Ps. 9.6-7 (destruction of a name)

You / have rebuked / the nations / you /have made / the wicked perish 
You / have wiped out / their name / forever and ever 
The enemy / are finished / perpetual ruins,  
and you have / uprooted cities / their memory / has perished.  

One thing I did not mention in the last reflection was how the ‘recalling’ of the works of Yhwh pulled those works forward, like a blanket, into the present. In the previous reflection we saw the psalmist applying Yhwh’s actions to the present and the (near) future. The enemies will be destroyed because Yhwh now sits upon the throne and takes up his cause. This awareness is not something that is sheerly based on a subjective religious intuition; rather, the recalling of the works of Yhwh guarantees their application in the present and the future. One wonders whether this ‘recalling’ of the works also operated as a type of plea: because you have done this in the past, perform it again now. If that is the case it is much like those attempts we have seen to ‘prick Yhwh’s heart’ so that he would turn his face toward the petitioner and deliver him. I’m not sure, though, there is this ‘hidden plea’ in the recalling of the works; those first few verses seem so centered upon praise rather than a type of intercession. And, not to belabor the point, but it deserves repeating: this ‘recalling’ is not something performed in the absence of Yhwh. It is something performed in his presence; they are like the songs sung in the audience with a king, recounting his great works. The more they are sung the more the singer is attuned to his king. Deuteronomy makes this clear: memory of Yhwh is not memory of a absent Yhwh but the mode by which Yhwh’s covenant partners maintain their position as covenant partners. Moving into today’s verses: we see here a recalling of the ways in which Yhwh has dealt with the nations. This emerged in Ps. 2 and the language seems reminiscent. There, the nations came to do war with the Enthroned One and his anointed (David). As they approached, however, they were strongly rebuked and ‘encouraged’ not to act in rebellion any longer. A point of contact with this psalm are these ‘nations’—they seem to be, so far, almost entirely understood as enemies of Yhwh. They are properly ‘rebuked’ and wicked. There, however, the nations were ‘put in their place’; although they were threatened with extinction (if they continued in their rebellion they would be ‘smashed like a potters vessel’), the intent of Yhwh was to have them, rather, as vassals of his anointed. David was to be the king of an international kingdom; not merely the destroyer of foreign nations. Here, the remembrance is of a different action by Yhwh. Perhaps on the psalmists mind is the destruction of Amalek. There is present throughout the OT the threat, and the reality, that certain nations, in their rebellion, are not merely rebuked but annihilated. And yet there is a crucial twist to this: Israel itself is often threatened with the same punishment. Throughout the Exodus, the time when the nation was effectively ‘born’, Israel repeatedly stands face to face with this reality, and it is one that would have consumed them except for the intercession of Moses. I don’t believe that that is explicitly found in the context here, except for the fact that Israel knew that its existence was not a guaranteed one, just like the other nations. “Wiping out their name”: notice how the psalm began with the praising of the Divine Name, Yhwh. In contrast to his name, we find these nations whose ‘names’ stand to be ‘wiped out forever and ever’. One obvious implication of this is that their ‘name’ will no longer be able to be passed down, generation to generation. They will become like all the barren women in the OT who cannot have children: their name will cease. There are several comments to make about this in light of what we have already said: to continue on one’s posterity is not only to continue a name, but to continue the ability to offer praise—the ability to ‘remember’. This ongoing command of Moses, in Deut. 8, is firmly grounded in this fact—to remember Yhwh is to remain in the land, which means to continue to be ‘fruitful and multiply’. It is manifestly not an individual thing: it is a communal reality. One’s name is not one’s individual name but a family, clan and nations ‘name’.  In a sense this goes back to our original observation that this psalm tends to have a more ‘global’ emphasis—large vistas are taken into account (i.e. entire nations and Yhwh’s ‘works’). This leads into the second part of our verses: their ‘perpetual ruin’, the ‘destruction of their name’ is also understood as “their memory” perishing. It seems to be a constant observation (from Homer to here) that the ability to be remembered is incredibly important; I would hesitate to call it a form of ‘immortality’ but there is a profound sense that if one is ‘forgotten’ then something truly terrible has occurred. It is as if in their being forgotten, Sheol (the place where memory of Yhwh cannot occur) has obtained its greatest victory. It could be, in part, the fact that ‘memory’ of dead only occurs in and by the living and that, in some way, by perpetuating the memory of the dead, they are, in some manner, still ‘living’. If the community that perpetuates that memory is utterly destroyed (not one person being left alive to ‘remember’ the dead), then that final last thread binding them to the land of the living is severed. This is something that man is always aware of: his “name” is mortal, close to death (not just his individual name, but his communal identity), while Yhwh’s name is understood as ‘unable to die’, and to be subject to these forces (which is a quite astonishing assertion in light of Jesus who, because he ‘went down into death’ was “given the name above all names”). One final comment: there seems to be here language very reminiscent of Jeremiah, who is told that he will, in his prophetic career, “uproot cities” and “tear them down”. At one point he takes a “potters vessel” and, in the sigh of Israel’s elite, tells them that what he is about to do Yhwh is about to do to Israel: he smashes it into pieces. Throughout the book there is an overwhelming sense that a final destruction is taking place (Jeremiah is specifically told not to interceded like Moses or Abraham so that Yhwh’s wrath can have its full effect). The point is not that Jeremiah refers to this Psalm; the point is that the sense of utter destruction is something that Israel was aware of in various forms and here it is combined with aspects of “name destruction”, posterity annihilation and the “loss of memory”.