Ps. 89.42 (injustice, duality and deliverance)

You have raised / the right hand / of his foes
you made all his enemies rejoice.

Our previous reflection focused on the utter powerlessness of David now that Yhwh has repudiated his covenant. He is not even able to protect himself from those ‘passing by’. It must be said that the state of vulnerability there was/is absolute. In these verses, the focus shifts slightly, but remains entirely centered on David’s powerlessness. Here, the psalmist turns his gaze to David’s enemies and what he sees is not the fact that David cannot defend himself from them in their own power, but he sees Yhwh himself ‘raising their right hand’. In a sense, Yhwh is now at war with David through David’s enemies. But the ‘problem’ goes much deeper. The psalmist has employed descriptions of rejoicing up to this point of the psalm, but always in the context of rejoicing over Yhwh’s faithfulness. Importantly, verse 16-17 speak of Yhwh’s people “rejoicing in your name all day long…for you are the glory of their strength…”. What we see there is that ‘rejoicing’ occurs in the ‘glory of Yhwh’s strength’, his divine backing of his people against their enemies. It is, in other words, a militaristic joy. In our verses, that rejoicing is not given to David’s enemies (“you raised their right hand - you made all his enemies rejoice”). This is also what happens with ‘the hand’. In verse 25, Yhwh says, “I will put his right hand on the rivers.” Now, he ‘raises the right hand’ of David’s enemies. The point seems unmistakable—the ‘blessings of the covenant’ (‘hand empowerment’ and rejoicing) are being given to David’s enemies, the agents of chaos he was empowered to quell as Yhwh’s regent on earth (his ‘image’ on earth). However, this is clearly not a ‘reporting’ but a lament; the point is not to ‘tell Yhwh how they feel’ but to almost demand that Yhwh change the present reality. By playing off the first portion of the psalm against the enemy/lament portion, the psalmist is attempting to ‘argue his case’ to Yhwh for him to reignite his covenant with David. In other words, his portrayal of the transfer of covenant blessings is rooted in the incredible sense of injustice that this entails. We need to emphasize again: this is a covenant lament in that it rises from and within the covenant.  The covenant both causes the lament and is the reason for the hope contained in the lament. 

What both of these realities point to—even perhaps more than the ‘transfer of blessing’—is the fact that Yhwh is now portrayed as actively against David. No longer is there a suspicion of simply abandonment. Yhwh is not merely standing aside passively. This may point to a further, more subtle reality—that in the light of Yhwh’s gaze there can be no true ‘neutral’ space of Yhwh’s pure passivity. What I mean is this—there is a constant ambiguity in the psalms when it comes to Yhwh’s wrath between activity and passivity. On the one hand, it often appears in the guise of Yhwh’s abandonment such that his wrath is most evident by his avoiding, or refusing, his protection. On the other hand, the imagery is often of his activity (as here when he ‘raises the right hand’). This ambiguity may stem from the psalmist’s conviction of Yhwh’s complete sovereignty over his creation. We need to keep the logic of this psalm in view to understand this—the first portion of the psalm demonstrates the fact that Yhwh is entirely without equal. His mastery over Rahab can only very leniently be called a ‘battle’. There is never any doubt that he has the authority over her to utterly subdue and control her. This utter mastery then plays into the covenant itself, especially in light of the fact that its perpetuity does not depend on David (or his sons’) faithfulness. If the covenant flounders it is not due to an enemy of Yhwh threatening him, nor to David---it can only be attributed to Yhwh’s ‘turning’ or ‘repudiation’. As such, Yhwh becomes the absolute center (or, lord) of both creation (mastery over Rahab) and covenant (with David). His sovereignty is not ‘one among many’. For this reason, his ‘wrath’ is not something that occurs in the same dynamic as other beings or gods. Why? Because for Yhwh to ‘turn away’ is not to leave the person in some ‘other sphere’. There is no ‘space’ other than in Yhwh’s sovereign control. Yhwh is the only sphere of activity. 

Now, rather than fully fleshing this out, we need to put down a marker in this reflection: the fact that there is something resembling ‘passivity’ and ‘activity’ in Yhwh’s wrath/anger does highlight the fact that these two realities cannot simply be collapsed into each other. We must always remember that for the psalmist Yhwh is not simply the ‘absolute sovereign’ but he is also the ‘absolute good’. For that reason, when Yhwh is angry something like the duality inherent in anger becomes apparent; he is simultaneously ‘for’ and ‘against’ the offender. But these are clearly not equal to each other. He is not ‘equally’ for and against the offender. Rather, his anger is always penultimate to his pleasure. What is the point of this for our reflection? I think that in the face of injustice, the psalmists often enter into this realm of duality and they oscillate between their portrayals of Yhwh’s involvement (passivity, or activity). This duality, however, does not point to a type of infinite ground of sovereignty where they are equal to each other. Quite the opposite—because it originates from and within the face of injustice, the duality itself is premised on Yhwh’s ‘prior’ goodness and ability to heal the division. In other words, were these realities ‘equal’ in Yhwh, there would be no lament, but a type of profound and overwhelming perception that, in Yhwh, light and darkness are but two perspectives on the same sovereign ‘ground’ of authority and power. That is not the experience of the psalmist. Injustice engenders lament because the psalmists are utterly convinced that in Yhwh his sovereignty is perfectly manifested in his goodness. And they are likewise convinced that the experience of duality is a penultimate experience of Yhwh, and not an ultimate one. As we will see, this is why (I would argue) these laments can end on a question and not resolve themselves.  Because Yhwh is utterly sovereign and because he is utterly good, there can be no ‘resolution’ of injustice short of the enactment of deliverance. We can repeat what we have said before—the psalmist is looking for deliverance, not answers. In other words, injustice is always met (in the end) not with philosophy or contemplation, but with lament and prayer.