Who Is Like You?
TRANSLATION
(7) For without cause, they hid their net for me. Without cause, they dug a pit for my life. (8) Let ruin overtake them unawares. Let the net which they hid capture them. Into that very ruin let them fall. (9) Then my soul will rejoice in Yahweh. It shall exult in his salvation. (10) All my bones shall say, “Who is like you, Yahweh, delivering the poor from the one who is too strong for him, the poor and needy from him who robs him?”
OBSERVATIONS
Two repetitions, each found in individual verses, mark this segment: “without cause” (vs. 7) and “the poor” (vs. 10). David initially protested that his enemies had tried to ensnare him without any provocation on his part. He then asked Yahweh to thwart the ambush they had set for him by trapping them in their own device (vss. 7 & 8). David finally focused on Yahweh’s deliverance and the praise that would result because of his gracious protection of “the poor” (vss. 9 & 10).
David’s statement, “All my bones shall say,” needs explanation. While everyone knows that bones cannot speak, they bear testimony to Yahweh’s greatness. In the ancient Hebrew mindset, bones represented the inner essence of a person. This expression conveyed the same message as the opening of Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name” (vs. 1).
OUTLINE
I. May my enemies fall into the trap they have set for me. (7 & 8)
II. Then my soul will rejoice in Yahweh who saves me. (9 & 10)
IDEA STATEMENT
When we entrust the fate of our enemies into Yahweh’s hands, our souls will rejoice in Yahweh’s deliverance.
APPLICATION
“Who is like you, Yahweh?” is not a question asked with an expectation of gaining information. Rather it has the rhetorical purpose of asserting that there is no one like Yahweh. The word “unique” is often misused when a better descriptive such as “unusual” or “special” should be found. “Unique” is a particularly appropriate way to describe our great God. There is no one and nothing like him throughout the entire universe. Yahweh is truly one of a kind. He defines the essence of the word, “unique.”
Skip Myers of the Smiths Station Baptist Church in Smiths Station, Alabama wrote the following in a column entitled “The One and Only One and Only” in the Edgefield Daily of Edgefield, SC: The only truly unique thing (in the universe) is God! He is the authentic one and only. Therefore, because God is the very definition of uniqueness, we should attribute to him a degree of value unlike any other element in our lives. The question “Who is like you, Yahweh?” should be understood as a confession of faith in Yahweh’s incomparable greatness. In essence the psalmist was forcefully declaring, “You alone are God, and you alone are worthy of our worship.”