Cinderella's Secret
We love Cinderella stories, the weak, the down-and-out who overcome all odds to win the prize. In relation to sports, the term, “Cinderella”, became prominent in 1950, the year Disney first released the animated film. It also happens to be the year when the unheard of City College of New York defeated vaunted Kentucky in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship at Madison Square Garden. An unknown group of boys defeated a giant at home, and the term, Cinderella was inaugurated in the sporting world.
This is why we love the story of David and Goliath, and why we teach it to our children. A boy who overcame all odds rose to defeat the enemy of Israel. It’s an amazing story now, but just imagine living in Israel after that boy became king. There certainly were things the nation did not like about David. You can see glimpses in the Scripture of the northern tribes’ reluctance, and sometimes anger, at accepting the reign of a king from the tribe of Judah, but David’s Cinderella story trumped all the negatives. He was the unequaled image of victory to all Israelites, regardless of his faults, or their station in life.
When David became king, he along with the prophets Samuel, Nathan, and Gad, organized Israel’s worship after Moses’ pattern of the Tabernacle. He organized the 2400 Levites into groups that would lead the worship before the Ark of the Covenant, and later in Solomon’s Temple. David, of course, wrote many of the psalms that were used in this worship.
However, David was more than a worshiper. He was also a prophet, and as such, the hymns had a much more profound meaning. Last Sunday, we looked at Psalm 3, where David opened up his heart about his conflict with Absalom. The psalmist says that even though most people considered David to be finished, and had “no hope in God”, that in fact the Lord had not forsaken him. David says he:
"But You, O Lord, are a shield for me,My glory and the One who lifts up my head." (Ps 3:3).
David was so comforted by the Lord that he actually slept in the wilderness, while Absalom performed all his sin in Jerusalem. This gives us astounding insight into the heart of David that can aid us in our worship. Even in the face of the Lord fulfilling His prophetic judgment against David (all this sin was David’s fault, the result of his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah), David maintained perfect confidence in the Lord.
A few hymns later the sub-heading to psalm 9 reads:
“To the Chief Musician. To The Tune of ‘Death of the Son.’ A Psalm of David.”
The question here is, what is meant by the phrase “Death of the Son”? Some people feels like David is referring to the death of his first son with Bathsheba, or maybe Absalom. Perhaps, but the wording of Psalm 9 has nothing to do with that topic. We saw last Sunday that the titles we have in our Bibles, “Psalm 9”, etc, did not occur until sometime after 1500 AD. There is no way of knowing in the earlier manuscripts whether our current sub-headings went with the psalm before or after. That’s all well-and-good, but if you take the phrase, “Death of the Son,” and try to apply it to Psalm 8, it won’t make any sense there either.
The Hebrew for this phrase is Muth Lab-ben. There is no doubt in the Hebrew that muth means death, and ben means son. But we know that vowels weren’t added until the Masoretes in about the 7th century AD. Adding a different vowel, you can end up with beyn, the separator, or bayin, meaning between. Both of these words are used of Goliath in 2 Sam 17:4, 23:
“4 And a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. “
“23 Then as he talked with them, there was the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, coming up from the armies of the Philistines; and he spoke according to the same words. So David heard them.”
In these verses, the words are translated as champion. The NET note at verse 4 also says the literal meaning is “the man of the space between the two armies”, and likewise translates it as champion.
If we apply this phrase to Psalm 8, things begin to make more sense. David is giving his secret to killing this champion. He says in verse 2:
"Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants
You have ordained strength,
Because of Your enemies,
That You may silence the enemy and the avenger."
David is instructing us in his hymn manual that the strength was God's, not David's, and YHWH had ordained it to defeat His enemies.
We can worship the Lord in our most humiliating experiences because He is the lifter of our heads, and we can likewise worship Him in our most glorious victories because He is the One who ordains strength to defeat His enemies! The secret power of Cinderella was the Fairy Godmother, the secret power of David was the Lord!