Ps. 77.8-9; Pt. 1 (The Haunting)

Will the Lord / spurn us / forever,
and never be favorable / to us again?
Has his loyal-love / completely come to an end?
Will his promises fail / for generation after generation?
Has God forgotten / to be gracious
has he locked up / his compassion in anger? 

There are two preliminary points that need to be made. The first is in regard to what I think is an easily overlooked detail but of large importance: these questions are not addressed to God, but they are those the psalmist poses to himself. We explored at least part of the reason for this in the preceding reflection—that the dialogue that had previously existed between the psalmist and God is being progressively internalized to such an extent that it is becoming but the psalmist’s own monologue. It is as if the pain of God’s silence is such that the psalmist cannot even bring himself to address these questions to God. The second preliminary point is in regard to the clear sense of finality that the psalmist is contemplating. The issue for the psalmist is not so much that the Lord is ‘spurning us’, or is not ‘favorable’—the issue is whether these qualities of God have definitively ended. Each line speaks to this: “spurns us forever”; “never favorable again”; “completely come to an end”; “fail for generation-to-generation”; and so on. This sense of finality, of absoluteness, has been struck already. In verses 1-3 we see how the psalmist is consumed with finality: day-and-night he stretches out to God; his entire being (voice, hands and eyes) search for God. His finality is, however, the permanency of abandonment. This ties into the first point of the monologue: is there any point in addressing these questions to God or has he irrevocably turned away? Is there nothing left but this air-filled reflection and search? Is the internal finality a true reflection of the exterior finality of God? Because, importantly, if the answer to these questions is “yes”, then there really is no answer at all to them. In other words, a “yes” would leave behind a permanent haunting, the ghost of God’s absence. A “yes” would not be resolution; it would be terror.