Ps. 91.7-9 (from participant to audience)

A thousand may fall / beside you
ten thousand / on your right
but it / will not come near you. 
You will only look at it / with your eyes
and watch / the punishment of the wicked
Truly you / O Yhwh / are my refuge. 

One thing I failed to note in the previous reflection is that the psalmist is not denying the reality of the ‘troubles’ that attack at night and during the day (the “terror”, the “arrow”, the “plague” and the “scourge”). Rather, as we did point out, he is attempting to convince his hearers of the protective presence of Yhwh in the face of these dangers. Just as in verse 4, Yhwh will cover them against these forces; it is not that they do not exist or are not real. They simply shouldn’t be feared. Here, the importance of that observation is more apparent. The imagery used is ingenious. The psalmist conjures up a vast multitude of people ‘falling’ next to the psalmist. From a ‘thousand’ he then moves to ‘ten thousand’. The scope is, quite literally, terrifying. It is a tidal wave of death descending upon them. It is as if a nation’s entire army was immediately and absolutely devastated, from an unknown source. 

At this point we need to catch the resonance with the preceding verses. There, the attack came ‘unawares, quickly, violently and with devastating effect’. It came ‘from hiding’. Here, that same attack is now deployed against this multitude. Now, they are the ones who suffer from this undescribed and seemingly hidden attack. However, this attack ‘reaches the mark’. Unlike the psalmist who ‘has no reason to fear’, they ‘fall’. We have seen this dynamic many times before: the weapons employed by the enemies of Yhwh’s people are turned upon them in a devastating boomerang effect (the ‘pit they dig, they fall into’; their hidden attack now descends upon them from hiding; the attempt to slander someone in secret, only falls upon them, in shame, publicly; etc…). There is an almost scientific precision to judgment as it crafts itself out of the wickedness and is then flung back on the wickeds’ heads. There is another important allusion to the previous verses. We noted in the previous reflections how ‘proximity’ has been a key image of the psalmist. Yhwh is a ‘refuge’ and a ‘fortress’; we ‘abide in the shade of Yhwh’; with his ‘feathers he covers you, and under his wings you will take refuge’; he is your ‘shield’ round-about. This ‘proximity of Yhwh’ is why there is no need to fear the dangers of verses 5-6. These dangers, and the fear they inspire, attempt to interpose themselves between Yhwh’s people and his ‘proximity’. They attempt to drive a wedge between them and Yhwh such that Yhwh’s ‘refuge’ is called in question or at least the extent of it. Here, that sense of ‘proximity’ is pushed to its limit. This horde of people—this ‘tidal wave of death’—that is ‘falling’ is doing so ‘beside you’ and ‘on your right’. In other words, it is nearly touching ‘you’. The ‘space’ (the ‘proximity’) between ‘you and this death’ has almost vanished. It is, quite literally, ‘in your face’. The psalmist is careful to point this out and he is doing so for a reason—he is placing us directly in the path of the most terrible of forces, just before the point of its devastating and fatal contact…and telling us “it will not come near you.” 

It is precisely at this point that the psalmist completely shifts his perspective. The danger is now not near. And then he reverts to images not of proximity but of vision—you will only look at it with your eyes and watch. It is a key shift. From the visceral sense of impending doom we now occupy the stance of an observer. Someone who stands apart from the danger as a passive ‘audience to the horror’. We have moved from being a participant in the play to being a member of the audience. The ‘wedge’ has been cast down, but now it is not the ‘wedge of fear’ but Yhwh himself. Through him, one moves from the play to the audience. In him, is protected against the ‘tidal wave of death’ and simply watches it wash ashore. 

This image does call to my mind a specific story in the Exodus. When the plagues were falling all over Egypt, the Israelites occupied a type of ‘safety zone’. None of the plagues inhabited that sphere of safety. Everyone was falling around them; indeed, the entire nation (the ‘ten thousand’) was suffering the onslaught. Yet, they lived in peace and security. They lived, in the words of this psalm, ‘in the refuge of the Name’.