Middle school is hell. Insecurity it at an all-time high. And kids are just cruel.
In seventh grade, one of my kids got in trouble for stabbing another kid with a pencil. It was wrong, but I get why he did it. He’d been excluded from playing soccer by the other boys during recess. He’d been taunted by the mean girls. He’d been rejected and isolated and humiliated.
On this particular day, his teacher had asked the students to read from a handout that had been given to them a few days before. But my son didn’t have his. So, he asked the kid behind him if he could look at his, but the kid turned away from him. He asked the kid to his right and got the same response. He asked the kid in front and got the same response. He asked the kid to his left and got the same response. Shamed and enraged, surrounded by haters, he lashed out at the kid on his left, stabbing him with a pencil.
It was a momentary break in the facade he’d maintained through all of the humiliation he’d endured and he was mortified by it.
When I heard about it, I felt a mix of conflicting emotions. I felt anger at the kids who’d shunned my son. I felt pity for him that he’d endured so much. I felt shame as the parent of the kid who’d stabbed another student with a pencil. I felt pride that my son had finally stood up for himself. I felt worry that he’d be kicked out of the school. I felt frustration with the teacher who let the situation unfold. I felt confusion about how to deal with him and the situation.
There are times when we’re surrounded and we feel like lashing out. It doesn’t just happen in the hell of middle school. It happens in churches and board rooms and neighborhoods and volleyball teams. It’s happened to the people of Israel numerous times.
Psalm 83 is a prayer from the middle. It’s not a good middle, since it’s surrounded by haters. An alliance has formed to bring down the people of God and erase them from history. As such, it’s a companion for all of us who find ourselves similarly in the bad middle.
O God, do not remain silent;
do not turn a deaf ear,
do not stand aloof, O God (Ps. 83:1).
It starts in silence, a silence it doesn’t want to remain in.
You and I are not the only ones who have struggled with the silence of God. There is nothing new in praying and not hearing a response. But this has not silenced the prayers of God’s people, because a sort of silence is expected when dealing with an invisible God.
There are plenty of people who are quick to impose their own internal voices on the silence. Uncomfortable with not hearing anything, they let their own feelings and imaginations infiltrate the silence. The angry Bright Eyes song “When the President Talks to God” asks,
When the President talks to God,
Does he ever think that maybe He’s not?
That that voice is just inside his head?
It’s easy for those who don’t know the silence conceals an awesome, quiet Presence to reject God and his Voice completely, as Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes does. But that would be as big a mistake as that of those who fill the silence with their own voices.
For the Scriptures are the evidence that the quiet Presence is also the God who speaks, who reveals himself.
When we read the first verse of Psalm 83, we run into silence. And Asaph the psalmist has had enough of it. It’s time for God to break the silence and speak, for God’s people are experiencing the silence as aloofness.
I don’t know how many times I’ve told my kids: Silence is the hardest things to interpret. We simply don’t know why nothing is being said. But here we come across common misinterpretations of silence: Maybe God can’t hear. Maybe God doesn’t care.
So, Asaph, says, “Listen! Care! Speak!” And then he gets to why this is so important.
See how your enemies growl,
how your foes rear their heads.
With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.
“Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation,
so that Israel’s name is remembered no more” (Ps. 83:2-4).
A beastly, growling alliance has been formed. A conspiracy has been hatched against God’s people. Their goal is complete obliteration. No one left. No memories even.
Even today, there are imperialistic movements which call for the complete erasing of other cultures, especially subcultures within them. This was a common practice in the ancient Near East. The Persians were a surprising exception, allowing the Jewish people to rebuild Jerusalem and Yahweh’s temple in it.
Although it felt like there was an alliance against him, there was no collusion among the kids who mistreated my son. It was opportunistic mischief. Once the first kid rebuffed him, the others merely repeated the shunning. There was malice, but at least it wasn’t premeditated. Hatching a plot together takes matters to a completely different level.
With one mind they plot together;
they form an alliance against you —
the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
of Moab and the Hagrites,
Byblos, Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia, with the people of Tyre.
Even Assyria has joined them
to reinforce Lot’s descendants (Ps. 83:5-8).
Like my son, Israel was surrounded on all sides by haters. The first set of four nationalities are distant relatives of Israel listed in parallel pairs. The first in each pair is a nation name, followed by a people group. Edom descended from Jacob’s brother Esau. Moab is where Ruth, grandmother of David, came from. The Ishmaelites are descended from Ishmael, the first son of Abraham. And the Hagrites are descended from Hagar. (Since Hagar was Ishmael’s mother, the Hagrites were related to the Ishmaelites while being a distinct people from them over time.) They were arrayed along the southern and eastern borders of Israel.
Blood may be thicker than water, but so too is its animosity. When families feud, the bad blood goes deep and can last for generations.
Ammon and Amalek were arrayed to the east of Israel; Philistia to the south along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in modern Gaza; Byblos and Tyre to the north also along the Mediterranean in modern Lebanon; and behind all of them was the puppet master, Assyria, a major world power at the time. The descendants of Lot include the peoples of Moab and Ammon, looping back to familial hatred. We see some of this list in Psalm 60 which is repeated in Psalm 108.
Moab is my washbasin,
on Edom I toss my sandal;
over Philistia I shout in triumph” (Ps. 60:8; Ps. 108:9).
Israel was surrounded by family. But instead of it being a warm embrace, it was an encircling noose.
Outnumbered and out-gunned, Asaph remembers stories from Israel’s past when things were just as bad. And in the remembering, he remembers what God did.
Memory is essential to faith. Memory draws us out of our focus on current circumstances and the seeming hopelessness of them and lets us see what God has done in the past. Being reminded of God’s past faithfulness and rescue gives new hope for future faithfulness and rescue.
So Asaph remembers two stories from the book of Judges. The Gideon story and the Deborah story.
Do to them as you did to Midian,
as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,
who perished at Endor
and became like dung on the ground.
Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,
who said, “Let us take possession
of the pasturelands of God” (Ps. 83:9-12).
The raiders from Midian had a technological advantage which made their surprise attack on Israel successful. They had camels. These long-legged, hump-backed animals are both fast and durable, able to attack from distance with speed (Judges 6:5).
But God’s intentionally motley crew of freedom fighters headed by Gideon beat them badly. The weeding out process God used to reduce Gideon’s men from 32,000 to 300 left him with the stupidest men in Israel (Judges 7:1-7). God did this to prove that the victory was his alone and not theirs. And it was, since those 300 didn’t actually have to fight. They merely caused confusion with their trumpets and torches, while the Midianites and their hired mercenaries from other lands fought and killed one another. Oreb and Zeeb were their leaders who died in the fray (Judges 7:25). Zebah and Zalmunna were the kings of Midian whom Gideon himself killed (Judges 8:21).
The rout was so complete that Midian ceased to exist as a distinct people group. The destroyers were destroyed. It was legendary.
Jabin was the king of Canaan and Sisera was his general. They invaded Israel during the time when Deborah was judge of the people. They, too, had a tech advantage, using iron instead of bronze (Judges 4:13) — they were a whole age of civilization ahead of Israel. It’s possible, though, that the tech backfired. Deborah sang a song about the battle (which also brutally envisions Sisera’s mom waiting in vain for him to come home) and in the song there are hints of a massive rainstorm. Most likely, the Sisera’s iron chariots got bogged down in the mud at the Kishon River, turning an advantage into a disadvantage and leaving them as sitting ducks to be slaughtered.
These two stories of victory against overwhelming forces with advanced technology on their side are essential to a biblical imagination. They remind us that with God on our side, we have more than we need to prevail. We aren’t equal to the task in and of ourselves, but that merely highlights God’s love for us and faithfulness to us by which we are saved.
No matter how unbeatable our haters may seem, they are insubstantial when God is on our side.
Make them like tumbleweed, my God,
like chaff before the wind.
As fire consumes the forest
or a flame sets the mountains ablaze,
so pursue them with your tempest
and terrify them with your storm (Ps. 83:13-15).
Tumbleweed and chaff tossed around on the slightest gust of wind; forests and mountainsides engulfed in flame by the slightest spark. Asaph prays that their seeming substance be shown to be nothing as God pushes them around and consumes them.
So, whip up the wind, Lord, and blow them away! Fork down your lightning and set them ablaze!
We expect these kinds of prayers in the face of an alliance against us. But what comes next is unexpected.
Cover their faces with shame, LORD,
so that they will seek your name (Ps. 83:16).
The shame is expected, but the seeking of Yahweh’s Name is far from expected.
Kill them or convert them, Asaph prays. What if this alliance against God and his people could be turned on its head and become and alliance with God and his people?
This is a beautifully biblical imagination.
We see this unholy alliance arrayed against us and call out to God for help. This is perfectly normal and expected. Our Lord is the Defender of the defenseless. As the Defender, he doesn’t just keep the weak from harm, he breaks the arms of the bullies so they can bully no more. From beginning to end, the Scriptures are full of passages showing this two-sided justice of God that shields the weak and beats down the abusers.
But the biblical imagination sees beyond this basic justice. It imagines something unseen. It imagines the unholy alliance becoming a holy alliance instead.
Elsewhere, Psalm 87 even goes so far as to suggest that these ancient enemies of God and his people might be considered to have been born in Zion, to be included among the people of God.
“I will record Rahab and Babylon
among those who acknowledge me —
Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush —
and will say, ‘This one was born in Zion’” (Ps. 87:4).
This is astounding! Even without a single sign of peace from these deep-seated, historic enemies, the biblical imagination can see them as brothers and sisters. At least, potentially so. This is the reconciliation that is at the heart of God’s mission in the world. This is the healing of what has been broken in human relationships that God so strongly desires. It may not come to pass for they may reject it. But in the middle of our praying for protection, we also pray for conversion, that our haters might become our allies, our friends, our family.
May they ever be ashamed and dismayed;
may they perish in disgrace.
Let them know that you, whose name is the LORD —
that you alone are the Most High over all the earth (Ps. 83:17-18).
In either case — whether our haters remain haters or whether they become our brothers and sisters — God’s name will be glorified.
God will be exalted because of his justice or he will be exalted because of his forgiveness and reconciliation. We get the choice as to which it will be. But the result remains the same.