Ps. 35.11-12 (violent witnesses)

“Violent witnesses / shall arise; - they shall interrogate me / on matters of which / I am ignorant.” The psalm opened with a call to Yhwh to ‘strive against those who strive against me; fight those who fight me.” Likewise, Yhwh was called upon to ‘rise up’ in the psalmist’s aid. Here, the substance of the enemy’s attack is made clear. They are not merely military powers. As we indicated with the word ‘strive’—they are parties who are adversaries to the psalmist in a courtroom. They are “violent witnesses”. The fact that they ‘arise’ is indicative of their assuming power over the psalmist. They have the power to depose and interrogate him; he is at their mercy. This seems important: the anointed one of Yhwh, his own son (Ps. 2), is here placed within the dock by other powers. And, it is not this, per se, that is the problem, but the fact that they are using the courtroom in order to perpetuate an injustice. Can we hear here the fact that the messiah, the ‘son of god’, is to be subject to court-proceedings? That, ultimately, they will be rigged and searching not for justice but for the anointed’s life? Is this the trial prior to a/the crucifixion? A further concrete detail is here provided to something we have looked at before. Earlier in the psalm the wicked’s actions were described as originating “without cause”. There was no source or impetus to their action except for the destruction of the psalmist. Here, that “without cause” is turned into interrogations over “matters of which I am ignorant.” These are obviously related: the wicked are attempting to coerce the psalmist into admitting knowledge of or participation in an injustice he doesn’t know about. They are attempting to get a guilty sentence passed on him. It is due to his ignorance that he previously called this onslaught as coming “without cause”. This is their ‘net’ and the ‘pit’ they are digging for the anointed. He goes on to say: “They repay me / evil – instead / of good. – they lie in wait / for my life.” For the first time we have come to see that their evil comes as a response to his goodness; this is contained in the words ‘repay me’. Their evil is, in fact, not utterly without cause. It is responsive. The bewilderment is in the fact that goodness is supposed to generate goodness, not evil. This principal flows throughout the wisdom tradition and the prophets (Jeremiah routinely laments that Yhwh looks for a crop but instead finds alien grapes; or, he looks for a  harvest and finds nothing but a withered and useless vine). Evil, then, is not something that simply comes into being. Rather, like the serpent, it shows up “mid-course” and as responsive to goodness. Genesis makes clear that creation itself is good; the serpent, though, simply ‘appears’ and is not, itself, seemingly within the flow of creation. He comes ‘unawares’. This type of evil is, then, only parasitic. It can only respond to the good and can’t itself, originate its own power. In the same way, kingly power is itself derivative of the anointed and his father, the Enthroned One. In Psalm 2 the nations ‘congregate’ and rebel against Yhwh and his anointed; yet, it is only on “this day” that the anointed is made king. What we see is that, even though the crowning (or, adopting) takes place “this day”, it is, nonetheless, the source of all kingly power (the kings apparently rebelled ‘prior’ to his crowning), as the end of the psalm makes clear. It is as if in Yhwh his anointed has been ‘hidden’ but present from the beginning (or, as if a child who would crush the serpent’s head was already in the womb of Eve, or, a ‘priest like Melchizadek”…).  I wonder if there was any indication prior to Christ that the messiah was somehow “hidden in God” from the beginning? That he, in some way, participated within this eternal rule of Yhwh?