Ps. 77.4 (to see nothing)

You hold open / my eyelids
I am so distraught / that I cannot speak. 

We should not be surprised by now at what is happening in this verse. These are very troubling lines. And it begins to push forward a thematic note struck yesterday, specifically, the fact that the psalmist’s own internal ‘turning toward God’ has become a source of extreme pain. Further, this pain, as verse 2 makes clear, is all encompassing—he consumes and is consumed by it “day and night”. Here, both of these images—the tragic inward turning and the all-encompassing aspect of God’s absence—are concentrated in the single (horrible) image of eyes that are held open. For a moment we should reflect on this, as an image. The eyelids provide man the ability to shut out the world around him. When an event is too tragic to witness, the eyelids can shield the soul from witnessing it. They protect man’s being from trauma too great to bear. Here, the eyelids are “held open”. That which the psalmist would desire to turn from, he must look at—perpetually. He has become, in this way, a torture to himself. This image of the eye is a similar way of affirming the reality of the previous verse in that the eye here mimics the act of remembering and pondering. Just as the psalmist cannot but turn in memory to God, so too can he not close his eyes. He is surrounded and forced to confront a reality that, to him, is too traumatic to witness. God’s absence has created in him a division whereby he is ‘against himself’. His memory is nothing but pain; his vision is nothing but trauma. Furthermore, in line with what we have explored in verses 1-3, this “seeing” reappears again at the end of the psalm—“the waters saw you O God, the waters saw you and writhed, even the deeps roiled” (vs. 16). Once again, just like the “voice” of verse 1, the “hands” of verse 2, and the “remembering” of verse 3, so too now the “seeing” of verse 4—the present is marked by a terrible absence. It is a time of “not-speaking”, of “no hands”, of “forgetfulness” and “blindness”. Although all of the psalmist’s capacities are stretching out toward God, they are being met by silence. Finally, while the waters “see” God and writhe at the power of his delivering, the psalmist’s sees nothing. And this nothing is so distressing that he “cannot speak”. Again, the sense of a terrible absence is, in a way, making the psalmist implode. He is folding in on himself. The more his eyes are “held open”, the less he can speak.