STRIKING TO SLAY OR SEEKING THE SAVIOR PSALMS 94:5-6

THEY STRIKE THY SAINTSv.5

They break in pieces your people, O LORD, and afflict your heritage.

THEY SLAY THE SUSCEPTIBLE V.6

They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.

The word “break” means to apply pressure. This is stress that is forced through the process of demands that are difficult. This pressure brings strain and stress until a person feels ground into pieces. It is excessive trauma, which can be psychological, emotional, or physical breaking. This leaves a person bruised, battered and broken up.

To “afflict” is characterized as oppression. It is disturbing a person to the point of anxiety and distress. This is laying a person so low that they are hurting with excessive humiliation.

“Heritage” is a term indicating ownership and possession. These are the ones the Lord has chosen for Himself, His people. They are referred to as the apple of His eye, identifying the eyes pupil, which is carefully protected.

God’s people are identified as His jewels in Mal. 3:17. A jewel is an item of exceptional preciousness. This is someone who is watchfully cared for.

Three vulnerable individuals are singled out who are exposed and defenseless. The widow, who is no longer protected and provided for by a husband. The stranger is a person from another country. They are new to a region and aren’t established. They are foreign to the new culture and without safe contacts and relatives. Last there is the orphan who is another at risk person that is unaware, and out in the open. The orphan is susceptible, weak and unprotected.

Then the word slay and murder are employed referring to the ruthlessness of these twisted, monstrous, predators who at all costs find pleasure in destroying others lives and especially preying on the weak.

Bill MacDonald’s comments on this section are that; “The proud persecutors victimize the defenseless widow, the unsuspecting guests, the helpless orphans. And their attitude is that the God of Jacob does not understand or care what is happening.”

Again the complaint to God is “O Lord” pay attention, look at what they’re doing.

“There are times says Charles Haddon Spurgeon;when the wicked seem to have things all their own way,”

They are creating chaos, destruction, and havoc. They smash and stomp at the inside of a person, annihilating a persons character, obliterating their personality, demolishing the feelings, and grinding them down with shame, humiliation and embarrassment. Using the heel of their boot, they pulverize the innocent to powder.

They go after the unborn child, who has no real parents, only sperm donors and ovum contributors; they chomp them up like ravenous, rabid beasts.

They pillage, plunder and embezzle every ounce of value from the widows, leaving them in rags, destitute and raped of all goods. They chain others in sweatshops, to slave in loneliness, struggling in grueling, arduous, punishing heat.

O Lord I know you’re watching, I know you’re involved, I know you hear my voice and comprehend my thoughts and feelings in these atrocities. There is carnage and mayhem ruling. And there is horror, terror and dreadfulness staining every inch of the earth with the blood and tears of the weak, helpless and lonely.

Show Yourself in all Your love, compassion and mercy. Display Your glory, grace and beauty in ways never before seen. Shine out in Your matchless power and deliver us. In these miscarriages of justice send out healing, and rectifying alternative cures. Any justice in our age is falling short of the decline. Discrimination is rising. Individual worth is being destroyed, decency is damaged, and courtesy and gentleness for the needy is declining. Good is replaced with calloused indifference; we sink in the mire of a hurricane of mindless assassins who are on the increase.

Jeremiah 8:22 asks the question; “is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?” But the only solution is asserted in Jeremiah 33:3 “Call unto me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which are unimaginable. The Lord is the salve that brings soothing, relief, comfort and healing: Psalms 103:3 says “He forgives all our iniquities; He heals all our diseases;” Psalms 147:3 “He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.” This is the only place to turn. We can come and pour out our hearts to Him and experience His healing touch and purifying pardon as He relaxes, relieves, fortifies and forgives.