“I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you? You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. Of old you spoke in a vision to your godly one, and said: ‘I have granted help to one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from the people. I have found David, my servant; with my holy oil I have anointed him, so that my hand shall be established with him; my arm also shall strengthen him. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me. Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.’ But now you have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust. Lord, where is your steadfast love of old, which by your faithfulness you swore to David?” (v1,8-9,19-21,36-39,49,52)
This Psalm follows a fairly familiar pattern:
– praising God for who He is, what He has done, and for His promises
– detailing the wonder of God’s character and His works
– remembering God’s promises
– questioning the seeming lapse of those promises
– questioning why God has turned away
– closing with a blessing/praise regardless of the missing blessings
This Psalm contains an apparent contradiction in v34-39: God promises not to break His covenant, but then He appears to do exactly that. Is the author correct, did God break His promise(s)?
Scripture indicates it is not possible for God to lie or break His promises: “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num 23:19) “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.” (Deu 7:9-10)
So God is not capable of lying, and He will keep His covenants with those who love Him. The breach of covenant happens on our side when people choose to “hate” Him, so “He will repay them to their face.” What does it mean for God to repay a hater? Can God “hate” someone back?
Typically “hate” means a strong aversion or disgust, to wish ill upon someone, but is that the only definition? We know that God loves everybody, even when they are still sinners, so how can He possibly wish ill will on someone? Another definition of hate is “the opposite of love”, which can be true when we wish ill of someone (or wish them dead), but that definition certainly doesn’t fit God – He is love and cannot be in contradiction to Himself. God hates sin, no argument there, but He loves people, so how can He also hate them at the same time?
The one definition of hatred that I feel fits God’s is this: there’s a long list of synonyms for hate including “be repelled by, recoil from, shrink from”. If God’s form of hating someone was to back away or turn His face away from them, wouldn’t that make more sense in context of scripture? “But now you have cast off and rejected; How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?” (v38a,46a-b) To keep someone at arm’s length or withhold His presence sounds much more like the God scripture describes.
If we use the synonyms “be repelled by” and “recoil from”, they are consistent with the behavior of God and other followers of God in the Bible. Multiple times in scripture there are references to someone (not always God) turning their face away, or hiding their face (eg. 2 Chr 6:42, Psa 27:9, Eze 7:22) – it is symbolic of disapproving of what that person said/did (their behavior), a form of distancing oneself from their actions, without thinking ill of the person. Of course there are also documented examples of sinful hatred of wishing someone dead or ill will upon them, but none of those examples were about God.
Father God, thank you that we can trust Your word and Your promises. Thank you that we can rest well in the truth that You would not wish ill of anyone, even if You have turned Your face away. Father please help us all to understand that You don’t shun us because You want to, it’s because we shunned You first. Father thank you for persevering along side us, even when we don’t acknowledge or obey You, and thank you that we are already forgiven before we even accept Your forgiveness. Amen.
~ Conqueror in Training