Ps. 37.21-22 (a wicked holocaust)

“But / the wicked / shall perish – Yhwh’s enemies too – they are consumed / like the beast / of the pasture; - they are consumed / in smoke.” This section connects to the previous by way of the word “But”. The wicked’s destruction (their ‘perishing’) is contrasted to the fact that the righteous are ‘provided for in days of famine’. As we will see, the fact that these verses are connected will help begin go decipher exactly what is happening to the wicked in these verses. Which brings us to the focus of these verses: the manner in which the wicked are destroyed. Up to this point the wicked’s ‘end’ has been described as ‘grass withering’, as green sprouts that ‘die quickly’, as their being ‘cut off’ and as their being stabbed in their own heart (by their own swords). All of this, as we have seen, hints at the natural destructive power of evil to boomerang back on those who commit it. Whether this is understood as something that happens to the wicked (grass withered by sun), or as something that is portrayed as a type of suicide (stabbing themselves in their own heart), the mystery of evil’s destruction is total. Here, this image is carried forward into a picture of animals being consumed by a raging fire (perhaps, as they search for food). Unlike the swords, this image is completely that of ‘suffering their destruction’. Why this phrase ‘beasts of the pasture’? The word ‘pasture’ has occurred before. In vs. 3 the righteous are described as finding ‘safe pasture’. I think the contrast is deliberate: whereas the righteous find pasture that is lush and green and ‘safe’, the wicked graze in a pasture that is subject to ravishing of famine and fire. This coheres with the overriding theme we have developed: that the teacher is encouraging the student to remain with Yhwh because only Yhwh can provide the ‘land’ (here, the ‘pasture’) that is safe and perpetual. Those who don’t wait on Yhwh will suffer the ‘natural’ cycles of famine and flame. Their ‘goods’ will be taken from them, not by any necessary act of Yhwh but by the fact that their grasping carries with it its own destruction (this is why their ‘end’ can be portrayed either passively (as something that happens to them) or actively (as something they do to themselves)). We shouldn’t pass over the impact of this image in our abstractions. What we find here, as an image of the wicked’s destruction, is twofold: first, the wicked are deemed to be beasts; they are probably, in this way, like animals caught within a pasture, not fully aware of the flames (and famine) that is about to beset them. They are both unaware and unable to avoid their impending destruction. This points, as we have argued, to the fact that the wicked, unlike Yhwh and the righteous, do not ‘see their end’. It is a brutal image. Second, the fact that ‘flames’ are never mentioned but only the animals being ‘consumed in smoke’ leaves to the reader’s imagination this mock sacrifice of burning animals and the flames that would devour them in a wicked holocaust. Whereas in a true sacrifice, the animals are offered by man to god, here, they are, in a very real sense, igniting themselves on fire, and they are burning to the ‘god of vanity’.