Read Psalm 16 at Bible Gateway.
Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another; {n} Their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, nor take their names on my lips. Psa 16:4
Psa 16:4 reads in the JPS, Let their idols be multiplied … Wait, idols is a long way from sorrows as the KJV has it. Let’s investigate.
Sorrow. Strong’s H6094, atstsebeth, an abstract concept meaning, “sorrow, pain, or injury;” from Strong’s 6087 עצב atsab, a primitive root meaning, “to labor, to be in pain, to be vexed, to worry.” The 3-letter root is ayin + tsadey + bet.
ayin ע = the eye, thus to see, watch, look, know, understand
tsadey צ = trail, thus a man concealed, journey, chase, hunt
bet ב = house, thus house, household, family, in, within
The story: Looking ahead (ayin) at a lifelong journey (tsadey) to maintain the house and family (bet). The sense I am getting, in its association to pain from grief or heavy toil, is of endless work: a job that is never completed. Housework, cooking, laundry, home repairs, raising crops, tending livestock, going to a job: it is the same work over and over again constantly repeating, which continues until the man and the woman return to the dust from which they were taken.
An alternate meaning of atsab according to Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon, is “to worry or be vexed,” and I think that is a very common side effect of the responsibility men and women have in caring for their family.
The above definition of atsab is from Sabbath: the first teacher of the gospel, for it is also the primitive root for Adam and Eve’s painful toil as a consequence of their disobedience in the Garden, in Gen 3:16-19.
But going back to Gesenius,
עצב To labor, to form, to fashion. The original idea is perhaps that of cutting, whether of wood or stones … hence a carved image, an earthen vessel.
Ah, this is where the idol comes in, as a carved image, something man expends labor upon to produce. But I can’t stop thinking about worry as a vexing or painful sorrow. Isn’t a worry something we ourselves fashion or build out of future events? We imagine a worst-case scenario that has not yet come about, and then grieve over it. To worry is to carve an idol, in other words. We build something in our minds, and then take it for truth instead of the promises of God’s word.
Let me be the first to repent of that idolatry right now, Father.
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