Devotional Short Note to Psalm 131: This Psalm is the picture below the way David saw it and the way I understand it from David. Mothers will fully understand this psalm. Father too that is why David understood it. David was a father himself. There is something about weaning a child that has a beauty in itself. The peacefulness of the baby, the happiness, the satisfaction, the comfort, the reliance, the innocence, the cuteness, every human being is attracted by it. Ever seen a busy shopping-mall and a sleeping baby in father or mother’s baby bag strapped in front or on the back? Everyone is running to and fro and shouting, but the baby is in dreamland. With a smile. Mother or father is near, stomach is full, nothing else matters. This psalm is about this situation. Except it is not a baby, but David’s soul is the baby. The soul needs feeding and hope from the Word of God in His promises is the milk that feeds his soul. So the soul is at peace and content and satisfied. There is no ambitious opportunism. There is no calculative politics involved. There is no wheeling and dealing. No discriminatory cutting out of this one or that one. None of it.

“Lord, my heart is not arrogant/lifted up/exalted/high nor mine eyes *growing loose [*the Arabic has it as ‘treacherously’ in the Dictionary but one should prefer the Akkadian ramû meaning ‘grow loose/loosen’]. His eyes are not negligent, idle, slack. He is careful what he is reading or looking at. He is not negligently watching anything dished up to him by the editorial room of the broadcasting corporation of his time. There is not an ‘anything goes’ approach. He is selective, careful, disciplined. His eyes will not affect his soul with loose ideas, ideas that conflict with the Word of God. He will not let popular culture, dished up in beautiful Hollywood garments, play loose games with his innermost thoughts and emotions.

“And not do I walk in what is greatness”. The two sentences are parked the same way as one can see in the block around the “and not” (131:1c and d).

“And not grow loose my eyes” (131:1c)

“And not do I walk in what is greatness” (131:1d).

What the world defines as “great” is not my aim at all Lord.

“and in what is falling [literal] from me” (131:1e). Dictionaries are written by people who stand with their feet in confessions or ideology or some petty ideas. They will define only as far as they can see and if they are living a licentious lifestyle, the Holy Spirit will not show them much. Religion is logic but not all logic. It is logic and the Spirit of God and logic succumbs to the Spirit’s will. Always. It cannot be falling in a pit because it is “from me”. Not “falling under my feet” for the same reason. Not “falling prostrate” because it is “from me”. There is a case of desertion “falling away”. To go over to the other side. David says he is not going to sell his vote for friendship and lose his dignity with God. He refused to be bought or sold. If ideas or programs “fall away from him” he will not walk after it to follow it. They go by themselves minus David.

How did David succeed in attaining this individual eccentric unpopular position in a culture overwhelmed society dominating everyone’s perceptions?

“If not, I have stilled and quieted my soul” (131:2a). Here is the picture in the drawing of the baby and the mother. His soul is that baby. He stilled it and quieted it like mothers do. The soul says follow, go, why not, I want it! But the screaming voice of the soul’s desires are stilled and quieted by David. Of course David is a Christ filled person with the Holy Spirit assisting. It is the only way.

Choosing the right is already a victory for God against Satan in this-world conflict, even if it is a heathen doing it.

“Like a weaned child that is upon his mother” (131:2b)

“Like a weaned child upon me, my soul” (131:2c).

When the religion of Israel became corrupt, it incorporated Astarte (female) as goddess on every mounting in the form of green tree worship. One of the motifs used was the cow and calf motif that can be found in numerous examples from ivories stolen by Sargon II in 720 BCE from Samaria and Hamath at Nimrud and also later in a Greek vase of 520 BCE but in Israel at the Negev site on a hill at Kuntillet cAjrud. There is a preoccupation with the mother and child idea in the Ancient Near East that is drawn into religion, albeit apostate religion.

David is not borrowing from outside. He talks with experience. Therefore he asked Israel to hope in the Lord.  

“Hope O Israel, unto the Lord” (131:3a)

“From this time and unto eternity” (131:3b).

Hope is the milk with which David feeds his soul and the soul is quiet by the innermost thought that God will keep His promises as outlined in the Word. That strengthened David’s hope from now unto eternity come. 

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