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 and meaning. 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 (like some Seinfeld throw-away line),” then “Good God, good meat, “Amen, let’s eat.”
The Thankful Round Table need not be contemptuous, empty. When the yada is David’s yada—thankfulness--is pleasing to God’s palette. We see David’s yadah in 2 Samuel 22:50:
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 thanks. Why yadah? The “therefore” points to what yadah is there for.
First, David is thankful for deliverance. He 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.
1And 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 is thankful for God’s attentiveness. He yadah’ed God because God is the God with a listening ear who can be called on.
4"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 is thankful for God’s relationship. He yadah’ed God because God wants to delight in us.
20"He also brought me forth into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me. 2 Sam. 22:20
Meaningful thanksgiving is relational. This is my favorite “I am thankful for” ingredient in a meaningful Thanksgiving serving. Who is around the table is more important than what is on the table
David also points to the notion that meaningful thanks is relative. Thanksgiving depends on how God’s broad place--His wide grace—has touched you. It’s different for everyone’s situation and insight. I heard this week from a young man I mentored out of a horrific home situation when he was a boy. Food and love were scarce. He is now an openly confessed “Hobo” traveling the rails with no shame and plenty of thanks. He is thankful for extra granola bars to share with his hungry fellow travelers; and he is thankful for the Naloxone he keeps in his backpack to give his hobo friends who are having a bad day with an opioid habit they cannot shake. He is grateful not one friend has died on his watch.
With these and other reasons, David’s thanksgiving could not reside in the
perfunctory, but sprang from the profound lovingkindness of God (v.51).
By way of reflection and application, when you sit down for Thanksgiving, before you throw down, throw to the heavens some Davidic yadah:
Has God delivered you from your enemies on 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” as a Seinfeld throw-away line. Make it a yadah, yadah, yadah day like David. Throw to the heavens, a thanks worthy of the destination—the One who made the stars and you.
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