Ps. 78.49-51 (the culmination)

He sent / his burning anger / against them
fury / and indignation / and distress
a band of angels / of calamity
who prepared / a path / for his anger.
He did not spare them / from death
and their lives / he delivered to the plague.
He struck down / all the firstborn / of Egypt
the firstfruits / of virility / in the tents of Ham.  

Israel and Egypt: Divergence. The plagues thus far have largely been confined to a single verse. At this point of the final plague, however, the psalmist slows down considerably. The entire drama of the plague unfolds. This should not come as a surprise given our observation about the mirroring of these plagues with the experience of Israel in the wilderness in verses 12-41. There, the most detailed description of the narrative is provided at the final enactment of God’s anger, when he starts his killing and his fury erupts. The same is mirrored here. As with Israel, the final plague begins in wrath and anger. In both his anger is portrayed as a flame (vs. 31, it “flares up”; vs. 49, his “burning anger”). Both involve the killing of human life. And both, most importantly, involve not the indiscriminate elimination of human life but, rather, the community’s most cherished men: vs. 31, he “killed their best men”; vs. 51, the “firstborn” and “firstfruits” are struck down. Here is where we come to a crucial insight—up to this point the ‘history of Egypt’ and the ‘history of Israel’ have not only diverged but been mirror opposites of each other. Convergence. However, now they converge. And they converge at this point of anger, fury and death. This is fascinating not so much for what it says about Egypt but about Israel---they do not have a privileged status in front of God when it comes to his anger. Rather, when his ‘killing anger’ erupts on them, it erupts on them just as it did with Egypt. The literary mirroring of the two points to the fact that Israel will suffer the same fate as Egypt. In a sense, when God’s anger ‘flares up’ in the wilderness it shows how the ‘Passover’ is not something that has been made permanent. Rather, as the psalm emphasizes over and over, it must be continuously remembered to be (continuously) efficacious. Wrath Internal and External. With that said, there is a key difference between Israel’s experience of God’s wrath and Egypt’s. When God’s begins his ‘killing’ of the Israelites he does, at one point, withhold the full venting of his wrath in an act of mercy; he “remembers that they are flesh”. However, nowhere is this mercy or withholding referred to regarding the Egyptians. Rather, they experience the full brunt of God’s wrath; there is no ‘mercy’ or ‘remembrance’ in the midst of their deaths. What we see then is an internal and external enactment of wrath. Internally, Israel is not safe-guarded from experiencing God’s wrath but they do stand within a covenant with him such that he will enact his mercy toward them and save them from the full brunt of his wrath (he won’t destroy them). Externally, however, toward Israel’s enemies, that full wrath can be experienced; total destruction can take place. Toward them there is no mercy. That said, this external ‘full venting’ is in service of a goal; it is, as always, penultimate. There is a clue to this in these verses. God’s angels are referred to as preparing a ‘path’ for God’s anger. This ‘path’ is referred to again, though, once Egypt is destroyed—now, it is the path that Israel will travel as they follow God, their shepherd. What this means is that the ‘path’ of God’s anger is to ultimately lead to the establishing of the path of deliverance for his people. God’s wrath is in service to his deliverance. Death of Man. Up to now Egypt’s history has never been described as one of anger but of signs. This final plague will share many of the features of the previous plagues. It will be a ‘delivering to’, just as he ‘delivered’ their livestock and their flocks to hail and lightning bolts. Likewise, this final plague will also contain echoes of the agricultural destruction of the crops, vines and the sycamore tree—it will consist of the death of the ‘firstfruits of virility’. And yet, as we have commented on before, this final plague is the most devastating. The plagues have been moving up the ‘chain of being’, from water, to vegetation, to livestock and now to man. Creation itself followed a similar movement. Egypt is, in a very real way, being dis-created or unmade. It is, in other words, being torn down. And, with man, creation (and its destruction) reaches the pinnacle. Death of Man, David and Temple. Within the psalm this ‘pinnacle of death’ in both Egypt and (especially) in Israel is important because of where we find ourselves at the end: with David and the Temple. As we will see, there is another ‘death’ that is experienced at the height of God’s rage with Israel: the tearing away of the Shiloh sanctuary and his repudiation of the tribe of Joseph and Ephraim. Both of these removals will then be replaced with Zion and David (tribe of Judah). The point, I think, is that man is in David being (re)made just as creation, in Zion, is being (re)created.  Further, when these acts of death are performed they either create a displacement or homelessness or they take place ‘in the wilderness’. At the end of the psalm, by contrast, the land is established when Zion and David are chosen by God. What this means, I think, is that this fury of God is, in a sense, an exilic fury; it is always one that ‘banishes’ or uproots the one toward whom it is directed. In Zion, then, we see the culmination of this momentum: toward the hill that can’t be shaken, the Temple that ‘stands firm’. In this way Zion and the Temple stand in complete contrast to Egypt. The Temple is the place of life and solidity; Egypt the place of death and homelessness.