Ps. 35.17 (closing the gap)

“O Yhwh / how long / will you / look on? – Rescue my life / from their ruin – my existence / from the young lions.” A superficial reading may generate the impression that David thinks Yhwh is blind to the injustice being worked upon his, Yhwh’s, son. However, that is not the case. Although no less disturbing, he is asking Yhwh how long he will continue to see the injustice and “look on” (i.e., do nothing). This is confirmed by vs. 22, where David says, “You have seen, O Yhwh, do not be silent.” In that verse, the act of ‘seeing’ and the act of ‘speech’ have been divided when, in the general course of things, they should not be: for Yhwh to see injustice should, it seems, generate a ‘response’ (we will talk more about why this response is vocal in 22 and not ‘physical’). Furthermore, it is likely that in the treaty between David and these men Yhwh acted as the ‘witness’ to it; thereby guaranteeing that he would be its enforcer. For David to ask “How long…?” is therefore not presumptuous on his part but a calling of Yhwh to the terms that he bound himself to. The point is, as we have seen in the past, is the disturbing hiatus between when Yhwh ‘sees’ injustice and when he determines to act on it (might we say that the ‘three days’ of Christ’s burial represent the culmination of this ‘how long’?). It generates this question, over and over and always with undertones of a deep complaint: “How long…?” As we have said in the analysis of similar passages, those who are Yhwh’s own experience time as somehow disrupted in this hiatus, as if it has fallen off the tracks. It is as if, in these times of hiatus, creation is beginning to devolve from being “good”, as it was created to be, and somehow beginning to be engulfed by the waters of chaos from which it was brought forth. Such an analogy is not random—the anointed’s life is slipping into ‘ruin’ and his existence to the ravages of “young lions”. It is clear that reference to the wicked as ‘young lions’ is to remind us of vs. 15 and the ‘tearing’ of David’s flesh and vs. 16 and the ‘gnashing’ of their teeth. A final point to make regarding this question/complaint: the hiatus opened up by injustice is not something to be accepted as part of Yhwh’s divine plan; rather, it is something that Yhwh’s righteous ones pray from within that it would be closed, that Yhwh would seal the gap between his ‘seeing’ and his acting/speaking. David, as Yhwh’s representative to his people, and as the people’s representative to Yhwh, places him in this unique position of intercession: he is the one whose duty it is to ‘cry out’ to Yhwh and ask him, “How long…?” Were he to fall silent, the gap could potentially only widen (and, in the end, engulf him with it).