Ps. 89.44 (throne to the ground)

You have made / his glorious ruleship cease
and thrown / his throne to the ground. 

These lines begin the final notes that will be struck as the psalmist begins to turn toward his petitioning-questions. As such, they are the denouement. What we witness in these lines is the ending of the ‘forever’ that has rang throughout the psalm and constituted its very center. The ‘forever’ of Yhwh that was opened up to Israel (and the world), in David, is now cut off. Yhwh has made David’s rule “cease”—the precise reversal of his ‘forever’. The ‘forever’ that both marks his heavenly character, sung by the angelic ‘holy ones’, and the ‘forever’ that is made accessible through the David covenant. In other words, the ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. Heaven is now sealed off from earth; that which had been ‘torn open’ in and through David and made to stream down upon Yhwh’s people, is now eclipsed and withdrawn. This is not just the cessation of David, but the closing of heaven. This sense is portrayed in the following line as Yhwh ‘throwing down’ (casting out?) David’s throne to the ground. The ‘ground’ has figured prominently in the lament section. When David’s throne is established it “continues forever as the sun before me; as the moon established forever” (vs. 36). Now, however, within the gaze of his anger, David’s crown is “defiled in the dirt” (vs. 39); his fortifications are broken and reduced to ruins (vs. 40). This contrast between the heavenly bodies and the earth is clearly deliberate. When David’s throne stood within the covenantal gaze of Yhwh it took the features of a heavenly throne; it mediated heavenly power to earth (making it…Eden). Now, by contrast, that throne is not merely ‘abandoned’, but ‘thrown’ to the ground. As we have said before, this ‘fall of David’s house’ is not merely a ‘failure’, but a ‘casting down’. David throne falls with a greater thunderous bang than any other throne because it was raised up higher than any other throne could be raised. The ‘glory’ of his throne is not merely eclipsed; it is blown out. 

A concluding remark: I think there is latent in these lines something a resurrection core. What I mean is this: when we put the lament section in the context of the entire psalm, specifically when we compare this ‘cessation’ of David’s throne with the ‘forever’ that is promised to David, we witness the psalmist conviction that, in fact, the forever covenant has come to an end but that, also, it can be restored. The whole point of the lament is it being a prayer of redemption. To the psalmist the forever covenant has died. This, however, is not the final word. We see this in many other psalms, especially those of sickness—even when the body is shattered and beyond repair; even when it is ‘in Sheol’; it can, in Yhwh, be ‘remade’. There is a glimpse of this in Abraham himself, who was physically ‘dead’ but made alive ‘in Yhwh’. Up to Abraham all men were ‘fruitful and multiplied’, but in Abraham Yhwh made him fruitful, even though he was long past the age of childbearing (as was Sarah). What we see then is that even in the vision of something that is shattered and dead (not dying, but dead and beyond earthly ability to rise), Yhwh can still be appealed to in order to bring life. This psalm is, in this way, a type of the vision Ezekiel sees of the ‘valley of bones’. The Davidic house is ‘in the dirt’ and utterly ‘profaned’, just as the bones of Ezekiel are not buried and utterly devoid of life. What Ezekiel witnesses however (and what Abraham and Sarah experience) and what this psalmist cries out for, is the power of Yhwh that lies both beneath and above every darkness. In this, what we come to see is that the ‘sovereignty’ of Yhwh that has been stressed over and over throughout this psalm, is one that is sovereign even over the chaos of death (vs. 9). 

One might say that, continuing the Abraham analogy, that the cessation of the Davidic house is like the ‘binding of Isaac’. Isaac and David both came from and were established by Yhwh’s power. They both were ordered to be killed—these ‘sons of Yhwh’. In Isaac, the knife was withheld; in David, it appears as if the knife has fallen. In both, there is a conviction (in Abraham; and in the psalmist) that they will ‘return from the mountain’, even after the death of the ‘son’. It is telling, therefore, that this psalm ends on a question—as it could not have been foreseen that the final resurrection was one that would not be accomplished over death but through the death of the only son (the Isaac, the David, the Christ). When Yhwh returned to his temple and become king on earth as in heaven, the thrones would be unified through the conquering of death, and thereby the earthly forever would be resurrected into the heavenly one, the ‘bones’ of the shattered king would receive flesh, and the son of David would be made the eternal king and the eternal ‘son of the sacrifice’ (the akedah).