FOR THE DIRECTOR of music. To the tune of “Lilies.” Of David.
1Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
2I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
3I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God.
4Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
what I did not steal.
5You know my folly, O God;
my guilt is not hidden from you.
6May those who hope in you
not be disgraced because of me,
O Lord, the LORD Almighty;
may those who seek you
not be put to shame because of me,
O God of Israel.
7For I endure scorn for your sake,
and shame covers my face.
8I am a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother’s sons;
9for zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
10When I weep and fast,
I must endure scorn;
11when I put on sackcloth,
people make sport of me.
12Those who sit at the gate mock me,
and I am the song of the drunkards.
13But I pray to you, O LORD,
in the time of your favor;
in your great love, O God,
answer me with your sure salvation.
14Rescue me from the mire,
do not let me sink;
deliver me from those who hate me,
from the deep waters.
15Do not let the floodwaters engulf me
or the depths swallow me up
or the pit close its mouth over me.
16Answer me, O LORD, out of the goodness of your love;
in your great mercy turn to me.
17Do not hide your face from your servant;
answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.
18Come near and rescue me;
redeem me because of my foes.
19You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed;
all my enemies are before you.
20Scorn has broken my heart
and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy, but there was none,
for comforters, but I found none.
21They put gall in my food
and gave me vinegar for my thirst.
22May the table set before them become a snare;
may it become retribution and a trap.
23May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,
and their backs be bent forever.
24Pour out your wrath on them;
let your fierce anger overtake them.
25May their place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in their tents.
26For they persecute those you wound
and talk about the pain of those you hurt.
27Charge them with crime upon crime;
do not let them share in your salvation.
28May they be blotted out of the book of life
and not be listed with the righteous.
29I am in pain and distress;
may your salvation, O God, protect me.
30I will praise God’s name in song
and glorify him with thanksgiving.
31This will please the LORD more than an ox,
more than a bull with its horns and hoofs.
32The poor will see and be glad—
you who seek God, may your hearts live!
33The LORD hears the needy
and does not despise his captive people.
34Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and all that move in them,
35for God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
Then people will settle there and possess it;
36the children of his servants will inherit it,
and those who love his name will dwell there.
Original Meaning
FOLLOWING THE GROUP of Psalms 56–68 with their striking connected themes of praising God (who is clearly identified as Yahweh in Ps. 68) for his universal creative power and authority acknowledged by all nations, Psalms 69 introduces a new psalm grouping (Pss. 69–71) that returns to earlier themes of lament and pleas for deliverance from mocking and threatening enemies. The hoped-for divine rule over the nations gives way here to the reality of something far less—isolation, oppression, and ridicule by the enemy. The psalmist—who acknowledges sin (69:5) and accepts divine discipline (69:26)—experiences an environment of scorn and rejection that seems out of proportion to his real guilt.
It is clear from the concluding verses (69:33–36) that this individual lament has been reinterpreted to speak to the exilic community. In this later context the rejection the psalmist experiences should perhaps be understood as scorn from those cynical captives who pour out contempt on his expressions of zeal for the Jerusalem temple (69:9) and on his contrition for the communal sins that brought the nation to this pass. At some level the psalmist’s suffering is vicarious—both for God (69:9) and for the people (69:26).
Perhaps also the psalmist’s enemies can be understood to include the mocking, victorious enemy, although for the most part the textual clues suggest fellow members of the community of faith (69:8, 27–28) who are forfeiting their share in God’s coming salvation by persecuting the suffering faithful. Together with Psalms 70–71, Psalm 69 prepares the way for the exalted hopes for the enduring and righteous rule of the king in Psalm 72—a rule that will last as long as the moon and will reach to the ends of the earth (72:5–8).1
Structurally, Psalm 69 is divided into seven segments: a plea for deliverance from enemies using the imagery of drowning (69:1–4), the psalmist’s admission of guilt coupled with a description of the scorn experienced (69:5–12), a renewed plea for deliverance from enemies again using the imagery of drowning (69:13–18), continued description of the scorn experienced by the psalmist (69:19–21), desire for divine judgment on the enemy (69:22–29), the psalmist’s vow to praise and his confidence of deliverance (69:30–33), and a final call to praise Yahweh, reflecting the situation of the exilic community (69:34–36).
The Heading (69:0)
THE PSALM IS referred to “the director of music” and is attributed to David.2 The heading also includes a reference to a tune for accompaniment: “To the tune of ‘Lilies’ ” (ʿal šošannim), a term that appears also in the heading of Ps. 45.3
Plea for Deliverance from Enemies (69:1–4)
SAVE ME, O God. The psalmist begins with an urgent plea for deliverance. The difficulties he faces are clearly identified in the rest of the psalm as the mocking attacks of the enemy. The imagery he chooses to dramatize the situation is the desperate struggle of a shipwreck survivor trying to stay afloat in a pounding sea.4 The waters are up to his “neck”—a play on the double meaning of the Hebrew nepeš as “throat/neck” or “self/being.” The waters that threaten to overwhelm him also threaten to snuff out his “being” or “self.”5
I sink in the miry depths. The series of terms emphasizes the depth of water into which the psalmist has fallen. He “sinks” into the “miry depths” (yewen meṣulah),6 where there is no possibility of finding a footing; he is “engulfed” by “deep waters” and “floods” (perhaps “torrents” or “waves”).
I am worn out. The shipwrecked psalmist is tiring from the seemingly endless struggle to stay alive and afloat. The futility of calling for help (“I am worn out . . . my throat is parched”) and of looking for divine rescue (“my eyes fail, looking for my God”) is beginning to sink in. Just as in his despair he is about to slip for the last time beneath the waves, the psalm moves out of the metaphorical imagery of drowning to describe the real circumstances of suffering.
Those who hate me. The real threat is not the pounding waves of the sea but the pounding attack of enemies who seek to destroy. Like the ceaseless waves, the psalmist’s enemies are everywhere and seem without number.
Without cause. The psalmist considers the attack of the enemy groundless. Their hatred is “without reason” (ḥinnam [“in vain, undeservedly”]) and “without cause” (šeqer [“falsely”]). The latter term suggests that the enemy attack is more than a misguided vendetta; it is a purposefully deceitful attempt to “get” the psalmist by distorting the truth—submerging any protestations under the flood of their false accusations. He emphasizes the injustice of the attack by claiming, “I am forced to restore what I did not steal.”
Folly and Scorn (69:5–12)
ALTHOUGH THE PSALMIST characterizes the enemy’s attacks as groundless and false, the second section begins with an admission—directly to God—of his “folly”7 and “guilt.”8 The exact nature of his offense is never clarified, so just how the enemy’s accusations can be considered groundless or false is a matter of speculation. What remains clear, however, is that the psalmist acknowledges guilt to God and accepts divine “wounding,” “hurt,” and “pain” without objection (69:26).
Because of me. The psalmist acknowledges that individual failing has corporate consequences. The collapse of an individual reflects on the broader community. This is true in his mind whether or not the accusations and scorn he experiences are deserved or not. He hopes that the unjust scorn poured out on him will not result in “disgrace” and “shame” for the community of the faithful.9 The theme of shame and disgrace as a result of the attacks of the enemy stitch together Psalms 69 and 70–71.10 As noted earlier,11 for Israelites shame and disgrace were not internal emotions but visible actions of communal rejection and detraction. It is as if the psalmist, having been judged guilty by certain influential members of society, must wear some sign of disgrace, like Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Or perhaps he experiences some sort of “shunning” by the community at large. Regardless of the method, he is faced with a communal assumption of guilt that takes obvious and visible form.
Those who hope in you. The psalmist feels a sense of solidarity with the faithful contingent within society who still trust in God. The enemies seem to be excluded from this group, and this allows the possibility, at least in the postexilic reinterpretation of Psalm 69, that the enemy can be identified with foreign detractors of the Diaspora Jewish community. In such circumstances of isolation within a dominant culture, the fall of one Israelite could occasion great distress for the whole community. The story in Esther of Haman’s great hatred for Mordecai that led to his plan to destroy the whole Jewish race is a case in point. It is this kind of general disgrace to the community of the faithful that the psalmist appeals to God to avoid.
I endure scorn for your sake. Whatever the nature of the guilt the psalmist admits to God in 69:5, the scorn he experiences results from his commitment to God rather than personal failing. He endures both scorn and shame12 for God’s sake and receives “insults”13 intended for God because of his “zeal” for God’s house. What form this “zeal” takes is not clear from the text, although the following verses (69:10–11) suggest a public display of weeping, fasting, and wearing of sackcloth. From an exilic viewpoint, this might represent the psalmist’s active mourning for the loss of the Jerusalem temple.14
People make sport of me. The public response to the psalmist’s fervent and visible grief is ridicule and mocking (69:11–12). His antics are the object of great fun among the detractors, and zealous grief for the temple becomes fodder for mocking drinking songs. Those who scorn him span the classes of society—from the drunkards to the influential leaders who “sit at the gate” of the city.15
Renewed Plea for Deliverance (69:13–18)
HAVING DESCRIBED THE experience of communal shame and ridicule, the psalmist returns again to entreat God for deliverance. The resulting prayer acknowledges the need for a “time” of divine “favor.” Such a view realizes that for each of the varied “times” in life there is a proper course of action—whether divine or human—and that humans are to seek to discern and accommodate their actions, hopes, and expectations to this divinely instituted chronology.16 This is not to say that all events are fixed ahead of time, like some type of “fate” or kismet, only that wise individuals capable of “knowing the times” (cf. 1 Chron. 12:32; Eccl. 3:1; 8:5–6) will be able to discern the proper course of action in every circumstance. Here the psalmist entreats Yahweh for a time of divine favor in which the proper human response is trust and God’s appropriate action is enduring salvation.17
The psalmist’s desperation is illumined by the repeated appearance of the imperative call “Answer me” in 69:13, 16, 17. The grounds for his assumption that now is the appropriate time for divine favor18 is the perception of God’s “great love” (rob ḥasdeka, 69:13; cf. ṭob ḥasdeka [“goodness of your love”], 69:16) and “mercy” (rob raḥameka, 69:16). The former describes Yahweh’s fierce loyalty to his covenant commitments while the latter refers to the deep, warm, motherly compassion he has toward those who have bound themselves to him in relationship.19
Rescue me from the mire. The psalmist’s plea for deliverance recalls in specific terms the description of the threatening circumstances with which the psalm began. His plea is that each image of threat elaborated in the earlier passage be countered with evidence of God’s saving grace. He desires to be rescued “from the mire” (69:14, miṭṭiṭ; cf. 69:2, yawen)20 and not to “sink” (69:14; cf. 69:2), and he pleads to be delivered from “those who hate me” (69:14; cf. 69:4), who are also identified with the “deep waters” (69:14d; cf. 69:2) as well as the “floodwaters” (69:15a; cf. 69:2d) and “depths” (69:15b; cf. 69:2a) that threaten to “engulf” (69:15a; cf. 69:2d) him. The deadly threat of these attacks is carried one step further by the reference in 69:15c to the “pit”—a metaphor for Sheol, the abode of the dead—that seeks to “close its mouth over” the psalmist.21
Do not hide your face. This section concludes with the plea that God end his inactive and hidden state and come quickly to the psalmist’s rescue. For God to “hide his face” (69:17) from his covenant people was considered a sign of divine rejection and punishment for sin—most usually the worship of other gods.22 This the psalmist claims is not true since he remains God’s “servant,” however much in need of “redemption.”23
Continued Description of Scorn (69:19–21)
IF GOD MUST be called to action, his seeming absence is not the result of ignorance. God knows the psalmist’s circumstance and is aware of the scorn the enemies pour out on him. “You know,” he cries almost as an accusation, “all my enemies are before you”—they are so visible to God as to be impossible for him to overlook. Undeserved scorn has left him heartbroken and “helpless” (lit., “I am sick, weak”), with none to sympathize or comfort (69:20). Instead of comfort, his enemies provide only “gall” and “vinegar” to assuage his raging thirst (69:21). This painful lack of concern—even sadistic toying with the urgent needs of the suffering—is used in the New Testament to describe the scornful treatment of the suffering Christ on the cross.24
Desire for Divine Judgment on the Enemy (69:22–29)
THE PSALMIST’S EXPERIENCE of such unjust suffering—or at least suffering beyond all bounds of propriety in relation to his real guilt—wrenches out a rather angry desire for divine retribution on the heartless enemies. He hopes that “the table set before them”—a clear allusion to the honorific and protective table set for the narrator of Ps. 23:525—will become “a snare . . . retribution . . . and a trap” for the enemy. The implication is that the table that the enemy takes as a sign of God’s presence with their cause will “be turned” on them to become the means of their downfall. The “snare” and “trap” are self-springing devices used to trap unsuspecting birds and are frequently used metaphorically for sudden entrapment of humans by their own deeds. Here, for the deeds and accusations of the enemy to return on them would be fitting “retribution.”26
May their eyes be darkened. The psalmist’s pain pours out in hurtful words directed at the enemy but spoken to God. The suffering and anger are real emotions, truly felt, as he is entirely open before God. These honest expressions of anger are placed, however, within the context of anticipated divine retribution. It is God who is called to “pour out . . . wrath . . . [and] fierce anger” (69:24). The blindness, constant burdens, decimation of descendants, and striking of the enemy’s name from the “book of life” (69:28) are God’s actions against those who injure people under his protection.
Interestingly, however, in calling for divine action against the enemy, the psalmist acknowledges that God is already in the process of disciplining him as well. The opponents are to be punished because they are persecuting “those you [God] wound” and are mocking the pain of “those you [God] hurt” (69:26). It seems that the opponents are not so much accusing the psalmist falsely as they are ridiculing his acts of grief and contrition in response to the chastisement of God. In the exilic community, the psalmist may have been taken as representative of those who had accepted responsibility for the sin of the nation that led to the divine punishment of the Exile and who were seeking (like Dan. 9) to repent of that sin.
Charge them with crime upon crime. The enemy offer only mocking disregard of the psalmist’s grief and contrition. After the Exile the mocking enemy would mirror the attitudes of those who assumed no responsibility for the Exile and saw no reason to make amends. These, says the psalmist, deserve to be excluded from the saving grace of God’s “salvation” (69:27) and should be “blotted out of the book of life,” in which only “the righteous” (including the psalmist, who acknowledges sin) are written. He calls to God for retribution against the enemy. Underneath the NIV’s “charge them with crime upon crime” lies the Hebrew tenah ʿawon ʿal ʿawonam, a phrase that is probably better rendered “give evil for their evil”—an almost exact retribution approaching the New Testament’s “reap what you sow” (Gal. 6:7).27
The psalmist concludes this section with a plea for God’s salvation and protection (69:29). Some commentators take this verse as beginning the next segment, but a decisive shift from second-person direct address to God to third-person reference about God occurs immediately after this verse and indicates that the final verses (69:30–36) represent a connected grouping distinct from what has gone before.
Vow to Praise God’s Name (69:30–33)
THE SHIFT MENTIONED above is further indicated by a change of mood and content from distressed plea for deliverance to a vow to “praise God’s name in song” (69:30). In addition, it is in these last verses that allusions to the circumstances of the exilic community are more readily apparent. They are Yahweh’s “captive people” (69:33), who look forward to the day when God will “rebuild the cities of Judah” so that people “will settle there and possess it . . . inherit it, and . . . dwell there” (69:35–36).
I will praise God’s name in song. As noted in the comments on 66:1, it is striking to find this reference to the “name” of God—clearly an allusion to the divine name, Yahweh—in the midst of the so-called Elohistic Psalter, where the use of the name has been diminished in preference for the more generic designation ʾelohim (“God”). Following the almost complete omission of the name in the group of related Psalms 60–67—psalms that nevertheless refer to the “name” (šem) of God on five occasions—the divine name returns with a vengeance, appearing five times each in Psalms 68 and 69, and another five times in the combined Psalms 70–71.28
The psalmist vows to praise God in song and thanksgiving (todah). While the latter might refer to the “thank offering” of the same name (todah), the following statements make it clear that no physical sacrifice is intended here. His joyous and grateful song is more pleasing to Yahweh than any offering of “ox” or “a bull with its horns and hoofs” (69:31). While this emphasis on the interior attitude of joy as the valued element of sacrifice need not require a setting in the exilic period (when temple sacrifice was no longer possible because of the destruction of the temple), these sentiments clearly lent themselves to affirm the postexilic piety of a community far removed from the temple and unable to participate in its sacrificial rites.29
The poor will see. Verses 32–33a contain the core expression of the preexilic form of Psalm 69. The focus is on the “poor” (ʿanawim) and the “needy” (ʾebyonim),30 who, although “despised” by the wealthy, are heard by God, who recognizes their essential piety (they “seek God,” 69:32b). In this earlier form of the psalm the enemies are those who despise the poverty of the needy, mock their pretensions of piety, and exploit them abusively. Such exploiters will be blotted out of God’s book while the righteous poor will be heard by him and will live.
His captive people. In the final shaping of the psalm as we now have it, the original focus on the poor has been broadened to make room for the concerns of the Diaspora community. This becomes increasingly clear in the concluding verses of the psalm, beginning with the last half of verse 33. While it is the “needy” whom Yahweh hears (69:33a), it is “his captive people” whom he refuses to despise.
Concluding Call to Praise (69:34–36)
IN THE FINAL segment of the psalm, the psalmist calls “heaven and earth,” the “seas,” and their inhabitants (69:34) to join in the praise of God. The shift begun at the end of verse 33 continues as he envisions God’s salvation of Zion (69:35a) and the reconstruction (69:35b) and repopulation (69:35c) of the devastated cities of Judah. This future event is cast in terms reminiscent of the original conquest of Canaan. People will “settle” in the land and “possess” it, “inherit” it, and continue to “dwell” there (69:36).31 In this way the children of the Exile, who live daily bereft of land and temple, are encouraged to anticipate a future return in which God’s promises to the patriarchs are established once again for those who “seek” him (69:32b), who are “children of his servants” (69:36a), and who “love his name” (69:36b).32
Bridging Contexts
THE BOOK OF LIFE. The idea of a divine account book in which the names of the righteous were entered (along with evidences of their righteousness) appears in several Old Testament accounts besides our psalm. In Exodus 32, after the Israelites worship the golden calf, Moses entreats an angry God intent on destruction to forbear and seeks to bring pressure on God by demanding that, if he will not forgive their sin, “then blot me [Moses] out of the book [seper] you have written” (32:32). Yahweh refuses on the basis that “whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book” (32:33). The divine record book also appears in Psalm 56:8, where the psalmist asks God to “record my lament; list my tears on your scroll—are they not in your record?”33 In these passages and in Psalm 69:28, “the book of life” appears to contain a listing of names and evidence of righteousness.
In 139:16, we encounter a similar, but slightly different allusion to a divine record book: “Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” It is not clear whether this denotes a preordained account of the daily events in the life of each human or just a tally of the number of days allotted for each individual to live. The latter understanding seems more probable from a brief survey of passages on the days of human life: “Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life” (39:4); “teach us to number our days aright” (90:12).34
The length of a human life is at best about seventy or eighty years (90:10). God is able to lengthen a person’s life: “Increase the days of the king’s life, his years for many generations” (61:6); but he can cut life short as well: “You have cut short the days of his youth” (89:45); “in the course of my life he broke my strength; he cut short my days” (102:23). Knowledge of the numbers of days allotted in God’s book helps each of us to know how best to maximize our time on earth.35 The request in 69:28 that the enemies’ names “be blotted out of the book of life” is tantamount to cutting their days short in death. Thus, there does not appear to be any clear justification for a book of life containing a list of those who enter eternal life after death.
In the New Testament, however, it is ultimately eternal life that seems to be accorded by inscription in the book of life. For Paul, the book of life seems to record the names of the faithful servants of God, including Paul’s coworkers in the gospel.36 In the early chapters of Revelation, the book records the names of the faithful who will be acknowledged by Christ before God and his angels.37 But, by the end of Revelation, the book of life denotes the means of judging between those who will be thrown into the lake of fire and those who will enter the heavenly Jerusalem to live forever. Since God is the one who keeps the record, entering and expunging names from the pages of his book, he alone knows what the book contains (Rev. 20:1–15).
Contemporary Significance
MAY THEIR EYES be darkened . . . their backs be bent forever (69:23). Once again in this psalm, we hear the psalmist lapse into imprecations against his enemies. Again we must remember in brief that these open and honest words of anger challenge us to be as open about our own feelings of anger and hate. These emotional words are spoken to God, who alone can heal the pain and redress the wrongs that motivate them. To deny such feelings does not eliminate them but simply prevents us from releasing them to God. The expression of our pain to God is good “therapy” and good “theology” at the same time. To say what we feel does not justify acting our words out. Jesus’ call to forgive and pray for our enemies and abusers is the safer path for fallible humans to follow, leaving vengeance and judgment to God (cf. Rom. 12:17–21).
The other side of these imprecations is once again the recognition that, even if we have no experience with this kind of anger and hate, there are those who do, and they need to know from us that honest expression of their emotions does not keep them from a relationship with a loving God. People who suffer the agony of abuse, torture, and all sorts of other undeserved pain need our sympathy and empathy, not our judgment. God knows their pain and in Jesus has even experienced similar suffering and pain unto death. If God went so far to stand in solidarity with the suffering of the world, how can we do less?
More pleasing than an ox. According to the psalmist, praise and thanksgiving is more pleasing to God “than ox, more than a bull with its horns and hoofs” (69:30–31). As noted above, this passage may indicate that this psalm has been interpreted in an exilic or postexilic context, where the temple and sacrificial system were no longer available for the far-flung exilic community. Even after the temple was rebuilt, individual participation in sacrifice was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most exiles. How, then, was it possible for Jews living in Babylon, or Spain, or northern Africa to fulfill their obligations to the sacrificial law?
This passage, and similar ones from the Psalms and Prophets,38 suggest that at least by the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., some within Israel were making a clear distinction between the spiritual attitude with which sacrifices were made and the physical sacrifices themselves. Even Deuteronomy emphasizes the need to offer gifts and sacrifices to Yahweh with wholehearted devotion (cf. Deut. 4:29; 8:2; 10:12; 11:13; 26:16; 30:1–18).
The New Testament speaks of offering our whole bodies as “living sacrifices” to God (Rom. 12:1). That certainly realizes that “sacrifice” is more than things we do or things we give to God. Sacrificing has something to do with giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God. I am often driven back to the Sermon on the Mount in this regard. So much of what Jesus says there has to do with the tension between inner relationship and outer action that was at the heart of Old Testament sacrifice. When Jesus begins the sermon with the Beatitudes, he is saying that the kingdom of God will produce visibly distinctive characteristics in its citizens. No one can be a kingdom citizen who has not been transformed as the Beatitudes suggest.
But, at the same time, outer actions are an insufficient measure of one’s commitment to the kingdom of God. Like sacrifice, undeniably good actions can be set in motion by undeniably bad motivation. It is like salt and light, Jesus says. What makes salt identifiably salt is not its color, its crystalline structure, or even the way it dissolves in water or melts away on food. Other similar minerals may well mimic those characteristics of salt. What identifies salt, Jesus says, is invisible to the eye. But just put a bit on the tip of your tongue and you will know: It tastes like salt, or it just isn’t salt, no matter what it looks like. If it were possible for salt to lose its savor, then it would cease to be salt altogether and would be useless for any purpose. We are salt, in that it is our invisible heart commitment to God that gives value to our outwardly perceivable actions. It is our relationship that makes us truly citizens of God’s kingdom.
Light works the other way around. What makes light identifiably light is its visible characteristic of illumination. Without this characteristic, light ceases to be light. We don’t have flash darks, you know! Therefore, Jesus says, it makes no sense to light a candle (whose purpose is to give illumination) and then hide it under a cover. Similarly, if we are kingdom citizens, spiritually connected to God through his Son, that relationship will work itself out in visible ways; we will be distinctively different from those who have not entered God’s kingdom.
I don’t believe that praise and thanksgiving are the only distinctives that set us apart from the world. I believe that what Christ unleashed within us changes the ways we understand and relate to ourselves. We can know healing and wholeness that is impossible for those who don’t know Christ. We can also learn a new way of looking at others and the world that is not based on self-interest and focus. People stop being objects to fulfill my needs; the environment ceases to be a resource for my pleasure and comfort. I can relate to people as those whom God has chosen to complete my incompleteness so that his image can be displayed in the world.39 The world can become my place of service as I work for the restoration of God’s original intention for the whole cosmos. When we get beyond ourselves in this way, “the poor will see and be glad” (69:32), and the “heaven and earth [will] praise him, the seas and all that move in them” (69:34).