Psalm 33:12-22 Commentary

When I was somewhere around the age of 9 years old and my brother was 5 years old, my Dad bought us a Shetland-Welsh Pony.  We had moved out to the country the year before and so had our own barn and fenced-in pasture.  I had said I was interested in having a horse or pony since I had recently had a lot of fun riding horses on the property of a friend.  So we got one.  She was all black and so we named her Shadow.

The first day we had her on the farm, Dad saddled her up, threw my brother and me onto her back, and slapped Shadow’s rump to start our ride.  Well, we learned later Shadow had never before had a saddle on her and maybe not much experience by way of past riders either.  Thus she took to neither of those things well and proceeded to run fairly fast, bucking up her hind legs vigorously as she went until in short order my brother and I found ourselves tumbling through the air before landing with a thud.  As my Dad and a neighbor friend were running to catch Shadow and make sure my brother and I were OK, my Dad said to the neighbor, “Right now in the house my mother-in-law is quoting Scripture: ‘A horse is a vain thing for safety.’”  Turns out Mom later told Dad that is exactly what her mother said in that moment!

I heard Dad say that but I knew nothing of Psalm 33 at the time.  I now know that the translation Grandma was quoting is not quite accurate.  What had once been translated as “safety” should actually mean salvation or deliverance.  The idea of that part of Psalm 33 is that people tend to look to all the wrong things and people for salvation.  Kings think their armies will protect them even as soldiers think a good strong horse will lead to the kinds of victories that will ultimately shore up our lives.  But the writer of Psalm 33 said that such things would never actually deliver what we are looking for in terms of salvation and long-term stability and peace.

For that we need to look to the God of Israel and to this God alone.  One of the reasons for this is articulated in most of the first 11 verses that the RCL skips to begin this reading at verse 12.  Those earlier verses in the psalm celebrate God’s wondrous actions in creation.  The psalm first begins with a call for enthusiastic praising of God.  It then goes on to note that God created the starry hosts and the vast oceans and it was seemingly a snap for God to do so.  What is more, God is sovereign over this vast creation (a universe whose vastness we now know so much more about) and is able to do amazing things within it.  While he’s at it, God also frustrates the plans of wicked nations and foils their every evil plan.

That then is the set up for the part of Psalm 33 we are looking at.  That is why the God of Israel alone is in a position to deliver us and save us and bring us to a place of peace and contentment in a way nothing else ever could.  Armies?  Strong horses?  The feeble defenses we try to erect to protect ourselves?  They will not in the long run give us what we need and desire.

Along the way Psalm 33 like many psalms (including some recent ones in the Year C RCL) notes the tender and wonderful fact that though every bit as majestic and almighty as Psalm 33 has previously depicted God, this God knows us, sees us, cares for us.  God is never so far away or so removed from us that he cannot take note, as verse 15 claims, of “everything we do.”  Possibly some might deem such a thought to be a little on the creepy side but it is not meant to convey a message of discomfort or embarrassment but rather a message of assurance that God cares for us, for the creatures made in God’s own image.

The psalm concludes with a plea that God’s everlasting love and kindness, God’s chesed, remain with us even as we have put all of our hopes in this God alone.  All in all Psalm 33 proclaims the loving care and providential presence of a God whose greatness in both Creation and Redemption cannot be overstated.

And perhaps preaching on Psalm 33 at this particular moment in the high summer of 2025 affords us the chance to proclaim to people hope in the ongoing presence of God in our lives and in our world precisely at a time when many people are wondering what God is up to.  Wars rage on and on, killing innocent children every day, and no one seems to be intervening to stop them.  A recent Op-Ed piece in a major newspaper noted that for lots of people in places like the United States right now, there seems to be a new version of the famous line by the philosopher Descartes: “I hate, therefore I am.”  We are such a riven people and trust in leaders and institutions is at perhaps an all time low.  All the wrong people seem to be flourishing while millions suffer in poverty and food insecurity.  It is hard to look around us these days and not join with the many Psalms of Lament in the Bible to ask “O God, where are you?”

Psalm 33 is here to tell us God is closer than we think.  He sees what’s going on.  He is not blind to the suffering nor deaf to the groanings of so many.  True, we cannot know precisely what God is up to, why he may seem from our limited vantage point to be moving too slowly, nor how exactly God will in the end somehow right all this world’s wrongs.  But Psalm 33 tells us God’s somehow got this thing and we have to continue to place all our hopes in this God alone.  Given the circumstances this may not be an easy message to embrace but we need to do so—or try mightily to do so—perhaps now more than ever.  “May your chesed be with us, Lord, even as we put our hope in you.”

Illustration Idea

In Franz Kafka’s novel Das Urteil/The Trial, we encounter a truly creepy scenario of the protagonist of the novel living in a world where he is more or less constantly on trial.  Somehow the authorities can track his every movement, record his every word.  It is an eerie and overall a terrible scenario.  Or in other sermon commentaries here on CEP I have noted the John Grisham novel and film The Firm in which a young attorney named Mitch (played by Tom Cruise) fresh out of law school lands a job with a top drawer law firm that treats him royally and even furnishes him and his wife with a lovely home.  Mitch fancies himself as the luckiest guy in the world.  But it turns out this is a law firm in cahoots with organized crime and that the firm is shadier than can be imagined.  At one point Mitch has to tell his young wife a terrible truth: their house was bugged.  The firm had been listening in on every conversation, every act of lovemaking.  Everything.  And it is horrifying to discover.

Psalm 33 tells us God is aware of everything we do but the reason this is not creepy in this case as in the two examples I just gave is that this is a loving and kind and gracious God whom we can trust with that kind of observation.  God is not out to control us or put us on trial but to care for us and guide us into paths of flourishing.  And that makes God’s presence in our lives a very good thing indeed.