Psalms 130:2: “Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.”
Maybe it is just me but I grew up in a Christian home, and went to church all my life. My earliest memory of Tiny Tots Sunday School is Mrs. Metzger telling us that God knows everything. He not only hears everything we say, he knows what we are thinking. Then I read a Psalms like this where writer is crying out to God for God to hear his voice. Really? I know better than that. I know from Tiny Tots in Sunday School that God hears every voice. Does this make me smarter than this guy who wrote this Psalm and if so why is it in the Bible?
I read this in the Hebrew this morning and I found something very interesting. There is a Beth in front of the word Qol (voice). The Beth is a preposition in or on. I sent a text to a couple friends of mine asking what it would mean to them if we rendered this as: “Listen in or on my voice.” One wrote back with one word eavesdropping. At first I thought she was joking but as I thought about it, why not? How many of us when we pray it is almost as if God has to eavesdrop on us to hear what we are saying. I mean in group prayer, how many of us are not conscious of the fact that other people are listening to us? We want to be sure and say the right words, make sure we sound pious and holy. After all we have a reputation to protect and we want the pastor to take notice so he might offer us some really responsible job around church and he will not give it to just anyone but someone who is holy and pious. Maybe the writer is not asking God to listen to him so much as he wants to express the fact that what he is saying is for God’s ears and not to impress the brethren with his piousness. Of course I don’t expect most of you to understand what I mean, I am sure whenever you pray in public you are just so tuned in to God you are not aware of the others around and what they might be thinking. It is probably just me and my own immaturity and need to feel accepted. So this verse is really for me. When I pray in public I need to say to God: “Listen in on my voice, because I am really trying to our pastor the pastor here with the prayer and really impress old Charlie who thinks he is such a spiritual giant that I too have loft spirituality. I fear I am so focused on them that you will not hear the cry of my heart.” Only if you are like me will you understand. If you are not then just go with “God hear my voice” and figure out for yourself why the writer is asking for something he obviously knows is happening.
I had another response which is one we should give consideration to. The writer is saying; “Listen in or on my voice.” In other words listen to the pain, the sorrow, the fear, the agony in my voice. Listen to my tears, my total emotion that is expressed in my voice.” Have you ever gone to God with a broken heart and prayed with a voice filled with tears? I have and I said something like this. “Oh God, I don’t have words to express what I am feeling, I will use the best words I can but only so you can hear the cry in my voice, so you will hear what I am feeling.” Have you ever received such bad news that all you could pray is: “Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord.” Such words are meaningless, but if God is listening in or on your voice, the cry of your voice says it all.
This leads to my other friend’s key word that she shared with me, wavelength. In other words the writer is asking that he and God be on the same wavelength. Now this really caught my attention. Perhaps when the writer is saying: “God listen in my voice” he is saying, “I want to be in tune with you. I want to speak my heart which is joined with your heart. I want only to ask what you want me to ask.” I think this interpretation is very important, particularly to those of us within the faith and Charismatic camps. People are always coming to each other for prayer. Perhaps they are sick and want to be prayed over for a healing. We all jump right in and start praying, but perhaps we are praying amiss. Would it not be better to first pray as this Psalmist prayed: “Lord listen in or on my voice bring me in tune with you, put me on your wavelength so that what I pray and how I pray is what is on your heart.”
In Mark 5:21-43 Jesus is touched by a woman who had a serious illness. Jesus immediately said; “Someone touched me.” The disciples said: “Master, a lot of people are touching you.” But Jesus said: “No, I felt virtue flow out of me.” Jesus spoke these words in Aramaic and I examined this word virtue in the Aramaic, chayala. I even went to the library at the University of Chicago to see how this was used in other Semitic languages and I found something very interesting. Chayala has its origins in vibrations. Everything that exist vibrates. Even a solid rock is made up of the very same thing we are made up of, atoms and molecules that vibrate chayala. Radio waves are simply vibrations and when you tune your radio which is a receiver to the same vibrations as the sender you pick up the music and voices. The more in tune the two vibrations are the clearer the reception as we call it. Perhaps this is what the writer is saying, the words he speaks are simply sound vibrations and he is asking that they vibrate in the same wavelength of God. The closer his vibrations match that of God’s the clearly the reception is to God.
So I don’t believe the writer is asking God to hear his voice because he thinks God is not listening or He will not hear him unless he asks. I think his words “Listen in or on my voice” encompasses all three of my responses. He wants God to eavesdrop only on those words which are charged with his true emotions and feelings so that only those words tuned into the wavelength of God will resonate and all the other pompous and pretty words spoken to impress the brethren will be overlooked.
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