Ps. 59.11 (slowing down judgment)

Don’t kill them outright / lest my people forget;
send them staggering / by your might / and bring them down
O my Lord / our Shield. 

These verses describe what follows in the ‘wake of God’s laughter’. This is what happens when God “comes to meet me with his loyal love…” (vs. 10). It is an interesting request. The king, speaking as the leader of a people (and not individually), petitions God to avoid destroying his enemies “in a moment”. We have seen this momentary judgment with increasing frequency in the psalms: the request that God’s judgment come so quick that the enemy has no time to prepare a defense and that its suddenness represents the utter superiority of God over the psalmist’s enemies. Here, though, the opposite is asked for: a slow death. Their path to Sheol will not be sudden, but a progressive stumbling/staggering. It seems that the king presupposes that any request for destruction would be for a ‘sudden’ one and that, here, he needs to interject this further request that God ‘slow down’ the process.  This deserves our attention. The first thing to note is how, like many prophets (Jeremiah, Moses, Abraham), the king can intercede with God and divert him from a general approach. God does listen to men like this. This request, however, unlike those made by Abraham, Moses or Jeremiah is not that judgment will not fall, but simply that it will lengthened. Their end will still be Sheol. Here we see a theme we have emphasized before: that judgment is public. The reason the king asks for this particular form of destruction is so that it will function as a lesson for his (and God’s) people. He wants their slow demise to be a beacon, something that will imprint itself on his people’s hearts, and prevent them from ‘forgetting’ God’s loyal-love on their behalf. This distinction between the request of a king and the request of an individual is interesting. When an individual asks for judgment it is often a request for the sudden destruction; when a king asks it is that the judgment will (can) function more like an emblem. Here we see the heart of a king, which is the heart of a father looking after his children and wanting to guide them in the way of virtue (not ‘forgetting’). And, perhaps more importantly, we catch a glimpse into the nature of God’s judgment (for it is to these men that he listens…)—that it can, often, take on the nature of the sudden or of the eventual. Both end in Sheol (“bring them down (into Sheol)”). The eventual, however, in this psalm, is geared not to the ‘outside’ but to the inner family of God—their staggering is not to be a lesson to the nations/people, but to the king’s sheep (“…my people”). Its point is to address one of the most persistent vices of the Scriptures: forgetting. It seems to lurk behind every corner. Moses constantly emphasized the importance of memory and ‘not forgetting’ (especially in delivering the Torah). Here, it is not entirely clear what is in danger of being forgotten. It may be the deliverance itself—God’s enactment of his ‘loyal-love’ on their behalf. I don’t sense that their ‘staggering’ is to be a mark of fear either (‘this may happen to you’). This is the only part of the psalm that gives any indication about the reception of the judgment by the flock/people. It has no other thematic or literary ties to the rest of the psalm either (that I can see). It seems, rather, to be a tangential concern of the king, something that he says in his capacity as king, in an almost off-handed manner (which is not to denigrate its importance). Its perhaps greatest point is that the king’s heart is aligned with that of God in his concern that his people “not forget” the actions done by God on their behalf; the more one approaches the heart of a king, the more one approaches the heart of God