Ps. 37.8-9 (the land, the name and an inheritance)

“Cease from anger / and forget fury – do not fret / it only / brings grief! – For evil persons / will be / cut off – but / they that hope / in Yhwh / will inherit / the land.” For purposes of highlighting how central the idea of “the land” is to this psalm, I wanted to graph it out in the following manner:

1	plants	wither/die quickly
3	dwell in land/safe pasture
9	will inherit the land	will be cut off
11	meek shall inherit the land	will be no more
22	whom he blesses shall inherit the land	will be cut off
27	dwell securely	(28) posterity cut off
29	righteous shall inhert the land
29(b)	shall dwell in it forever
34	he will exalt you to take possession of the land	wicked are cut off
35	wicked flourish like luxuriant tree	he is no more/can't be found

Clearly, inhabiting the land is, perhaps, the central motif of the psalm. But saying that is not enough. In light of our previous reflections “the land” alone is but a ‘good’ that the wicked can come into possession of at almost any time. Rather “the land” must be something given by Yhwh before it can be the type of ‘good’ that can be enjoyed safely and in perpetuity. In effect, ‘the land’ and ‘time’ must be brought together, and that can only be done by faithful reliance upon Yhwh. Just to highlight this, the psalm will later say, regarding the land: “inheritance shall be forever”, “dwell securely”, “dwell in it forever”, “peaceful man has future”-“future of transgressors are cut off”.

This is the root of the teacher’s command to “not fret” (vs. 1, 7, 8). As we will see later, this is something he, the teacher, has ‘seen’. He knows the evil are robbed of their ‘goods’ and that the faithful end up safe in times of famine. Yet, it is also something he knows will come about and endure ‘forever’. The question is how he knows that this will continue ‘forever’. It would seem that the teacher takes an observable phenomenon—that the wicked are always ‘cut off’, while the righteous are provided for—and is able (how?) to see that state of affairs play out in perpetuity. And this, as we have argued, is the central tenet of the psalm. Without this, everything falls, including his directive to “not fret”. For, unless he can affirm this, there is no way of telling that the righteous man’s possession of the land will not, eventually, be taken from him and he, therefore, be subjected to the same vanity as the wicked.

I believe at least part of the answer lies in the name ‘Yhwh’. The psalmist is not merely a wisdom teacher who only meditates on the ‘current state of affairs’ and draws general conclusions (wisdom sayings) from it (i.e., a stitch in time saves nine…). One cannot pronounce the name “Yhwh” without a whole range of theological implications coming with it. For our purposes, and this is something new in our psalm reflections, Yhwh means “land Lord”. Yhwh is not only, as could have been implied before, the one who provides ‘goods in perpetuity and in security’. Rather, Yhwh is the one who provides a specific good—“the land”—in perpetuity and security. Just as the Temple could be seen as the generative principle in creation as a whole, so too can ‘the land’ be seen as the stage for the world stage. In other words, to understand the ‘givenness’ of all creation one must begin with the particular giving of ‘the land’ (just as one must begin with the particular Temple in order to come to see all of creation as a temple). Yhwh, it seems, elects the particular in order to make of it the redemptive center for the whole. In this way, these particulars (Israel, Temple, land, etc…) are something like a sacrament to the world. Interestingly, it could be argued that this upends worldly wisdom entirely: whereas wisdom tends to prize the abstract and general (however difficult it is to arrive there), by emphasizing the permanence of the particular Jewish wisdom says one must, first, make a ‘journey of the magi’ to this people, this land, this temple, these prophets. Paradoxically, that which is not accessible to man’s intellect (the particular election of Yhwh of this people/Temple/land) is that which actually provides the starting point for all wisdom. Seen from this perspective, ‘the land’ itself is a source of wisdom.

A second part of the answer lies in “the land” itself. For several reasons we should hear in this term the land Yhwh promised to Abraham and “his descendants forever” (i.e., the Promised Land). That being the case the teacher is then able to see this land being given in perpetuity because it is grounded in the prior covenantal promise of Yhwh to his people. In this way we see that his ‘people’ (Israel) are ‘made for’ the land; they ‘fit’ there. Likewise, we might say, the land was ‘made for’ them. It was to be the covenantal stage and act like a theophany of Yhwh’s loving concern and care for his people. Notice how the land is referred to ‘their inheritance’. It is something that Yhwh has fashioned for them, something he has made in order for it to be a perpetual gift to his people.

A third part of the answer is in the land being given as ‘an inheritance’. Clearly death is contemplated by the psalmist. That is not the problem, per se. He is not seeing Yhwh’s fulfillment of his promise of land as bestowing immortality. The ‘perpetuity’ we have spoken of is a familial perpetuity. Perpetuity is aligned with “inheritance”. Later the psalmist will say he has not “seen the righteous forsaken, nor his posterity seeking bread.” The emphasis is decidedly familial and not individual. For a parent: to simply know that their children will be provided for is enough to overshadow any lament that they themselves cannot personally benefit. Hence, when Moses was allowed to ‘see’ the promised land and Abraham bought a portion of the land (and, Jeremiah too), each of these men saw the ‘beginning’ of the promise worked out in them (either its initiation or its, in Jeremiah, restoration). It was the fact that ‘their posterity’ would now be able to benefit from ‘their inheritance’ that they saw the promise beginning (however small it was at first).  The problem is the perpetual gift of the land, generationally (not individually). With this one can clearly see how, when they are kicked off the land (when they are “cut off”), to even have some soil from the land would have been an appeasement, for they would have been carrying the promise (no matter how small…). This understanding of ‘perpetuity’ is not going to resolve the paradox we will note later. It does, though, reorient how we understand the psalmist’s perspective (as familial).