One of the many traditions of Thanksgiving is the Thankful Round Table. You know it. Before the turkey throw down, everyone around the table must say what they are thankful for. Sometimes, a tradition can be done so often it can lose meaning. It becomes perfunctory, a gesture carried out with a minimum of effort. Reflection becomes casual, cursory, even disrespectful leading the 13th century poet Geoffrey Chaucer to coin “Familiarity breeds contempt.” The Thankful Round Table morphs into: “I am thankful for family, friends, yada, yada, yada,… Good God, good meat, let’s eat.”
The Thankful Round Table need not be contemptuous, empty. When the yada is David’s yadah—
—thankfulness is pleasing to God’s palette. We see David’s yadah in 2 Samuel 22:30:
50"Therefore I will give thanks to You, O LORD, among the nations, And I will sing praises to Your name. 2 Sam. 22:50
Yadah means to throw, to cast, to shoot. Its root word is yad, the Hebrew word for hand. So, yadah is literally the physical action of throwing with the hands. It is used 114 times in the bible (70 times in Psalms), to express praising or giving thanks to God.
David, in this passage, is going public with an outward expression of an inward spiritual impression that He is grateful to no one more exclusively than God for his deliverance from his enemies. He is making it known to, not just his Israelite world, but to the gentile world, that God and God alone, is an unprecedented deliverer. His yadah is a parallel physical expression of raised hands and raised voice—signifying and singing. Why yadah? The “therefore” points to what yadah is there for.
First, David yadah’ed God because he had enemies on more than one front. He had enemies without like the Philistines, and within like Saul, his king.
And David spoke the words of this song to the LORD in the day that the LORD delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. 2 Sam. 22:1
Second, David yadah’ed God because God is the God with a listening ear who can be called on.
"I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised, And I am saved from my enemies. 2 Sam.22:4
"In my distress I called upon the LORD, Yes, I cried to my God; And from His temple He heard my voice, And my cry for help [came] into His ears. 2 Sam. 22:7
Third, David yadah’ed God because God has and wants a relationship with him.
"He also brought me forth into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me. 2 Sam. 22:20
With these and other reasons, David’s thanksgiving could not reside in the perfunctory, but sprang from the profound lovingkindness (v. 51) of God.
By way of application, when you sit down for Thanksgiving, before you throw down, throw to the heavens some yadah:
Has God delivered you from your enemies of many fronts—illness, heartbreak, loneliness—then yadah him.
Has God heard your cries when it appeared that no one was listening to you, then yadah him.
Has God sought a relationship with you not based on your faithfulness, but His faithfulness to you, then yadah him.
As you make your way around the Thanksgiving table this holiday, don’t just yada, yada, yada. Make it a yadah, yadah, yadah day.
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