Ps. 95.8-9 (challenge and work)

Do not / harden your hearts / as you did at Meribah
as on that day / at Massah / in the wilderness
when your fathers / put me to the test
when they / put me to the proof
though they had seen / my work. 

There is some confusion about what exactly happened at Meribah-Massah. For our purposes though one thing is central: it is where Yhwh’s people questioned his presence among them. Exodus 17.7 says that they put Yhwh “to the proof by saying, “Is Yhwh among us or not?” It is this questioning—more so than the complaining for water (and crops)—that the psalmist, I believe, has in mind. The reason is because the psalm has been an extended meditation on Yhwh’s presence and the people’s access to it. As a ‘Temple’ psalm, the opening of the psalm focuses on the entrance into the Temple; the second portion provides a type of ‘inquisition’ or ‘examination’ focusing on the moral quality of those who enter and asks whether their hearts are sufficiently ‘soft’ to Yhwh’s instruction. The final verse concludes with a warning regarding the father’s failure to ‘enter my rest’. The point, of course, is not that the father’s questioned the ‘existence’ of Yhwh in their presence, but his power. Yhwh’s rebuke to them is direct and abrupt—they had just witnessed his ‘exodus-work’ and yet they now question his power? For them, the ‘work’ centered on their deliverance from Pharaoh. 

In our psalm, however, the work of Yhwh is arguably different, or at least more layered. Here, the work is creation and Yhwh’s sovereign control over it as its fashioner and owner. That creation-work is not to be divorced from Yhwh’s control over chaos; it does involve a measure of redemption within its very heart. We need to notice how ‘creation’ (vs. 3-6) flows into ‘covenant protection’ (vs. 7). Here, creation is itself a type of covenant-protection and deliverance. The point (or, a point), however, is that Yhwh can use the same rebuke as he used in Exodus and yet apply it in a different context and with a different referent. (In other words, Yhwh’s words are not bound to ‘their original context’.) For the listener, then, these words resonate on several levels—on both the ‘creational’/covenantal level and on the ‘exodus’ level. Both realities are ‘works’ of Yhwh that stand in manifest openness to them, and both stand as a rebuke in the event that Yhwh’s power is challenged as not being ‘present’ to his people. 

There is, though, an even deeper implication to this—the fathers were exiled from the Land. Not only did they never enter the Land but they also never entered the Temple. The listeners in this psalm, however, are standing not only ‘in the Land’ but in the Temple itself. In other words, they stand in a more centralized and profoundly intimate position to Yhwh than the father’s themselves. They are actually in perhaps the greatest ‘work’ of Yhwh. This level of insight points toward a deeper meaning in the rebuke—that any ‘hardening’ that takes place while the Temple is present will lead to a greater exile than their fathers experienced. 

One final observation. The ‘hardening’ of the heart, on first glance, seems to be a type of withdrawal, a turning away, and ignoring of Yhwh. That, though, is not what happens here. Rather, their hardening is an active testing and ‘putting to the proof’ of Yhwh. Later they are described as “not wanting to know my ways”. This type of ‘hardening’ is precisely what occurred in Pharaoh’s heart (and his actions). It was not simply a neutral ‘turning away’. It was an active and open confrontation with Yhwh.