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Monday, May 28, 2007

When and who?

I came across an interesting verse today in Psalm 9:18.
"For the needy shall not always be forgotten; The expectation of the poor shall not perish forever."

The implication seems to be clear. The needy and the poor are often forgotten and mistreated in this life, but there is coming a day when this will not be so. Notice that this verse says nothing about the spirituality of the poor person or to their relationship with God, it simply teaches that there is coming a day where the poor will receive justice. A parallel is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich guy goes to hell and the poor man goes to Abraham's bosom. In this story as well, nothing is mentioned about the poor man's relationship with God nor to the virtue of the poor man. Here are my questions.

When will the poor receive justice? At the end of days? If so, who will be the beneficiaries?

Discuss!

3 comments:

Kingdom Shifts said...

Aaron - Welcome back to blogosphere! Sounds like you had a successful trip to Africa! Praise God! Please give our love to your wife and I hope we can catch up soon over the phone. Blessings!

Anonymous said...

Aaron,
I can't really comment on this one intelligently. It's hard to take a single verse from an entire psalm and then interpret. A psalm is a song, usually of praise, and usually written in response to the things that God has done in the author's life. However, this isn't always the case, so you would have to study the entire psalm and see if it is prophetic or a psalm of praise for what God has already done and who He is.
Pete

Aaron D. Taylor said...

It's good to hear from you Brian. I hope you and Anetta are doing well. I'd love to talk with you over the phone soon.

Pete, thank you for your comment. I think the context is clear in the Psalm that David is referring to a future day of justice for the poor. This theme is all throughout the prophetic literature of the Old Testament and is reaffirmed in the teachings of Jesus, namely in Matthew 25 and in the story of the rich man and Lazarus.