Ps. 48.5-7 (Zion and the art of mockery)

“They saw – they / were totally dumfounded! – they / were terrified / they / hurried away; - trembling / took hold of / them; - writhing / like that of a woman in labor – like the east wind / that shatters – the ships of Tarshish.” No arrow is launched; no chariot is sent charging; no sword is unsheathed. Zion is not even touched. Simply by its physical display of God’s glory/authority, it conquers the kings of the world. This is hugely significant. Everything (literarily and thematically) is aimed at this central premise—the overwhelmingly apparent power of God’s glory residing in Zion. Literarily, vs. 5a is brilliant: “They saw…”. It is the shortest portion of the psalm and marks the immediate reversal of the kings’ plans. As quickly as they are defeated is as quick as the line itself. Furthermore, it is clearly humorous. I have to believe that those listening to this psalm would have almost guffawed at these lines, and this one in particular. The psalmist would have aimed, by this contrast, to evoke this sense of shocking reversal by way of this rather demeaning form of defeat (simply by way of sight). The kings “do not come off well” in these lines. They are, in other words, mocked. If the immediacy of the first part does not convince, then the image of the kings “writing like pregnant women” certainly would. This is an incredibly demeaning, humiliating and, therefore, humorous (and, brilliant) description of the kings, as incapacitated, not in a holy terror, but in a ‘womanly’ form of debilitation. This is anything but a kingly response. A king does not ‘writhe’, much less “like a pregnant woman”. Another way this is portrayed is in the kings’ immediate “hurrying away”—again, it seems as if their strong, united front in vs. 4 stands in such utter contrast to this ‘hurrying away’ that one cannot help but laugh at the picture of the kings, heads-ducked, scattering, like so many ants, and this simply because of something they saw. The kings are—pathetic. This is also seen in another literary manner: the kings, in verse 4, are agents; they “assemble” and “cross over”. Here, however, once they see Zion they become, only, objects: “were dumfounded”, “terrified”, “trembling took hold of them”, “writhing”, “shattering”. The point is that Zion robs them of their power to such a degree that they lose any semblance of being kings and, instead, become objects pushed around, overwhelmed and enslaved to the fear inspired by Zion. This would be the pinnacle of kingly shame. Two final thematic points. One: the thematic use of “seeing’. Later in the psalm the ‘citizens of the city of God’ describe their vision of Zion as being both ‘seeing and hearing’ (vs. 8)/ And, towards the end of the psalm, Zion is to be ‘passed down’ generationally through both vision and through hearing of its description. It is, then, clearly important that the kings engagement with Zion is only visual. The kings, in other words, are purely external to Zion. They never enter it wherein they can ‘hear’. Indeed, Zion seems to rebuke them; to ‘harden’ them so as to even prevent them from approaching. The kings ‘see’, but in a very profound sense they do not see and are blind as well. Which leads to the second point: we mentioned in an earlier post how Zion was the physical emblem of God’s covenant with Israel—a source of blessing to those who bless it, but, here, a source of curse to those who attempt to curse it. Zion here seems to be operating in much the same way that Yhwh did when he travelled within Israel’s camp as they left Egypt, striking fear into those who were attempting to (re)enslave Israel. The same dynamic is at work here as Zion’s ‘face’ is deployed in a seemingly ferocious manner to those who would move against its ‘citizens’/children. When attacked, it becomes a ‘pure Subject’ and turns the attackers into a ‘pure Object’.