Ps.30.12 (pulling at Yhwh's ear)

“Because of all my adversaries – I have become / a reproach, - and to my neighbors, / a calamity, - a fearful thing / to my acquaintances – those who see me / in the street – and retreat from me!” From the physical we now move into the deterioration of the social. Not only is the psalmist employing formulaic images of bodily extinction, so too does he now draw upon standard phrases describing the turning away of “the neighbor”. As we have seen in the context of reflection on ‘shame’, so too here are we witnessing the fact that to be socially outcast is tantamount to bodily death. For the psalmist, to be an “I” is to be bodily healthy and to be socially included. The “I” rests in both realms (which, again, is why the psalmist implores Yhwh to save him from ‘shame’). Indeed, as we will see, I do not believe the psalmist to be physically deteriorating at all but, rather, employed those images in order to heighten the sense of social danger he suffers at the hands of slanderers. In essence, the danger for him, socially, is so real that it invokes in him the panoply of images of bodily destruction and social ostracizing. The important phrase here, that hinges the two dynamics (bodily and social), is “Because of all my adversaries”. It would seem as if the constellation of these images finds its root (or cause) here, in the ‘adversaries’. This is important because, later, the only evil these adversaries engage in is spoken (“whispering of the multitude”, “scheming together against me”, “let them be silent”, “let lying lips be sealed, that speak arrogantly against the righteous”, “you will set them aside in a shelter, from the strife of tongues”). We might then ask why would the psalmist look back to these traditional images of sickness if, in fact, that is not what he is suffering from. With these thoughts in mind, something interesting does emerge from those previous lines: it is ‘grief’ that is consuming him, not sickness. His eye is “wasted with grief”, and it is “grief” that consumes is “soul and belly”. Likewise, his life is “consumed with grief” and it is ‘distress’ that makes his strength ‘stagger and his bones waste away’. The psalmist has then employed these images but subtly transformed them into his present situation as suffering at the hands of slanderers. In essence, he is saying that they are “his sickness”, or, better, that the effect upon him of their words is his “sickness” (his ‘grief’). This enables both of these images (of bodily and social disintegration) to work together: both of them find their cause in the ‘hinge’, the ‘adversaries.’. They are causing him so much grief that it is like bodily death and they are causing him to be socially ostracized like some unclean person. He is therefore deploying these images but putting them to a different use. And this would, in the psalm’s hearers, make them realize that something different is happening. They would have picked upon the subtle shifts and they would have seen how the psalmist’s desperate plight could only be adequately conveyed through these traditional modes of expression. Of course, it must be pointed out that ‘we’ are not the intended audience of the psalm: it is Yhwh (these descriptions are book-ended by “Be gracious to me, O Yhwh” and “But I – I have trusted in you, O Yhwh”). These images are being deployed in order to make Yhwh “bend down (incline) his ear” to hear him. The psalmist is gathering these images, like so many strands of rope, in order to cast them upon Yhwh and pull him down so he will listen and enact his covenantal blessing upon him. Seen in this way, the combining of images, is an act of desperation (almost, exaggeration) in order to pull at Yhwh’s sympathies (or, covenantal lovingkindness).