Ps. 46.6 (if grace perfects nature, judgment perfects chaos)

“The nations / roared! – The kingdoms / slipped. – He gave forth / his voice – the earth melts.” These verses represent an important development within the psalm. First, as to structure: the psalm has moved from visions of earthly destruction and devouring by chaos to the vision of the firmly planted ‘city of God’ and now it returns to its vision of chaos. Literarily, the ‘city of God’ stands as a type of mountain within this section with the chaos swirling on either side but unable to overcome it. That said, there is something of a development in this section. In the first ‘chaos section’ the vision was of an upturned earth; all of the images were drawn from nature (which does not mean they are all ‘natural images’). Here, by contrast, the agents of political power make their appearance: the nations and kingdoms. Whereas before it was the chaos sea that ‘roared’, here it is the ‘nations’; and whereas before it was the mountains that ‘slipped into the sea’, here the kingdoms ‘slip’. Everything, from the natural to the political is subject to this destructive force. And, importantly, here we find that these kingdoms and nations are not only subject to the forces of chaos but agents of chaos (the nations roar). While important it is the following observation that is so compelling: God’s voice is here portrayed as the agent of chaotic destruction. “He gave forth his voice, the earth melts.” ‘The earth’ has already been described as ‘quaking’ which was paralleled with the slipping of the mountains into the sea. It is obviously an effect of the consuming nature of chaos as it returns the earth to its primordial waters (hence, ‘melting’). Further, in Genesis when God ‘gives forth his voice’ earth is separated from chaos. There, his voice operated in precisely the opposite manner: as a creative force bringing order out of chaos. Here, his voice actually creates (or uses) chaos. Hence, we are confronted with the reality that everything we have described as swirling around the city of God has been but the ‘voice of God’, much like the flood was an agent of his judgment. Perhaps what we could say is this: that, just as God’s presence makes the earth into Eden, so too does his judgment make the ‘roaring of the nations’ into the force of chaos. In other words, if it is true that ‘grace perfects nature’, then the reverse is probably true as well ‘grace perfects sin into judgment.’ This may be why the entire ‘earth’ is portrayed as ‘melting’ with the reception of God’s voice whereas the effect of the nations and kingdoms is more limited—only God could accomplish the absolute melting in the same way that only God could firmly plant the ‘city of God’ in Jerusalem. The totalizing effect of both—‘city of god’ vs. ‘melting of the earth’—can only be brought about by and through God. With this concluding line, then, we see this important reality: that God is as much the God of chaos (it is his agent) as he is the God of blessing. As we will see, however, the agency of chaos is something that is in service of the greater agency of blessing. Judgment falls in order for creation and redemption to follow. And, more importantly, as we see here, the agency of chaos is used precisely at the same time that the agency of blessing is employed—the “city of God” is firmly planted within the midst of chaos, much as Noah’s ark existed within the agency of the flood and Israel within the plagues of Egypt.