God, hostage negotiators, and the biggest shame of all

More insights on Psalm 119 including the original FAFO

Apr 10, 2025

I’ve been sharing some of my learnings from Psalm 119, which I’ve been transcribing as part my morning routine. (On Wednesdays, for the last few years, I’ve scratched out the Psalms in my own handwriting in the early morning light, with coffee).

Here are a few takeaways from my fifth session, as I transcribed verses 113-136. I hope you’ve been enjoying this series of reflections. Good news! (Or, hopefully, bad news…) There’s just one more to come.

This passage, strangely, reads like a hostage negotiation.

I transcribed it the day after Trump met Marc Fogel, whose release from three-and-a-half years in a Russian prison was all over the news. Fogel was given a fourteen year sentence in a penal colony on false charges, and languished in jail.

There’s a lot of pleading and negotiating in this portion of the Psalm, as David longs to be free from:

all who go astray from your statutes (118)
oppressors (121)
the godless who oppress him (122)
human oppression (134)
iniquity, which would otherwise have dominion over him (133)

He emphasizes that he’s in a camp totally separate from the godless and goes out of his way to be identified in God. This picks up a theme that appears throughout the Psalm. Not only do friendship and belonging come through relationship with God, shelter and protection are found in him. The psalmist declares:

You are my hiding place and my shield (114).

This verse is a song I’ve known since childhood. It’s personal and emotive and I love it. It’s easy to imagine David signing it under a bedazzled, star-filled sky on the hills outside Bethlehem. Or Corrie Ten Boom, whispering it from her bunk in the flea-infested block of the Ravensbrück concentration camp where she was imprisoned by the Nazis.1

For a key scene in my play Delft Blue, I imagine the heroine singing it from a cell of the city jail. She sings the verse to summon courage before the incredible plot twist in which the tragedy unfolding comes to a surprising, hopeful end (not without some gritty violence and relational carnage).

This song is part mournful part hopeful plea. It’s the heart’s cry and the leverage for negotiating the release from the sin, pain, and trouble of human existence. And God delivers, setting the captive heart free.

The biggest shame of all time

One of the things to be free of is shame.

Past regrets and failed attempts. The things we’re known for by others who hold a grudge or are trapped in it themselves. Brene Brown’s viral TED talk on vulnerability gave her an epic hangover, which led to her other famous talk on shame and what we can learn from it.

Shame, when unchecked, is a cultural epidemic undermining empathy, but facing it with vulnerability can be profoundly healing, she concludes.

For David, the biggest shame would be to see God not come through for him. For God not to live up to his word, the truths David so boldly declares. To be holding an open bag of faith and for it to not be filled with proof of God’s presence or plan in his life, would be the ultimate shame. To come up empty because his hopes disappoint would be a plot twist that would be impossible to recover from.

Let me not be put to shame in my hope (116).

What a vulnerable and honest plea!

Does it cut you to the core too? This is the guy who’s life is an open book, whose pleas and antics, glories and failures are on display for the world to see. We read about him and nitpick David’s decisions from the comfort of our 21st century armchairs, often ignoring the 10th century BC context of his life.

But he’s not asking God to cover up, for posterity, his moral failures or mishaps. He’s not asking God to redact the big moments that reveal his sin or faithlessness from the historical record. He’s begging God to prove himself to be who God has revealed himself to be to history: present, good, vindicating.

Because if he doesn’t, David is so screwed.

And so are you and me.

Negotiate, deal, fandangle

I think this is the character quality of David I appreciate so much. It’s very present in the other Psalms and surfaces here.

It is not below or beneath David to beg. It’s not a bug, my friends, but a feature of his faith. He pleads, genuflects, persuades—dare I say manipulates. David nakedly, unapologetically wants to thrive. He has an almost uncomfortable and bold desire for self-preservation and the success of his family and his own person (body, soul, profession, and relationships).

It’s a desire most of us don’t speak out loud, especially in Canada, where I live and where we suffer from an acute sense of Tall Poppy Syndrome: don’t stand out or we’ll cut you down.

David’s vertical relationship to God has none of that contesting. He’s fine to be the apple of God’s eye, in fact he angles for high standing and favour. David’s posture challenges me to hold my head high. Be honest with God about my desires and needs. Vocalize them, too. (The alternatives—not growing to fulness or having your head lopped off—seem like poor options).

The original FAFO

I’ll let you search what the crude acronym means if you’re not familiar with it. It became popular recently with the latest US administration. There was a lot of funny chatter about FAFO on social media recently. At the core of the concept is the idea that people in a position of authority, make a real mark when they use their authority. If you’re in their good graces, you’re okay. If not, watch out!

We get a sense in this passage that when it comes to righteousness and God’s standard and laws, you don’t want to FA because you will FO. David is is terrified to be found on the wrong side of the law of God: “My flesh trembles for fear of you and I am afraid of your judgements” (120).

He is adamant he’s done what is just and right (121), begs a guarantee of well-being (122). Which, of course, is laughable. David, you, me, we all fall short. So what’s he doing here? David is making a case that he is on God’s side, and is presenting every shred of evidence at his disposal to appear before God in a positive light.

But, ultimately, David doesn’t depend to his own goodness, though he does take time to highlight his good behaviour. He ultimately appeals to God’s goodness and grace.

He wants a deal based on the steadfast love of God. Who God is and what God is like is his hope and guarantee for thriving. David recognizes that if he is to “make it” in this life, if he’s gonna please God, it’s because God deals with him “according to [God’s own] steadfast love” (124).

He knows it is God’s custom to turn toward those who love his name and to be gracious. David’s reference to God throughout is the LORD, capitalized. It’s a direct reference to God’s revelation of his name and nature to Moses on the mountain in Exodus 34.

⁶And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, ⁷maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”

Every time the name LORD appears in David’s writing or anywhere else in scripture, it references this passage, and summons this meaning.

The meaning embedded in that name is that God actually wants to forgive everyone. And the only ones that go punished are the guilty (those who don’t take him up on his compassion, forgiveness or grace).

Phew.

Throwaway thought

Upheld. The word bangs through this passage like the sound of a bullet in a fireworks show. It’s easy to miss it, but still pronounced.

Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live,
and let me not be put to shame in my hope
Hold me up, that I may be safe
and have regard for your statues continually (116-117)

God’s act upon the person helps the person keep the promise.

This is a key to thriving. What a relief that self-will and some untapped inner strength isn’t what we need. We’re never alone. It doesn’t depend on our own capability. Thank God I don’t have to hold myself up by pulling on my bootstraps.