Ps. 77.14 (a public memory)

You are the God / who works wonders
you made known / your strength / among the peoples. 

We have pointed out that one of the driving ‘forces’ of the first half of the psalm is an increasing interiority, a type of implosion of the psalmist as he turns inward upon himself in the face of God’s absence. The psalmist speaks, but is ‘unable to speak’. He does not ‘proclaim God’s saving works’ but rather he ‘ponders them’ whereby they become a torture to him. In this verse, by contrast, we come to see how the prior ‘exteriorizing’ of God’s power is the reason for the interiorizing of the psalmist. What I mean is this: in this verse, God’s action is fully public. God does not work these ‘wonders’ privately. He works them (“makes them known”) “among the peoples”. We could even say this: that this prior ‘explosion’ (public) of God’s power, reverberates through time such that, in its absence, it actually causes its covenant partner to implode under the weight of its absence. The display, in this regard, was so profound, so tremendous, that it opens up the possibility of an inverse ‘tremendum’ in its absence. The more God displays his power the more intensely felt is his absence. Or, the more God displays his power the more he expands his people’s perception of the possible (and the actual). In Yhwh, one stands within a much greater horizon than any other god (indeed, an infinite horizon). And, very importantly, that ‘horizon’ that one stands in, is a fully public one: it is one, in other words, that encompasses and undergirds the entirety of creation itself. (This is a fascinating point: that creation is undergirded by a more primal ‘publicity’ of God such that it partakes in and displays that publicity.)  When the presence that created that horizon is absent, however, one is left within a space that is profoundly disturbing and dreadful. The reaction against that absence could, of course, be toward a cabining of the fully public nature of God’s power (as, into mysticism for example). But, that is not the way of the psalmist: in God’s absence he remembers. It is a deeply important point. He does not abandon the memory in favor of a more manageable or endurable (but, smaller) reality. Rather, he calls it back to mind. His memory becomes like some abandoned Temple hoping for its divine inhabitant’s return.