Ps. 73.4-5 (the wicked: emblems of heaven)

For they have no pains / at their deaths
and fat / are their bodies.
They are not troubled / like mortals 
nor plagued like humans. 

We are beginning to sink down into the tainted heart of the psalmist. The goodness of God that comes to the “those who are pure in heart” is beginning to be steadily eclipsed. These are the objects of temptation to the psalmist. In a seemingly odd note, the psalmist’s first description of what he sees as the ‘good’ of the wicked’s life is actually their death: “they have no pains at their death”. To begin in death and work backwards from there is instructive as it seems that how one leaves life points to the ‘goodness’ of their life. To die without pain is a great temptation for the psalmist. I have recently read a book that argues that Sheol was the place for those who died unnaturally, and whose life was unexpectedly cut short. For those whose life ended well, by contrast, they were ‘gathered to their ancestors’. The witness it not universal but does seem to be born out in many texts. The point for us is that to leave this life untroubled is a great blessing. And, it seems as if the wicked are partaking of that blessing. Second, their bodies partake of the same blessing: they are fat (a blessing in the ancient world). From there we move to the contours of their lives: they do not experience suffering. Compare this with the life of the psalmist: “I was plagued all during the day, and my punishment began each morning.” (vs. 14). Most instructive, though, is the fact that the psalmist sees this lack of suffering as partaking of the divine. These wicked are neither mortals nor human. From beginning to end, they have seemingly been lifted out of the realm of suffering all together. In this way, they are ‘signs’ of divinity. If one ‘reads’ their lives, solely as it relates to how these wicked relate to suffering, they are emblems of a heavenly reality and seem to dwell within a constant state of blessedness. This begins the overwhelming sense that these wicked’s presence is simply massive and imposing. As we will see in the next verses, there is no reticence-of-the-wicked that we find in many other psalms. They exist and move in a state of freedom and lack of anxiety. That said, we will come to qualify this in an important way—the portrayal of the wicked in these verses originate from an impure heart, one that has, like the Israelites on the border of the promised land, fear the giants. They are, in this way, as much a reflection of a heart straying from God as they are an objective description.