Ps.35.10 (singing bones)

“All my bones / shall say: - ‘O Yhwh / who is like you? – One who delivers / the weak / from the one / too strong for him – and the weak and poor / from the one / who robs him.’” After the judgment has fallen on the wicked there emerges from the anointed’s soul rejoicing. Here, it comes from “all my bones”. In a poignant image, they are described as almost have mouths; his bones speak to Yhwh. ‘Bones’ have been commonly referred to throughout the psalms we have contemplated. The majority of the references have been in times of distress or sickness when the bones are described as disjointed, the psalmist can “count them all”, they are ‘crushed’. All of these images point to an acute awareness of body’s ability to disintegrate, to slip back into chaos and formlessness. Here, as in the last psalm, however, something different emerges. Here, the body is unified (as in the last psalm where Yhwh made sure “no bones were broken”). On the far side of deliverance the ‘bones’ are no longer disjointed, melting or crushed; rather, they themselves actually proclaim Yhwh’s praises. And their first act of praise is, importantly, a question: “O Yhwh, who is like you?” Although a question, this praise is, in fact, a recognition and, perhaps, it is always the first act of recognition in praise—when man is confronted by the redemptive power of Yhwh he can only respond to Yhwh that he has no analogy with which to compare him, that Yhwh is, utterly, unique. Yet there are two ways of understanding this: that, because there is nothing to compare Yhwh with he is essentially dark, or, that he so far exceeds every goodness that he is a blinding light. The second is obviously correct—these ‘bones’ are crying out because they are overwhelmed by Yhwh’s graciousness. “One who delivers the weak from one who is too strong—the weak and the poor from the one who robs him.” From the psalmist’s perspective, the ‘strong’ and the ‘robber’ are “too strong”. Yhwh, however, overthrows these powers (as we saw, he sends judgment on them ‘unaware’). I find this very important: to be overwhelmed by Yhwh’s uniqueness (to see the first commandment) is not to only see Yhwh as creator, but to see him (as in this psalm) as the redeeming Warrior King. In the first act of wonder, we are to stand in awe at Yhwh as the source of all being; in the second, though, and no less profoundly, we are to stand in awe of him as the Redeemer. Just as there is nothing in creation to compare with Yhwh, so too is there nothing within redemption (history) to compare to him (and, as we have argued in other places, it was the astonishment at Yhwh’s delivering hand that gave rise to an understanding of creation, not the other way around). Are we to hear in Ezekiel’s prophecy of the bones that are ‘put together’ a similar thought? Is Ezekiel’s vision fed by the same stream as this psalm? If so, the ‘putting together of the bones’ would be the signaling of healing, of deliverance, of protection—it could be the sign of Yhwh’s conquering of those forces at war with his righteous ones. And, to push the analogy further—the resurrection itself, as the knitting together of bones, would be similar: the putting together of what was once subject to sickness, destruction and darkness. And, in this vision, the twin ‘wonders’ are combined: that of Yhwh as creator (Genesis) and as Warrior King (Exodus and Davidic).