will be with him and he will read in it all the days of his life so that he will be accustomed to fear YHWH his God in order to keep all the words of this Law and these statutes, in order to do them,

20. in order that his heart not be lifted up above his brothers, and in order that he not turn from the commandment - to the right or to the left - so that he might prolong the days of his kingdom, he and his sons in the midst of Israel.

—————————

[1] Lit “not again” is here used in context with ‘eod at the end of the phrase which brings out this emphatic coloring.

[2] see BDB ‘al II.1.f. The use of ‘al here denotes the norm or standard in conjunction with safer which is an instructional document or missive.

[3] vehaytah has a feminine singular ending. “it will be with him” referrs to the Torah. “So the Law will be with him” instructive as a king.

Preface

A poem I jotted down today during a break between sessions on a staff retreat. I have been studying Deuteronomy for a sermon series I am preaching at an area church and was overwhelmed at the manifold ways in which my own heart breaks the first commandment to have no other gods before the LORD. I was amazed at oft quoted verses in 2 Chronicles, “If my people, who are called by my name, will turn to me … I will heal their land…”. The problem with preaching that as a call to repentance is that it glosses over the fact that Israel, the original audience, never turned to God and yet salvation from God is bigger than they imagined. Often God takes us into desert places not to punish us but to reveal more of himself to us. Then we become complacent because of the great blessing of his presence and the process starts over again. Ezekiel 8 teaches us that God is one who goes into exile with his people, into Babylon. While Babylon has historically been the symbol of apostasy, it is not so here. It is the desert place of discipline where God reveals himself to his people even in the context of great suffering. If that is where Jesus is, then that is where I want to be. I don’t want to be like those Ezekiel rebukes who remain smug at home in Jerusalem, failing to recognize that the Glory of the LORD had left the temple and gone into Babylon with His people whom He disciplined.

Thank you for silence
a most rare and precious jewel
that fills the room with angst and awe.
A subtle gray light growing hot white.

As it illumines, my heart falls faint,
lunging, longing that the bulb would fuse
and in the darkness still and noisy
might I, in my sin, bemuse
its hiddenness and stealth.

But oh God! would you drag me out to Babylon,
for I, your son, am want to turn.
Burst these bonds of religion-steel cast
that bind my heart in pious farce.

At least in Babylon, hands now free to embrace
you, my Lord - to yourself exile me.
My many gods crushed and hubris rent
from these hands that formed countless idols,
hewn from the quarries of Old Man bent
deep in deviance and divorce.

But you, O Lord! have renewed.
You have become my last and lasting word
that redefines and reforms - even suffering.

Oh that Babylon would be mine
if more of you would be had there.
In humiliation might I find the Humble One.

In suffering the dross is dropped.
In the desert place the God of Abraham
would in my heart and soul and mind
be finally unstopped.

For the human heart trusts goods at hand but mistrusts those not at hand, as the saying goes: “Having gold makes men bold; being poor makes them sour.” But trust in wealth cannot rule in the heart at the same time with faith and love. And this he calls here “to forget the Lord God.” For you do not remember the Lord if you merely mouth His name, but if you cling to Him and love Him with constant faith in your heart.

Martin Luther. Luther’s Works, Vol. 9 : Lectures on Deuteronomy, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1960), 71.