Ps. 71.9-11 (elderly and God's righteousness)

Cast me not off / in the time of my old age
as my strength fails / forsake me not.
For my foes / talk about me
and my ‘soul watchers’ / have formed a conspiracy
saying:
“God / has forsaken him;
after him! / Catch him!
For / no one / will rescue him.” 

It is in these verses that we are first made aware of the psalmist’s advanced age. And, from this point forward, it will be either alluded to or directly made evident. The opening verse operates in a chiastic manner, in the following way: A: Cast me not off B: in the time of my old age B1: as my strength fails A1: forsake me not.  This structur will become important to note when we move into the ‘voice of the wicked’ in verse 11. Here, we can note that the old age (of B and B1) has opened up a hiatus in the psalmist’s life, a disconnect. He has become vulnerable and exposed to those forces that have been against him his entire life and that God has thwarted his entire life. Here, however, the psalmist has entered ‘new territory’ in his old age because now his strength is failing him. The distance between himself and his enemies is getting closer in that they now see a rift between the psalmist and his God; whereas his whole life has been one marked by God’s covenantal righteousness, it would appear that that that power has come to an end at precisely the time when the psalmist’s own strength if faltering. In other words, the enemies now see the psalmist as operating purely ‘under his own steam’. He has been ‘cast off’, and ‘forsaken’ by God. It is this situation that the psalmist implores God to resolve—even though he is old, frail and weak, he still turns to God to surround him with his power, to still be a refuge for him. The psalmist’s language of forsakenness as contrast to the wicked’s is key: the psalmist implores God to not cast him off/forsake him; the wicked see it as an already accomplished fact “God has forsaken him…”. It is because they are convinced of the psalmist’s lack of divine protection that their begin weaving their conspiracies and ‘talk about me’ (vs. 10). Once the light is perceived as abandoning the psalmist, the darkness begins to see its opportunity. And yet, this is where the true profundity of these lines emerge: the psalmist does not regard his old age and frailty with a hindrance (or, embarrassment) to God. This is key: just as Ezekiel and so many ‘sick men’ before him (in the psalms), resurrection power is always understood as greater than any human weakness or power over man (as finally exemplified in death itself). The wicked, by contrast, envision a ‘point of no-return’. That there is a line across which God will not cross. His servant may continue (in old age, etc…), but God will ‘cast him off’ and ‘forsake’ him as he crosses that boundary. Once that line has been crossed, the conspiracies can begin because now there is no divine governance that watches over him. Here—the wicked believe the psalmist has crossed that line and that God has turned back from him. The psalmist, by contrast, knows there is no ‘line’, that God’s governance is never ‘turned back’. As he will say later, “Though you have made us see troubles, many hurtful troubles, will you let us live again? And from the depths of the earth bring us up again? Restore me to a good status, and comfort me again.” (vs. 20-21). For the psalmist, there is no point at which the wicked can safely conspire against God’s righteous ones, for his authority never abandons them (even to the ‘depth of the earth’). In short, the wicked’s statement is always going to be wrong; they would never be able to definitively state God has abandoned one of his own. Even the frailty of old age can be a vessel of and for God’s righteousness. (There may be no more poignant expression that so needs to be voiced today…). This is the importance of the chiasm noted above—the psalmist brackets his old with God’s ability to stay close to him; the wicked see no enveloping structure of God’s power.