Therefore
/ God will / ruin you completely
He will / snatch you up / and tear you away
/ from your tent
he will / root you out / from the land / of the living.
There
are several things to note about the way in which this judgment is enacted. First
is the incredible violence that is being unleashed: “ruin…snatch up…tear you
away…root you out.” There is the sense here of a sudden and terrible
destruction that will fall on the hero. Whereas before he was portrayed as the ‘actor’,
here is almost purely objectified, thrown about by God in the heat of his
anger. This sense of violence, in must be pointed out, is the source of the
sarcasm in the opening—that was verbally violent, this is physically so.
Second, as we noted in the previous reflection, the hero is ‘utterly depraved’.
He not only knows the good and yet loves the evil, but he is infatuated and
drawn to “every cruel word”. He is an agent of chaos and destruction. Here, as
total as is his love of evil will be his destruction; “God will ruin you completely.” This picks up on a theme we
have traced in many other psalms—evil’s judgment will mimic the evil
perpetrated. Just as the hero’s love is centered solely on the destructive
power of evil, so too will destruction now descend on him. His love will boomerang
back to him. Third, the completeness and the swiftness within which the judgment
descends on the hero is to highlight the utter superiority of God in relation
to the hero; although he operated in bragging and boasting, he was utterly deceived
by the fact that God’s “loyal-love” could and would dwarf and humiliate him.
Which leads to the final point: the act of judgment is an act of utter grace
and goodness. This is the “loyal-love” that cut the line in two in verse 1. This
act of cleansing by God of the “land of the living” is the act of a gardener
cleaning out the weeds that are choking his crop. Although it is an act of
incredible and vivid violence, it is one convinces in its display, that God
loves those who abide by him.
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