Ps. 30 (intro)

“I will / extol you / O Yhwh / for you / have drawn me out – and have not allowed / my enemies / to rejoice / over me. – O Yhwh / my God / I called to you / for help / and you healed me – O Yhwh / you brought up / my soul / from Sheol.” These opening lines take on added depth only when we realize the error that (presumably) caused the psalmist to plunge into the pit. He later makes this confession: “But I – I said in my security: I will never be moved.” This boast on his part is entirely self-centered and self-sufficient. It is not relational and it bears no marks of the fact that one’s life, as a covenantal partner of Yhwh, is one of standing in a loving stance toward Yhwh. Such arrogance and boasting may not have ‘caused’ his downfall but it certainly made the length of his fall that much greater. Here, in these opening words, the psalmist has manifestly changed his perspective. He speaks like one who is a covenantal partner and the action for his salvation is decidedly and utterly in Yhwh. Notice how he emphasizes this again and again: “you have drawn me out—you have not allowed my enemies…--you healed me—you brought up my soul”. No where is there a residue of his previous boasting. Also, the action is one of ascension: Yhwh has“drawn out” the psalmist from the very maw of Sheol as one draws water up from a well. The psalmist, in his passivity to his ascending, ascribes all of his healing to Yhwh. Furthermore, his ‘ascension’ is not simply one of healing but of placing him ‘over’ his enemies (“not allowed my enemies to rejoice over me”). This dynamic is similar to other psalms: if one is delivered, the ‘raising’ necessarily implies to ‘striking down’ of an enemy. This is portrayed by the fact that the psalmist can now ‘extol’/rejoice Yhwh because his enemies cannot ‘rejoice’ over him. Stylistically, these two verses work acrostically: A. for you have drawn me out; B: not allowed enemies to rejoice; B1: healed me; A1: brought up my soul.