A STRONGHOLD FOR THE NEEDY

What kind of God provides strength to the poor and strength to the needy in their distress? Our God does. No wonder the chapter opens with a note of praise, ‘Thou hast done wonderful things’, v. 1. How wonderful to care for the poor and the needy! Until this day, the poor and the needy in any society are so often without rights or remedy. The Hebrew words for ‘poor’ and ‘needy’ indicate that, in the eyes of their oppressors, those in view are too powerless to resist and too penniless to have recourse to the courts. They can be bought and sold at will. Their blood can be shed without explanation. The wonder is that they matter to God.

The previous chapter sets the scene in which the poor and needy found themselves in distress. The pressure they faced was of persecution involving ‘the kings of the earth upon the earth’ driven by the demonic forces - ‘the host of the high ones on high’, 24. 21 RV. What the poor and needy required was more than strength; they needed a stronghold. The noun ‘strength’, twice used at verse 4, is not merely in the abstract, but a strong place or fortress. The Lord was their strong castle in that time of intense pressure. No need for them to question, like Asaph, ‘Will the Lord cast off for ever? ...Is his mercy clean gone for ever? ... Hath God forgotten to be gracious?’, Ps. 77. 7-9. When faith might have faltered and in the depths of the soul the unspoken questions have arisen, ‘shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?’, Luke 18. 7, they saw the doors of the strong castle lie invitingly open to them, whilst fast closed to their enemy.

We have recourse to that strong castle, when the oppressor would apply pressure to us. In the context of chapters 24-27, the poor and needy are those who will find themselves persecuted just before the Lord arises to punish His enemies, 24. 21. We are their example of how the Lord can protect His own. He did say, ‘Blessed are ye poor’, Luke 6. 20 RV, as He revealed how we would be hated and reproached. It has proved to be so, but He has also proved true, who is our stronghold in whom we are preserved ‘unto his heavenly kingdom’, 2 Tim. 4.18.