You have probably taken one. You can go online and find a bunch of them, and some jobs require them. What are they? They are personality tests. You take to learn more about yourself. But they are not all created equal. At one end are serious and in-depth personality tests that government agencies administer to determine if you are suited to be a secret agent. On the other end, there are the lighthearted and fun ones on random websites. Some of these entertaining tests will tell you which house you would fit into at Hogwarts, what character you match in Middle Earth or Star Wars, or what animal you are most like. And there is probably one about what tree or plant your personality resembles. Are you more like an oak, a willow, a sumac, or a thistle? Our Lord often sees us spiritually as a tree, and this psalm points out the right and wrong kind of tree to be.

Like the previous psalm, this one is anchored to a distinct event in David’s life. He hammered out this poem on the anvil of a trial, particularly a not-so-pleasant encounter with Doeg the Edomite. For this ordeal, we are taken all the way back to the beginning of David’s career. He had toppled the giant Goliath and had been a commander in Saul’s army for a bit. Then, when Saul was feverish to murder David, Jonathan released David so that he could go on the run, being above reproach. And with David on the road, his first stop was the city of Nob, where the tabernacle was at that time. Nob was a city of priests. While at the shrine, the priest Ahimelech gave David some bread and the sword of Goliath. Yet this was not a private meeting, because lurking off to the side was Doeg. He spied David acquiring his supplies and hitting the road again.

Who was Doeg? First, he was an Edomite. He was not a native to Israel; he possessed no citizenship within the covenant. Furthermore, the Edomites were the descendants of Esau. The age-old rivalry between Jacob and Esau lived on between the Israelites and the Edomites. Doeg was not friendly. What, then, was he doing in Israel? We are informed that he was the chief of Saul’s shepherds. This means he was a hired worker; he was in the employ of Saul for the money. To be in the covenant realm for the money was not a positive trait. Also, the chief of shepherds job does not seem to be confined to agricultural work. Maybe Doeg dealt with the flocks some, but we find him mainly occupied with military work. He was a mercenary, a gun for hire, a paid sword. So, shortly after spying David at the tabernacle, knowing that Saul was on the hunt for David, Doeg ratted.

Doeg informed Saul that David paid the city of priests a visit. Then, in the psychosis of his jealousy, Saul summoned all the priests of Nob and charged them with treason for helping out David and condemned them to death. But when no Israelite would kill the priests of the Lord, Doeg happily volunteered. Yes, the sword of Doeg cut down eighty-five priests. This Doeg slaughtered the holy priests of Yahweh! And he did not stop with the men, for then Doeg murdered all the women and children of the town. He even killed the animals. What a mind-boggling massacre! Doeg stained the ground with the blood of priests, wives, infants, and, for good measure, sheep and donkeys. The horror fills you with dizzying nausea.

Finally, when the one surviving priest told David about the bloodshed, David mourned and blamed himself. He said he knew that Doeg would tell Saul, so he occasioned the death of the city. Hence, it is no surprise that after this disaster, David wrote about it. He bound up his anger in a poem and offered it up to God.

His opening line is quite the gut punch: Why do you boast in evil, O warrior? This shows that Doeg was more mercenary than shepherd. Yet, such boasting smells particularly putrid, especially in contrast to its upright counterpart. That is, there is a godly boasting that brags about the Lord. To boast in God magnifies and praises Him as our Lord and Redeemer, our supreme good and our beautiful Holy One. To boast in Yahweh is proper and necessary.

Furthermore, your run-of-the-mill boasting is, for the most part, a sin against the truth. Someone brags that they are strong, smart, awesome, or attractive when they are not. The problem with this is that it does not match reality. Most bragging takes some good and inflates it beyond proportion; it violates sober accuracy. But Doeg’s boasting takes an even more perverted path, for he brags in evil itself. He treats evil as if it is good, and then he puffs up his chest and struts around as being the best at evil.

And what is this evil? His tongue plots destruction. His razor-sharp tongue succeeds at deceit. The implication of this is undeniable. Namely, Doeg planned the massacre of Nob. His ratting out David was his strategy to spill innocent blood. Sure, Saul gave the order, but Doeg was the puppet master pulling the strings. As an outside Edomite, Doeg used David to strike a deadly blow against the holy priests of God and their families. This is the evil about which Doeg brags. He is dancing on the graves of good and innocent saints. It is wicked to slaughter innocents and conceal your dastardly deed, but it is far more perverse and wretched to boast openly of such bloodshed.

Doeg took selfies with the dead and sent them to his mum: “Look what I did, Mum! Aren’t you proud?”

Moreover, a blade against a priest is a hand against the holy Lord. The pure boast in the Lord, but as far as hell is from heaven, so Doeg boasted in genocidal evil. The serpent buried his fangs deep into the heel of Jacob through Doeg. As Psalm 52:3 says, “You love evil more than good”; you love words that swallow and consume. The lust of his heart, the true affection of his soul, was unadulterated evil that deceives and devours.

Thankfully, God’s common grace restrains most people from being this dark; most of our unbelieving neighbors are quite decent. Yet this kindness of our Lord should not make us forget that such arrogant evil still prowls in our world. Lovers of evil will happily knife good in the belly and do it with a Joker smile. We cannot be naïve. We must be vigilantly on guard.

As David rebukes and laments the evil boasting of Doeg, however, he knows that this foul fellow will not have the last word. In his mysterious providence, the Lord allows such atrocities at times, but this does not mean God is absent or uninterested. Rather, the Lord remains on his throne; he sees all things, and he avenges notorious crimes. One of the consolations for David’s tears is that Yahweh will judge. God will not allow Doeg to escape scot-free. Thus, David asserts the justice of the Lord. Surely, God will tear down Doeg; he will snatch and rip him from the safety of his tent. The Lord will uproot this scoundrel from the land of the living.

There is no record in Scripture of Doeg being punished for his deed. Yet probability favors that he got what was coming to him. Remember what David did to the Amalekite who claimed to have killed Saul: He executed him. Doeg may have roamed free for a time, but when David came to power, you can bet he dealt justly with Doeg. But even if Doeg slipped through the fingers of the human courts, he could not outrun the Divine tribunal.

Note the imagery employed here. God will uproot him (Ps 52:5). Doeg is likened to a plant and a tree. No species is identified, but Doeg’s roots are ripped up from the living plane. He was a fruitless tree—no, worse—Doeg grew poisonous and wicked thorns; thus, he was destined for destruction. A wicked tree is toxic to the whole forest. Not only will Doeg be chopped down, stump and root, but the Lord will tear him down forever. The Lord’s justice against evil is not for this life alone but extends into the next.

There are times when execution does not seem like enough. The proportionality of justice balances crime and punishment. But Doeg massacred a whole town of people; he did not even spare the cattle. Tyrants will kill thousands and ruin the lives of millions. How can their one execution balance the myriad of murders? Earthly judges will hand out several life sentences for heinous felons, which seems a bit silly; they cannot serve them. But with God it is possible! His justice issues an enduring punishment. Sin blasphemes the infinite Lord, which is balanced by an infinite sentence.

Nonetheless, with the judgment of Doeg, and those like him, accomplished, note the response. The righteous ones of God will see it, and they will fear. The upright witness the justice of the Lord, and they learn respect and humility. It confirms to them that our God is holy and mighty. The wicked may escape justice for a season, but the Lord always gets his man. Thus, those with truth in their souls realize that you cannot thwart the law with impunity; you cannot defile the Lord for long. But for the grace of God, there we go as well. Thus, God’s wrath invigorates our fear of the Lord so that we cling to him ever more tightly in faith and devotion. This, though, is not the only response the godly have at God’s judgment, which we will dig into deeper in part 2.

©Zach Keele. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

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Post authored by:

• Zach Keele

  

  Rev. Zachary Keele grew up on a ranch in a small town named Crawford, Colorado. He attended Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania and received his Master of Divinity from Westminster Seminary California. He has served as the pastor of Escondido OPC since 2006.

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