Psalm 118:10-14
10 All the ungodly encompass me; *
In the name of the Lord I will repel them.
11 They hem me in, they hem me in on every side; *
In the name of the Lord I will repel them.
12 They swarm about me like bees; *
they blaze like a fire of thorns; *
in the name of the Lord I will repel them.
13 I was pressed so hard that I almost fell,*
But the Lord came to my help.
14 The Lord is my strength and my song,*
And he has become my salvation.
We have been on the edge of a war zone twice in our lives; once in the early nineteen-seventies crossing the border from Ulster to Ireland where the crossing was bombed an hour after we passed through it; and once in the nineteen-eighties at the Allenby Bridge between Jordan and Israel where we could here bullets ricocheting off the rocks. The former crossing between Ulster and Ireland had some tangible danger and that delicious tang of fear in the belly, and the latter may have been some Palestinian cowboy having a little bit of fun. However that border crossing inspection took six hours because the week before some tourist’s hand was blown off by a bomb that had been placed in his suitcase. In neither instance could we with a straight face say “All the ungodly encompass me; * in the name of the Lord I will repel them.”[i] Yet the Psalmist’s testimony in Psalm 118 does have a deep personal relevance.
St. Benedict gives us a clue to the application of this passage from Psalm 118 in the Prologue of his Rule when he says, “This is the one who, under any temptation from the malicious devil, has brought him to naught (Ps. 14:4) by casting him and his temptation from the sight of his heart; and who has laid hold of his thoughts while they were still young and dashed them against Christ” (Ps. 137:9).”[ii] There is often in Holy Scripture several layers of meaning much akin to the layers of meaning in poetry. Indeed much of the Bible is poetry, including all of the Book of Psalms. The verse Benedict is interpreting actually applies to an unpalatable malediction on the children of one’s enemies, “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock! (Psalm 136:9). The sixth century saint Benedict, casts temptations as the little ones that need to be dashed against a rock, and he is quite right.
Applying that interpretation to this passage from Psalm 118 yields the following insight. There are times when the temptations from our malicious enemy the devil encompass us; we feel harassed, surrounded, and overwhelmed. Frankly, even more dangerous are those times when we don’t even recognize that we are being tempted, but that is a discussion for another time.
The Psalmist points the way to dealing with these spiritual assaults when he says of these overwhelming enemies, “In the name of the Lord I will repel them!” Benedict says, “Take these thoughts and dash them against the Rock who is Christ!” St. Augustine gives poignant voice to difficulty that ensues, “The triflingest of things, the very hollowest of things of the hollow-headed, had stalled me—my entrenched lusts, plucking me back by my fleshly clothing, whispering low: Can you cast us off? And: From this moment, never more to be with us! And: From this moment never to do this, not ever, or to do this?”[iii]
It is so very difficult at the outset not to heed the siren call of those unholy little ones that beset us. The Psalmist says in response They hem me in, they hem me in on every side; in the name of the Lord I will repel them.” But these thoughts are insistent, “They swarm about me like bees; they blaze like a fire of thorns; in the name of the Lord I will repel them. I was pressed so hard that I almost fell, but the Lord came to my help.” When these seemingly overwhelming temptations swarm about us we will find that if we actually take those little ones, those thoughts, and in prayer dash them against Christ by asking for his help in the midst of temptation, that the greatest difficulty is at the outset, at the beginning; and if we persist we will discover that His grace will meet our need.
Note that the phrase “in the name of the Lord I will repel them” is a declaration that we ourselves, by grace, take authority over our temptations. That is the declaration we make in our baptismal vows, “Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? I renounce them.”[iv] Augustine would remind us that God will give us grace that we might actually decide to repel those temptations, and that when we have decided to renounce them, that God himself will give us the grace to carry through our intent to repel them. God chooses not to act instead of us, but hand in hand with us that we might experience his victory as we strive to repel the temptations sometimes swarm about us like bees.
Then with joy we can cry out:
“The Lord is my strength and my song,*
And he has become my salvation.”
[i] Those who have lived through one of the many wars of the last century have an even more direct experience of the nature of war, and for they have a deeper appreciation of “they blaze like a fire of thorns.”
[ii] The Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue, v. 28
[iii] Garry Wills, trans. The Confessions of St. Augustine, (New York: Penguin, 2006), p.179-180
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