The two-year-old sat in her highchair, looked at the plate of uneaten food in front of her, looked at her mother, looked back at the plate, looked back at her mother, grabbed the plate without taking her eyes from her mother, and flipped the plate onto the floor.
We tend to think of children as powerless, but no human is truly without power. In fact, we all feel fairly powerless, chasing after things which are out of our control. But there are times in life when we feel our power, feel our strength. And you could see power in the plate-flipping two-year-old’s eyes.
I grew quickly as a kid and reached six feet in height in ninth grade. And I distinctly remember feeling my strength in high school as I walked from one class to another. I was bigger and stronger than most and I could feel the strength in my body, knowing I could knock down almost anyone I wanted to.
I felt my strength, not physically this time, when I was editing a business magazine in Seattle. Almost daily, I would receive requests from public relations officers of companies through the state of Washington, hoping to get me to meet with the president or CEO of their companies. I could feel the power I had to ignore a request or to put a CEO on the cover of the magazine.
There are many times in life when we feel our weaknesses, but there are also plenty of times when we feel our strength. And so, we find ourselves needing to make decisions about how we’re going to use our power. And that leads us to Psalm 75.
Psalm 75 refers to “horns” four times in its ten verses.
Hebrew is a physical, concrete language. It’s filled with images from daily life rather than abstract words like “power.” So, when we come across a word like “horn,” a horn is exactly what we’re supposed to see in our imaginations. Think of a ram whose horns are used to protect the herd. Think of a bull whose horns are used to dominate other bulls, to “bully” them. (Ah, now you see where that word came from. English used to be more concrete too.)
Hebrew poets and prophets used the everyday agrarian image of a horn as a means of expressing power, extending the animal image to humans. They had no trouble with mixing images that our urban imaginations have and so they wrote of humans with horns (and, no, don’t think of silly devil horns!). But keep the image of animal horns with you: Horns are used to protect or dominate others with the power we have. A “horn” is how we feel our strength.
Psalm 75 begins in worship, praising God for his “wonderful deeds,” which would be the use of his “horn” to protect his people.
We praise you, God,
we praise you, for your Name is near;
people tell of your wonderful deeds (Ps. 75:1).
Asaph, the psalmist, writes, “We praise you, for your Name is near.” But what does it mean to have someone’s name near?
Names tie together a person’s relationships and authority. To do something in someone else’s name is to do it by their authority. If I told you to “mention my name” to someone else, I’m offering to you all of the accumulated benefits of my relationship with that other person; I’m allowing you to draw from my relational bank account with that person.
To have God’s Name near is to have his covenantal relationship with us and all the weight of his authority near at hand to deal with all that we need to deal with.
This is especially important when we’re weak and vulnerable, when the strong are using their “horns” to push us down, when we’re being bull-ied. We need to be able to call on the Name, drawing on our relationship with God to access his ultimate strength on our behalf.
You say, “I choose the appointed time;
it is I who judge with equity.
When the earth and all its people quake,
it is I who hold its pillars firm (Ps. 75:2-3).
(The text doesn’t actually have “You say” in it as the NIV renders it. But the NIV rightly attributes the following speech to God, making those words a helpful addition.)
Having had his Name called on, God responds as the one true Judge.
God judges at the times he sees fit, at the times he’s appointed, not when it seems most advantageous to us. This is almost always too late from our vantage, which is why we get so many “How long?” psalms.
But here, through Asaph’s pen, God assures us that justice will have its day. God guarantees it. It’s on his calendar. It’s on his mind.
Because of this, we don’t quail along with the rest of the people around us when things go terribly wrong. This has always been important, but it’s especially so in an era dominated by mass media which emphasize bad news over good news.
People have always had a larger appetite for bad news over good news, a larger imagination for what might go wrong over what might go right. Fear is a constant temptation.
Now, in the ancient Hebrew imagination, God had built the earth as his temple. They didn’t actually believe it was built on pillars, but picking up on the temple image, Asaph imagines the earth and all its people quaking as if it were built on a pillared foundation. And having seen poorly built structures fall in an era long before modern building codes, it would be easy for people to imagine the earth built on pillars literally falling to pieces during an earthquake.
While we have a more scientific imagination, we also fear the world falling apart. Natural disasters. Nuclear disasters. Ecological disasters. Economic disasters. Political disasters. And despite all of our fear-motivated safety measures, our personal lives can quickly and easily get shaken to the ground. A car accident. A bad medical diagnosis. A job loss. A family-tearing fight.
The pillars holding up our lives and the world around us can seem pretty shaky at times.
But Asaph reminds us there is a Foundation holding up what we think of as foundational. God undergirds it all. As he says, “It is I who hold its pillars firm.”
There is great comfort in knowing that God the Unshakable is holding together our fragile world and our fragile lives.
I spent some time with a man recently who ran off a long list of dangers and evils in the world that had him cowering. But he had begun our conversation by stating his belief in God. So, I asked him, “Does God win in the end?” “Well, yes,” he said. “Then, he must know what he’s doing now.” By doing so, I was copying Asaph in Psalm 75, reminding him that contrary to the facts he focused on, God is holding everything together.
Since God is both Judge and Foundation, Asaph turns to those who reject God and his ways and tells them to lower their horns.
To the arrogant I say, ‘Boast no more,’
and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horns.
Do not lift your horns against heaven;
do not speak so defiantly’” (Ps. 75:4-5)
Most bulls lift their horns against each other in a sign of domination. To lift up your horns against heaven is the height of arrogance, taking on God himself.
While we mustn’t belittle God as powerless by fearing the earth’s pillars will be shaken, we mustn’t belittle him as powerless by arrogantly asserting our own power.
No one from the east or the west
or from the desert can exalt themselves.
It is God who judges:
He brings one down, he exalts another (Psalm 75:6-7).
Scan the earth. You’ll find no one who can raise their horns against Yahweh and win. He is the Judge over all. He determines who stands and who falls. As Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18).
And finally we get the Name mentioned in verse 1: Yahweh (rendered in all caps as LORD, following the Jewish reading tradition).
In the hand of the LORD is a cup
full of foaming wine mixed with spices;
he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth
drink it down to its very dregs (Psalm 75:8).
Yahweh is holding a cup. It’s a cup meant for others to drink.
This may seem inviting at first, but it’s not. It’s a cup of judgment.
In the ancient Near East, covenant meals included meat and wine. The meat signified flesh and the wine signified blood. If one of the participants in the covenant meal were to break covenant, their bodies would be torn like the meat and their blood would be poured out like the wine. Symbolically, they were eating their own flesh and drinking their own blood if they were to break covenant.
And here, those who raise their horns to heaven are being offered the cup of judgment as covenant breakers. It’s a horrible drink they must drink to the dregs, the unsavory sediment of grape skins and stems at the bottom of the cup that most people would leave the last sip of wine behind to avoid. They’ll drink every drop.
In the covenant meal of communion, Jesus turns this upside down. As God who is man and man who is God, he represents both sides of the covenant between God and humanity. And so he takes the place of covenant-breaking humanity, saying, “This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, poured out for you.” It’s his body eaten and his blood drunk in the meal, not ours. It is his body torn and his blood spilled on the cross, not ours.
How horrible. How beautiful.
When Jesus asked James and John if they can drink the cup that he drinks (Matt. 20:22), this Psalm 75 cup is the cup he has in mind. When Jesus asks his Father to take the cup from him in the Gethsemane garden (Matt. 26:39), this Psalm 75 cup is the cup he has in mind.
As for me, I will declare this forever;
I will sing praise to the God of Jacob,
who says, “I will cut off the horns of all the wicked,
but the horns of the righteous will be lifted up” (Psalm 75:9-10).
Even though Jesus takes the place of wicked humanity on the cross and in the covenant meal of communion, God still deals with those who do wickedly.
Those who raise their horns to heaven get them cut off.
Biblical justice always includes two things: First, it protects those who are being mistreated so that their abuse is ended. Second, it deals with the abusers with enough severity to make sure they will not abuse again. Cutting off their horns accomplishes both.
Therefore, when we feel our power in this life, we ask ourselves: Who is this power for? And how will I use it?
Is this power for me? Do I raise my horns to heaven? Do I use my gifts to push people around, to bully?
Is this power for others? Do I humbly lower my horns before the Judge who will see justice done? Do I protect the vulnerable instead of dominating them?