Ps. 94.5-6 (a perceived void)

They crush / your people / O Yhwh
and oppress / your heritage
they kill / widows / and resident aliens
and murder / orphans. 

Crush, oppress, kill and murder. These verbs of action form the enactment of the ‘spewing forth’ of the previous verse. And they are encased within these exclamatory words, as the immediately following verses reflect the ‘vaunting’ words of the wicked in the face of Yhwh: “And they say, “Yah will not see!”.  I think part of the point to this is that these wicked accomplish this ‘crushing, oppressive, killing and murder’ by way of their speech, probably more so that by direct action. I think there is additional warrant for this but first we need to look at who these victims are: widows, resident aliens and orphans. 

These are “Yhwh’s people” and his “heritage”. This group is commonly portrayed together, particularly widows and orphans and we have looked at them in previous psalms. There, we have noted how they represent a type of ‘invisible’ group of people. They are the vulnerable, without no one to protect. It is precisely because they live within this invisible hole within society that they become of particular concern to Yhwh. Yhwh is the one who ‘fills in the gaps’. They are dear to him precisely because their protection is a form of his sovereignty over the social order. What I mean is this: if there existed a perpetual ‘gap’ within society, a group of people that could be victimized without fear of judgment, then that ‘gap’ would represent a divine gap, a place that the god would not go. It would be a place of (wicked) freedom. When Yhwh moves into this sphere, however, he shows himself to be the sovereign of every social space. In other words, just as in time and space there is no place to hide from Yhwh, so too, within the social order, is there no place to hide. This is why, when the ‘lowly are lifted up’, it becomes an expression of Yhwh’s sovereign glory and mastery. He ‘fills’ every void. Clearly, however, the wicked do not see it that way. Rather, this social void, for them, is opportunity and freedom. It is a type of real or absolute absence. It is a place wherein they can exercise their will completely unfettered. It is a place of invisibility (“Yah will not see!”). Interestingly, throughout other stories, the ability to be invisible results in extreme depravity and wickedness (from Plato to Tolkein).It is as if they wicked have ‘found a hiding place’, a metaphysically empty space. 

And now we can circle back to the original idea that these actions are ‘verbal actions’. I think these wicked are some form of administrators of justice, or judges, and that they pervert justice such that their rulings (their ‘speech’) effectively kills the ‘widow, resident alien and orphan’. They believe that their rulings are, in a sense, utterly and absolutely secular and devoid of divine oversight. For them, these people are essentially empty, pure vessels that they can pour themselves into. As we will see, though, this perception of their ‘rulings’ will be revealed to have been ‘always-already’ performed within a prior ruling (a prior courtroom) of Yhwh. When ‘the time comes’ these victims will be revealed to have been Yhwh’s all along and they will become the judgment of the wicked. This is why the psalmist prefaces the description of these people as “your people” and “your heritage”. That which the wicked thought was an absolutely empty space will be understood to have been full, without remainder. While they thought Yhwh didn’t ‘see’ them, they will learn that, in fact, these people were Yhwh’s eyes.