Ps. 89.9-10 (the beginning of holy saturday)

You are ruler / of the surging sea;
when its waves rise up / you can still them
You crushed Rabah / she was like a corpse
you scattered your enemies / with your powerful arm. 

The first portion of the psalm was a type of praise of Yhwh but cast in the third person; it didn’t address Yhwh directly. Now, however, the psalmist is shifting his voice directly to him. Almost every line in the next few verses will begin with ‘you’ or ‘yours’. The first verse speaks to Yhwh’s present rule while the second speaks the past establishment of that rule. These are not, I don’t think, to be taken in a strictly chronological fashion but more in a theological fashion. I find these verses to be largely parallel, describing the same thing but in different modes. What I mean is this: Rahab is often described as the ‘sea’ and in other mythologies, particularly Baal mythologies, she is the chaos sea that is conquered during the ascendancy and enthronement of the god. Here, Yhwh overtakes that story and he becomes the one who is understood as having ‘crushed’ her, just as he is now understood as being the ‘ruler of the surging sea’. What I think we see is that Yhwh’s mastery of the present forces of chaos is understood as being grounded not in a type of battle-that-might-be-lost but in a theologically (not chronologically) prior victory over chaos. In other words, the psalmist clearly recognizes that chaos has not been utterly destroyed; it is still at work and the ‘waves still rise up’. However, he also knows that it is subject to Yhwh’s reign; he ‘can still them’. It will not, and cannot, challenge his reign; its ‘queen’ has been destroyed.  It is tempting to say that the psalmist, in his perception of chaos, sees the ‘battle of Rahab’; he simultaneously sees the ongoing effect of chaos and perceives Yhwh’s victory, mastery and dominion over it. 

So why did the psalmist bring this up? What does this have to do with this psalm? There are several reasons I think, and they relate to Yhwh, David and the future. As to Yhwh: I think these verses operates in a somewhat analogous way that ‘heaven’ operates in the previous verses. Meaning, they describe a mode of Yhwh’s reign that is ‘utter light’. In the previous verses this took the form of liturgy—all the heavenly ones were turned toward Yhwh in liturgical praise of his faithfulness and his authorial glory. Here, it takes the form of ‘the establishment of his throne’. In both what we see is the unquestionable authority of Yhwh in both praise and in the enactment of his reign. I also think this is one reason why the ‘holy ones’ were introduced. They represent the forces in the ‘heavenly sphere’ that are in utter conformity with Yhwh’s reign; Rahab represents that force in the heavenly sphere that was utterly subjected to Yhwh’s reign. As to David: we will see later that this ‘governing power of Yhwh’ over the forces of chaos will be both wielded on behalf of David and given over to him. In verse 21, Yhwh’s ‘arm’ makes David strong and then, immediately, it begins to describe the fact that no enemy will get the better of him and I will beat to pieces his foes before him (vs. 21-23). In David the ‘battle of Rahab’ is continued. That divine power to subdue chaos is granted to David, Yhwh’s ‘son’ on earth. As to the future: this is where the lament emerges. David’s throne has been ‘cast to the ground’, the covenant seemingly abandoned by Yhwh. As such, that force that operated to withstand the ‘chaos sea’ has fallen and the waves are pouring in. Earthy is ceasing to mirror heaven—as the covenant with David was intended to accomplish—and, most troubling, that faithfulness that surrounds and establishes Yhwh’s throne is being called into question. 

It is tempting to put the matter this way: once the covenant is established with David, what happens on earth is absolutely tied to how one perceives and interacts with Yhwh. In other words, when Yhwh’s faithfulness was ‘only in heaven’, then what happened on earth would not call into question Yhwh’s person (his faithfulness). However, once Yhwh comes down from heaven and covenants himself (swears himself) to David, then he unalterably weds himself to the events on earth; what happens to David really does reflect Yhwh and his faithfulness. No longer can there be a hiatus between the earth and heaven. If Yhwh’s throne in heaven is established by his faithfulness, and if that throne-power is covenanted to David’s throne, then the destruction of David’s throne, quite literally, ‘stretches to heaven’. 

And this is where we come to what seems to me a deep resonance with Christ: in the fall of the Davidic house, it would appear that Israel is made to go through a ‘holy Saturday’, to, in some way, participate within that time when Christ was dead and before his resurrection, when the covenant was seemingly destroyed (only to be ‘raised up’ anew). And Chris, in turn, is made to go through the ‘time of Israel’; he is made to walk through the ‘fall of the house of David’ and enter into that ‘death of the covenant’ (Christ, in perhaps the most profound sense, did not participate in the Davidic covenant but was that covenant). As we know, the only way a covenant can be void is by the death of one of the parties…