Satan's Taunt

Psalm 91

5054 words long.

Published on 2024-05-18

On Numbers

I have an affinity for numbers. I inherited it from my mother, who studied Math at Duke. I inherited it from my father, who studied Physics at RPI. I received it from my Creator, whose gift of ASD gave me a generous helping of Hyperlexia. This passion runs me afoul of the received wisdom concerning the numericity of the Bible. The order of the Bible books, arrangement of the Psalms, and the division of it all into chapters and verses are not considered inspired, hence off-limits when it comes to using them in arguments and proofs about doctrine and prophecy. In my book, this aversion to numbers makes many truths hidden in the Bible into "Emotional Riddles" (as defined in Riddles). The emotion is the fear that going against the opinion of the majority of scholars creates. That fear erects a wall that keeps people out. Scholarly opinion is often right and helpful, which credibility is the timber making up the wall.

The opinion of scholars fills me with skepticism and caution, but if the numbers seem to be saying something, I will listen. They guide me by suggesting connections, but the semantics of the text must back those connections up. I refuse to a priori rule out a divine hand in the final arrangement and numbering of the Bible's components. As a result, I have found the order and often the actual Psalm number to be relevant for about half of the Psalms. The relation of the Psalm number to the text that it labels varies. Thus even when there is a relation of number to meaning, finding that relation is a riddle in itself. A few examples (covered in my books):

• Psalm 1 focuses on the Trinity, with each person represented, a numerological connection to the unity of God.
• Psalms 2, 3 and 7 focus on the Son, Father, and Holy Spirit, respectively. Thus the psalm number matches the numerology of the content.
• Psalms 1 to 28 match the twenty-eight times of Solomon from Ecclesiastes 3 (with Psalms 1 & 2 swapped, for a special reason).
• Psalm 31 prophesies the trials of the Jews during the thirty-one years between when Great Britain gained control over Palestine in 1917 and when the Jews were granted sovereignty over their nation in 1948. This Psalm predicted the Holocaust.
• Psalm 102 prophesies the long struggle of Islam against Byzantium. 816 years elapsed between the capture of Jerusalem in 637 AD and the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD. 816 = 8 x 102. The factor of eight matches the eight verses in the psalm that speak of the fate of Jerusalem and the eight times of Solomon, six full and two partial, that correspond to the era during which the battles were fought.
• Psalm 119 is an extended prophecy about the coming of the Messiah. The Bible has 119 mentions of the sin offering, which foreshadows Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Also, that psalm contains a Generational Prophetic clock whose period per generation is 119 years. Furthermore, the flood of Noah ended on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, symbolizing God's victory over sin. 119 = 7 x 17.

The preceding image shows the 816 year period related to Psalm 102 and the thirty-one year period related to Psalm 31.

I doubt that I have discovered the full variety of ways in which numbers factor into the interpretation of psalms. A few years ago, while writing Peace, like Solomon Never Knew, I was entranced by Psalm 91. In order to solve it, my attention spidered out through other psalms. They shared similarities that I thought might help me understand them all. In that book, I titled this section "A Spiderweb of Psalms: Psalms 58, 91, 102, & 127". That section was tucked inside "Appendix D: To Number our Psalms". To really understand how I crawled back and forth between those psalms to eventually unravel all four riddles, you need to read that whole seventy-five page appendix. This presentation will simplify matters and just focus on Psalm 91.

One part I minimize in this selective excerpt from the appendix is how I got stuck on Psalm 91 in the first place. It is because the number 91 is a triangular number, and I had been checking all the Psalms whose numbers are triangular to see which were special. For the innumerate, a triangular number equals the sum of many sequential counting numbers starting at one, with no gaps:

91 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13

Ninety-one is the thirteenth triangular number - and that is significant - because Psalm 91:13 is critical to solving the riddle of what this Psalm means prophetically.

(NOTE: Habakkuk is structured according to twenty-eight, the seventh triangular number:

28 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7

John 21 describes the second miraculous catch of fish, when 153 fish were caught. 153 is the seventeenth triangular number. See 153 is for Total Victory for an exploration of both Habakkuk and the miraculous catch of fish.)

Psalm 91 poses two riddles. The first is the riddle I was hoping to answer: what does the actual number 91 have to do with the meaning of the psalm, if any? That is a riddle peculiar to my interests which most people would not care about one whit.

The second riddle is one every one ought to want solved. The devil is most creative in his taunting. He even quotes Psalm 91! Ah, but his selective quoting conceals a measure of irony too heavy to weigh on a scale. Why did Satan quote that particular psalm? That is the true riddle!

---

Satan’s Taunt

How did I spend my time this morning two days before Thanksgiving? I meditated on Psalm 91. If the psalms associated with triangular numbers have more to tell, I want to hear it. Psalm 91 is the last triangular psalm that isn’t historical (e.g. Psalms 78, 105 and 136) and isn’t related to Solomon’s times (Psalm 28) or the length of a generation (Psalm 120). Looking closely at the psalm did not offer any prophetic insight or satisfy my mathematical curiosity, but it did shine light on one of the most important events discussed in this book: Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the desert. Let’s revisit temptation #2:

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on

the pinnacle of the temple and said to him,

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down,

for it is written,

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and

“‘On their hands they will bear you up,

lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”

- Matthew 4:5-6

The devil has abridged these verses from Psalm 91:

If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,”

and you make the Most High your dwelling,

no harm will overtake you,

no disaster will come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you

to guard you in all your ways;

they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread on the lion and the cobra;

you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

- Psalm 91:9-13

I never saw the humor and irony in the exchange before today. Who is Satan? He is the roaring lion:

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like

a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

- 1 Peter 5:8, NIV

Who is Satan? He is the serpent to be trampled by Eve’s true son:

And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel.”

- Genesis 3:15, NIV

Satan was taunting the Lord, to get him to trip up on verses 11 and 12 so that Jesus never makes it to verse 13, the declaration of his (Satan’s) doom. I like verse 13. I am glad Jesus didn’t stumble.

An earlier verse in the psalm is also both comforting and numerical. After speaking about a terrible plague come these words that bring relief:

A thousand may fall at your side,

ten thousand at your right hand,

but it will not come near you.

- Psalm 91:7, NIV

My attention was drawn to this verse partly because of the extravagance of the promise and partly because of the numbers 1,000 and 10,000 – and I love numbers. Sadly, I can’t tie them into any of my prophetic clocks. (This is not for lack of trying! If there are 366 days in a leap year then...

10,000 days ÷ 366 days per leap year = 27.32 leap years

There are 27.32 days in a sidereal month, and Solomon’s times are based on a lunar cycle. Numbers will drive you mad…)

What happens if you put this all together? In Psalm 91, verse 7 is a promise of protection for the faithful and verse 13 a promise of defeat for the enemy.

07 x 13 = 91

Quaint, you might say. My eyes were drawn to those two particular verses in that particular psalm because of silly mathematical ideas that went nowhere, their spiritual content and the excitement of discovery they triggered when I tied it to Jesus’ temptation.

And another reason. 071391 is the combination code I chose a year or more ago for one of my electronic devices! I key it in several times a day. This “coincidence” will mean nothing to anyone but me. However, has the Lord ever connected rare details of your life to his Word? Has God made one of his promises oh, so precious to you? When that happens, you know that your life is not an oversight, but part of His plan. When this happens, you know that the Lord has your number. When that happens, you know you can “rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” (Psalm 91:1)

May yours be a peaceful rest.

Psalm 91: A Siege with a Riddle (634-1453 AD)

Like a petulant child, I dithered over this psalm for days, progressing little and cross with God. The riddle of the numbers in verse 7 resisted my analysis and my study of history merely kicked up theories easily dismissed. Happily, I did not commit myself to a contorted and meaningless theory. My heart admitted at last that I didn’t understand the big picture that this psalm was painting. Absent that, no prophetic interpretation could offer any solace or guidance.

Once I applied my heart to trying to understand the psalm, I sought wisdom to decipher the first metaphor which did not fit my thinking: the fowler’s snare. Spurgeon delivered a marvelous sermon on this one verse:

Surely he will save you

from the fowler’s snare

and from the deadly pestilence.

- Psalm 91:3

(See: Spurgeon, Rev. C.H. “A Sermon (No. 124) Delivered on Sabbath Morning, March 29, 1857, by the REV. C.H. SPURGEON at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.” Subject: "Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler."- Psalm 91:3)

The fowler is the devil, employing diverse snares that take in the measure of every person in their design. The fowler practices deceit. The metaphor is memorable, yet starkly at odds with the rest of the terrors arrayed against the believer. They invoke disease and war and every unsubtle coercion. Paradoxically, Spurgeon’s words told me what the psalm was not about, which helped me discover what it was about. It is about fear.

Already I understood these verses to connect to Satan’s second temptation of Jesus:

For he will command his angels concerning you

to guard you in all your ways;

they will lift you up in their hands,

so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

- Psalm 91:11-12

So what was the snare that Satan had set before our Lord? In fact, there were two. One attacked Jesus as man, the other as God. To the man he addressed the lie that to succeed as a man, he needed more angels and miracles. His humanity was not adequate to do the job his human self needed to do. The Father had not equipped him properly. To the Son of God he addressed the lie that if Jesus walked off the roof of that temple, he was a man who could fall and die. Jesus was a man, but he was more than a man.

The parable of the fowler’s snare marvelously conceals the truth that refutes Satan’s lie. The fowler is a man intent on luring people into a trap. In our pride, we think we can’t be fooled. We think we men and women are as smart and strong as he and walk right into his noose. But compared to the fowler, we are not men, we are birds, and birds are not too bright. To save us, either by warning us away from Satan’s snares or swooping in to rescue us when we become ensnared, does the Lord arrive as a man with the terrifying presence of a man that is so frightening to birds? No! The Lord becomes a bird!

He will cover you with his feathers,

and under his wings you will find refuge;

his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

- Psalm 91:4

God saves us through the miracle of the incarnation. By becoming a bird, the Lord can not only oppose Satan’s power and facilitate our release, he can comfort us under his wings. He not only addresses our material needs, but our emotional and spiritual ones as well. So when Jesus steps off that temple, he is not a man who can fall and die, he is an eagle who can soar to the heights. Satan was trying to confuse Jesus over his true identity. Jesus did the things of a man as a man and the things of a god as the Son of God. Those two natures existed in one person, but he kept it all straight and knew how to present himself in all situations.

Bird analogies also announce the Holy Spirit’s touch, for wisdom (to avoid snares) and courage (to escape dangers of all kinds) are the fruit of the Spirit’s care. This lets us know which segment of church history Psalm 91 prophesies: the pouring phase. The church goes through the phases of the harvest pattern: preparation, plowing, planting, pouring, plucking, producing and peace. Preparation was the Apostolic age, when the New Testament was written. Plowing was the Roman persecutions. During planting, it was heresies that were the greatest challenge, as Satan tried to spread lies in place of sound doctrine. During plucking (the early part of the European colonial expansion), the church became so wealthy and powerful that being distracted from the mission was the greatest risk. The producing phase was the great missionary age in whose latter days we live. Peace is yet to come.

That leaves the pouring phase of the Middle Ages as the time of danger, more persecution, plague and war. That age needed the encouragement of the Holy Spirit the most. That was the age that needed the message of Psalm 91.

The fearful portents in this psalm are the fowler’s snare, terror, disaster, pestilence, war (arrows), plague, lion and cobra. The fowler, lion and cobra mean Satan. Arrows and the lion stand for the Islamic Empires. The plague needs no introduction. The disaster is the Fall of Constantinople and its consequences. These images could easily be applied to other times in history and other adversaries of the church. Why the Middle Ages? What cements us in time are textual clues that tell us when and how long is the period addressed by the psalm and the order of some of the events. Finding and interpreting those clues would have been impossible without repeatedly giving up and praying. It all hinges on verses 5-7 and the mystery of a thousand and ten thousand.

You will not fear the terror of night,

nor the arrow that flies by day,

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,

nor the plague that destroys at midday.

A thousand may fall at your side,

ten thousand at your right hand,

but it will not come near you.

- Psalm 91:5-7, NIV

This riddle is as clever as Solomon’s riddle about living a thousand years twice over, which defined the starting point and length of a time in Ecclesiastes, maybe cleverer. This riddle breaks an era into two time periods and tells us where in history the middle event falls relative to an event that preceded the time period. Events within a time period are given in forward chronological order while the time periods are listed in reverse chronological order. Don’t see it? Let’s take it one piece at a time.

The first piece is joy. It has nothing to do with the prophecy but everything to do with understanding it. As I reflected on Psalm 91, I remembered that Michael Joncas’ hymn “On Eagle’s Wings” was based partly on this psalm. When I had been a Christian for ten months, I still had not experienced the joy of salvation. I was still mired in depression. It was March 1986. I had found a supportive group at college, the United Christian Fellowship, affiliated with IVCF. The group decided to host a talent show one Friday. I sang “On Eagle’s Wings”. Starting that evening and lasting for the whole month, I was filled with joy. A few days later I visited Ruggles Baptist Church for the first time; I am still a member there.

Psalm 91 is about how the joy of the Lord can lift you up over your troubles on eagle’s wings. It is about the Holy Spirit giving you courage to face your trials. They played “On Eagle’s Wings” at my mother’s funeral. I didn’t choose the music. That was God saying he was with me, with my mother, and with my family in our time of grief.

Back in “Two Time Paradoxes, Illustrated” I related how the first time I ever experienced joy was in high school, after completing an art project, a mirrored box with a kaleidoscopic interior. I hadn’t seen that box for years. Then today, December 15, my wife decided to clean my side of the closet. She bagged up old shoes to donate, tossed trash, reorganized sweaters – and found that magical box.

So when I present my crazy idea about what Psalm 91 means, it is not some random text I decided to tackle cold. For me it is a life transforming psalm full of power. Like many of the discoveries I have put forth, my connection to these verses goes back to the very beginnings of my faith. Like Job, Ecclesiastes and Matthew, this seed was planted long ago and has had a long time to grow.

Now, for the prophecy. The first thing to notice is the repetition of time words: night, day, darkness, midday. See, it puts them backwards! The later time of day is being shown before the earlier. By repeating the order, it suggests we continue this ordering into the next verse. That means that whatever “a thousand” is counting, it comes after “ten thousand”.

However, since night parallels darkness and day parallels midday, the other phrase grouped with the matching time of day should go in forward chronological order. Thus “terror” precedes “pestilence that stalks” and “arrow that flies” precedes “plague that destroys”. If we take the division and union by time of day and the ordering together, we get four events in this sequence:

• Arrow that flies
• Plague that destroys
• Terror
• Pestilence that stalks

The “arrow that flies” is the scores of wars and naval battles fought between the Arabs and the Byzantine Empire, beginning with the Rashidun Caliphate’s victory at Ajnadayn in 634 AD, followed that year by the capture of Damascus. When Mohammed conquered Mecca in 630 AD, he captured the Kaaba, a shrine for idols. He destroyed the idols, but among the items he pillaged were seven arrows famously used for divination, establishing Mohammed as the archer of Revelation, the first horseman of the Apocalypse.

The “plague that destroys” was the Black Plague of the 14th century.

“Terror” describes the general state of affairs in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, with civil wars, recurring bouts of plague, and dwindling help from the west. One contributor to the terror was Timur (Tamerlane), the central Asian warlord who drew power from being both a Mongol and a Muslim. His military campaigns slew 17 million people, 5% of the world’s population. Tamerlane virtually extinguished the Church of the East. His policy was to execute every inhabitant of any city that resisted him which sometimes amounted to hundreds of thousands of people in a single city; causing terror was one of his main military tactics. In terror, the Byzantine Emperor sent an emissary to Tamerlane promising tribute, should he defeat the Ottomans.

The “pestilence that stalks” was the final advance of the Ottoman Empire. The last series of sieges occurred even as a resurgence of the plague ravaged the area.

According to their sequence in time, severity and relevance to the fate of Byzantium those four groups of events seem plausible. However, how can we anchor verses 5 and 6 to years in history? That is where verse 7 comes in.

In other prophecies we have dealt with thousands, but never ten thousand, a number of years longer than any expectation that we can derive from prophecy. If “ten thousand at your right hand” measures time, the unit must be shorter than a year. Recall that in Ecclesiastes, Solomon’s times represent a lunar cycle. Other chapters have advanced the idea that from the temple dedication to Christ’s return, twenty-seven complete times and a fraction of a twenty-eighth time will pass. A sidereal month is 27.32 days and matches this concept. What do we get if we assume the unit of time is one sidereal month?

Dividing 27.32 days by the number of days in a year (365.25) gives us a fraction that when applied to 10,000 yields 748 years. Repeat that for 1,000 and you get 75 years. Thus we have two time periods, of 748 years followed by 75 years. Note that “at your right hand” refers to the position of strength. Byzantium’s early years were their years of strength, reinforcing the idea that the 10,000 units of time comes earlier than the 1,000 units of time.

If you add 748 + 75 you get 823 years, not what we expected from prior analysis. From our psalm’s number (91) and a multiplier derived from a slightly different time period we got a period of 9 x 91 = 819 years from the Fall of Damascus to the Siege of Constantinople. That nicely captured the period of war between the Muslims and the Byzantine Empire (634 to 1453 AD is 819 years), since the first battle occurred in 634 AD. This period of 823 years – which still ends in 1453 AD – must begin earlier, in 630 AD. that was the year that Mohammed captured Mecca and obtained the seven arrows.

Wonderful! We have good justification for this date range, because it runs from the beginning of one series of empires (the Islamic Empires) to the end of another (the Byzantine). Yet why is this period divided in two in the proportion 10,000 to 1,000? What is the significance of the year where the two epochs meet? Where does the midpoint fall?

630 AD + 748 years = 1378 AD

That year of 1378 AD falls near the end of the Byzantine Civil War of 1373–1379. In order to reclaim the throne, one party to the civil war allied himself with an Ottoman faction. In the process, Byzantium became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire. Elsewhere in this book, the year 1380 AD has been advanced as the year Satan was unbound. That would place it in the second year of the second era, the era corresponding to the number 1,000.

This is no coincidence. The number 1,000 has a double meaning here. It counts the number of years from the Edict of Thessalonica of 380 AD (when Satan was bound) to the year in which our adversary was released. Why is 380 AD significant? That was the year that the Roman Empire (including the Eastern Roman Empire, aka Byzantium) became a Christian empire. Thus our time markers in this psalm are:

• 380 AD: Christian Eastern Roman Empire begins
• 630 AD: Muslim empires begin with capture of Mecca
• 1378 AD: Byzantium becomes vassal of Ottomans
• 1380 AD: Release of Satan, bound 1,000 years
• 1453 AD: Fall of Constantinople & end of Byzantium

Altogether, we have indicators that measure the length of two adjacent time periods and root the off-center midpoint to a critical event in Christian history, and these measures are almost the same as the time duration derived from the psalm’s number.

Why should we connect this psalm with the release of Satan? Why else would the psalmist counsel us to not be afraid?!

You will tread on the lion and the cobra;

you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

“Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

He will call on me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble,

I will deliver him and honor him.

With long life I will satisfy him

and show him my salvation.”

- Psalm 91:13-16

Thus the psalm speaks of the trials that precede the release of Satan and the terrors that follow it. It speaks of an escalation of the eternal conflict, and that is what history shows happened. By words such as “refuge” (used twice), fortress, shield, and rampart, the image of a siege is reinforced. Sieges are associated with many of the marker events, especially the last.

There is no need to trample a lion or a serpent if it is caged. You only do that to ones free in the wild. Verse 13 is like verse 7; it gives a before and after picture. The lion and cobra are the human opposition that precede Satan’s release. The great lion and serpent are the more potent forces that follow his release.

In our own lives, God may subdue some of our problems or thwart our foes for a time while we are recovering from wounds or maturing, then permit them to magnify once he deems us capable of handling them. It is part of his plan to grow us to our fullest potential – but we must love Him, acknowledge His name and call on Him. Our strength alone will not carry the battle.

---

Summing Up

In the two sections of the appendix reproduced above, I failed to tie everything up in a bow. I also omitted some parts of the appendix touching on many psalms at once, hence a few points relevant to understanding Psalm 91. Let's fix that now. The greater riddle was the irony in Satan's taunt. He tried to twist the words of Psalm 91 to get Jesus to stumble, to sin and lose the battle against him. Satan was trying to turn a prophecy of his defeat into a tool for his own victory.

As for the riddle of how the number 91 relates to the meaning, here goes. Psalm 91 is a prophecy of the rise to power of the seventh beast, Islam, and its overthrow of the sixth beast, Rome. It took Satan 819 years of warfare to grow and strengthen his beast to the point where it could finally capture the prize. The Battle of Damascus in 634 AD was the first great victory of Islam over Byzantium; it followed several smaller victories in the same year, including Islam's first victory over Byzantium, at Ajnadayn. That was the beginning of Satan's long struggle against Byzantium.

The conclusion of the seventh beast's long war was the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

1453 - 634 = 819 = 9 x 91

The length of the war is a multiple of 91! This is but one of the several psalms that I discovered have numbers that relate to the interval of time between two events that the psalm prophecies. Considering that this psalm also made use of the numbers 1,000 and 10,000 to spell out time intervals between other pairs of events, I think this raises the numerical connection to a place higher than mere coincidence.

Putting everything together, Psalm 91 is about Satan's prison break. During the millennium that he was bound, the millennium of the ascendancy of Christian Rome, he raised up Islam into a series of powerful empires that eventually broke him free from his prison. The Psalm is also about Satan's final downfall. He can breach the walls of a great city like Constantinople, but that was never our greatest fortress:

I will say to the Lord,

“My refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.”

- Psalm 91:2

As Martin Luther taught us to sing, "A mighty fortress is our God."

That fortress will NEVER be breached.

---