Ps. 4.5-6
Diag.
Tremble / but don’t sin!
Speak within yourselves / but be still on your bed. Selah
Sacrifice / sacrifices of righteousness
And trust / in the Lord
Only in Ps. 2 have we found something similar to this direct address to ‘vain men’. There, the address emerged only after the anointed had proclaimed the words spoken to him by his Father, along with the terrible threat of the nations being destroyed like potter’s vessels. As we saw there, the words of the Enthroned One left the earth in silence, the anointed one stepped onto the state who then filled that void with his own words, and the narrator of the Psalm carried forward this shouting enthronement of judgment through instruction. He said to the nations: think carefully / be admonished / serve the Lord / rejoice with trembling / kiss the son.
Something similar is happening here. Regardless of how one interprets vs. 3, the Psalm moves from prayer to an address to vain men telling them of where true judgment lies (it lies in the righteous man who is “set aside” for the Lord), and then moves into instruction.
In both Psalms, then, we have this one person lifted up who is this ‘conduit’ of judgment because he stands within the sphere of God’s anointing and protection. In Ps. 2, the anointed was established on this throne (and begotten) by his father, the Enthroned One. He became the source of his father’s mighty judgments upon the earth; we saw in Ps. 3 how he returns all of that glory to his father. There, in Ps. 2 the source of the instruction to the nations issued forth based upon the promise to the anointed that he would shatter them. Here, in Ps. 4 it is the ‘righteous man’ rather than the king who is the Lord’s ‘prized possession’. It is after that revelation that instruction emerges and it seems to emerge more from a place of protection. Indeed, the emphases between the two overlaps in significant ways while maintaining its own distinctive viewpoint.
Notice the progression between the two instructions as well. They both begin in an interior ‘watching’ (Ps. 2: think carefully/be admonished; Ps. 4: tremble / speak within yourselves). This interior disposition then issues forth into an outer movement (Ps. 2: kiss the son; Ps 4: sacrifices). Neither is given priority, although the interior does seem to be a precondition of the outer movement. We must emphasize again, based simply upon natural reflection, that outer actions are not merely expressions of interior dispositions. They are their own reality. Just as a tree’s fruit is based upon the interior processing of water and sun, so too do these outer movements become the ‘fruit’ of an inner disposition. As the OT makes very clear, fruit is what the Lord is looking for, not merely an interior disposition. Indeed, an interior disposition without fruit is a perversion, a grotesque thing deserving of judgment. In this way fruit actually completes the process and brings to the process its own distinctive glory. A grape needs a vine, but a grape is not a vine.
Verse 5 can appear rather confusing. One helpful paraphrase is as follows: “You can tremble with anger and rage, but don’t sin by doing anything! You can speak your evil words within your hearts, but don’t speak them out loud! Lie still and silent upon your beds, where you can do no harm.” We see again, the sense that the outer actions have their own distinctive reality. This is, of course, only logical given the context of the Psalm. It would be better for the vain men to be angry at the righteous man and not profane his reputation. It is the act of profanation that will ignite God’s wrath (“If your hand causes you to steal, cut it off. It would be better to enter the kingdom maimed, than to enter Gehenna with both hands.”) and the entire concern of the Psalm is on the tearing apart of this man’s reputation. Immediately following this, though, is the directive, “Sacrifice sacrifices of righteousness!” What began as a prohibition (avoiding outer actions of destruction) has been met with positive instructions. It is not enough, obviously, to simply avoid doing evil. One must, also, engage in positive acts of righteousness. One is here reminded, in a way, of Psalm 1. There, the blessed man avoided the wicked and delighted in the Torah.
I am not sure how else to state this except to say that this Psalmist lives much closer to “the surface of things”. Is it not the case that we tend to favor the interior, to find it to be where our ‘true selves’ exist? Actions, bodies, the dramatic nature of time and space have become merely metaphoric pointings to the interior person. Like a diver, we must ascend from these interior depths and learn to see reality as an enactment much closer to the surface where the light actually shimmers off of the wave’s surface. I think it is here that the covenant is ‘ignited’ so to speak. Lived too deep and it simply stutters and stalls; time stops. Too close to the surface and its reaching down into the depths can be easily overlooked. Grace is not merely an ‘empowering’ of our inner selves. It encompasses the entire range of human activity so as to ignite within them the ability to ‘move time forward’ in covenant faithfulness. Grace can, in this way, be ‘shared’, passed on in material elements like wine, bread and oil. It can, literally, reach out to us and grab us and smash our faces into the Lord. Grace is drama. But until we ascend from our depths this whole interplay will be lost on us.
There is something in this about why ‘confidence’ in these Psalms is so difficult to understand as well. But I need to reflect on this further…
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