Today’s Scripture Reading (February 7,
2017): Psalm 48
In
“The Game of Thrones,” the characters have a fear of what lives beyond the wall
– or literally on the north side of the wall. The North was a place of cold,
and a place where all sorts of monsters lived. The wall had been built in the
first place to keep the people of the
south safe from the horrors of the north. While in the south everything was
very rational, in the north it was spiritual. In the north magic lived – and
magic is always to be feared. And so they had built a colossal barrier between them and the evils of the North. It was a precaution that simply made
sense.
In
the ancient world, there was a belief
that all the gods lived on a mountain to the North. Throughout all of the
Middle East literature, there is this repeated refrain – the gods of the
Northern Mountain. It was the supposed dwelling place of the gods of Mount Olympus. Even the Canaanites believed
that their gods lived on a mysterious Northern Mountain. It was the home of
Ba-al and all of the other deities that ran around in the Promised Land. The
North was thought of as a strange place,
similar to the way that people treated the northern space beyond the wall in
the fictional “The Game of Thrones.” There was a mystery about the North.
Because no matter how cold it was, no matter how strange were the things that
the people confronted – there was still more north to travel. And no one had
ever reached the Northern Mountain and the home of the gods – which would have
been the strangest place on earth.
The
translators of this Psalm have taken this idea of a Northern Mountain and have
given it a name – Zaphon. The word in Hebrew is transliterated
tsä·fōn' – a word that really just
means “in the north.” The actual verse in Hebrew seems to be much more of an
imperative than the NIV would lead us to believe. The intent of the Psalmist is
not so much that Mount Zion, the mountain location where the temple had been built, was like Zaphon. Mount Zion dwelt
on the slopes of Zaphon – it was Zaphon. The Psalmist was taking aim at all of
those who might believe in the gods that inhabit the mountain in the
north. The
Psalmist throws all of the pagan mythology of the area out the window. By the
use of the word Zaphon, he tells everyone who is willing to listen that the God
who calls himself “I Am” is the only true God - the only real deity that this
world has ever known. And that Zion, the very mountain on which that God had
placed his temple, is the northern mountain and the place where God lives.
Of
course, that was not quite correct either. It took the destruction of the
temple three times before God’s people began to realize that their God dwelt
wherever it was that they were. He was with them, even during the tough moments
of life and, indeed, to the very end of the world itself. The real truth was
that every person who was brave enough to declare that “I Am” was the true God
became, in and of themselves, the famed Zaphon, the mountain of the north and
the place where God has decided to live.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Kings
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