Ps. 78.39 (wisdom, history, death and mercy)

He remembered / that they were flesh 
spirit which passes / and does not return. 

Taken in itself, this verse is not strange. Taken in context, it seems at first glance to be out of place. In itself: the fact of man’s ephemeral and short-lived life is fairly common to the psalms. It often emerges in the context of its juxtaposition to God’s everlasting life and the need on the psalmist’s part to be delivered from his present trouble so as to continue praising God. What is strange here is the fact that this observation comes not from man to God (in petition), but from God to man—God remembers this and ceases the full venting of his wrath. Taken in context: The note struck here is seemingly very jarring. Why is this the reason for God’s compassion and mercy? It seems odd because all of the sudden a very non-historical observation is made, directly in the midst of the very rooted narrative of God’s dealing with Israel, and yet becomes the basis for a very historical moment of God’s mercy. This observation is not dependent, or conditioned, in any way, on what has preceded it. And, further, the psalm will immediately plunge back into the history following this verse. Why then does the historical act of God’s interacting with Israel become conditioned on something that is, in fact, not historical at all? Man is always ephemeral. I think there is something rather important in this. First, this verse strikes us an historical moment; an ‘act of memory’ on God’s part. And yet the content of that memory is the abiding and constant reality of man’s ephemeral nature; it is not turned away because of a sacrifice or an intercession. Second, this abiding nature of man becomes the source for the seemingly historical moment of God’s mercy and compassion in withholding his total destruction of Israel. Third (and this is crucial and may be the summarizing of the two above): the flame of God’s wrath that did erupt, erupted in response to a direct, historical challenge on Israel’s part to God. However, when that wrath is restrained in mercy, it is done so based on an abiding reality of man (it is not conditioned on an historical moment).  I think what we see is this: that God is both temporal and a-temporal. He responds directly to man, but he also, almost philosophically, conditions his response according to an abiding reality. A parent, of course, does the same with a child (responding directly, but conditioning that response to the nature of the child). There are many important insights from this—the more man moves into this perception of the a-temporal nature of things, it is not the case that man moves away from history. Rather, man moves more into the modes of ‘memory’ that God employs in order to condition his (God’s) historical responses to man. ‘Wisdom’ from this vantage is anything but non-historical (or, at odds with the historical), but compliments and is a necessary aspect to understanding God’s real responses in history; indeed, here it is necessary to understanding God’s compassion itself.  Tension: man’s ephemeral nature is here not portrayed as a negative. Rather, it is a profound blessing in that it operates as the source of God’s compassion. This actually tracks the Genesis account on some level: man was cursed with death so that he would not become an immortal monster (in the same way that the Tower of Babel was torn down and the languages scattered in order to prevent man’s monstrosity). It seems as if death is actually what prevents Israel’s annihilation.