Ps. 79.10 (a question within a question)

Why / should the nations say

Where / is their God? 

In context. We will look more closely, later, at the content of the two questions asked in this psalm. Here, we need to focus on their formal placement in the psalm. The first question of “How long…” emerges directly on the heels of Israel’s complaint regarding their profaned reputation among their neighbors. They are a visible and public object of shame. The second question follows the same patter—it comes directly on the heels of the petition to God to help Israel “for the glory of your name…for your name’s sake”. So, the first question is focused on reversing the loss of Israel’s reputation while the second question focuses on reversing the loss of God’s reputation. They both emerge from a complaint about the terrible effect of public shame (the loss of powerful glory and respect) on their mutual ‘names’.  There is a further important similarity between the two: they both emerge from, or respond to, Israel’s waywardness. The first question explicitly finds in Israel’s present horror the effect of their waywardness—God is angry with them. The second question follows immediately on the call to God to “remember not our wayward acts” and “pardon our sins”. In both questions, then, we see how the removal of sin and a question posed to God as to the unrighteous present either coincide or the removal of sin precedes the question. In this psalm, the chasm torn open by Israel’s waywardness must be addressed before or during the question to God (both questions being, of course, implicit petitions). It is, in fact, their waywardness that has created the absurdity contained in both questions.

Two questions. Two questions are asked in this psalm. How long is he to be angry with the psalmist and his people (vs. ) and the question in this verse. They are, in fact, very similar questions. Both questions focus on how others are responding to Israel (the first: God; the second: the nations). Both questions essentially ask “how long” (the first: as to God’s anger; the second: as to the taunt of the nations); they both want the ‘age to turn’ (upside down). Perhaps more the point, they both question why God presence is allowed to be hidden in shame. Note, it is not a question about why God’s presence is, simply, ‘hidden’. Rather, both questions emerge from a sense that God’s presence and glory should be fully public and unquestionable; it should not seem contained. However, in the present, the reverse of that ‘publicity’ is the degradation of shame. Again, we must keep in mind the focus of verses 1-3—defilement has covered, literally, everything (all of God’s inheritance). The ‘taunt of the nations’ in our verse is simply another expression of that. It is that ‘filth’ that has become the expression of God’s hiddenness. The differences. The first question looks for Israel to be ‘raised up’ by the cessation of God’s anger and his ‘sent mercy’. The second looks for the nations to be ‘torn down’ from their superior and mocking stance. The first places before God Israel’s own experience of suffering-present. The second places before God the mocking call of the nations. In this we find here a hidden connection the first—as the first originated from the ‘jeers’ of the neighbors, so the second originates from the jeers of the nations.

Or are there three. Within this second question is actually a nested third question, that one posed by the nations to Israel. It is a question within a question. Israel asks God why the nations ask “Where is their God?” We find here the explicit concern of God’s hiddenness, except now it is placed not on the mouth of Israel but of the nations. This is an important device. The first question directed to God is, of course, a question-as-petition. It asks “how long..” but is meant to convey, “please cease this time of non-time” (stop being angry with us). As we saw there, the question actually offered a glimmer—it acknowledged that the horrors that had been perpetrated were not acts of the nations conquering Yhwh. Rather, they were, in fact, expressions of Yhwh’s anger. Their history is, in other words, contained within Yhwh’s will; were they to assume what many others would have assumed—that the destruction of Yhwh’s Temple occurred because Yhwh was unable to defend his own home—they would have been ushered out of their god’s will (and out of his sacred time) and into either an atheistic history or the history of another god. And that is precisely what the nations’ question taunts Israel with: “Where is their God?” means “Under whose authority (glory) do you now stand? None”. The nations’ have perceived their actions as not being an expression of Yhwh but of their own gods. Yhwh is not hidden from view; he is defeated. This is an incredibly important point to make: Israel identifies herself with the first question and distances herself from the second. However, the second question was the one that was more ‘apparent’. In Israel, then, there lived and abided a perception of history that was not only incredibly at odds with a reigning conception of history but also one that they actually found to be the more “true” (or, persuasive). The first question is theirs; the second question can only emerge from those who “do not know” or “call upon” the Divine Name. Hence, to “know Yhwh” and to “call upon him” actually ushers one into an arena of being that is profoundly different, so different in fact that it transforms the heart of his servants to such a degree that their deepest questions are of such a different order as to make them seem incomprehensible to others. And this is what we can see by the form of this question—the question of the nations is, literally, contained within Israel’s question to God. By offering it to God, they reveal the great distance between their hearts and the nations. This is, in effect, what it means to “know and call upon Yhwh”—it enables one to contain the world’s questions within a more encompassing one (a question, nonetheless) thereby denuding their mocking power within a greater absurdity.