Ps. 49.1 (enigma and totality)

“Hear this / all you peoples; - listen / all you inhabitants of the world, - both humble / and mighty, - rich and poor / alike.” The psalmist (wisdom teacher) opens his ‘lesson’ with an appeal to ‘listen’ and ‘hear’ him. As we will see, this is not merely the call to register the sound of his voice but truly perceive what his going to expound upon. And, I must admit, on a personal level his call is crucial to drink in as there is an aspect to this psalm that I simply do not understand yet. There is a depth that I am, as of yet, unable to penetrate. Hopefully it will come as we work through it. I think this difficulty, though, is something inherent to the psalm—if what the psalmist was expressing was immediately obvious there would be no need to “hear” or “listen” to him. In other words, there are mysterious depths to the world that necessitate a type of almost ‘repentance’ in order to perceive. And the psalmist knows this. As he will say later, what he is about to speak on is an “enigma” and a “proverb”. It seems important in this regard to understand how this ‘enigma’ is something that gains its ‘enigmatic quality’ precisely due to the fact that it is universal: “all you peoples”; “all you inhabitants of the world”. This first totality is quantitative, the next is qualitative: “humble and might”; “rich and poor alike”. What the psalmist is about to detail is a truth that clothes and pervades the entirety of the human realm, both in quantity and quality. It is a truth that is just as prevalent within Israel as without; it respects no borders. Perhaps we sense here something of the enigma: lessons tend to be addressed to certain parties, and address certain virtues that are inherent (or, required) within those arenas. The more total one becomes in one’s vision, however, the more enigmatic wisdom becomes. Here, when the entirety of the human realm is contemplated, whatever wisdom will be perceived will contain within it a sense of it being always prior, of being “always-already”. In short, it will be something like the ‘air-we-breath’ (this phrase will actually prove apropos…), a mystery we more participate within than comprehend. It is something that is always-already prior.