PART 1: Discovering the voice of King David in the Psalms
When I was young but already taking myself seriously (some said, too seriously) as a Christian and a student of Bible it rarely occurred to me to read the Psalms. I associated Psalms either with daily devotional booklets (which seemed to provide the whole biblical repertoire of elderly souls) or with the Lessons of the Day that are assigned by an ancient lectionary for reading in church each Sunday. The sounds that the Psalms made were majestic, and no doubt the message was edifying; but even after memorizing one or more of them under instruction from my Sunday School teacher, I did not see their relevance to my life.
But then, somewhere in late middle age (that is, long ago), I made a discovery. Behind every word of every Psalm there is an individual voice suffering some crisis or confusion in his own life or overwhe lmed by crisis in the public life and calling out for understanding and help to God.
Autobiographical elements in the Psalms of David
Not all of the Psalms are by David, but it is the Psalms of David that interest me here. In illustration of my point about the autobiographical character of the Psalms, here is Psalm 3, subtitled "A Psalm of David when he fled from Absalom."
LORD, how they have increased who trouble me!
Man are they who rise up against me.
Many are they who say of me,
"There is no help for him in God" …..
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have set themselves against me all around. (Ps 3:1-2, 6)
This theme of harassment by enemies, of extreme physical isolation and of even more extreme emotional desolation, runs all through the story of David from beginning to end. It was already in play before David became King. In 1Samuel chaps 16-31 we find the story of King Saul's jealousy of David, leading to embitterment and irrational behaviour.
In these chapters, David is described as sleeplessly preoccupied with proving his innocence of the wild charges thrown at him by Saul. We learn how all of this — Saul's irrationality and David's effort's to triumph over this irrationality — ruins the lives of all around them and jeopardizes the security of the embattled tribes who need leadership. David sends out one message after another proposing reconciliation with Saul, only to encounter betrayal, humiliation and rejection.
In the end, David reluctantly accepts that there is nothing to be gained by reasoning with Saul. Henceforth, he will give all his attention to preserving his own life, avoiding Saul until Saul passes from the scene in consequence of his own mad behaviour.
Eventually (the details are in 2Samuel), David accomplishes what all of Israel's past champions have failed to do. Through vigilant exercise of force where it is needed and patient diplomacy where it is not, he achieves unity of the Twelve Tribes. Still, until the very end of his life, he faces ambush by enemies within his own court and family. For his realistic attention to the evil designs of the enemies of his kingdom, he is like Winston Churchill, probably the last major figure in our public life who used the word evil without apology, standing for the same cause nearly thirty centuries later.
David's righteous anger
Like Churchill, David is denounced as a warmonger. Also like Churchill, David occasionally slips into expression of exaggerated contempt for the enemies of the cause of civilization and into brutal imagining about how the enemy will be made to suffer. Precious souls around us this day are still trying to discredit the cause that Churchill served and the ways and means with which he served it in order to pour contempt upon the very notion of civilization. Likewise, for many more centuries, the enemies of Israel have gloated as they point to David's all-too-human failings as they are described in this supposedly Holy Book.
Arise, O LORD;
Save me, O my God!
For You have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone;
You have broken the teeth of the ungodly.
Salvation belongs to the LORD.
Your blessing is upon Your people…. (Ps 3:6-8)
…..
Let all those who hate Zion
Be put to shame and turned back.
Let them be as the grass on the housetops,
Which withers before it grows up,
With which the reaper does not fill his hand,
Nor he who binds sheaves, his arms.
Neither let those who pass by them say,
"The blessing of the Lord be upon you;
We bless you in the name of the Lord!" (Ps 129:5-8)
C.S. Lewis begins his brilliant commentary on the Psalms with frank examination of this embarrassing theme:
In some of the Psalms the spirit of hatred … is like the heat from a furnace mouth. In others the same spirit ceases to be frightful only by becoming (to a modern mind) almost comic in its naivety….Perhaps the worst [example] of the first is in 109. The poet prays that an ungodly man may rule over his enemy and that "Satan" may stand at his right hand (v.5.) …. May his days be few, may his job be given to someone else (7) When he is dead, may his orphans be beggars (9). May he look in vain for anyone in the world to pity him (11). Let God always remember against him the sins of his parents (13)… [In Psalm 137] a blessing is pronounced on anyone who will snatch up a Babylonian baby and beat its brains out against the pavement (9). And we get the refinement of malice in 69, 23, "Let their table be made a snare to take themselves withal; and let the things that should have been for their wealth be unto them an occasion of failing."
…. The thought of the "righteous Lord" — who surely must hate such doings as much as they do, who surely therefore must (but how terribly He delays!) "judge" or avenge, is always there, if only in the background. (C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (originally published 1958) Chapter III: "The Cursings," pp. 20ff. (The whole text can be found at
http://books.google.ca/books?id=ngmCh73UJ-UC&printsec=frontcover&dq=C.S.+Lewis+Psalms)
Lewis's explanation of the purpose of these passages convinces me even more today than it did a half-century ago: "The ferocious parts of the Psalms," he says, "serve as reminder that there is in the world such a thing as wickedness and that it (if not its perpetrators) is hateful to God.
Forgiveness and contrition
The message of the Psalms is utterly lost if we lose sight of the fact that God directs his salvation towards human characters who cannot by themselves rid themselves of the worst side of human nature. A conspicuous example is David the King. If my reader will examine his own career objectively, he will probably conclude that for a ll his faults, he has surely never committed a sin so gross as to steal the wife of his most devoted solider, conspire to have that man extinguished by putting him into a hopeless position in the front line, and in so doing bring his own armies to the verge of defeat — thereby putting at risk of extinction everything that God had done for him and through him for his Nation. (2Sam 11 and 12) A theologically-sound Christian understands that God forgives and God sets things right and that any person may be reconciled to God and become an instrument for His purposes. The cause to which an unworthy man is attached by God remains God's cause. All the difference between that cause and the cause of its enemies is not closed by reason of discovery that the cause of God is served by sinners.
There is no point denying that Israeli soldiers — charged with maintaining peace in a setting of constant abuse and provocation, constantly under the eye of global journalists and photographers standing ready to catch a child heroically throwing a stone at a soldier, hopeful to catch the very moment when a ricocheting bullet ends an "innocent" young life – have been guilty of outrage. Young David felt such pressures and confesses them contritely in the memoirs which come to us in the form of Psalms: he could, he admits, behave like "a beast" (Ps 73:22)
Contrition, in our Judeo-Christian tradition, is a godly virtue. It can be easily faked — a fact that gives our enemies openings for judgment. But the ability to experience and express contrition, we say, is essential to achieving a right relation with God.
The Israelis have been waiting since the first day of their national existence, and indeed for many decades previous, for the first hint from the other side of contrition for its beastly deeds. In the zero-sum thinking of Islam, there is no place for the thought of contrition: the enemy is always and completely evil; we are always and completely virtuous.
It is profoundly significant of the difference between the causes of Israel, on the one hand, and of anti-Israel on the other side, that only in the first camp does contrition ever get expressed. Contrition occurs only where there is recognition of the universal effects of evil, and this thought occurs only where the reality of judgment is engaged. Israelis and Christian friends of Israel are everlastingly seeking outlet for contrition through heroic programs of goodwill towards Arab Palestinians. Huge amounts of money and time go into programs to improve the health and living conditions of the Palestinians Arabs. Not a nickel (to my knowledge) has ever been expended in parallel programs of goodwill from the other side.
PART 2: Vilification of the People of Israel Today and Its Effect upon Christian Zionists
O Lord my God, if I have done this:
If there is iniquity in my hands,
If I have repaid evil to him who was at peace with me,
Or have plundered my enemy without cause,
Let the enemy pursue me and overtake me;
Yes, let him trample my life to the earth,
And lay my honor in the dust….
Arise, O Lord, in Your anger;
Lift Yourself up because of the rage of my enemies;
Rise up for me to the judgment You have commanded!
Arise, O Lord, Do not let man prevail;
Let the nations be judged in Your sight. (Psalm 7:3-9)
In the Psalms attributed to David, we find him sometimes overborne by fear of the primal, irrational mind and behaviour of his enemies. In total bafflement at their animosity, he brings his helplessness to God, and asks:
Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,
"Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us." (Ps 2:1-3)
It is as though all the powers on earth have found unity in condemnation of Israel. They are infatuated with the notion that all human unhappiness is somehow the fault of Israel.
As we persist in defense of Israel, Christian Zionists today are increasingly worn down by the irrationality of the anti-Zionist diatribe — just as David was three thousand years ago.
Anti-Zionism and the Islamists
Long ago, I came to the conclusion that we will all share in the outcome of Israel's ongoing struggle for her life. This insight sustains me in my commitment to defend Zion. But there is a price that we Christian Zionists have to pay for this privilege.
Well-intentioned souls discover every day that "there is nothing more humiliating that to have to defend the truth." (Alain Finkelkraut, as quoted by Ruth R. Wisse, If I Am Not For Myself (Toronto: Macmillan, 1992, p. xi). What makes it worse is the observation that it is the Islamic extremists, those who are most zealous for the liquidation of the Jews, who are increasingly providing the music that is sung by the anti-Zionist choir. Under the cover of "Resistance to Zionism," our leaders of opinion, including leaders of our major organized churches, have begun to draw upon the fathomless well of anti-Judaism that is central to the message of Islam.
As terrorism is increasingly rewarded and praised throughout the Muslim world, elite commentators in our part of the world are becoming more ingenious and more disingenuous in discovering justification for the terrorist mentality as an "understandable" response to the "disproportionate" military force and oppression exercised by the Israelis. Romanticizing of the youthful stone-throwers of the intifada has been a staple of liberal commentary for thirty years now.
Muslim governments as well as imams everywhere are becoming more brazen every day in their evocation of the traditional Islamic language of contempt for Jews that is inseparable from the message of Muhammad as it is found in the Qur'an and the hadithah. [A convenient source for traditional material as well as contemporary material is Tarek Fatah, The Jew is Not My Enemy (Toronto: McClelland Steary/Signal, 2010), especially Chapter Two: "Bird Flu and other Jewish Conspiracies," pp. 18-37.)] In this tradition Jews are not truly human, they are literally "the sons of pigs and monkeys." The influence of the Jews is invisible and always malign and it is everywhere. The Jews are behind everything that has gone wrong for Islam. Indeed, they are behind everything that is suffered by mankind.
Sayyid Qutb, the revered founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, is quoted triumphantly by every Islamist teacher and agitator in every corner of the world — including here in Canada. Qutb explained that Arabs lost the war of 1948 because they failed to apply the teaching of the Qur'an regarding the Jews." God had promised punishment for the Jews for their evil-doing nature," Says Tarek Fatah, paraphrasing Qutb. "God had inflicted such punishment twice in destroying their Temples of Jerusalem and had promised punishment to the Jews throughout their history. Even Hitler, according to Qutb, was sent by Allah to rule over the Jews." [Fateh, p.30.]
Qutb's Jew-hatred was so intense and so irrational that he managed to persuade himself and his followers that the fateful division between Sunni and Shia, which opened in up in the middle of the Seventh Century and has continued to this day without the least mitigation, was planted at the heart of Islam by a Jew, by an advisor to the first Caliph, evidently an early Yemeni convert, who, on no evidence at all, Qutb insists was a Jew. This perfidious Jew incited the people to kill this first Caliph (Uthman); in consequence, all subsequent caliphs have fallen one after another into error. On this thinking, all Shia Muslims are tools of Jewish purpose. This is typical of the Muslim approach to historical reality. Evidence is never necessary. Spiritual insight is everything.
Tarek Fatah, a Pakistan – born scholar who teaches the history of Islam in a Canadian University, and has been under threat of assassination for his "treason" to Islam, writes:
[This theory] epitomizes the Islamist tradition of passing the buck to the kuffar. No matter how badly we Muslims bungle our diplomacy, there is always a Jew to blame for the mess we create. One could argue that if a Jew can be blamed for the murder of Caliph Uthman, then a Jew can also be blamed for the Darfur genocide or the Muslim-on-Muslim slaughters in Pakistan…. Today, the anti-Semitism spread by Islamists like Qutb and their Saudi sponsors has mutated into hatred of the Shias, since it is hard to find a Jew in all of Pakistan.
Inspired by Qutb, Egyptian cleric Hazem Shuman proclaimed on al-Rahma TV, October 31, 2009:
Your turn has come at last, you offspring of apes and pigs, you most accursed creatures, created by Allah, you people who have hated the Prophet again and again…. I have a message for every Jew on the face of the earth. The army of Muhammad will return, O offspring of apes and pigs, the day of vengeance is nearing. O Most accursed creatures created by Allah, those who swore before the Prophet Muhammad to die, are returning.
And Cairo's Al Nas TV has proclaimed (December 29, 2009):
The Jews are our enemies. Allah will annihilate them at our hands. This is something we know for certain. We know this for certain — not because I say so, but because Allah said so.
Anti-Zionism and deconstructionism in the circle of elite opinion.
Incredibly, at the same time as these voices of hatred become bolder in expression of their primal hatred they are being embraced, under the banner of Anti-Zionism, by academics, leaders of opinion, leaders of major institutions, indigenous to our own western civilization. The paranoia that is inseparable from Islam is infecting the thinking of leaders of our elite opinion who imagine that they are secularists but who are, for the most part, neo-pagans or nihilists.
Our elites are responsive to anti-Zionism because it fits so well the deconstructionist vision of life and its purposes that now reigns in most branches of scholarship. Here at home, our media, taking their cues from the academic world, romanticize the masked youths who recreate for our television postures associated with the intifada's heroes as they set ablaze police cars and smash the windows of downtown stores, striking blows against capitalism by stealing merchandise. Opinion elites who own the right of response in our media ask us to believe that these deeds are done in defense of Canadian students' birthright to the lowest tuition costs in the western world. Other thugs, operating under the banner of justice for First Nations, close down railway lines, taking away the rights of hundreds of average people who simply want to visit relatives at Christmas. Again, opinion elites explain these nihilistic acts as deeds done in service to the cause of restoration of the edenic life lived by First Nations before it was all poisoned by schools and Christian philanthropy. Anti-Zionism is one face of this bourgeoning assault upon all forms of legitimacy.
The assault upon "legitimacy"
The fundamental explanation for the preference of our opinion elites for the cause of the enemies of Israel is that the cause of cause of Israel is legitimate. Israel was created in a moment of time in 1947 by solemn decision of the newly-created "parliament of nations," the UN. The decision was defended in language of justice and supported by arguments which drew upon the whole record of history. This all occurred as intellectuals were pre-occupied with the task of re-instating the rule of law and respect for legitimacy following up on the defeat of Nazism.
At the time when the United Nations took the decision for Partition of the Palestine Mandate (November 29, 1947), making possible the creation of "a Jewish State and an Arab State," respect for legitimacy was its zenith among intellectuals. Today, however, Israel's argument for its right of self-defense offends the de-constructionist spirits who reign in the universities and in the editorial rooms.
But most discouraging of all for Zionists is the contemptuous treatment that Israel receives from the majority of Nations that make up the United Nations. Israel has for years been singled out for denunciation and vilification. UN Commissions have been invented for the exclusive purpose of keeping Israel's alleged sins under constant judgment and denunciation . While the United Nations Security Council and the UN General Assembly turn their collective face year after year away from abuse of human rights, denial of religious freedom, denial of freedom of expression and freedom of the press by such consistent violators as China, Iran, Cuba and the entire deck of Muslim countries, an anti-Israel majority, can always be enlisted for yet another Declaration of indictment against Israel.
Just recently, the United Nations General Assembly, by an overwhelming vote, with only the United States, Israel, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama voting NAY, delivered a brutal blow to Israel's esteem by granting to the enemies of Israel who pretend to be the "Government of Palestine" recognition as a State as its prize for its refusal over the entire period that the Oslo Accords have been in effect (1993 to the present) to admit that Israel exists. A state of Palestine has already been recognized by 132 countries, and the Palestinians have 80 embassies and 40 representative offices around the world, according to the Palestinian Foreign Ministry. Palestinians lobbied hard for Western support for the vote on recognition, winning over key European countries including France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland, as well as Japan and New Zealand. Germany and Britain were among the many Western nations that abstained — acts of sheer cowardice.
In light of all of this, it is not an easy thing for Zionists, including Christian Zionists, to respond to the impression that has been created in the minds of most people living in the West that Israel is the leading violator of the rules that are supposed to be governing mankind.
Dealing with fear of defeat
Defending Israel is not for the faint of heart. Our fear of how this will all turn out follows from the evident hopelessness of making a defense of legitimacy in a world governed by deconstructionist spirits and entranced by the dream of crushing the State of Israel. The challenge for us is to retain our sanity in face of the ever-enlarging victories of the insane.
The very best equipment for this task I find is in the Psalms of David. This essay began with examples of David's despair and consternation in the face of precisely this irrational hatred of Israel — hatred that seems to have won over the entire world. But this is not the note on which David ends as I hope to show in my next essay.
PART 3: How David Found Peace
There is something uncanny, something prescient and marvelously prophetic, about the way in which the Psalms of David catch the present-day reality of harassment and isolation of David's nation.
In Psalm 3, traditionally identified as "A Psalm of David when he fled from Absalom," David finds himself surrounded, abandoned by all decent people and given up as good as dead:
LORD, how they have increased who trouble me!
Many are they who rise up against me.
Many are they who say of me,
"There is no help for him in God"
…..
But You, O Lord, are a shield for me,
My glory and the One who lifts up my head.
I cried to the LORD with my voice,
And He heard me from His holy hill. Selah.
I lay down and slept;
I awoke for the LORD sustained me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have set themselves against me all around. (Ps 3:1-6)
With isolation goes fear. David, surrounded by implacable enemies, confesses the hopelessness of his situation. He recalls the deadly animosity of King Saul in the days of his youth and reflects on the fact that what made the menace from Saul impossible to neutralize was that Saul was unappeasable and closed to reason. Abruptly, Saul would stop pretending willingness to negotiate and resort to a campaign of dirty tricks. In the Psalms, David recalls having been repeatedly protected by God against Saul's plots.
This theme of harassment by enemies, extreme physical isolation, and even more extreme emotional desolation, runs all through the story of David from beginning to end. It was already in play before David became King. In 1Samuel Chaps 16-31, we find the story of King Saul's jealousy of David, leading to embitterment and irrational behaviour. In these chapters, David is described as sleeplessly preoccupied with proving his innocence of the wild charges thrown at him by Saul. We learn how all of this — Saul's irrationality and David's effort's to defend himself against irrationality — ruined the lives of all around them and jeopardized the security of the embattled tribes who need the King's leadership.
David sends out one message after another proposing re conciliation with Saul, only to encounter betrayal, humiliation and rejection. In the incident in the cave (1Samuel 24), David proved beyond doubt his willingness to risk his own life for the sake of showing mercy to Saul. In the end,David reluctantly accepts that there is nothing to be gained by reasoning with Saul. The limits of possibility of discussion and patient argument are passed. Appeasement is not an option. Henceforth, he would give all his attention to preserving his own life, avoiding Saul until Saul passed from the scene in consequence of his own mad behaviour.
David in his contest with Saul, like Israel today in its contest against its current enemies, repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to risk all in pursuit of honorable appeasement (1Sam 18-19.)
David pleads for reason against the false charge that he has persecuted others:
O Lord my God, if I have done this:
If there is iniquity in my hands,
If I have repaid evil to him who was at peace with me,
Or have plundered my enemy without cause,
Let the enemy pursue me and overtake me;
Yes, let him trample my life to the earth,
And lay my honor in the dust …
Arise, O Lord,
Do not let man prevail;
Let the nations be judged in Your sight. (Ps 7:3-9)
Eventually (the details are in 2Samuel), David accomplishes what all of Israel 's past champions had failed to do. Through vigilant exercise of force where it is need and patient diplomacy where it is not, he achieves unity of the Twelve Tribes. Still, until the very end of his life, he faces ambush by enemies within his own court and family. For his realistic attention to the evil designs of the enemies of his kingdom, he resembles Winston Churchill, probably the last major figure in our public life who used the language of good and evil without apology, standing for the same cause nearly thirty centuries later. David's assurance that God is on his side inspires him to fight, not to acquiesce.
* * *
From the General Assembly of the United Nations and from all of its Commissions pour out daily resolutions in denunciation of Israel . If we were to take at full value the description of Israel that emerges from these documents, we would simply have to accept that Israel is in a class all by itself as irredeemably evil while its enemies are pristine victims. Such denunciations are issued by UN bodies over which preside such angels of light as Syria, Libya, Sudan, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, etc. All the while, the UN ignores these and other major violators of human rights. Arab and Muslim nations escape condemnation by acting as bloc, dominating the Council on Human Rights and other Commissions on which Israel is not allowed to sit. There are UN Resolutions of denunciation and programs to strip Israel of her right to self-defense and prosperity through Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. In our part of the world, universities, labor unions and churches use these denunciations as basis for actions intended to isolate Israel as a pariah and to render Israel incapable of defending herself.
* * *
How does one answer irrationality? The truth is that a sane person should not try. David retains in his memory the deadly animosity of Saul — utterly irrational, unappeasable and unpredictable — and he recalls that his victory over the menace of Saul was not accomplished through dialogue with his insane adversary. It was won through steadfastness and patience while waiting for rescue by God.
David knows that his appointment has been from God — that in the end God will not permit him to be overthrown and humiliated. Furthermore, he knows that the hopes of all humanity for peace are bound up in his own continuance. Through his line mankind will be redeemed from all dark forces. But all of this requires that he survive. And to survive he must acknowledge the absolutely evil intent of those that are seeking to harm him.
Contemplating the propaganda victories that his enemies win against him every day, David does not respond in kind. He does not get down on all fours with his enemy for the purpose of manufacturing conspiracy theories that might sustain his cause. He wins peace of mind with the thought that God is still Ruler of the universe:
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure (Ps 2:4-5)
The God whom David serves is the Lord of History. God tells David to tell us
"Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion"
I will declare the decree:
The LORD has said to Me,
"You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession. (Ps 2:6-8)
Zion will be standing at the end and the princes of the world will then acknowledge what God will have accomplished through the efforts of His People.
* * *
Samson Raphael Hirsch in his Commentary on the Psalms describes David as "at peace and harmony with all things … But as regards his people, David's wishes, hopes and endeavors know no bounds… [He seems to say] 'I know of no further ambitions for myself… But as for Israel, let it hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever…. In my eyes, my people had an eternal claim to progress, growth and prosperity, and so it was both with Israel and on behalf of Israel that I ceaselessly hoped in the Lord.'" [S.R. Hirsch, Psalms (Originally published 1882. English edition: Feldheim, 1960, pp. 397-399 (on Psalm 131.]
The peace that David achieved at the end stood upon his confidence that his own eternal life was safe in the hands of God: "Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou dost hold my right hand. Thou dost guide me with thy counsel, and afterward thou wilt receive me to glory. (Ps 73:23-24)
We know that the cause of Israel is just, and we know equally well that it does no depend upon us for its credibility or its defense. We have to be vigilant against the temptation to triumphalism when we see Israel winning some transitory victory in the court of public opinion, and equally vigilant against despair when we see that she is vilified with impunity. In the latter case, we a re tempted to vilify in return, scouring about for human failings among the Palestinian Arab leaders. David was realistic about the failings of his enemies, but he understood that it was God's responsibility, not his, to add up the moral accounts. Eventually, he lost his instinct for revenge, and in doing so he lost his desire for vindication.
In old age, David's physical helplessness increased and his ability to control his emotional state virtually disappeared (1Kings 1.) Evidently, he remained to the end subject to agonies of fear and despair. But along the way he taught himself to accept that he could not of his own resources save Israel. He never achieved the cheap peace that shallow "spiritual counselors" tell us is achievable if only we will think clearly and pray fiercely. In fact, David confesses that the problems he has created for his own peace of mind follow from his obsession with matters too great for him — matters that are in God's hands and into which He has never permitted David or us to penetrate. To find peace, he confesses:
LORD, my heart is not haughty,
Nor my eyes lofty.
Neither do I concern myself with great matters,
Nor with things too profound for me.
Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul,
Like a weaned child with his mother,
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD
From this time forth and forever. (Ps 131: 1-3)
The peace that David achieved in the end stood upon his confidence that his own eternal life was safe in the hands of God. "Nevertheless I am continually with thee; thou dost hold my right hand. Thou dost guide me with they counsel, and afterward thou wilt receive me to glory. (Ps 73: 23-24)
Dr. Paul Merkley is a CIJR Academic Fellow, and a retired Professor of History at Carleton University. He is the author of the Politics of Christian Zionism (Frank Cass, 1998), Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001) and American Presidents, Religion and Israel (Praeger, 2004.)
