Ps. 89.45 (cut off too young)

You have cut short / the days of his youth

you have robed him / with shame. 

As we mentioned in the previous reflection, these final two verses represent the last of the psalmist’s complaints before he turns to his (haunting) questions. As such, this final verse is the last note struck and the one that should ring out the loudest (or, echo the longest). Here, at the bottom of the king’s descent to the ground, we are met with the words ‘cut short’. These words are very similar to the ‘cessation’ we reflected upon the previous verse. They point to the ‘drying up’ of the ‘forever’ that was (irrevocably) opened up in and through Yhwh’s covenant with David. Here, the focus is on the ‘days of his youth’. It is a perplexing (to me) image. The psalm is clearly composed long after David, and the fall of the Davidic monarchy. What then is this ‘days of his youth’? I think the answer lies in the fact that the covenant with David is portrayed as ‘perpetualized’ through his sons. In a sense, they are all ‘Davids’. We can see by the fact that the ‘him’ of the lament section (you have defiled his crown; his walls, his fortifications; plundered him; his foes; his enemies; etc….) is singular; it is not that Yhwh has does this to ‘them’ (David’s sons). The entire Davidic line is portrayed as single man/entity. The singularity to the Davidic line stems, at least in part, from the fact that the covenant itself is what delivers this ‘forever’ character to David and his sons—embodied as the perpetuation and protection of his descendants. As such, the ‘days of his youth’, I would propose, refers to the Davidic line, envisioned as a single “David”. In other words, the ‘days of his youth’ refers to the days of the youth of the perpetual Davidic covenant. His sons were cut off shortly after they began. The throne, and the house, was still ‘young’ when Yhwh cut it short. (It was as if he was only 33 when he was ‘cut short’…).

The second image focuses on the king’s clothing. Instead of the king being ‘robed in glory and honor’, Yhwh ‘robes him with shame’. The king is made to publicly ‘wear’ his shame. He is, in other words, made into a spectacle. It is not his ‘private’ experience that is so worthy of lament; it is his public display. The fact that he is made into that which is mocked and humiliated. This twin tragedy is the note that ends this portion of the psalm: mockery and the all-too-young-cutting-off. From this, the psalmist will spring-board into his questions to Yhwh.