Ps. 34.5-6 (embodied assurance)

“I have sought Yhwh / and he has answered me – and he has delivered me / from all my terrors. – Look at him / and be radiant – and let not / your faces / be ashamed.” Here we begin to see why the psalmist ‘boasts’ in Yhwh and, likewise, how this ‘boasting’ is shared/transferred to others. The movement begins with a seeking. This wording is interesting in that usually Yhwh ‘answers’ a ‘calling out’ and not a ‘seeking’. One would expect the line to read either “I called out to Yhwh and he heard/answered me” or “I have sought Yhwh and he revealed himself to me.” The fist example is what occurs in vs. 7 (“This poor man called and Yhwh heard and delivered him from trouble.”).  Here, though we have a ‘seeking’ that is met by an ‘answer’ (which seems verbal). This ‘answer’ though is deliverance from terror. It seems important (to me at least) that the psalmist sees his deliverance as an ‘answer’, an almost verbal expression of acknowledgment and a perfect meeting of the ‘question’/seeking. I wonder how much of this is not also something that finds its coherence in the fact that the psalmist is addressing others—that he is essentially assuming their ‘questioning’ stance and their desire for an ‘answer’ and modeling his experience on that. The fact that Yhwh ‘answers’ sounds rather ‘didactic’ in that regard, and could be a form of ‘wisdom’ teaching that is being employed to show others how to interpret deliverance. From this experiential component the psalmist now gives a directive: “Look at him and be radiant, and let not your faces be ashamed.” Here we are beginning to understand how one continuously praises Yhwh. One aspect is to “look at him”. We must keep in mind that this psalmist is speaking to others, and offering encouragement. It therefore seems probable that the danger is that they would not “look at Yhwh”, that their eyes (hope) would stray either into despair (silence) or to other gods. By prefacing this directive, however, with his own experience of deliverance, he offers to them a ‘bridge’ so to speak, something that they can walk across. His experience of deliverance is to ground them and turn their eyes toward Yhwh. In so doing they will become ‘radiant’. This image is interesting for several reasons. First, the act of ‘looking at Yhwh’ leads to this ‘radiance’. I cannot help but think of Moses as he ‘spoke with Yhwh face to face’ and his face ‘became radiant’. Here, this radiance is matched by a face that is ‘not ashamed’. The psalmist seems then to be saying that one’s face can, now, be radiant even though the deliverance has not yet come about. And this must be added: this is not an exhortation to simply love Yhwh for Yhwh’s own sake in contrast to one’s present life. Rather, this ‘radiant face’ is one that glows due to one’s confidence that Yhwh is the god of the living, and that his intention for his people is there welfare and their ability to live long. It is an entirely ‘earthly’ blessing and deliverance that is the source of the hope that causes the face’s ‘shining’. The reason there is no ‘shame’ on the face is not because of a stoic indifference to earthly castigations; it is, rather, that the shame will be removed. This is crucial in understanding ‘continuous praise’—this is a praise that is entirely creaturely; that is one that looks for Yhwh’s real and full deliverance; that actually risks this assurance that Yhwh delivers those who fear him; that, in essence, Yhwh is actually the sovereign of history.  One temptation that prevents continuous praise is to retreat away from this perspective and toward the silence of stoicism, that one’s earthly being is not the real source of blessing but rather one’s soul or one’s life ‘after death’. This would, it seems to me, avoid the risk the psalmist takes in this psalm in “looking to Yhwh” and, likewise, turn down the volume on the praise that is being called for. This is not an intellectual or spiritual purification. This is a fully embodied assurance of deliverance. This will, of course, lead to tensions, but this fact itself, must not be let go of. It seems, then, that this ‘radiant face’ is the face of one who, in confidence, is sure of Yhwh’s deliverance