Ps. 36.4 (a bed and open rebellion)

 “He devises wickedness / upon his bed – he sets himself / on a path / that is not good – he does not reject / what is wrong.” In this final verse regarding the nature of the wicked we are, again, witnessing the reversal of wisdom and the degradation of folly. In many places of the psalms (particularly ps. 63) the wise and good man ‘meditates on Yhwh’s torah’ while on his bed; later rabbinic activities included studying the torah all night long (Nicodemus may have been engaged in this activity when he approached Christ). Here, by contrast, there is no ‘meditation on Torah’ but ‘devising wickedness’. Does this help us get closer to what ‘wickedness’ means? Verse 1 refers to transgression ‘belonging to the wicked’. There we saw how ‘transgression’ pointed to a state of rebellion against the order and function of the world and of Yhwh’s commandments; it was an agent of chaos and destruction. Verse 3 then says that the ‘words of his mouth are wickedness’. There we commented that ‘wickedness’ is juxtaposed to ‘wisdom’ (right living, and speech) and is probably closely aligned with ‘deceit’. This is not merely stating something inaccurate. It is speech that is designed to destroy what is good. It is a type of verbal death. And it degenerates into this chthonic realm precisely because the source of wisdom is absent (“fear of God”).  Here, in verse 4, things become more explicit—wickedness is a form of rebellion against Yhwh (Psalm 63.6: “on my bed I remember you…”). If, as we have been arguing throughout, the wicked have what they shouldn’t and don’t have what they should—here, the same principle follows: Yhwh should be present in his mind but instead he is ‘devising wickedness’. He is bringing forth, almost ‘birthing’, wickedness through his meditations. The following two lines are a perfect inversion of wisdom: “he sets himself on a path that is not good – he does not reject what is wrong.” Psalm 1, in describing the ‘blessed man’, is a good example of how wisdom is supposed to work and be applied: the rejection of the wicked, and the pursuit of Yhwh’s instruction (or, torah). Likewise, the ‘path’, as we saw in our reflection there, is a term for one’s ‘mode of living’ and is frequently described in wisdom sayings. Here, the wicked moves in the opposite direction from wisdom: he goes down a ‘path’ that is ‘not good’. And he does not reject what he should (and, by implication, courts I and allows it to keep company with him). One final thought; these four verses have focused exclusively on what the wicked man does (“he flatters himself; he speaks deceit; he gives up being wise; he devises wickedness; he sets himself on the wrong path”). There is the sense here that this man, along with his precious wickedness, are working ‘under their own steam’. One thing we have noted in other reflections on Yhwh’s judgment is how it is often (almost always) a ‘letting be’ of the wicked; of allowing their own wickedness to return to them. Yhwh does not need to ‘do’ anything in particular, except do nothing. Paul will later say that this is the preeminent form of Yhwh’s punishment (and wrath?): leaving men up to their own devises. In this constant refrain of what the wicked man does, are we to see in these lines man cut off and abandoned by Yhwh (due to their own heart of transgression)? In other words, are we to see here a latent judgment already (he has been described as blind to himself), even without reading the closing lines of the psalm? One cannot help but feel as if, in reading these verses, one were peering down into a cave where a solitary individual is living, unaware of his degradation and his isolation. There is almost no human contact in these lines and everything emanates solely from within the wicked man; these verses feel very claustrophobic. In fact, one could say that the only ‘companions’ of this man are ‘transgression’ (vs. 1) and himself (vs. 2).