Ps. 80.16 (burning away history)

May they perish / at the rebuke of your face. 

We have noted throughout the fact that heaven has been sealed off from earthy by way of the ‘fumes’ of God’s anger. We have also seen how the psalm is itself the attempt to part those fumes so that God’s ‘shining face’ and ‘cherubim throne’ can descend from heaven and provide the Vine with its necessary protection and life. Within that imagery one can perceive the sun being hidden by clouds. Not only does the lack of sunlight prevent necessary growth but also creates a darkness whereby enemies can hide. Here, the ‘vagrants’, ‘boars’ and ‘field animals’ are allowed to operate with abandon so long as the sun/face remains covered. However, once God “looks down” and “inspects” his Vine, not only does the Vine receive its necessary vigor and life, but those creatures that were previously permitted to operate in the darkness of the face, are now subjected the “rebuke of your face”. There is in this something essential to note. To the ‘holy ones’ God’s face, when it is not covered by his wrath, ‘shines’. It is an unquestionably and utterly positive image of personal affected and love. However, when the face is revealed, it displays, toward the enemies, not a ‘shining’ face but a face ‘of rebuke’. This, of course, is no contradiction, paradox or difficulty. Anger is often merely the expression of love. As we argued in the previous post, the ‘face of rebuke’ is grounded in a prior ‘inspection’ of the Vine; meaning, it is grounded in God’s prior sadness over the state of ‘his son’, the Vine. It is his love of ‘his son’/Vine that now causes him to turn in fury toward the animals that have been feeding upon it. We have seen this throughout our psalms: injustice creates the duality inherent to anger (the love of the object creates the wrath of anger). It is the source of the ‘great reversal’ that we trace in almost every complaint. Here, that ‘reversal’ is captured by the fact that the Vine was previously on the verge of destruction and of perishing at the maw of the animals. Now, when God’s face emerges, it is the beasts that will ‘perish’. That which had been subject to death (the Vine) is made alive; that which had been alive (the beasts) is now subject to death. This is the necessary ‘movement toward unity and integrity’. 

The fact, however, that this (re)establishment of unity is created by way of judgment and perishing is important for another reason: in the light of God’s face everything is not ultimately reconciled. The threads of history are not ultimately patched together in some beautiful quilt. Rather, a portion is ‘cut off’ and found to be damnable. The horror and disfigurement of God’s Vine is, in a way, useless and serves no real purpose. It is crucial to see that God’s face destroys and causes perishing. There is detritus caked onto history that must be burned away by his face. It is precisely because of this fact that history/time must be viewed from the perspective of heaven, not necessarily because of the ability to perceive the detritus (although it may be the case that earth has no way, of itself, of arriving at that judgment) but because, in the end, judgment is what is sought, not just comprehension. And judgment can only be enacted by way of heaven.