One of the shortest psalms of the
Bible gives us a beautiful picture of the kind of peace and quiet that God
wants us to experience:
O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great
and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned
child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope
in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 131:1–3)
It is the peace and quiet of a weaned
child. What is that?
Great Humility Looks Like a Small Child
When David said his heart was not
lifted up and his eyes were not raised, his original Hebrew readers would have
clearly understood what he meant. His son, Solomon, later used similar imagery
when he wrote, “Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked, are
sin” (Proverbs 21:4). David was talking about pride.
We tend to think of David as a
humble man, which is a right tendency because he often was. But humility didn’t
come naturally to David. He, like us, was all too aware of the incessant
prideful impulses of his fallen nature, which at times he followed and which led
him into grievous trouble. Therefore, David, like us, was often painfully aware
of his pride-induced transgressions, and there were times his sin was ever
before him (Psalm 51:3).
We don’t know the events that
prompted David to pen this short psalm. But we know two things: 1) His
afflictions were many (Psalm 34:19) and 2) We often respond to our own
afflictions the same way. We quickly lift our hearts and raise our eyes in
pride when we are opposed or maligned or suffer in some way.
David’s life was frequently
embattled and often threatened. With the complexities and tragedies he faced,
it must have been difficult to set aside the things “too great” for him — the
“why’s” he couldn’t figure out. We only need to think of how hard it is to set our
anxieties and fears aside, things “too marvelous” for us, and rest in trust on
God’s promises. We know just how easy it is to grumble and not to be humble.
So in these few words, David is
giving us a model of what it looks like to humble ourselves under God’s mighty
hand (1 Peter 5:6): Great humility typically looks
like a small child.
Why a Weaned Child?
But David has a particular child in
mind: a weaned child. “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child
with its mother” (Psalm 131:2). Why did David choose a weaned
child as his model of humility?
A nursing child is a beautiful
picture of a restful, comforted dependence on a mother’s provision. It is an
idyllic picture of what it looks like to receive necessary nourishment at a
needed time from a trusted source.
A weaned child is a different picture
altogether.
In ancient Near Eastern cultures,
children weren’t weaned from breastfeeding until at least three years of age,
and sometimes older. By those ages, children’s cognitive and verbal abilities
were normally quite developed. This meant that the transition from the familiar
comfort and nourishment of a mother’s breast to no longer receiving such
comfort and nourishment would have been psychologically and emotionally more
difficult than for a younger child. One can imagine a three year-old’s tears
and anger and insistence and complaints and pleas and repeated physical
attempts to nurse again, only to be denied by the one person who had up to that
point been the source of such intimate comfort and nourishment. Why won’t Mommy
nurse me anymore?
A recently weaned child is a child
who has experienced deprivation, disappointment, confusion, and grief. Such a
child who has quieted his soul and is peacefully sitting beside his mother, no
longer demanding what has been denied to him, is a child who has submitted his
will to his mother’s will. The reasons why being denied his mother’s breast is
the best thing for him are still “too great” for him to understand. But he has
endured the struggle, worked through the grief, dried the tears, and is finally
willing to trust his mother’s wisdom that “solid food is for the mature” (Hebrews 5:14).
He is beginning to bear the peaceful fruit that comes from the discipline of a
loving parent’s training (Hebrews 12:11).
Child-Like Hope in the Lord Forever
So a weaned child is the picture of
peaceful humility that illustrates David’s hope in God. David does not fully
understand the reasons for his deprivation, disappointment, confusion, and
grief. He has endured struggle, dismay, and tears. But now he sits in peace
beside his divine Parent, chastened and humbled and willing to trust that God
knows what’s best for him.
And it is in this spirit of a weaned
child that David says to us, the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16),
“O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore” (Psalm 131:3).
Hope in the God who weans his children. “For the Lord disciplines the one he
loves” (Hebrews 12:6; Proverbs 3:12),
and his painful weaning is for our good, even though this good may be too
marvelous for us to yet understand.
If we trust in God now, if we will
place our hope in him now, we will know peace, and our hope will last
forevermore.
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