Ps. 75.2-3 (deed declared)

When I choose / a set time
I will indeed / judge with equity
When the earth / and all her inhabitants / are shaking
I am the one / who makes / the pillars firm. 

At this point in the psalm, the speaker shifts from the psalmist to God himself, probably through a prophet. However, with that much rather clear, there is, I think, something more at work. The immediately preceding line ended with the “wondrous deeds declaring” the Divine Name. As we saw there, the “wondrous deeds” enact God’s name; there is a type of “liturgy of the name” contained within the deeds themselves. Here, it may be that this prophetic utterance is to be understood as the “declaring” of the wondrous deeds—this is the “voice of the Name”, the “liturgy of the Name”. Seen thus, the prophet is giving voice to this declaration of the Name. More importantly, by framing this in the “I” of God, we see that the ‘wondrous works’ are not merely impersonal ‘events’ enacted by God; they are “speeches”, manifestations of his person, his Name and his will. In each “wondrous work”, in other words, this “speech” is what can be perceived. With this we can turn to the content of the “declaration”. The first verse is narrowly crafted around the image of time and judgment. Each of these are utterly contained within the ‘choice’ of God. There is nothing to thwart him in his choosing both the time and the deployment of equity. This sense of everything centered, purely and absolutely, within the choice of God is crucial for the psalm as a whole. The “time” of God’s judgment is aligned with the sense of ‘equity’ in that it comes about in the ‘perfect time’ of God’s choosing. It originates from nowhere other than the will of God and, in that way, time itself is fully at God’s disposal; he does not need to ‘wrestle’ in order to craft his judgment but merely decide when. Furthermore, in light of the above, what we see is that every ‘wondrous deed’ emanates from this centrality of authority, this “I”. The time is chosen and each deed is an enactment of equity. It is not brute force or power. Rather, each deed by God, as “declaring his Name”, is a deed of ‘equity’. The Name, then, in being ‘presenced’ or ‘enacted’ in the ‘wondrous deeds’, effects equity. Later, we will see that this ‘equity’ effected by the Name has no source other than in the Name. In other words, the Name is not equitable, but Equity. For the name to be ‘brought near’ (vs. 1), is for equity itself to be near.  The second verse focuses on the centrality of God’s authority over cosmos. Importantly, the verse does not emphasize that God has created the pillars but instead focuses on his complete power to stabilize them when they shaking “the whole earth”. The focus is not so much on his ‘creative mastery’ but on his ‘stabilizing mastery’. In this way the two verses are tied together. Just like the ‘set time’, this ‘earth shaking’ is the manifestation of chaos rising up against the justice and authority of God. However, there is no anxiety in God about this ‘shaking’. Just as time and equity are his, so too are the foundations of the earth utterly within his control. Both the moral and the cosmic realms partake of the same authority and are mastered by the same “I” of God. This is what the ‘wondrous deeds’ declare—not only that God is Eternal Judge, but also that the cosmos are just as equally within his realm of authority. Each deed manifests this moral and cosmic reality of the Name.