Ps.37.18-19 (a taste of the final meal)

“Yhwh knows / the days / of the blameless – and their inheritance / shall be forever. – They shall not / be ashamed / in an evil time – and they shall be / provided for / in days of famine.” There are two aspects to this section I want to focus on: 1) Yhwh’s knowledge  “of days” during the ‘hiatus’ and 2) the phrasing of “shall not” and “shall”. As to Yhwh’s knowledge: up to this point the action of Yhwh has been limited to the ‘end point’, that time when the righteous will be provided for (the poor will be made rich and the rich made poor). For example—and he will give you your heart’s desires”; “trust in him and he will do it”; “he will make your righteousness come forth…”; “they that hope in Yhwh will inherit the land”; “Yhwh laughs at them for  he has seen their time has come”. On the other hand, the student is to cultivate an attitude of patience and trust in Yhwh; he is to be ‘quiet’ in front of him during this time. What we see, then, is that, in a sense, the student is to be ‘active’ (in cultivating patience, trust and quiet) until the time of Yhwh’s great activity of deliverance. Here, however, we find that Yhwh has not been idle as to the righteous during the time of ‘patience and trust’. Rather, “Yhwh knows the days of the blameless”. This strikes a ‘passive’ note: as if Yhwh is merely aware of their ‘days’. That, clearly, is not the case. As we have seen throughout, during the ‘hiatus’ of injustice Yhwh’s knowledge (or, seeing) and Yhwh’s action, are in tension. The goal (the ‘end-point’) is when that gap is closed. The point, however, is that Yhwh’s ‘knowledge’ or ‘seeing’ carries with it the real potential and guarantee of his ‘acting’. No where do we find that this ‘hiatus’ is caused because Yhwh is unable to close the gap (when one looks closely at the wicked’s interpretation of these times it is, in fact, they who claim Yhwh can’t act).  Therefore, for Yhwh to “know the days of the blameless” is for them to have an assurance that a final day will come when Yhwh acts on their behalf. But there is more: the entire psalm only refers to ‘days’ twice, and they are both in this section. They are the “days of the blameless” and the “days of famine”. By seeing this connection we deepen the insight above: for Yhwh to “know the days of the blameless” is for Yhwh to “provide for them in days of famine”. When the ‘hiatus’ occurs then (when patience, trust and quiet are required) Yhwh’s ‘knowledge’ will become one that will sustain his people. We might say, “manna will be provided during his people’s dessert wanderings”. This provision is that ‘real potential’ and ‘guarantee’ spoken about above—it is both sustenance and promise, a taste of the final meal. (Side-note: in the context of this psalm, the implications of this are rather far reaching. It would mean that any provision now given, as coming from Yhwh’s ‘knowing the days of the blameless’, is the beginning of that final provision we have spoken of: the land being provided in safety and perpetuity. One cannot help, then, thinking of Johns’ gospel when Jesus says the people ‘ate the manna but still died’ where he is the ‘bread of life’ that, if you eat, you ‘will never die’. In effect, the OT, in this context, is this ‘manna’ that was the foretaste, the ‘real potential’ ‘guarantee’ and ‘sustenance’, of Christ, the ‘bread of life’. In Christ, eternal life is provided, precisely that form of giving we have indicated is the goal of this psalm.) As to the second point: the conclusion to this section juxtaposes the protection and the provision of Yhwh as he ‘knows of the days of the blameless.’ “They shall not be ashamed in an evil time”: a natural question is why would they be ashamed? We have seen before that the emphasis on shame in these psalms points to the fact that, for biblical man, his public face is just as important as any ‘interior face’. For him, if Yhwh is the true protector and deliverer, then his public face will be just as much of a concern to Yhwh as any interior state. For that reason, when evil comes, if Yhwh is in fact who he says he is, then his ‘provision’ for them during that time will be by way of their not experiencing ‘shame’—presumably the shame associated with a god who cannot (or does not) bestow care on his own. So, publicly they will not be ridiculed. Likewise, “in days of famine” they “shall be” provided for. In many ways these could be read as parallel: to ‘not be ashamed’ in evil times is to ‘shall be provided for in days of famine’.