Ps. 45.10 (the queen and the hiatus)

“Hear, / O Princess / and look / and listen – and forget / your people / and your father’s house.” In light of our previous reflection on the ‘containment of the queen’, this verse begins the profound development of the idea. These are the first words actually spoken to the queen/princess. If we contrast what was first spoken to the king with the queen’s first address important differences emerge. The king was first addressed as “the most beautiful” and as having lips “of anointed grace”. The speech of praise then went on to describe his martial prowess and victory in battle. As to the queen, the address couldn’t be more different. Her first address is not as to who she is, in herself and her own initiative. Quite the opposite—she is being told to sever herself from the bonds that would have provided her her sense of identity. If the king is being hailed due to potentiality, she is being told make herself vulnerable through forgetfulness. At this point, we see why the king’s portion of the psalm had to come first—the queen needed a ‘place to go’. In a sense, the queen is “always already contained”—the question is where and whether, in her transfer from her father’s house to the king’s, she is being transferred to a better “home”. If she is not, she will always look back to her “father’s house” and regret this diminution. If her new house/containment is better, she is ascending and yet, of course, as this verse makes clear, the initial hiatus (the initial ‘handing off’) is, itself, a type of exodus and something that must be accompanied by the admonishment to ‘forget’ (just as Israel needed to forget Egypt). It is always that initial transfer, that moment of adolescence and purgation that is the most dangerous and difficult. For a moment, the queen (like Israel), will seemingly stand alone between two worlds (her father’s and her king-husband’s). We see, then, that the psalm’s first half has been precisely in order to build a bridge for her, to attempt to re-orient her desire enough to see her through this transition and, in hope, to see that her new home will far exceed her old. Hence, this verse works along both poles: it both attempts to orient her “Look and listen” while at the same time purge her of the old desires that would restrain her (“forget your people and your father’s house”). There is something much deeper and more difficult being called on by the queen than by the king: and it is this hiatus between her people/father and the king. And this is accomplished through something the king does not necessarily need to develop: hope. It is precisely in the fact that the queen is always contained (as Israel is always ‘serving someone’), that her being is one that, in any transition, must make that conversion through hope (not ‘freedom’). If this is true, then the physicality of the king’s description plays an important role in this transition. Her hope is in him. In order for her make this real transition, therefore, her movement will have to be as bodily as it is something that will be made through promises in the future or through authorial protection in the present. In other words, her transition into marriage must be one that appeals to the totality of her being as she moves “from her father’s home” and into “the king’s home”.