12 Rise up, O Lord; O God, lift up your hand;
do not forget the oppressed.
13 Why do the wicked renounce God,
and say in their hearts, ‘You will not call us to account’?14 But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief,
that you may take it into your hands;
the helpless commit themselves to you;
you have been the helper of the orphan.
HP might have benefited in his spiritual life from a familiarity with the New Testament. His attitude towards “the wicked” might have been helped by hearing Paul proclaim,
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
Perhaps HP might have been sobered a little by hearing Jesus’ injunction to his followers to,
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
Surely, such an exalted vision might have caused HP to pause a moment and reflect upon the reality of his own shortcomings.
I see that I live often far below the call of perfection that is embodied in the challenge to live like my “heavenly Father.” The sad truth of my life is that I am seldom selfless or deeply compassionate and fully understanding of those upon whom I sit in judgment. I am often petty, vindictive, jealous, small-minded and conflicted in my loyalties.
But HP really did not need to look any further than his own Hebrew spiritual tradition to be remind of the shattered reality of the human condition. The prophet Isaiah thundered from his prophetic vision:
We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. (Isaiah 64:6)
HP could not have viewed himself as the only person on earth exonerated from this woeful judgement. There is no human being who has ever lived who cannot count himself among the company of the “helpless.” And, it is the very recognition of just how “helpless” I am that enables me to open to the help “from above” that is always available when I am willing to see honestly the reality of my condition.
What are the forces I see at work in my life that keep me from seeing how far short I fall of the beauty and light to which I am called?
Lord, make me honest about my failings and help me to know that, as grievous as they may be, they do not define me.
In A Spacious Place 
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June 23, 2021 at 10:46 am
bobmacdonald
I never use helpless in my translation. For this rare word used only in this psalm, Psalms 10, three times, I glossed it as hapless. Fits me to a tee.
HP a. didn’t have the NT, and b. doesn’t need it as much as we need the OT.
There is a lovely meditation at thetorah.com, Mysticism in the age of science. Just on the unity of the plural Elohim, and the duality of the second letter of the alphabet, b. You will see if you look at it, how it anticipates the doctrine of kenosis. And so explains the reason that G-d distances himself from creation.
LORD why do you stand in the distance,
obscure in times of trouble?
It’s hard to put it in a few letters. But HP succeeds. We are up to the letter Q now. He has described in restless language how ‘criminal’ operates.
P – Pucker full of imprecation and deceit and fraud,
under its tongue toil and mischief,
it sits in the lurking places of the villages. In hidden places it slays the innocent,
its eyes treasuring the hapless.
It lies in wait in its hiding place like lion in lair. It lies in wait to seize the poor.
It seizes the poor. It draws him away in Its net.
It crushes. It presses down,
and hapless falls by its sheer numbers.
It said in its heart, God has forgotten.
He hides his face. He will never see.
Q – Quickly arise! Yahweh God. Lift up your hand.
Do not forget the afflicted.
Since when does criminal spurn God?
It said in its heart, He will not search.
NRSV takes terrible liberties with the text, smoothing it over and losing its power, losing the architecture of the words and letters.
R – Regard you will, for you yourself take note of toil and grief to give by your hand.
To you the hapless defer.
The orphan you yourself will help.
Orphan will be reflected in the next few verses also. As hapless ties together P and Q, orphan will tie together R-S-T.