Ps. 55.3 (the voice of the wicked)

I am distraught
from the voice / of my enemy
from the threat / of the wicked
for they / move evil / over on me
and hunt me down / in wrath.

As in nearly every single description of personal enemies, the threat they pose to the psalmist is framed, initially, in terms of their speech (“the voice…from the threat of the wicked”). It then progresses into seemingly more dire directions: “terror of death…” (vs. 4); “battle against me” (vs. 18). We have seen this before. There is clearly some very close connection between these verbal threats and the sense that the enemy is waging war against the psalmist. It may be that the enemy is robbing the psalmist of his ‘glory’, his authority within the community that keeps the forces of chaos and destruction at bay. If this is the case, it is a type of stripping and exposing of the psalmist to very real threats. In other words, without any other ‘police force’, it is the communal perception of a person (that person’s glory or authority or weight) that protects that person from exploitation. When that perception is attacked, the person is attacked. As admittedly speculative as this is, it would seem to cohere with the utter desperation of the psalmist. And, it could perhaps account for the fact that the verse moves between vocal dangers and more seemingly ‘real’ dangers: “voice—threat—evil—hunt me down”. One final note, and it is not uncommon: the wicked are predatory, they “hunt down” the righteous. In other psalms they are compared to ravenous lions and motley hounds. Their desire is, often, to ‘tear apart’. This is the arena inhabited by the psalmist: not only suffering from ‘threats’ but hunted, burdened by the evil being ‘moved over him’.