Ps.39.2-3a (my heart grew hot within me)

“I was dumb / with silence – I kept quiet / even about good matters. – But / my agony / was aroused – my heart / grew hot / within me.” One can sense here the utter turmoil the psalmist was experiencing due to his self-imposed silence. The description “dumb with silence” is important especially in light of the fact that the immediately preceding psalm was saturated with this inability to speak in the face of injustice (But I am like a deaf man, I do not hear! And like a mule, who doesn’t open his mouth. And I have become like a man who doesn’t hear and has no arguments in his mouth. Ps. 38.13-14). Furthermore, this description is another attempt to give expression to his ‘muzzling of himself’, a very forceful image, one that speaks to the fact that the psalmist viewed his self-imposed silence as almost a violent repression. As internal as it is, there is clearly a sense that it has become almost like an objective presence to the psalmist. It has, in other words, become to him an enforced silence and, to him, is no longer merely an expression of his will. Along these same lines, this imposed silence becomes so consuming that it also silences his ability to speak “even about good matters.” The muzzle is now expanding to consume the entirety of the psalmist (both good and evil). The question is why would it seep into the good? Why would this hand stretch itself this far? I think there are three, interrelated reasons. The first is that, as we have indicated, this is no mere act of the will. Rather, it has become an objectified presence to the psalmist. It is as if the ‘silence’ has become more than the psalmist himself. Anyone who as attempted to ‘not speak’ in situations of fervent anger knows this to be the case. Second, it is likely that ‘the good’ has been so overwhelmed by his anger and questions that it is steadily losing its persuasive power of the psalmist; he is being consumed by that which he is attempting to silence. In other words, I think it likely that he does not have much ‘good’ to talk about. One who cannot speak the good quickly ceases seeing the good. A third possibility (which I think likely) is that his anger is so close to the surface that were he to speak at all he would find his anger unleashed.  It is at this point that the lines shift completely. Whereas before there was silence and dumbness, now there is ‘arousal’ and a ‘fire’. Just as objective as his ‘muzzle’ was, now does his anger become. The phrase “hot within my heart” is a devastating anger. It refers to an angry or uncontrollable reaction of a person who learns a loved one has been killed. The question, naturally, is who is this anger directed toward? Is it the evil persons, or is it Yhwh? In fact, I don’t think they can be separated. What has clearly ignited within him is the question he will pose to Yhwh but that question will be rooted in the fact that evil persons seem to be in the ascendancy.