Ps. 73.6-7 (an unlimited heart)

Consequently / pride is their necklace
and violence / drapes them / like a robe.
Their eyes / bulge from fatness
the conceit / of their heart / is unlimited. 

We concluded the previous reflection by noting the way in which these wicked seem monstrous. Their presence and authority are almost Goliath-like. Further, this sense was derived, there, from the fact that they inhabit an almost divine realm of blessedness. They are ‘emblems of heaven’ in their complete lack of suffering and health. In these verses, however, the darkness descends with the word ‘consequently’. Their stature as near-divine results in their being clothed in pride and violence. Their hearts are not only ‘full of conceit’ but unlimited. They are, in other words, terrors. The emphasis on their clothing (“pride is their necklace”; “violence drapes them like a robe”) is important as it fills out their picture in particularly disturbing ways. Most of the wicked encountered in other psalms operate in secret and in duplicity. They appear comforting when they are concealing wrath. They are lies. That is not the case here—these wicked are unified in their wickedness. They actually express what they are—they wear their wickedness as show. Nowhere in this psalm do the wicked seem to need to formulate ‘conspiracies’ or ‘wait in hiding’ or ‘lay snares’. Rather, everything is in the open. These giants of wickedness waltz through the market without hesitation. They willingly wear their pride and violence just as willingly as they put on clothing. And they wear them as emblems of attraction (“like a necklace”; “like a robe”). They are not only not ashamed of their wickedness, but they are proud of it and publicize it. This sense of an unashamed expression of wickedness is summarized most damningly in the concluding line: “the conceit of their heart is unlimited”. The sense of a complete lack of proportion (the monstrosity of their evil) is now turned to the central realm of the psalm: the heart. Just as their presence is monstrous, it is but the expression of a heart that likewise knows no boundaries (“unlimited”). In light of the opening proverb, this is tantamount to their being an expression anti-god; (quasi-divine) forces of total chaos and destruction. They are, in other words, the complete absence of God’s goodness to Israel, the antithesis of the proverb. This is important to grasp when understanding what the psalmist is attempting to do: he has taken the proverb and is now raising up in its face a challenge proportionate to it. These wicked represent, in almost an apocalyptic fashion, the most open and sizable rebellion against God. This is why he has removed any hint of hesitancy from the wicked (there is no hiding, conspiracies or ‘snares’). They do not ‘lurk’ at night like dogs. They do not retreat behind closed doors. They move within the full light of day. If there is ever going to be a power that vies for the heart of God’s people, these will be it, for they will dawn the authority of heaven in open rebellion to God. And their hearts will expand in wickedness in proportion (“unlimited”) to the demands of God for his goodness (“pure in heart”). It is, therefore, not a stretch to see in these men the primal temptation of the serpent who coaxed Eve (and Adam) to ‘become like a god’ in direct violation of God’s single command.