Ps. 40.12 (troubles too numerous to count)

“For / troubles have surrounded me – too numerous / to count; - My wicked deeds / have overtaken me – so that / I cannot see. – They are more numerous / than the hairs on my head – and / my heart / has failed me.” There is, in this section of the psalm, some interesting allusions to previous portions, specifically, the section detailing how “numerous” Yhwh’s acts of deliverance have been for the king/Israel. I think the allusion is intentional and falls in line with our previous reflection. In verse 5 the king emphasizes, no less than three times, that Yhwh’s wonders are “many”, that “no one can arrange them” and they are “too many to count”. Here, by contrast, the troubles of the king are described as “too numerous to count” and “more numerous than the hairs on my head.” Furthermore, whereas the magnitude of Yhwh’s acts of deliverance erupted in act of praise and liturgy, here the ‘troubles’ and ‘wicked deeds’ work in exactly the opposite fashion: they make his heart ‘fail’; one can detect a descending progression from “too numerous to count” – “I cannot see” – “my heart has failed” as a type of reversal of the progression in verse 2, “raised me from the pit” – “set my foot on rock” – “made firm my footsteps” – “put a new song in my mouth”. It is important here to pause and look to the immediately preceding verse before developing further why the psalmist has structured the psalm the way he has and what it implies. In verse 11 the psalmist had declared that Yhwh’s lovingkindness and truth “continually protect me”. Now, in the immediately following verse, the king has seemingly been left without this protection. The sudden shift in tone is important to track and, as we saw in our previous reflection, verse 11 operated as a joining-together of the two sections of the psalm. The psalmist, therefore, in looking to the past knows himself to be protected but in the present is experiencing the onslaught of “troubles”. And the present is the moment of prayer and petition. This, I believe, is why the psalmist has fashioned the psalm the way he has. The ‘numerous wonders’ of Yhwh in verse 5 were recounted in order that they act as a counter-blast to the “too numerous” troubles that now surround the king. Just as the king had experienced an exodus in the past, and Yhwh had ‘displayed his wonders’, so too has the king now entered into a similar Egypt-like darkness and is in need of Yhwh’s ‘wonders’. In essence, the first half of the psalm embodies this very carefully constructed liturgical petition, in the form of memory, so that it can operate to “ignite” Yhwh’s wonders once again. It is not, I think, too speculative to say that Yhwh’s “too many wonders” came prior to these “too many troubles” in order to demonstrate (formally) that they are (or, can be) significantly more powerful than the troubles currently are. And, the fact that the acts of deliverance have been rooted in the past, and recounted in the ‘great assembly’, tends to make the current troubles not less real, but dangers from which the king can have faith in Yhwh’s power to deliver him from. The present troubles, while ‘numerous’, will not be able to defeat what has been a “plan for Israel” (vs. 5), which is more than a simple act of deliverance.