Ps. 74.2 (remember God)

Remember / your congregation / acquired of old
the tribe / of your patrimony / which you redeemed
Mount Zion / where you have dwelt. 

From the flame of anger we now turn to the apparently contradictory image of forgetfulness. One is intensely active (anger) while the other signals passivity (forgetfulness). Yet they are both clearly describing the same activity. The flame burns “against the flock of your pasture.” God is called upon to remember “your congregation acquired of old”. What we see here, it seems, is that the psalmist is groping for a way of describing his perplexity at God. On the one hand he acknowledges the fact that God is very aware of their plight, and that that awareness is, in fact, manifested in the form of anger; he is not simply ‘aware’ but ‘against’ his people. And yet, on the other hand, he is simultaneously aware that God is absent from them. He has ‘forgotten them’ such that he needs to be ‘brought to attention’, to ‘remember’. In the face of this terror God has become, to the psalmist, a type of double. There is something unresolved about God in his behavior toward his people. The psalmist asserts with equal force the fact that God is entirely conscious of the dilemma and that he is seemingly acting inappropriately toward it. The expression of this are the two words: “Why…” and “Remember…”. To the psalmist God is acting in a duality while the psalm is attempting to bring God to act in a unity (his knowledge coinciding with his covenantal love = redemption; one could almost say the psalmist is pitting God’s will for his people over-against his permissive will, asking that God re-engage his will for his people.). Here, in contrast to verse 1, the way the psalm attempts this unification is through appealing to God’s past actions toward his people and toward Zion. It is important to note that in the appeal to God to ‘remember’ the psalmist himself performs an act of memory, appealing to “your congregation acquired of old.” The psalm is attempting to make liturgically present that which would ignite God’s covenantal power (redemption). The past is therefore intimately present in this act of the psalmist’s ‘memory’ (anamnesis). It is what can truly ignite the present. Further, this act of memory is never abstract, but aligned with God’s act of possession: “your congregation…the tribe of your patrimony which you redeemed…Mount Zion where you have dwelt.” All of these remembrances are intimate acts taken by God, and they may signal an increasing intensity: possession, redemption, dwelling. The first, the ‘congregation’, is ‘acquired’. The second, the tribe, is redeemed, like a kinsman redeeming another kin, thereby making God the “kinsman” of Israel. The third, Zion, signals the actual place of his residence, his dwelling.. Further, these acts of memory all relate to the same moment: that of genesis or origin. The congregation is of old “which you acquired”. The tribe memory refers to the time when Israel was made into the ‘family of God’ through their being ‘redeemed’. Zion is the only exception in that it refers to his constant dwelling. The psalmist is clearly being strategic then in his prayer-petition. First, he is not merely ‘reminding’ God of what he already owns. We know this from the first verse; God is aware of what is occurring. Rather, what he is doing is attempting to awaken in God a sense of shame. These things acquired, redeemed and dwelt in by Him, represent him. In acting toward them he bound himself (or, his reputation) to them. The psalmist is, therefore, mirror God back to himself in this act of memory. Second, by appealing to their genesis, the psalmist is attempting to enliven in God the same creation power in the present. The Temple has been destroyed; so it must be re-made. In other words, remembering the genesis of God’s redemption and establishment is the attempt to liturgically make that power present. This is not mere reporting of past events. The past events themselves, in prayer, the psalmist pleadingly hopes, become present. In other words, it seems clear that the psalmist presupposes that his act of memory will engender a response by God, that it is somehow persuasive to Him. And, finally, the reason for signaling these out in particular is that they are the objects now under attack, the most intimate of which, Zion, has actually been destroyed (“defiled to the ground”; vs. 7). The psalmist is, then, remembering these three objects in order to reverse their present desecration. Resurrection is latent in the petition.