Ps. 4:2

Ps 4.2

Diag.

O sons of man, how long:

            Is my reputation  /  to be a reproach

            Will you love vanity

            Will you seek falsehood.                                     Selah

It is a common refrain, this “How long…”. It echoes throughout the scriptures from the voice of an innocent and afflicted righteous person. And it carries forward where we ended yesterday: the character in this Psalm senses that time has somehow ‘fallen of the tracks’, been distorted or is now proceeding in a wholly unnatural way. Again, it would be helpful here to briefly review the past three Psalms and their ‘three part’ repetitions:

1)       Psalm 1: the wicked are those whom the blessed man avoids

2)       Psalm 2: the nations that have arrayed themselves against the Lord and his anointed

3)       Psalm 3: the ‘many’ who are pressing in upon David

In these other Psalms there is the sense of either an evil to be avoided or an impending doom. Psalm 1 does provide us a glimpse into the relationship between the blessed man and time. He is the one who ‘bears fruit in season’ and yet ‘his leaf does not wither’. There, the blessed man inhabited this liminal realm between seasonal change and eternal fruitfulness. We saw there that speaking about this in the context of ‘eternal life’ is probably misleading, but only because it would blind us to an ever greater sense, on the part of the Psalmist, that to be rooted in Torah is to be rooted in life itself.

Here, though, the “blessed man” (righteous man) finds himself “out of season”. There is something inherent to Israel’s experience of injustice that gives it this sense that time is standing still; that it is not moving forward. It is as if the wind has ceased blowing and every tree and every water-wave has been stalled; a leaden, and profoundly empty, silence pervading everything. It is as if time was dead. And, as we have seen, this is why this Psalm begins with an arrow aimed at God’s heart. This character is attempting to wake God up, to call him to a ‘remembrance’ of him. When injustice flourishes and attacks the righteous, they must, within that time that is standing still, call upon the Righteous One to “break the seal” that binds the scroll of time and allow it unfold. These two images must be held together: injustice leads to a sense of time’s demise while the prayer for judgment is an attempt to ignite God’s justice in the world; to “get things moving” and to allow the seasons to again begin their cycle. Covenant, time and justice are intimately wed.

But what exactly is the source of the injustice?

“How long is my reputation to be a reproach?”: This man’s reputation has become the subject of attack by the “sons of men” (probably men of significance/distinction). This may be difficult for us to fully appreciate. Our culture’s sense of “reputation” is, more than likely, different than this character’s. Some tentative thoughts though: in a culture without driver’s licenses, social security numbers, and other forms of identification authorized by the state to guarantee one’s identity, one’s reputation, or “public face”, is as much of who that person is as their interior sense of ‘identity’. In this regard, one’s identity is much more of a manifold, or multifaceted, reality than ours and so to attack it is to attack something much more intimate than we can appreciate. Our culture is one of individualism that actively seeks to root this ‘public face’ inside the individual; we would pride ourselves on the fact that, regardless of what others think about us, our real ‘selves’ remain unchanged. It is unlikely, therefore, that we would ever experience time as “stopping” in the way this character has sensed. Our selves have not been given over to the public in the same way. We are, in a word, much more stoic than this man is, much less ‘vulnerable’ to the whims of “men of significance”. (There is one area we could look for an analogy though: minorities. Often minorities work much more along the lines of this ‘shame/pride’ ethic than the dominant community. Their ‘reputations’ are things to be actively, even violently, protected because, for them, they have not been afforded the same level of ‘recognition’ as the majority.) For this man, by contrast, his reputation in the community is a type of sun, providing him nourishment and light. When it is under attack, like a plant he withers; he begins to dry up. And, he becomes angry and fires of directives at the Lord to re-establish his reputation.

1)       How long will you “love vanity  /  love falsehood”: To us this sounds odd, as a parallelism to this man’s character being attacked. How is the attack on his reputation like a love of vanity and a love of falsehood? We can, of course, draw very tenuous and shallow connections between the two, but I do not think that these words would ever spring to our minds to describe an attack on our reputations and, for that reason, we must search out the wellspring from where these images can coexist.

a.       Reputation/vanity/falsehood: there is a refrain throughout the OT that the Lord’s reputation is on the line if he destroys Israel for their unfaithfulness. This particularly comes through in the Exodus story and the conquest of the land. Likewise, it is the Lord’s ‘reputation’ (as a Warrior King of profound abilities to deliver his people) that instills dread and terror in the inhabitants of Canaan. The prophets also (Ezekiel in particular) speak about God’s reputation (of holiness) as being the sole reason for his eventual deliverance (and ‘resurrection’) of the twelve tribes. When Israel sings of the “works of the Lord” they are proclaiming his holy and sustaining ‘reputation’ to the nations. In this sense, Israel is God’s ‘reputation’ in their covenant relationship. And they either tarnish it (subject it to reproach as the ‘men of significance’ do here) or they bring it glory. (And, I’ve just realized this: that in the covenant the Lord has handed over his reputation to Israel.)

                                                               i.      With this as a foundation, we might gain some leverage on this man’s predicament and why attacks on his reputation could be seen as enactments of vanity and falsehood. Apparently, there is a realization that one’s reputation carried the person with it. It was, in this way, like the person’s ‘name’ (as a substantial and real possession of “who that person was”; again, the Lord “gave his name” to Israel and they thereby became his ‘reputation’). To attack a righteous man’s reputation was then understood as an attack on righteousness itself. And, to attack righteousness itself (or blessedness), is, as the OT stresses over and over again, ‘foolishness’ and ‘vanity’. It is, essentially, utter nonsense. And, when nonsense is allowed to persist, time stops--righteousness, glory and truth have become subject to derision.

b.       So we see here an echo and development of Psalm 1. There, these men of vanity were avoided by the blessed man who loved Torah. Here, the blessed man has avoided them, but they have not avoided him. Rather, like thieves, they have broken into his house, stolen his reputation, dragged it out into public and subjected it to a mock-trial that is rigged against him. And, unknowingly of course, what they have done is dragged light (righteousness) into public and, in their darkness and nonsense, caused the night to fall in the midst of the daytime.

And, it is precisely from this darkness that the righteous man, for the sake of his reputation (and, therefore, for the sake of righteousness, glory and truth), must demand that the Lord awaken and re-establish a proper order. A righteous man defends his reputation the same as if his own child were robbed from him and being tortured before his eyes. Of course he will call down God’s wrath