Ps. 94.3-4 (wicked celebration)

How long / will the wicked / O Yhwh
how long / will the wicked / celebrate
spewing out arrogance / when they speak
and all the evildoers / vaunting themselves. 

These lines, in their context following verses 1 and 2, resonate with a deeper meaning than would usually be the case. Verses 1 and 2 refer to the ‘time of judging’, when Yhwh would ‘shine forth’ and ‘rise up’ in order to ‘render payment’ on the wicked. They contemplate a time, or a moment, when Yhwh would enact his ‘vindication’, calling the earth to account. It is looking forward to, in other words, an historical event at which time things would be set to right. The petition to Yhwh to enact this event is full of confidence. His ‘shining forth’, his ‘rising’, his being the ‘God of Vindication’, and the fact that the entire earth is his courtroom, inaugurates this psalm with the tone of an extreme assurance. This is important to note as we read these lines because usually the question of ‘how long….’ is a very heavy question, laden with anxiety and sorrow. In other psalms, when this question is posed, there is a degree of uncertainty as to when, or even perhaps if, Yhwh will choose to rectify the injustice. Here, however, it has a different tone. Because it is rooted in the confidence of verses 1 and 2, it feels more like a rhetorical question, a question whose answer is known. In this sense it comes at us from a different direction. Now, it is important to note that the more ‘tragic’ sense is alluded to in the second portion of the psalm. However, there it is told strictly in the terms of the past tense. The psalmist now stands within the light of Yhwh’s faithfulness and has been rescued from his troubles. Here, that ‘confidence’ resides in a different place—not in the personal sphere of redemption but in the more ‘cosmic’ sphere of Yhwh’s utter mastery over all areas of life (vs. 8-11). The point to all of this: this ‘how long’ is contained. It is not as open ended as in other psalms. The psalmist knows the ‘tie will end’ in the same way that his time of injustice ended. Importantly, though, we need to note that this question can still be posed within this sphere of assurance. The certainty that the time will end does not nullify the question, although it does change it in an important way. 

Celebration and Arrogance. The word ‘celebrate’ is important, as this is not simply a type of festival that the wicked are engaged in but rather a victory celebration. They are celebrating their own power and freedom from any divine oversight; they ‘vaunt themselves’. It is this type of ‘abandon’ that is deemed by the psalmist to be ‘arrogance’ and a type of ‘spewing out’. For him, this is some type of mock-liturgy to the darkness rather than a celebration. The wicked are portrayed as emitting filth from their mouth. The image is one of utter contrast. The wicked ‘celebrate’ but they do so by ‘spewing from their mouth’. This disconnect between the psalmist and the wicked, between what they understand themselves to be doing and what the psalmist perceives, will be most fully embodied in the mock questions posed to them in verses 8-11.  The ‘freedom’ the wicked believe they celebrate in will be revealed to have been encapsulated within a greater realm of Yhwh’s sovereign judgment. At that point the ‘real’ celebration will occur, the celebration of the righteous.