Ps. 7 (Pt. 4)

He sharpens / his sword

He has / bent / his bow / and / prepared it

and for it / he has made ready / instruments / of death

He / will make / his arrows / fiery shafts.

It has been said already throughout our reflections but it bears repeating: the act of judging between innocent and guilty in this psalm is inextricably bound to the act of punishment and deliverance. The Warrior King is the Righteous Judge; we might call him the Warrior Judge. The previous verse ended with Yhwh being a ‘righteous judge’, immediately shifted to ‘indignation’ and now we find him preparing his weapons for war. The pacing is rather elegant. It is the first time in the psalm that the element of time becomes central: in other words, the psalm has become ‘dramatic’. There have been other dramatic aspects (the nations ‘gathering’around the judge), but here things feel different. One can picture Yhwh taking his sword to the sharpening stone, and, over a period of time, sharpening the blade, testing it, sharpening it more and testing it until it is prepared for battle. He then lays down his sword and bends his bow so as to notch the string. Laying the bow aside he begins to inspect the arrows he fashioned earlier. A fire is stoked and he places on the tips of the arrows a flammable liquid. From heaven he girds on his sword, takes up his bow, and places an arrow into the flames of his wrath. Notching an arrow he takes aim at the evil-doers below. The choice of verbs is interesting (he “sharpens his sword”(present)—he has bent his bow (past) – he will make his arrows (future)). There is the sense that this act of judgment is one that is all pervasive; perhaps here we have a development of the image of Yhwh’s “indignation” he has “every day” at those who do not repent. This sense of abiding indignation that seemed in such contrast to the earlier commands to “Wake up!”, “Arise!”, “Assume your seat!”, is now understood to be a description of this process of preparing for war. Yhwh’s indignation is not simply an ‘eternal principal’ but, here, is understood as a process of ‘girding for war’. Are we to understand there is a hidden sense of patience here? That Yhwh ‘sharpens his sword’ and all this time is waiting to hear words of repentance, and that he only lets fly the fiery instruments of death when the time for repentance is over? There may be something to this, but it seems to me that the overall feeling of these lines is to slow time down in order to highlight the horror of what is about to happen to the wicked. One can immediately sense this in the next lines—

Lo / he is / in labor / with iniquity

and he is / pregnant / with mischief

and / gives birth / to falsehood.

The shift in perspective is essential in grasping the import of these lines, and it is something we have seen over and over already. The judgment of Yhwh (his ‘shooting of instruments of death’) is the wicked man’s giving birth to his own evil. In other words, Yhwh’s judgment is allowing the evil that wicked men give birth to, to descend upon their own heads. I have heard it described as a boomerang judgment. These wicked men cast out their evil accusations against David that he is a covenant breaker, and, just as the curses are about to strike him Yhwh becomes his “shield”and the curses begin to make their trek back to the wicked men. In this way Yhwh acting as a shield is his ‘preparing his sword’, his ‘notching of his bow’and his dipping of arrows in the flames of his wrath. Yhwh needs do nothing except permit this evil to come into his presence where it becomes fashioned into an ‘instrument of death’ (which is what it was when it entered his presence) and is returned to the wicked man. This militates against an idea of Yhwh’s judgment as always being a type of active and arbitrary cursing. In Yhwh’s presence the world becomes its own judgment (“I have not come into the word to judge it; but those who do not recognize me stand condemned.”). This may be better conveyed by the images used in this psalm: we left off the last verse with Yhwh taking aim with fiery shafts. This is an image of something ‘leaving’ Yhwh’s presence and descending to earth. Immediately the scene shifts and we see wicked men who are, likewise, about to ‘deliver’ from themselves an ‘instrument of death’ (these ‘wicked curse-children’) and shoot them at David. The contrasting of these two images is to highlight the fact that, in a very profound sense, they are the same thing. Yhwh’s ‘preparing his sword’ is the wicked man’s ‘labor of evil’. Yhwh’s shooting of his fiery arrows is the wicked man’s ‘giving birth’ (meaning, I think, the actual performance of the wicked act). Notice too that the wicked man’s evil is described in terms that are deeply shameful: he is described as a woman. This would be a humiliating description and it needs to be seen that way: this utter shamefulness is part of the judgment. As we have seen, there is the need for these men to be publicly shamed, not just ‘individually found guilty’. There actions have been public actions; their punishment must be a public punishment (shaming). There is another important aspect to this image: whereas Yhwh very deliberately sharpened his sword and prepared his bow, these men have, in a sense, no control over the wickedness. It grows in them; it requires them to ‘give birth’. The biological inevitability highlights the deep sense that wickedness ‘takes a person over’, and this in stark contrast to the very deliberate actions of Yhwh. This contrast is fascinating: one sees a total Divine freedom as describing in parallel fashion what seems to be an almost fatalistic enactment of evil. I don’t think this should be pushed too far in the wrong direction. One thing we can say is that there is very much the sense that evil is not an entirely ‘free act’; it is ‘engendered’ in man but then grows, with a ‘life of its own’ and demands its own ‘birth’. There is something in David’s awareness that to perform evil is not to be overtaken (as seen in the contrast with Yhwh’s freedom in preparing for battle) in much the same way that a woman is ‘overtaken’ by birth. One does not, however, get the same sense of David who proclaims himself righteous; meaning, there is not here a sense that righteousness is somehow related to this same fatalism of evil (again, the contrast with Yhwh the sharpening ‘righteous One’). This is a profound mystery: the ‘righteous One’ can ‘fashion’ instruments for battle, in total freedom, out of actions that very much give the impression of fatalism. In order to ‘balance’this fatalism David adds another image to the wicked man—

He dug / a pit / and excavated it

then / he fell / into the hole / he was making.

Utter perplexity and an inability to reduce or ‘define’ evil. It is both fatalistic (as an image of giving birth) and one of freedom (digging one’s own grave). The evil man intends for his child-curse to destroy David; he intends for this pit to be one into which he can thrown his Joseph/David. But, utterly surprisingly, both of them return upon his own head (as Joseph’s brothers’ evil ‘returned upon their own head’—“You intended this for evil; but God intended it for good”).

His mischief / returns / upon / his own / head

and his violence / descends / on / his forehead.

Notice where judgment comes from: ‘returns’ (horizontal) and ‘descends’ (from above). The source of this judgment perfectly matches what we have said thus far: they are, entirely, his own actions boomeranging back upon him (horizontal) and they are coming down from Yhwh and are His ‘fiery shafts’ (from above). One sees here that everything is permeated with Yhwh’s presence; it is all ‘seeded’ with his potential. When attempting to understand this it would be, I think, very misleading to speak in terms of ‘nature’ and ‘grace’ (or ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’).The images capture this best and it would be best, here, to let them alone.

I will / laud / Yhwh / because / of his righteousness.

I will / sing the praise / of the name / of Yhwh / Most High.

One things we have not done previously is to contrast the opening line of a psalm with its concluding lines. These lines obviously work as a type of conclusion; they are merely following on the heels of the previous verse but rather sum up the entire psalm in a very fitting manner. The opening sought refuge (and, as we saw, this was refuge in ‘judgment’ as innocence, as refuge in punishment of the wicked)—the conclusion expresses praise at Yhwh’s righteousness (meaning, his ability to ‘put back to right’ what was wrong, or, stated in other ways, to declare one innocent and to punish the wicked). The opening expressed a profound sense of exposure—the conclusion is one of security in the Most High. Along these same lines: we saw throughout the first half how the psalmist implored Yhwh to ‘rise up’ on ‘high’—the conclusion is an expression of praise to the “Most High”. The opening was a plea for deliverance—the conclusion is a song of praise for the provision of safety. Interestingly, too, the conclusion of the psalm mentions Yhwh’s ‘name’ twice. These are the final (and crowning) invocation of the name ‘seven’ times in the psalm (seven being the number of perfection, rest/Sabbath and deliverance). In the context of this psalm it is absolutely fitting and so surprisingly subtle to find the name mentioned precisely seven times (this has happened before, as we have seen). And, is it merely coincidental that the seventh psalm mentions Yhwh’s name seven times? And, structurally, notice this very interesting transition to the next psalm (I will contrast the two concluding lines of this psalm with the two opening lines of the next: “I will / laud / Yhwh / because / of his righteousness. I will / sing the praise / of the name / of Yhwh / Most High. à O Yhwh / our governor / how majestic / your name / is / in all the earth. I / will worship / your majesty / above / the heavens”). These two psalms flow so effortlessly between the two, emphasizing similar themes (the ‘name’, the majesty that is ‘above’ the heavens (or, Most High)), and yet they are utterly different in their purposes. The praise of the name exists, however, equally and just as forcefully within both: one, of deliverance from enemies, the other, of the praise of creation and man’s role as king within that creation. It cannot be overstated: the ‘name’ of Yhwh as a source of praise fills, utterly, both realms and is the source of inspiration in both realms. One sees, here, in these contrasting verse, a dynamism that could easily be lost if we were not to trace the lines between the two psalms. Whoever organized the Psalter must have had this in mind when he placed these two back-to-back.