Ps. 39.4 (Yhwh, explain to me...) Part 1

“O Yhwh / explain to me / my end – and the meaning / of the measure / of my days.” This is, without question, a very odd start to the psalmist’s prayer to Yhwh given what we have seen thus far. There are, I believe, reasons that explain but to recount where we have been—we first observed how intensely personal this psalm is. Over and over the psalmist has recounted his own, very personal, experience of anguish while attempting to refrain from sin by way of complaint. This found its expression in his attempting to self-impose silence upon himself. His rage burned so intensely that this self-imposed silence became all consuming, to the point that he could not even talk about ‘good things’. He uses the rather violent image of ‘muzzling’ himself in the face of “the wicked before him”. And, finally, and most devastatingly, he compares his anger to that of a person who has just learned about the murder of a loved one. This flame that burns within his mutterings, arguably, could not burn more brightly. And then—we have this almost calm question posed to Yhwh. Again, strange to say the least. A few things worthy of reflection: 1) this is the first instance of the name of Yhwh appearing. I think this is important as the psalmist has now placed himself within the presence of Yhwh by and through his naming of him. Perhaps what we see here, in this question, is a sense of respect and deference. 2) The psalm began with his attempt to ‘muzzle’ himself and I believe what we see in the restraint of this question is the psalmist’s further attempt to ‘tone down’ his frustration and anger as he finally gives voice to his complaint. 3) This question is one that approaches Yhwh very much ‘from the side’. By that I mean the question, initially, does not seem to follow the initial anger at all. It seems almost philosophic in its tenor. As we work our way though it, however, we will see that it, in fact, does address his initial rage, but, again, there is an impressive restraint here and a further desire on the part of the psalmist to not ‘sin in his anger’. This is crucial on a number of levels: we must keep in mind that this ‘philosophic’ approach originates from an intense anger at the injustice of the world. It would seem as if everything ‘personal’ in the first few verses has vanished as the psalmist takes a massive step backwards and casts his glance over the entirety of his life and, indeed, all of humanity. This oscillation is crucial to grasp—if we sever one from the other (the personal from the distant, or, the anguish/injustice from the philosophic) we will distort both of them. The distance that will open up in the next few verses originates from an entirely different place than, say, what we see in Psalm 8. Here, the pervasive sense of futility in the world begins in a complaint about the injustice in the world. In psalm 8, by contrast, the astonishing distance between man and his world (and his god) was one that originated in praise and led back to praise. Here, it begins in injustice and will end, significantly, in an almost anti-liturgial prayer/plea that Yhwh leave the psalmist alone. In this way the psalm is bookmarked entirely by the personal. A final note in this regard that I find significant: it seems to me that the wonder of man’s insignificance found in these psalms (and in Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) finds its source in either a contemplative grasp of creation or—and this is the important point—in the perceived injustice in the world. The poles, it seems, are ‘glory’ or vapor. The world appears either radiant (as in Genesis and Psalm 8) or it appears to be nothing but vanity, vapor and an empty wind. Biblical man does swing between these two poles, validly, but I wonder if we must always remember what instigates such a response. If injustice is what leads to seeing the world as ‘vapor’, then we have here a hidden glory in man of how the world ‘should be’—one eye focused on the world, the other eye perceiving the “eden” the world should be. It is, in other words, a vision firmly rooted in man’s moral heart and not simply a rational conclusion based on logical inferences. I would almost wager that the covenantal bond between Yhwh and Israel carries within it this potential of envisioning the world as empty and glorious: empty when Yhwh seems almost absent, glorious when his presence is manifest.