An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 114: Moral dilemmas, too many similes and things that sound like God (Psalms 91-95)

Psalms 91-95
Moral dilemmas, too many similes and things that sound like God.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.

For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Psalms 91
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”

Talk about mixed metaphors! This psalm depicts God as a protection against the troubles of the world, He is a fortress, a protective mother bird, and like a buckler, protecting from fowler’s snares, pestilence, arrows and terror. Each theme alone would have been quite effective but this psalm throws together so many it becomes a bit of a morass. The theme is a familiar one – put your faith in God and He will protect you in turn. There’s an unusual twist in tense at the end which seems to imply that the worshipper will also grant God protection, but it could be (and is more in tune with not only the rest of this psalm but most of the others) that the psalm changes to speaking as God to the worshipper, without flagging the shift in speaker as such.

Psalms 92
“O LORD, how great are thy works! And thy thoughts are very deep.”

This psalm is flagged as a psalm for the Sabbath, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unique about it that would make it, and not most of the other psalms, specific to a holy day of rest. It is largely a hymn of praise, and the quote sums it up, mixing in making joyful music, damning the unbeliever and asking God to anoint the psalmists horn with sacred oil, like the horn of a unicorn.

No, I don’t understand that part either.

Psalms 93
“Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting.”

A very short psalm that basically states that God is everlasting and clothed in majesty. There’s a nice line about floods rising and receding but there’s not a lot to say about this one.

Psalms 94
“O LORD God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself.”

This psalm is another of those that call out to God to show Himself so that the unbelievers and wicked people, who in this psalm are killing widows and orphans, will be punished. Once again people are acting without regard to law or morality because there is no immediate response from the God of the believers, therefore they consider Him to either not be a strong god, or to not exist at all. Given the general lack of vengeful interference by God in humanity’s affairs, this stance must be a difficult one for believers to reconcile, I think. There have been quite a few psalms on this topic and you can feel the agony and frustration from them; how can life be unfair in a world governed by an all-powerful and just God? You either have to tie yourself in theological knots attempting to justify God’s behaviour (as being mysterious to mortals and not for them to judge), or accept that God cannot be both all-powerful and all-benevolent, or decide that the universe is an uncaring place without a central guiding moral entity. And I can see that if faith sustains you through trouble, choosing either of the latter two is probably as bad as suffering whatever it is that is troubling you.

Psalms 95
“Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:”

Another hymn of praise, making a joyful noise etc., and this one does the same rhetorical trick as psalm 91, and I think I understand it a bit more now. Plainly the last few lines are as God speaking to the listener, saying “Don’t be like your forerfathers that ended up wandering the wilderness for forty years because they disobeyed me”. And the lines prior to that end with “Today if ye will hear his voice”, so I wonder if the style of the singing and the music changes at that point so to the congregation it is almost as if God is speaking through the temple musicians. With only the most sparse musical instructions remaining we have no way of knowing, of course, but imagine if suddenly there was a clash of cymbals and a blaring of trumpets, and the deeper choir voices take up the God part to the accompaniment of drums; the effect could be quite impressive.

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