Ps. 60.3-4 (the deception of God)

You / who made your people / suffer hard times
who gave us wine to drink / that made us reel; 
you / who put up a banner / for those who fear you
only to let them flee / before the bowman. 

The psalmist here introduces a rather disturbing theme: God’s duplicity toward his own people. In the first verse, it is the offering of wine (something that can often be source of joy). In the second it is the raising of the banner. In both, however, the original ‘offering’ is deceptive. The wine, turns into the wine of judgment (drunken reeling is often the sign of judgment), the banner only tempts people to the safety of a city in order to more dreadfully expose them to the ‘bowman’. In both of these lines the tragedy is heightened precisely due to the fact that what is offered lulls God’s people into a false sense of security—they sense what the first line calls for, God being “for us”, when, in fact, it is the opposite, God has “spurned us”. A further important point to make is that whereas in the first line the king/psalmist referred to “us” (“…turn back to us”), he know refers to “you who made your people suffer…who gave us wine to drink…you who put up a banner for those who fear you…”. The intent is obvious and alludes to our closing observations in the previous reflection: these lines are intended not to be a pure description but to move God into action, to awaken his sense of covenantal obligation and to come and save his people. In effect, the psalmist is accusing God of dishonorably ignoring his covenant with his people. This is seen when we state, rather baldly, that the psalmist is accusing God of a form of almost Judas-like betrayal. Beneath these lines there is a latent, but certain, desperation and, we might say, anger. These are the words of a desperate king who is finding himself more-and-more convinced that his God has, in fact, left him to fend for himself. It is important, at this point, to flesh something out: the ‘banner’ referred to is, I believe, a banner raised up over Jerusalem when an invading army was approaching telling those outside its walls to come in to the safety of the city. Here is the import: the banner was certainly raised by a citizen of the city. To the psalmist, however, a banner over Jerusalem is a banner raised by God—for Jerusalem is the city of God, the impregnable house of God. This is a natural implication of God establishing his ‘home’ in Zion—the city itself begins to take on the person of God, as it is ‘enlivened’ by his presence. This is another way of circling around to the first verse and how God’s presence is what makes the fortifications not only secure but eternal (they partake of God’s ‘everlasting’). The “banner of Zion”, then, would be one raised by God. And yet, mysteriously (indeed, unfathomably to the psalmist), the banner and the fortifications have not held. They have, therefore, deceived. We might say this: when God comes to truly dwell with his people (and no longer is to them a travelling god), then the potential for tragedy is increased dramatically. For it is in his wedding of himself to a place that he truly enters into history. Indeed, to such a degree that the seemingly natural sense of history’s betrayal (the ‘vanity of the world’) becomes one now that could be aimed at God himself. This, I believe, is largely what stands at the heart of this psalm and the psalmist’s desire to be led to a “siege-proof” city, for God to “return to us” and the fact that “human aid is futile” and only “with God” is success possible.