“I have heard your name, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and I am aware of your profession — one of which I by no means approve.” These are the words of a potential client, and critic, in The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter. Sherlock’s quiet reply is simply this: “you will find yourself in agreement with every criminal in the country” (Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, vol. 2).
That’s just the point, isn’t it? We may not approve of the work of a judge, but it is precisely a judge whom we want when we have been harmed by a criminal and rightfully desire the criminal to be prosecuted. A judge is required for that. If there is no judge, or a poor judge, the criminal is likely to walk away and commit another crime, against someone else. Or against you, for the second time. We need a judge.
The poet of Psalm 106 wants a judge. He says, “remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people, help me when you save them” (Ps. 106:4). We know the poet values a judge, the Judge, because the poet wants to live in a land in which the inhabitants “observe justice” and “do righteousness at all times” (Ps. 104:3). A divine Judge is beyond handy because He is the final arbiter of what justice and righteousness are.
The big problem with a judge who detects unrighteousness, which is the same big problem with a detective like Sherlock who can expose criminals, is that everyone knows in their heart they themselves are sometimes the unrighteous ones (small sins, of course) and sometimes the criminals (misdemeanors, only). If the detective or judge is especially proficient, he may not limit his investigation and judgment to others, but turn his investigation and judgment on me. I want someone strong enough to wring out the bad guy, but too weak to detect my peccadillo or two.
With praise to God as the perfect Judge comes awareness of sin and a profound need for mercy among the imperfect worshipper. It cannot be otherwise. You can hire Sherlock to investigate your enemy, but you cannot do so at the same time as hiring him to never indict you. The poet knows that praise for strong judgment, if it is honest praise, includes confession of sin. It is for this reason that, sandwiched between the first five verses (1-5) and the last two verses (47-48), is a beautiful story of sinners who are found-out.
Try reading verses 6-46 as a separate unit. You will find in it a confession of sin, iniquity, wickedness, apathy, forgetfulness, disrespect, disobedience, idolatry, hatred, and distrust. Read this middle section several times so that it soaks in. The words are carefully chosen. The various events are chronological, from the deep past. The poet, by remembering the step-by-step bad episodes of the past, is humbly throwing in his own lot. He finds his sin related to the past, and these past sins related to his heart, today. He cannot talk about a Judge without talking about his own sin. In a Saul Bellow novel his protagonist comes to a point where, as he says it, “something happened to my forgetting power, it was impaired. My mistakes and faults came from all sides and gnawed at me” (The Adventures of Augie March, 400). When the poet praises the perfect Judge, his power to forget about his own sin becomes impossible.
This is what we should expect if the poet serves an inscrutable, precise, strong Judge. He praises the Judge, in large part, by confessing his sin.
