Ps. 79.13 (return and redemption)

Then we / your people
the flock / of your pasture
will give you / thanks forever
to every generation / we will declare / your praise. 

Return and redemption. We didn’t have time to draw attention to an important shift between the opening lines and verse 12. Verse 4 says, “We have become the subject of contempt to our neighbors, of scorn and derision to those around us.” Verse 12 says, “Pay back sevenfold, into the bosoms of our neighbors, the contempt in which they have held you, O Lord.” Verse 12 clearly signals the answer, or call for redemption, of verse 3. These are the only two verses in the psalm that speak of ‘neighbors’ as opposed to ‘nations’ and refers to effect of Israel’s disempowerment and shame and how that is perceived by her surrounding peoples (her ‘neighbors’). The change in verses though is key. Verse 3 refers to “we” being the subject of ‘contempt’; verse 12 says it is the Lord who is held in contempt by the neighbors. To the psalmist, arguably, this was not a huge difference because the ‘state of the people’ is the manifestation of their god. If the people exist in shame and contempt, their god is held in shame and contempt. However, this observation holds a great deal of insight, particularly as we look at these concluding lines. We can summarize it thus: God’s people are not a ‘barrier’ to God and his glory but, rather, are the vehicle for that glory. That statement needs qualification though, which is clear from this psalm. The people of God see their current situation of degradation and shame as originating not in the powerlessness and shame of their god but in their waywardness and God’s anger at it. His ‘withdrawal’ is not, as the nations would have assumed, his defeat, but his anger. And yet, God cannot simply withdraw without consequence. In giving Israel his Name, he has given them his reputation. When he withdraws he permits his reputation to be sullied. He allows his reputation to be shamed. This is key, because as the psalm shifts to petitions for deliverance it carries a steady focus on the “revelation of the Name” to the nations (i.e., the restoration of glory to the Name that has been lost). In this there is a varied dynamic at work: the people’s sins are “remembered not” (vs. 8), signaling God’s “return to them”. This ‘return’ is a simultaneous return of God to his reputation and his Name. In the people’s redemption the Name is to be fully manifest to the nations (vs. 10 in particular and vs. 10-12 in general). What is key, then, is the fact that in the ‘reversal’ one can say either verse 3 (the contempt of the people) or verse 12 (the contempt of God) and be referring to the same movement of deliverance. In the people’s redemption, God’s name will be redeemed and revealed; when God’s name is redeemed and revealed, the people will be redeemed. Once this unity is achieved we arrive at our concluding verse. 

Covenant. To call themselves “your people” is to refer to them as God’s covenant people, his kin and family (“You will be my people and I will be your god”). Once the covenant power has been unleashed, achieving the revelation of the Name by and through the redemption of his people, what is achieved is liturgical exuberance. Even more forcefully stated: they enter into the liturgical ‘forever’ of God’s presence, the festivity of God. Here is the ultimate achievement of redemption. It is not merely well-being, but the prodigal exuberance and overwhelming and overflowing praise of God. Within that realm of festivity, the ‘forever generations’ enter and form a continuous chain of liturgy (“to every generation we will declare your praise”). This is the full revealing of the name. That which the nations had shattered and left in defilement and silence-of-death is here resurrected into the safe and perpetual presence of God. And, importantly, the ‘giving thanks to God’ could likely refer to the offering of sacrifices. The only place that could be accomplished is in the Temple, which the opening said was destroyed and defiled. We see here the intimation of a new Temple, a new liturgical center of God’s presence where abundance is perpetual. (Again, how appropriate that this psalm is still recited at the Wailing Wall…). 

A final note. One thing we have not tired of emphasizing is that whenever the psalmist approaches this ‘festivity of God’, he is clearly unable to express the consequent bliss of the vision. His language falters and begins to grope for images of perpetuity, of boundlessness and of prodigality. In other words, the beauty of God’s glory. I do not think this ‘failure’ on the psalmist part is unintentional however. Rather, the point is that the faltering of language is, oddly, an ability (a capacity) of language. Language, like creation in the presence of God, is made into ‘more than itself’; it is, in other words, ecstatic (it moves ‘out of itself’ in glory). This dynamism, of being ‘always more’, is what creates this sense of linguistic failure. It is very telling, in this regard, and as we have seen many times, that in the realm of ‘curse’ language operates in a very formal and measured way. It is often perfectly symmetrical and ordered. It is, in a way, fully in control of itself, able to contain its content. Blessing, by contrast, cannot contain its content because it (language) is being made more than what it is. That is the nature of liturgy—of being elevated, of being in ecstasy, of grace, of ‘faltering’. When language falters, it initiates.