Ps. 36.2 (the eclipse of fear)

“For / he flatters himself / too much / in his own eyes – to find / his iniquity / and hate it.” The word “for” refers us back to the previous verse and makes these two lines interdependent. The verses seem to work something like the following:

A: There is no fear of god

B: before his eyes

FOR

B1: he flatters himself too much in his own eyes

A1: to find his iniquity and hate it.

If B1 and A1 are the cause of A and B then it seems to mean that his ‘flattery of himself in his own eyes’ puts a barrier between himself and the ‘fear of god’. There are several conclusions we can draw from this. First, here we stumble upon another meaning of ‘fear of god’: “finding iniquity and hating it” (A1 and A are related). There are two necessary actions to this. The first involves an active search, a ‘finding’. The second involves the movement of the will: ‘hating it’. But didn’t the psalmist say that ‘transgression belongs to the wicked’? How is it then that he can’t ‘find his iniquity’? Perhaps what we see here is that the first verse needs to be read more in the manner of a judgment passed by the psalmist and not read as something ‘from the perspective of the wicked’. What I mean is that the psalmist sees transgression ‘belonging to the wicked’ and it residing ‘in the midst of his heart’ but that is not something the wicked, himself, would agree to or acknowledge; only a superior act of ‘seeing’ would enable one (the psalmist) to accurately assess the situation and have this cardio-gnosis (heart-knowledge). Such a reading would cohere well with the fact that his iniquity (his individual acts of rebellion) is unknown to him. “Transgression”, as we argued, appeared to be almost a ‘state of being’; it ‘resided in the midst of his heart’. It is more of a grounding and perpetual disposition to rebellion. Iniquity, on the other hand, seems more like the individual acts that can be ‘found’ and ‘hated’. The progression of the psalm then seems to be: transgression --> flattery/no fear of god --> inability (refusal?) to find iniquity and hate it. This raises an important point, something we alluded to yesterday but left unresolved. It seems as if the ‘state of transgression’ is the ‘primal act’ that prohibits the wicked from adopting ‘fear of god’. Yet it accomplishes this ‘eclipsing of the fear of god’ by making the wicked man ‘flatter himself too much in his own eyes’. It effectively blinds him to his own iniquity thereby preventing him from hating it. Notice the use of the phrase “too much”: it points to an imbalance, a disordered motion. Because the heart is already infected with ‘transgression’ (which, as we argued is a rebellion against the proper order) it is already “too much” (imbalanced). And, because the heart is the source of one’s vision, such an imbalance would be, by definition, a blindness (he flatters himself too much in his own eyes to see his iniquity and hate it). “Flattery” then is an act or a result of rebellion and transgression. It is foolish; it is blindness. This rounds out the two actions we spoke of: finding and hating. “Flattery” is a form of ‘love’, a movement of the will. A heart that is fed by transgression is one that instigates a form of disordered love of oneself, which is an act of blindness; hence he can’t “find and hate”. Most importantly, it eclipses the ‘fear of god’ which, as we saw yesterday, is the beginning of all wisdom (and, hence, perception of the good and right order of things). Without the ‘fear of god’ one lacks wisdom; without wisdom, one cannot ‘find iniquity and hate it’. Two final points to make: first, wisdom engages not merely the ability to ‘see’ but to ‘hate’. It, therefore, orders one’s vision and passions correctly. It is, then, a moral act and not merely one that perceives “the nature of things”. It is not that the wicked man has no passion; it is that his passion is himself. Second, there has been an interesting play on the idea of ‘ownership’. Transgression “belongs” to the wicked—and iniquity is “his to find”. Both of these, however, although owned by him are invisible to him. He cannot see what he himself is and possesses. Perhaps this is the greatest curse of living without wisdom (‘fear of god’): that one constantly feels ruptures in one’s own being (hints of caverns and creatures) and yet one cannot identify where it is coming from; one constantly senses one is “too much” (or, perhaps, “too little”); an imbalance is sensed but never understood to be originating from the heart and not the world (or, god); even, perhaps, that one’s sense of the world’s atmosphere as vacillating between ‘leaden’ and ‘empty’ is but the blood of transgression running through one’s eyes.