Ps. 91.14a (speaking into Yhwh)

Truly, / I will keep safe / the one devoted to me. 

This line contains several fascinating features and, as such, I want to simply focus on it even though it is only half of verse 14. The first thing to note is that Yhwh has emerged and now speaks for himself. The psalmist is no longer speaking about or to Yhwh. It is an important and profound shift in the psalm, and one we will hopefully return to. For the moment, though, I want to highlight something in particular about how Yhwh speaks. He begins with the word, “Truly…” which recalls verse 3, when the psalmist says, “Truly he will save you from the fowler’s trap.” As well as verse 9, that closes the first portion of the psalm. Further, what Yhwh affirms about himself largely mirrors the psalmist’s portrayal of him. “Truly, I will keep safe the one devoted to me…”. We need to observe the deeply significant point that Yhwh is here mimicking, or mirroring, the psalmist. He follows on the heels of the psalmist, speaking in the first person. Yhwh is, in this way, adopting the psalmist’s profession and raising it up into his own profession about himself; it is like some reverse incarnation (instead of the word coming down and being incarnated in the words of the prophet, they are rising up and being incarnated in the words of Yhwh). ‘Respectful’ does even approach what is happening here. The words ‘of earth’ are being spoken ‘in heaven’. This perhaps sheds some light on exactly what Yhwh means when he says, “Truly….”. When the psalmist says it, it operates as a type of strong emphasis. However, when Yhwh says it, it may be that he is affirming, and asserting, what the psalmist has said about him. In this way, Yhwh is not only ‘mirroring or mimicking’ but he is offering deep affirmation of the psalmist’s words of him, as if the psalmist’s words were some liturgy to Yhwh that he revels in. This casts an astonishingly powerful light—the light of Yhwh’s almost joyful acclimation—onto the psalmist’s words.