Ps. 66.10-12 (testing alone leaves you in Egypt)

Indeed / you have tested us / O God
refined us / as silver / is refined.
You brought us / into a snare
and put afflictions / on our backs.
But / you caused a man / to ride at our head
we went through / fire and water
but you / brought us out / to abundance. 

The image of refinement and purifying are prevalent in these verses, not only explicitly in the ‘testing’ and ‘silver refining’ but also in the image of “fire and water”. Fire and water is often used in cultic practices to purify, or make holy, a certain object. When Israel is therefore made to “pass through” fire and water, it is, like an object being made for Temple-use, being turned into a “holy nation”. Interestingly, this image is grounded, possibly, in the Exodus story with them passing through the water of the Reed Sea (could the fire be the “pillar of fire”? yet they do not pass through it…). An important point in all of this is that God’s objective with his people is this ‘making holy’ through testing, snares and affliction. The goal, however, is not simply this but to make them an appropriately shaped people for their “abundance”. In other words, the people are led out of Egypt, to Sinai, to be made holy, so that they will be the silver appropriate to the Promised Land. Further, this testing is not one accomplished with the nation as such, but they are drawn out of fire, pincer-like, by and through Moses: “you caused a man to ride at our head”. This is a rather extraordinary praise of Moses (so much so that his name does not even need to be mentioned). Just as God “brought them out to abundance” is Moses “caused to ride at our head”. God purifies his people in and through an appointed head of his people (whether through type of prophet/priest/king like Moses or through David…). There is, in this, a simultaneous movement on God’s part: of leading them into snares and raising up a man to lead them out of it as well. This dynamic (not merely the ‘testing’) is part and parcel of the refinement. God’s people are not only “tested”. Because the point of the testing is a destination, they need an appointed guide/leader to help them arrive. This is crucial: God always establishes an appointed head to his people in order for them to be purified for abundance. (One exception could be the time of prophets, but even that is questionable on two fronts: the judge themselves and the fact that the book represents a downward spiral to the necessity of David.) Testing alone leaves you in Egypt. (The Christian appropriation of this is sitting on the surface, as Christ leads his people on a new Exodus to the ‘kingdom’ and does not leave them abandoned, ‘head-less’ but appoints Peter as the Rock).