RR Psalm 35:14 Part 9

Shalom,

Psalm 35:14 I went about mourning as though for my own friend or brother. I bowed down dressed in black as though for my own mother.

How low can you go?  This used to be asked of those doing the limbo.  I’m asking today because the psalmist is describing his (or is it our own?) miserable condition.  How would we comport ourselves, if our own friend, brother, or mother had just died.  Soon we will see how he goes on to describe the delight of his enemies over his sadness.  Following that, he will call upon the Lord for both deliverance and justice, but not yet.

Verse 14 is an expanded explanation of verse 13.  Read the context of these verses.  The Psalmist is in mourning over the condition of his enemies, yet they repay his good empathetic response with their evil distain.  I am reminded of Zechariah’s prophesy over Yeshua.  Zechariah 13:6  Then someone will ask him, “What are these wounds between your hands?”—and he will answer, “Those that I received in the house of my friends.”  

To follow Yeshua in His sacrificial death, is a walk that leads to following in His resurrection.  This is what the scriptures refer to as joining Him in the fellowship of His suffering. Philippians 3:10 My aim is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death— 11 if somehow I might arrive at the resurrection from among the dead.

Can’t we just skip that part and go straight to resurrection?  Isn’t the pain and suffering optional?  John 15:18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But you are not of the world, since I have chosen you out of the world; therefore the world hates you.”  

Yeshua went so far as to add this warning the Apostles (and by extension, He warned us too)… Matthew 10:22 And you will be hated by all because of My name, but the one who endures to the end shall be saved.  Let us be glad Yeshua added the “but,” so that we will have the blessed assurance of salvation.  

As Longfellow said (quoting the second verse of his poem, “A Psalm of Life”),

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not it’s goal.  
Dust thou art to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”  

Shalom shalom.

Daily Bread, reading plan by Lars Enarson (https://www.thewatchman.org/)
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Rabbi H Michael Weiner

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