OUR CHRIST IN THE PIT A MESSIANIC PSALM: The prophet David, while suffering, and feeling that he was going down to the pit, by the spirit of prophecy, he saw the Lord Christ, our Savior, entering into Hades to break down its gates, and to redeem from it the believers of the Old Covenant, who have fallen asleep with hope. He saw the Savior of the world, who, by His own free will, chose to deliver Himself for the sake of mankind. In other words, this psalm is said in the name of “the Son of David”, presenting in some detail the experience of the literal (or historical) David; And at the same time, presenting it as a symbol of the Lord Christ to come; Hence, this psalm is considered a Symbolic Messianic psalm; or actually a supplication presented by our Greatest High Priest to our account. About this psalm, St. Augustine says: [It is the voice of the Intermediary, whose arm was strong in His struggle with passions. The evils which He seems to pour upon His enemies, are not curses, but rather a proclamation of their punishment; the same way it came in the gospel, when our Lord addressed the cities which saw the miracles He performed, and yet did not believe in Him (Matthew 11: 20), ‘Gunkel’ sees this psalm as a personal lamentation; ‘Mowinkel’ sees it as a national collective lamentation; ‘Tournay’ sees it as a psalm of thanksgiving; while others see it as a royal psalm. This lamentation is a cry-out because of a deep pressure, reflecting a huge danger that dwelt upon David, even close to death; It represents a prayer for the sake of judgment https://coptic-treasures.com/ over the enemies, a praise for the sake of the anticipated salvation; and an intercession for the sake of all the people of God. This psalm is a fulfillment of David’s vow to offer to the Lord a sacrifice of joyful praise amid his sufferings. … Here he fulfills his vow, even before the Lord responds to his prayers. David’s afflictions turned him into (the sweet psalmist of Israel), who, with a spirit of confidence, knows how to resort to God with effective and well-received cry-outs from the heart, … how to hate and fear evil, … how to have a wide heart to perceive the salvation of the Lord for him, as well as for all his people; … and how to forget his own troubles, and seek the blessing and growth of the people of God. In other words, his afflictions did not lead him to depression or grumbling, as much as to the width of heart with love, and the lifting up of the mind to heaven to live perpetually exultant. Its general frame:: 1- A supplication 1 - 2 2- An entreaty and trust 3 - 5 3- A thanksgiving and praise 6 - 7 4- An intercession and love 8 – 9 1- A SUPPLICATION: (1 – 2) This prayer was raised in the temple, by someone, probably ill or suffering affliction by the wicked. It was raised toward the depths of the temple – the Holy of Holies – where God resides over Ark of the covenant (1 Kings 8: 6-7). According to the Hebrew text and the Septuagint version, this psalm is referred to the prophet David; although some refer it to king Hezekiah when he was about to die. https://coptic-treasures.com/ Confronted by a horrible danger, that turned him into weakness itself, yet the prophet David felt that he would be saved even from going down to the pit, to the shadow of the lower world, through the salvation of God. “To You I will cry, O Lord my Rock; Do not be silent to me, lest, if You are silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit” (1) What does God’s silence mean? 1- It means that God will not be silent anymore; He will talk to bring joy to His servant, and confusion to his evil enemies. It is ‘the prayer of listening’; namely, to beseech God to listen and to respond to us. 2- By the silence of God, we would be denied His Word – our life – He who created the whole world for our sake, and saved us by His cross. Whoever does not enjoy the fellowship with the Lord Christ, the Word of God, will not be able to hear the Father, nor to recognize His divine will; And for him, God will be silent. Such a man would end into the pit of death! … How horrible is the silence of God! 3- God would never separate from His Word; But a non-believer, for whom Jesus is not the Word of God, by his lack of faith he deprives himself of the divine voice, and for him God would be silent. 1- In His love, God is perpetually talking to man – his beloved creature. The spiritual man hears the voice and responds; Whereas the carnal man would assume Him silent. God spoke, and was heard by the child Samuel; while Eli, the experienced priest could not hear Him. The believer with the (circumcised) ears would, all the day long, hear the word of God addressed to him personally; when all the others would count God as silent, not responding https://coptic-treasures.com/ to their prayers and supplications. The psalmist, asking for a personal divine response, says: “Do not be silent to me, lest I become like those who go down to the pit”. … Knowing for sure that God would never be silent, his fear lied in his own self; lest he may be deaf, and God would seem to him as silent. He used to cry out from his heart with unutterable words, anticipating God’s voice in his heart as a personal message that touches his life. 5- The silence of God toward a sick man, reminds us of what came in the gospel of St. Luke 7: 7, when the Centurion said to the Lord Jesus: “Say the word, and my servant will be healed” ; and when the leper said to Him: “Lord, if You are willing. You can make me clean” (Luke 5: 12). The Word of God came to realize our salvation from Hades by His salvation works that proclaim the divine love even through His silence. We remember the suffering servant in the book of the prophet Isaiah, the Word of God who “will not cry out, nor raise His voice to be heard in the street” (Isaiah 42: 2); And we remember as well the silence of the Lord Jesus during His passion before the Senhedrim, and before Pilate, when “He kept silent and answered nothing” (Mark 14: 61; 15: 5). 2- According to St. Augustine, the words of the psalmist are the words said by the Lord Christ on the cross; when the non-believers thought that He was forsaken by God, and that He was going down into the pit forever. 3- Having prayed for the sake of his own spiritual progress, and the edification of the kingdom of God within himself; he believed that unless God responds to his prayer, he would be counted as dead, going down into the depths of Hades (the pit). Trusting in God’s power to overcome death, he did not fear death itself, but feared an immature death, namely, to die before he could realize the mission for which he was created and called by God. https://coptic-treasures.com/ In short, when God seems to have closed His ears and would not listen to us, or became silent, and would not respond to our prayers, We are committed to persist on raising our supplications, until we enjoy our right for a divine response; Namely, our right to be brought up as though from Hades, to enjoy the resurrected life. God’s silence is death to us, and His talking to us is an enjoyment of the new resurrected life in the Word of God, raised from the death. “Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry to You, when I lift up my hands toward Your holy sanctuary” (2) Supplicating to God, asking Him to talk to him personally, and not to be silent, and finding his salvation in God who dwells among His people, the psalmist lifts up his hands toward the holy temple of God, which although not yet built, yet, by the holy sanctuary, he meant the Ark of the testimony, and the seat of mercy, being the throne of God who resides between the two cherubs, from where He used to address His people, as it came in the book of Exodus 25: 22: “And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim, which are on the ark of the testimony” . The seat of mercy refers to the Lord Christ, the Word of God, who proclaims the Father and the propitiation (John 1: 1; 14: 9; Romans 3: 25; 1 John 2: 2). Now, as it is in prayer, it is also by faith we look up at the Lord Christ, the way the believers of the Old Testament used to look at the seat of mercy. Lifting the hands up is an old sign in prayer, supplication, and entreaty (Psalm 44: 20; 63: 4; 88: 9; 141: 2; 143: 6), referring to a wish to enjoy the heavenly blessings, and of feeling the need for heavenly things, which the temporal things cannot fulfill. Stretching and lifting up the hands also symbolize faith in the crucified Lord Christ, and partaking of His cross, the grantor of conquest. It was not possible for the people of the old to overcome Amalek, without the lifting hands of the prophet Moses. And the Coptic artist used to portray the saints lifting their hands up, to proclaim that the secret of their holiness and conquest, as true men of prayer, is their attachment to the Crucified. https://coptic-treasures.com/ What came in verse 2 are the words uttered by the buried Lord Christ; whom the Jews assumed that He has gone down forever into the pit, together with the evildoers; when He actually went down to Hades to bring forth those who departed in hope, and in anticipation of His salvation work. Comparing between the prophet Jeremiah who was cast into a royal dungeon in the court of prison, where he sank in its mire (Jeremiah 38: 6); and St. Peter who ascended to the roof of the house where he saw a divine vision, the scholar Origen says that, as believers, we should ascend together with the Word of God by the Holy Spirit, in order to get true knowledge and divine visions; and should never let the word of God be cast down into the dungeon through our carnal thoughts and our evil desires. Ebed-Malech the Ethiopian took with him thirty men, and let down old clothes and old rags by ropes into the dungeon for Jeremiah to put under his arm pits to be lifted up (Jeremiah 38: 13)… Who is Ebed-Malech, but our Lord Jesus Christ, who became a servant to lift up our thoughts and nature from the depth of the pit through the church (the 30 men), by His humility (the old rags). It is befitting of us to receive the poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ, to be lifted up, and be clothed with heavenly royal attires forever. There, we would sit at the right hand of the heavenly King, who descended to the pit to keep us from descending to it ourselves. 2- AN ENTREATY AND TRUST: (3 – 5) The psalmist recognized faith and hope as sources of conquest and victory upon the enemies, not for the sake of personal gains; but upon the hidden enemies, so as not to divert from the way of truth, and not to partake of the evil of the wicked, through using their deceptive ways, to end up having their same portion. He seeks from God with faith, not to forsake him to himself, so as not to perish together with the wicked, saying: “Do not take me away with the wicked, and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors, but evil is in their hearts” (3) https://coptic-treasures.com/ The psalmist seeks from God not to count him together with the deceptive wolves and serpent-like wicked, the hypocrites, and the scoundrels; For, being the true Good Shepherd, God knows that the psalmist is a lamb, and not a wolf in the body of a lamb. The true singer of this psalm is our Lord Jesus Christ, “who was numbered with the transgressors” (Isaiah 53: 12), carried the sins of the whole world (1 John 2: 2); and, for our sake, went down to Hades, yet His portion was not together with the wicked, for He has never done evil, nor had iniquity in His mouth. He went down to Hades to separate between the true believers and the wicked non-believers; to carry His believers as spoil upon His shoulders, and to lift them up to the bosom of the Father, to partake of His eternal glories. If our Christ came down to the world to dwell among the sinners, yet He did not partake of their evil, but delivered His life to carry them forth from evil to a holy life; So it is befitting of us, as members of His body, not to despise the sinners, but the sin; to keep ourselves from evil itself; to live in the world, yet, as though in heaven, where the Holy Spirit of God carries us to His temple, sanctifying our life, so as not to end up like the wicked. Although the righteous could not be separated from the wicked in the world; yet, it is befitting of the holy church of God not to have the wicked among her congregation; She is committed “to purge out the (corrupt) old leaven” (1 Corinthians 5: 7), to remain herself a holy leaven, capable of sanctifying a multitude in the Lord. The psalmist saw her “a holy sanctuary” (Psalm 28: 2); the secret of her beauty is that she rises up as though to heaven; has her royal way, along which no wicked may tread! … The church, therefore, should purge evil (Isaiah 53: 11); And, being the bride of Christ her Groom, she should forget her people and the house of her ancient father, the devil; for “the King greatly desires her beauty” (Psalm 45: 11) https://coptic-treasures.com/ + Paul counsels us, saying: “purge the corrupt from among yourselves”, “to put away from yourselves that wicked person” (1 Corinthians 5: `13, 2); “for evil company corrupts good habits” (1 Corinthians 15: 33). I wish we keep away from having wicked friends. (St. John Chrysostom) Who are those wicked from whom the psalmist advises us to keep away, so as not to end up sharing their eternal destiny? The psalmist concentrates upon the hypocrite deceptive persons, “who speak peace to their neighbors, but evil is in their hearts”; those who utter sweet and smooth words, that bear the image of love, so as to catch the souls of the simple; those are more dangerous than the ferocious beasts. The psalmist, by the eye of prophecy saw Judas Iscariot who delivered his Lord by a kiss, together with a word of peace. + Who is that lamb who turned himself into a wolf, and started to bite the Good Shepherd?! + Why have you forgotten the gift given to you by the Lord, the same gift He gave Peter and John?! + Beware, O wise people, from the deceptive kisses; as through one of them the Son of God was hanged on a tree! (St. Jacob El-Serougi) + Malice is a science, and a satanic act devoid of truth, which the wicked think he can hide from most people. https://coptic-treasures.com/ Hypocrisy is a mixture of all kinds of tricks by which the body appears with what contradicts what lie in the soul. Innocence is a feature of the sound, comfortable soul, free of any deception.. He who has no malice has his soul as pure as it was created, and acts according to this purity. . is a false prophet. (St. John El-Sollamy) Anyway, he who does not partake of the evil of the wicked, would have the hope not to partake of their punishment. “Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors. Give to them according to the work of their hands. Render to them what they deserve” (4) This is not the language of grudge or revenge, that may contradicts the prayer for our enemies, but it is rather a prophecy concerning their Perdition, for the psalmist knows that men will surely reap nothing but what they sow. According to Bishop Weiser, members of the congregation who entered with God into a covenant, intended to express their separation, actually and positively, from the suppressive elements among them (Deuteronomy 27: 11; etc.). The cause of their malice and their deception, is the blindness that dwelt upon their insight, that made them unable to recognize the (fingerprints) of God’s love in the works of His creation, salvation, and the going on events; denying themselves, therefore, God, the source of their edification, to come to lose even what they have got by nature; Instead of being exalted, they go down; and instead of being built up, they are destroyed; … God’s grace would be utterly taken away from them. https://coptic-treasures.com/ “Because they do not regard the works of the Lord, nor the operation of His hands, He shall destroy them, and not build them up” (5) Non-believers would reap the fruit of their malice, their evil, and spiritual blindness; Being deceived by their own deception, they will perish. 3- A THANKSGIVING AND PRAISE: (6 – 7) “Blessed be the Lord, because He has heard the voice of my supplications” (6) Having offered a spiritual prayer from the heart, the prophet David perceived that salvation, or even what is greater (the everlasting salvation) is not far from him. Being convinced that the Lord has heard him, and has not been silent toward him, he uttered a praise of thanksgiving to God. By faith he prayed (1 – 2); and by the same faith, he offered thanksgiving; For he, who prays with faith will rejoice in hope. It is befitting of us to trust in the words of God Himself, saying: “It shall come to pass, that before they call, I shall answer, and while they are still speaking, I will hear” (Isaiah 65: 24). For through such trust our prayer and supplications are mixed with thanksgiving and praise to God, who surely hears us. Asking us to pray according to the will of God, to respond to our prayers, St. (Mar) Isaac the Syrian, says: [We should not seek from God something He intends to grant us without being asked, not only to us, His own household, and beloved friends, but even to those who do not know Him. The Lord says: “Do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do” (Matthew 6: 7); “But seek first the https://coptic-treasures.com/ kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6: 33). And in case you seek something, and He does not hasten to respond to it, do not be sad, for you are not wiser than God; … You may not be worthy of getting your request; Or the ways of your heart do not conform to your request (but contradict it); Or you have not reached yet the stature that makes you worthy of getting the request you ask for…. We should not rush to reach great statures before the right time, so that God’s gift would not be abused on account of being got in a hurry. For what we get in a hurry, we would lose in a hurry; Whereas what we get with labor, we shall surely keep] Having got his request, being spiritual concerning his own salvation, the edification of the congregation, and the perdition of evil, a request befitting of his spiritual stature, the psalmist enjoyed the blessing of the Lord in his heart, and his tongue opened up to bless the Lord. Who can utter the words: “Blessed be the Lord”, except one whose heart is full of the blessing of the Lord? … He who gets the blessing will feel the blessed God, Grantor of the blessings; … He who is glorified within himself, would be able to glorify God, would experience the strength of the Spirit, and would praise the Lord, Grantor of strength. “The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; Therefore my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song I will praise Him” (7) Trusting with his heart trusted; namely, with his whole inner man, his whole being exulted. The trusting hearts exult in the Lord. https://coptic-treasures.com/ During affliction, man sees his life as the longest and darkest nights. But with faith, the Lord Christ shines upon his life, turns it into a joyful day; and turns the darkness into light. That is why David’s lamentations always mix with sacrifices of thanksgiving. + He who walks along the way of the Lord, would give Him thanks for everything dwelling upon him, and cast blame upon himself. (Mar Isaac the Syrian) 4- AN INTERCESSION AND LOVE: (8 – 9) In his affliction, the psalmist believes, not only that the salvation of God has turned his sorrow into joy, and his supplication into thanksgiving, but has turned it, as well, into an intercession. Hence he forgets his own affliction to seek the edification of the people of God. He could not rejoice in his own salvation, without confessing his preoccupation with the congregation. “The Lord is their strength, and He is the saving refuge of His anointed. Save Your people and bless Your inheritance; shepherd them also, and bear them up forever” (8 – 9) The psalmist generalizes his experience, applying it to the people, protected by ‘Jehovah’ their God; believing that what is for the benefit of the king, would surely touch the people as a whole; and what is for the benefit or loss of a member, would have its activity upon the body as a whole. By saying: “Your people”, David refers them to God and not to himself. They are the portion of the Lord, and the Lord is their strength and salvation. https://coptic-treasures.com/ David asks God to grant His people the following blessings: a- Salvation: To save them from their enemies. They cannot enjoy fellowship with Him, unless He grants them conquest upon the ‘ego’, sins, and Satan. b- The blessings from God, to be blessed. Their salvation from their spiritual enemies is not enough, but they are in need of tasting the sweetness of God Himself; their righteousness, sanctification, glory, and joy. c- Caring for them; feeding them in His heavenly pasture, namely, in His church; offering them the heavenly bread, the Eucharistic body, and the Eucharistic blood of Christ, together with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. d- Lifting them up above all enemies; above fears and dangers, to enjoy the exalted inheritance and the everlasting glory. He lifts His believers forever. He does not take away the sufferings from their life, as much as lifting them up above every affliction and sorrow, to enjoy Him even in their temptations. The people looked up to David as being their shepherd, and expected him to bear them, which he did; on account of that he, himself was borne. We, as well, if we are borne in the bosom of the Father, in Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, We, in our turn, could bear the others to the same place, not by our own ability, but by the divine grace. The entire burden will not abide on our soldiers, but on those of that One Good Shepherd, alone. It is not the work of the spiritual guides alone, to pray for the sake of the people, but it is the work of every member of the congregation to pray for the sake of Jerusalem (9); … of the parents to pray for the sake of their children, and of the children to pray for the sake of their parents; … of the priests to pray for the sake of the people, and of the people to pray for the sake of their priests. … Through prayers together with love and good work, even a child can bear the whole world in Christ. https://coptic-treasures.com/ Such intercession was also uttered by Christ, risen from the dead, through His propitiation blood, for the sake of the edification of His people, granting them the resurrected life. So the psalm started by supplication to God to hear the voice of the psalmist, for the sake of his own edification, and the destruction of evil; Then his supplication, through faith, turned into a song of praise of thanksgiving to God, who hears the prayers of His believers. The psalmist set forth to intercede for the entire congregation, through his practical experience with God, with a wide heart. --------------------- AN INSPIRATION FROM PSALM 28 SAVE ME, O LORD, FROM THE DUNGEON OF THE PIT + You, who descended to Hades for my sake; Lift me up from the Hades of the ‘ego’, and set me free from the pit of sin + Listen, O Eternal Word, to my cry-outs; Carry me by Your love on Your shoulders For You are the Good Shepherd. + Teach me to carry every soul; by my love; The way You carry me by Your love Train me by Your Holy Spirit to pray for the sake of every soul; So that all would live in the bosom of the Father forever.
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