Latest / Reformed Thinking / God the Righteous Judge Who Defends the Oppressed (Psalm 9) | Matthew Poole

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God the Righteous Judge Who Defends the Oppressed (Psalm 9) | Matthew Poole · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. It is great to be here.
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You know, consider the staggering fact that some of the
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most ancient texts we possess use use sharp divine sarcasm to
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mock the arrogance of corrupt leaders.
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Yeah, that is something that really catches people off guard
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when they first read it. Right, because you read the news
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today and it is so incredibly easy to feel this, this crushing
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sense of anxiety. I mean, the individuals who play
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by the rules often seem to lose, right?
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100%. And the corrupt thrive.
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They build these massive empires, engage in absolute
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fraud, and just say they seemingly walk away untouched by
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any consequence. It feels like a distinctly
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modern crisis, doesn't it? This frustration over watching
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the wicked succeed while the innocent are crushed.
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It really does. But then you open up a text
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written thousands of years ago and you realize you're looking
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at the oldest human complaint on record.
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Scripture not hide from this reality.
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No, it confronts it with a startling level of rhetorical
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force. It is the perpetual human
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condition, really. We demand justice and we want it
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executed yesterday. Right.
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And we are constantly bewildered when the sky does not
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immediately open up to strike down the guilty.
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We sit there watching blatant arrogance continue, asking
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ourselves why a righteous judge allows it to persist.
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So to answer that, today we are taking a deep dive into the
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historical and theological commentary of Matthew Poole on
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Psalm 9. Yeah, we are pulling from
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volumes one through three of his work.
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And for those who might not know, Poole was a brilliant 17th
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century theologian. His commentary provides this
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meticulous look into the sovereignty of God, the severity
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of divine judgement, and the comfort available to the
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oppressed. He really is a fascinating
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figure to guide us here. He is.
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And to give you the proper lens for our conversation today, both
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of us are Protestant Christians who adhere to the Westminster
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Confession. Yes.
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Holding firmly to reformed theology.
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So we are looking at this text to see how Pool highlights God's
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immutable decrees and a total reliance of humanity on divine
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grace. We want to see how a
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historically grounded 17th century theological mind
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processes the unchangeable nature of God's judgments.
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And Poole was writing during a period of intense political and
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religious upheaval in England. He actually had to flee to
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Holland later in his life due to death threats.
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Wow, really? So he was not just writing from
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some ivory tower. Not at all.
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When he writes about the oppression of the wicked and the
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delay of divine justice, he is writing as a man who knew what
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it meant to be haunted by corrupt authorities.
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That historical backdrop gives immense weight to his textual
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analysis. It does.
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Poole spent a decade compiling his massive synopsis
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critiquorum, synthesizing the thoughts of previous biblical
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scholars. He had a brilliant deductive
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mind. He did not just accept the
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popular interpretations of his day, did he?
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No, He rigorously tested them against geography, history, and
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the timeline of Scripture, and that rigorous method is
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immediately apparent when we look at the very beginning of
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Psalm 9. Right, the mysterious title of
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the song. The text reads to the chief
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musician upon Muth Lavin, a Psalm of David.
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That phrase muth lavin is a huge linguistic puzzle.
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It is not immediately clear to anyone reading it today, and
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what is fascinating is that Pool notes even the ancient Jewish
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doctors were ignorant of his precise meaning.
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Yeah, they just did not know. I always appreciate that level
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of academic honesty from historical scholars.
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They reach a linguistic dead end and they just admit they do not
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know the definitive answer. But you know human nature, of
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horrors, of vacuum. When there is an unknown phrase
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in a historical text, commentators rush in with dozens
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of competing theories. Oh, for sure.
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So what does Poole say about those theories?
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Well, he outlines a few of the dominant ones.
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Some translators suggest Muth Lab means upon the death of his
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son. So they try to link this entire
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song to the death of David's rebellious son, Absalom.
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Right, the narrative there would be David writing this in the
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aftermath of that tragic civil war.
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OK, that is 1 theory. What is the other big one?
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Others suggest the Hebrew root points to the middleman or the
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man who stood between the two armies.
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Oh, which points directly to Goliath.
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Yes, in First Samuel chapter 17, Goliath is described using a
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Hebrew phrase that translates to the champion or the man between
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the two armies. I can see why the Goliath theory
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is highly popular among commentators.
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He gives the reader this dramatic, instantly recognizable
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backdrop. The story of David and Goliath
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is universally known. However, Poole rejects the
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Goliath theory entirely. Wait, he just refuses to accept?
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It he does, and his reasoning is a masterful display of deductive
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historical logic. He argues that Trump trying to
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force this text into the narrow box of the Goliath narrative
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restricts his actual utility. I see this tendency all the
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time, not just in biblical studies, but in literary
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analysis across the board. Oh yeah.
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Yeah, scholars often try so hard to pin a specific historical
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event to a piece of poetry when the text itself does not demand
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it. It is like taking a universally
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relatable piece of music about overcoming fear and having a
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critic insist that the song is exclusively about one specific
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boxing match from 1995. That is a brilliant analogy.
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If you force the song to be about that one specific news
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headline, you ruin the broader application by demanding the
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Psalm be about Goliath. Commentators shrink the vast
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theological claims David is making down to a single
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afternoon in the Valley of Elah. Precisely.
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Poole maintains that none of these specific historical
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events, neither Absalom nor Goliath, suit the design and
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matter of the Psalm. So he thinks it is much broader.
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Yes, it relates to David's manifold dangers, all the
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various threats he faced over his lifetime, and the
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deliverance which God had graciously given him out of all
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of them. And Poole does not just argue
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against the theme, right? He uses hard geographical and
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chronological evidence to dismantle the Goliath theory.
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His deductive reasoning here is airtight.
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He points to verse 14 where David talks about praising God
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in the gates of Zion. OK.
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What is the significance of that?
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Well, Poole notes that during the event with Goliath, David
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was a very young man, and Zion, the fortress in Jerusalem, was
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still firmly in the hands of the Jebusites.
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Oh wow, I didn't even think about that.
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Yeah, it remained in Jebusite control long after the Goliath
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incident, all the way until David was crowned king over all
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of Israel and finally conquered the city.
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So the timeline completely contradicts the Goliath theory.
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It makes absolutely no chronological sense.
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None at all. You cannot have young David
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writing a song about praising God and the gates of Zion for a
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victory over Goliath when he and the Israelites were not even
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allowed inside Zion yet. Right, the enemy still lived
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there and held the fortress. You cannot praise God in the
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gates of a city that currently belongs to a hostile foreign
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army. Exactly right, and this
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highlights the absolute necessity of rigorous historical
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context in Reformed theology. We do not just spiritualize the
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text and ignore reality. No.
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We use historical timelines and geographical facts to protect
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the text from faulty interpretations.
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Paul's careful reading shows us that this Psalm is a mature
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reflection from King David. Written much later in his life,
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then. Yes, looking back from the
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safety of a conquered Zion. Praising God for cumulative
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deliverances over decades of warfare and political intrigue.
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Which brings us into the actual body of the Psalm, starting with
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David's internal posture. Verse one says, I will praise
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the O Lord, with my whole heart I will show forth all thy
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marvelous works. Pool stops on that phrase whole
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heart and defines it as a sincere, affectionate and united
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heart. And within our theological
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framework, the concept of a united heart is not a given.
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In fact, he goes against the very grain of human nature.
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It really does. The doctrine of total depravity
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dictates that the natural state of the human heart is fractured.
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It is divided. A person left to their own
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devices does not possess a united heart toward God.
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The intellect might assent to a truth, but the affections are
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pulled towards selfish desires and the will is enslaved to sin.
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The mechanism of grace is what we must focus on here.
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Right, because when we say total depravity, we mean the entirety
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of the human faculties, The mind, the will, the emotions are
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tainted by the fall. There is no pristine, unaffected
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island of righteousness left inside the human chest.
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Therefore, a whole heart is a supernatural anomaly.
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It is not something David achieves by sheer willpower or
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by practicing intense mindfulness.
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Not at all. From our theological
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perspective, A United Heart for Praise is a definitive work of
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divine grace. God has taken the fractured,
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competing pieces of David's affections and sovereignly knit
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them together. The Holy Spirit acts as the
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unifying agent, drawing the mind's understanding and the
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heart's affections into singular alignment toward the Creator.
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A whole heart is a healed heart, entirely dependent on God's
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prior action. I think of the divided heart
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like a shattered clay jar trying to hold water.
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You are constantly leaking allegiances.
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That is a very vivid way to picture it.
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One minute you were praising the Creator, and the very next
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minute you're relying entirely on your own cleverness, your
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bank account or your social status to secure your future.
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Cognitive dissonance is the default setting of the fallen
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human mind. So when David resolves to praise
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God with a whole heart, he is acknowledging an intense
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internal miracle. He is operating under a grace
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that has temporarily suspended the chaos of his fallen nature.
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And Poole also makes an insightful linguistic note about
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the word all in this verse, where David says he will show
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forth all thy marvelous works. Oh, what does he say about that?
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Poole notes that the particle all is used in a restrained
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sense here, which is a highly practical observation.
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Because if David literally attempted to list every single
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marvelous work God ever executed from the dawn of creation.
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Right. Every star hung in space, every
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planetary orbit sustained every microscopic biological function.
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He would run out of breath and ink.
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That makes perfect sense. So what does all mean in this
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context? Poole argues that it means all
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the works relevant to his deliverance.
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It is a focused, intentional gratitude.
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David is taking inventory of the specific, tangible ways God has
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intervened in his life to rescue him from his enemies.
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Exactly. He is setting the posture for
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the rest of the Psalm. He is glad and rejoices in the
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Lord's favor and help which was vouchsafed or graciously granted
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to him. With that posture of united,
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wholehearted praise established, the text moves forward into
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describing the specific awe inspiring actions of God that
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generated this praise in the first place.
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This brings us 2 verses 3 through 8, moving from David's
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internal posture to God's external judgments.
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And the imagery here is incredibly visceral.
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Verse 3 says, When mine enemies are turned back, they shall fall
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and perish at thy presence. Poole describes this falling in
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a very specific, tactical way. He says the enemies are
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discomforted, put to flight, but they cannot save themselves by
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simply running away. They cannot just retreat to
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reserve themselves to do further mischief another day.
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Right. Instead, Poole writes that they
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shall stumble, as it were, at gull traps by the laid in their
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way. Now, a gull trap is an ancient,
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highly effective defensive weapon, isn't it?
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It is essentially the same as a caltrop.
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It consists of a small metal device with sharp spikes
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constructed so that no matter how you throw it on the ground,
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one spike is always pointing straight up well.
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The Romans called them Tribulus. I think they were scattered
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across battlefields to cripple charging horses, war elephants
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or foot soldiers. Precisely when an army is
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retreating in panic, they are not looking carefully at the
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ground. They are running blindly,
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terrified of what is behind them.
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So when they hit a field of gull traps, their retreat becomes a
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massacre. It is devastating it.
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Is the ancient equivalent of modern police spike strips.
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You have a suspect fleeing down the highway at top speed
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thinking they are successfully outrunning the authorities.
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And then out of nowhere, they hit the spike strip.
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Yeah, the tires blow out, the vehicle loses all control, and
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their own massive momentum is the very thing that destroys
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them. They are stopped dead in their
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tracks by a trap they never saw coming.
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Poole is saying God lays these divine spike strips in the path
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of the wicked. They think they are retreating
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to regroup, to plot a new strategy, to fight another day.
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But they stumble into a divine mechanism of ruin and perish.
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Notice the primary cause of this destruction, though Poole
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highlights that deliverance comes solely from God's
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presence. Yes, Poole writes 1 Angry look
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of vine is able to confound and destroy them.
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The Hebrew implies destruction from my face.
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In the ancient Near Eastern context, the presence of the
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king on the battlefield was the deciding factor.
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God marches at the head of the armies.
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David is totally ascribing the honor of his victories to God
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alone and to his assistance. It is not David's brilliant
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military strategy, his logistics, or his weaponry that
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wins the day. God sits on the throne, judging
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right, acting as a righteous sovereign judge, executing
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perfect justice. And God rebukes the heathen,
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which Poole identifies as the Philistines, the Moabites, and
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other nations molesting Israel at the time, and he puts out
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their name forever. Poole explains this means they
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lost the fame and honor they gained by their former exploits,
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or even their very memorial is wiped out entirely, like the
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ancient nation of Amalek, which cease to exist as a distinct
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people. But verse 6 is where the
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language gets truly fascinating and where we see that divine
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sarcasm you mentioned earlier. Yes, it reads.
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Oh, thou enemy destructions are come to a perpetual end, and
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thou has destroyed cities. Their memorial is perished with
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them. When you first read that in
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English, it sounds like a tragic lament.
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It sounds like the enemy won and the writer is mourning the
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permanent destruction of his own cities.
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But Poole argues this is a sudden apostrophe, a direct
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address to the enemy, and he explicitly categorizes it as a
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sarcasm or irony. Poole identifies this as a
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rhetorical figure utilized to show the absolute futility of
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opposing God's decrees. The enemies fully believed they
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had brought Israel's destructions to a perpetual end.
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They thought they had utterly and irrecoverably destroyed the
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Israelite nation and their cities.
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But Poole explains that this irony signifies the exact
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opposite. They were entirely frustrated in
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their hopes. It is a brilliant literary
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device that forces the reader to recognize the massive gap
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between human arrogance and divine reality.
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Using sarcasm in the Bible feels so contrary to our modern
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religious sensibilities, though. It really does.
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We do not expect it. Sarcasm feels petty to us today.
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We associate it with cynical teenagers rolling their eyes or
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Internet commentators trying to score cheat points.
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So we have to ask, is it reverent to read sarcasm into
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the biblical text? That is a very fair question.
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Does it diminish the holiness of God to view the psalmist using
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irony? It is a highly effective, very
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reverent rhetorical device when understood within its proper
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context. Biblical irony is not petty
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teenage cynicism. It is the theological mockery of
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cosmic arrogance. Like the prophet Elijah on Mount
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Carmel engaging with the false prophets of Baal.
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That is a perfect example. When their God fails to answer
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their prayers, Elijah does not offer a polite theological
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critique. He mocks them.
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He suggests they yell louder because their God might be
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asleep or perhaps he is away on a journey or relieving himself.
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Sarcasm and scripture is utilized as a weapon to cut
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through the bloated delusional pride of humanity.
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The enemies of God puff out their chests, declaring they
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have permanently ruined God's people.
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By using irony, David is essentially saying, oh, you
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really thought you destroyed us, didn't you?
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You thought your little siege engines and your political
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alliances were enough to overthrow the decrees of heaven.
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Look at you, now, completely defeated, with your own cities
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left in ruins. It demonstrates the sheer
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absurdity of a mortal creature attempting to outmaneuver the
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omnipotent creator. That completely reframes how we
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read these ancient texts. If we as modern readers miss the
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literary devices, we end up reading everything in a flat,
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monotone voice, and we miss the holy confidence of the psalmist.
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We really do. David is not cowering in a
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corner, hoping God might eke out a narrow victory at the last
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second. He is boldly, almost laughingly,
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pointing out the absolute failure of the enemy's grand
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plans. They wanted to erase Israel's
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memory from the earth, but they only succeeded in erasing
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themselves. It is a master class in
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theological confidence, and this brings us to verse 7, which
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provides the ultimate contrast to earthly ruin.
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Right, but the Lord shall endure forever.
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He have prepared his throne for judgement.
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While earthly cities are demolished, political regimes
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collapse, and human reputations vanish into the dust of history,
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God remains untouched. Poole uses a very heavy
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theological phrase to explain the mechanics of this verse.
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He states that God establishes His throne by His immutable
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purpose and His irrevocable promise.
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Immutable Purpose In our Reformed framework, when we
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speak of God's immutable purpose, we are speaking
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directly about the doctrine of predestination in God's
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sovereign Providence over all historical events.
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Immutable means it cannot mutate, it cannot change, it
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cannot be adjusted based on new information or unexpected
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circumstances. The outcomes of wars.
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The rise and fall of nations. The destruction of the wicked.
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None of this is left to chance, and none of it is contingent on
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human free will. God does not look down from
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heaven, see what the Philistines are doing, and then scramble to
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come up with a counter strategy. His decrees are set from
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eternity past. His promises cannot be revoked.
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The enemies are trying to fight against an unchangeable script
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which makes their defeat absolutely.
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Certain, he will judge the world, not just local enemies,
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but all men in pure, unyielding righteousness.
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And that reality of a fierce, unchangeable judge setting traps
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for the wicked naturally raises a critical question regarding
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his interaction with the victim. Oh definitely.
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How does he deal with those who are not arrogant, but who are
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actively being crushed under the weight of this worldly
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corruption? If God's decrees are set, why do
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the innocent suffers for so long?
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This leads us straight into the concept of delayed justice and
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the Inquisition for blood found in verses 9 through 12.
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Verse 9 declares the Lord also will be a refuge for the
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oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
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Poole is careful to note that God does not only judge the
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world at the last day, He gives present protection to his people
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right now amidst the chaos. Verse 10 follows with a crucial
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conditional statement. And they that know thy name will
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put their trust in thee, For thou, Lord, has not forsaken
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them that seek thee. Poole defines knowing God's name
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as thoroughly understanding his nature and his perfections.
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It means having an accurate grasp of His infinite might, His
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boundless wisdom, His covenant faithfulness, and His goodness.
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The mechanism here is straightforward.
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Trust is directly proportional to accurate knowledge.
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We often hear people say they are struggling to trust God
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during a crisis, and the Reformed response is often to
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encourage a deeper study of his attributes.
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You cannot place the full weight of your life upon a foundation
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you have not inspected. If you are going to put your
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trust in God during times of severe trouble, you must have a
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thorough, rigorous grasp of His character.
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The experience of God's faithfulness across all ages is
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the just ground for this confidence.
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Knowing His name is not about reciting a title, it is about
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comprehending the vastness of His sovereign character.
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And because of this, David calls the people to sing praises to
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the Lord who dwells in Zion, declaring his doings even among
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the heathen nations, so they might also be brought to the
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knowledge of the true God. But verse 12 introduces a
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concept that is highly challenging to our modern
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instantaneous desire for immediate resolution.
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Verse 12 is incredibly intense. It reads when he maketh
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inquisition for blood, he remembereth them.
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He forgetteth not to cry of the humble.
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Poole points out a vital detail. In the original Hebrew, the word
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for blood is actually plural bloods.
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It refers specifically to the mass bloodshed or the serial
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murder of his innocent and holy ones.
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It is the blood of the martyrs crying out from the ground, much
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like the blood of Abel. But here is the phrase in
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Poole's commentary that made me stop reading and reread it three
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times. Poole writes that God might
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connive at for a season this bloodshed, but will certainly
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avenge it. The phrase connive at sounds
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entirely scandalous. Today we think of conniving as
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malicious, sneaky and underhanded.
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We think of a conniving politician making backroom deals
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to enrich himself. How can a perfectly holy God
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connive at murder? This is a perfect example of why
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we must rigorously understand historical linguistics when
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reading older commentaries. Language drifts over the
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centuries and words completely change their connotations.
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Today, if someone is conniving, they are actively plotting
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something wicked. But in the 17th century, when
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Matthew Poole was writing, the word connive retained its direct
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link to the Latin root word Conover.
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Which literally means to shut the eyes, to blink, or to
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intentionally overlook something.
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Exactly when Poole says God may connive at murder for a season,
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he absolutely does not mean God is conspiring with the murderers
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or proving of their sin. He means God is intentionally
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closing His eyes to it for a temporary period.
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He is delaying His immediate visible judicial action.
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He stays his hand. He does not strike the corrupt
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politician or the violent oppressor with a lightning bolt
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the very second the crime is committed.
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He delays the justice. He allows the wicked to continue
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operating under the delusion that they have gotten away with
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it. Yes, and this points to God's
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immense patience and the great mystery of his timing.
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It is a display of divine restraint.
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And the accompanying phrase in the text, Inquisition for
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Bloods, assures the reader that this delay is absolutely not
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forgetfulness. An inquisition is a formal,
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thorough and exhaustive legal investigation.
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No hidden sin, no secret conversation, no covered up
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crime escapes this final accounting.
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The Ledger is being meticulously kept.
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I think of this process like a highly complex forensic auditor.
21:59
Oh, that is a great way to look at it.
22:01
Imagine a veteran brilliant auditor who is brought into a
22:04
massive multinational corporation because there are
22:07
whispers of systemic embezzlement.
22:09
OK, so they come in looking for the fraud.
22:10
Right. And on the very first day, the
22:12
auditor finds a small threat of fraud, a fake invoice here, a
22:16
suspicious wire transfer there. But instead of running into the
22:19
CEO's office, slamming the desk, blowing the whistle and stopping
22:23
a minor theft right then and there.
22:25
The auditor does nothing visible.
22:27
The auditor just watches. They watch for six solid months.
22:31
They gather every single forged receipt, they track every
22:34
deleted e-mail on the servers. They monitor every offshore
22:37
account routing number. They intentionally let the
22:40
perpetrators think they're entirely getting away with the
22:42
scheme. They connive at it using Poole's
22:45
17th century definition. They intentionally overlook it
22:48
for a season, but. Then, when the trap is fully
22:51
loaded with undeniable, overwhelming evidence, the
22:54
auditor drops 1000 page RECU report on the federal
22:58
authorities making the final strike.
23:00
The perpetrators are totally ruined with zero chance of
23:03
escape, no plausible deniability, and no legal
23:06
defense available. That analogy captures the
23:08
tension of the text beautifully during those six months of the
23:11
investigation. The honest employees who are
23:14
suffering under the corrupt management might feel completely
23:17
abandoned. The waiting period is
23:19
excruciating. They see the CEO buying the new
23:22
yacht while they are facing pay cuts, and they wonder if justice
23:25
even exists. But the Inquisition for Bloods
23:29
guarantees that the final accounting will be Florida State
23:32
executed. God is gathering the full
23:34
overwhelming measure of the wicked's guilt.
23:38
Fool notes that the humble or the meek do not avenge
23:41
themselves. They cannot and will not take
23:43
vengeance into their own hands because they trust the Divine
23:47
Auditor. They commit their cause to God,
23:50
recognizing him as the singular entity to whom vengeance
23:54
legitimately belongs. If a listener is experiencing
23:57
intense injustice right now, maybe someone slandered your
24:00
reputation permanently with lies.
24:02
Maybe you were cheated out of your livelihood by someone who
24:04
smiled to your face and manipulated the system.
24:07
This section of the commentary validates the sheer agony of
24:10
delayed justice. It acknowledges that waiting
24:12
often feels exactly like God has forgotten you.
24:15
But it guarantees the absolute certainty of God's final ruling.
24:18
He is making inquisition. The Ledger will be balanced
24:21
perfectly. Nothing is missed.
24:23
This reality of waiting for God's justice, of trusting his
24:26
hidden timeline while the enemies are still seemingly
24:28
victorious, leads directly into David's highly personal plea.
24:32
David moves from these grand cosmic declarations of God's
24:36
delayed judgment down to his own raw, vulnerable reality where he
24:41
feels he's at the very edge of physical mortality.
24:44
We see this emotional shift clearly in verses 13 through 16.
24:48
This brings us to a beautiful architectural contrast in the
24:51
text A Tale of Two Gates. In verse 13, David prays.
24:55
Have mercy upon me, O Lord, Consider my trouble which I
24:59
suffer of them that hate me, Thou that liftest me up from the
25:02
gates of death. Poole notes that the gates of
25:04
death means the brink or the mouth of the grave.
25:07
David feels like he is dropping right into the dirt.
25:10
He is as close to death as a traveler standing right at the
25:13
physical city gates is to entering the city itself.
25:16
Pool points out a linguistic nuance here, doesn't he?
25:18
Yes. In Scripture, gates usually
25:20
signify authority, jurisprudence, and policy.
25:23
The gates of ancient cities were not just entry points.
25:25
They were the places of council, the courts of law where Elder
25:28
SAT, and the primary defensive choke points of strength.
25:31
The pool specifies that the gates of death are never taken
25:34
in that administrative sense. Death does not hold court.
25:38
The gates of death represent the grim, silent threshold of
25:41
mortality. It is a place of finality and
25:44
cessation of earthly activity. The reason David asks for rescue
25:49
from these grim gates is what I found really striking.
25:52
In verse 14, he tells God his specific motive for wanting to
25:56
be saved. He says that I may show forth
25:59
all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion.
26:02
I will rejoice in my salvation. We have this brilliant
26:05
structural contrast, the silent, isolating, cold gates of death
26:09
versus the loud, joyful, populated administrative gates
26:13
of the city assembly in Zion. Poole explains that Daughter of
26:16
Zion means Jerusalem as chief cities were considered mothers
26:19
and the people living there were the daughters.
26:21
But we need to examine David's logic here.
26:23
Why is David's primary motive for rescue simply so he can
26:26
praise God publicly? To a modern reader conditioned
26:30
by highly individualized therapeutic religion, it feels
26:33
almost transactional. Like he is attempting A bargain
26:35
saying save my physical life and I.
26:37
I'll make sure to give you a 5 star review in the public
26:39
square. To our modern years,
26:41
prioritizing public praise over our own personal survival sounds
26:44
entirely counterintuitive. Our dominant instinct is
26:47
biological self preservation. We want to be saved simply to
26:51
preserve our own existence, to enjoy our families, to finish
26:55
our personal projects, or to experience more of life.
26:59
But in Reformed thought we always return to the core
27:02
function of humanity. The very first question of the
27:05
Westminster Shorter Catechism asks what is the chief end of
27:08
man? The answer is that man's chief
27:11
end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.
27:15
That is not just a nice religious sentiment, it is the
27:17
ontological reason for our existence.
27:19
It is the entire reason we possess breath in our lungs.
27:22
Correct. Therefore, David's request for
27:24
rescue is not about extending his own earthly comfort.
27:27
It is about fueling public worship.
27:29
If he goes down to the silent gates of death, his voice is
27:32
permanently removed from the earthly choir.
27:34
Dead men do not sing in the gates of Zion.
27:36
By asking to be brought to the gates of the Daughter of Zion,
27:39
He is asking to be restored to His primary created function,
27:43
glorifying His Maker in the great Assemblies of the Saints.
27:46
His survival is a means to an end, and that end is worship.
27:51
Poole notes that David promises to rejoice with spiritual joy
27:54
and Thanksgiving because otherwise it would be no fit
27:57
motive to use to God in prayer. God is not swayed by our desire
28:01
to just live a few more years of comfortable autonomy.
28:04
He is glorified when His people depend on Him and publicly
28:08
declare His goodness. That completely reframes the
28:11
nature of prayer. It is not a transaction, it is a
28:14
request to return to His designated creative purpose.
28:17
And while David is asking to be brought to the gates of Zion to
28:20
sing, verses 15 and 16 show us the mechanism of exactly what
28:24
happens to the enemies who pushed him toward the gates of
28:26
death in the first place. Verse 15 reads The heathen are
28:29
sump down in the pit that they made in the net, which they hid
28:33
is their own foot taken. We see God's justice acting in a
28:36
highly reflexive manner here. Poole notes that the enemies
28:39
have fallen into the very destruction which they
28:41
meticulously designed to bring upon God's people.
28:43
The mechanism of their ruin is their own malicious plotting.
28:47
Instead of a generic trap, this makes me think of the story of
28:50
Haman in the Book of Esther. Oh, that is the perfect
28:52
parallel. Haman, in his absolute arrogance
28:55
and hatred for the Jewish people, orders the construction
28:58
of a massive, towering Callows specifically designed to execute
29:03
Mordecai. He spends his wealth, political
29:05
capital building this instrument of death.
29:08
And yet, through the sovereign Providence of God, the political
29:11
winds shift overnight. The King discovers Haman's
29:14
treachery, and Haman is dragged out and hanged on the exact same
29:18
gallows he built for his enemy. The pit they made is a self
29:21
executing judgement. It is not just that they are
29:23
punished, it is that their own sin provides the architecture
29:27
for their punishment. The irony we discussed earlier
29:29
returns in full force. God's judgement is often
29:32
executed simply by giving the wicked over to the logical
29:35
conclusion of their own devices. They are snared in the work of
29:38
their own hands. God does not always need to send
29:41
a miraculous plague or a bolt of lightning.
29:43
He simply allows the internal corrosive logic of sin to play
29:47
itself out to its fatal, inevitable conclusion.
29:50
And the text punctuates this massive reality with a very
29:53
specific, rare musical notation of the end of verse 16.
29:56
Higian, Sailor. Higgy going What a fascinating
30:01
word to drop into the middle of a text.
30:03
Poole says this is either a musical term directing the
30:05
instruments or a note of attention, meaning behold, it
30:09
intimates that the matter deserves intense, prolonged and
30:13
frequent meditation. It acts as a divine instruction
30:17
to the reader to hit the brakes. Do not just skim past this
30:20
verse. Stop reading, pause the music,
30:23
and meditate on the doctrine of self-destructive sin.
30:26
Think about how sin contains the very seeds of its own punishment
30:29
within it. The plotting of the wicked is
30:32
the machinery of their downfall. It requires intense meditation
30:36
because it entirely contradicts our initial human anxiety.
30:40
We started this discussion talking about how anxious we get
30:43
seeing the wicked prosper and build their empires.
30:45
And Gaons tells us to look closer at those empires.
30:48
Their prosperity is a complete illusion.
30:51
They are currently expending all their energy digging the very
30:53
pit they will fall into. That is a heavy realization, but
30:56
an incredibly stabilizing one. It shifts your perspective when
31:00
you watch someone engaging in fraud, malice or oppression to
31:03
get ahead. You stop seeing them as
31:05
victorious, untouchable conquerors and start seeing them
31:09
as people actively blind constructing their own trap.
31:12
And this meditation on the reflexive judgement of God leads
31:15
us to the most sobering, heavy part of Poole's commentary.
31:20
It is the final eternal destination of those who reject
31:23
God, found in verses 17 through 20.
31:26
Verse 17 is uncompromising in its language.
31:28
It reads The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the
31:32
nations that forget God. Now Poole tackles the word hell
31:36
here, which in the original Hebrew is Sheil.
31:39
The translation of sheil is a major point of debate among
31:42
linguists and commentators. Some modern, perhaps more
31:45
liberal commentators suggest Sheil, in the specific context,
31:48
just means the physical grave, the literal dirt in the ground
31:51
where human bodies are buried. They argue David is just saying
31:54
the wicked will eventually die. But Poole argues vehemently
31:58
against that reductionist view. He insists that in this verse
32:01
she almost mean eternal perdition, the active state of
32:04
divine punishment. What is the mechanism of his
32:06
argument there? Why does he insist on eternal
32:08
perdition? Why can't it just mean the
32:09
grave? This is another brilliant
32:11
instance of Poole's rigorous logical deduction.
32:15
He states a simple biological fact.
32:18
The grave is common to both good and bad people.
32:21
Every human being dies. The righteous go to the grave,
32:23
and the wicked go to the grave. Therefore, if David is declaring
32:27
a specific terrifying judicial sentence upon the wicked
32:31
nations, a threat of only physical death lacks any
32:34
distinct judicial weight. Think about it in a modern legal
32:38
context. If a judge looks at a convicted
32:41
unrepentant mass murderer and says your punishment for these
32:45
heinous crimes is that you will eventually die of old age just
32:48
like everyone else in this courtroom.
32:50
That is not a punishment. That is just human biology.
32:52
It offers no justice to the victims.
32:54
Therefore, Poole deduces, the text must refer to a peculiar,
32:59
specific, and terrifying punishment reserved solely for
33:02
the wicked. It must be eternal perdition.
33:04
That makes pure logical sense. I know that talking about hell
33:07
is incredibly unpopular today, even in religious circles.
33:10
People try to soften it, gloss over it, or explain it away as
33:13
just a metaphor for or a bad weekend or a state of temporary
33:16
separation. Why does Pool and Reformed
33:19
theology in general insist on leaning into this heavy reality
33:23
of eternal judgment? Because the entire theological
33:26
system demands it to maintain the perfect justice of God
33:29
within the framework of the Westminster Confession, the
33:32
final judgment is a core, non negotiable reality.
33:36
God is infinitely holy, and therefore His justice must be
33:40
perfectly and infinitely satisfied.
33:42
If there is no eternal consequence for those who
33:44
oppress the innocent, who slaughter the righteous, and who
33:47
build empires on fraud, then God is not fully just.
33:51
The scales of the universe would remain forever unbalanced.
33:55
Cool notes that the wicked are turned back into hell as the
33:58
proper assigned place. He makes a chilling comparison,
34:01
saying they return there like the locusts being driven back to
34:04
the bottomless pit in Revelation.
34:06
Or, he suggests they are turned back because they had audacity
34:10
to set themselves in battle array against God and were
34:12
beaten back and driven permanently from his presence.
34:15
They actually set themselves up in military battle formation
34:18
against the Almighty, and they are driven back into perdition
34:21
by a single look. And who exactly are these wicked
34:24
people? The verse gives us a specific
34:26
definition. It says they are the nations
34:29
that forget God. Poole clarifies the forgetting
34:32
God does not mean having a bad memory or misplacing your keys,
34:36
or having a momentary lapse in concentration.
34:39
It means actively, intentionally disregarding his precepts and
34:43
his threatenings. They go on securely and
34:45
presumptuously in their oppressive courses.
34:47
They act like they are completely untouchable by divine
34:50
law. They banish the thought of a
34:52
sovereign judge from their minds so they can sin without the
34:55
friction of a guilty conscience. That intentional forgetting is
34:58
the root of profound arrogance, and it leads directly to David's
35:02
final prayer in verses 19 and 20.
35:04
Having established the eternal stakes, David, praise arise, O
35:07
Lord, let not man prevail. Let the heathen be judged in Thy
35:10
sight. Put them in fear, O Lord, that
35:12
the nations may know themselves to be but men.
35:15
Pool zeros in on the exact Hebrew meaning here.
35:18
To know themselves to be but men means to know they are weak,
35:20
miserable and mortal creatures. Mortal, prone to bleed, prone to
35:25
disease, prone to losing their breath, prone to returning to
35:28
the dust. Yes, entirely frail.
35:31
Poole points out a fatal flaw in human psychology.
35:35
Wicked men, when they are advanced to great political
35:38
authority, massive wealth and earthly majesty, are very prone
35:42
to forget their own biological and spiritual frailty.
35:45
The insulation of wealth and power creates A delusion.
35:48
They begin to carry themselves as if they were gods.
35:51
It's the oldest lie in the historical record, isn't it?
35:54
The serpent in Eden looked at humanity and said, You shall be
35:58
as gods. That is the lie humanity keeps
36:00
swallowing over and over, generation after generation.
36:03
ACEO accumulates a certain amount of wealth.
36:06
A politician gains a certain level of security clearance or
36:08
legal immunity. A dictator surrounds himself
36:11
with enough tanks. And suddenly they think they're
36:13
exempt from the rules of mortality.
36:15
They think they dictate reality. They act as their own miniature
36:18
autonomous deities, writing their own moral codes.
36:21
And this is precisely where true terror becomes a mechanism of
36:25
divine grace. David prays for God to strike
36:27
them with terror. Why?
36:29
Because fear is the only thing that can Pierce that thick armor
36:32
of delusion. If arrogant rulers are suddenly
36:34
terrified by a display of divine judgement, A collapsed economy,
36:38
a sudden illness, a political ruin, they might finally wake up
36:43
and realize they are but men. They are totally unable to
36:46
oppose the omnipotent and eternal God.
36:49
This terror is a severe mercy aimed at shattering their false
36:53
godhood before they reach the gates of death.
36:55
It really is a severe mercy. We love to point our fingers at
36:58
the corrupt politicians, the fraudulent billionaires, or the
37:01
historical tyrants when we read verses like this.
37:04
But the theological reality of total depravity means that same
37:07
seed of autonomy, that same desperate desire to act like a
37:11
sovereign God over our own lives, is resting right in our
37:14
own chests. We have to examine our own
37:16
tendencies to intentionally forget God when His precepts
37:19
interfere with our plans. It requires intense self
37:22
examination and it reinforces our earlier discussion.
37:25
The whole heart we examine in verse one is solely a product of
37:28
divine grace, not human effort. Without that grace, we would all
37:32
remain in the delusion of our own autonomy, building our own
37:34
pits. O let's pull all these threads
37:36
together and summarize the rogression of this text.
37:39
We've covered incredible ground today.
37:41
We really have. We started with the historical
37:43
mystery of the title Muthlavin and saw how Poole used strict
37:46
historical timelines and the geography of the Jebusite
37:49
occupation of Zion to keep the text universally applicable,
37:53
rejecting the narrow Belias theory.
37:55
We looked at the stark, brutal irony of God's skull traps,
37:59
understanding how divine sarcasm mocks the arrogance of those who
38:03
think they can outsmart the Creator.
38:04
We contrasted the silent, isolating gates of death with
38:08
the joyful, populated gates of Zion, realizing our primary
38:12
created function is public praise, not just private
38:15
survival. And finally, we confronted the
38:17
heavy reality of divine judgment, the linguistic
38:19
necessity of Sheol meaning eternal perdition, and the
38:22
absolute danger of frail humans believing the Edenic lie that
38:26
they are gods. It is a meticulous examination
38:29
of how God's immutable decrees interact with human agency and
38:33
how divine patience operates on a timeline we often find
38:36
agonizing, but which is mathematically and morally
38:39
perfect in its justice it gives. You so much to think about.
38:42
Now, as we wrap up this conversation, we want to leave
38:45
you with a final thought to Mull over something that builds
38:48
heavily upon pools commentary and the mechanisms of justice we
38:51
have discussed today. Consider this reality.
38:54
We saw how the wicked are snared and the very works of their own
38:57
hands falling into the exact pit they engineered.
39:00
Could it be that God's most terrifying judgement in this
39:03
earthly life is simply removing his restraint and giving us
39:08
precisely what our fallen hearts ask for?
39:10
Allowing us to succeed in our corrupt autonomous plans until
39:13
the weight of that success crushes us.
39:15
And conversely, is His greatest mercy frustrating our plans,
39:21
laying those painful spike strips in our way, blowing out
39:23
our tires so that we are forced to end up at the gates of Zion
39:27
instead of smoothly driving ourselves straight into the
39:29
gates of death? That is a thought that will keep
39:31
you awake at night, analyzing every failure and every success
39:35
in a completely different light. Thank you for joining us on this
39:38
deep dive into Matthew Poole's commentary.
39:40
We encourage you to continue reading Scripture with a
39:42
critical, historically grounded mind, resting entirely in the
39:46
sovereign grace of the righteous Judge.