19A desire of ones fearing Him He
will make and the cry of them (pl.) He will hear and He will deliver them
(pl.).
As is often the case, my fairly literal translation is so
wooden, it almost loses the meaning. The NIV does a nice job:
“He fulfills the desires of those
who fear Him; He hears their cry and saves them.”
Once again, this verse is, at first glance, very familiar,
even cliché. I’ve had to very deliberately just slow down and ponder on it to
make sure my soul doesn’t receive the Lord’s cordial as a stone. And as usual, what a cordial!
First I need to record a couple of exegetical observations:
It is interesting to me to note that the words “desire” and “cry” are actually
singular, even though the substantives are plural. He fulfills the desire
(sing.) of them (plural) that fear Him; He hears their (plural) cry (sing.) and
saves them.” The NIV translates it “desires” (plural), even though the Hebrew
is most definitely singular. That admirably smooths out the English but, since
I can look at the Hebrew, I know it is singular and wonder why. I also notice
that the LXX accurately kept the sing/pl. in its translation of the Hebrew into
Greek. Many translations do maintain the singular, but no one seems to wonder
why. I guess I could just blow it off as perhaps a “collective singular,” but
it bothers me that the sing/pl peculiarity occurs with the word “cry” also.
Interestingly too, back in verse 16, the same thing
happened. There it was said of the Lord, “”He satisfies the desire (sing.) of
every living thing. In the wonderful Psalm 37:4, it says, “Delight thyself in
the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” In that
case, the “desires” is, in fact, plural but then that isn’t the same Hebrew
word for “desire” as in our verses 16 & 19. In 37:4 the English is
correctly rendering the plurality of that particular noun.
I wonder why the difference? In all the commentaries I
consulted, no one noted this or pondered on it. It might just be a peculiarity
of the Hebrew language. I guess I’ll just have to let it lie. If the Lord wants
me to understand something specific He meant here, He of course is more than
able. For now I’ll just have to let it lie.
Then I want to comment (quickly) on this “fear” thing. The
words “fear of the Lord” always seem to light up commentators and everyone
stumbles around trying to assure us it doesn’t mean “to be afraid of God,” as
if it might be suggesting we should all go hide in a closet or something and
cringe in fear of what He might do next. People will quickly point out that in
the very next line, He speaks of “them that love Him,” to emphasize that ours
is a love relationship with Him. When they’re done, our relationship with Him is
presented to be a mixture of “reverential awe” and love.
Actually I don’t disagree at all with that conclusion. I
would suggest it is the only defensible position given the full range of
Biblical understanding. What I’d like to insert is my explanation of why it’s
such a problem for us to begin with. Why does “the fear of the Lord” cause us
so much consternation? Why does it require so much explanation to assure everyone
that somehow love gets included?
I would suggest the problem is that we, as Western culture,
have totally forgotten what a king was to the ancient peoples – and still may
be in some parts of the world. In the ancient world, the king’s authority was absolute.
Simply at his word you could live or die. People had considerable reason to “fear”
the king. Now, down through human history some of those kings were actually “good”
kings and were dearly loved by their people. But can we all pause and just
realize that in their world, even if they loved him, they could never forget
that He held their very life, their family, their possessions in his hand. Even
if he was a good king and even if they loved him deeply, he still bore absolute
authority over their life.
In their culture, you could ask someone who is their king by
asking, “Who is your fear?” God was even called “The Fear of Isaac” (Gen. 31:53).
My point is that, in that culture, that isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a fact.
The king holds my life in his hand. No matter how good he is, I am awed at him.
And particularly if I love him, I don’t mind calling him “the one I fear.” To
say, “He is my king,” automatically includes the fact that I fear his power. It
in no way precludes the possibility that he is a very good king and I and all
his subjects love him deeply.
The Magna Carta was signed by King John of England in 1215
and ever since then, we have lived in a world where it is understood the king
does not have total authority. The very point of the Magna Carta was that
a king rules at the consent of the governed. The Latin saying had always been, “Rex
Lex,” which means “The King is Law.” Magna
Carta thinking led to Samuel Rutherford declaring in 1644, “Lex Rex” – “The Law
is King!” All of this led to our American Revolution and underlies our entire
form of democracy. The very fact that our government consists of three branches
– the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial – was intended as a “balance of
power.” Even back in England, Magna Carta thinking led to the weakening of the
royal power until they got to today where their government is actually run by
their Parliament and the royal family are more figureheads.
The bottom-line of all this history is that we have totally
lost all sense of even what a king was. This, I would suggest, explains why we
can’t seem to handle the Bible’s expressions of kingship which were simply the
givens of life in the ancient world. In their world, of course you fear the
king – then you might also love him if he is a good king – but you never
would lose that sense of fear, because that is the nature of his rule. And so …….
when it comes to God, of course we fear Him. He literally holds our life
in His hand. But we also know Him as the very best of kings. He is the King of
kings. He opens His hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing. To
know Him is to love Him.
So when I get done, “the fear of the Lord” still means both
to hold Him in “reverential awe” and to love Him. I say all of the above simply
to offer a reason why we should all stop stumbling around thinking we have to
go bonkers with explanations every time we run across the phrase “the fear of
the Lord.” We just need to read it with the understanding of the culture it was
written in.
I think, in the interest of something approaching brevity, I’ll
stop here and consider the verse itself in another post.
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