Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. – Psalm 148:4

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 12, 2013): Psalm 148

In the ancient world, the people believed in what has become known as a three tiered universe. There was the earth, and there was the space above the earth termed the heavens, which because of its blue color and the fact that rain fell from the sky was originally thought to be filled with water, and then there was the space under the earth. We are not sure how long this three tiered universe belief lasted, but it probably was not as long as we might think. We are a curious group, and soon we just needed to answer the questions that we had about what it was we were seeing in the sky.

How long the human race actually believed in a three tiered universe might be an open question, but even today we use the terminology of the three tiered universe. Heaven is up and Hell is down even though we know full well that the world is round and then the direction we are indicating when we point up is different depending on the time of day and even where in the world it is that we are standing. The three tiered terminology is seared into our emotions even though we know intellectually that the three tiered model is untrue.

This psalm was written either during the time of the Babylonian captivity or at the close of the captivity. And the Psalmist uses a three tiered description of creation in his praise. This has raised the question of whether the Psalmist believed in the three tiered model, or was he just using poetic language to get a point across. One of the criticisms about people that read and use the bible is that we often ignore the genre present – we seem to believe that every passage of scripture is written in the same way – and that is probably a dangerous way to read any literature.

But the evidence in this case is that the Psalmist is using poetic language of a three tiered universe. As much as many people seem to want to ascribe scientific truth to passages like this, it is just unlikely that that was even what the author was intending. Seven hundred years before the Babylonian captivity, Babylon had already amassed a great deal of knowledge about the stars and the planets. And two hundred years before the captivity, scientists were already using internal logic to predict the movement of the planets. In Babylon, and in most of the world, the time of belief in the three tiered universe was already past.

But the fact that the belief in how the universe was arranged had already changed did not steal the power of the three tiered universe description from the poets. For the poet, up was up and down was down – it may not have been intellectual truth, but it was emotional truth. And emotional truth has always been powerful in literature (and especially in poetry.) So the Psalmist uses the emotional language of the three tiered universe to reinforce the idea that everything will eventually praise God.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 149 & 150