Ps. 75.8 (feast of judgment)

Indeed / there is a cup / in Yhwh’s hand
and the wine foams / fully mixed
when he / pours it out
all the wicked / of the earth / will surely drink it
drink it down / dregs and all. 

These verses represent the most potent image in the psalm and its most interesting. There are several layers to this “cup”. The first is to look at what God “does” in this psalm in order to begin to see what he may be doing with this cup. Up to this point God is described as: choosing a set time for judgment and making the ‘pillars of the earth’ firm when they are shaking. Both of these, as we saw, were assertions of complete mastery over the forces of chaos (whether cultic or cosmic). They were both, more importantly, concerned not merely with being ‘responsive’ but with re-establishing equity, order and justice. This was summed up in the line: “he puts one down and raises another up”. It must be, then, that this ‘cup’ in some manner partakes of this establishment of justice and its consequent ‘putting down’ of Chaos. In other words, it is an act of judgment. The second point to make, however, is how complicated this image is: the ‘cup of wine’ is usually a positive (perhaps liturgical) image of festivity. To have wine that is “fully mixed” means that it is well prepared for drinking and celebration. Clearly, though, that is not what is at work here. The image, which seems like it may be positive at first, changes suddenly when it is ‘poured out’ for the wicked of the earth. This use of “earth” has been referred to before when God was described as stabilizing the pillars of the earth when it and all her inhabitants shook. Here, the inhabitants are limited to only “the wicked”. It would seem that something like the following is occurring: that the wicked are, in some way, participants within a feast called by God; however, this is the feast of judgment. The wine, which usually is the source of gladness, is here the reverse. Further, just as “indeed” is the cup in God’s hand, so too will the wicked “drink it down” (will surely drink it). The consumption of this wine will be objectively accomplished, over-and-beyond the will of the wicked. This fact makes this ‘drinking’ an aspect of the “set time” of judgment. Until this ‘pouring out’ the wicked can ‘lift up their own horns’; they can, in this regard, act as if they have power. However, once the judgment day comes (the “set time”), this will be reversed completely: the freedom they thought they had will be revealed as illusory precisely by the fact that they will be required to perform (or, undergo) activities of humiliation (either, having their horns cut off or being required to drink the wine). When the wicked think they are the only subjects, God’s judgment will reveal them to be but objects of his divine mastery. This image of the wicked as ‘object’ is then solidified in the final, disturbing line: “drink it down, dregs and all”. The wicked will be required to drink even ‘the dregs’ of the wine. They will become, in this way, pure ‘vessels’ of God’s judging will. No amount of rebellion will enable them to avoid this down-pour. Again, there is no “power from east to west, or from the wilderness” they will be able to appeal to, to save them from this “set time”. What they previously regarded as power is, in this ‘feast’, revealed to be the source of their greatest weakness. The “set time” will rob the wicked of their illusion of power and subject them, instead, to the mastery of God’s judgment.