Peter SmytheDecidedly Unprofessional

In some previous essays, we established that Acts 2:27 does, indeed, speak of Jesus being in hades. In the last essay, we saw that Jesus demonstrated that the Law, all of the prophets, and the psalms spoke of Him (prefiguratively, if that is a word). With that foundation, we can delve into one of the figural readings of Jesus’s descent into hell.

Before we do that, however, let me speak a word about how our culture of self-help in the Oprah age has affected our reading of scripture. If you go into any Christian bookstore today, you’ll see one of today’s Christian topsellers which is a book about Psalm 40:1-3. Psalm 40:1-3 says:

I waited patiently for Yahweh, -
And he inclined unto me, and heard my cry for help;
So he brought me up
Out of the destroying pit,
Out of the swampy mire, -
And set upon a cliff my feet,
Making firm my steps:
Then put he into my mouth a new song, Praise to our God, -
Many shall see and revere, And shall trust in Yahweh.”
 (Rotherham)

In the book, the preacher/author uses Psalm 40:1-3 as a Biblical foundation for “getting out of the pit.” The “pit” is a place where “you feel stuck” and “you feel you can’t stand up effectively to your enemy.” The pit can be anything from a bad relationship to an eating disorder. The author goes on to identify “three steps out of your pit.” Once you do the three steps, then you are on your way to deliverance. (How many 3 steps, 4 steps, 12 steps sermons have we all heard?) While I respect the author as a minister of the gospel, he has employed the same, psychological, self-help approach to the psalms that most of us Oprahites want to hear; it’s all about us and all about self-help. Indeed, in today’s preaching, the psalms have been relegated to use as nice poetry to read or say when you’re feeling down (the “pit’). God has instilled in the psalms much more than that.

The Figural Reading of Psalm 40

In Hebrews 10, we read:

Therefore, when He [Christ] comes into the world, He says,

Sacrifice and offering You have not desired,
But a body You have prepared for Me;
In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure.

Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come (In the scroll of the book
it is written of Me)
To do You will, O God.’

After saying above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have not desired, or have You taken pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.” Hebrews 10:5-10 (NASB) (emphasis supplied)

Here we see the author of Hebrews, a New Testament author, going back to Psalm 40 and quoting Psalm 40:6,7, not as a psychological jump-start, but as the very words of Jesus, Himself. Indeed, the author doesn’t even qualify it by saying something like, “David prophesied about Jesus, saying” or anything like that. He writes the God-breathed scripture as Jesus’s own quote without any theological qualms whatsoever. That opens the entire psalm to being Jesus’s voice and when we see it that way, we see a much fuller and richer revelation of Jesus’s redemptive work.

Let me frame a re-reading of Psalm 40:1-3 as the first-person voice of Jesus. First, by Acts 2:27 (“you will not abandon my soul in hades”), we understand that Jesus’s soul had to descend to hell as part and parcel of His work of redemption. By Ephesians 1:20 (“when He raised him out of dead ones”), we understand that it was God, the Father, who raised Him up. (see also Romans 4:25). By Galatians 3:11 and Habakkuk 2:4 (“my righteous one shall live by my faith”), we understand that Jesus had to live by faith; He had to trust the Father to raise Him out of hell. Now we can see Psalm 40:1-3 in its real light:

I waited patiently for Yahweh, -
And he inclined unto me, and heard my cry for help;
So he brought me up
Out of the destroying pit,
Out of the swampy mire, -
And set upon a cliff my feet,
Making firm my steps:
Then put he into my mouth a new song, Praise to our God, -
Many shall see and revere, And shall trust in Yahweh. (Rotherham)

The “destroying pit” takes on quite a different character, especially when you think of Acts 2:27 when it says, “You will not allow your Holy One to see destruction.” “I waited patiently for Yahweh” also takes on a fuller meaning when we consider that Jesus had to be in the “heart of the earth” for three days and nights.

When Mary met Jesus at the tomb, He said to her, “I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God.” (John 20:17 (NASB)) We can see that John 20:17 is a partial fulfillment of Psalm 40:3 - “Praise to our God, Many shall see and revere . . .”

If we take Jesus at His word to the disciples that all the scriptures spoke of Him, we’ll have a much richer understanding of His role in the Plan of Redemption and why God, after raising Him, glorified Him and gave Him the name above all other names.

[Note: If you cross-reference Hebrews 10:5-7 with Psalm 40:6-7 in your own Bible, you might notice that they don’t line up word for word. That is because the author of Hebrews is quoting from the Septuagint (Greek translation of O.T.) and not the original Hebrew text. Most of our Bibles’ O.T. translations are based upon the original Hebrew and not the Septuagint.]

[Note 2: While I like writing, this is a whole lot better preached.]