Psalm 105:15, “Do not touch My anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm.”

You may have heard this verse before. Maybe many times. It is used by those claiming special powers of the Holy Spirit in our day to make the rest of us back off. As is quite common, the verse they use to prove their point here is yanked out of context like a perfectly good tooth being yanked out of a perfectly good set of teeth. No reason for it, and lots of damage done in the process.

Context. The “C” word among those who love a proof text more than proving the truth of a text. The truth of this particular text is a far cry from what the “spiritual” folk among us, say it is.

We grant up front that no one should do any sort of harm to a person in the pulpit who is proclaiming God’s truth. That principle can be gleaned in any number of ways from the Scriptures and common Christian sense, but not from this passage.

Psalm 105 is one of those long songs showing God’s faithfulness to His people Israel. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and a host of stories are brought in to show how God cared for His own during so many difficult times. For all these reasons, the Psalmist concludes, we ought to praise the Lord.

One of the recurring incidents the writer mentions is the confrontation from time to time with pagan nations and kingdoms. God so very carefully and painstakingly protected Israel from these Gentile realms and their rulers by basically telling them the words of our selected text: Don’t touch my anointed ones. Don’t harm my prophets!” The story of Abraham in Egypt comes to mind immediately.

So who were the “anointed ones”? Preachers? Leaders? No. The “anointed ones” encompasses the entire nation of Israel! Today we hear preachers say, “Church, don’t you touch this preacher! He’s anointed of God! Don’t dare criticize him!” The many are told not to harm the individual. But the context is the opposite: Leaders, Kings, and we must add “Preachers” too for the sake of this argument, “Do NOT touch my people!” Leave your pagan ways, your false teachings, somewhere else, but leave God’s people alone! The individual here is being told not to touch the many!