Daily He Bears Us Up
Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation. Selah (Psa 68:19).
In Psalm 68, King David celebrates God’s perfect protection and provision for his people, the nation of Israel. God causes the righteous to rejoice by destroying Israel’s enemies, by bringing justice to the oppressed, and punishing the wicked. God has already demonstrated such deeds by liberating Israel. He led Israel from Mount Sinai and settled them in the land of Canaan. The kings of the Canaanite nations were defeated before the Lord. After establishing his people, God establishes his presence on his holy mountain. Then, in response to this great salvation, all of Israel joins to worship God. David even predicts that the Gentile nations will join the worshiping multitude.
Verse 19 beautifully summarizes the Lord’s care for his people—both his old and new covenant peoples. He is “the Lord, who daily bears us up.”
I am no expert in Hebrew, so I am unable to examine the original language of this verse. However, it is obvious by the variety of translations that this phrase is difficult to translate. The King James Version says, “the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits” (Take notice of the italicized words. In the King James Version, italics indicate words supplied by the translators for clarity. These words do not correspond to any words in the original language.). Even Spurgeon acknowledged that this translation of the verse is likely wrong, writing in The Treasury of David, “Our version contains a great and precious truth, though probably not the doctrine intended here.”
The Holman Christian Standard represents the majority of translations today which insert the word “burdens” for clarity: “Day after day He bears our burdens.” So, which is it? Is God loading us with something—something presumably good, thus “benefits” as supplied by the KJV translators? Or is God bearing up something for us—thus “burdens” supplied by the HCSB translators? Or is God, as the ESV has it, bearing us up? Does it even matter? Like I said, I am not qualified to make any suggestions based on the original language itself. Even so, it does matter which one is correct because the different translations are making very important distinctions.
To focus on the modern translations alone: Is God bearing up something for us? Or is God bearing up us? Often when translation is difficult, context becomes the greatest guide to meaning, and David’s recollection of Israel’s salvation story seems to indicate that the ESV is closest to the intended meaning. God did not only bestow benefits upon Israel. God did not merely bear up Israel’s burdens. God bore up Israel! God delivered them. God fought their enemies. God established his beneficial presence among them on the holy mountain.
Let me illustrate the difference: Imagine watching your child attempt to carry his huge backpack, a lunch box, and a tuba case to the end of the driveway in order to catch the school bus. You see your child having great difficulty, and so you take the backpack, lunch box, and tuba from him and carry it to the bus for him so that he can more easily and freely walk to the bus.
Now consider another situation. This time your child is an infant. Your child needs to go to the table and eat. Do you say, “Go. Nothing is burdening you down. Just get to the table”? Of course not. Instead, you pick up the baby and carry her to the table, open the jar of baby food, and spoon it into her mouth.
In these illustrations, as in the translations, there is a difference of dependency. The school-aged child has the ability to walk and only needs help. The infant does not have the ability and therefore lives in total dependency upon the parent. Which better describes God’s people Israel? Which better describes us as God’s new covenant people? I think it is obvious that we are the infant. We live in absolute dependency, and this psalm emphasizes the point. God is the one acting throughout the psalm. God’s people merely respond in praise.
So, God bears us up, and he does so daily. Every day I wake up, and I am unable to do it. I am unable to live. I am unable to obey. I am unable to make it through in one piece. I am unable to meet the demands. I am unable to endure the suffering. I am completely and utterly unable. This inability is not due to the fact that I am overloaded with burdens. O, yes, I have burdens, and, yes, they are many! But my inability is much greater than my burdens. My inability is innate. My inability is not outside me; it is within. So, I am completely dependent upon him who bears me up.
Like a baby cries to communicate needs, I cry out to God with my needs—not for help satisfying my own needs, but for the satisfaction that comes from his hand alone. I don’t pray, “Help me this day get my daily bread.” I pray, “Give me this day my daily bread.” Like a baby must be placed at the breast, God must pick me up to provide and protect me. Certainly, I must put forth effort. Certainly, he uses ordinary means—like my job—to meet my needs. Likewise, Israel fought the Canaanite enemies that the psalm celebrates God fighting against. However, apart from God’s bearing up, Israel would have been unable to fight its enemies and I would have been unable to go to work this morning. Any power that we do demonstrate is only the result of God’s gracious demonstration of his power through us.
So, here is the great comfort: He does it. He bears me up daily. I’m not holding it all together. He is. I’m not pushing through. He’s carrying me through. So, why worry about tomorrow? Why even worry about today? I want to rest in the fact that I am being carried and cared for, and there is never a single day—never a single moment—that I am not safely within his arms, and for this the only appropriate response is praise. “Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up!”
