Ps. 78.46-47 (rain of wrath; rain of blessing)

And he gave / to the grasshopper / their crops
and their produce / to the locust swarm
He killed their vines / with hail
and the sycamore tree / with the frost. 

We observed the phenomenon in the previous reflection on how God’s acts towards Israel’s enemies is one that essentially forms the reverse of his acts of blessing toward them. Toward Israel God provides ‘streams and rivers in the desert’; toward her enemies, he kills her ‘streams and dessert’ in their own vicinity. Here, we see that momentum moving forward. Toward Israel God then provided ‘bread’. Here, toward her enemies, God ‘gives over’ and ‘kills’ the produce of the land: their crops, produce, vines and sycamore tree. Important to note (although not mentioned previously) is the fact that this reversal occurs not simply at the level of vegetation. Rather, it also occurs at the level of geography: Israel is ‘in the wilderness’; they are ‘wanderers’ without a home. The Egyptians, on the other hand, are attacked in their own land. In a way it is the ‘lowly being raised up while the mighty are cast down’. Opening heaven: When Israel was given bread, it was no merely natural bread. Rather, it came down from heaven and was the ‘bread of angels’. Its descent is repeatedly cast in terms of ‘rain’: God “commanded the skies above, and opened the doors of heaven, and rained downon them manna to eat…”. Here, the reverse is on display: rather that manna ‘raining’ from the sky, God sends ‘hail and frost’ to destroy their crops. Clearly, this is not merely literary cleverness nor historical recounting. It is conveying the theological insight of God’s dealing with his people and their enemies and it accords with the ‘logic of wrath’ we have traced in nearly every psalm that deals with it—when the evil are cast down they are done so in one of two ways: 1) in reverse to their behavior (if they dig a pit they will fall in it); or 2) in reverse to the blessing God bestows on the righteous (if he gives them water, he will turn the enemies’ water to blood). God’s wrath is then a ‘revelation of truth’. We might put it this way: God’s wrath is what turns man’s evil into a curse. It ‘truths’ the evil, and in this ‘truth-ing’ makes it into a curse. This is why, I think, these ‘signs’ that God places in Egypt are not simply objects but effective ‘transformations’. They are, in other words, curses. Perhaps more profound, however, is this: They look forward to the blessings that God will bestow on Israel and are conformed to that reality.  This is really deep insight. We have always remarked on how God’s curses are ‘penultimate’; God’s blessings are the ‘ultimate’ aim. Here, we see how that reality is worked out in historical fashion: that the plagues in Egypt are shaped according to the blessings that Israel will experience after they are ransomed. The future is not merely a response to the present; the “present-of-wrath” is just as much—indeed, more—a response to the future (in other words, God’s wrath is teleologically ordered, which is why it is always penultimate, and not ultimate). One final point. When we compare the rain on the Egyptians and the ‘rain of manna’ on the Israelites (rain of curse to rain of blessing), we note a very different emphasis in deployment. When God acts in wrath he acts according to an almost rigid logic/justice; when he acts according to blessing, there is a type of prodigality to it. We saw this when comparing the two ‘splittings of water’: when the red sea was split it was ‘built’ and ‘stood up like a wall’; when the water in the river flowed, it “runs like rivers” and emerges as “from a great deep”. The point, I think, is that God’s blessing is festive while his wrath operates in a much more ‘restrained’ (though powerful) manner. Notice that in this psalm the only thing that is ‘held back’ is God’s wrath (vs. 38); when God bestows his blessing, he gives ‘full vent’ to it.