Ps. 69.16-18 (speaking into the pit)

Answer me / O God / because your loyal-love is good
according to your great mercy / turn to me.
Hide not your face / from your servant
because of my distress / answer me quickly.
Come near / to my soul -- / redeem it!
On account of my enemies / ransom me! 

From the closing mouth of the pit we now shift to the answering mouth of God. This contrast is instructive—the maw of the pit signals the death, silence and the descent into the land where God’s name is not remembered (Ps. 6). The ‘voice of God’, however—the “answer”—is one of tremendous power. It is imbued with the covenant power of fidelity (“your loyal-love is good”). We could, in a way, picture God speaking into the mouth of the pit and ‘calling forth’ his servant by this creative, redemptive and covenantal word of answer. This picture continues in the next line—when God ‘answers’ his face must, necessarily, turn toward the petitioner. This ‘turning’ of God signals the defeat of death, chaos and the power of the pit. God’s “attention” in ‘answer and turning’ is not merely recognition—God’s presence effects the power of his life-giving presence. God’s presence is power. This is, really, the conundrum of the psalmist—how can he have the zeal of God and yet not have God’s power? How could God be aware and yet not act? Why this hiatus? How can a servant of God appear to be such an idiot? Here, the resolution of this problem comes from constant prodding and petitioning of God to (en)act his covenantal power. In these verses, that enactment is portrayed by God’s ‘coming close’. He “answers”; he “turns to me”; he “hides not his face”; and he “comes near my being(soul)”. This is crucial to grasp—when God ‘turns away his face from his servant’ there is reproach, humiliation, shame, the ‘flooding of waters’, the closing of the pit’s mouth, the engulfing power of the ‘flood’. All of these forces of chaos and death result from the vacuum created by God’s absence. All of them are dispelled, like the chaos waters of creation, by God’s ‘turning’ and ‘speaking/answering’. If God speaks into the pit-indeed if he simply turns his face toward it-resurrection occurs. Although we said it above, this is not generalized “presence”; it is God’s face. Further, the dispelling of the waters of chaos is not the infusing of an interior, spiritual calm; it is the real, concrete dispersal of enemies and public redemption of God’s servant. The psalmist wants the shame that has been cast on him to be publicly dispersed (not interiorly detached) by his observable vindication. This is ‘creation-redemption’. It is real; it is historical; it could be dated. This is (for us) the embarrassment of God’s deliverance.