Scripture Daily

Context No. 356 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 107:33-43: in context

33He turns rivers into a desert, water springs into a thirsty ground, 34and a fruitful land into a salt waste, for the wickedness of those who dwell in it. 35He turns a desert into a pool of water, and a dry land into water springs. 36There he makes the hungry live, that they may prepare a city to live in, 37sow fields, plant vineyards, and reap the fruits of increase. 38He blesses them also, so that they are multiplied greatly. He doesn’t allow their livestock to decrease. 39Again, they are diminished and bowed down through oppression, trouble, and sorrow. 40He pours contempt on princes, and causes them to wander in a trackless waste. 41Yet he lifts the needy out of their affliction, and increases their families like a flock. 42The upright will see it, and be glad. All the wicked will shut their mouths. 43Whoever is wise will pay attention to these things. They will consider the loving kindnesses of the LORD.

This is the closing movement of a psalm all about reversals, and it piles them up. God turns rivers into desert and springs into thirsty ground, and turns a desert into pools of water and dry land into flowing springs. He settles the hungry there so they build a city, sow fields, plant vineyards, and multiply. Then he lets them be brought low again by oppression and sorrow. He pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in a trackless waste, and he lifts the needy out of their affliction and makes their families flourish like a flock. Up and down, low and high, fruitful and barren, the psalm insists that nothing is fixed, that God turns situations completely around in both directions.

And then the psalm does something unusual. It stops describing and starts instructing, telling us how to read everything it has just shown. The upright see it and are glad, it says, and then the final line: whoever is wise, let him give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the LORD. That is the key to the whole poem. All these reversals, the deserts blooming and the princes wandering and the needy raised, are not random turns of fortune. They are the steadfast love of God at work, and the wise are simply the people who pay attention to them and ponder them long enough to see it. The rises and falls are the same for everyone; wisdom is reading them rightly.

That is a skill worth wanting. Most of us just ride the ups and downs of our lives and the lives around us, taking them as luck, good or bad. The psalm says the wise person watches those same turns and considers them until they resolve into the pattern of God's steadfast love. When my circumstances or someone else's turn upside down, for better or for worse, do I read it as random fortune, or do I stop and give heed, looking for the steadfast love of the LORD in it?

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