Ps. 75.4-5 (the absurd command)

I say / to the boastful, / “Do not boast”
and to the wicked / “Do not / lift up / your horns
do not / lift up your horns / high
or speak / with an insolent neck.”  

 It is important where these lines fall within the context of the psalm. There was a need to situate these ‘directives’ after the astonishing display of authority and power contained in verse 2-3. The one who ‘speaks to the boastful and wicked’ in verse 4 is the one who “chooses a set time for judgment” in vs. 2 and the one who “makes firm” the “shaking pillars of the earth”. In other words, verses 2-3 display the ‘active’ authority of God over both realms of judgment and cosmos. In verse 4, it is that “I” that now addresses the ‘wicked and boastful’. Hence, it is the “I” that already contains the utter authority to both command these actions and to bring about the judgment and stabilizing force necessary if he is not heeded. The ‘wicked and boastful’ represent those forces of verses 2-3 that called down the “set time of judgment” and the chaos forces that “shook the earth”. These verses are then not so much ‘directives’ as warnings. If God is not heeded, verses 2-3 reveal what will occur. By placing these directives after 2-3, then, they are seen as commands against which one rebels with supreme absurdity. With that said, a further point can be observed: the “speech” (“I say to…”) of God is directed at the speech of the wicked/boastful. Further, the directive begins with a command as to speech, “Do not boast”, proceeds through the “raising of the horn”, and ends, again, in speech, “speak with an insolent neck”. The words of the wicked bookend God’s directive. In this way, we see how their speech and their ‘horn raising’ are, to God, of the same order. They both display “boasting” and “insolence”. Thematically, this ‘boasting’ can be seen in this way—the wicked ‘lift up their own horns’ while, at the end of the psalm, the “horns of the righteous will be lifted up” (vs. 10). Clearly, the ‘lifting up’ is not the problem. The problem is its genesis: either the wicked or God (which is a matter of equity). In addition, only one type of horn can be ‘raised’. The wicked’s horns, at the set time, will be “cut off” in a humiliating type of castration. The righteous horns, at the set time, will be ‘lifted up’. As to these verses, the same ‘reversal’ will be accomplished as to their ‘speaking’ in that their ‘mouths’ will be full of the wine of God’s wrath (vs. 8). Hence, both forms of ‘boasting’ (voice and horn) will be addressed and destroyed.