The Victory of “Might Have Done”

I am currently doing something I do at least once a year – reading through Psalms and Proverbs together. Five psalms, one chapter of Proverbs, and a one-day adjustment with Psalm 119 means you can do that in 31 days. If you’ve never tired it, I encourage you to consider doing so. I first learned of this when I was a senior in college and a preacher named Jim Dyer came and spoke to a class I was taking. I’m very glad I was present that day and often share this reading plan with students at Point.

This time I am reading from a new translation of the Old Testament titled The First Testament. It was done by John Goldingay who is an Old Testament professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. As the blurb on the cover says, The First Testament “interrupts our sleepy familiarity with the Old Testament, and sets our expectations off balance by inviting us to hear the strange accent of the Hebrew text.” So far I’ve found that blurb to true!

A week or so ago one of my “five psalms” was Psalm 18. It is a Psalm of David thought to have been written in response to God’s rescue of David from the hands of Saul. The line that leaped off the page to the point that that I put it on my “reminder” list in my iPhone was verse 23: “I’ve been a person of integrity with him; I’ve kept myself from waywardness I might have done.” In particular the phrase “waywardness I might have done” is a really intriguing idea.

I suspect we all often express thanksgiving to Yahweh for His presence in our lives and we ask Him to forgive us for the sin we commit – either by “commission or omission” as I grew up hearing said. Perhaps better expressed in The Book of Common Prayer by the phrase “the things I have done and the things I have left undone.”

But in the context of Psalm 18, David’s faithfulness to God, his integrity with God, and God’s faithfulness to him have apparently combined to help David keep himself “from waywardness he might have done.” Perhaps David was thinking of the story in 1 Samuel 24 where he could easily have killed King Saul in a cave in the Wilderness of Engedi. Or perhaps it was when David could have but didn’t kill Saul as he slept in the wilderness of Ziph. 

I suspect it is impossible to say – but what can be said is that by having a relationship with God marked by integrity, David was able to avoid wayward acts that he could have committed.

As I’ve been thinking about this phrase, two things seem to be important. First, if you read Psalm 18:1-24, you can’t miss the importance of the idea expressed in verse 21, “because I have kept Yahweh’s ways and not been faithless to my God.” If I want to avoid “waywardness I might have done” – keeping Yahweh’s ways before me is important.  Second, I ought to be more expressive of my gratitude to Yahweh for this great gift.

The victory of “might have done” is indeed a blessing.