Ps. 34.13 (the wise man: lover of goodness and days)

“Who is the man / that takes pleasure in life – that loves days / so he may see goodness?” Here is the central ‘wisdom’ question of the psalm and it is important to realize that this is a very positive question. This ‘man’ is the ideal man, the ‘blessed’ man. Often, as a person stands on the brink of death and is peering into Sheol he implores Yhwh to save him so that he can continue to praise Yhwh’s good things on earth. That idea is certainly present here although Yhwh’s name is not mentioned. The ‘goodness’ here should refer us back to vs. 9 (“Taste and see how good Yhwh is; blessed is the man who seeks refuge in him”) and vs. 11 (‘The young lions are in need and are hungry, but they who seek Yhwh shall not lack any good thing”). Are we to see here, also, the ‘goodness’ that Yhwh sees in the created order when he looks upon and declares “It is good”? It would seem that this ‘goodness’ is very closely aligned with ‘blessedness’—it is the natural ‘glory’ of the created order, what is ‘delightful’ about creation. It is, here, the “pleasure of life” and what makes “days” the object of “love”. In other contexts this seems similar to the sphere of covenantal blessing promised by Yhwh to the Israelites just before entering the promised land: “Today I place before you life and death; choose life so that you may live long in the land.” Notice, again, the ‘length of days’ that is the promise guaranteed to covenant faithfulness. What is crucial to recognize is that this ‘goodness’ is where the psalmist was redeemed ‘into’—this is the ‘sphere of Yhwh’ we have speaking of and it is decidedly ‘worldly’. This is the place where the lowly are aspiring  to: in the words of the psalm, this is the land where the lowly are patiently assured of obtaining if they listen to the psalmist for he has already been granted admission. To see this place, and to know that one will be ushered into it, is to be able to “praise Yhwh continuously”. It is in order to be guided there that Yhwh’s angel ‘encamps’ around the ‘poor’ (importantly, this ‘angel’ is both a conquering and guiding angel in the wilderness journey). We have said this over and over again, but it is crucial: the answer as to how one ‘praises Yhwh continuously’ is not in a detachment from the earth but in this assurance that one will “see goodness” and the “love of days”. To briefly look forward: this is the germ of resurrection and it will play a massively important role when we come to the verse regarding how Yhwh makes sure his ‘child’s bones’ are not broken and how and why John quotes this precisely at the death of Christ (which seems to be the total and utter opposite of what this psalm is speaking about…).