Ps. 91.5-6 (from fear to Yhwh)

Do not fear / the terror / of the night
or the arrow / that flies / in the daytime
or the plague / that strikes / in the dark
or the scourge / that rushes forth / at noonday.   

What is probably the central issue to the psalmist emerges in these verses. It is fear. This central concern is what holds all of the images and themes together. It is what accounts for the dominant image of Yhwh as defensive and protective rather than offensive and judging. The psalmist, standing in a position of authority, is constructing the psalm in order to address not so much the people’s sense of injustice as their fear; their sense of being open to attack that they can neither predict nor protect against. Were this a petitionary psalm for Yhwh to eradicate wickedness, the images would be more of Yhwh as ‘lion’ or ‘king’. However, what we find here is different: he is a protective ‘bird’ and a shield. Furthermore, this psalm is a ‘mediated psalm’. It is one that flows through the psalmist and to the people. It is different in this regard than petitionary psalms that are spoken from the psalmist to Yhwh for deliverance. There, the psalmist and Yhwh speak ‘fact to face’ so to speak. Here, the psalmist is attempting to ‘hand over’ (to ‘tradition’) the name of Yhwh to the people and, in so doing, he is, essentially, providing instruction. The psalmist himself stands where he wants the people to stand—in a position of confidence. In other words, the psalm is not attempting so much to move Yhwh to act (as in petitionary/lament psalms) as it is to move the people to act, to change their minds and hearts. Yhwh, himself, is the ‘instruction’, but the psalm is not a lament asking for Yhwh to ‘change’. This is something more akin to ‘wisdom’ (it seems to me) than anything else, but the ‘wisdom into Yhwh’, adopting the ‘mind of Yhwh’. For our purposes, this is why, I think, the central command of the psalm is to ‘not fear’. Yhwh’s role as king and judge have been muted because the focus of the psalm is not on petitioning Yhwh but on instructing the people into Yhwh.   

Here, the ‘fear’ that the psalmist is attempting to counter is an all consuming fear. He directs the people both as to the content of the fear (‘terror’, ‘arrow’, ‘plague’ and ‘scourge’) and its time (night, daytime, dark, noonday).  Here, I want to focus on the time element. What is clear is that the people essentially are living in fear; the dwell in fear; their time is the ‘time of fear’. It consumes them, from ‘night’ to ‘daytime’, from ‘dark’ to ‘noonday’. It is ever-present. The second focus is on how this fear operates. It is sudden; it is unpredictable; and it is terrible. Nearly every attack comes ‘from hiding’. In the daytime it moves quickly (‘flies in the daytime’); in the night, it moves in a plodding manner (‘stalks in the dark’). It is an interesting dynamic: in the daytime, it rushes out ‘from darkness’. In the dark, it ‘stalks’ under the cover of hiding. When we combine both insights (the mode of attack and the time of attack) we develop an image of fear that is at once ever-present and ever-hidden. The more it falls into the background of darkness (either into ‘night’ or into ‘hiding’), the more it asserts itself as a consuming presence. It is almost as if the attack itself is not the real problem but the fact that it is always potential, waiting. 

Now, what needs to be seen is the context of these directions to ‘not fear’. The immediately preceding verses in fact portrayed Yhwh as the consuming presence, the one who “saves from the fowler’s trap and the threat of destruction”; the one who “covers you with his feathers and under whom you take refuge”. His faithfulness is “your shield”. We will see this more later, but the ‘constant abiding presence’ is not these ‘terrors’ of day and night, but the presence of Yhwh and the protection of his Name. Unlike the demonic ‘terrors of the night’, the ‘angels of Yhwh’ are “about you, guarding you in all your ways….holding you up” (vs. 12). In fact, it is beneath them that you are covered (vs. 4). In other words, the psalmist is attempting to usher the people into a different ‘presence’; away from the presence-of-fear and into the presence-of-Yhwh.