Ps. 46.16 (a new land, a new mother)

“Your sons / shall replace / your fathers – you / will make them / princes / over the whole land.” In our previous reflection we noted how the procession into the king’s palace moved in a very different fashion than the initial call to the princess to ‘forget her people and her father’s house.’ Whereas before the princess needed to be coaxed to shroud her previous associations in forgetfulness, once she enters the king’s presence her movement is one of pure “joy and celebration”. Here, there is no hint of sadness but an inexorable movement forward, from the containment in her father’s house to the containment in the “king’s palace”. Here, that same movement forward is experienced and her ‘father’ is now not ‘to be forgotten’ but actually replaced. Presence (of sons) now substitutes for her previous absence. In the union of the king and queen these ‘third parties/unities’ (these children) will be created whereby the power of the king will spread. Yet, importantly, the psalmist attributes this fruitfulness to her, not the king. “You will make them princes.” Are we to hear here the fact that only God makes kings? This ‘new Eve’ does not give birth to ‘Cain and Abel’. For a moment we see a potential reality of a ‘new creation’ whereby a new family is created that doesn’t suffer from the original exile (or, has been healed of it) and it flows through this ‘new Eve’, the ‘mother of all the living’. She becomes the headwaters to a river that will cover the land, subduing it all so as to open up a new realm whereby she would become the patron to the nations. Just as all of Israel had to be contracted into a single individual, the king, so too did all of Israel’s fruitfulness need to be contracted into this new Eve in order to, through their union, spread anew a family of God. Essential to grasp: this vision of a spreading authority is a familial one. The ties that will bind the land together will those of kinship as they will all begin to trace their source back to this queen who finds her fruitfulness within the ‘containment of the king’s palace’. She could not realize this potentiality, this ‘fruitfulness,’ in her ‘father’s house’; she needed to be transferred into the realm of the king. It is there, and there alone, whereby what is necessary for the ‘whole land’ moves from potentiality to actuality.