Ps. 101 (Intro.; enacting Adam within)

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? 

A brief side note on my approach to this psalm. Initially, the psalm seemed very straightforward as a description of a king’s proper act of safeguarding himself and his court from corruption. He was (and we will look at this later) a type of “Wisdom King”, separating the good from the evil. And he celebrated his vigilance in this regard. However, one line stuck out: the question he poses to Yhwh, “When will you come to me?”. That question has been heard before, but it is often in the context of a psalmist (or a people) who suffer injustice and are imploring Yhwh to ‘set things to right’. Here, it sounded odd, given the very confident nature of the psalm. The more I reflected on it, though, the more certain other things in the psalm started to strike me as odd as well. For example, the psalm is bookended by Yhwh; his name appears in the first and last verse. However, he is not mentioned at all in between. Everything that ‘happens’ is the king’s doing. Also, there is the intriguing fact that the king initially refers to “his court” and then at the end refers to “Yhwh’s city”. There is also what, I perceive, to be a resemblance between how the King regards his own person and his city and how pilgrims are interrogated when they enter the Temple. Both are very concerned with the proximity of evil and the need for a unified and humble heart. It was, at this point, that the question that seemed so odd at first became, in fact, the central line of the psalm. Here is what I mean—I think this psalm is David ‘making his case’ for why Yhwh should “come to him”. He has acted justly; he has ‘walked in Yhwh’s integrity’, enacting it both in himself and in his realm. He has, in other words, made his people into ‘pilgrim people’ who are ready for Yhwh’s presence just as pilgrims must examine themselves before entering the Temple. More deeply still, this psalm reflects the internal action of the king, within his realm. He enacts the same type of ‘ridding of injustice’ within himself and his people that he does to the external enemies in times of war. This psalm is entirely ‘inward’ focused. The ‘enemy’ is within David (or, potentially) and his people. One final point: Adam, in Genesis, has many similarities to a king (the ‘image of god’, the test of ‘wisdom’, etc…). One in particular should be noted here—like priests, kings are supposed to ‘guard and protect’. They are to ‘adjudicate’ the right from the wrong. Adam is given this command over the Garden. He is to be a wise ruler who guards and protects it (and, fails). David, when he engages in war with the Philistines is enacting this Adam-command over the Promise Land. In this psalm, he is enacting it within the realm. This is “Adam enacted”. He is, in the power given to him as a ‘son of God’, moving with the freedom-of-Adam, which, I believe, casts a bright light on the fact that while Yhwh begins and ends the psalm, it is David who ‘performs the action’. As we will explore next time—this ‘performance’ though, is one that begins and ends in praise.