George Gates
Apr 14, 2022, 5:44 PM
Most of us have heard this passage over and over again…especially verse 4, from Psalms 37:4-11 we read, 4 “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass. 6 And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday. 7 Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him: fret not yourself because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who brings wicked devices to pass.”
So, as a teacher I have a craving for truth. Not because George wants to be correct or right from an egotistical standpoint, but I love the truth of God’s word. Is not the first piece of armor in the full armor of God the “Belt of truth?” Yes, it is indeed. Jesus even said, “Sanctify them in truth.” So, I dug deep into this passage in Psalms with an emphasis on Hebrew grammar.
Hebrew has some verb tenses that we do not have in English without adding adjectives to our sentences to make something clearer. The verb tense of “Delight yourself” falls under the classification of intensity but also of a reflective nature towards myself. So now you may ask, “George, explain this in practical terms.” When the passage says “Delight yourself” is a choice I make (reflective) towards myself in an intense fashion. The Hebrew word for delight in this passage is “ahnag.” However, the verb tense of ahnag is much more than just casual delighting. Ahnag has an intense verb tense called the Hithpael tense. Hithpael means for you to take a very strong and intense effort to delight in the Lord. The person delighting in the Lord in this manner is to be passionate, powerful, strong, and very willful in delighting in the Lord. Delighting yourself in the Lord is not like stopping at the local convenient store, getting a shot of “espresso God” and moving on. Where the passage also states “wait patiently” for him is also the Hithpael tense. “Wait patiently,” if you look it up in a good Hebrew Lexicon (Gesenius) means to “bind yourself tightly like a rope around a tree.” So, you can see that “waiting” is not like me waiting on the city bus down by the stop sign. Whenever I have rode the bus, I was just casually hanging out there watching the city bus app as to where the bus was. Even as I post this I have to partake of my own medicine because teachers will be judged with a stricter judgement. So we, George included, need to ask ourselves, “What efforts are we going to take to intensely delight in the Lord and binding ourselves close to him?”
As I have meditated on this passage, I wonder what I may have lost because of my lack of intensity or intimacy in my walk with the Lord. Let us do as John says, “Abide in him so that when he appears we will not shrink back but be blameless before him.” Yes, it is possible to stand before the Lord “blameless.”
Selah
