We all love this psalm. Although we haven’t all interpreted it in the same way. Some say it is a declaration of material blessing and a proof that believers are entitled to visible prosperity. Others, like the church I attended in university, use it as a confession to claim wealth, success, and abundance. We were told to even apply it to our academics and claim good grades. Some others say it is about God’s plan for the believer in general. They say it means God’s plan for the believer is good. His plan for our career, marriage, etc., is pleasant. So, while some use it as a prayer point, others use it as a confession, and still others use it as encouragement that God has marked the believer for good things. The difference in meaning, I would suppose, is how the words “lines”, “pleasant places”, and “heritage” are interpreted.
If we take “Lines” to mean opportunities, contracts, territories, and “Pleasant places” to mean wealth, comfort, influence, and “Heritage” to mean generational blessing and assets, then our application of the text would significantly differ from someone who takes “lines” as boundary lines used in land allocation in ancient Israel.
Now, if you’ve never heard the latter interpretation, let me expand it a little.
Lines as “boundary lines”
This interpretation takes verses 5 and 6 together as one stanza.
“The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: Thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; Yea, I have a goodly heritage.”
As a stanza, they insist that “lines” can’t be interpreted without taking into account the other words: portion, lot, and inheritance. And most especially, without the context of the composer of the psalm– an Israelite in Canaan.
They say, “the LORD is the portion” reflects Numbers 18:20 (LSB) and means landed property: “Then Yahweh said to Aaron, “You shall have no inheritance in their land nor own any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the sons of Israel.” Joshua 13:14 reaffirms this earlier command: “Only to the tribe of Levi he did not give an inheritance; the offerings by fire to Yahweh, the God of Israel, are their inheritance, as He spoke to him.” (Emphasis mine)
Now, land is becoming a big deal in Nigeria. Actually, it has always been. Families fight, swindle, and kill over land. I mean, plastered on many fences in Nigeria are the scary words caveat emptor, which my friend Tola (The Law) recently told me simply means “let the buyer beware.” (not sure why it is written in a “scary” way)
Even with this attitude toward landed property, we still miss how important land was in ancient Israel. Some of us didn’t inherit land but are currently doing just fine. In Israel, you wouldn’t. It was the means of generating wealth and making a living. They were agrarian, remember? To be born into a family without land sadly means to be born to be a slave. Land was so important that God told Israel in Deut 19:14: ““You shall not move your neighbor’s boundary mark, which the ancestors have set, in your inheritance which you will inherit in the land that Yahweh your God gives you to possess.” Proverbs 22:28 says the same thing. In fact, if you bought someone’s land which he inherited, Leviticus 25:10 says you cannot own it forever: “You shall thus set apart as holy the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own possession of land, and each of you shall return to his family.” (Emphasis mine) Notice that in Micah 2:1-2, taking someone’s land is considered absolute evil in the eyes of God: “Woe to those who devise wickedness, Who work out evil on their beds! When the light of the morning comes, they do it, For it is in the power of their hands. And they covet fields and then tear them away, And houses, and take them away. And they oppress a man and his house, A man and his inheritance.” (Emphasis mine)
From these passages, we can summarize that in Israel, land was the material basis of wealth. God forbade permanent land loss because it inevitably produced poverty, debt, and slavery. This is why they had the Jubilee laws which ensured that no family could be dispossessed forever, preserving both dignity and liberty.
The interpretation that sees lines as “boundaries lines” then concludes that vv 5-6 taken together are a verse of intense trust and praise, not confession, declaration, or prayer. The psalmist has, according to how the verse is constructed, inherited no land and so has no “lines”, no “boundary lines”. But he has Yahweh, and reflecting on that reality, which in Israel is a terrible one, still says: “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places”. Read from the NIV, the “are” should be in the past tense to indicate something that has already happened, not something that’ll keep happening or that one needs to confess in order to happen. Here is the NIV: “The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.” (Emphasis mine)
Yes, land is good, land is wealth, land is all you need to have a normal to good life, but the psalmist is on to something we should pay attention to. Even in a society like ancient Israel, where land was everything, the psalmist saw the lack of it as nothing and the possession of Yahweh as everything. It is, as he said, “a delightful inheritance.” Even though I did not inherit land and have no means of wealth, even though I’ll have to serve others and perhaps beg, I have a delightful/good inheritance because God is the “land” I got. Wow!
But not all the land as “boundary lines” interpreters agree. There are two sides. Yes, they agree “lines” shouldn’t be interpreted as “opportunities, contracts, etc. But the guys on the other side of the divide say that the previous interpretation takes the Psalm as not written by David and only attributed to be written by David. Here is what they mean: If you take the psalm to be written by David, then David, who they believed may have had such a thing as an inheritance from his father, even if little, would not mean this literally (the previous interpretation takes it that the psalmist literally did not inherit a land). They strongly believe that this Psalm was composed by David and may refer to David in 1 Sam 26:19: “Now let my Lord the king listen to his servant’s words. If the Lord has incited you against me, then may he accept an offering. If, however, people have done it, may they be cursed before the Lord! They have driven me today from my share in the Lord’s inheritance and have said, ‘Go, serve other gods.’” (Emphasis mine)
Their point is, if David, as they believed, wrote this psalm in his travail in the wilderness where he himself confessed that he has been driven “from my share in the Lord’s inheritance”, then David is acknowledging that he has an inheritance but has been driven from it. And even though he has been driven out and not sure if he will ever return (which is why he went to Philistia in 1 Sam 27), he speaks/sings with confidence and without no dejection because “Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup; you make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”
Though out of the land and his physical inheritance, this Psalm shows where David’s confidence has been all along. It was not in Jesse’s land. It was somewhere where thieves can’t break in or someone more powerful than him could oppress and dispossess him. This Psalm speaks of David’s belief that he had a better allotment than even those who have the choicest of physical inheritance in Israel.
Which interpretation is correct?
Now, I take the interpretation of land as “boundary lines” as the correct interpretation, and I don’t have to choose whether David wrote it or not. The applications from both camps are the same and very counter to Nigeria’s religious culture that emphasizes a great deal of prosperity as a mark of God’s favor on Christians.
David disagrees; his values would not sit well with many Nigerian Christians. What do you mean you’re satisfied with no physical inheritance? No car, no wife, no wealth, no 7figure salary? Yes, God is our inheritance, but how do we know who has God’s favor or not, how do we know the better christian, the one that knows the secret of the kingdom? Isn’t that the question, if not on the lips, definitely in the hearts of many Nigerian Christians?
David confidently declares that with no tangible inheritance, “his inheritance is better,” and “what he’s gotten is pleasant.” Is that how you think of your salvation – as a pearl, as a wealthy inheritance? Can you confidently say, with no heart reservation, “If I am chased away from all I have now and never have the hope of ever getting justice and them returning to me, if I lose my job, and the good name of my parents/husband gets embroiled in a national theft, what I have – my salvation in Christ, my forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit given to me – is pleasant, a very good inheritance, and I don’t need anything else?”
Can we really reject, in our hearts, not just with our lips, the current societal values of wealth and status and be content in our hearts with God’s promises?
Notice my repeated use of the word heart. Think of my question as a question for when you don’t have to act spiritual, no one is there to watch you or your facial reaction. Think of being on your bed when you’ve stripped off all the acting for the day, it’s dark and it’s you and your thoughts. What answers, reservations, counterquestions, and anxiety does your heart bring up as you consider David’s adamant trust and praise to Yahweh and His gift to you?
“Is God alone your portion?” Or if you’re being honest, “it is God, together with wealth and status that defines you even in your own private reflection of yourself,” and that “they all together, one with each other, bring you your confidence, satisfaction, and worth?” Without them all working together, “you won’t be able to keep your head up in society?”
To be clear, this is not an article about selling your possessions or an antiwealth campaign. No. It is a reminder that in David’s words lie the implication that anything else is idolatry. That if in your heart of heart, God together with something else (including one’s earthly poverty) is believed to be your good inheritance and unlike Paul, you have not started to consider everything a “loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ”, you might just be on the broad road that leads to destruction, the one that many enter through. Or you might be a christian who has now begun to wander from the faith and will pierce themselves with many griefs (1 Tim 6:10).
As Samuel Annesley said in one of his sermons, “we must love nothing more than God, nothing equal with God, and we must love God above all”. He said in the same sermon that, “our love to God must be like or exceed Jacob’s love for Benjamin in Gen 42:38. Jacob would rather starve than part with Benjamin…the soul that loves God is not able to bear the thoughts of parting with Him…we must so love God as if there were nothing else in the world to bestow our love upon”. Or is He not the most beautiful inheritance?
Brothers and sisters, like the Psalmist, “keep my eyes always on the LORD. With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” (Ps 16:8). This we can do through the grace of God in Christ and by the power of God through His Spirit in us. Amen.
