Ps. 34.18-20 (close in affliction)

“Yhwh is close / to the broken hearted – and saves those / who are spiritually crushed. – The righteous one’s afflictions / are many – but Yhwh delivers him / from them all.” As a succinct summary of the psalm, much of what we have already said could be applied here. The question of “why, O Yhwh, do you not see” is no where present here. Rather, in the midst of injustice and suffering Yhwh is “close”. He “saves” those who crushed. Needless to say we are in a very different place than what has been experienced in other psalms. To summarize: the psalmist, himself, has experienced the saving and delivering hand of Yhwh; he was, when he called out to Yhwh, a “poor man” and, it seems, one of the ‘ashamed’; Yhwh, however, heard his call and saved him; the psalmist, now, in turn, sees his experience as laying the groundwork, or the ‘science’, as to how others can proceed to experience the same deliverance; this psalm is, then, an invitation to stand in the same realm as himself; one of the main points the psalmist has been making throughout is that, for those who are suffering, Yhwh is present—one can, in fact, ‘see him’, one can even ‘taste him’, Yhwh’s own angel that led Israel through the wilderness (which is where these listeners are now), is ‘encamped’ around the righteous; importantly, Yhwh’s eyes are, now, ‘upon’ the righteous and his ears are ‘open’ to them. The question: prior to the psalmist’s deliverance, would he have been praying laments of “how long, O Yhwh, will you forget me…”? To state it another way, could it be the case that the psalmist began where other psalmist’s began—with the vision of Yhwh’s ‘turned face’. Through Yhwh’s deliverance, though, the psalmist came to realize that, all along, Yhwh had had his ‘gaze upon him’. (i.e., that he had been wrong). And that, now, through his experience, he is attempting to show these ‘children’ and ‘poor’ what he himself came to realize. If this is the case, there had to emerge at some point this realization. Someone had to go through it so as to ‘pull the veil back’ for everyone else. This is all hypothetical but it seems to be demanded, at some level, by the psalms themselves and the experience many had of Yhwh. The important point, however, is that if this is the case then this ‘new experience’ can become somewhat ‘normalized’ into wisdom; it can be tradition-ed and ‘handed-down’. The psalmist’s experience becomes, itself, the ‘bridge’ of ‘patient assurance’ we have spoken of. This means that Yhwh’s ‘plans’ are embodied, and delivered, in the experiences of his saints. They go through the sudden ‘jumps’ and ‘changes’ inherent in Yhwh’s redemption. In this way, they are not ‘private’ experiences (nor are they ‘teachings’ delivered in the abstract). They are invitations and gifts. They are, by nature, meant to be passed-down. This is seen most paradigmatically in the exodus: it was to be retold and relived in each generation. It was not simply an event in the past but an opening and ‘ongoing present’. It was (and is) a living experience. For our purposes, this ‘sudden leap’ experienced in the psalmist, is something in his past but something he is saying is now open to those in the present and is an object of their assurance in the future. It is as if he opens a door previous closed and asks others to enter (he, himself, being that door). The goal remains the same in the original experience (“why, O Yhwh, do you not listen…”) and the current one; the difference is in the fact that during the time leading up to the deliverance, Yhwh is now understood to be ‘present’, to ‘see’ and to ‘hear’. He can, in fact, even be ‘tasted’. This will have significant implications when we come to our reflection on Christ.