Ps. 101 (ridding the City)

In the morning / I have destroyed
all wicked countrymen
ridding Yhwh’s city
of all evildoers. 

We have commented on this theme throughout—the king’s unwavering and immediate response to wickedness. But it is here where it is most clearly stated. The reference to the king’s destruction being “in the morning” signals the fact that the king does not hesitate in uprooting evil. No time passes. Instead, the ‘light of justice’ coincides with the ‘light of the sun’. Just as the sun ‘reveals everything’ upon rising, so too does the king’s justice. In other words, the king floods his kingdom with the light of justice as the light of the sun floods the kingdom in vision. This immediacy of response, contained here in the concluding verse, should recall to mind the question the king has posed to Yhwh: “when will you come to me?”. What the king is insinuating is that he has acted immediately to the need for justice and now Yhwh should do the same. Without saying it directly, he implies that Yhwh response is not as immediate as his own. This is not, however, an accusation; it is, rather, an attempt to prod Yhwh into action by showing him that the king has been (utterly) faithful. This ‘immediacy’ is then matched by the ‘totality’ of his response. Not only does he respond without delay, but he responds without remainder. He destroys “all wicked countrymen” and “all evildoers”.  This ‘totality of response’ has been clear throughout the psalm. It is in almost every verse either by total absence (“no one”, “none”) or by activity (silence “whoever secretly slanders”). What we come to see in this concluding verse is that the king’s protection of himself and his realm is not merely defensive or an ‘avoiding of evil’. Rather, it is an active “destruction” and “ridding” of evil from Yhwh’s city. And it is here that we can stretch out and make two points. The first is that the king is enacting within the city what he does outside the city. What I mean is that the king here engages in an ‘internal’ war to uproot wickedness in a similar way that he, for example, would destroy the Canaanites. This is ‘holy war’ from within. And the king is just as decisive and total to himself and his people as he is to the ‘nations’ and Israel’s enemies. This leads to the second point—there is something reminiscent here of Joshua’s ‘conquest of Canaan’ and the ‘ban’ he enacts on the cities; it is total, it is decisive, it is final and it is immediate. In this psalm we see the ‘faithful king’ (David, a ‘new Adam’), as opposed to the Saul who failed to utterly root out the wickedness in the land.  This ‘echo’ of the king’s holy war is deepened when we see that this war is not one waged to “rid the land” of evildoers but to “rid Yhwh’s city”.