Awake!
O my glory
Awake!
With the lute /
and the harp
I am ready / to wake up Dawn.
Structurally, these lines mimic
the previous verse: Firmly fixed is my heart (Awake!) – O God (O my glory) –
Firmly fixed is my heart (Awake!) – I am ready to sing and chant praises (With the
lute and harp, I am ready to wake up Dawn). What we find here is a type of parallelism
and a subtle progression. The fixity of the psalmist’s heart is now turned into
a call to ‘awake’. The object of the call is both “my glory” and, in the final
phrase, “Dawn”. The conclusion is important: the liturgy is, literally, a
wake-up call. Like some rooster who foresees the rising sun, the psalmist is
poising himself to not only greet the Dawn but to actually participate in its
rising by way of liturgy. This seems rather striking. The Dawn, here understood
to be the dawning of God’s redemptive act on behalf of the psalmist, is an
event that the psalmist himself will (in some manner) initiate (or, at least
participate in) by way of his music/liturgy. This is no mere passive reception
but active calling forth and response. That said, this is not a hidden plea,
but a readiness, a certainty that the Dawn will rise and respond to him. Perhaps
what we see here in the formal parallel of these verse is something to this
effect: the psalmist’s ‘firm heart’ is significant in that it displays that
certainty in God’s action that is a hallmark of the righteous; this
preparedness/readiness is, in the second section transformed into action as his
‘glory’ (his ability be a vessel containing the power to praise God) awakes. Within
this active realm he now is able to call forth the Dawn in much the same way as
he implored God to “Rise up!”. Indeed, the rising sun (at Dawn) is now to be
seen as the ‘rising up’ of God ‘above the heavens’ so that his glory (his power
to re-order creation around his will) will wash over and fill the earth. As
such, the psalmist, in his firmness of heart and his liturgy has become a type
of precursor to the Dawn. He has become the light before the light in and through
his certainty and hope, like some Isaiah foreseeing a return, or some Baptist
preparing the way. He is ready for the rising. Here we see the full force of
the time imagery: the fading night with his lying down amidst lions; the
inherent uncertainty of night (“O my soul, among lions I must lie down…”; vs.
4) matched by the firmness of sight in the daytime (“firmly fixed is my heart”;
vs. 7); the separation of the wicked from the righteous (like night from the
day); the genesis story as a backdrop with the darkness as type of pregnant
pause before the creation of light (the first ‘Dawn’).
No comments:
Post a Comment