Ps. 89.27 (Pt. 2; the greatest fall)

One thing I failed to point out in the previous reflection is how this verse thunders in the concluding lament portion of the psalm. In verses 39-40, the psalmist tells Yhwh that defiled his servant’s crown in the dirt and reduced his fortifications to ruins. In verse 44 he tells Yhwh that he has “thrown his throne to the ground”. Admittedly, David is here described as a “servant”, as in verse 20, and not a “son” or “firstborn”. The ‘geography of descent’ seems to point back to both verses 20 and the one here, verse 27. Verse 20 describes Yhwh “setting a boy over warriors” and “raising up a chosen one from the people”. Here, the firstborn is made “the most high of the kings of the earth”.  What occurs is clear, from the position of the ‘most high’ Yhwh casts down his servant to the dust. This is not merely ‘the downfall of the Davidic house’. The ‘raising up’ was, as we see in our verse today, part and parcel of David’s adoption by Yhwh as his firstborn son. The ‘fall of the Davidic house’ is, in the lament, Yhwh-father’s betrayal of the covenant. It stretches into the divine realm. David was raised up by a power infinitely greater than his own and for the purposes of serving as son to that power. The fall becomes thunderous because the distance covered is as great as (indeed, greater than) any human could fall: from the height of divine sonship to the dust of the earth.