Ps. 79.4 (the final rung)

We have become / subjects of contempt / to our neighbors
of scorn and derision / to those around us. 

Contempt. Of central importance to the psalmist and his people is the fact that their reputation (their publicity) to those around them is of “contempt, scorn and derision”. What they cannot do is retreat into a type of indifference to the opinion of others. Rather, in these verses, how they are viewed actually comes at the conclusion of the litany of horrors that the nations have perpetrated against them. Whether this is a type of ‘ultimate horror’ (the final and worse effect) is not clear; what is clear is that this concluding line must be read within the context of the preceding lines such that it is not dulled by a denigration of the power of shame. For the psalmist, how “we” are viewed by “our neighbors” is just as terrible as the consuming of the holy ones by animals. God’s presence and absence are public phenomenon. When he is present, life abounds in the land; when he is absent, the “nations come into your inheritance”, defile his holy temple, kill his servants, leave them unburied and as a meal for animals, and then encircle the city and drench the Land with their blood. All of these actions are meant as public acts of shame and defilement. Up to this point, these could have been viewed ‘internally’—how the psalmist and his people react in horror. Here, however, what we see is the ‘external’ reaction—how those around them respond to the horror. And this external response is deeply troubling to them. On one level it is troubling because it signals their complete vulnerability: without a divine protector they are open to plunder and further destruction. On another level it points to the fact that there is no hiatus to them between how God acts ‘privately’ and how he acts ‘publicly’—the totality of human life is consumed by God’s divine power, not a portion of it. As such their ‘reputation’ (their public well-being) participates in the same sacredness that the Temple, the people and the Land participate in. It, just like those, can be ‘defiled’. For the Temple: that means defilement; for Jerusalem: destruction; for servants: being left unburied and as a meal for animals; for the Land: drenched in holy blood; for reputation: subject to contempt, scorn and derision. Their very existence has become a visible emblem of God’s abandonment. And this ‘visibility’ serves as the final, and consuming, statement of their existence. From the internal to the external they are covered in shame. 

A glimmer. There is something in this though that strikes a deep note of transformation. What I mean in this: that only what is sacred can be defiled. In this final verse what we come to see is that literally everything is regarded as sacred, consumed in and made holy by its participating within God’s holiness. The psalm arguably moves in a type of hierarchical descent: Temple, Jerusalem, people, Land, neighbors. Further, this descent outlines the contours of the psalmist’s ‘state of being’: his liturgical celebration in the presence of God (Temple); his communal relation-to-others in the city (Jerusalem); his veneration of God’s servants (‘holy ones’); his international relation-to-others (reputation) in the world (his ‘neighbors’). Importantly, this final portion of the hierarchy reveals that how they ‘shine’ to others (reputation) is itself a sacred ‘showing forth’ of God’s holiness. This is going to play a decisive role later in the psalm as it will be employed by the psalmist to cajole God to come to their aid. There, he will appeal to God’s reputation as restoring theirs.