If you’re like me, though you are loathe to admit it, you find Hebrew poetry less than satisfying. While sophisticates know better, most us like a poem to rhyme. Hebrew poetry does not when translated, nor even in the original, rhyme words. Instead it rhymes ideas. David, in Psalm 22 laments that “O my God, I cry in the daytime but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent” (verse 2). Twice David notes that he cries out to God, first in the day, and then at night. This is what passes for rhyming.
Rhyming, however, isn’t the be all and end all of good poetry. Good poetry, in any era, in any language, is replete with powerful images, just like this one, “But You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel” (verse 3). How’s that for an image, that God sits on a throne built not of ivory or gold, but of the praises of His people? It touched me this morning I believe, because I have seen this.
I’ve seen it when my precious wife and I take time morning and evening to open God’s Word, and then open our hearts before Him in prayer. I’ve seen it when we are sitting around the table with our boys trying to unpack the mysteries of the book of Revelation. I’ve seen it even in cyberspace as God’s people sing together from different homes, all while being called together to the true Mount Zion. I’ve seen it when we are blessed to gather together in an earthly building and our hosannas are raised.
Could it be though, not so much that I believe it because I see it, but that, by His grace, I see it because I believe it? When we come to God’s poetry our first inclination, because we are modernists at heart, is to turn it into prose, and so, we diminish it. That God is enthroned in the praises of His people becomes not something we are mesmerized by. Instead we turn it into, at best, “God likes it when we praise Him” and at worst, “We’re supposed to praise God.” When we take His poetry and diminish it we push Him farther away. When we enter into His poetry, we enter into Him. And that is ever and always a blessing too deep to be measured, too ethereal to be packaged, too powerful to be denied.
God sits enthroned on our praises. Or, to rhyme images, when we praise Him together, oil pours down on Aaron’s beard. We live in a wretched world, one that yet groans under the weight of sin. We have broken relationships. We have roots of bitterness choking out the fruit of the Spirit. We have distractions and burdens. But God in His grace, from time to time gives us glimpses beyond, tastes of eternity. Mark these moments well. Give thanks to the Giver of these good gifts. And give thanks to the gifts as well.