Psalms for Turbulent Times - Psalm 75: The Cup

Psalm 75[1]
¹   God, our hearts spill over with praise to you!
     We overflow with thanks, for your name is the “Near One.”
     All we want to talk about is your wonderful works!
     And we hear your reply:
²   “When the time is ripe I will arise,
     and I will judge the world with perfect righteousness.
³   Though I have set the earth firmly on its pillars,
     I will shake it until it totters and everyone’s hearts will tremble.”
Pause in his presence

⁴    God warns the proud, “Stop your arrogant boasting!”
      And he warns the wicked,
      “Don’t think for a moment you can resist me!
⁵     Why would you speak with such stubborn pride?
      Don’t you dare raise your fist against me!”
^6–7 This I know:
      the favour that brings promotion and power
      doesn’t come from anywhere on earth,
      for no one exalts a person but God, the true judge of all.
      He alone determines where favour rests.
      He anoints one for greatness
      and brings another down to his knees.
⁸     A foaming cup filled with judgment mixed with fury
      is in the hands of the Lord Jehovah,
      full to the brim and ready to run over.
      He filled it up for the wicked and they will drink it
      down to the very last drop!
⁹     But I will proclaim the victory of the God of Jacob.
       My melodies of praise will make him known.
¹⁰   My praises will break the powers of wickedness
      while the righteous will be promoted and become powerful!

A time of trembling, a time of judgment, a time of lifting up the lowly and of breaking the power of wickedness. This is the theme of this psalm, painted figuratively with the powerful image of the foaming cup of God's judgment. 

As the pandemic continues to wreak its havoc in lives lost (nearly 43,000 recorded deaths to Covid-19 as of June 23^rd) we are also more than aware of the untold wounding of lives in multitudinous ways (losses of jobs, homes, relationships, networks, education, future prospects). We begin to emerge from the lockdown into a new future aware that it feels like humanity has been shaken and many hearts tremble (vs3). And as it has now been anounced that pubs and other places of fellowship and social gathering will now begin to be opened in the early summer, this psalm's powerful image of the foaming cup gives us something to reflect upon.


I confess to becoming more aware of a sense of trembling within me in these days. It certainly feels like the quiet certainties of the beginning of this year have all been cast aside. We focus so much on death rates at present – whether of pandemic victims or of victims of violence or racist actions – that we have all become aware of our own mortality. There is an inner trembling of the heart, certainly.

Amidst the trembling of the verse 3, there is yet great certainty. The world falls into two clear camps. Those who depend upon God, often the most needy and the most fragile; and those who do not depend upon God, often those who boast of their own self-sufficiency. The self-sufficient may also be in places of power, but they also may be powerless – the psalm does not make this clear. The only way it describes those who are not God-followers is by the way they boast (vs4) of their own power and the way, in their stubborn pride, they believe they can fight God’s purposes (vs5).

These are the ones who will taste God’s righteous judgment – figuratively described as being forced to drink to the last drop a foaming cup of wrath, strong and undiluted (vs8).

The image of the cup full to overflowing is one the psalmist has already explored earlier in the psalter. This is a contrasting cup. It is a cup of blessing which is full to overflowing (‘my cup overflows’ Ps23.5) at the banquet table of the Lord. This is served to the trusting follower of the Good Shepherd at a table laid out before all his or her enemies.

These two cups – the cup of judgment and the cup of blessing – come together in the cup of wine drunk and offered by Jesus to his disciples on the night before he died. Christians believe that in that prophetic act – an act supreme of all the prophetic acts of the Scriptures – Jesus demonstrated how he had taken into himself the judgment of the wicked and the blessing of the just. He drew the poison of the cup of wrath. He took the undeserved suffering of the lowly and the weak as well as the justified suffering of the hard-hearted enemy. And he took it all upon the cross – where wrath and mercy meet.

For many years I suspected that God’s judgement was about wrath. Somewhere in the darkened recesses of my mind and heart, where I did not want to go, I created a box, a category, a dark and foggy and unclear designation, that this was what God was probably, in the end, about. Anger. Rage. Wrath. But as I have thought about my own trembling heart (and the uncertainty of this time) and the life of Jesus lifting that cup which he shared with his friends, I again seek to understand a mystery.

Psalm 75 is not presenting quick solutions for evil acts. But it is presenting a picture of divine justice which we understand, through the Gospel lens, Jesus has already borne. Christ drunk to the dregs the wrath which mundane sin and outrageous evil generates. The cup of Psalm 75 has been emptied on the cross. The cup of Psalm 23 – along with the table groaning with food and the friends of God gathered around it in joyful celebration – is the cup I believe we are being offered.

As we emerge from lockdown, may the table of fellowship become something we honour and love with more energy than before. And may we look to offer the cup of Psalm 23 to others. An may our hearts ‘spill over with praise’ to God (vs1). For the cup of Psalm 75 has been drunk by Jesus for us all.

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[1] The Passion Translation (TPT) The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017 by BroadStreet Publishing® Group, LLC