Ps 39 (Eden was not destroyed; it was protected)

The question we left off with yesterday was whether, according to our reading of the psalm, something could be salvaged. I indicated there could and would offer it in this reflection. In fact, I think there is an incredible affirmation standing at the center of the psalm and embodied in his final request that Yhwh “turn from him”. We have already gestured in this direction in a previous reflection but it deserves to be brought out more fully here. We concluded in the previous reflection that man was, with Yhwh, an alien and sojourner in the land. Clearly, the psalmist’s desire that Yhwh ‘turn away’ is an attempt to rectify this sense of alienation and thereby be at home, and find peace. Although it is not alluded to, the Genesis story is, I think, the most concise and poignant expression of this. Man is created, with Yhwh, in the garden. The land and the presence of Yhwh are not only utterly congruous but, in fact, are expressions of the dual character of man: he is both ‘made from the garden’ and ‘breathed in by Yhwh.’ However, once man sins he is subjected to being removed from the ‘tree of life’, cursed with death and, importantly, ‘expelled from the garden’ and made to be an ‘alien and sojourner’. All of these images are meant to be understood as a single piece: man is expelled from the ground he was created from (thereby his being suffers from alienation); man is cursed with death (thereby subjected to vanity and frustration); and man is cast from Yhwh’s presence (thereby being alienated from his divine life). Furthermore, all of this is irrevocable as Yhwh places an angel with a flaming sword to prevent man from ever re-entering this place of harmony. On the other side of the threshold, man will oscillate between (at least) these three competing (and now, forever un-harmonious) aspects to his created life: “the land”, the ‘breath’, and death. Yhwh holds out the possibility (and the promise) that these will, again, be unified and harmonious: the promised land, the king (David), and the Temple. The point here is not to schematize the life of Israel. The point is that outside the garden, attempts to unify all of the created space in order to achieve the harmony contained therein, is seemingly futile and impossible. The psalmist, therefore, in a moment of supreme contradiction, simultaneously affirms that Yhwh is his only hope (vs. 7) and asks that Yhwh turn from him (vs. 13). He simultaneously knows Yhwh to be his ‘fashioner’ and the one who has ‘expelled’ him from his home. There is, then, within the psalmist a tremendous opening that seeks out “the land” and knows that his allegiance to that promise forever reveals his alienation from it. I would therefore argue that this concluding line is, in a very disturbing yet illumination way, a recapitulation of verse 7 (“And now what have I hoped for O Yhwh; my hope is for you”) and that neither verse can be read apart from the other. In other words, for this psalmist, man cannot be unified outside the garden. He will, within himself, know Yhwh to be his hope and carry in him a latent desire that Yhwh ‘turn from him’. Job will know this as well. And it points to man’s twin alienation: from the land and from ‘the breath’. Lastly, as the psalmist makes clear, any unity will be achieved only “in life” (not, “in heaven” and certainly not “in Sheol”). Death is the cause, result and bookend to all possibilities. And it is here that the hidden event comes forth: when the Word became flesh it became subject to this alienation (this ‘vanity’ and ‘frustration). The Word also held all of these together within the span of a single life (and, as this psalm makes clear, within the span of “all mankind”) and ended in death. Before that death Christ, in a manner, prayed this psalm when he said “take this cup from me, but not my will but yours be done.” He therefore utterly affirms the attitude at the center of this psalm. Through the death of Christ, the harmony that had been lost was re-ignited in the Resurrection as the curse (of death, futility and vanity) was destroyed. Christ thereby shows that these twin alienations of man can be held together and thereby be the potential seed that dies and is resurrected in him. However, because the Resurrection occurs to only one man in the midst of time it is not, therefore, some type of ‘escape’. Rather, it shows how, in Christ (in the “faith of Christ”), the promise has and continues to overcome the curse all of creation is subjected to. When man sinned Eden was not destroyed; it was protected. In Christ man can be with Yhwh and, in the resurrection, no longer be an alien and sojourner.