Ps. 41.9 (even my dining companion...)

“Even my good friend / whom I trusted, - my dining companion / has raised up his heel / against me.” This verse is the culmination and pinnacle of the treachery experienced by the psalmist. We are to hear, in this final and concluding line as to the enemies, the falling darkness as the psalmist is utterly surrounded by betrayal. We indicated in our previous reflection that his ‘enemies’ were, perhaps, the cause of his friends rebellion due to a public pronouncement as to the nature of the psalmist’s sickness (“a devilish disease”). If so, this slander has run its course, and the fact that the ‘trusted one’ follows this pronouncement lends me to think he has succumb to their diagnosis of the psalmist’s condition. One thing we note here is that to be a ‘dining companion’ is tantamount to being a ‘trusted and good friend’. Whenever we see people in the Bible, therefore, ‘sharing table’ we should understand it be, at least, an expression of solidarity and trust; and, more important and as a result of the previous, of vulnerability. This ‘good friend’, due to the trust the psalmist has given him, would have a much greater ability to betray him than his enemies. Finally, this line brings to a conclusion an image that has permeated the psalm: the psalmist’s lowliness. Verse 3 mentioned him “on his bed”, verse 6 implied he could not leave his dwelling, verse 8 spoke of a “devilish disease” being placed “upon him” and of his being “lain low” and “he will not rise again”. Here, even the ‘trusted’ friend takes advantage of the psalmist’s lowliness and “raises up his heel against him” to crush him in much the same way the “devilish disease” has been “placed upon him”. This lowliness points to something we have spoken of already: the diminishing power of his “name” (vs. 6) and authority within the community to defend himself. In essence, he only needs to be stepped on and not confronted while standing. In the next reflection I want to provide a reading of this verse as it applies to Judas and Christ.