A Study of Psalm 16 (verse 4, Worship)

¹ Preserve me, God, because I take refuge in you.

² I say to Yahweh, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have nothing good.” ³ I say of the holy people who are in the land, “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.” ⁴ The sorrows of those who hurry after other gods will multiply. I will not pour out their bloody libations, nor take their names on my lips.

People get in a hurry to do something for a variety of reasons:

• They have time constraints, so rush to complete the task quickly.
• They want to achieve more, so are urgent to achieve a multitude of goals.
• They feel a social pressure to meet other’s expectations.
• They are stressed and anxious about what they are doing so they hurry to complete it.
• They have the expectation of instant results like those produced by technology.

In Psalm 16, David is making a confession of faith in Yahweh that includes a confession of dependency on the lordship of Yahweh (v.2), a confession of a righteous fellowship with Yahweh’s people (v.3), confession of his commitment to orthodox worship (v.4), and a confession of deep satisfaction with his relationship to Yahweh (vv.5,6).

In his confession of orthodox worship David attests to his belief that a multitude of sorrows and troubles will attend the way of those who worship false gods. He says, literally, “The sorrows of those who hurry after ___ will multiply.” He doesn’t specify what is hurried after, though the next phrase makes clear that he is talking about other gods than Yahweh. As he says, he will not take “their” names on his lips. He cannot mean the names of the worshipers who are hurrying after something but must mean the names of these false gods.

But “hurry after”? The term used means to do something quickly or hastily, with urgency. David cannot mean that the rituals these idol-worshipers conducted were hurried. Rituals in the Ancient Near Eastern world, pagan rituals and Israelite ritual equally, were not quick, instantaneous, or hurried. They were slow, elaborate, multi-stepped, and highly formalized. No, David means these people have abandoned the worship of Yahweh, have quickly deserted Him, maybe from “social pressure to meet other’s expectations.” Any rejection of true worship is too hurried.

But he, David, will not be a participant in this false worship. He will not pour out sacrificial libations or drink offerings to these false gods. They are bloody libations, not because they contain blood in them (they were normally wine), but because they are offered with blood-stained hands, with guilty hands that have been sullied with the blood of animal sacrifice wrongly offered. They have been offered to Molech, or Baal, or some other named god rather than Yahweh. And David will not take the name of any god other than Yahweh on his lips. He will only do orthodox worship.