Ps. 14 (atheism and bread)

We have seen how, in many psalms, there are two competing spheres—that of Yhwh’s and that of chaos and destruction. To live in the sphere of Yhwh is to live in faithfulness to him and his Torah. To live in the sphere of chaos is, usually, to live either in idolatry or rebellion against Yhwh and his people. Implicit within both of these spheres is the fact that man lives his life embedded within a divine realm. Even when man is engaged in idolatry or rebellion, he is still interacting with a divine realm of the gods and understands his life to be measured by that realm.

 In psalm 14, however, we are given a glimpse into another mode of existence for those who live apart from Yhwh. In this psalm, the ‘sons of man’ are not worshipping another god, nor are they rebelling against Yhwh. Instead, they are acting as if Yhwh had no authority whatsoever over them and their actions. They are, in effect, practical atheists. I say ‘practical’ because their type of atheism is “spoken in their hearts” (vs. 1). It is, so to speak, the guiding assumption behind their every action; the air they breathe, in other words. Their lives are lived in atheism, not (cognitively) at atheism. Crucially, for them the earth has been severed from heaven and the divine realm; it operates, solely, according to the will of man and is governed, solely, according to man’s power. Here, man is not measured by heaven, but by man.

 For the psalmist, this severing of earth from heaven does not lead to a prudently, well-ordered society. Instead it becomes, literally, consumed in perversity, ‘horrible deeds’ and corruption. More deeply still, this realm attempts to destroy those who wish to maintain faithfulness to Yhwh and heaven. Here we get to the central image of the psalm: the act of feeding.

 Throughout the Scriptures man is reminded that “he does not live by bread alone”. When Israel is journeying through the dessert, this becomes a literal reality, when ‘bread from heaven’ descends once a day for six days. Each day the Israelites can gather it, but only what they can eat for that day. If they gathered more it would spoil. On the ‘sixth day’, they could gather twice as much and that portion, interestingly, did not spoil on the ‘seventh day’.  The Israelites are, here, not ‘living by bread alone’ because they must gather the bread in a faithfulness to Yhwh that includes faithfulness to the Sabbath itself. This ‘bread’ is a type of ‘creation bread’—produced for six days and then ‘resting’ on the seventh.

 In Psalm 14, though, the ‘sons of man’ do not observe this. They do live by bread alone. “They have eaten bread; on Yhwh they have not called.” For them, eating lacks any reference to a transcendent realm of giving and production.  It is, moreover, entirely non-liturgical (they do not ‘call’ to Yhwh). There is no Sabbath consumption or rest. And it is here that the psalmist reveals his craft most fully by combining this ‘eating of bread’ with the “consumption of my [Yhwh’s] people.”  For the psalmist, their consumption of purely earthly bread is an expression of their consumption of Yhwh’s people and the utter depravity and corruption that marks their lives. Just as the bread has no transcendent reality to it, so too does God’s people have no inherent value. For these men, bread and men are equally susceptible to their wills and dominion.

 At a deeper level still, what we find here is that an ambivalence to God leads to an ambivalence towards man. The image of ‘consuming’ Yhwh’s people is rather dull in comparison with other images in the psalms that tend to describe the wicked as attacking God’s people, or ‘tearing at them like a lion’. Here, though, something in a sense more perverse is at work. God’s people are simply fodder. They have no worth. This denigration is intimately tied to their denigration of Yhwh.  The psalmist makes this clear when he weds their atheism to being “fools” and then Yhwh chastises them for “failing to understand” when they consume his people. There is a deep sense that these men are faulty, utterly blind to the heavenly reality that surrounds them and measures them.

 It should be clear at this point that for those who live within Yhwh’s realm, the realm of the ‘sons of man’ is a terror. The will of man severed from faithfulness to Yhwh is and leads to corruption, perversity, oppression and willful confusion. In other words, remaining aloof from Yhwh and the divine realm places one in the realm that is understood as wickedness and chaos. Earth is made to be in relation to Heaven, like a bride to a bridegroom. When the ‘sons of man’, attempt to sever that relationship, the kingdom entrusted to them becomes folly. Man cannot live by bread alone because man cannot serve himself alone. There is Yhwh, and there is death (as the story of Genesis and Deuteronomy make clear). Man cannot set up a ‘third realm’ and operate independently of those two choices. When they try, they will still fall into the realm of chaos and death, but they will inhabit that realm in a particular mode of evil. This is the great lie of the psalm—the belief that man can ignore that choice and instead choose himself alone. To not choose Yhwh is to choose destruction.

Ps. 13 (hope overtaking)

The most important line in the psalm is when the psalmist demands from Yhwh, “Look! Answer me! O Yhwh, my God!”. One might say that this is the final deafening, and demanding “knock” of, “knock, and the door shall be opened to you.” It is preceded by the no less subtle ‘knocks’ of “How long…” in verses 1-2, all of which are, in reality, demands, not questions.

 

However, although that line is the most important, the key to the line is actually found in comparing it to the opening line of the psalm. There, the psalmist ‘asks’ “How long O Yhwh? Will you forget me forever?” The Name, as in many psalms, is referred to in the very first line. Here, psalmist inserts the Name into the midst of his agonized cry, attempting to draw Yhwh’s presence into his affliction in order to reverse it. For him, time has derailed. Without the Presence, time is chaotic; it is ‘forgotten’ time and it exhibits all the characteristics of a state of existence apart from the Presence—incoherence, confusion, oppression and death.

 

When the psalmist again refers to the Name, however, he will add an important phrase to it, “O Yhwh my God.” This small phrase turns the psalm around from despair to one of impervious hope. The phrase “my God’ calls to mind the covenantal bond between Yhwh and his people, “You shall be my people, and I shall be your God.” Yhwh is his name, but he is Israel’s God, wed to them with bonds of loving-kindness and faithfulness. It is this covenantal bond that opens up the sphere within which the psalmist can demand that Yhwh listen to him, turn his Face toward him and deal with him ‘bountifully’. It is this covenant sphere that makes possible the powerful assurance of the closing lines. Notice how the closing lines are covenantal in shape: “But I have trusted in your lovingkindness. My heart shall rejoice in your deliverance. I shall sing praises to Yhwh, as soon as he has dealt bountifully with me.”

 

The covenant is not a sphere within which man has no claim on Yhwh, within which there can be no demanding “knock”. In fact, within this covenantal sphere, we witness the expectation of bountiful deliverance. Within this sphere the “heart that experienced grief day and night”(vs 2)  is turned into a “heart that shall rejoice in your deliverance.” (vs. 5).  It is a sphere within which the ‘rejoicing of the enemy’ (vs 4) will be turned into a ‘rejoicing in your deliverance.’ (vs. 5). The liturgy of chaos will turn into the liturgy of Yhwh.

 

We might say it this way—when Yhwh covenanted himself to his people (when they could add “my God” to Yhwh), he gave birth to them. They became constituted as covenant people, a people whose very structure was encased within the faithfulness of Yhwh (from the bottom to the top and from ‘the east to the west’). Their enemy would be Yhwh’s enemy and Yhwh’s enemy (Death) would be theirs. As a covenant people they could speak Yhwh’s faithfulness back to him in the form of demand without that demand somehow lessening their sense that Yhwh’s response is always-already a response that overwhelms them in its bounty and makes them erupt in rejoicing and singing praise. It also, for this very reason, provides the space within which, in a span of 5 verses, the psalmist can move into a hope and expectation that overwhelms his despair.

Ps. 12 (speech and creation)

We have often spoken about the realm of Yhwh and the realm of the wicked and chaos. In this psalm, those realms are primarily described as being creations of speech. Speech is not simply something that happens within each realm. Speech does not merely reflect a reality; it is something that actually creates those realms. Genesis is good example of this, with creation itself flowing from the words of Yhwh. Creation is the (ongoing) speech of Yhwh. Moreover, when the serpent speaks to Eve, her disobedience creates a realm of serpent-duplicity within the Garden that then requires hers and Adam’s expulsion. Those who are within either realm, are, so to speak, what is spoken. Speech is performative in that sense. For Yhwh, it is prodigally life-giving; for the wicked, it allures to self-mastery and power but is, in the end, chaotic and death-dealing. That is why the psalmist is in such dire need of help from Yhwh. He is about to be consumed by the realm created by the speech of the wicked, and he wants Yhwh to speak into that realm in order to protect him and redeem him. That ‘help’ will come in the form of Yhwh’s “shining words”.  

 

For the wicked, their realm is created by vain speech, flattery and duplicity. It is full of “great words”. One can here catch the echo of the serpent, who tempts Eve to disobey Yhwh in order to constitute herself within the Garden, to become like Him. The lie here is not that speech is ineffective, or that speech is not performative. The lie is that speech that severs itself from Yhwh becomes “vanity” and “double” and, inevitably, “devastates the afflicted” and “makes the poor groan”. It becomes, in other words, the vehicle of oppression and death while, at the same time, giving those in power the impression that they are their own masters, that they are the “great words” of the people, and that they do deserve the “flattery” that is the community’s  currency. For those who are abandoned to this realm, the speech imprisons them. It anticipates every objection to its power and persuasively lulls everyone into a status quo. It makes the afflicted and poor either invisible or justifies their position. It becomes the Egypt that oppresses the Israelites in their midst (Egypt is the Serpent-speech in national form). For those who can see beyond the flattery, though, it creates a kingdom ruled simply by the will to power and domination.  

 

Yhwh’s speech is entirely different. Whereas the wicked’s speech is double and, accordingly, “full of dross” (pure metal mixed with impurity), Yhwh’s speech is “silver refined in a furnace, gold purified seven times.” Yhwh’s speech is an act of redemption from the oppressed. It creates a realm within the “kingdom of the wicked” that “guards from this generation” and “sets him in safety”. Moreover, Yhwh’s speech, in contrast to the destruction of the wicked, reverses and upends the realm of the wicked. The realm of the wicked is, as we have seen, a realm of public display that is mere flattery and vanity. This public nature of the wicked is integral to their power because it communally reinforces their own mastery. When Yhwh acts, he also acts publicly, but reverses the wicked’s glory into shame. He shamefully “cuts off their lips and tongue.” This is not simply a muting of the wicked. It is also a humiliation of the wicked. They are now on display. Their reversal will not be in some private dungeon or prison. It will take place in the public square. It will ‘out’ every form of duplicity and unrighteous power. The wicked will be forced to experience the hellish truth of their vanity and deception. This is the ‘effect’ of Yhwh’s speech within the kingdom of the wicked. For a time, it will ‘protect and guard’ but it does not simply protect. It also will eventually judge and set things to right. It purifies because it is purity.

 

Within the time of the Church, one can read this psalm in a two-fold manner. On the one hand, it can be a psalm spoken by Christ to the Father. As he is lifted up on the cross, abandoned by “the Twelve” (remnant tribes of Israel) indeed he could look out over Jerusalem and say, “Help, Yhwh, for the faithful one has come to an end, for the honest persons have disappeared from among the sons of man.” And as he looks out over a Jerusalem effectively ruled by Rome he could say, “They speak vanity, each with his neighbor, with flattering lip and double heart they speak.” He would also anticipate that his death would be the event that would inaugurate his Father’s kingdom, the event that would begin in the Resurrection when the Father would say, “Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the poor, I will not arise, I will set him in safety. I will shine forth for him.” The Resurrection, then, is understood as the “pure utterance of Yhwh” one that is “silver refined in a furnace, gold purified seven times.”

 

But, like creation, the Resurrection is not simply an event that happened in the past but is one that is ongoing. Each baptized person is baptized into Christ’s death and Resurrection. Accordingly, the ‘second creation’ (the Resurrection) is an ongoing affair. As such, the Church can now pray this psalm in the position of Christ, now with the assurance that the Resurrection obtained by Christ is one that is assuredly granted to all the baptized who are ‘in his body’. Indeed, the Church is, itself, built out of this reality. It is the speech of the Trinity, “silver refined in a furnace, gold purified seven times.”