People really worshiped the sun and moon? Why would anyone do that?
The Gemara ties this psalm to the fourth day of Creation, when God made the sun and the moon (Bereishit 1:14-19). Its reason is that God "will punish those who worship them." The psalm itself never says that. The Gemara does not name the verse it has in mind.
One verse might point toward idols. On verse 20, "Can a throne of ruin be joined with You?", Rashi says the verse means the nations that make statues and molten images. Radak reads the same verse as the throne of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king. Neither one ties the verse to the sun and moon, so even this verse is read two ways.
Who worshiped the sun and moon, and why? The Rambam (Maimonides, a great medieval codifier of Jewish law, who died in 1204) gives his account of how it began, in the days of Enosh, Adam's grandson. People reasoned that God made the stars, set them on high and gave them honor, so they are His servants and it is right to honor them. A king wants his ministers honored too.
The Rambam says those first worshipers did not claim there was no God. They thought they were pleasing Him. Later, he writes, false prophets said God had commanded the worship, and in time nearly everyone forgot God's name.
That is the Rambam's picture, and it should be read as one explanation. Notice what the Torah calls the sun and moon: lights God made and called good (Bereishit 1:18). The Gemara's punishment is for "those who worship them," not for them. The Yotzer Or prayer looks at the Torah's warning about this, in Devarim 4:19.
Rosh Hashanah 31a,Bereishit 1:14-19,Rashi and Radak on Tehillim 94:20,Rambam, Laws of Foreign Worship 1:1-2"Lucky is the one You make suffer"? Is pain supposed to be good for me?
Verse 12 says: "Fortunate is the person whom You discipline, Yah, and teach from Your Torah." The Hebrew for discipline, teyasrenu, comes from the same root as yisurin, the word for suffering. It can sound as if the psalm tells hurting people they are lucky.
Rashi hears it in a narrower setting: righteous people tormented by oppressors, "provided that they are busy with Torah and mitzvot." Radak hears a reply to the wicked, who ask the righteous why they sit in disgrace if they are so good. The reply is that a father disciplines the son he loves, as Devarim 8:5 says.
The Gemara, in Berakhot 5a, builds a method on the verse. If a person sees suffering coming, Rava (some say Rav Chisda; both sages of the Gemara) says, he should examine his deeds. If he finds nothing, he can blame neglect of Torah, and this verse is the proof. If he finds nothing there either, he can know these are "suffering of love."
The Gemara then says God delights in a person who accepts suffering with love, and promises that person a reward. Right after, it tells stories that pull the other way. Rabbi Yochanan (a leading sage of the Gemara) visited Rabbi Chiya bar Abba, who was sick, and asked: "Is your suffering dear to you?" The answer was: "Neither it nor its reward." Rabbi Yochanan said, give me your hand, and helped him stand. When Rabbi Yochanan himself fell sick, Rabbi Chanina asked him the same question, got the same answer, and did the same.
So the sources keep both. A person may look for a lesson in his own pain, and the Gemara praises accepting it with love. Yet two great sages said plainly that they did not want their suffering, and the one who visited did not argue. He helped them up.
Tehillim 94:12,Rashi and Radak on Tehillim 94:12,Devarim 8:5,Berakhot 5a,Berakhot 5bIf God sees everything, why do bad people keep winning?
That is the psalm's own complaint. "How long will the wicked celebrate?" it asks, twice. They kill the widow and the stranger, murder orphans, and say, "Yah does not see."
The psalm answers with questions: "He who planted the ear, does He not hear? He who formed the eye, does He not look?" Rashi says it means the God who planted the ear will surely hear the cry of His people. Ibn Ezra says sight and hearing come from God, so how could He not know?
Notice what that argument proves. It says God knows. It does not say God acts right away, and the psalm never claims that. Radak says on verse 3 that the time has dragged on for us. On verse 13, Ibn Ezra says God lets the wicked person's time stretch out until his day comes, his time of reckoning.
The Yigdal prayer brings Rabbi Yannai's saying in Pirkei Avot (the Mishnah's chapters of sayings about how to live): it is not in our hands to explain the calm of the wicked or the suffering of the righteous.
The psalm does not explain. Its turn in the middle is personal: "When my worries multiply inside me, Your comforts delight my soul." Radak says those comforts are the promises written by the prophets.
Tehillim 94:3-11,Rashi, Radak and Ibn Ezra on Tehillim 94:3, 9 and 13,Pirkei Avot 4:15,Radak on Tehillim 94:19