Ps. 8, Pt. 2 (Majesty and the Lifting)

Majesty and the Lifting: It is an interesting thing to note that the psalmist begins the psalm declaring that he is going to worship the ‘majesty above the heavens’, but the rest of the psalm focuses on Yhwh’s lifting up of the lowly in order to grant them a participation within his strength. True, he does mention “the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars”, but the dominant note that is struck is the fact that Yhwh consistently “establishes his strength” either through “babes and sucklings” or through the seemingly irrelevant “sons of man”. Indeed, the reference to the heavens’ creation only serves to highlight the magnitude of the authority that is granted to man. If we are, in fact, to see in this psalm a praise of Yhwh’s majesty, then we must come to a rather profound realization: that it is precisely in “the lifting” that the psalmist sees one of the grandest expressions of Yhwh’s majesty and mastery over creation. In other words, Yhwh’s condescension to establish his strength in the lowly is, almost paradoxically, an expression (or theophany) of his majesty. This is something we alluded to in our reflection on Psalm 2—that it was precisely in mediating his authority through the Davidic king that we were permitted to witness an aspect of Yhwh’s love and authority that otherwise would remain hidden. Yhwh is one who can actually hand over power and thereby increase his own glory rather than lose or diminish it. More deeply still, the more he establishes his power in the ‘lowly’ the more his power is actually revealed; if he can establish his strength through “babes and sucklings” then he is not limited to the realm of human forms of dominion and power. Instead, he can pacify (vs. 2) all human forms of dominion and power precisely through those who have none. This is why the psalmist can actually overwhelmed by Yhwh’s majesty, precisely through his mediation upon the authority that has been granted to man. We might say: God could subdue Rome through a backwater nothing-of-a-man.

Ps. 8 (Majesty, mastery and liturgy)

It is commonly thought that what the “babes and sucklings” speak is the divine Name and that Yhwh’s mastery is thereby ‘established’ putting “to rest” foe and avenger. There is merit to this. However, the psalm seems to point in a different direction. In the immediately preceding line the psalmist declares that he will “worship your majesty above the heaven.” It is this act of speaking, this liturgical praise, that I believe is what comes forth “from the mouths of babes and sucklings”. This has important ramifications for how we understand the act of creative mastery in this psalm, for both Yhwh and the authority Yhwh grants to man over “the work of his hands”. Of course, the act of worship involves praise of the divine Name, and its shimmering visibility “in all the earth”.  But this is not simply a ‘pronouncement’ of the Name. The Name is ‘majestic’, and this ‘majesty’ is “above the heavens”. The Name is, then, itself an overwhelming expression of Yhwh’s presence and, as such, can only be expressed through an act of awed liturgy. More deeply still is how the psalmist understands the role of liturgy within creation and the act of sovereign power. For the psalmist, the liturgy of Yhwh’s Name “establishes strength” and “puts at rest both foe and avenger.” This idea is present in many places in scripture. We might think here of the liturgy that establishes creation in Genesis, or the liturgy that brought down the walls of Jericho and, more pertinent still, the liturgy that is reported in the book of Chronicles at the establishment of the Temple. In Genesis, the “rest” of the seventh day, is the “rest of Yhwh” as he comes to dwell in the Temple that has been completed. In Chronicles, the liturgy of the Temple establishment follows the “rest” that floods the land after David’s conquests. That “rest” was the prerequisite of the Temple construction. In regards to Jericho, there is no military attack but simply a ‘seven’-circling (creational circling) of Jericho. In all of these, the liturgy is part and parcel of the act of creation against the forces of chaos and destruction. Here, in psalm 8,  these ideas are closely wed together. When man is “made little less than God” and “crowned with glory and honor”, he is made into the Adam-of-God that has the responsibility to guard and protect the garden. In other words, to continue Yhwh’s creative act of establishing a prodigal and life giving order to creation, and guarding that against the forces of chaos and death. It is this form of ‘mastery’ that is given to man and the authority that “sets everything beneath his feet”. The entire spectrum of creation is set beneath man, but man-as-liturgical-man. It is liturgy to Yhwh that establishes man’s mastery over creation. It is what “crowns him with glory and honor”. In the words of Genesis, we might say that it is the foundation of his “image”.

Ps. 2 (the new Adam)

Psalm 2

 

Why do nations / congregate in commotion

And why do warriors / murmur murderously

Why do earthy kings / take their stand

And why do princes / join together as one

Against Yhwh / and his anointed.

 

Psalm 2 opens with a vision of the nations engaging in speech and in action. The first two lines describe what they say, or how they sound. The next two lines describe their unity. The final, fifth line describes what their speech and action is aimed at: the overthrow of Yhwh and his anointed. These two dynamics are important to keep in mind as the psalm progress because Yhwh and his anointed will address each in turn.

 

In the realm of sound there is music and there is noise. Music is shaped and formed; noise is simply chaos (or, cacophony). Here, when the nations congregate, their sound is chaotic: they ‘congregate in commotion’ and ‘murmur murderously’. More to the point, their sound is murder. The nations are, here, deliberately set over-against the blessed man of Psalm 1. In Psalm 1, the wellspring of the blessed man’s blessedness was Torah and his ‘murmuring’ over it day and night. Here, the warriors’ wellspring is murder, and over it they murmur.  

 

Yet, as central as freedom is to the nations, they do exhibit a type of order and shape—they do ‘congregate’, ‘take their stand’ and ‘join together as one’. They will, in other words, surrender freedom from each other (at least temporarily) in order to achieve freedom from Yhwh and his anointed. This points to an important dynamic of the psalm—the national one. This psalm should not, I think, be read individualistically, but rather as one that focuses on how the realm of Yhwh and the realm of chaos interact at the national level. These are not simply the wicked and the scoffers of Psalm 1, but princes, warriors and kings. In contrast to Psalm 1, where the wicked could be avoided by the blessed man, here the nations are actively seeking the anointed’s destruction. They are at war with Yhwh and his son. There is no possibility of avoidance. The only option is confrontation. And, that is what this psalm will address later—how Yhwh confronts those who attack his own. As we will see, Yhwh’s response to the nations this is the Davidic covenant and his establishment of his ‘son’ on Zion. Moreover, and perhaps even more importantly, we will see that while those who stand over-against Yhwh experience Yhwh as a force of tremendous wrath and destruction, those who stand within the Davidic realm, hear Yhwh’s voice as one of overwhelming tenderness, affection and love. This psalm, in other words, takes the dynamic of Psalm 1, with the blessed and wicked, and transposes it onto the national stage.

 

The wrath of Yhwh can already be anticipated, however, from the opening word—‘Why…’. For the psalmist, the nations’ attempt to overthrow Yhwh’s anointed is nothing short of absurd. It is, to the psalmist, purely and only a source of confusion and questioning. Contained within this single word is a vision of Yhwh’s covenant with David that is nothing short of amazing. For the psalmist, the Davidic covenant stands not merely as a source of order and justice on the earth, but as the source. The Davidic kings are, in the human realm, what Zion is in the realm of stone—the place where Yhwh meets the earth, where heaven and earth intersect in such a way that Yhwh’s governance, glory and authority are made present to the earth, filling it with his abundance and desire. If Zion is the ‘navel’ of the world, then the Davidic kings are the Adam of the Garden. And, this is why the psalmist cannot do anything but merely voice confusion. Chaos has no shape; it is absurd in its most fundamental level. Here, the absurd is met with the absurd.

 

Let us tear off / their fetters

And let us cast off / their cords from us

 

The nations are not simply at war with Yhwh and his anointed. They are, in fact, in rebellion against them. These ‘nations’, ‘warriors’, and ‘earthly kings’, are currently bound by Yhwh and his anointed’s ‘fetters’ and ‘cords’. They are their vassals, and subject to their authority. They are, perhaps, attempting their rebellion during a time of succession, when a seeming fissure has opened. Whatever the cause, we must be attuned to fact that their rebellion is a tearing of the unified fabric of Yhwh’s reign on earth through his anointed. Yhwh’s wrath, as we will see, must be understood entirely within this context.

 

We must also be cognizant of how their subjection to the davidides is narrated. They describe themselves as being bound by ‘fetters’ and ‘cords’. For them, the Davidic rule is oppressive and restrictive. This description, though, must be understood as an expression of their murderous murmuring and not as an accurate, or true description. In fact, the psalm will end with a claim completely counter to the wicked: “Blessed are all who seek refuge in him.”

 

While the reason is never described, these nations have become entranced by a form of power different than Yhwh and his anointed. Moreover, the psalm does not describe to whom they want to be bound, to what god or what king. It merely describes their rebellion in terms of freedom. It seems as if they want to be the kings of the earth, but an earth without demarcation, form or structure. They want the freedom to do what is right in their own eyes; they want to establish (one might say…) a dictatorship of relativism. They want chaos as their king. The wickeds’ aim is aimless. When Yhwh responds, he points to two particularities—his king and his mountain—both of which he has established as his covenant fountains on earth.

 

Finally, the nations’ rebellion is summed up in these two lines. They will not speak again. Yhwh’s response to them will, likewise, consist of two lines, with the king himself filling out the rest.

The Enthroned One / laughs in heaven

Yhwh mocks them.

 

We recall that Psalm 1 began in the negative. It described what the blessed man avoided before it described what the blessed man desired. We saw that by opening the psalm in that fashion the psalmist caused the listener to pay closer attention to the blessed man; the hiatus created a sense of tension that was then released when Torah arrived. Here, something very similar happens. The psalmist’s opening questions create anticipation for a resolution, a desire for a denouement, an unmasking of the nations’ absurdity. The psalmist now provides that resolution, but in a truly shocking manner.

 

By way of analogy, when the nations gathered together to build the tower of Babel, they constructed what on earthly terms was monstrous. The text gives one that impression. However, when Yhwh shows up the entire drama is reversed. What appeared daunting is now portrayed in a very comic, dismissive light. Yhwh is described as “looking down from heaven” on this tower that was being constructed to reach the heavens. It is deeply funny and in much the same way as this psalm. There is a heavenly perspective that renders man’s pretentions to be comic and, as we have said, partaking of the absurd. But not until the heavenly perspective is revealed.

Of course, one must ‘breathe heaven’ before one can, like the psalmist, look upon such things not merely as misguided but with puzzlement and as absurdities.

 

First, the shift to heaven and ‘the Enthroned One’: the psalmist has described the rebellious ones as “earthly kings”. And his perplexed questions about them has engendered a sense of deep superiority to them. As such, the psalm has already alienated the reader from the nations in an upward fashion. One has been ‘looking down’, as it were, upon them. This is not simply geography. Yet now, without any preparation, the psalmist turns our gaze not only to heaven, but to the very throne of Yhwh.  immediately dra The psalmist accomplishes several remarkable things at once in these two lines. First, until this verse the psalm has really been framed more as a question needing an answer, and building toward a resolution when the nations’ mask of arrogance will be removed and they will be revealed, to the world, as the fools they really are. As such, there is an unreal quality to the first few verses. The nations have been, in a sense, bracketed and, as such, the psalm has felt The murdering murmur is here met with laugher in heaven and divine mockery. The contrast could not be more abrupt. On some level the reader has already been put in a position to hear this laughter; the psalmist’s question of ‘why..’ distances the reader in a state of superiority over the wicked. And yet, even with that alienation, the divine laughter catches us by surprise. The reader is almost as disarmed by it as the wicked surely are. The laughter: Yhwh’s laughter is, perhaps, the perfect reversal of the wickeds’ aggression. Whereas they are murmuring murderously, and gathering in a display of unified chaos---Yhwh, laughs. Their seriousness is met by his laughing incomprehension. Yhwh does not meet them where they are but rather at a distance infinitely above them.

 

This laughter causes a cessation, a pause and hiatus. It forms the preamble to his speech but its reality is so acute that it instills a visceral response of humiliation. One almost senses that it takes place off-stage. As if the wicked have been performing their little act only to now realize that they are contained within a much larger play, and one whose hiddenness from them is now only revealed through a laughter that overtakes them and surrounds them. They did not know Yhwh; but they are now getting a sense of the one they had come to overthrow.

 

It must be pointed out here that this laughter and the violence and terror inherent in this psalm is all of a single piece. What I mean is that this laughter is an expression of wrathful anger; it is the wind before the hurricane, and in many ways is more horrible. It is the response that only a person of supreme authority could provide. And yet, as we will see, it does not originate from the depths of Yhwh’s offense against justice, but it originates in his love for his ‘son’, the king. The flame that erupts in derisive laughter is the flame of love that consumes his son.

 

 

Then he addresses them / in his anger

and in his wrath / he terrifies them.

 

It is at this point that Yhwh truly begins his confrontation with the wicked. Wrath and terror are central concerns for the psalmist. As we saw yesterday, wrath and terror are Yhwh’s response to attacks on his son; they originate from within and are therefore expressions of that paternal love. Moreover, it is Yhwh’s activity within the covenant within his son. If his son is established on his mountain in order to mediate his justice and concern to the world, then Yhwh’s obligation is to protect his son, and that protection finds expression as wrath and anger. This is, simply put, the dynamic of covenant. This must, however, be firmly set within the national scope of the psalm. Yhwh’s son is not merely an individual Israelite. Yhwh’s son is the king who represents the people to Yhwh and represents Yhwh to the people. He has a particular role that cannot be applied indiscriminately to everyone. We could make a comparison—that one cannot read the play of Hamlet correctly if one forgets that Hamlet is to be a king. The Davidic king is a political person; he carries Yhwh’s people within himself. As such, Yhwh’s concern for his son is but the intensification into a single person of his concern and regard for his “first born son”—Israel. And it goes further—Yhwh’s concern is not limited to Israel’s boundaries, because Israel, as the ‘first born son’ is, Joseph-like, supposed to ‘feed the world’ in times of famine. Israel election is for service not mastery. The ‘nations’ that are in rebellion are supposed to be peacefully subservient to Yhwh and his anointed, so that they might flourish within the divine light of Yhwh’s bounty. In other words, Yhwh’s wrath and anger extends to those ‘nations’ that place themselves within the ambit of the anointed’s authority. As we will see later, that authority is supposed to expand to “the end of the earth” (vs. 8). Yhwh is ready to give his son the entire earth and all of the nations, so that he can quell the forces of chaos and establish shalom. So he can, in other words, be the Adam that ‘guards and protects’ the garden.

 

This is not far afield from understanding Yhwh’s wrath and anger. Again, his anger is but the expression of his love of his son and his mission of bringing the entire earth underneath his, Yhwh’s, throne. “Every knee shall bend….”. The greater the expanse of Yhwh’s concern and regard, the further out the boundary of his wrath and anger will extend. Finally, by subjecting the nations to terror of him, Yhwh has already begun their conversion to him. The final verses show that, even within the offered service to Yhwh there is ‘fear and trembling’. A holy dread is maintained even there, and it leavens the rejoicing inherent to praising and serving Yhwh (vs. 11). We should not see this, then, as merely an ‘angry response’. Yhwh’s wrath carries within it the beginning of a liturgy to him, no matter how much that terror will be reconfigured when service is willingly offered. In other words, Yhwh’s wrath even exhibits his loving concern for those who are subject to it. It is not merely defensive. His booming and terrifying laughter, and his rage—all of it, from the beginning, is aimed at gathering the nations back to himself like lost sheep. For those with ears to hear, even Yhwh’s voice of wrath can be a thing of beauty

 

I have installed / my king

upon Zion / my holy mountain.

 

These are the only lines directly spoken by Yhwh in the psalm; the remaining Yhwh-speech will be narrated through the anointed. This is important in two structural ways. First, these two lines represent a response to the wicked’s two lines of rebellion. The wicked declared, “Let us tear off their fetters and let us cast off their cords from us.” Yhwh responds, “I have installed my King upon Zion, my holy mountain.” Yhwh’s words are meant to respond directly to the wicked. They want freedom from “their” (Yhwh and his anointed) fetters; Yhwh responds that he installed his anointed. They want freedom without any concomitant binding authority over them; Yhwh responds that they are subject to the particular king established on the particular location of Zion. When one juxtaposes Yhwh’s response with the declaration of the wicked, one sees that Yhwh has concretely and particularly made his anointed into not simply a seat of his justice, but the seat of his justice within the world. Just as Yhwh is the “Enthroned One” in heaven (vs. 4), so now is his anointed the one enthroned upon the earth, upon the ‘holy mountain’.

 

The point is profound—just as Yhwh is the only true power of heaven, so too is his ‘king’ the only true power on earth. In other words—in the Davidic king one witnesses “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. We will come to see how the Davidic king enacts Yhwh’s will upon the earth, and how he mirrors Yhwh in this psalm. For now, however, we should comment on the second important aspect of these words—that they are spoken by Yhwh and not the anointed. When the chaos kings speak, they speak as one. They are, however, “earthly kings” (vs. 1), a clearly derogatory comment. One might say, along more Pauline lines, that these are the “kings of the flesh”. They represent the summation of earthly rebellion against the heavenly realm of justice and flourishing. Moreover, when they speak, they can only speak through themselves; their rebellion and their (supposed) freedom emerge from and are aimed at ‘the earth’. It has no divine backing. Yet, when the psalm turns away from the wicked and toward Yhwh and the anointed, he does not have the anointed respond to them but instead Yhwh in order to show that the anointed’s authority is not merely ‘earthly’ but one that has behind it this divine statement of installation. When the anointed speaks, he speaks as one who stands within an intimate relationship with heaven and Yhwh; he speaks from within the covenant. He, unlike the wicked, does not ‘speak from himself’. In fact, when the anointed speaks, he will only speak the words spoken to him by Yhwh.

 

A further point to make here is the profound difference in tone between how Yhwh speaks to the wicked and how he speaks to his anointed son. The speech to the wicked is brisk, authoritarian and largely devoid of elaboration. It is issued with the force of a command. It is an almost purely external word that confronts the wicked in a type of judgment. When Yhwh speaks to the anointed on the other hand it is full of dialogue and desire. His words to the anointed are more than triple the amount spoken to the wicked. And, whereas the words to the anointed are not intended to call for a response, Yhwh’s words to the anointed actually request that the anointed speak to Yhwh, to move Yhwh into action. I think we could say this: that the rebellious hear Yhwh’s voice as one of pure command or statement. Yhwh’s voice, at this point, takes on the aspect of wrath and anger and it allows for no intervening space of dialogue or reciprocity. It is ‘abstract’ and formal in this way. The righteous however enter into dialogue with Yhwh. Like Moses they speak to him ‘face to face’. As we will see, time only becomes ‘history’ in the realm of the righteous, which is also the realm of prayer and liturgy; everything that stands outside of this realm operates in the realm of curse and of time alone (time is to history what noise is to music).

 

I will tell / of Yhwh’s decree

He said to me / “You are my son

Today / I have begotten you”

Just ask me

and I will grant nations / as your inheritance

and as your possession / the ends of the earth.

You shall break them / with an iron rod

like a potter’s vessel / you shall pulverize them.

 

Up to this point the psalm has focused on Yhwh’s external face, the one he turns toward the wicked. As we have seen, it is fierce and authoritarian. His voice is one of command and statement; there is no room for dialogue. Here, in these verses, however, we look inward and we see the face he turns toward his son, his king. It is, to put it mildly, a dramatic and profound change. This is probably best summarized in the following way—when Yhwh speaks to the wicked about his installing of his king, his voice is terse, abbreviated, authoritarian and consists of two lines of speech. Yet, when king speaks, telling of the exact same situation—his installation as king—the anointed is not referred to as the ‘king’ but as “my son”. Moreover, he is not “installed” but ‘begotten’. His lines to his ‘son’ are more than triple those to the wicked and, most importantly, they consist of dialogue. The riches that this difference points to could likely be pursued in an infinite amount of ways. In the broadest stroke, one could begin with the observation that Yhwh’s speech to the wicked does not contradict his speech to his son. They both announce the king’s installation. They both speak to the fact that Yhwh is the source of power behind the Davidic throne. In this way they are both, clearly, ‘true’. And yet, the speech to the wicked is one of abstract confrontation. The earthly kings, while in a state of rebellion, are not permitted to see the inner dynamic of the covenant. They are only permitted to see that which confronts them in their rebellion and serves to terrify them. Yhwh is, emphatically, not speaking ‘open’ with them. In this way it is, one might say, ‘true’ but it is shorn of the beautiful language spoken to the son. Moreover, Yhwh’s act of installation is one that is accomplished, in the eyes of the wicked, through a pure act of power on Yhwh’s part; it hits the wicked like a bomb. The king is, in effect, absent and he plays no active role at all. He has been pushed into the foreground in order that Yhwh’s blazing face might burn the wicked with a greater heat. With the son, though, everything is different.

 

With the son, Yhwh’s proclamation is itself, entrusted to the son. Yhwh speaks here, but only through the son. This is a first, profound point, and something hidden from the wicked. For the wicked, Yhwh’s speech must be one that only originates from him; Yhwh’s authority is, so to speak, of such authority and power that to admit of mediation would be to admit of a diminution in power. Yet, when we move into the inner life of covenant, not only is the anointed permitted to speak but Yhwh’s words are entrusted to him. This is not mere ‘accuracy’, although it is significant that the accuracy of his words can be entrusted to him. It is, rather, the fact that the full dynamic, the full life, of his speech can not only be handed over to the anointed but that it is precisely in that handing over that we come to fully hear Yhwh’s speech. What I mean is this: that Yhwh’s full authority is actually grasped, not lessened, in the fact that he hands over his words to his son, and that it is only in the dialogue between them it emerges completely. This ‘authority’ cannot be understood by the wicked, but the wicked do not have a ‘monopoly’ on a vision of Yhwh’s authority; they have only a partial vision of it, and an incomplete one. That is to say—Yhwh’s authority is not a neutral category that can be correctly understood by wicked and righteous alike. 

 

Which moves us deeper into the profundity of these lines. When Yhwh speaks to the wicked, he speaks of the authority of his king, established on Zion. Although it is not stated, it is clear that his king’s authority is one that is consonant with the range of authority that Yhwh possesses; meaning, that the king’s authority on earth is as expansive as Yhwh’s in heaven and, therefore, total. When the anointed speaks, however, something deeply significant is revealed about how this authority is enacted. To the wicked, it would appear as if the realm of the king is one that is put under his feet based solely upon the actions of Yhwh and his overwhelming authority and power. To the righteous though, it is based upon the son’s imploring of the father to give him the ‘ends of the earth’. In other words, and this is the remarkable point, Yhwh delights in bringing the son into the sphere of his own authority and, even more remarkable, of being responsive to him. It is as if Yhwh’s authority is waiting for the catalyst of his son’s request in order to unleash itself. This is the full range of covenant-love—it is here that we witness the fact that love and authority coincide completely, that prayer and power are not mutually exclusive but actually interpenetrate one another, not as if the son, himself, had divine authority within himself (that will have to wait), but that Yhwh’s power is one that wants the call of the beloved. The most important and eloquent words of the psalm are the simple, “Just ask…”.

And we can say more. Again, this psalm has a national, world-wide scope. It is the king that operates within this ‘call-and-response’ with Yhwh. As such, and this is the deeply moving and awesome nature of this psalm—that the kingdom of God is actually made present by and through the Davidic king, Yhwh’s son, requesting it. Yhwh’s borders are expanded to the same degree to which his son requests that that authority be placed underneath him. In other words, for the king that ‘bury’s his talents’, then little will be given. But to the king that asks for the ends fo the earth—to him will be given the ends of the earth. And one must pause here to reflect—this gives us a glimpse into the relationship between Christ and his Father that is deeply moving. We find here the fact that Jesus made this demand; that ‘asked’ his father for the ends of the earth and his father gave it to him, and he gave it to him by incorporating the Church into his body such that Christ’s spirit would spread to the ends of the earth. But the impetus, the catalyst, and the life of that evangelizing spread is the constant prayer of Christ—even today, through his ‘limbs’—that he be given the world. The Church spreads in so far as it voices this prayer, in the Son, to the Father.

 

Serve Yhwh / with fear

and rejoice / with trembling

kiss the son / lest he be angry

and you perish / in the path

for his anger / flares up quickly

happy are all / who seek refuge in him.

 

Here, at the end of the psalm, the anointed and Yhwh are seen mirroring each other. The kings are admonished to ‘serve Yhwh’, just as they are told to ‘kiss the son’. They are told to serve Yhwh ‘with fear’, and to kiss the son ‘lest he be angry and your perish’. Moreover, they are told to ‘rejoice with trembling’ in front of Yhwh, and that ‘happy are all who seek refuge in him [the anointed, presumably]’. This type of mirroring is now only possible once the kings have been terrified out of their rebellion and also seen how Yhwh’s authority is most fully exercised through his adopting of his ‘son’. The kings now have a proper appreciation of the divine backing of the king, and the fact that the king now resides within the sovereign sphere of Yhwh and exercises that sovereignty over them and the ‘ends of the earth’. They know see that the ‘king’s anger’ is one that burns not simply from within himself but is also one ignited within the heavenly realm; it is both a human and divine wrath that erupts at rebellion. We see here how, at the font of the Davidic covenant, is a king whose heart is (or, should be) after Yhwh’s own heart. The psalmist can now fluidly move back and forth between Yhwh and the anointed without compromising Yhwh’s position as ‘father’ nor the king’s position as ‘son’; he can, in other words, now move within the realm of covenant. Perhaps one of the best analogies for what is occurring here is that between a man and woman—the man must be the one originally active in the sexual act. He is the one who delivers the seed, as Yhwh delivers and creates the covenant. However, the woman must then apply her own inherent activity and appropriate the seed within herself, making it fruitful. Likewise, Yhwh delivers the covenant and opens the space—he impregnates the Davidic line—but the Davidic king must then, woman-like, take that seed to himself and appropriate it. He must deliver as much of himself over to the seed in order to make it fruitful—in order to bring justice and shalom to the earth. It is, then, no coincidence that Israel will be the ‘bride of Yhwh’ and, of course, no coincidence that that bride will find its final and most exuberant fulfillment, concretely, in Mary, the bride-mother of the bridegroom-son-of-David.

 

Concluding Theological Reflections

 

The story of Adam and Eve is not merely the story of everyman’s disobedience, but also the story of the fall of Yhwh’s king. Adam was the first messiah, the first anointed king of Yhwh. He was the one who was supposed to perpetuate Yhwh’s creative mastery over chaos and bring shalom to the earth. He was supposed to “fill the earth and subdue it”. He was supposed to ‘take Eden to the world’. The Torah command—the first words spoken to Adam—placed him within the creative upsurge that began on the ‘first day’ and now culminated in Adam. Had Adam remained obedient, ‘the kingdom of heaven’ would have become the liturgical empire of Yhwh and covered creation. Adam’s sons would have established nations, but nations that would have been unified under the authority of Yhwh. And those nations would have continued and perpetuated the prodigal act of creation. But Adam failed. And, when he failed he did not only disobeyed Yhwh but, importantly, he obeyed the deceiver. At that moment Adam began the transfer of creation over to Satan. Esau-like, he foolishly gave his birthright and authority over to the trickster. The effect of Adam’s disobedience was tremendous. Adam’s children, who should have been the patriarchs of creation now became the fathers of national chaos and confusion. Adam’s sons, and the nations that sprang from them, manifested Adam’s disobedience. They sought to dominate one another but were, instead, dominated by their lust for domination. They became the chaos waters again covering the earth. Their apogee was the Tower of Babel (confusion).

 

As nations of chaos and confusion, the nations have no inherent form or shape. They exist purely in the twilight of the form of creation that Yhwh intended from the beginning. They are movable shadows. The more one senses that one has perceived the ‘guiding light’ of the nations—the more one delves deeper into the origin of the nation—the more one comes to see that their origin is nothing but a mockery of the why-less, and good, nature of creation. The nations are at root, why-less as well but it is the why-less nature of chaos and disobedience. In other words, there is not nor can there be an overarching or universal history or story of the nations. They are cannibals. Eternally seeking to dominate, yet eternally dominated by their lust to dominate.

 

More deeply still, the nations must themselves become a lie even to themselves, just as Adam, at the moment of his disobedience, created a story that would enable him to hide from Yhwh (“the woman you gave me…”). The nations create myths and idols that simultaneously reveal their disobedience and conceal their shameful lust for domination. Disobedience generates idols, as if out of a great chaos furnace. The tragedy of this situation is that these myths and idols become the nation’s ethos and life; it is their world. And, as such, they are, quite literally, trapped within their own disobedience and lie, and yet perpetuate that disobedience and lie with every act. The Flood was nothing but Yhwh’s attempt to stem the tidal wave that was threatening to consume the nations and the earth.

As if by the slimmest thread, however, Yhwh maintained a glimmer of creation within the covenants he established with humanity (Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Israel, David, and finally Christ). These covenants maintained the ‘kingdom of God’ that Yhwh had intended for Adam to cover the earth with. They fluctuated and contracted with astonishing speed (even to the point of Isaac). And yet, through these covenants, creation remained tethered to Yhwh. These covenants carried within them the first promise made to Adam and Eve—that from Eve one would be born who would crush the deceiver’s head. A ‘new Adam’ would come from Eve, a new messiah, who would reverse the flood of chaos that Adam had unleashed. And this new messiah would establish the true nation that would begin again the work of Eden. This new messiah would begin to rebuild the Temple of Creation. He would establish a ‘ground zero’ from which Yhwh, through him, would begin again. Clearly, we begin to see the origin of the Davidic covenant and Solomon’s erection of the Temple on Zion, the Temple that, in Chronicles, directly mirrors creation itself.

 

This is the situation of Psalm 2. These nations have congregated together and are seeking to overthrow Yhwh and his anointed. The tidal wave of the nations’ chaos is lapping at the base of Zion and seeks to sever the earth from Yhwh’s dominion and to return the earth to its primal state of confusion and chaos. It is not simply the battle of one nation—Israel—against ‘the nations’. It is the battle of Adam against the forces that seek to introduce disobedience and confusion into creation. It is, in other words, a cosmic battle.

 

Undoubtedly, the confusion that the nations live within and perpetuate is legion. Psalm 2, however, is concerned with a particular form—their confusion regarding Yhwh and his anointed. As far as the nations are concerned, Yhwh and his anointed are the guardians of one nation among many; to them, the king is simply a king-among-kings, Israel is simply a nation-among-the-nations, and Yhwh is simply a god-among-the-gods. Here, we must recall the moment of Adam’s lie, because what we will find is that Adam began this confusion. First, Eve was the one who was seduced by the Deceiver, not Adam. Adam, however, obeyed Eve and ate. Second, when Yhwh confronted Adam, Adam himself became the deceiver. Adam blamed Yhwh for giving Eve to him. He did so, hoping that Yhwh would judge Eve and vindicate him; he was trying to curry Yhwh’s favor over against Eve. This was the beginning of every national myth—that the Divine favors one in contrast to another. Adam sacrificed Eve in order to win Yhwh. More deeply still, when Adam sacrificed Eve he irrevocably became a lie to himself, because Eve was ‘built’ from his very side. She was his own flesh. To sacrifice her in order to curry favor with God meant that Adam would always remain hidden from himself by the myths he creates to justify his shame. From that point on, every ‘son of Adam’ that would come to be a nation’s founder would perpetuate this myth; and at the root of every national myth is the sacrifice of others and that nation’s own concealment from itself. National identity is grounded in a struggle to curry divine favor and to sacrifice; it is not grounded in peace. There is only a will to power. As such, national identity is violence by necessity.

 

That is not Israel’s story. Israel sees all of this as the enactment of Adam’s lie. Strikingly, Israel is the only nation that does not trace its origin back to some hero or to a particular protective deity, but all the way back to Adam, who stands as the father of all men, and to Yhwh the one god. For Israel, creation is not, at its root, struggle and violence but shalom and joy. Israel, then, does not see itself as a nation-among-nations. Instead, Israel is Yhwh’s beginning to re-Adamize all of creation. Yhwh and his anointed are not a barrier to freedom, as the nations necessarily assume, but are, instead, the only ones in whom freedom from chaos can be achieved. The difference this makes is not merely quantitative. Israel is not simply ‘adding more power to Yhwh and his anointed’. It is not simply rhetoric. It is a qualitatively different story. It is so profoundly at odds with the nations understanding of themselves, of creation, and of the divine realm that when it confronts them, it necessarily becomes a force of destruction.

 

And yet, as we see in this psalm, the dialogue between Yhwh and his anointed does retain the original warmth and intimacy of Yhwh and Adam. This is the shalom of creation as manifested within the covenant between Yhwh and his messiah. Within the rupture that Yhwh created by his wrath he reveals to the nations the true identity of his anointed—and, more profoundly still, their own identity—and the fact that divine power is not one of struggle but of sacrifice, of handing one’s self over to the other.

 

All of this culminates in Christ. As the Second Adam, and the Messiah-of-God, Christ will not sacrifice his Eve in order to win the favor his father. Instead, he will sacrifice himself on her behalf. He will enact, for her, the primal moment of creation and display for all the nations the true and glorious realm of divine sovereignty. Adam hid when he disobeyed and then lied in order to curry God’s favor and sacrifice Eve. Christ exposes his nakedness to the nations and to God, and sacrifices himself for Eve. In so doing, Christ remakes the primal lie and disobedience that led to all of the nations’ myths and idols. Christ’s sacrifice became a moment of true divine unveiling so profound that man, and the nations, could never again revert to their original myths and idols. As Paul would say, Christ enacted the true spousal relationship between man and woman and, in so doing, he gave birth to a resurrected creation, a new Temple, a new nation, and a new priesthood. For those who stand within this ‘New Covenant, they will come to experience the profound reality that within God himself he is a perpetual ‘handing over’. That the inner dialogue between Yhwh and David is grounded in the dialogue of love and sacrifice that is God.

Ps. 1 (in the beginning)

Psalm 1

 

One of the first times that Adam hears Yhwh's voice, it comes to him as provision and command. Yhwh tells Adam that he is free to eat from any tree in the garden but that he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that if he does so he will surely die.  This primal sound will echo throughout history. When Israel is about to enter the Land, Yhwh will, in the form of Torah, put before them 'life and death', and they are to choose life so that they can live long within the Land. And when Jesus is baptized he is immediately driven out into the dessert, so that he can 'choose life'. It is, then, no surprise that the Psalter opens with the same dynamic. Blessed is the man who avoids the wicked and who cherishes Torah. We witness again, here, a type of 'first man', a 'first born', an Adam.

 

Curiously, Yhwh's first words to Adam required of him to make a choice. Yhwh spoke to Adam and awoke his freedom. More fundamentally, Yhwh, in the very first instance, told Adam that freedom was only such when he chose to obey Yhwh. Disobedience was not freedom; it was death. As such, it is important to recognize that Yhwh's command itself already bore the markings of a type of knowledge of good and evil. Yhwh put before Adam the choice between obedience and disobedience. It is not our place here to investigate what exactly the 'knowledge of good and evil' was in this regard. It is simply to point out that Adam's (e)very movement will be, and always-already is,  a response to Yhwh.

 

And that is where the Psalter opens in Psalm 1. It begins with the blessed man's avoidance of the wicked. It begins with a decision. More to the point, it begins with obedience.

 

Blessed / the man who has not / walked by the counsel of the wicked

and has not / stood in the way of the sinful

and has not / sat in the gathering of scoffers.

 

The psalter's opening is anything but an introduction. There is no genesis-like backstory. Yhwh is not the first person to appear. Instead, it opens as if in the midst of the story. It is man-in-action. We are, as readers, simply thrown into the psalm. It places before us an ideal, blessed man, and asks us to watch him and to contemplate him.

 

For the blessed man the world is charged with the reality of good and evil. They are different spheres of activity, and they are realms that man does not so much perform as inhabit. The blessed man is attuned to the fact that the one who acts out either good or evil does not so much act out a power that lies within himself, as that good and evil take him into the sphere of its own power. In other words, to perform evil is to become encompassed by evil and be performed by it. This stands in line with the fact that man was first spoken to and did not himself first speak. Man is a response. Good or evil, when performed-as-response, are therefore prior to man and something man inhabits. It is more true to say that good and evil perform through man than that man performs good and evil.

 

Once we come to grasp that evil is a sphere of activity we perceive that it is more like a dark flame than a passive reality brought forth through voluntary act. This is why the blessed man's avoidance of evil is total and absolute. It is always already more than the act performed and, as such, it is like a contagion. Again, we should recall Adam. Evil manifests itself through the insinuating voice of the serpent. It beckons, it tempts and it distorts. It is a lion seeking to devour. To simply be in its presence is to already be in the presence of a voice that draws into itself. It is this 'pull of evil', or this 'contagion', that the blessed man is aware of and wholly seeks to avoid.  We are, in other words, to see in the blessed man's avoidance what Adam failed to do.

 

The question we must ask ourselves at this point is why the psalm starts off in the negative. Why does he begin with what the blessed man avoids rather than what he desires? There are surely several reasons, but the one I want to focus on is the way this affects the listener. In brief, by opening the psalm in this manner, the psalmist makes the reader actually begin performing the necessary steps toward blessedness.

 

By opening in the negative, the psalm makes the reader begin the act of discernment. By withholding what the content of blessedness is, or what its source is, the psalmist performs an act of purgation. It is like an act of contrition or confession, because it calls forth the act of avoidance. It looks to cleanse the vessel before the content is poured into it. If reality is itself a choice between these two spheres, and if those two spheres are inhabited by an act of the heart's discernment and by obedience, then the psalmist is here creating the reader's heart into a fitting receptacle for Torah.

 

But / in Yhwh's Torah / is his delight

And in his Torah / will he muse / by day and night

 

The psalm now shifts from avoidance to delight. And in this shift we come to suspect that the blessed man avoidance of the wicked may have a deeper significance. What I mean is this, the first three lines lead us to believe that the blessed man is actively avoiding the wicked; that he finds something tantalizing about it and therefore must make a concerted act of will to avoid it. However, what we find here makes us question that. Here, we find that the blessed man's will is actively drawn toward another sphere of reality. Torah is his delight. So, his avoidance of the wicked may in fact be his movement toward Torah. In other words, it may be that the blessed man does not need to exert much energy to avoid the wicked. To him, the wicked display neither grandeur nor magnificence. Instead, they are boorish and dull in comparison with the glory of Torah.

 

If this is the case it points to a rather profound reality of Torah's power. A thing of beauty is not merely an object of attraction. A true object of beauty is, so to speak, a world in itself, sovereignly bending the entire person according to its contours. One is captive to it; transfixed by it; and changed by it. There is no place to hide in its presence. Beauty is, quite literally, powerfully creative in this way. For the blessed man, Torah is this most profound object of beauty. And it creates in him the proper response to evil, which is, from the standpoint of desire, no response at all. Within the world of Torah, evil and wickedness hold no sway.

 

The question then becomes what the blessed man sees in Torah. For the moment, we must be prepared to let that answer develop. It is no coincidence that this psalm stands as the gateway to the psalter. The remaining 149 psalms will each provide their own answer, as the Psalter itself is a part of Torah. That said, what we can see in this psalm is that, as an object of beauty, Torah displays that coincidence of freedom and form. It is law, but it is boundless. It is instruction, but it is life. It has a clear shape, but it is prodigal. It displays, in other words, the light of wisdom.

 

It is for this reason that Torah can counter the communion of the wicked. Verse 1 shows a clear totality-walking, standing, sitting-the entire scope of human activity. For Torah, however, it does not merely encompass the scope of the wicked-it is something that is present continuously. We might say that the Torah provides an abiding, ever-giving presence. Man's ability to meditate on it 'day and night', displays Torah's ever-greater depths and fecundity. This will have important implications for the images we will explore later, where Torah is likened to a water of eternal life.

 

So shall he be / like a tree

Transplanted / by running waters

Which shall yield its fruit / in its season

And its foliage / shall not wither

 

Torah and the blessed man now become an image drawn from the natural world. In fact, the psalmist will now portray both the wicked and the blessed in terms of vegetation and harvest. Each will get four lines.

 

The blessed man and Torah, the tree and the water: It is here were we find the most succinct and layered exposition of the blessed man’s relationship to Torah. When the psalmist spoke in non-metaphoric language, he described the blessed man as being attracted to Torah, of it being “his delight” and what he “meditates upon day and night”. It was certainly a thing that attracted the blessed man but it was described more as an object the blessed man approached. Torah was, in this regard, somewhat one dimensional and passive. And, for the psalmist, it did not capture the full dynamic at work. Accordingly, he reached for the image of the tree and water. Here, the psalmist maintains the original dynamic of the blessed man appropriating Torah—he ‘drinks’ from it. However, the psalmist, importantly, begins not with the blessed man approaching Torah, but with the blessed man being ‘transplanted’ next to running water. I find this highly significant.  Meditation upon torah moves one from, we might say, a profane sphere to that of the sacred. Torah mediation is, in other words, ecstatic; it moves one out of oneself and into Yhwh’s realm. This is both the reality and experience of Torah meditation. One is, and senses oneself to be, ‘transplanted’ in a more-than-literal fashion into Yhwh’s realm. Understood from the more accurate realm of poesis, we see that the foundational movement is not of the blessed man to Torah, but of the blessed man being taken into the realm of Yhwh’s delight. We might draw a parallel in this way: in Exodus there is a fascinating interplay between whether or not Moses sees Yhwh ‘face to face’. In some verses it appears he does not, while in others it seems clear that he does. Moreover, there is the permanent declaration that “no man can see the face of God and live.” Whatever the purpose of these verses, one thing we can glean is this: that Moses ‘sees the face of Yhwh’ most profoundly when he comes to know that he is seen, absolutely, by Yhwh.

 

That experience of Yhwh’s ‘always-already’ prior and absolute gaze is, in fact, what is experienced when one ‘sees the face of God’ (at least in part). What seems to be a one-way street of gazing at Yhwh is understood to be a much deeper two-way street whereby Yhwh was and is the one who is and was. And something analogous, I would argue, occurs in Torah meditation. On the surface, it appears that man approaches Torah and takes Torah to himself. However, for the blessed man, the opposite is largely true. Once he crosses Torah’s threshold he comes to see that he did not so much take Torah to himself but Torah transplanted him in some profound and prior act of ecstatic appropriation.

 

Not so / the wicked

but they are like chaff / that wind tosses.

 

Because of the way the psalmist has structured the psalm, these lines come laden with a meaning and depth they would otherwise not have. The nature of the righteous as a transplanted, nourished tree, that produces fruit and does not wither, creates a stark and profound contrast to the wicked. The wicked become the inverse of the righteous. Whereas the righteous are ‘transplanted’ to life-giving and sustaining waters, the wicked are ‘moved’ by being ‘blown away by the wind’.  Whereas the righteous ‘bear fruit in season’, the wicked are merely the ‘residue’ and useless portion of a harvest. Whereas the righteous are solid and substantial, rooted in the earth, the wicked are, in many translations, ‘blown away from the earth’. And whereas the righteous ‘will not wither’, the wicked are annihilated.  

 

Importantly, too, ‘nature’ as it is poetically described, operates in both spheres—as ‘living water’ for the tree and as the ‘wind’ that blows away the chaff. There is no natural force that is supplanting, or strengthening, the wicked. Of course, nature is not accurate. It is creation. The water is not ‘merely water’ and the wind is not simply a breeze. Yhwh’s presence coheres within the rhythms of creation. And that ‘rhythm’ is torah. As such, torah is not merely what operates for the righteous—it also acts as a force against the wicked. It is both life giving water and destructive wind; it is both blessing and curse. And it is here that we need to signal something that we will return to later in our concluding theological reflections. In Genesis, when Yhwh creates he does so through separation: light from darkness, water from water, earth from water, and so on. This act of separation does not end, however, with the material world. It is, in fact, culminated in the first words Yhwh speaks to Adam. It is, as we have already said, profoundly significant that the first sound Adam hears from Yhwh is in the form of blessing and curse; it is an act of separation. Adam is given all the trees of the garden but one. What we see here is the culmination of Torah (man is Torah’s Sabbath so to speak), as it is finds expression in a command issued to Adam. The torah that shapes the cosmos is consummated in the torah command to Adam. Discipleship and cosmos are not two separate realities. As such, Adam’s obedience is itself a participation within the order of creation itself. When he obeys he drinks from an ever-flowing water. When he disobeys he is ‘cast out’, or ‘blown away’, in curse-like exilic fashion, and in a further act of separation. This is why the rhythms of nature are intimately connected to the expressed commands of Torah to mankind.

 

That said, torah’s destructive, curse capacity is always penultimate to its ultimate goal to fill the earth with abundant life. When it is destructive, it is such in order to allow life to flourish more fully, more prodigally, more festively. It is not, in this way, a force in and of itself, but merely a responsive one. The wicked are but mockeries of the righteous and their reality, such as it is, is only parasitic. Torah as blessing is a force in and of itself; it is not a response but a why-less, infinitely self-initiating gift (it is grace we might say). And this is why creation itself can operate as the poetic vehicle (or, sacrament(al)) of Torah—in its totality, from water to wind, it is a torah enactment. The implications for this can be stunning. Torah and creation can mutually enlighten each other. The more one reflects (or, meditates) upon torah, the more creation opens, in its totality, as torah-enactment. Conversely, the more one reflects upon nature, and its boundless rhythms and possibilities, the more one comes to see the abundant, life giving nature of torah; to look at creation (not ‘nature’) is to see torah; to see torah is to see creation. This can, of course, open up possibilities on meditatively incorporating creation’s destructive capacities into a vision of torah, which is something I find rather unique.

 

Therefore / the wicked shall not rise up / in judgment

Nor sinners / in an assembly of the righteous

 

For Yhwh knows / the way of the righteous

But the way of the wicked / shall perish

 

It seems to me there are at least two possible interpretations of these lines: 1) because the wicked have been 'blown away' by the wind, they no longer can seek a voice in the room of judgment (they are no longer present); or 2) that because the wicked are so insubstantial, they are unable to represent a threat to the righteous when judgment is rendered (still there, but not a threat). The first interpretation tends more toward an apocalyptic reading-a time when the wicked are no more. The second tends more toward an ongoing perception of the fate of the wicked 'in time'.  But are these mutually exclusive? Or, more importantly, does the psalm justify both readings (can we see with both eyes)?

 

I think both interpretations are valid and, in fact, enlighten each other. These lines, if read within the structure of the psalm, mirror the opening lines. There, it is the 'counsel', 'the way', and the gathering-of the wicked. Here, we have 'judgment', 'an assembly' and 'the way'-of the righteous. There, the wicked 'were present', but avoided by the righteous. Here, the righteous are gathered in communion, but the wicked are absent. What has changed of course is the two-fold movement of water and wind. The righteous have been planted and the wicked blown away. Moreover, the righteous have been planted as in a grove, together. They are now 'an assembly', whereas before the psalm gave the appearance of the isolated blessed man avoiding the 'assembly of the wicked'. Their tree-like solidity is a result not merely of an individual made firm in Yhwh, but of an achieved unity and communion of the righteous. The wicked, by contrast, have been separated-they are the discarded/separated chaff. Originally, they were unified; now, they are separated.

 

This separation causes them to be weak-to be subject to being blown away by the smallest wind. This is no gale force wind. It is the breeze that allows the heavy harvest to fall, cleansed of the chaff. This is one reason why I think the closing lines could be read in both ways-it could be that the righteous have now been cleansed of the wicked to such a degree that they now 'sit in judgment'. They are now the ones with authority and power. This must, however, be the result of an historical act of judgment that caused the wicked's downfall. It is not simply an interior, moral overturning.

 

The issue, then, is whether this 'act' is profound enough to be considered an apocalyptic act, whereby the wicked are utterly removed, or it is a more 'mundane' historical act. In the end, I think this may obfuscate, more than anything else. What we find here is that the 'realm of the wicked' has been made present, and it has been made present by and through an act of Yhwh-his act of "protecting the way of the righteous." Whether or not this manifests itself in a more 'typical' fashion or a more dramatic one, is really beside the point. The point is that the blessed man can be assured that Yhwh will protect him. And, if it is a more 'mundane' protection, that only speaks to the greater act that will come, such an act being present like a seed contained within the psalm, ready to grown when watered (as Lazarus is a seed of the resurrection). Every mundane act can be seen as a harbinger for the greater, final act.

 

Finally, however, when addressing this question we must take into account that this psalm is the first psalm-the gateway to the psalter. It seems to me that there should be a presumption that this psalm is intended to hold the weight of the psalter and, as such, can and should be read in as expansive way as possible. It must have, potentially, the entire psalter in it. And, therefore, it should be able to be read in the more 'mundane' wisdom fashion and the more dramatic apocalyptic fashion. Both readings making clear that when Yhwh acts on behalf of the righteous the wicked will be shorn of their power and blown away (from the face of the earth). The beauty of this vision should be the 'delight' that the righteous man contemplates in Torah (vs. 2). He looks forward not to judgment-as-such, but to a time when the power of Yhwh, as expressed in Torah, will out, will shine forth, uneclipsed by the wicked and saturating the earth in its full, bountiful, festive and prodigal power.

 

Concluding theological reflections

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. This Word was that through which the world was made and it was the Word that gave life and light to man. The Word was cosmos and command. It was, in other words, what we have come to see as Torah—that which created the world through the act of separation and that which provided man the commands that gave him life. The Word was the first word spoken over the depths, and it was the first word spoken to Adam.

 

The Word, however, was not to end with Adam. Adam was to hand over the Word to Eve and they, together, would hand it over to their children. This would become the ever-expanding fruit of the Word or, said in different terms, fruit of the Vine. It both constituted and planted Adam and Eve in the Garden’s holy-of-holies and it would produce in them a fruitful abundance, covering the earth with a type of temple holiness.

 

That is how it should have been. And that is what this psalm places before us. We do not find here simply a moral man, but a blessed man. A man who participates within the prodigal, life giving Word by and through his delight and obedience to that Word and who therefore lives a life of bounty (cosmos) and justice (command).

 

More deeply, the first word to Adam was the culminating Word of creation. It is a momentous thing to consider: that the radiance and glory of the cosmos culminates in obedience. That the ‘goodness’ Yhwh sees in the cosmos (its own docile obedience to his Word) is intensified and made perfect in man’s obedience. As such, the particularity of man’s response to Yhwh—history—is the consummation of cosmos. History is not dwarfed by the magnitude of the cosmos but is, instead, its culmination.

 

This obedience, this supreme goodness of history, this ‘way’, is what Yhwh ‘knows’ as a man intimately knows a woman, and it is what Yhwh cherishes and protects. One might say that it is the heart of Yhwh on display.

 

Yet, we must move deeper still: Yhwh and Torah produce a dynamic power, an ‘ever-living water’, that perpetually nourishes the blessed man and causes him to perpetually produce fruit. One can detect here a three-fold pattern of Yhwh, Torah and power. Torah does not end with the blessed man. Its appropriation by man causes an explosive and dynamic power to be unleashed. This is the festivity, the prodigality, of Torah and is, we must add, the ultimate aim of Torah. Just as Torah begins in a why-less gift from Yhwh, it also ends in a type of why-less banquet and joy. Prodigality is the alpha and omega of creation.

 

And, once this dynamic is perceived, we can then understand this psalm in a deeply Trinitarian way. When the Word becomes flesh, the entire momentum of cosmos and obedience are incarnate in Jesus. He becomes, in and through his obedience, the Adam-that-should-have-been, and the blessed man of this, the first psalm of the Psalter. Every step of obedience that he takes incarnates the Torah more and more, to the point where, on the cross, Torah has been fulfilled (“It is finished…”) and his very side is pierced and from it flows the sacramental elements of blood and water.   

 

Just as Eve was created from Adam’s sleeping side, so now is the new Eve created from the sleeping side of the Second Adam. Crucially, though, and in light of Psalm 1, this creation is the primal moment of Christ’s fruit-bearing. This is the culminating, explosive power of the pierced side, when God’s own heart was poured out in (now) living water. As such, it points forward to Pentecost and the sending of the Spirit. The Second Adam has now become the ‘tree that perpetually bears fruit and whose leaves never wither’. This is the Trinitarian dynamic that Adam was created for, but failed to accomplish, and that Christ inaugurated.