PSALM 25 [1]

ABCs of the Covenant Way

Aleph 1 To You, O Yahweh, I lift up my soul. [2]	2 O my God, in You Beth I trust, [3]
Do not let me be ashamed;	Do not let my enemies exult over me.
Gimel 3 Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed;	Those who deal treacherously without cause will be ashamed.
Daleth 4 Make me know Your ways, [4] [5] O Yahweh;	Teach me Your paths (˒ōraḥ). [6]
He 5 Lead me in Your truth	Vav and teach me,
For You are the God of my salvation;	For You I wait all the day.
Zayin 6 Remember, O Yahweh, Your compassion and Your lovingkindnesses,	For they have been from of old. [7]
Heth 7 Do not remember the sins of my youth [8]	or my transgressions;
According to Your lovingkindness remember me,	For Your goodness’ sake, O Yahweh. [9]
Teth 8 Good and upright is Yahweh;	Therefore He instructs sinners in the way.
Yodh 9 He leads the humble [10] in justice,	And He teaches the humble His way. [11]
Kaph 10 All the paths (˒ōraḥ)of Yahweh are lovingkindness [12] and truth [13]	To those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.
Lamedh 11 For Your name’s sake, O Yahweh,	Pardon my iniquity,[14] for it is great.
Mem 12 Who is the man who fears Yahweh? [15]	He will instruct him in the way he should choose.
Nun 13 His soul will abide in prosperity,	And his descendants will inherit the land.
Samekh 14 The secret of Yahweh is for those who fear Him, [16]	And He will make them know His covenant. [17]
Ayin 15 My eyes are continually toward Yahweh,	For He will pluck my feet out of the net.
Pe 16 Turn to me and be gracious [18] to me,	For I am lonely and afflicted.
Tsadhe 17 The troubles of my heart are enlarged;	Bring me out of my distresses.
18 Look upon my affliction and my trouble,	And forgive (lit. lift) all my sins.
Resh 19 Look upon my enemies, for they are many,	And they hate me with violent hatred.
Sin 20 Guard my soul and deliver me;	Do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in You.
Tav 21 Let integrity and uprightness preserve me,	For I wait for You.
22 Redeem Israel, O God,	Out of all his troubles. [19]

[1] Psalm 25 is an alphabetic acrostic meaning that each line begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There are other alphabetic acrostic Psalms and passages in the Bible: Psalm 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119; 145, Prov.31:10-31; Lamentations 3; Nahum 1. Careful study of the following acrostics will give the ABCs of biblical child rearing: Psalm 25; 34; 37; 111-112; 119; Prov.31:10-31 (cf. Proverbs 2).

[2] see Psalms 86:4; 143:8.

[3] Trust is found 181x in the OT; 50 of which are in the Psalms.

[4] This was also the prayer of Moses, “Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight...” (Exodus 33:13).

[5] This Psalm mentions “way” (derek) four times and “path” (˒ōraḥ) two times.

It is helpful to think of covenant as the way of life. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, did not choose God’s way and they were therefore driven from the Garden of Eden because of sin, “So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way (derek) to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24). The Scriptures deal primarily with the way back to God’s blessed presence (a.k.a. the Covenant of Grace; cf. Genesis 18:19; Psalm 1:1,6; 2:12; 25:4,8,9,12; etc.).

“When Jesus contrasts the two ways, the two doors and the two destinations in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7:13–14), he is basically repeating the concept of ˒ōraḥ and derek, as taught in Hebrew wisdom literature” (Victor Hamilton, in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, p.71). In fact, Jesus is “the way” (John 14:6-7) and Christianity is “The Way” (Acts 9:2; 16:17; 18:25,26; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22 ).

[6] Paths (˒ōraḥ) appears fifty-eight times in the Old Testament, forty-five of them are limited to three books: Prov, nineteen times; Ps, fifteen times; Job, eleven times. (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament p.71).

[7] Note the comparison between “old” and “youth” in this Psalm.

[8] In a Psalm directed toward children emphasizing them to learn and remember it is striking that an appeal is made to Yahweh to forget!

[9] “In April 1685, a commission, sitting at Wigtown, condemned Margaret Maclachlan or M’Lauchlision, an elderly widow of sixty, and Margaret Wilson, a girl of eighteen, who refused to abjure the Apologetical Declaration. They were sentenced to be “tied to stakes fixed within the flood-mark in the Water of Blednoch, near Wigtown, where the sea flows at high water, there to be drowned.” The sentence was carried out, probably not with the sanction of the Government, on May 11, 1685.

Twice a day up the deep channel of the sluggish Blednoch, fringed by steep and sloping mud-banks, sweeps the yellow tide of the sea. Stakes were set in the ooze of the tideway, to which the two women were bound. The elder woman, Margaret Maclachlan, was set lower down the river, that the younger sufferer might see her struggles, and her course finished, before she herself was reached by the rising sea. Pitying her young, the executioners tried to save Margaret Wilson. As the water swirled about her body, she was drown to the edge of the bank, and offered her life, if she would say, “God save the king,” and take the test. She was ready to say, “May God save the king, if He will,” for she desired, she said, the salvation of all men: but she would not forswear her faith, or take the test. So she was once more secured to the stake, and left to her fate. With her fresh young voice, as the salt waves curled above her breast and all but touched her lips, she sang the 25^th Psalm:

“My sins and faults of young

Do Thou, O Lord, forget;

After Thy mercies, think on me,

And for Thy goodness great”;

and so continued singing till her voice was choked in the rising tide” (Rowland Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life pp.277-278).

[10] “humble/afflicted” (עָנָו [ānāw]) is most frequently found in the wisdom literature. It occurs thirteen times in the Psalms (9:13, 19; 10:12, 17; 22:27; 25:9 [twice]; 34:3; 37:11; 69:33; 76:10; 147:6; 149:4), three times in Proverbs (3:34; 14:27; 16:14) and once in Job (24:4). Interestingly, the same word is used of Moses, “Now the man Moses was very humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3). Cleon Rogers suggest that Moses was not the most humble man on earth, but the most miserable/afflicted. The context of Numbers 12 also supports this translation (see Cleon Rogers, “Moses: Meek Or Miserable?” in JETS Vol.29 257-263).

Affliction/humbling/`anah was the contrition all God’s people were to express on the Day of Atonement for their transgression, sin and iniquity (Leviticus 16:29,31; Isaiah 58:3,5,10). It was to the afflicted/humble/`anav/poor that Jesus proclaimed Jubilee,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor [The Hebrew of Isaiah 61:1 is`anav; LXX: πτωχος]. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed, To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” …And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-19,21 with Isaiah 58:6; 61:1-2).

The poor/humble to whom Jesus came with the Gospel are those who, unlike the scribes and Pharisees, humble themselves before God and His Word (cf. Isaiah 66:2). The poor/humble are those who look to God and His covenant promises for deliverance from sin and its consequences (Psalm 72:1-14,17-19; Isaiah 11:1-5). They may include orphans and widows (cf. Psalm 10; 146:9); Moses (Numbers 12:3); King David (Psalm 32; 34:4-6; 40:17; 51; 70:5; 86:1); Isaiah (Isaiah 6:5); John the Baptizer (Matthew 3:24); Roman centurions (Matthew 8:5-13); wealthy sinners like tax collectors or bankrupt sinners like prostitutes (Luke 7:18-50; 19:1-10). By God’s grace the humble recognize God alone can redeem (Psalm 25:22).

[11] “Fear, lest, by forgetting what you are by nature, you also forget the need that you have of continual pardon, support, and supplies from the Spirit of grace, and so grow proud of your own abilities, or of what you have received from God, and fall into condemnation ... Fear, and that will make you little in your own eyes, keep you humble, put you upon crying to God for protection, and upon lying at his footstool for mercy; that will also make you have low thoughts of your own parts, your own doings and cause you to prefer your brother before yourself. And so you will walk in humiliation and be continually under the teachings of God, and under His conduct in your way, God will teach the humble. "The meek will He guide in judgment, and the meek will He teach His way [Psalm 25:9]” (John Bunyan [1628-1688], The Fear of God).

[12] The Hebrew word for “lovingkindness”, Ḥesed, occurs some 245 times in the OT, of which slightly more than half (127) are found in the Psalter (The Anchor Bible Dictionary).

[13] The phrase “lovingkindness and truth” is one that occurs some 35x in the OT 24 of which are found in the Psalms (Gen.24:27; 32:10; 47:29; Exod. 34:6,7; 2 Sam. 2:6; 1 Ki. 3:6; Ps. 25:10; 26:3; 36:5; 40:10,11; 57:3,10; 61:7; 69:13; 85:10; 86:15; 88:11; 89:1,2,14,24,33; 92:2; 98:3; 100:5; 108:4; 115:1; 117:2; 138:2; Prov. 16:6; 20:28; Isa.16:5; Hos.4:1; cf. Psalm 119:59-60).

[14] Transgression, sin and iniquity were dealt with on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:21) and all three terms are found in Psalm 25 (vv.7,11,18). Note the other passages where these three terms occur together: Exodus 34:7; Job 13:23; 14:16,17; 1 Kings 8:46-50 [context: bringing of the Ark of the Covenant into the newly built Temple {1 Kings 8:1-11}]; 32:1,2,5; 51:1-3; Daniel 9:24-27; Isaiah 43:24-28; 53:5,6,8,12; 59:12; Jeremiah 33:8; Ezekiel 18:20-22; 21:24; Micah 7:18-20.

The word “pardon” (Hebrew: סָלַח; LXX: ιλασκομαι) (v.11) may also have the sense of propitiation and the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:2,11, 13-15; cf. Exodus 25:17-22; Psalm 65:3; Romans 3:25).

[15] This kind of question is what Luis Alonso Schökel calls a wisdom question. Wisdom questions are put by the teacher “to his students to arouse their interest and provoke their collaboration. The professor puts the question, and shows that his teaching is the result of a search” (A Manuel of Hebrew Poetics p.151).

[16] The fear of Yahweh is a common theme in several acrostics: Psalm 25:12,14; 34:7,9,11; 111:5,10; 112:1; 145:19; Proverbs 31:30.

[17] “The Psalter is of all books of the Bible that book which gives expression to the experimental side of religion. In the law and the prophetic writings, it is God who speaks to his people; in the Psalter, we listen to the saints speaking to God. Hence the Psalter has been at all times that part of Scripture to which believers have most readily turned and upon which they have chiefly depended for the nourishment of the inner religious life of the heart. I say that part of Scripture and not merely that part of the Old Testament, for even taking the Old and the New Testament together the common experience of the people of God will bear us out in affirming that there is nothing in Holy Writ which in our most spiritual moments–when we feel ourselves nearest to God–so faithfully and naturally expresses what we think and feel in our hearts as these songs of the pious Israelites. Our Lord himself, who had a perfect religious experience and lived and walked with God in absolute adjustment of his thoughts and desires to the Father's mind and will; our Lord himself found his inner life portrayed in the Psalter and in some of the highest moments of his ministry borrowed from it the language in which his soul spoke to God, thus recognizing that a more perfect language for communion with God cannot be framed” (Geerhardus Vos, A Sermon on Psalm 25:14; Preached October 15, 1902 in the Chapel of Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey).

[18] The plea ḥonnēnı̂, “be gracious to me,” appears nineteen times in the Psalms. (TWOT 302). It is probably rooted in God’s statement to Moses, “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion on whom I will show compassion.” (Exodus 33:19) and the Aaronic benediction, “The LORD make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:25).

[19] Like Psalm 34, Psalm 25 ends in a manner that breaks the alphabetic acrostic. Both Psalms end with the Hebrew letter Pe. This break then spells the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and also forms a rare word for learn/teach (אָלַף [˒ālap]) when you take the first Hebrew letters of vv.1,11,22. This word is found in Job 33:33; 35:11.