O Most High / when I am afraid / I put my trust
in you
By God’s help / I will be able / to praise his word;
in God / I
trust, / I am not afraid!
What can mortals / do to me?
There is a seemingly
bewildering (and, apparently simplistically solved) oscillation in this psalm
between fear and assurance. On the one hand, the psalmist in the opening verses
is clearly in fear of being pushed off a precipice by his attackers. On the
other hand, here we find him emerging in statement, not only of confidence, but
of an utter relativizing of his previous concern. Set directly in the center of
it is “trust in you”. The psalmist is not, as the opening line makes clear,
denying that is ever afraid nor is he hinting that such fear is wrong. It is
that fear that compels him demand “mercy” (vs. 1). This seems to be an
important point and directs us away from a rather simplistic answer to the
oscillation. Simplistically, one could claim that his lack of fear is based on
his conviction of God’s eternal justice. This is true, on one level, but misses
an important dynamic that is at the center of the psalm—the psalmist is not
lodged in his confidence by a belief that centers on God’s eternity but on his
certainly that God is one that acts in history in answer to pleas for help. The
importance of this distinction is that it permits fear and the concomitant plea
for deliverance; deliverance is dramatic. God is a god that responds (in
contrast to a god that is simply ‘eternal’). The psalmist is, therefore, a
fully developed dialogic (and, dramatic) being in front of God. He can inhabit
his fear because he trusts in God and
because he trusts in God that fear can, also, be overcome. His hope in God does
not reside in some type of resignation or anesthetizing of himself in the face
of God’s eternity. His trust is much, much riskier than that as it focuses, as
the end reveals, on the “light of life”, not on some abiding truth but a real
and historical living “before God”. This is the germ of resurrection trust.
Man is not merely vessel into which God pours himself but an object of God’s
delight that he will deliver. And the psalmist sees himself as depending on
nothing but this ‘mercy’ in contrast to “mere mortals”. The more the psalmist
consigns his oppressors to mere “men” and “mortals” the greater is the power of
God stressed over those forces: his everlasting power in contrast to their power
of the flesh. In so doing, however, he places himself within this realm of ‘flesh’
and asks that God’s “help” fill in this gap and pull him into God’s sphere (“walking
before God, in the light of life” vs. 13). Perhaps what we see here is that God’s
‘word’ that the psalmist will come to praise, is a prophetic word that has been
spoken to the psalmist, in the midst of his darkness, that, in fact, God will
extend his ‘help’ to him. And it would be by receiving this word/promise that
the psalmist’s does not overcome his fear, but his fear is overcome by God’s prophetic word. The psalmist, as
flesh, cannot overcome his fear; only God’s help/mercy/word can accomplish
that. Within that act of mercy, however, the psalmist is lifted up into God’s
sphere of protection and, from that vantage point (and no other), can he say: “What
can mortals do to me?”
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