Ps. 60.2 (ripping open the land)

You / who made the land quake; / ripped it open!
heal its fissures / for it has split apart. 

The same movement as in the first verse is employed here—accusation/complaint, followed by petition for healing. Whereas in the first verse, the focus was on the breached city, here the focus is on the ‘torn’ and ‘quaking’ land. In both, the central motif is of complete instability and, more importantly, insecurity. In other psalms we might say it is about being “shaken”. This is what the psalmist seeks to remedy. In the first verse it was to “turn back”; here, it is to, doctor-like, “heal its [the land’s] fissures.” What we are seeing here is, most likely, a type of parallelism whereby the psalmist is describing the vulnerability of the city in terms of a torn landscape—that the dilemma is so acute that he sees the very earth as having suffered from God’s abandonment.  One finds similar imagery in the prophets when they describe the sun as ‘darkening’, ‘stars falling from the sky’, etc…. The point, often, is not the geographic disturbance, but a type of heightening of imagery in order to dramatize the profound effect of the disruption. That said, it may be that we can, in fact, take these lines in a more literal sense and still find them to be parallel—if the fortifications of the first verse are understood as a protecting wall of God’s city, it is not a leap to see their breach as the tearing of “the land” (the city’s relationship to the land is always a close one). In that event, healing its ‘fissures’ would simply be a type of mending the walls of verse 1.  Could it be that an earthquake caused the breach in the walls? Whatever its historical reality, the point is how deep the anxiety is of the psalmist: not only are the walls breached, but they are ripped open, like a wound on a mortal body. Whereas in the first verse, one envisions a flood entering through the breach, in the second, on sees the lifeblood of the city running out through its tear. In both, the city is near death. And, in both, God’s action is one that produces an incredible vulnerability (his spurning creates a city of pure ‘flesh’ and not ‘spirit’). He “opens” the city by and through his “spurning”. One final point: it seems crucial to always keep in mind that the language employed in these verses is for a goal—to get God to move back into the city. They are not simple descriptions in that way, but rhetorical displays of petition. And their goal must always be kept in mind. When we understand it thus, we quickly realize that these accusations that are being hurled at God are intended to “prick his conscience”, to ignite in him a desire to return to his people and heal them. That comes out clearly in the following verses. But we can’t isolate the psalm. All of it is geared to that reality. To interpret it as psalm simply offering some type of abstract or even neutral description of the current state of affairs would completely miss the point—it is dramatic and must be interpreted accordingly.