Ps. 92.4-6 (the ecstasy of the king)

For you have made me glad / by your work
because of your handiwork / I sing out!
How exceedingly deep are your works / O Yhwh
how profound / are your designs.
Only an idiot / would not know this
and only a fool / would not understand.   

This psalm seems to lend itself, in one way or another, to very pregnant insights. There are possible depths to this psalm that are forever multiplying. Here, as with our original reflection, I want to begin by proposing some very broad reflections that might deepen our perception of this psalm. And I want to go back to Adam. For various reasons I believe Adam to be a type of ‘high priest’ of Eden as well as its ‘king’; I believe that David, in large part, and through his covenant with Yhwh, reignited this Adamic power over creation by becoming the ‘king of Yhwh’ and establishing the ‘kingdom of God’, his ‘liturgical empire’. Part of Adam’s responsibilities included the role of protection—just as David would later be assigned this role and carry it out marvelously in his battles against the Philistines (and others). That is one point. The second point is this: when Solomon, the Temple-builder, asks for one thing from Yhwh, he asks for wisdom. It is the most essential quality of a king; it is that which enables him not just to ‘rule’ but to ‘rule well’. A king’s military might enables him to rule ‘externally’; wisdom is what enables him to rule his people ‘internally’; it ‘keeps his house in order’ in other words. Now, when we look back at Adam, the primal ‘son of God’, we see an important echo of this (or, in Solomon there is an echo of Adam)—the entire story focuses on the role of wisdom, and how this ‘original king’ will respond to wisdom. For a king, it is the Torah of Yhwh that he perpetually stands under (as in Deuteronomy). Yhwh’s command to Adam as to the ‘fruit of the knowledge of good and evil’, operates in this fashion. Yhwh’s instruction should be Adam’s ‘delight’, his ‘instruction’ and his ‘wisdom’. That is the second insight. 

If we take both of these and put them together we have a reading of the Adam story as one of the testing of a king, and of his failure. Now, importantly, this testing of the king takes place within the Temple-that-is-creation. It takes place within the realm of the astounding and utterly transparent ‘work’ of Yhwh. In other words, Adam is, quite literally, surrounded by creation as the manifest enactment of Yhwh’s graciousness. Adam has both ‘Torah and Creation’—the ‘word of Yhwh’ (in command) and the radiance of Creation. So: King—Wisdom—Creation. Now we turn to our psalm, and I want to simply make the claim, without providing a great deal of support right now (it is there in the psalm), that the speaker of this psalm is the king of Yhwh. He is, in other words, the Adam of God. With that in mind, the words of our verses today take on the ‘hue of Eden’, the ‘sound of Eden’. These are, in other words, the ‘song of Adam’ as he looks out at Creation. It ‘makes him glad’. He ‘sings out’. Yhwh’s ‘works’ are “great” to him; they are, immediately and evidently and without suspicion, “exceedingly deep”. This “Adam” is seemingly lost in delight in the face of Yhwh’s creation that surrounds him. He is exuberant, he is festive, he is liturgical, he is prodigal in his praise, and he clearly cannot adequately give voice to the ‘gladness’ that spills over as he, rather child-like, glories in creation. This is the earth-king in liturgy to the high-king; this is the ‘son’ in liturgy to his ‘father’. This is Adam, and David, and Solomon (and, finally, Christ) in their primal, and original, glory responding in joy to Yhwh. 

What we indicated above also adds depth to the presence of these ‘idiots’ and ‘fools’. Now, I almost said this: “For this Adam-king, the perception of Yhwh’s creation is so clear, that a failure to recognize Yhwh through Creation, represents a type of impossible failure of insight. A failure so total that he is only left with these harsh words of “idiot” and ‘fool” for those who do not “know this”.” That is true, except that I would add this point: here, ‘wisdom’ is ‘gladness’. It is this abundant expression of joy. It is not merely a type of intellectual ‘perception’, but total, all-encompassing, overflow of thanksgiving, wonder and surprise. THIS is what these ‘fools’ and ‘idiots’ fail to know. Their failure is a failure of joy, a failure of ecstasy, a failure to enter into this Adam-praise to Yhwh at the glory of his creation. 

And one final point to close out the introductory insights: the ‘works’ that are alluded to here clearly refer to creation, but that word ‘creation’ carries with it several layers of meaning. One of those layers involves Yhwh’s act of ‘separation’, of ‘division’ and of his proper ordering of things. It also entails, as we see in many other places in the Scriptures, his taming of the forces of chaos. It entails, in other words, a battle. Now, this aspect is clearly muted in Genesis, though not entirely absent. My focus here is not to elaborate on that point but to simply highlight the fact that the speaker of this psalm is one who has just engaged in battle and received his victory (vs. 10-11). He has been endowed with Yhwh’s creation-shaping power, and he has, Adam-like, brought order and peace and shalom to ‘the land’. As such, the ‘works’ of these verses is not merely the king looking upon creation, but he is also giving thanks to Yhwh for endowing him with the necessary authority to ‘carry out’, to ‘extend’, Yhwh’s creative governance of creation. This is Adam giving thanks for being endowed with the power to ‘protect’ the Garden, as the ‘image of God’.