Ps. 78.32-33 (surmounting death)

Despite all this / they kept on sinning
and did not trust / in his wonders
and so he ended / their days / in a breath,
and their years / in sudden calamity.  

Death’s reign These verses describe, in literal fashion, something that seems odd. The immediately preceding verses describe God’s wrath flaring up and his killing of Israel’s best men. Here, it reports that despite “this” they kept on sinning. The psalm then proceeds to re-engage with God’s killing. The question is what does “this” refer to. It seems clear that it refers to God’s ‘death dealing’. This, in and of itself, is shocking for two reasons: 1) that in the midst of God's destruction they continued to sin; 2) that death seems to ‘reign’ in these verses in the sense that it continues on afterward. In other words, it entirely encompasses these verses, surrounding Israel; it is like a consuming flame. The reason is something we have already alluded to: that displayed/enacted in God’s judgment is his mastery, righteousness and the fact that when his judgment falls it is precisely aimed. Death’s suddenness. In many other psalms we have noted how, when death is a means of judgment/deliverance, it comes suddenly and without warning. The reason in those other psalms is apparent on close inspection: its suddenness directly address the wicked person’s sense of solidity and perpetuity in the face of God’s righteousness. In other words, if a person acts in defiance of God’s righteousness and thereby believes himself to be ‘established’, God’s judgment ‘suddenly and unawares’ directly confronts and robs that wicked person of their pretensions. Their sudden death is, itself, a revelation of the authority and mastery of God over all forms of rebellion. Here, something similar is at work, although in a perhaps more troubling fashion. What I mean is this: that the ‘suddenness’ is so terrifying precisely because God has lifted them to the height of their arrogance by bestowing on them this ‘wicked blessing’. This is not the case, as we see in other psalms, of God’s simply abandoning Israel to their desires and allowing them to destroy themselves. Rather, this is God bestowing on them a blessing that leads them into a sense of superiority to God and control of creation only to tear it away, irrevocably, at the moment of consummation. In a sense, God’s blessing is a clothing of them in their own sin/rebellion. As such they then become the perfect objects of wrath. Death’s stripping. We spoke about this, in part, yesterday when we looked at the victims of death and why it was these ‘sons’. That observation can be furthered here. We saw, in our contemplation of Israel’s perception of the blessing, that they would have, in the midst of blessing, seen themselves almost as a nation of magicians; a nation that not only had their god at their beck-and-call, but a nation that could coerce their god into granting them astonishing and prodigal power and blessing. Leavened by divine power, they would have seen themselves not as lifted up to the pinnacle of earthly blessing but, in fact, into the divine realm where they would feast on the ‘bread of angels’. By granting their request, God made them, in a sense, into a tower of Babel. They became their own wicked desires. Their death, then, functions in much the same manner as Babel’s destruction: by destroying them at the pinnacle God simultaneously (and graciously) reveals their own transgression. We might the analogy in a different way: if Israel is God’s unfaithful wife, she (believes she) has succeeded in shaming her husband into providing for her rich garments. God does so only to take her into the midst of a crowd and strip her naked. This act may seem incredibly callous except for the fact that its brutality is meant to address the brutality of her request. And, in fact, what we see here is that even in the midst of their punishment—even in the midst of the necessary brutality of death—they continue to sin. It is a deeply, deeply damning indictment on Israel. And reveals the fact that even death is not enough for them. Their rebellion surmounts even the death of their children. As we will see later, God relents in his punishment; Israel does not.