Ps. 78.23-25 (wrath, irony and a gathering)

And so he commanded / the skies above
opened the doors of heaven
and rained down on them / manna to eat
he gave them / the grain of heaven.
Each person / ate the bread of angels
he sent them / plenty of bread.

These verses, in context, seem very odd. We just concluded verses wherein God’s fury and wrath erupt because Israel asked for bread and meat, and yet, immediately following this eruption, God not only commands that bread be provided but he in fact “opens heaven” and rains down them not only bread but “the bread of angels”. We need to note here the fact that as prodigal was Israel’s request, it does not match what happens here—God utterly moves beyond their request and provides what is clearly the finest of all possible bread: angelic bread. It would seem that this provision actually moves beyond the previous provision of providing gushing water in the wilderness. There, the provision came as “from the deep”, here the provision comes from the highest source: heaven. God has surrounded Israel with the greatest of all possible blessings, blessings that could not be anticipated. It has to remain a supreme mystery what in fact ‘angelic bread’ is in this context, but what the psalmist seems to be envisioning is not a merely mundane worldly bread but a type of “super-substantial” bread, a bread that itself partakes of heaven. Clearly, if before, the prodigal provision of water was astounding, this signals a surpassing “heavenly feast”. This is, in other words, a heavenly banquet. God has, in fact, “prepared a table in the wilderness” and served them the food of angels.

And yet, crucially, this heavenly banquet is, in fact, given under the sign of wrath and fury. We will not see the completion of this act on God part until verses 29-31. There, the Israelites will have just begun their feast when God strikes them (or, their 'youngest') dead. This incorporates a deep level of irony into these verses. And it is of a type that I do not believe we have encountered in other psalms—God’s wrath being employed in almost a mocking fashion. As if to say to the Israelites that if they mock God they will be mocked; that God will take their mockery and shape it into the arrow of their own judgment. However, what this ‘shaping’ introduces into the realm of God’s wrath is something new: that it can incorporate irony, or, in other words, that it can operate under the appearances of blessing in order to make the judgment more complete. This is something we have not seen before. In other psalms, God’s wrath operates in almost a one-to-one correlation. There is no ambiguity in other words. It does not move under the auspices of blessing. That said, there is a way in which this ‘level of irony’ has operated and that is the form of the ‘idiot’ and the ‘temple’ that we have examined in other psalms. What I mean is this: the ‘idiot of God’ had all of the zeal for God with none of the power of God; he became a byword to everyone, from low to high; by becoming this ‘idiot’ however, he gathered to himself the sin of everyone, from low to high, such that when his redemption occurred no one was with an excuse—they had all participated within his ‘crucifixion’. The idiot was 'sunk low' so that he his righteousness would incorporate everyone. Likewise, the temple suffered a similar crucifixion when God allowed it, through no fault on the part of his people, to become a house of idols and to be destroyed. He allowed himself, through his Temple, to be covered in shame. These are crucial insights to maintain as they point to a common center: that as in God’s humiliation, so in his wrath, can there be a deep level of irony that frustrates any attempt to necessarily perceive a one-to-one correlation. It is, in the opening words of this psalm, a “riddle”. There are times when God’s patience, or forbearance, operate as a type of ‘gathering of judgment’, a type of ‘filling up of the sins of the people’ such that when reality emerges, there will be no excuse. Until then, though, those who ‘live in sin and rebellion’ will live in a riddle but not perceive it; they will be spoken to but will not hear; they will have eyes to see, but will not perceive. We could even say that God’s wrath moves along the lines of a narrative. It is an unfolding story, replete with the modes of history and narrative.