Psalm 18 presents a very violent, punishing God. This reminded me of our discussion on whether the God in these psalms was a universal god, or the god of a nation. This psalm, like many others, is about God destroying the enemies of the speaker. This one goes a bit further in detailing how God made the speaker (presumably David) strong and swift and a good fighter, and then helped him defend his enemies with his own God-given strength and the might of God behind him. This God is very specific to one person in this psalm. This is the first psalm (that I remember at least) where the enemies try to call out to God, and it says that "He answered them not." So it makes a distinction between the speaker, who had gone on about how he did everything according to what God said and never strayed, and his enemies, who apparently have no hope. A psalm like that is powerful in convincing people to kill their enemies. If it's God's will, he won't help them. There's no reason to feel remorse or guilt for killing people; they weren't worthy to live.
One line stuck out to me as odd. Beginning on line 48, the psalm states, "The God who grants vengeance to me...frees me from my enemies,...from a man of violence You save me." I thought this odd because of the extremely violent nature of God in this psalm. That line gives "man of violence" a bad connotation. Violence is wrong. Yet, the speaker goes into detail about how he crushes his enemies, "smashed them, they could not rise," "demolished them." I'd say that's pretty violent. And this is all with God's help, because the speaker needed saving. But, of course, the idea is that violence is ok because the speaker was going to be killed otherwise.
I think the incorporation of aspects from other religions is interesting. It seems like the writers took images or titles that they liked, that applied well and brought power to their monotheistic religion. Another reason for this, however, may be to alleviate the peoples of those religions, perhaps make them more likely to follow this religion.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the line "from a man of violence you save me" seems odd and even contradictory in the context of the Psalm. On first thought it doesn't make sense for someone to believe that God should cause harm against enemies because the enemies are in fact violent (this is the contradictory part). But, I actually think many people feel the same way as the narrator of the Psalm (David?). For example, in a war situation, people of the countries in the war may want their soldiers to protect them but also to fight and kill the enemy.
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