Ps. 9

Memory, Mortality and the Forever. In Deuteronomy 8, Yhwh warns the Israelites against ‘forgetting Yhwh your God by not keeping his commandments’. If they do, the final outworking of their forgetfulness will be a belief that all of the good that they experience in the Land was won by their own efforts and not by Yhwh’s covenant blessing. Their hubris will lead to their perishing “like the other nations before you”. They will become, in a type of terrible mockery, a mirror of their enemies. The resonances to Psalm 9 are deep. The psalm concludes on a foreboding note: “Put fear in them, O Yhwh, let the nations know they are only human.” This line is the conclusion to several verses that say much the same thing but in different ways: when Yhwh reveals himself, the “wicked shall return to Sheol, all nations that forget God” (they shall return to the dust from which they came). Their destruction will not be partial, but complete and total: they will “perish; their name wiped out forever and ever.” Their cities will be “perpetual ruins and their “memory perish”. Those who ‘forget Yhwh’ will themselves be forgotten. On the other hand, for those who ‘remember Yhwh’, they will stand within the authority of him who “reigns forever”, and who has “established his throne of judgment.” He judges the entire world and is known as the “Enthroned One of Zion.” He is the “Avenger of Blood” who does not forget the cry of the afflicted. In Yhwh, the “memory of the afflicted” will not “perish forever”, unlike the nations. Those who remember Yhwh will never be forgotten. Life, death and the ability to be remembered among the people is wed, absolutely, to remembering Yhwh, as in Deuteronomy 8. Everything pivots around this central theme. To remember Yhwh is to stand not simply within the realm of Yhwh’s forever, but, more precisely in this psalm, it is to stand within the realm of Yhwh’s delivering and saving help.

 

There is a deeper implication to all of this than what might be gathered from an initial reading. Importantly, the psalmist, and the writer of Deuteronomy, understand that for those who ‘remember Yhwh’ (those who obey his commandments), they are blessed with a long life. They will not be like ‘the other nations’ whose names, at some point, are forgotten. Israel will, in other words, enter into the realm of Yhwh’s ‘forever’. They will enter into his memory. Something truly profound opens up here. This is not simply prolongation of life, a quantitative measuring. It is, rather, quantitative and qualitative. It is the life of those who are covenanted to Yhwh. Israel’s life will become immortal within the realm of Yhwh’s remembrance, but immortal because of the presence of Yhwh in her midst. Israel, as a nation, will be(come) the Adam (the ‘firstborn’) that Adam failed to be. In this psalm, to stand within the realm of Yhwh’s remembrance means to stand within the flood of his righteousness that will be unleashed on the earth, cleansing it from all wickedness. It will ‘lay waste’ to the memory of the wickedness (vs. 5); it will ‘uproot its cities’ (vs. 6); it will ‘judge the world’ (vs. 8).  And in the wake of this flood, Zion and the Enthroned One will remain. Its ‘gates’ will resound with the exuberant praises of deliverance. This cleansing-and-renewal is what stands at the heart of this psalm and, importantly, it emanates from, or is enacted by, the profound presence of Yhwh as his ‘forever’ is made present.