Ps. 79.8 (forgetting form)

Remember not / our wayward acts / of the past
let your compassion / come quickly / to meet us
for we are down and out. 

An initial reading of this psalm may leave the impression that this verse is out of place. Why, all of the sudden, is there injected into the psalm this statement of culpability? There seems to be no precedent for it and it does not emerge again later  (except in the immediately following verse, which is part-and-parcel to this verse). And yet, importantly, this verse comes at precisely the middle of the psalm; of the 40 lines, it is line 21. I think there is an answer to this but it requires us paying closer attention to the form the psalmist has employed thus far. The psalm seems to progress in this fashion: A. Recounting of the acts of the nations (vs. 1-3); these are focused on the external acts against Israel. B. Questioning how long God will be angry (vs. 4-5); focus on the internal life of Israel. B1. Focus on God’s response to the nations (vs. 6); external approach to their enemies. A1. Asking God to ‘remember not’ their waywardness (vs. 8); internal approach to Israel. When mapped out in the fashion, we can actually see how this verse is completely consistent with and a response to verses 4-5. As we saw in our reflection on those verses, the influx of the nations was preceded by an act (or, acts) on Israel’s part that instigated his anger. We observed how anger makes a person double; both for and against the same person. This ‘doubling’ of God caused a tension in the language—God was both responsible for and yet completely against the acts of the nations. His anger was his removal of his protective hand (as in Job…). Their waywardness, in other words, caused a breach, and through it flooded the nations. Now, in this portion of the psalm that seeks God’s response to the problem, Israel looks to heal that breach (the cause of the anger) by imploring God to “remember not” their waywardness and to let his compassion come quickly. Notice—and this is key—how God’s doubling in anger is remedied by a doubling: an act that looks to passively ‘forget’ (remember not), and to actively move toward (in compassion). It is a complete reversal of the original anger. There, God’s ‘forgetfulness’ led to the nations incoming, while his activity was that of ‘anger and jealous’. Here, the ‘forgetfulness’ is turned to their sin; and his ‘anger and jealousy’ turned to compassion.  As we have noted in so many laments before, the psalmist is appealing to God to enact the great reversal, and as the world begins to be erected right-side-up, it is built upon a meticulous answering to that which undermined it to begin with. The form of the psalm, then, mimics the content.