GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
PSALM 76:10-12
God’s fame
10 Surely the wrath of men brings you praise,
And you clothe yourself with the wrath that remains.
What does this verse mean? When humans become angry with God, it’s inevitable that their anger will prove useless, and God’s glory and power will be proved right. He is never diminished by anything man does. He is glorified by our praise, and he is even glorified when man tries to attack him with criticism or man’s sinfully flawed logic. When men try to use science as a weapon against faith rather than a tool to use in God’s service, they prove that science is a shifting dune that holds no firm place before God’s truth. And the Lord shows again and again that the pagan religions are nothing but trinkets hammered in place so that the breeze won’t topple them over (Isaiah 41:7; Jeremiah 10:4).
The second line has been difficult for commentators to understand. Perhaps “God has anger in reserve to deal with those who still remain impenitent” (Brug). However, my own eyes are drawn to the cross, where God reigns from a tree and his enemies are terrified by nothing more than a windblown leaf. There is Christ crucified, stripped of his outer clothing but caked in his own blood by the wrath of men. There is Christ crucified, glorified on the cross, atoning for sin and magnified beyond all human comprehension. Surely here is God clothed in wrath, but praised by men, to our eternal joy.
11 Make vows to the LORD your God and keep them.
Let all of you who surround him
bring tribute to the Fearsome One.
12 He humbles the spirit of leaders;
he is feared by the kings of the earth.
(Some readers may want to jump down to the next paragraph) About atnach in this verse: Normally, the ^-shaped accent (below a word) called antach marks the main division in a verse, but in the poetic books Psalms, Job and Proverbs, atnach is often replaced by a double accent known as oleh weyored. Once in while, both of these occur in the same verse (as they do in verse 11). This tends to confuse even those few commentators who bother to look at the accent marks. “Let all of you” is marked by atnach but is only the secondary division of the verse. Allowing oleh weyored to show the main division superseding atnach is an example of the law of continuous dichotomy in Hebrew accentuation.
What does this mean? It means that the “you” ending of “Let all of you” can be brought out without any unnecessary interpretation like the NIV’s “let all the neighboring lands.” If we continue the picture of Christ on the cross, those who surround him are those who are there who have come to faith in him, including his mother, the apostle John, the other women (Matthew 27:55), and of course the thief on the cross who brought him the tribute of glory, addressing him as his savior, and who was granted forgiveness and eternal life.
Christ crucified. He was feared by rulers—such as Pilate, who was confused by Jesus, who tried to wash his hands of Jesus, and whose wife was disturbed by dreams about Jesus (Matthew 27:19).
Christ crucified. He humbled the spirits of leaders—such as the centurion, who exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
Christ crucified. His enemies thought he would finally fear them, but Jesus Christ is the Fearsome One, the judge who will come in glory on the last day and judge them, “even those who pierced him” (Rev. 1:7), and he will bring life to all who have faith in him. “I will bring health and healing. I will heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security” (Jeremiah 33:6). Put your trust in the one who was crucified for you. He will bring you into his Father’s many mansions, and he will give you eternal life.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota