Ps. 93.3 (the seas will be no more)

The floods roared / O Yhwh
the flood roared / with their thunderous voice
the floods roared / with their pounding. 

From the ‘throne established from eternity’, the psalmist now shifts his attention to the waters. These waters clearly represent a force opposed to Yhwh. The world is ‘firmly established’; Yhwh’s throne is ‘established’; yet these are the fluid and shapeless ‘waters’—the antithesis of stability and establishment. Further, they ‘roar’, which in the context of many other psalms and passages in Scripture, is the ‘noise of chaos’ and rebellion. It signals the turmoil of the nations that rebel against Yhwh, and particularly against Yhwh-as-King and his anointed (Psalm 2). It is this vocal chaos that is the real focus here, as the psalmist continuously draws attention to it (four times in three lines): “the floods roared…the floods roared, with their thunderous voices…the floods roared with their pounding” This vocal chaos stands in complete contrast to Yhwh who is not only immobile, firm and ‘established’, but never speaks. The roaring waters are met by the sovereign silence of Yhwh. This fact again highlights what we reflected on yesterday—that the ‘passivity’ of Yhwh in this psalm actually highlights and dramatically emphasizes his utter and complete mastery over creation and over the forces opposed to him. Nothing truly threatens his reign. Indeed, while there appears to be something of a ‘battle with the waters’ that is alluded to, there, in fact, is no battle. Again, the psalmist completely foregrounds any engagement by Yhwh with the waters. As we will see, Yhwh is simply ‘greater that the roar of many waters’ (vs. 4). 

On an imagistic level, these verses also highlight the drama between ‘land and water’. The psalmist sets in opposition the ‘firmly established’ world with ‘roaring and pounding waters’. He also sets in opposition to the waters the ‘established throne’. There are a few things to note here. First, the psalmist begins with the world and the throne. To the psalmist, the ‘throne’ of Yhwh ‘shines through’ the world and its stability and order. In the world he literally lives in and is surrounded by the shining sovereignty of Yhwh as displayed through the stability and order of creation. This is the ‘enacted sovereignty’ of Yhwh. It is a ‘thing of the past’ but not in the sense that it is not still ongoing. Precisely the opposite—the psalmist’s emphasis on the eternity and establishment of the world and the throne, is to show the present and ongoing utter and absolutely sovereign power of Yhwh in maintaining that establishment. Again, the chronological depth of creation is a qualitative statement of Yhwh’s sovereignty. This is not a present vs. past, but a past as present (and the ‘more past’, the ‘more present’). This is why these ‘waters’ are portrayed as coming after Yhwh. They are not ‘from eternity’. And, they literally follow Yhwh in the psalm. The point is that their authority, no matter how loud and no matter how destructive simply cannot overtake Yhwh’s authority because their authority does not coincide with Yhwh’s eternity. They may be a continuing force opposed to Yhwh but they do not represent a real challenge to his reign. In a very ironic way, their ‘roaring’ is effectively mocked here by Yhwh’s overpowering silence and turned into more of a whimper. 

Along these lines it would seem important to point out that in the apocalyptic visions of Revelation the ‘sea is no more’. This ‘present-but-contained’ opposition to Yhwh’s reign is finally and absolutely done away with. Importantly, this occurs within a liturgical context. Their ‘noise of chaos’ is cancelled out and replaced by the liturgy of those ‘around the throne’ that now comes to embrace (and be embraced by) all of creation.