Ps. 78.6-7 (commandments encased in wonder)

children yet to be born
who in turn / would tell / their children,
that they in turn / would put their confidence / in God
and forget not / the deeds of God,
but keep / his commandments. 

Here we come to the most compact verses detailing the central emphasis on ‘generations’ and ‘handing on’. The movement is immediate and direct. It begins, indeed, in a generation that does not in fact even exist yet, “children yet to be born”. From there it moves “in turn” to a further generation who “in turn” would put confidence in God. It is important to see how this dynamic of ‘in turn’ delivery of God’s wonders and instruction is not a perceived diminution. It is not the case that the further it gets from the source the more alienated the generations become. Quite the opposite in fact. As we will see, future generations may in fact trump earlier generations in their response to the story. It may be that in an oral culture, one’s sense of time and its effect on transmission is different. However the case may be, though, what is clear is that the story does not lose its power as it proceeds through the generations. In its retelling one is not ‘far from the event’ but made coterminous with it. Time is not the issue. As we will see, it is memory and a failure of the will that is the danger. This leads to a further point: although implicit we find here the first real danger to the story’s life—forgetting. Up to this point in the psalm, the story’s transmission has been actively sought and accomplished. There has been no mention of its failure, nor of any danger. However, here, as the psalmist looks down the generations he is aware of the fact that the story’s life is fragile. It can be forgotten. And the consequences are tragic, which leads to the final point—the perceived goal of this ‘in turn’ handing on: confidence, memory and the keeping of God’s commandments. As we saw yesterday, the story is pregnant with power. The story is that which connects each generation to the primal event of God’s wonders and his Torah. It generates confidence in God. There is the implication here that without the wonders the commandments themselves would not be kept. If they were ever forgotten the commandments would lose their life-giving source. The wonders are the soil of the commandments. In other words, when the commandments are passed down they must be passed down encased in the wonders of God. Clearly, then, the people of God themselves must involve themselves in the passing-on. They are not passing on mere objects, but a story that must involve their entire person. At this point we can refer back to the opening with new insight—the reason the psalmist is so insistent that his listeners actively perceive what he is about to narrate is that they must themselves become vessels of the story, but they cannot be so if they merely ‘hear-and-report’; rather, they must perceive the story; the must see the wonder-works; they must risk a total engagement with the story itself.