Architects of Disorder: Framing Mischief by Statute

Psalm 94:20 is an oft-cited verse because it speaks so strikingly of our modern situation. Not only did Dr. Rushdoony continually reference this passage, it is even singled out by Christian historian Otto Scott as a pivotal passage. Dr. Rushdoony provides a good summary to launch our discussion:

The psalmist asks, “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?” (Ps. 94:20). The word mischief can also be translated as misery. The throne of God cannot be in fellowship with ungodly or nontheistic doctrines of so-called justice. Justice or righteousness is an attribute of God and is revealed in His law-word. When man seeks to establish his own doctrines of justice or of good and evil (Gen. 3:5), he sins, and he produces injustice. He frames, as the psalmist declares, mischief or misery by law. Our present law structure is producing a growing misery and injustice. The more it departs from God’s law-word, the more deeply it moves into misery and injustice.1

Expositor John Goldingay shared a fascinating account of Psalm 94 popping up in an unexpected way in 2006.

Hymnwriter John Bell tells of asking a Salvadorean musician to teach him a song from his country. Bell translated the song into English but then felt the words were far too political to regard as a hymn – they were “all about corrupt judges and corrupt courts. Then I discovered it was Psalm 94.” It turned out that the Psalms “had a political and economic dimension” that perhaps our singing should have.2

Just as valuable is Nahum M. Sarna’s explanation of the purpose for this psalm:

[This psalm] goes further: it tries to understand why the unprincipled scoundrels in power act as they do, and it offers a polemic designed to expose the folly of the kind of theological thinking that produces such wanton behavior.3

… it is not surprising that judicial corruption, as in Psalm 82, and the cruel and oppressive excesses of tyrannical rulers, as in Psalm 94, would be the subject of prayer and entreaty to God.4

Leupold sets the stage for the reason the psalm was written.

This is a psalm which prays to the Lord for relief in days when justice is miscarrying. The evil seems to have advanced to the point where it is beyond the power of man to rectify it.5

As Eaton puts it, this psalm “rises from a situation of grave social ills,” making it pertinent to our present situation.6

Verse 1: Vengeance, Recompense, or Redress?

In Ps. 94:1, we find controversy in how to translate the way God is described, with theologians straining to recover the difference between revenge (bad) and vengeance (good), a difference that has been smeared over in the last century as distinctions have eroded away. Boice quotes Maclaren to defend a traditional overview of the term:

Vengeance is proper to God. It is a function of His perfect justice. Alexander Maclaren writes, “there are times when no thought of God is so full of strength as that He is ‘the God of recompenses,’ as Jeremiah calls him (51:56).7

Goldingay provides a more helpful translation of the first verse that squares better with the proper sense:

The god of all redress, Yhwh, the God of all redress has shone forth/shine forth!8

He says of the psalm that “it offers the encouragement that Yhwh does act to exact redress, indeed is God of redress (‘redress’ is plural each time: hence ‘all redress’).”9

Estes observes how unique this verse is:

For the only time in the Old Testament, the Lord is addressed as the God of vengeance. … the psalmist does not take revenge against his enemies into his own hands, but he calls on the Lord to do what is just to rectify the situation. … it is the proper effect of His holiness reacting against sin and injustice (cf. Jer 50:28-29).10

Sarna contrasts the psalmist’s perspective with that of God’s opponents. “At the outset, the psalmist affirms his concept of an active God. This is needed because, as he states later on, the wicked believe in an essentially inactive deity.”11 Sarna also provides additional insight into the proper nature of the word vengeance used here:

Unlike “revenge,” which is essentially antisocial, “retribution” is concerned with vindication, not with vindictiveness, with upholding or restoring a just social order, not primarily with retaliation.12

Verse 2: God to Rise Up

In verse 2 we encounter a connection to a primary theme from the last Arise & Build article, “An Eschatology of Fire,” for the entire theme of fire described in Isaiah 33:11-16 is prefaced by the Lord lifting Himself up (Isa. 33:10), so that here in Psalm 94:2 the psalmist is alluding to His judicial actions according to the same pattern as Isaiah described.13

There is a connection here with the well-known prophecy quoted by postmillennial theologians, Isaiah 2:2-4, as Goldingay also points out.

Describing Yhwh as the one who exercises authority fits with that [emphasis], because Isa. 2:4 also declares Yhwh’s intention to exercise authority among the nations (cf. the references to exercising authority in Isa. 1:17, 21, 23, 26, 27). In the present context, Yhwh’s being “the one who exercises authority over the earth” implies there is no reason why Yhwh should not start being assertive over powerful people within Israel. … The psalm seeks for apposite action toward people whose eminence compromises Yhwh’s.14

Verse 3: How Long, O Lord?

The cry of the oppressed, “How long O Lord, how long?” parallels the cry of the saints in heaven under the altar in Rev. 6:9-11, the first reference in Revelation of the “little season” during which those saints wait for their brethren to run their race. 

But the cry here in Ps. 94:3 is, as Goldingay affirms, noneschatological: it is actually present-oriented, and he cites Sarna to that effect concerning the verse:

The wording shows that the psalmist is looking for action in the here and now, not in some vague eschatological future.15

Verses 4-7: The Indictments

The men in power misread God’s forbearance and reinforce their rebellion against His government.

The wicked seem to have cultivated the habit of speaking much and insolently about the seeming success of their wicked devices, and they have thus taken to exalting themselves as being the individuals to whom rule and authority belong.16

Accordingly, their apparent death grip on the levers of society compels “the psalmist to cry out to the Lord to rectify what lay beyond the power of good men in the land to set right.”17

Beyond their arrogant attitude, says Leupold, “these misdeeds are apparently chiefly in the area of social injustice.”18

Goldingay brings forward a key aspect of the oppressors’ conduct in verse 5:

It is not (merely) that they wrong the weak; it is that they attack people who belong to Yhwh.19

To this, Estes adds another element:

The people they oppress are the very people for whom the Lord especially cares (cf. Deut 10:18; Pss 10:14, 18; 68:5[6]; 146:9), so the actions of the wicked explicitly reject His values.20

As W. Domeris notes, “The psalm carries an extended sense of killing which includes the idea of structural violence, where there is a breakdown of law and order and the mechanisms designed to protect the innocent become instead the instruments of violence.”21

Verse 10: Instructor of the Nations

The psalmist recognizes that God is concerned with more than just Israel: He operates upon all the nations of the earth. Leupold points out that the wicked misread the course of events, failing to see God’s hand in their blindness, oblivious that “He is in the habit of disciplining the nations by the course of history, for He is Lord of all.”22 Attempts to soften this verse are doomed to fail, for “it cannot be made to refer to a warning by means of the voice of conscience” as it involves actual chastening of the nations as Delitzsch notes.23

The connection with Isaiah 2:2-4 is further strengthened in Goldingay’s handling of the key words in Ps. 94:10:

The psalm speaks of Yhwh “instructing” the nations (yasar), a striking comment… The second verb (rebuke, yakah) usually refers to the use of words … So it seems likely that the whole line refers to teaching. God instructs the nations about their behavior.24

Verse 11: Exercise in Futility

The idioms used by the psalmist are brought out by Hamilton, thus:

The psalmist concludes this section in 94:11 with the assertion that Yahweh knows everything that man plans, and all such plans are vapor. The word “man” here is the term “Adam,” and the word “vapor” is also the name “Abel.” In the Hebrew, then, there would be overtones of Adam’s sin and Abel’s death after only a short life. Man will not devise a lasting way to overcome his creator and live forever in freedom from God’s law and its consequences.25

Here, Goldingay reaches for the intention behind the choice of terms in his translation:

Yhwh recognizes the plans of humanity, that these are empty.26

Goldingay suggests a parallel here:

They decline to recognize Yhwh; Yhwh declines to recognize them. They treat Yhwh as having no power in the world. Yhwh treats them as having no power in the world.27

Estes puts forward the idea that the wicked can run but they can’t hide:

The participle yodea, “knows,” indicates that the Lord continually knows what humans are thinking (cf. Ps 139:4), in contrast to humans who cannot hide what they think from Him (cf. v. 7; Ps 73:11). Before the all-knowing God all human schemes are without substance.28

Verse 15: Judgment and Justice Reunited

The relief is further extended, according to the psalmist, “for judgment will again become just” (verse 15). Judgment had been wrenched out of place and dislocated by the wicked, but that aberration will be temporary in that “the government is upon His shoulders” (Isa. 9:7). Leupold tells us,

The Hebrew says literally, “Judicial decision shall again turn to justice.”29

The following clause, “and all the upright in heart shall follow it,” refers to the judgment that has returned to justice: the upright are defined as those who follow God’s law when its righteousness is again emanating from judicial decisions in the land. There is no crafting of legislation according to so-called natural law, but a return to what was already delivered to man. 

Goldingay illustrates the relationship between the faithful and the government based on verse 15, so:

At present people who are upright of heart necessarily distance themselves from the administration. When the administration turns to faithfulness again, the upright will be able to identify with and support it.30

Significantly, there is a parallel here to Isa. 42:3, which describes Christ’s activities in the world: “He shall bring forth judgment unto truth,” for “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law” (Isa 42:4). In both places, mishpat (what Delitzsch defines as “fundamental right”) leads to something else: unto truth (in Isaiah, emet) and unto justice (in the psalm, tsedeq). In both cases, the practical implication is brought out:31 not mere abstract justice, but the active justice of God (symbolized in Isaiah 33 by fire).32

This translation by Goldingay reinforces this sense of the Hebrew:

Because authority will turn to faithfulness and all the upright of heart will go after it.33

This change, this return to faithfulness, is necessitated by the corrosive decline society had suffered due to departure from God’s laws.

Most interesting is the faith expressed in verse 15 that judgment will once again be united with justice. The wicked have severed the one from the other. The decisions and deliberations of the courts no longer are informed by the ends of justice, for the judicial institutions have become mere instruments of the wicked who control the levers of power.34

Such a surgical amputation of morality from law was codified (as Dr. Rushdoony documented) by Oliver Wendell Holmes, trickling down to every lower court since.35 This disconnect is precisely what the psalmist promises will be reversed. Rushdoony, commenting on an educator’s hostility to religion, notes that the educator believed that “man is safe with powers that God dare not be trusted with!”36 The reality is the reverse of this mindset.

Verse 20: The Architect of Disorder

The throne described doesn’t necessarily mean a single evil person sitting thereon. Delitzsch speaks here of “the seat of corruption (by which a high council consisting of many may be meant, just as much as a princely throne) and its accomplices.”37 If the activity is framing mischief by statute, and the shoe fits, then the framer(s) is/are indeed seated on that throne as described.

Is the translation strong enough to carry the weight of the original? Consider how Briggs renders the opening clause of Ps. 94:20 – “Can the throne of engulfing ruin…”38 He expands the thought to make it crystal clear:

Engulfing ruin – a government whose administration was like a yawning gulf, swallowing up its subjects in irretrievable ruin. … Government and law should protect the righteous and justify the innocent. This government had become so corrupt that it did the very reverse of what it ought to have done.39

And Goldingay helps clarify the gist of this key verse of the psalm:

The “seats for exercising authority,” the tribunal for issuing judgments, have become the “seat of destruction,” one that issues judgments that destroy the life of the innocent. … The courts use the legal system in order to cause trouble for people instead of making statutes that embody faithfulness, in keeping with Ms. Wisdom’s teaching (Prov. 8:15).40

What becomes interesting here is the translation could carry a somewhat different sense: instead of “framing wickedness with statute,” it could be “framing wickedness against statute.” Goldingay explains the implications of this possibility, citing the Syriac version as favoring the sense of “against Your statute.”

That could then imply “against the statutes given by Yhwh to Israel,” or “against the statutes that comprise the order laid down by Yhwh for the world.”41

The general sense, keeping in mind the active social framing being done under either translation, is related: the wicked create statutes that frame mischief and misery, or they frame a social order in opposition to God’s statutes to frame mischief and misery. We end up in the same place. The variant simply makes it more explicit that departure from God’s statutes inflicts misery on the nations who indulge in such policies.

Mention should be made here of Dahood’s striking translation42 of “the framer of mischief,” where he renders the phrase as the architect of disorder. This is a shoe that fits our modern world governments remarkably well, for there are architects aplenty, in nation after nation, ready to design disorder to supplant godly social order. We are awash in talk about “the weaponization of the Justice Department,” unaware that (1) such things have been described with precision in this very psalm centuries ago, and (2) we’ve long been at the mercy of these architects from the point in time we collectively said of the King, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:3). 

Verses 21-23: Implosion, Refuge, Relief

According to Estes, the psalmist here “paints a scene of moral confusion and societal collapse as the wicked wield the reins of power. … They manipulate the legal system to do what is evil.”43

The refuge motif is put forward to bolster the faith of the Lord’s people, and it is true that here it is God Who is the Refuge par excellence. However, we do see intimations from Isa. 32:2 that God’s people themselves have a calling to be a refuge as well, an idea explored in a previous issue of Arise & Build.44

It is all too common for Christians to place the promise of deliverance announced by the final verse of Psalm 94 in the distant future. However, this approach to verse 23 stumbles because the tenses are the same as in verse 22, as Goldingay explains:

The Hebrew tense remains the same as v. 22, implying that if Yhwh’s being a shelter is a present reality, Yhwh’s bringing about proper moral order is also not postponed into the future. Yhwh is active in the world now.45

Modern Attempts to Undermine the Lawgiver

Dr. Rushdoony once commented that “Freedom has been more often buried by its confused friends than by its enemies.”46 Before examining a dedicated opponent of God’s law, we should briefly point out the apparent connection between Psalm 94 and the form of Christian Nationalism promoted by Dr. Stephen Wolfe. In a previous article in Arise & Build, we examined Dr. Wolfe’s book, The Case for Christian Nationalism, at length.47 By building on a foundation of natural law, as opposed to God’s law revealed in Scripture, there will always be, at best, an open question whether or not the statutes he proposes are in alignment with God’s justice.

I say at best because there is an alternate way of rendering Ps. 94:20 (referred to above) that would support the idea that any deviation from God’s written statutes would be inherently unjust, and thereby constitute the work of an architect of disorder. There can be no alliance or alignment then between God and the throne framing such mischief. The global extension of God’s law predicted in Isaiah 2 and 42 reaches the nations, and the former passage asserts it goes forth from Jerusalem, not from man’s intuitions concerning so-called natural law (which is distinct from natural revelation, though much confusion arises from glossing over that detail). 

The unity of God’s law, asserted by James, also militates against extracting it from anywhere other than its specified source: Scripture. The source of scriptural law is God, directly and explicitly, and is thus a transcendent source. Natural law is inherently immanent, and seeking law from an immanent source is supposedly justified on the dubious (and hotly contested) principle that nature has priority, despite being fallen (I’m equivocating terms here somewhat, but the issue of syncretism would remain even if I rephrased this). Psalm 94, like the prophets, opens up the entire world as the proper theater for operation of God’s enscripturated law. Why would men from ten different nations grab the skirt of a Jew (Zech. 8:23) if they need only intuit “natural law” for themselves? 

King Alfred resorted to the written Law when crafting a law code for England. It would appear, then, that having a Christian nation can be done on the basis of revealed law – so why is the current version of Christian Nationalism determined to replace revealed law? How do judgment and justice meet other than on God’s terms in His Word to the nations (and not merely to Israel), as Psalm 94 takes for granted?

But there are true enemies of God’s statutes, and one of them has raised the indictment against God’s Law that it actually oppresses the poor and marginalized in society. Harold V. Bennett’s book, Injustice Made Legal, argues that laws in Deuteronomy that ostensibly relieve poverty actually exacerbate it, creating permanent castes in Israeli society.48 The back cover endorsements assert that Deuteronomy “actually intensified the very injustices” it ostensibly targeted, and that we must not “normativize privilege” given how those laws were supposedly drafted to protect “the self-interest” of those cobbling them together. 

Of course, neither Bennett nor his endorsers believe Moses or God had anything to do with the authorship of Deuteronomy: it was supposedly drafted centuries later when Omri and Ahab (and generally, the Omrides) were ruling Israel. Not surprisingly, this book uses critical theory at multiple levels to blame oppression49 upon promotion of biblical ideology,50 for “ideology is the most effective tool for social control and for oppressing a class of people.”51

Aside from the frontal assault on biblical authority attempted by the book (which takes for granted its readers’ agreement), the work has other problems. If Deuteronomy is comprised of statutes drafted in the reigns of Omri and Ahab, how could Deuteronomy ever have survived the indictments leveled in Micah 6:16, where Israel is condemned precisely because “the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels…” The massive chronological reconstruction that Bennett attempts in order to sever Moses from specific ordinances in Deuteronomy are incompatible with this passage in Micah, for Micah condemns the laws churned out by Omri and Ahab and asserts that keeping such laws entails national suicide.

You would think that Bennett would cite from Micah to deal with this gaping hole in his hypothesis, but he spends time on other prophets but never Micah. However, Bennett’s readership, already inclined to promote the ideology of critical theory and disdain all other constructions, can’t be bothered with evidence hostile to their mythology.

We will go one step further in response to Bennett’s attack on the poverty legislation in Deuteronomy: Israel was the only nation to abolish poverty, doing so during the Maccabean period52 two centuries before Christ, and doing so by following Deuteronomy’s precepts. This astonishing achievement was, regrettably, temporary, with Israel falling back into old habits of neglecting the law. This is why Christ encounters a widow who threw two mites into the temple treasury – which was all she had. He encountered her shortly after telling the rich young ruler (Mark 10) “do not defraud,” an ordinance embedded in a list Jesus enumerated for him. When the man claimed he had done all these from his youth, Christ informed him that one of those things he lacked – upon which the four-fold restitution applied, requiring him to sell all that he had and give it back to the poor. When the law is kept, the promise of Deut. 15:4 is realized that the nation would have no more poor among them. Since the law was being broken again by the first century A.D., Christ informs the disciples that they would always have the poor with them, because Israel refused to resume honoring the law that actually abolishes poverty in a nation.

The upshot is that, far from embedding poverty and social castes in a culture, the laws of Deuteronomy lift the poor and oppressed out of poverty – and this was demonstrated historically after the return from Babylon. Had an envoy from Alexander the Great not come through Jerusalem to attempt to confiscate the holdings, the truth may never have come to light. The reality is this: critical theory leads astray on countless fronts while promising to help the oppressed. But God’s word in Deuteronomy is the only proven mechanism for eradicating poverty in nations. 

Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty, spending far more than the poor tithe, only worsened poverty in America. Deviating from God’s law will yield precisely the same kind of social disorder that America continues to suffer from. Until we cashier the architects of disorder and consult the Lawgiver (Isa. 33:22), the more we will invest in disorder and the more disorder we will have. 

Finally, our survey of Psalm 94:20 also bears upon the meaning of Romans 13:1-7, supporting the position of commentators old53 and new54 that Paul imposes moral conditions on the governing authorities before they are to be obeyed. This certainly dovetails with Micah 6:16, where obedience to the authorities triggers God’s wrath. Isaiah 8:20 alerts us to the only litmus test prescribed in Scripture: we must speak according to the law and the testimony, for God alone is the Architect of Order, and His Law is the only charter for freedom, whereby “I walk at liberty, because I seek Thy precepts” (Ps. 119:45).

1. R. J. Rushdoony, Faith & Action, Vol. 2 (Vallecito, CA: Chalcedon/Ross House Books, 2018), p. 652.

2. John Goldingay, Psalms, Vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), p. 85.

3. Nahum M. Sarna, Songs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1993), p. 192.

4. Sarna, p. 198.

5. H. C. Leupold, Exposition of the Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1969 [1959]), p. 668.

6. J. H. Eaton, Psalms (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1967), p. 230. 

7. James Montgomery Boice, Psalms, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1996), p. 769, citing from Maclaren’s 1894 exposition.

8. Goldingay, p. 73.

9. Ibid, p. 76.

10. Daniel J. Estes, Psalms 73-150 (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2019), p. 201.

11. Sarna, p. 192.

12. Sarna, p. 193.

13. John Trapp, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Soli Deo Gloria, 2022 reprint), p. 617.

14. Goldingay, p. 78.

15. Sarna, p. 193.

16. Leupold, p. 670.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Goldingay, p. 78.

20. Estes, p. 202.

21. Ibid.

22. Leupold, p. 671.

23. Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, Vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982 reprint), sec. 3, p. 81. 

24. Goldingay, p. 80.

25. James M. Hamilton Jr., Psalms, Vol. 2 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021), p. 180.

26. Goldingay, p. 74, 80.

27. Goldingay, p. 80.

28. Estes, p. 203.

29. Leupold, p. 673.

30. Goldingay, p. 82.

31. Keil & Delitzsch, p. 82. 

32. Cf. Selbrede, Eschatology of Fire, citing George Adam Smith.

33. Goldingay, p. 74.

34. Sarna, p. 202.

35. R. J. Rushdoony, An Informed Faith, Vol. 1 (Vallecito, CA: Chalcedon/Ross House Books, 2017), p. 4.

36. R. J. Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Vallecito, CA: Chalcedon/Ross House Books, 2024 reprint), p. 252.

37. Keil & Delitzsch, p. 84.

38. Charles August Briggs, The Book of Psalms, Vol. 2 (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), p. 291.

39. Ibid.

40. Goldingay, p. 83-84.

41. Goldingay, p. 84, n. 25. The author adds that “some reading into the text” would be required to go this direction, but he doesn’t rule it out.

42. Mitchell Dahood, Psalms Vol. 2 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), p. 346, 350. Dahood proposes a different translation for “by statute” which we do not endorse.

43. Estes, p. 206.

44. Selbrede, “Is the Kingdom Present?”, Arise & Build, May 2019.

45. Goldingay, p. 85.

46. Rushdoony, Messianic Character, p. 216, n. 17.

47. Arise & Build, November, 2023.

48. Harold V. Bennett, Injustice Made Legal: Deuteronomic Law and the Plight of Widows, Strangers, and Orphans in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002).

49. Ibid, pp. 107-108.

50. Ibid, p. 111.

51. Ibid.

52. 2 Macc. 3:10 records 200 talents of gold and 400 talents of silver laid up for relief of poverty at the central temple: resources sent to Jerusalem for distribution because there was then nobody in Israel to whom they could give the relief monies. This is due to the poor tithe of Deuteronomy 14 being finally obeyed, after centuries of neglect. Israel was fastidious about avoiding idols after the return from Babylon, and from “grinding the faces of the poor” (Isa. 3:15), by keeping this ordinance.

53. James M. Willson, The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision Press, 2009 [1853]), pp. 135-140.

54. Stanley Porter, The Letter to the Romans (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012), pp. 243-244.