Psalms Of Faith And Doubt In Ancient Times
40 How often they rebelled against him in the desert
and grieved him in the wasteland!
41 Again and again they put God to the test;
they vexed the Holy One of Israel.
42 They did not remember his power—
the day he redeemed them from the oppressor,
43 the day he displayed his miraculous signs in Egypt,
his wonders in the region of Zoan.
Recall that Zoan was another name for the place where the Israelites were when the Passover took place and they were brought out of Egypt and freed from their captivity. Maybe the Psalmist chose this word because it is so similar to Zion, the place to which God finally brought them. The journey from Zoan to Zion was filled with miracles; many different displays of God’s power over nature: earth, air, fire, water, animals and people are all subject to him.
And yet the chosen people of Israel rejected him, again and again.
44 He turned their rivers to blood;
they could not drink from their streams.
This was the first plague in Egypt (Exodus 7:14-24). Although it was matched by the Egyptian magicians (Exodus 7:22), that didn’t make it any less destructive; the people still had to dig into the sand to find water to drink. Pharaoh hardened his heart against God, but what about the Israelites themselves?
45 He sent swarms of flies that devoured them,
and frogs that devastated them.
This passage covers the second, third and fourth plagues (frogs, gnats and flies, Exodus 7:25-8:32). Pharaoh’s magicians could also summon frogs (Exodus 8:7), but they were as flea-bitten as anyone else after that (Exodus 8:18). Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, again and again. But what about the Israelites themselves?
46 He gave their crops to the grasshopper,
their produce to the locust. (NIV)
The Psalmist does not worry about getting the plagues in their exact order; not does he try to mention every single one. The eighth plague (Exodus 10:1-20) was the first time that Pharaoh began to show signs of giving in. He started negotiating for some of the Israelites to go and worship out in the wilderness—just Moses and Aaron and the men; the women and children would not be permitted to go. By this time, Pharaoh had been hardening his heart so much and so often, that God was now hardening Pharaoh’s heart, too (Exodus 10:20).
And what about the Israelites? The Psalmist is showing them that their own hearts have become hard, just like Pharaoh’s. But God is “the Holy One of Israel,” the only way any of us has to heaven. He is the only hope for all of mankind. We must turn away from our own hardened hearts and turn to him, trusting in him even when it doesn’t seem like the fun thing or the pleasant thing or the easy thing to do. But God himself is our holiness; without him, we have only despair.
But what he has given us through his Son is that very same holiness. It is ours because in Jesus, we have becomes the holiness and the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is the one who has brought us from the Zoan of our sins and despair to the Zion of his holiness and our eternal life. All through Jesus our Savior.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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