Parallels

Anyone who has taken my Psalms class can hopefully tell you what parallelism is. Parallelism is the poetic device that groups lines for comparison or contrast, or so that a second line expands on an idea set forth in the first. Parallelism functions not only line to line but stanza to stanza, even psalm to psalm. An example of the last is found in Psalms 11 and 12.

In Psalm 11, David seems to be arguing with someone. His statement of trust in verse 1 is followed immediately with the hanging question, “How can you say of my soul?” Someone is counseling David to flee to his mountain because the wicked have bent their bows and are taking shots at the righteous. The person ominously concludes, “What can the righteous do?”

David answers, “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.” What can the righteous do? Nothing. Because they don’t have to. God is on his throne testing “the children of man . . . his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” David concludes that God will bring judgment on the wicked, but “the upright shall behold his face.”

The point seems clear: don’t talk to me about running away. God is my protector.

But in the very next psalm, David cries out, “Save, O Lord, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.” Everyone lies to his neighbor and speaks from a double heart. Furthermore, they are arrogant, proclaiming they will prevail as if there is no God to judge them. David trusts the Lord to preserve the poor, but his final portrait of life is grim: “On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the children of man.”

In neither psalm does David waiver from his trust in God. But doesn’t David accuse someone of quaking in fear of the wicked in 11, while he seems to do so himself in 12? The problem isn’t the expression of fear and concern about the wicked. The problem is the direction of that expression.

David puts his finger on this in Psalm 11. “How can you say to my soul?” David has no power to save the person who is speaking to him. Worse, David, like any other man, is capable of running away from the things God has called him to do. Receiving this person’s fear could easily excite his own.

In psalm 12, David shows us the person to whom such fears should be addressed. “Save, O Lord.” David pours out his fear of the wicked to the one person who can do something about it: his God.

There’s a lesson here. In pouring our hearts out to God in the intimacy of prayer, we find personal comfort. He is faithful to speak to us as he spoke to David, “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan, I will now rise . . . I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”

In our interaction with others, we often share our fears over the state of the world in the name of “venting” but incite more fear and indignation as a result. This is the last thing we need. Now of all times, we need to use all of our strength and gifting to remind each other that “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.”

Although we, too, see vileness exalted all around us, we can trust, like David before us, that “the upright shall behold his face.”