Psalm 149 — a song in bed & a sword in the hand

Prayer easily becomes rote and formulaic, even when we try to be spontaneous. I hate that about myself. I quickly and easily fall into ruts where I’m pretty much praying about the same things in almost exactly the same words day after day.

One of the best things about the Psalms is how they surprise me. So often, they jolt me out of my bored repetitions, jarring me by heading off in directions I would never, ever go. Not only do they knock me out of my ruts, they take me down altogether different roads than I’d ever have traveled in prayer.

Psalm 149 is one of the five Hallelujah psalms that end the Psalter. The fourth of the five, it starts without any surprise. Reading that initial Hallelujah (Hebrew: Praise the Lord!) after the previous three settled me in. The call for God’s people to sing to him while gathered together was no big stretch either. That’s pretty much what we do every Sunday in our worship gatherings, after all.

As the psalm continues, praise gets physical with dancing. OK, I think, things are getting interesting. I’m not used to dancing in worship in my staid cultural setting, where simply raising hands is to be super expressive. Honestly, the closest I’ve gotten to dancing during worship was when my kids were babies and I held them as we sang, swaying from side to side. Holding a baby was my excuse for my dance-like motion. The reality was I really did want to move my whole body in worship and not just my mouth, engaging body and soul together in offering myself to our Lord.

So, singing, dancing, music-making, the psalm is off to a great, worship-launching start. I’m good with all these, I think. But then Psalm 149 throws me a curveball.

Let his faithful people rejoice in this honor
    and sing for joy on their beds.

Sing in bed? Really?

When other psalmists speak of thinking of God through the watches of the night, I’m right there with them. There are times when I can’t sleep, when I turn my thoughts toward God and reach out to him in prayer. It’s a great opportunity to rest my anxieties, to search my soul, to lay myself bare before God. But singing? I’m not so sure my wife would appreciate it if I launched into an old hymn or a new chorus while she’s sleeping next to me.

But Psalm 149 jolts me out of myself and my set patterns and says, in effect, “Every corner of your life is a venue for praise. Even when you’re turning off your body and mind, turn them back on in worship.” Not only is my entire person engaged in worship through dance, not my entire day is engaged in worship through songs in the night.

Psalm 149 leads me into worship that invades every corner of my life, spilling from the sanctuary into my bedroom.

Then the psalm leads me immediately from the bedroom to the battlefield.

May the praise of God be in their mouths
    and a double-edged sword in their hands,
to inflict vengeance on the nations
    and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings with fetters,
    their nobles with shackles of iron,
to carry out the sentence written against them—
    this is the glory of all his faithful people.

Whoa! I was not prepared for this sudden and drastic shift. In fact, my initial reaction is to be deeply disturbed by it.

This sounds like ISIS. This sounds like the the same exact thing religious extremists would say as they call their followers to combine worship and terrorism. This sounds like the call to arms of the Crusades. What gives here? Psalm 149 feels like it is leading me into territory I’d rather run from.

So, I pause and catch my breath. And then I remember the ancient setting in which the psalm was written and I weigh the literal with the metaphorical.

Psalm 149 was written in a theocratic setting. The nation of Israel was a theocracy. God was her King and the human sitting on the throne was considered a “son of God,” not because he was divine but because he ruled as the Lord’s anointed, as the Lord’s regent. He ruled with the Lord’s authority, not his own; by God’s Spirit, not by his own power. At least that was how how it was supposed to be. And because of that, the nations who warred against Israel were warring against Israel’s God. So, battling back was an act of worship, blending patriotism with extending the kingdom of God.

This doesn’t work in our current setting at all. Our secular nations are to be loved and prayed for, but there must be no confusing them with the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God Jesus proclaimed is beyond politics, crossing borders as if they don’t exist, and making one people of God out of all the nations.

So, it’s essential to move from the literal to the metaphorical with this part of Psalm 149, because Jesus has changed the playing field. The New Testament doesn’t reject military language, but it uses it in a completely different way.

Instead of a literal double-edged sword, we are given Scripture as our even sharper blade:

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword,it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13)

The words of God in the Scriptures cut to the heart. They reveal what’s inside of us. It’s all laid bare and shown for what it really is. These God-words skewer the lies we’ve embraced. They make mincemeat of our culture’s opposition to God. They pop the over-inflated, ballooned egos of our celebrities and superstars. In other words, the Scriptures do everything the psalmist calls for us to do to the opponents of God but without violence.

We leave worship armed not with the weapons of violence, but with the Word of God. In an era where Christianity seems to be retreating, the psalmist reminds us that we armed with the best of weapons: One that doesn’t cut off heads, but opens up hearts with truth.

We are not empty handed. Instead, with hearts filled by worship that has taken over every corner of our lives, we invade every corner of the world with the truth of our God. This is the glory of all of his faithful people. Hallelujah!