Ps. 78.21 (the fire breaks out)

When Yhwh / heard about it / he was furious
and fire / broke out / against Jacob
and his wrath / flared up / against Israel
because / they did not trust / in God
and did not rely / on his saving work. 

It is an interesting point that the immediately preceding verse ended in a question: “Can he supply meat for his people?” It is, of course, a type of accusation and mocking of God. What this shows is that the real intent and meaning, even when shrouded in an apparently innocent question, is discerned by God and the seeming innocence will be no defense to his acting accordingly; put crassly, God dispenses with Israel’s bullshit. These questions when used between people often operate as a ‘place of retreat’; they questioner can always retreat behind it being ‘merely a question’. However, with God, who discerns the heart, no such retreat is possible. When the question enters into his presence, presumably through Moses putting the question to God (?), the duplicity is torn away, the reality is immediately perceived. The question has been stripped of its regalia and, in God’s presence, become a “testing” (vs. 18) and Israel’s stance of an enemy “against him” (vs. 17, 19). The question becomes their curse. God has become furious. This sense of immediate perception and reaction by God should be one of terror. It overtakes man’s presumption and hubris. The immediacy of God’s response reveals the fact that there is no equivocation; there is no moment on his part to discern the true intent. When man speaks to God, man must be truthful or his attempted duplicity and manipulation could ignite in God his fury and wrath. We notice that man’s challenge to God is contained in seven lines. God’s hearing and his response are in one line.  A second point to make is the phrase “When Yhwh heard about it…”. This occurs in only one other verse in the psalm, verse 59, where God hears about the construction of “high places” once God provides them the promised land. There we read, “When God heard about it he was furious – and he vehemently repudiated Israel.” Importantly, this idolatry is specifically described as a “testing” (vs. 56) as is the request for bread and meat in the present verses (vs. 18). There is a deeper level to this ‘hearing’ and response we need to examine. When God responds here, he specifically uses ‘fire’. This is not a coincidence. The Israelites had just put to God the fact that he had provided them with “gushing water”. Further, as we will see, God’s second response is to inundate them with ‘meat and bread’, in direct response to their question about his ability to provide ‘meat and bread’. Likewise, in the scenario surrounding verse 56 and following, the Israelites construct ‘high places’. When God hears, he abandons the tabernacle at Shiloh. The point is this—God’s hearing and response operate as the direct contrary to the Israelites testing. In our verses, their acknowledgement of water is met with fire while their request for bread and meat is met by a type of cursed bread and meat. Later, their building of ‘high places’ is met by God’s abandonment of the one place where he meets them. The point is that—and we have seen this in nearly every psalm where God’s fury is described—God’s wrath and fury is not merely an expression of anger and power. It functions in direct response to the particular form of rebellion issued at God and it meets it by a type of reversal. In this way it utterly denudes the challenger of his power by throwing his sin back to him in the form of its opposite—or, its curse; we have called this in other places ‘the logic of wrath’ and Dante knew it well. Moving on, we now look at the object of this fury. It is important to observe as it mimics verse 5. In verse 5, we find: “He instituted a set of requirements in Jacob – and established a body of teaching in Israel.” While God’s wrath is ignited in other places in this psalm it is only against Israel. It does not follow this formal pattern we see in verse 5. What I believe the psalmist is attempting to show is that contained within the ‘requirements’ and ‘body of teaching’—the Torah—is a disturbing danger. As Moses would say, “I put before you life and death this day; choose life so may live long in the land…”. The point is that the Torah brings life but it also contains within it the power of God’s wrath in curses for disobedience. The Torah is what enables Israel to live with the presence of God in their direct midst in the form of his intended goal with creation—deeply prodigal blessing; to repudiate it, is to unleash that presence in its ‘penultimate’ form: curse and death. The only other mention of a ‘flaring up’ in this psalm is in verse 31 where we read, “the wrath of God flared up against them, and he killed their best men, and he brought down to death the youths of Israel.” This covers the dynamic described above: prodigal blessing and unequivocal death. This the ‘flame’ of their history.