Ps. 55.15 (judgment: one's proper home)

Let death / surprise them
let them / go down to Sheol / alive
for wickedness / is at home / in them.

 From the ‘sweet remembrance’ we now descend into a call for judgment. This pattern tracks precisely the same movement in verses 8-9, when the dream gave way to a call for destruction. And, as there, it is an immediate and total call for judgment. There, the call was for the city to be ‘scattered’ like Babel. Here, something more ominous emerges: it is a call for a death so sudden that the person will be ‘taken alive’ down into Sheol. This seems like some type of mockery of Enoch’s being “taken into heaven” while alive (or, Elijah’s). The desire that it take them “by surprise” is an interesting choice of words; one could easily expect it read “let death overtake them”. It does seem to be important thematically. The call follows the remembrance of when the ‘companion’ used to walk with the psalmist in apparent fellowship. That memory has been revealed to be a sham and such a revelation clearly would have taken the psalmist ‘by surprise’. Indeed, it would be the surprise that so thoroughly defeated him (enemies are predictable; he could deal with them—a friend is an entirely different matter: vs12-14). The call, then, that death would ‘take them by surprise’ is a type of justice, an ‘eye for an eye’—just as his deception so surprised the psalmist, so, now, does he hope that death will surprise him. There are other important contrasts between the remembrance and the call for judgment. Geographically the memory ended with them walking ‘in the house of God’. Now, when judgment falls, the companion will be cast to its utter opposite: Sheol. This contrast is furthered when the psalmist says that Sheol is their proper home because “wickedness is at home in them”. The house one occupies (the Temple or Sheol) will mirror what is ‘housed’ within. Furthermore, the companion’s interior ‘house’ mirrors the city’s infestation of vice—just as the seven forms of evil thoroughly cover the city, so too does wickedness find a shelter within the companion. What all of this points to is that judgment is the great revelation—the Temple was not his proper ‘dwelling’ place; and, in judgment, a unity will be achieved whereas before there existed deception and duality.