Selah, Sweet Music to God’s Ear

“…let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth. Selah.” Ps. 59:13

Jacob. Why Jacob? Why not Abraham? Why not Isaac? Judah? Jacob was the father of the twelve: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim, and Manasseh. David could have said ‘God ruleth in Judah.’ That was his tribe. Was David arbitrary in referring to Jacob in this Psalm? If so, what would such arbitrariness say of the reliability and purposefulness of what is written in the Word of God? Wasn’t David, as the prophets and apostles, equally inspired? I believe so, and God inspired David to say that ‘He ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth.’

But why Jacob? Of course, I can’t say exactly, but I suspect it had to do with what prompted David to write Psalm 59; which, as a Michtam (or golden Psalm), was a song written some time after the event when Saul sent men to watch David’s house and to lie in wait to kill him. If written in retrospect, David possibly associated his anointment as King of Israel, to succeed Saul, as a matter of God’s choosing; as God chose between Jacob and his older brother Esau. Esau became the father to the Edomites. It is unlikely that David would have referred to Abraham because of Ishmael, who was a father of twelve sons, which represented the tribes of the Persian and Arabic peoples. I can imagine the theological arguments and claims the Muslims would have brought if Abraham was named in this text. Today, of course, we hear the Muslim claims that they too were the children of Abraham, and they are correct. However, God’s covenant passed from Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob in that order, and the lineage of Jesus, our Messiah, followed through David and Judah. Today, in Romans 10, we are told, “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” By God’s grace, we have been grafted into the root of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), but the day will come that Israel shall be restored; that is, once the fulness of the Gentiles is realized. Here, in Romans, we see the fulness of Psalm 59:13, ‘…until the ends of the earth,’ driving for completion in thought and purpose towards the ultimate end found in Revelation 21:1, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”

Did David see what is written here when he wrote the line of this song: ‘…let them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth?’I suspect he did; not in the way that he visually saw what would occur in his future, ending in Revelation 21:1, but certainly, as a man after God’s own heart, he had a deep and heightened; if only an ephemeral sense of God’s glory and promise! Such exhilaration must necessarily be shortened, lest our very hearts would stop beating. Such was his view and faith in God’s covenant; even as ours should be.

And when David wrote the lyric, ‘let them know?’ was he directing that to us? If that’s the case, and I believe it is, then of course the verse should end for all eternity: Selah! According to Strong’s Lexicon, the word ‘Selah’ means to pause in silence. Silence!  Yes, I would say for us to consider the grandeur of God’s grace, His throne and eternal Being; to kneel in reverence, adoration and ‘in silence!’ before Him, and that silence, allowing only the sound of ten billion beating hearts or more being heard… as many waters lapping on the shore of God’s harbor, will be sweet music to God’s ear.