Ps. 71.22-24 (liturgy reveals deliverance)

Then / I would praise you / with a lute
then / would I praise your faithfulness / O my God
I would sing to you / with a harp
O Holy One of Israel.
My lips would give / a shout of joy
I would sing / to you indeed
with my very soul / which you will have ransomed.
Then / my tongue would tell / of your righteousness / all day long,
how put to shame / how disgraced / will be those / who seek my hurt. 

The first thing we notice immediately on reading these lines is that the vessel of the psalmist is not merely full but overflowing. First, these lines tumble over themselves with nearly every line including a form of praise (praise, sing, shout of joy, sing, tongue would tell). Second, the psalmist’s being cannot contain his joy; we move from praise with a lute, to a harp, to lips, to ‘my very soul’, and my tongue. Third, the psalmist is pushed the boundary of time as well—his praise is “all day long”. All of these point in the same direction and one we have seen already—that at the heart of man’s praise to God is a very deep and intense awareness of His super-abundance—we might say his ‘infinite outpouring’—and that every act of praise and liturgy by man could never exhaust itself while in his presence. Indeed, we might even say that his presence is itself liturgical. If one compares the opening of the psalm to its closing one comes to see how and why the psalmist does not merely end in “a good status” but in liturgy to God. The opening of the psalm appeals to God to not let the psalmist end in shame; here, the psalmist’s enemies are “put to shame” and “disgraced”. Their end is in their own wickedness. What they attempted in private, by way of conspiracies, in order to publicly destroy the psalmist, now turns upon them, uncovers their shame, and reveals them in disgrace. This literary ‘bookend’ points to the content of the righteous justice of God—a justice that exposes everything. Within the light of this exposure the psalmist tumbles over himself in a litany of praise to God. Line by line the psalmist exuberantly declares how he will offer praise to God. This effusive praise is important to note given the tone of the previous verses and the ‘depth of the earth’ the psalmist saw himself within. As we saw there the suffering of the psalmist had almost quenched his ability to even speak to God. Here, by contrast, everything is not only reversed but reversed in a prodigal fashion. The psalmist cannot now contain his zeal for praise. In this we see, I think, an important point: that in the experience of God’s deliverance much that has occurred to the psalmist is declared damnable (the wicked ending in shame); further, that the grace of deliverance superabounds beyond the experience of suffering. His suffering does not lie along a continuum leading up to his praise. His ‘resurrection’ from the depth of the earth (vs. 20) is the destruction of his suffering, not its resolution, answer or meaning. The ‘good place’ he is placed in after this resurrection from the earth is not simply being granted health; it is being reunited with the very presence of God, something that we have seen throughout places the psalmist in the ‘every day’, ‘all day long’, ‘continuous’ forever time of God. Further, the abundant nature of the praise is a reflection of, and participation in, the act of deliverance itself. What I mean is this: if we want to get toward the heart of this act of deliverance, we do so by way of this tremendous outpouring of praise. We do not attempt to excavate down below it. Liturgy reveals the deliverance. And that, dimly—the psalmist clearly cannot give adequate expression to the act but can only fall over himself in abundant joy. It is in the context of liturgy that God’s deliverance is most evident, as is clear from the book of Revelation.