Ps. 41.5 (petition: enacting wisdom)

“My enemies / speak evil / of me: - “When / will he die / and his name / perish?” If it was not clear before, it is now—this is the beginning of the “evil time” referred to in verse 1. It is, therefore, appropriate, to quote the verse(s): “…in an evil time Yhwh will deliver him. Yhwh will keep him and give him life, he will bless him in the land, and will not give him up to the desires of his enemies.” Verse 5 is clearly alluding to verse(s) 1 and 2 in that it is the first mention of “evil” and of “enemies” since then. If our reading has been correct, the priest’s introduction provided to the psalmist a type of wisdom/proverb, a saying that is supposed to clarify the character of Yhwh and how he acts within a given situation; it implies a sense of constancy (hence, character) of Yhwh. The proverb saying is calm and collected. Once the psalm transitions to the first-person of the psalmist, this ‘wisdom saying’ is recalled, but in the form of petition and plea. Rather than reporting what Yhwh will do, the psalmist is describing what his enemies are saying. This transition is important to recognize: the psalm creates almost a type of dialogue between the priest and the psalmist, and between wisdom and how she manifests herself in a plea/petition. In other words, when the wisdom saying is ‘enacted’ in the life of the psalmist it becomes incorporated into an urgent plea and loses its detached feeling. Or, the wisdom offered by the priest is not a wisdom that becomes ‘true’ (or, enacted) apart from the plea that it become true. One must engage Yhwh in order for his wisdom to become effective. This dialogue between wisdom and petition is crucial and one should not drown out the other (wisdom often becomes the foundation and source of the plea; the more one learns of wisdom, the more one urgently requests that it become enacted (“thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”)). Likewise, wisdom is always ‘calling out’ for other to come to her (as Proverbs makes clear). She wants to be ‘ushered’ into every given situation, but she must be invited. Here, the wisdom of verses 1-3 is being ‘invited in’ through the petition of verses 5 and 6 (and following).

As to the specific content of the verse: the connection between perishing and dying is important. There is here the sense that one’s name carries with it the power of their person. And that when one ‘dies’ his ‘name’, likewise, perishes with him. This obliteration of a ‘name’ has been seen in other contexts where one nation utterly annihilates another, leaving none alive and, therefore, none to perpetuate the name of the nation. Perhaps we are to find here the fact that for a name to ‘perish’ would also involve the destruction or prohibition on that individual’s children? Regardless, what is clearly meant by these enemies is that they are waiting for this man’s authority on earth to be snuffed out by death. This psalmist either represents a threat to them or he has something they want. Either way, as long as his ‘name’ lives, they cannot accomplish their desired ends. Similarly, the opening of the psalm indicated that our psalmist was one who looked after the “poor and needy”. Here, the ‘enemies’ are displaying exactly the opposite behavior as they, rather than showing ‘consideration’, are “speaking evil of me”. This is clearly an “evil time” that calls out for Yhwh’s “keeping” and protection (vs. 2,3).