Ps.31.10-11 (avoiding the covenant with silence)

“Be gracious / to me / O Yhwh – for I have distress; - my eye / was wasted / with grief, - my soul / and my belly / too. – For my life / was consumed / with grief, - and my years / with groaning; - my strength / staggered / in my distress, - and my bones / were wasted.” In this portion of the lament the psalmist focuses upon images of bodily deterioration and progressive weakness: he is in distress and wasting away; he is consumed and groans; he stagers and wastes away. The ‘wasting of the eye’ is familiar refrain; in other contexts it is wed to the image of tears, which is its import here although not stated. One gathers the sense of someone whose distress is so extreme that he is beginning to lose the ability to weep; he is utterly spent. This has consumed not only the eye but the ‘soul’ and ‘belly’ as well. In a final gathering of images he says “my life was consumed with grief”. The fact that this is passive (was consumed) is important in that the psalmist finds himself to be the victim of grief. It is devouring him and is a menacing threat. When we look back on the psalm we gather that this may be the ‘net’ he implores Yhwh to protect him from; that this grief is hunting him down, and he is not only unable to withstand its onslaught but unable to predict its attack as well. It is therefore from this ‘night’ that he has asked Yhwh to “lead me and guide me”. His ‘staggering’ strength is also something we have seen before but here it adds the dimension of near failure on the part of the psalmist. He is about to ‘go under’. The final description of ‘wasted bones’ is also familiar and points to the fact that his bodily structure is deteriorating (Ezekiel will come to see exile as symbolically represented by separated bones). This final description looks back to the ‘wasted’ eye—just as the organ of perception is beginning to fade, so too is the actual bodily structure itself.  Something to advance on our previous reflection on Christ’s death: this is a statement that originates from and speaks to absolute “trust in Yhwh”. As the body sinks down, the psalmist (and Christ) cannot (and will not) cast about to other ‘vain idols’ for their protection and restoration. For them, there is only one who can redeem them. Because of that unique relationship, this yawning gulf becomes more acute and begins to push at the boundaries of the covenant relationship. There is no ‘outside’ to it, nothing else to look to. This serves to only heighten the falling darkness. As we have said before, one is seeing in this the drama of the first commandment. One thinks here of Job’s friends as they say, “Curse God and die.” This resignation, though, is not available to the psalmist. His life is not his own, but has been handed over to Yhwh. At no point can he, then, become silent, but must always express a rebellion against this power that challenges (and shames) Yhwh’s name (“redeem me for your name’s sake”). Jeremiah attempted to enter this silence, but the ‘fire burned within him’. Job was probably tempted to. It is, in essence, the desire to step outside of the covenantal relationship into the silence of darkness and to be ignored by Yhwh. This is the temptation of tragedy: to sever the covenantal bond with Yhwh and disappear. For, to continue in the dialogue is to remain open to the flooding darkness (better, it would seem, to let it wash one out to sea and there find rest). It is precisely this refusal to succumb to the temptation of silence (or, the inability to succumb) that we see here. The psalmist knows that everything else is vanity; he also knows that one cannot ‘trust the darkness’ but Yhwh alone. Were he to turn, he would be entering into a covenant with the darkness and silence, in effect saying that it, and it alone, is what can assuage his pain. That is not an option to him. He therefore must maintain the covenantal bond with Yhwh; it has so saturated him that he cannot do otherwise. This is why this portion of the psalm is bookmarked with statements of trust in Yhwh (vs. 7 and vs. 15).