Ps. 50.17 (owning God's words)

“For you / have hated instruction – and have cast / my words / behind you.” The interplay between speech and performance in this and the previous verse is intriguing. The previous verse ended with God, noticeably angry, accusing the wicked, asking them what “right they have to recite my statutes, to take my covenant upon your lips?” There, the covenant was “taken” by the wicked in the act of speech, appropriated to their use. Here, however, they do precisely the opposite with God’s “instruction” and “words”—they are ‘hated’ and ‘cast behind them’. The point is fairly obvious: that one cannot presume to enter into covenant with God with one’s mouth and, at the same time, refuse to perform according to his instruction and words. That said, the central emphasis here falls squarely on God’s ‘speech’, which has been already an overriding concern and dramatic enactment throughout the psalm. Just as the world, and all its animals, are “mine” (God’s), so too here the speech is God’s: “my statutes”, “my covenant”, “[my] instructions”, “my words”.  Here, we may find an important link to the first section’s address to the devotees. There, the nature of sacrifice was being displayed through God’s ‘possession’ of all of man’s animals and all of the wild animals as well. Here, when God turns to the wicked, he emphasizes that the covenant is not ‘theirs’ but his. When it came to the devotees, God’s instruction as to the nature of sacrifice was in order to ‘purify’ them of conceptions that resembled their neighbors (which is why everything is set in the negative). Here, the rebuke of the wicked centers on the disunity they have brought into God’s covenant. Whereas with the righteous, there could be a type of duality (a non-competitive) as to the ownership of the animals, here, there is no question but that the covenant is God’s. We have seen this dynamic before (particularly in Ps. 48 as to Zion) where the ‘face’ God gives to the wicked is very different than what he gives to the righteous. To the wicked, he appears like iron (here: there can be no compromising God’s ownership of the covenant), whereas to the righteous there is an amazing sense of interplay (God and man can both own the animals of sacrifice just as, in Zion (Ps. 48), Zion can both represent God and turn to him).  This understanding is confirmed by the fact that the righteous can “summon God” and he will answer. They can, in a sense, ‘act like God’ and, within that covenantal concern, God will respond. Here, the wicked would never be afforded this arena within which to operate. Indeed, whereas the righteous would be able to “summon” God, the wicked have nothing to look forward to but God’s tearing them apart like a lion (vs. 22). There is one final element to introduce here before attempting a type of summation—the duration of the wicked’s “hatred of God’s word/instruction” is marked by God’s silence (vs. 21). The wicked, however, completely misunderstand the nature of the silence and think that it is like the silence of the exploited (those who cannot defend themselves). The righteous, however, after understanding the nature of sacrifice, would clearly perceive God’s silence as a time of ‘patience’, not weakness. Now, however, God has broken the silence and spoken to the wicked, and when he does he emphasizes to them, in contrast to his stance to the righteous, his total and absolute ownership of the covenant and his words. To the wicked, there is no dynamic as found with the righteous. In a sense, in this time of silence God has taken his words completely to himself (whereas the wicked have regarded his words as type of object of commerce). And this is precisely the connection: the wicked are treating God’s words in precisely the way God has instructed the righteous not to regard the sacrifice; meaning, as an object that is somehow not entirely originating outside of the realm of God’s need and therefore as an object that can be transferred (like any other object). In a very deep sense, the lesson being imparted to the wicked and how they understand God’s words is very similar to the lesson imparted to the righteous.