Ps. 101.6 (the eye and the clothing of wisdom)

I have had my eyes / on faithful countrymen
for them / to live with me.
The person / who walks / a path of integrity
has been / my minister. 

We have already pointed out how the psalmist-king is enacting wisdom through his ‘shunning of evil’. Unlike Adam (and Eve), he does not permit deception within the realm he has been given to protect. Wisdom, however, is two-fold. It also necessitates an adhering to, a ‘following after’, the good. Psalm 1 is a good example (the ‘gateway to the psalms’): there, the wise man avoids the wicked but meditates on Yhwh’s torah. Here, the ‘wise king’s adhering to the good’ is enacted through the people he chooses to surround himself with and to advise him. Just as he ‘pushed away’ the evil, so now does he ‘bring close’ the good. This whole wisdom dynamic is captured by the king’s “eyes”. In the previous verse the king did not tolerate those with ‘arrogant eyes’. Here, his “eyes are on faithful countrymen”. For the king, what his ‘eyes’ focus on is clearly more than mere observation. It manifests his entire person. For him, what his eye avoids is what he “hates” and what he resolutely acts against. What his eye is “on” is something he comes to ‘surround himself with’. In other words, the ‘eye’ is intimately associated with the dynamic power of evil and good. Just as evil and good are not merely ‘things’ but ‘spheres of power’, so too is the eye what either avoids or brings the person into those spheres. To ‘perceive’ is to ‘enter’; to ‘shun’ is to ‘walk away’. The eye is as active for the person as good and evil (the ‘fruit’ was “…pleasing to the eye…”). 

We also need to highlight how the king’s approach to the ‘good’ mimics his approach to evil. We saw in his avoidance of evil that he often used ‘spatial’ terms: no evil purpose is ‘before his eyes; devious actions do not ‘cling’ to him; and a perverse mind is ‘far’ from him. Here, the reverse is true—he ‘surrounds’ himself with good people, they ‘live with him’ and they ‘minister’ to him. As opposed to the immediate and unequivocal shunning of evil, the king ‘abides’ with the good; it is constant to him. Wisdom enacted is, accordingly, both repulsive (it repulses the wicked) and attractive (it attracts to itself the good). It is something, moreover, that is received in communion with other good people. It is not individualistic. It is not received merely through the mind, but through the body as well (the ‘entire person’, so to speak).

I think there is another reversal as well. We saw how the king was able to perceive the ‘snares of evil’ in both its secret, hiding places (‘secret slander’) and in its more open forms (‘boasting’). Here, the king surrounds himself with both the low (my countrymen) and the high (ministers). He ‘clothes himself’, so to speak, in wisdom.

Ps. 101.4-5 (wisdom, high and low)

A perverse mind
has been / far from me. 
I have not been / involved in the wrong.
Whoever secretly slandered / his associate 
him I have silenced
if any have arrogant eyes / and big ideas
him I have not tolerated. 

In many psalms the psalmist complains about the evil perpetrated “in secret”. It seems to either refer to a type of duplicity—that what is ‘open’ and what is ‘secret’ are not the same—or to a hidden attack—they ‘lie in wait’. In both of these situations, what is ‘hidden’ is an act of communal destruction. They are not ‘hiding themselves’ but the evil they intend to do to another. It is always directed at someone (generally, the psalmist). In these psalms, it is precisely the hidden nature that causes the psalmist to cry out to Yhwh because, as to Yhwh, nothing is hidden. In other words, Yhwh is the only one who can protect the psalmist against that which, by nature, is hidden from him but designed to destroy him; there is a deep anxiety over this in those psalms. What the psalmist want is for Yhwh to ‘bring out in the open’, by way of judgment, the hidden plans of the wicked. The psalmist wants Yhwh work a reversal, whereby what is hidden is revealed and, often, openly turned upon the heads of the perpetrators. So, while they intended to attack others (communal), the end up only hurting themselves (individual), and while they planned in secret, they will be exposed publicly. We might say, in the context of this psalm, that this is Yhwh’s “path of integrity”, the path whereby he brings justice to the world, and light to the darkness. 

What is important to see, of course, is that in our psalm, it is the king who silences these “secret slanders”. He is the one who protects those whom are spoken about. He is the one brings justice. He is the one who protects the social cohesion of those around him. He ferrets out the ‘secret slander’ and puts a stop to it because, as we indicated in the previous reflection, evil is dynamic, dangerous and, in a sense, contagious. As such, the king must ‘nip it in the bud’ before it blossoms in the court. This reveals how ‘socially wise’ the king is; how attuned he is to the dangers of social entropy. And how he, as the ‘wise king’, must protect his realm from it. Again, this is precisely what Adam and Eve failed to do in the garden, when they allowed the serpent’s ‘secret slander’ to persist and grow. Ironically, this happened before, during and after they “ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (a ‘tree of wisdom’). 

When we look at the second form of ‘evil’ that the king thwarts he notice an important relationship between it and the previous one. Here, the evil is ‘big ideas’ and ‘arrogant eyes’. This operates openly and ‘loud’. Which stands in contrast to the single, ‘hidden slander’, which worked slowly and silently. What we see, then, is that the king governs the realm inside and out, and top-to-bottom. He is able to discern every level of danger to the social cohesion of his people and to thwart it, enacting wisdom throughout.

Ps. 101.2-3 (the proximity of evil)

I have behaved / with integrity of mind
at my court.
I have set / before my eyes
no wicked purpose
I hate / devious actions
they have not / clung to me. 

We might say that, as David begins his “song of loyalty and justice”, the first note struck is that of wisdom. This note will resonate throughout and is the, I think, watermark of the entire psalm. David, as a ‘good’ king, enacts wisdom in his realm. It begins with “integrity of mind”. For the following verses, wisdom-enacted is David’s internal ordering of himself. Like the wise man who discerns between good and evil, David describes his integrity of mind in ‘spatial’ terms. Wicked purposes are not “set before my eyes”; devious actions have not “clung to me”; a perverse mind has been “far from me”. However we understand this, it does seem that the ‘evil’ avoided is somewhat like a thing that David could contract were he to be too close to it; it is ‘contagious’ in other words. Simply being in its presence is dangerous and not simply ‘acting it out’. This sense of evil resonates throughout the wisdom portions of the Scriptures. It is not simply that it is to be refrained from; it is to be actively avoided. One should not get ‘close’ to it. To do so, apparently, would draw one into its sphere of influence where, at the center, the ‘evil would perform the performer’, not ‘the performer performing the evil’. Evil is, so to speak, dynamic and not static. This understanding of evil helps explain the parallels between these verses and later ones. Here, the king “behaves with integrity of mind”. In verse 4, a “perverse mind” is “far from me”. The king does not place a wicked purpose “before my eyes” or “those who speak lies” and likewise shuns those “with arrogant eyes.” Later his eyes are “on his faithful countrymen” (vs. 6). The ‘proximity to evil’ that he actively avoids is paralleled to the ‘proximity to good’ that he actively seeks out. This dynamic is the essence of wisdom—the ability to discern and limn the ‘spheres of good and evil’ and to ‘shun the evil’ and ‘seek the good’. 

An important observation in this regard, and one that picks up on the previous reflection, is the fact that ‘wisdom’ here begins within David; it is not simply his ‘rightly ordering’ his people. Rather, he begins by ‘rightly ordering’ himself. From here David will then move ‘outward’ into the social sphere. This outward movement will be a type of blossoming or ex-pression of the wisdom that already governs David’s ‘inner’ life. 

When we turn to the what David actually avoids we learn at least two things. First, we are witnessing the discernment of the ‘wise king’. David is able (in a way, uniquely) to discern deceit from truth. What is clear about these two verses is that what David ‘avoids’ is duplicity. There is the sense that the ‘appearance’ and the ‘reality’ are two separate things; that those in front of him are not unified, or have ‘integrity’. It is the king’s ability to wisely discern this duplicity that is one of his most important roles (think here of Jesus ability to accurately limn the thoughts intentions of those around him, separating the ‘wheat’ from ‘chaff’). One might say that this is the ‘charism’ of the king and it is why, when Solomon asks for wisdom above all else Yhwh finds his request so worthy of being lavishly answered. In this we witness the ‘true’ Adam-king who ‘knows good and evil’; Adam (and Eve) failed in wisdom in being unable to discern the lie of the serpent. The second thing to note is how this deception is particularly important for a king to discern. Anything that makes it past the ‘head of the country’ will infect the rest. David, and the king, therefore must be able to be guard against the infection in a way that is unique to the role as ‘son of Yhwh’. Again, like Adam, they stand as the ‘guardian of the garden’. In so far as they fail, the garden falters.

Ps. 101.3 (the "I" of the king)

I have behaved / with integrity of mind
at my court. 

The opening line is, in some fashion, a mirror to verse 2. There, David celebrates Yhwh’s “path of integrity”, asks when Yhwh will come to him, and now declares that he has “behaved with integrity of mind.” As we have argued, David is laying the ‘foundation of his case’ as to why Yhwh should come to his aid. And he does so by matching his integrity and Yhwh’s. He does not merely praise Yhwh’s integrity, he enacts it as Yhwh’s sovereign agent. What is key to see in this is that this type of argument is a ‘covenant argument’. David appeals to Yhwh as a covenant partner appeals to another covenant partner. In other words, he is saying, “I’ve held up my end of the bargain, now you hold up yours.” Putting it in these stark terms sounds ‘contractual’, rather than ‘covenantal’. In their context, however, of that of Yhwh-and-his-king-son, and within David’s clear love and admiration for Yhwh (vs. 1-2), this covenant is more like kinship than contractual. This is a son speaking to his father (Ps. 2). David is modelling in his court what Yhwh performs in his heavenly court (“…thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”). 

Along these lines we should note the repetitive “I”. Every single line of the psalm describes what “I” (David) have done. It is, almost startlingly, ‘self’ centered. In this we should hear something important—what the king does (or refuses to do) is absolutely crucial. The king, as we have seen, holds in his person, all of his people. And, he likewise is the one through whom Yhwh establishes his kingdom on earth. The overwhelming focus on the “I” of the king then is the result of the king inhabiting these two realms between Yhwh and his people. The king is not an ‘individual’; his “I” is not simply personal. Rather, he is, somewhat like the Temple (and somewhat like a priest), the person in whom the people and Yhwh meet. And, therefore, like the Temple, he must be kept clean; he must not be ‘profaned’. The king’s being is, in other words, utterly appropriated by the people and by Yhwh. He does not have a ‘portion to himself’.  For this reason, his entire “I” must be examined in a way unlike any other person. His office—his covenant status—places him in a hierarchical role (like a priest, like the Temple) that consumes him (the higher up the hierarchy the more one’s ‘person’ is expropriated and consumed, whether as a  ‘prophet, priest or king’.) This absolute focus on the “I” is therefore not a type of hubris and dangerous self-centeredness. It is the focus appropriate to the office. (As we will see later, this type of focus on the king’s innocence is similar to the focus on the need for no impurity to enter the Temple.)

Ps. 101.1-2 (admiring imitation)

I sing / of loyalty and justice
I celebrate you / Yhwh / with music
I celebrate in poetry / your path of integrity
when / will you come to me? 

If we place this psalm within the mouth of the king (of David and his successors) a level of meaning emerges here that otherwise is only hinted at. That level is two-fold. We have noted in many other psalms where we can detect the voice of the king a particular, intimate connection between the king and Yhwh. The king is his “son” and the “son” wants nothing more than to please his father-Yhwh. This intimacy is rooted in the fact that this son is, so to speak, a ‘father’ to the nation; Yhwh’s love of this son is very closely tied to the son’s love of Yhwh’s people. It is this which marks out a king as “one who is after Yhwh’s own heart”. David is David (as Adam was Adam) not (only) because he loved Yhwh but because he loved Yhwh’s people. The king is, in this sense, very “close to Yhwh’s heart” and is able to reveal and open that heart to Yhwh’s people in a way that others cannot. 

This opens out into the second layer of meaning: that the king not only represents Yhwh to the people, but represents the people to Yhwh. In some fashion, the people are summed up “in their head” the king. When he stands before Yhwh, they all stand before Yhwh. They are “in him”. If he is struck, they are scattered. These opening lines, with this in mind, resonate at these levels. The king-son rejoices in his father. He ‘sings’ to him; he ‘celebrates’ him; his love of his father is best expressed (or, most deeply expressed) in poetry. And, he aches for the time when his father will “come to him”. Likewise, when he reaches out to his father, he does so as king-of-his-people. What he praises in his father are those ‘communal’ qualities that bind a kingdom together: loyalty, justice and integrity. All of these qualities, as we will see, are the ‘glue’ that hold people together. They are the ‘life of the people’. 

A third level emerges here: whose ‘integrity and loyalty’ is David talking about? At first glance it clearly appears to be Yhwh’s. And yet, what David ‘sings’ in the remainder of the psalm is his own enactment of integrity and loyalty. It is here that a deeper meaning to the question emerges that confirms our previous insight: this is not an ‘either/or’. David enacts Yhwh’s integrity, as his ‘image on earth’ and ‘son’, and, by doing so, attempts to draw his father-Yhwh closer to him and his people. In other words, in the logic of kingly-love, the interplay between Yhwh and his king-son, is not one of competition (either its Yhwh or the king) or dissolution (its really just Yhwh). It is, rather, one of admiring imitation. The question is, in other words, a complaint (and, actually makes the entire psalm a complaint) but it is a loving-complaint, a desire for Yhwh to ‘fill the space’ that the king has made.