Everything inspired?

Originally posted on October 01, 2007 – by Andre Piet

Question: Is a text like Psalm 137:9 also inspired by God?
“… happy shall he be who will seize your little ones and dash them against the rock.”

Answer:
In Ecclesiastes 3 we read that there is also a time to hate. As well as a time to kill, a time to cast stones, a time to let things perish, and so on. We should not try to smooth that over. We now live in “the administration of grace” (Ephesians 3:2, KJV), in which such things are foreign, and we can hardly imagine how in another context such (re)actions will indeed be fitting. Now God is silent in His love — but soon He will speak in His indignation (cf. Eccl. 3:7 and Ps. 2:5).
Everything in its time.

Another point that must also be taken into consideration: giving vent to emotions is something quite different from a call to put them into action. Paul is furious with the circumcision-preachers among the Galatians and he writes: “Would that those who are raising you to insurrection struck (castrate) themselves off!” (Gal. 5:12). Such verbal violence is not a call to violence, but rather a substitute for it. Also consider the harsh insults (“brood of vipers,” “whitewashed tombs”) of Jesus in Matthew 23. As ‘civilized,’ decent Westerners, we may consider such language ‘politically incorrect,’ but the Bible (written by passionate Middle Easterners!) is certainly not squeamish about it.

Furthermore, we should keep in mind that it was not the people who were inspired when they said these things. The Scriptures are inspired (2 Tim. 3:16). Because even such statements have been included in the Scriptures, they are sanctified. Just as an ordinary and ugly stone became a holy stone once it was given a place in God’s temple (cf. Ps. 118:22), so too a text becomes holy from the moment it is given a place by God in “the sacred Scriptures.”

Inspired means: breathed in. Adam had the breath of life breathed into him and “thus became a living soul.” All the words (even the raw, rough words) in Scripture are part of the one, living (and therefore inspired) whole.

see part II – Psalm 137:9: rock or Sela?

Delen: