Psalm 111:9 – “What Do I Know of Holy?”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of this verse:

⁹He has sent redemption to His people;

   He has commanded His covenant to [the] ages;

  Holy and fearsome [is] His name.

For some time I have pondering this last line, “Holy and fearsome [is] His name.”

What does it really mean? Can I actually say those words with understanding, or are they a religious cliché, easily spoken utterly without the slightest idea what the words mean?

What really is holiness? I think most people just understand it as something like righteousness or purity, but it means way more than that. Moses was told to remove his sandals, “…for the ground whereon thou standest is holy ground.” The ground wasn’t righteous – clearly, in the case of inanimate objects it must mean something more like “dedicated.” And we can see it means more than “righteous” or “pure” in passages like Hosea 11:9-11 where the Lord is condemning the sins of the tribe of Ephraim, then says, “I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor turn and utterly destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the Holy One among you. I will not come in wrath … I will settle them in their homes.” Given our cliché understanding of holiness, we would expect the Lord to in fact utterly destroy Ephraim. But He will not. And why not? Because He’s holy.

I hope if anyone has stumbled across this you can see what I mean. I wonder if we have the slightest clue what “holy” means.

And that’s bad. Even as I type, the Seraphim are around the Throne singing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!” They understand exactly what it means and it moves them to endless praise. Yet here I am groping around in a dense fog really not seeing clearly what it means at all. As I ponder, I’m wondering if this isn’t a satanic thing – that he has so duped and deceived and confused the human race that we not only don’t see God in His holiness, we don’t even know what it means! He’s taken this quality of God that moves angels to praise and stolen its very meaning from our hearts.

I keep thinking of a contemporary song, “What Do I Know of Holy?” Its chorus goes:

What do I know of You
who spoke me into motion?
Where have I even stood
but the shore along Your ocean?
Are You fire?
Are You fury?
Are You sacred?
Are You beautiful?
What do I know?
What do I know of Holy?

“What do I know of holy?”

I’m not so sure anyone knows.

I read all kinds of things written and see everyone else struggling to exactly put their finger on it.

This has to be cosmically tragic.

Such an obviously important attribute of our God … and we don’t even know what it means!

I want to.

I want to know Him.

We need Jesus to give us salve for our eyes, “that we might recover ourselves from the snare of the devil” and “see the truth.”

When we think of holiness, I think our misunderstanding of it moves us to be Pharisees. It means to us scrupulously keeping the rules. It means not being defiled. It means separation from everything in this world. Yet that isn’t what it means. Jesus is holiness and the Pharisees were His most bitter enemies. Jesus is the perfect picture of holiness in a man. Yet still, what do I know? Do I even understand it in Him?

What do I know of holy?

I’m going to keep pondering and praying. If the Lord opens my eyes to see something, I’ll come back and write it down.