Ps. 76.4-6 (the attack)

You are / the Resplendent One
the majestic One / from the mountains of prey
the stouthearted / lay plundered
slumbering / in the last sleep
no man of war / could lift a hand. 

Up to this point in the psalm there has been no mention of anyone other than God. Although the entire thrust of the psalm has been his public appearance to the world, the world itself has not been in focus. The previous verse began to make this transition, but the only other ‘powers’ other than God were the implements of war. Here, humans make their entrance. And, importantly, when they appear, they stand in complete antithesis to God. God is “resplendent” (the one of “light”) and “majestic”. Humans “lay plundered”, ‘slumbering’ and ‘unable to lift a hand’. While God appears supremely active, those in front of him are utterly passive. It in this dynamic that several themes begin to open up. First, we see here why the psalmist has focused so much on the public display of God’s authority: his being the “Renowned One”, the “Resplendent One” and the “Awesome One”. The force of his public display is meant to set up the reciters of this psalm for the effect that display has on the powers of the ‘mighty’ and on the ‘war-lovers’. The effect, in short, is that it completely robs them of their glory—all of their glory (their authorial weight) is stripped. Second, and this ties in very closely to the first point, this sense of complete control and activity is meant to highlight the complete inactivity and powerlessness of the ‘mighty’. If the first point was in regard to the power displayed by God, this second point focuses on the effect of that power. The most poignant description of this effect is, surprisingly at first, that of ‘sleep’. It is not of ‘being destroyed’ or of being ‘frightened’ or ‘overwhelmed’. Rather, the effect results in a supremely powerful pacification. All of the descriptions in the psalm point in this direction: “lay plundered”, “slumbering”, “unable to lift a hand” (vs. 5); “lay stilled” (vs. 6); “the earth feared and was quiet” (vs. 8); “mortification” (vs. 12). It is as if in the face of such overwhelming Light, the wicked are subjected to a type of near-death sleep. There resides over the battle-field a type of deafening silence. It is important for the effect of this psalm that the ‘action’ of God remains entirely in the background. There is the reference to the ‘mountains of prey’, which clearly allude to Zion as the ‘den of God’. However, the actual event that precipitated this silence is absent. By simply detailing its effect, the psalmist leaves the reciters of the psalm with a sense of an utterly overwhelming, but perhaps hidden, display of God’s ‘lion-attack’. Between God and his adversaries there is no comparison; the event that destroys them is, therefore, an event of fantastic pacification, something that completely challenges and dwarfs man’s ability to comprehend. In this way, the event itself resides in a cloud of foreboding, a sense of the terrible. It is as if a cloud descended upon the adversaries, shrouding the ‘Lion of Zion’, and when it lifted the field was littered with these men, plundered and in a near-death sleep, bearing every mark of the lion’s ferocity. Every emblem of world power is not only defeated; the vision painted by these lines is to disturbing for such a tame description. The totality of the vision is terrifying. This is where we come to see where the real distinction lies between the “Resplendent One” and these men: it is not in the difference between ‘activity and passivity’ but between ‘authority and overwhelming subjugation’.