Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 10: Hope-filled struggle

Psalm 10[1]

¹ Why, Lord, do you stand far off?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

² In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak,
    who are caught in the schemes he devises.
³ He boasts about the cravings of his heart;
    he blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord.
⁴ In his pride the wicked man does not seek him;
    in all his thoughts there is no room for God.
⁵ His ways are always prosperous;
    your laws are rejected by him;
    he sneers at all his enemies.
⁶ He says to himself, ‘Nothing will ever shake me.’
    He swears, ‘No one will ever do me harm.’

⁷ His mouth is full of lies and threats;
    trouble and evil are under his tongue.
⁸ He lies in wait near the villages;
    from ambush he murders the innocent.
His eyes watch in secret for his victims;
⁹     like a lion in cover he lies in wait.
He lies in wait to catch the helpless;
    he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.
¹⁰ His victims are crushed, they collapse;
    they fall under his strength.
¹¹ He says to himself, ‘God will never notice;
    he covers his face and never sees.’

¹² Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
    Do not forget the helpless.
¹³ Why does the wicked man revile God?
    Why does he say to himself,
    ‘He won’t call me to account’?
¹⁴ But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
    you consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
    you are the helper of the fatherless.
¹⁵ Break the arm of the wicked man;
    call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
    that would not otherwise be found out.

¹⁶ The Lord is King for ever and ever;
    the nations will perish from his land.
¹⁷ You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted;
    you encourage them, and you listen to their cry,
¹⁸ defending the fatherless and the oppressed,
    so that mere earthly mortals
    will never again strike terror.



Here, in this Tenth Psalm, is a dilemma of faith. Why do the powerful get away with injustice? Why does it seem as if God is hiding or standing far off when the vulnerable, the weak, the oppressed, the victims of crime, the fatherless and the orphan suffer? How can we claim to follow a God of justice and mercy and compassion and kindness when it is clear to all that there is so much injustice, merciless cruelty and hatred in this world? Is God impotent rather than omnipotent?



We remember from yesterday that this psalm is woven together with the ninth by virtue of its acrostic pattern – each verse beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The ninth psalm began with praise but soon dug deep into the biblical tenet that God is on the side of the afflicted ones – that there is an inherent bias to the weakest and neediest in the divine character. And the psalmist extolled God as a refuge to the afflicted.



Yet, here in Psalm 10 we hear a contrasting voice which speaks of God being far off, distant and hidden. Things remain unsettled for the poet. As he pours out his heart about the injustices he sees, he seems to lose focus on the eternal character of a God of justice. He appears, like many of us who feel overwhelmed by wrongs, to feed his anxieties with account after account of the relentless strength of the wrong-doers. It is a powerful list; they are:

·      Arrogant and persecute the poor with carefully devised schemes

·      Boastful, greedy and renounce God altogether

·      Proud and sure that there is no God anyway

·      Prosperous and confident that their winning ways will last through the generations

·      Full of cursing, deceit and oppression and have mischievous tongues

Then, all of a sudden, as if waking from a bad dream, the psalmist rediscovers focus. And the poem regains a sense of balance and purpose. ‘But you O God,’ says the psalmist with renewed confidence in verse 14, ‘do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits to you; you are the helper of the fatherless… You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more.’



While the powerful think God does not see, it takes a weak and oppressed and helpless person to know better. How? What is going on here that enables a crushed person to nonetheless put their trust in this hidden and far away God?



Great is the mystery of faith!



Somehow when we are at our lowest ebb, when we cry out maybe for days, weeks, months or even years about something that has afflicted us we reach a turning point.  Somehow in that faithful process of crying out because we just KNOW that this affliction is not right (either ours or, most likely, someone else’s), this crying out shifts something in us. We move from disorientation to reorientation, as the great bible scholar Walter Brueggemann.  It is in the descent to the depths that we discover the eternal policy of God’s justice which rises from the dead. ‘The psalmist’s confidence is ultimately founded on the conviction that God rules the world and that God will enact the royal policy of justice,’ writes J Clinton McCann Jr in his commentary on the Psalms.[2]



Jesus, for whom the psalms were like meat and drink, taught this same psalmic truth in his famous Sermon on the Mount. Because God rules the world, the meek will ultimately inherit the earth, he said (Matthew 5.5).



It is only human to be at a loss and to know helplessness. It is also only human to experience triumph even amidst a sense of Godforsakenness and to ‘discover the conviction and hope which impels humanity into the struggle to join God in God’s work in the world’.[3]


As huge efforts are being made tonight to build two super hospitals – a strong refuge for the afflicted – in London’s docklands and Birmingham’s NEC – may all those who engage in this struggle against Covid-19 also find renewed conviction and hope to act. It is fitting that these hospitals are being named after Florence Nightingale, whose Christian convictions inspired the dedicated and hope-filled actions of the nursing profession worldwide. Nurses and their medic colleagues at their best epitomise the opposite of arrogance, boastful, greedy, proud, scheming and wicked people. They are those who inspire sacrifice, service, faithful love and mercy. May God bless these huge places of refuge in the coming days - and may those who enter them for treatment discover they are cared for as individuals, not as statistics: one person at a time. 

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[1] New International Version - UK (NIVUK) Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

[2] The New Interpreters Bible Vol IV © Abingdon Press 1996 p719

[3] Ibid; p720