Ps. 39.8 (seeing Eden is not being merely optimistic)

“Deliver me / from all / my transgressions – don’t make me / the object / of a fool’s reproach.” How are we to understand this plea for deliverance from transgressions? I think that if we interpret verses 7 and 8 together a progression emerges that lays a certain foundation. Verse 7 represented a type of culmination to the psalm. Verses 1-3 opened with the psalmist muzzling himself so as to prevent himself from sinning in the heat of anger. In verse 4 we saw how this muzzle was burned away by the anger of his heart and he did, in fact, speak out to Yhwh. There, we noted how his question was an attempt to remain respectful and was, thereby, still a ‘muzzling’. From that initial questioning the psalmist moved into a ‘global reflection’ on the vanity of man’s created order—everything is merely vapor. Then, as a reaction against this vanity the psalmist turned to Yhwh and, in our interpretation, saw in him the only source for redemption within the created order of the vanity of that created order. From that plea, we not turn to a request for deliverance from his transgression. Although not certain it seems to me that his ‘transgression’ is related to what has come before and probably associated with his inability to remain quiet. Could it be that his blanket denunciation (especially his claim that man is “merely an image”) was, in fact, a transgression? Did he, in essence, go too far? It must be said that verses 5 and 6 seem like a world without Yhwh, a world of continuous and perpetual oscillation and, therefore, a world of shadow and vapor. It is true the psalmist describes this as ‘made’ by Yhwh, but the overall impression is incredibly forlorn. It is not, however, without parallel (specifically to psalm 37) in some of its conclusions. Rather, it is in its totalizing vision that the psalmist seems to inhabit a world we have, hitherto, not seen. And, importantly, it is the specter of death that hovers over the entirety of these reflections. Indeed, one might argue that it is the spirit of death that has inspired these lines. Everything begins and ends in the absurdity of death. For that reason we might say this: that this is the vision of the world after it has been subjected to the curse of Adam; that a blanket of transitoriness has descended and interwoven itself into the fabric of the created order. Might we then hear “you have made by days mere handbreaths” as an echo of the original curse? That the world has been subjected to vanity (made vain)? This would, in fact, confirm our previous reflection on the nature of the psalmist’s impossible hope (as an “Eden” hope). And, furthermore, it may in fact shed light on what the psalmist believes his ‘transgression’ to be, and that from two different vantage points. On the one hand, the psalmist may see in his denunciation an almost abandonment of the Eden-potential in creation. In other words, he seems to get dangerously close to not drawing the distinction between man before the curse and man after the curse. In his anger—which, as he admits, prevents him from speaking of ‘the good’—he has become blinded to the fact that the world as vain is not the true nature of the world but the world-as-subjected-to-a-curse. The psalmist is aware of this: his attempt to muzzle himself was not merely an attempt to avoid speaking but also a recognition that to give into anger carries the dangerous possibility that one will become blind and lose hope. (One could draw the image this way: man was given two eyes in order to show that we must always see Eden and post-Eden at the same time; here, anger potentially clouded the psalmist to the Eden-like goodness of the world as it struggles underneath the curse imposed on it. ‘Seeing’ Eden is not merely being ‘optimistic’; rather, it is, in a very real sense, seeing the ‘really-real’. It is hope of an assurance.) Second, perhaps the psalmist, in asking to be removed from the ‘fool’ is admitting his previous rant was, in fact, foolish. Now, he seeks deliverance from it and asks to be made what he has thus far claimed is impossible: substantial. All of these reflections will be confirmed by the second half of the psalm. Importantly, however, they will not be ‘answered’ there but only intensified.