Ps. 88.13-14 (questioning removal)

As for me / I have cried / for help to you / O Yhwh
and in the morning / my prayer has been before you.
Why O Yhwh / do you spurn me?
Why / do you hide your face from me? 

From the painful questions of Yhwh’s ‘death-wonders’ we come now to the psalmist’s exhortation to Yhwh. The psalmist is not simply informing Yhwh of his prayers. He is attempting to cajole Yhwh to act for him by making a ‘case’ for himself. In other words, he, in a sense, is trying to say he deserves to be heard by Yhwh. His statement leads into the question—I have petitioned you constantly, why (on earth) do you not listen? We need to hear the relationship between the petition and the questions. As to the petition, it largely recapitulates the first two verses: “…daily I cry out for help, nightly I am before you. Let my prayer come to your attention…”. In both we find this language of either the psalmist or his prayer being “before” Yhwh. In both, although he is standing in front of Yhwh, Yhwh is aloof to him, turning his face from him and being silent. It is a terrible sense of almost indifference. The psalmist is crying out in anguish, and Yhwh seems unmoved. 

From the psalmist’s cry—now comes what can only be his question, “Why…?”. The psalmist has no answer to Yhwh’s actions. He sees no reason for Yhwh to be acting in the way he is (there is no platitude that resolves the issue). He is, Job-like, unable to be appeased by any justification. As such, he becomes a question. We must notice in this regard the difference in tone between the opening verses and these. There, the psalmist moved from his description to petition: “I have cried out, let my prayer come to your attention.” Here, by contrast, he describes his petition but now follows it up with an almost accusatory question, “Why don’t you listen?”. The purpose is the same—the get Yhwh to move toward him. The tone is very different. The questions asked to Yhwh in today’s verses both ask why Yhwh is intentionally acting the way he is. “Why do you spurn me? Why do you turn your face from me?” We said above it was aloofness—I think it is better to say a type of active indifference. He does not say, “Are you spurning me, or are you turning your face?” He says Yhwh is doing that and hoping that, because there is no just answer, Yhwh will ‘repent’ of his behavior and turn back to him.  These questions are his ‘cries of anguish’ because they completely offend his sense of justice. 

One final thing to note. In many other psalms that share resemblances to this psalm, the source of the psalmist’s anguish is the fact that he is beset by enemies (either sickness or foes) and Yhwh seems to not be intervening on his behalf. There is none of that here. Everything is contained entirely in the will of Yhwh. The source of his suffering is Yhwh, not an enemy. This is the ‘perfection of wrath’ we spoke of earlier (seven complaints of Yhwh’s actions). I think we find something very important here. This psalm could have been written in a different ‘key’ so to speak. It could have been composed very similarly to those other psalms, for the sufferings he experiences are the same (isolation from friends due to affliction, etc…). This psalmist, though, focuses, entirely, on Yhwh’s ‘agency’ in his plight. Like Job, he is going to utterly isolate his sufferings and focus them on Yhwh. All ‘secondary-causes’ for his suffering are bracketed out. In doing so, he enters into this realm of contradiction and absurdity that we have been tracing. His images oscillate horribly. He cannot come to rest in any single description of his pain. And, I think at least in part, this is because of his entire focus on Yhwh. Once everything is ‘contained’ in Yhwh it all, so to speak, ‘bounces off each other’, echoing around in a horrible echo-chamber. Within this space there can be no recourse to another standard, no ‘third party’ to deflect the issue. This is why the psalmist, in what I think is the key verse of the psalm, says “I am closed in and cannot get out”. He is ‘closed in’ in Yhwh and cannot ‘get out’ of him. This is the sin-fallen side of the fact that we “live and move and have our being” in Yhwh. 

One important point, though, is that the psalmist is not looking for an ‘answer’ from Yhwh—he is looking for redemption and deliverance. He does not want the suffering in his life to be set within a larger context so as to more easily understand and live with it. Rather, he wants Yhwh’s ‘wonder-power’ to destroy his suffering. This is important—the fact that there is no ‘answer’ to his questions isn’t really the point because he is looking for Yhwh to actually alter the situation. His question of “why aren’t you doing anything?” is not his attempt to understand injustice, but his attempt to end it. I am not sure, in other words, that injustice is something that, properly speaking, can be ‘contemplated’ apart from a petition for its end, for its destruction. It is not a ‘thing’ over-against us that does not, always-already, involve our desire for its removal. Part of my point in this is that the psalmist’s perspective is valid (though can’t be seen as authoritative)—I believe that man’s relationship with God is one that is only perceived from a ‘constellation’ of different vantage points, none of which can be the entire one, but each of which is necessary and comprises the entire ‘form’ of the communion between them. They are ‘irreconcilable’ only in the sense that differing notes in a melody aren’t the same notes… This psalmist’s perspective is one that is, generally speaking (at least, I think I’m correct in saying this), a ‘star within the constellation’ that is often ameliorated by other more dominant stars. And, perhaps that should be the case. There is a reason why there are so few psalms like this in the psalter as there are so few books like Job. They are, almost literally, out-shown by the cannon. 

I’m not sure. I do think that this psalm points forward in a very profound way to what we alluded to earlier—that prayer that stretches from Gethsemene to the Cross: “not my will…(but)…why have you forsaken me”. It seems to me that the ‘space’ opened up by this psalm is a space that is inhabited by Christ toward the end of his life when he is suffering from the most acute forms of injustice. He is, in a way, inhabiting this ‘echo-chamber’ of the Father. There are many avenues one could take with this (that those quasi-rhetorical questions of 10-12 somehow are taken down with Christ into Sheol…). Most important (perhaps) is the fact that Christ’s prayer is a petitionary prayer—again, he is not looking for an answer but a reversal. But, again, I’m not sure, and I’d appreciate any thoughts on the matter. The depths are simply too deep for me to swim in right now.