46 How long, O LORD? Will you hide yourself forever?
How long will your wrath burn like fire?
47 Remember how fleeting is my life.
For what futility you have created all men!
48 What man can live and not see death,
or save himself from the power of the grave? Selah
Solomon died after forty years on the throne (1 Kings 11:42). His son Rehoboam reigned seventeen years (1 Kings 14:21). Rehoboam’s son Abijah reigned only for three (1 Kings 15:2). It’s easy to see why Ethan the Psalmist wondered about the prophecy about David’s throne lasting forever. Human life is so fleeting; so short. Even kings aren’t immune to dying.
Remember that the first readers of the Psalms were Old Testament Jews who were looking forward to the coming of the Messiah. This passage stops the reader and asks: How could the Lord’s anointed, the Messiah, be an ordinary King of Israel, when even David and Solomon died, and their descendants were every bit as subject to the grave as they were? David’s throne empties, and empties, and empties again, because the grave asks, and asks, and keeps on asking.
49 O Lord, where is your former great love,
which in your faithfulness you swore to David?
50 Remember, Lord, how your servant has been mocked,
how I bear in my heart the taunts of all the nations,
51 the taunts with which your enemies have mocked, O LORD,
with which they have mocked every step of your anointed one. (NIV)
These final verses of the Psalm would be unsatisfying if they weren’t so clear and if they weren’t such an open, honest prayer. The grave asks and asks, and so we have to ask and ask again: Lord, where is your love?
Prophetically, the Psalmist might have thought his poem ended badly, with the King of Israel mocked and taunted by enemies. But we see with the eyes of faith that the true King of Israel, Jesus Christ, was abused for our sake. His every step was mocked, and he bore the taunts of the nations on the cross, to save the nations and even those who mocked him. He came to rescue us from the debt of our sin, and to save us from the punishment that would have endured forever. He suffered to show us his great love and faithfulness.
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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