Ps. 73.10-11 (mocking God)

So / his people / turn to them
and they swill / the waters of abundance
and they say / “What does God know?”
and / “Does the Most High know anything?” 

These are very important lines as they describe in very short order the turning away from God toward the wicked and the effect that such a turning has on them. First, we must note the progression in theses lines. “His people” likely refer to God’s covenant people (“You will be my people, and I will be your God”). Initially, they “turn to them”. Then, they drink (“swill”). Finally, they speak. This ‘turning’ toward the wicked is clearly also a ‘turning away’ from God. They have become entranced by the seemingly divine authority and power of the wicked and their ability to ‘speak heaven on earth’—to accomplish everything they speak, without interruption or hesitation. They ‘fill heaven and earth’ with their presence and power. As we indicated before, this united ability on their part to partake of the divine status of power, makes of them a temptation rivaling the God who made ‘heaven and earth’. If their voices fill both realms, they have, in some way, eclipsed the God who ‘spoke’ both into existence. This ‘turning’ then represents a ‘turning of the heart’. It is what the psalmist describes as almost happening to him in the opening: “my feet had nearly slipped because I envied the arrogant and coveted the prosperity of the wicked”. The heart becomes the unclean, ‘category-confusion’ of attempting to serve two masters. This ‘turning’ then moves into engagement. They ‘drink the waters of their abundance’. The psalmist had ‘turned’. However, unlike ‘his people’ he had not actually moved to the point of encounter, of consummation and consuming. The wicked remained for him a spectacle. Not so for ‘his people’. Here, we see their end. They not only drink, but they eagerly appropriate the wicked to themselves (the “swill”). Further, we noted previously the ‘stature of the wicked’ and their monstrosity. In particular we highlighted how the “conceit of their hearts is unlimited”. That same lack of proportion and extreme size is now applied to the waters—“of abundance”. This refers both to the abundance of their wealth and the abundance of their wickedness (power). Both have become the object of desire and what ‘his people’ so eagerly want for their own. They are, in this way, like the ‘women of the earth’ who mated with the ‘sons of god’ prior to the flood. They have denied their portion on earth and reached out for those who seem to not only span but control the realm of heaven and earth. And, from this ‘water of abundance’ ‘his people’ become drunk. They end up in precisely the same position the wicked had ended in the previous section—they now speak words of incredible arrogance, one that storms the realm not only of heaven but of God himself. These are disastrous words. “His people” are now mocking him. The two statements, in their progression, reveal an arrogance that is terrifying. The first questions the extent of God’s knowledge, the second, however, directly mocks God asking if, in fact, he knows anything at all. One could envision this sort of hubris at a drinking party to some foreign god, wherein Yhwh is portrayed as aloof and stupid. (One wonders whether the ‘waters of abundance’ actually refer to some foreign god’s liturgy.) This is precisely the language that puts “ones mouth in heaven, while the tongue struts on earth” (vs. 9). ‘His people’ have betrayed their covenant and become the wicked. They have become intoxicated with the wicked’s power to mock God with impunity.