Ps. 62.2 (passive activity)

As smoke / is blown away / so may you / blow them away
as wax / melts before fire
so may the wicked / perish before God. 

Furthering the image of movement away from God we find here the enemy-haters “blown away” like smoke. Interestingly, the next image also involves the image of fire—they are to melt before God the way wax melts before fire. In the first image (of smoke), the wicked are the residue of fire and the action of God is on the “blowing away”. In the second, God is likened to the fire. The importance, I think, is that in both the enemy-haters operate, in the face of fire, as ephemeral and insubstantial. In the first, like the chaff of Psalm 1, they are effortlessly blown away; the blowing away of smoke does not require a gale but a mere God-breath. It is his astonishing power that makes of these enemy-haters to be mere smoke. The second image is different; there, they have substance (wax) but lose it before the flame of God. They are ‘undone’ in a way unlike the first image of smoke. That said, the image of God’s action is different between the two: smoke needs to be actively ‘blown away’; wax naturally melts in the face of fire (fire simply needs to be fire to melt wax; it doesn’t need to ‘do’ anything). By emphasizing this active/passive dynamic of God’s “ascending-forth” the psalmist expertly draws attention to the fact that God is both active in his attack—and yet his activity is mere breath!—and supremely passive—his presence alone melts and undoes the enemy-haters. Just as we saw with God’s “ascending” and his “going forth” so too do we now detect this sense of God’s judgment as being neither (or, being both) a supremely effortless act and supremely passive abiding destruction. And this is heightened by associating God’s activity with mere smoke, and his passivity with hard wax! The juxtaposition of these images is an exquisite work of thematic unity that will track through the rest of the poem (and one that has already been mentioned in our previous reflection).