Ps. 97.10 (the Adam-command)

You lovers of Yhwh / hate evil
he protects the lives / of his loyal ones
he will deliver them / from the hands of the wicked. 

One of the aspects of this psalm that we have not commented on is the fact that much of it is set in the past tense. The theophany (appearing) of Yhwh and its consequent reordering of earth and the heavens has already happened. What we find in this verse is that that reordering, and that appearing, were not permanent in the sense that it did not irrevocably banish evil, in perpetuity. Rather, it is an ongoing drama. A question is why the psalmist arranged it in this fashion. There are several possibilities but I think they boil down to two trajectories. In one, what happened in the past was a beginning, an establishing. What Yhwh did in his theophany and in his reordering was like a planting, and would be something that would continue to grow. In another trajectory, what Yhwh did was a momentary thing. Something that could be repeated in the future but not something that was a ‘beginning’. His presence descended, reordered the cosmos, and now it needs to ‘descend again’. I think that the first is more likely—I think that what the psalmist described was the beginning establishment of Yhwh’s reign. However, what the second explanation reveals is that it is an ‘ongoing establishment’ and not something completed. In other words, the ‘righteous ones’ and those who ‘love Yhwh’ stand within the establishing power of the previous verses, and, within that sphere, they carry forward Yhwh’s reign. Evil is, today, something that needs to be re-ordered, and the battle against evil partakes of Yhwh’s original reordering when he appeared and established right worship of him “among all the peoples”. In a sense, Israel is an ‘already but not yet’ people. A people who contain within themselves “all the people” and a people in whom “all the gods” bow down to Yhwh. But it is clearly not a ‘completed people’. One might object that this ‘completed status’ is not something the psalmist even envisions. He only sees history as the drama of Yhwh’s Presence in relation to the cosmos. That, however, I am not convinced by. Yhwh’s Presence, and its effect on the cosmos, from the earth all the way into heaven—and, more importantly, its fundamental unmasking of idolatry—does point to something like a ‘completed cosmos’, a place where Yhwh is “all in all” and the gods and “all the people” are reordered around Yhwh, without remainder and absolutely. In other words, I see Yhwh’s Presence, and its overwhelming display of power and Glory, as carrying within itself a reflection (or, an enactment) of a completed cosmos (and, I would also argue, a vision of Eden as well). 


A final note—Yhwh’s Presence is as powerful as described above. However, for the first time in the psalm is a direction issued to Yhwh’s people; for the first time they are given a command to “hate evil”. This is their Adam-command. What we see, then, is that within this Yhwh Presence there is the sphere of command, the sphere of man’s obedience to Yhwh and, therefore, man’s participation within Yhwh’s governance. As such, it would seem, man can, on some level, diminish the power of Yhwh’s Presence; man can, on some level, permit ‘evil’ to gain a foothold. Perhaps, then, we begin to catch the echo of Jeremiah’s prophecy of the ‘new heart’ and the implantation of Yhwh’s law therein. A vision of a place, not where there is no command, but a place where Yhwh’s will and man’s obedience are one. And, in that place, we will arrive at the dramatically ‘completed cosmos’. We will arrive, in other words, at the person(s) of re-creation…; of resurrection.