Ps. 83.15-18 (the grace of judgment)

So pursue them / with your tempest
terrify them / with your storm;
fill their faces / with humiliation
so that they will seek / your name / O Yhwh. 

Violence and shame. There is no question but that the psalmist envisions God’s judgment as one of a consuming act of violence. It was clear in the preceding verses, as the enemies became dust and chaff and, more to the point, a forest and mountain consumed by flames. Of course, this act of violence is, as we have seen, something that is fashioned out of their enemies’ own act of unjust violence. Here, that ‘fashioning’ is deepened: it is now “your tempest” and “your storm”. It is not the case, in other words, that the wicked’s acts simply return upon them. Rather, in God’s presence they become ‘judged’ and, as such, become fashioned into a weapon of judgment. Now, what was the wicked’s has become Yhwh’s. In this way it becomes the inverse of grace: whereas grace is ‘taken in’ to man’s womb and, in being ‘actively appropriated’, made into the earthly blessing, man’s evil ascends to heaven and, therein, is fashioned into an object of curse. That said, there is an important caveat: whereas with blessing, there is, in a sense, no further ‘end’ to blessing, with curse, there is. As we see here, the weapon of judgment is not simply destruction. Rather, it is a tool whose end is “seeking the name of Yhwh”. Here, the curse is penultimate, not ultimate (as it is with blessing). This act of violence and its purpose serves as an important contrast to verse 4 where the wicked together call for the extermination of Israel, her name being erased. The wicked’s act of violence is ultimate. It is total. It serves no purpose other than the annihilation of Israel. Yet, when this ‘ultimate act of violence’ is expropriated by God and fashioned into judgment it is modified—the wicked do not receive exactly what they perpetrated; had they, the judgment would be an act of extinction. Rather, what they receive is something that is, ultimately, an act of grace and mercy (this is the vision of purgatory). It is a tool and not purely an act of vengeance. This is astonishing; and it is not something we witness in every psalm (it is not uncommon for the psalmist to be calling out for the ‘ultimate judgment’).  What is ultimately being sought here is not the destruction of the ten-headed beast but its conversion (through the penance of humiliation and shame of course). One might call this a ‘higher order’ than vengeance, but it should not lose sight of the clear ‘joy of vengeance’ that is at the heart of the psalm: images of dust, chaff, consumed forests and mountains are images that display the ‘joy of vengeance’ (which is the joy of justice enacted). Further, as nations, what we are witnessing here is a type of “kingdom judgment”. The psalmist is seeing Israel as the ‘hub’, surrounded by vassal-states, all now appropriately ordered in a circle around the throne of Yhwh.