The Nugget:
Psalm 94:20 Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law? (KJV)
Psa 94:20 Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute? (ESV, English Standard Version)
Psa 94:20 Are wicked rulers who use the law to do unlawful things able to be your partners?
Psa 94:21 They join forces to take the lives of righteous people. They condemn innocent people to death. (GW, God’s Word translation)
Psa 94:20 But you are opposed to dishonest lawmakers
Psa 94:21 who gang up to murder innocent victims. (CEV, Contemporary English Version)
Psa 94:20 Cruel rulers are not your allies,
those who make oppressive laws.
Psa 94:21 They conspire against the blameless,
and condemn to death the innocent. (NET Bible)
My Comment:
The possible application of these verses to contemporary affairs and concerns, such as locking down the economy by the executive order of state governors during this so-called Covid-19 crisis, is too obvious to require further comment by me.
These passages also apply to other events of our day, such as President Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s jail sentence. If you have carefully followed the events related to this, as I have, you will be pleased by President Trump’s compassionate and timely action. If you strongly believe otherwise, in my opinion I believe you have too readily swallowed the propaganda of the corporate media giants who often do not report the news, but rather editorialize upon the news, usually twisting the alleged facts to discredit President Trump every chance they get. Such consistent bias against the President is the very definition of propaganda.
We have recent generations of college graduates who have been systematically taught biased, slanted, information about our past history. The focus is upon victimhood and divisive, one-sided presentation of American history. I encountered this tendency in the field of education beginning in the 1960s when I taught English at Cass Technical High School. Our literature textbook, Insights into Literature, with such great classic short stories such as Anton Chekov’s story “The Bet,” was shelved and replaced with a series of paperbacks. That textbook also contained E. B. White’s essay “Freedom,” a most important subject to be taught deeply to students. My brighter students complained that they had actually read those replacement slender textbooks in middle school, and they resented having to use the material again in high school. I agreed with them. I typed up some of the most significant pieces of literature from Insights into Literature as reading selections to supplement the newly required slender paperback volumes so that some of my students, when they finished the regular assignment, could do extra reading of a more sophisticated nature, rather than dumbing down the curriculum entirely. I learned, many years later in the late 1990’s, that the literature featured in Insights into Literature were the stories being read in local college literature courses.
I was also told, when teaching the course Early American Literature, not to focus much attention on our nation’s earliest literature. I chose to do otherwise. Poetry by Phillis Wheatley (which I supplemented by presenting more of her poetry than was given in our textbook), the writings of William Bradford, leader of the Pilgrims, and the writings and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin and his bitter criticism of Thomas Paine’s work, Age of Reason, and much more furnished a solid basis to ground student understanding of the ideas behind the founding of our nation.
In the late 1970s and 1980s I was once again given the suggestion that I should not focus on the Colonial Period of our nation’s history in my course in American History, but rather focus on more recent periods in our history. Once again, that is not the advice I chose to follow. To understand the United States of America, to understand the Constitution, to understand what American government ought to be in the vision of the founders of this nation, students must be thoroughly taught about these things.
Now, we see the fruit of neglecting our early American literature and history almost daily in the news. We see efforts and arguments about the Electoral College, with some of the loudest voices favoring the elimination of that antique relic of our past. When students have not been thoroughly taught the history behind the creation of the Electoral College, they ignorantly join the chorus of voices against it. We see young people defacing, toppling, and destroying our national monuments. They must not have been in Mr. Smith’s classes where they surely would have learned that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.
With the recent trend in events, we are surely headed for more, not less, repression and oppression “on the anvil of Law.” It is time that we take time to read and study the Bible. It is time that we re-acquaint ourselves with genuine history. If we don’t, we will experience some very undesirable consequences, if I read my Bible correctly.
Notes on Psalm 94:20 from The Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury for deeper study:
Psalm 94:20 Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?
Psalms 94:20
throne of iniquity. Heb. havvah, cupidity. FS121C1D, Exo_6:6, Iniquity put by the Figure Metonymy (of Cause) for the injustice produced by desire for gain. Psa 94:3, 4, 5, 6, %Psa 47:8; *Psa 52:1; *Psa 52:2; Psa 56:7; *Psa 82:1; *Psa 82:2; Psa 140:8, *1Sa 22:17, 18, 19, 1Ki 21:2, 3, Ecc 3:16; +*Ecc 5:8, Jer 22:30, Eze 33:26, Dan 11:36, 37, 38, 39, *Amos 6:3, Joh 19:13.
fellowship. So as to divide men’s allegiance with Thee (Kay). Gen 49:6, +*2Ch 19:2, +*Psa 1:1; +*Psa 5:4; +**Psa 119:63, *Isa 1:11-20, *Jer 7:4-11, Joh 18:28, **2Co 6:14, 15, 16, **Eph 5:11, *1Jn 1:5; *1Jn 1:6.
frameth. or, forgeth. Al-choq; as if they hammered out their systematic oppression on the anvil of Law;—or, as if Law were the cast or mold, by which they gave shape to their iniquitous policy (Kay). Deut 24:17, +*1Ki 21:9; +*1Ki 21:12, Mat 26:3; Mat 26:59, +*2Th 1:6.
mischief. Psa 58:2, Exo 1:17, +*1Ki 12:32, *Est 3:6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, *Isa 10:1, *Dan 3:4, 5, 6, 7; *Dan 6:7, 8, 9, Amos 6:12, Mic 6:16, +**Joh 7:24; Joh 8:15; *Joh 9:22; *Joh 11:57, Act 16:37; Act 22:3; Act 26:12, *Rev 13:15, 16, 17.
by a law. Isa 10:1, 2, Dan 2:13; Dan 3:10; Dan 6:15, +*Hab 1:4, *Act 4:17; *Act 4:18, Rev 13:11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18.
A Phillis Wheatley poem I shared with my students:
On Being Brought from Africa to America
‘Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land
Taught by my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view that sable race with scornful eye:
“Their colour is a diabolic dye.”
Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain
May be refined and join the angelic strain.