Scripture Daily

Context No. 633 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 75:1-10: in context

1We give thanks to you, God. We give thanks, for your Name is near. Men tell about your wondrous works. 2When I choose the appointed time, I will judge blamelessly. 3The earth and all its inhabitants quake. I firmly hold its pillars. Selah. 4I said to the arrogant, “Don’t boast!” I said to the wicked, “Don’t lift up the horn. 5Don’t lift up your horn on high. Don’t speak with a stiff neck.” 6For neither from the east, nor from the west, nor yet from the south, comes exaltation. 7But God is the judge. He puts down one, and lifts up another. 8For in the LORD’s hand there is a cup, full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours it out. Indeed the wicked of the earth drink and drink it to its very dregs. 9But I will declare this forever: I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. 10I will cut off all the horns of the wicked, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up.

This psalm gives thanks to a God who judges at his own appointed time, and at its center is a truth that cuts against the whole striving logic of ambition. Speaking to the arrogant and the wicked who lift up their horn, who boast and swagger and stiffen their necks, the psalm declares where honor and advancement actually come from. For not from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south does exaltation come. But God is the judge; he puts down one and lifts up another. Promotion, being raised up, coming to honor, does not arrive from any earthly direction, from any quarter of human striving or scheming or positioning. It comes from one source only: God, who alone lifts up and brings low.

That is a bracing correction to how I usually think about getting ahead. I tend to believe that my advancement depends entirely on my own efforts in every direction, the striving, the networking, the positioning, the self-promotion, the scramble to be noticed and lifted up. The psalm says exaltation comes from none of those directions. It comes from God, the judge who raises one and lowers another according to his own reckoning. The arrogant, lifting their own horn, are told to stop, because no amount of self-exaltation from east or west or south actually determines who is raised. That is God's to decide.

That is both a rebuke and a relief. It rebukes the exhausting scramble to exalt myself, the endless self-promotion that assumes my rising depends wholly on me. And it offers relief, because if it is God who lifts up and puts down, then I can loosen my white-knuckled grip on my own advancement and leave it in his hands, doing my work faithfully and trusting him with the raising. Am I scrambling to exalt myself from every earthly direction, as though my rising depended entirely on my own striving, or can I trust the God who alone puts down one and lifts up another, and leave my exaltation to him?

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