Ps. 46.2-3 (Adam and the shaking of adamah)

“Therefore / we shall not fear / when the earth quakes – or / when the mountains slide / in the midst / of the seas. – Its waters / roar and foam; - the mountains shake / at its swelling.” There is within these lines a conviction that is more tremendous than the cataclysm shaking the earth. And this is essential to grasp. “We shall not fear when…”. The entire earth is being overwhelmed by the forces of chaos—the flood is again returning—and it is being returned to its primordial state of ‘water’. It is being ‘shaken’ loose from its moorings. Once uprooted, everything begins to crumble. The action is, importantly, described as a falling and a being consumed by the sea. Within the entirety of the ‘earth’, there is no stability as everything is heading for destruction. And yet, within this horrendous destruction, the voice of the psalmist raises above it in a supreme act of confidence. How could one possibly not fear when the destruction is so clearly absolute? If man (Adam) is ‘made from earth (adamah)’, how would the destruction of the very ‘stuff of which he is made’ not be understood as his own destruction? If the ‘earth (adamah) shakes’ so too does Adam. The answer, as we will see, is not in a ‘spiritual’ realm or a flight from the creation to the Creator. As with Noah and the ark, there is to be a created place of protection, within the earth, that will be the ‘refuge’ referred to in verse 1—the “city of God” will be that which cannot be consumed by the waters of chaos.