Ps. 79.9 (consuming rift)

Help us / O God / of our salvation
for the glory / of your name
deliver us / and pardon our sins
for your name’s sake. 

The dynamic of pardoning sins is not simplistic in these two verses (vs. 8-9). We reflected yesterday on how God’s pardoning completely reverses the drama of verses 1-5. It is, in this way, not simply an act that takes place only in regard to waywardness. Rather, it is, in its fullest sense, a response. It therefore adopts the ‘drama of the call of sin’ and responds to it by overcoming (healing) it. Here, we come to see that the depth of Israel waywardness extends much further than their own well-being. This, of course, could have been anticipated by verses 1-3, where the immediate and primary effect of the nations is the destruction of the Temple (where God’s name dwells). However, it is in this verse where we see how deep the rift tears---and it tears all the way into God’s glory. This is the covenantal effect of waywardness. Meaning, within the covenant waywardness is not simply contained within the party who committed it. When God entered into covenant he, in a sense, ‘risked his glory’; he wed it to Israel. In so doing, her glory (her wellbeing) became a manifestation of his. And his glory, in some mysterious fashion, became a manifestation of hers. In this, we could even say, that Israel is God’s reputation in the world. She is, in other words, his publicity, his ‘face’ to the nations. It is at this point that we come to sense the terrible effect of her waywardness—it opens up a rift that begins to consume even this ‘face of God’ to the world. This is clear from verses 1-3, with the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem. This is not to say it ‘weakens God’; the psalmist is utterly convinced of God’s power to judge the kingdoms of the world and to forgive her sins. Rather, what it does is diminish the glory of God’s name. It eclipses it. Because God has wed himself to Israel his anger must, in some sense, make him at odds with himself (this is the ‘doubling’ of anger). Seen from this perspective I would propose that these lines actually refer to something concrete—the rebuilding of the Temple and Jerusalem. It does refer to the salvation (redemption) of Israel from her oppressors, but this redemption now is understood to involve the healing of the rift that consumed the Temple and Jerusalem; it will involve the redemption of the glory of God’s name. Within the forgiving of their sins, the Temple will be rebuilt (…much as the gospel of John says…). Once this is accomplished the ‘doubling’ of Israel’s sin will be healed, the nations subdued and the ‘doubling’ of God’s anger removed—and flowing from this will be a unified Temple (“descending from heaven…” to a pacified Land).