Ps. 109 (Part One--Evil and the becoming of a curse)

There are many psalms dealing with a psalmist who is unjustly attacked, either through some type of court proceeding or through violence. Typically, there is a reason given for the attack. The attackers are envious of the psalmist; they want to take down the king; they want his wealth. But sometimes, as here, there is no reason given in the psalm. The accusers, or at least the accusations themselves, do not appear to have any justification. Like the serpent in the Garden, they simply appear from some why-less place, and attack the psalmist from the darkness. They are, as some psalmists describe them, like a snake in the grass. Because there is no discernable reason for their attack, they cannot be avoided or anticipated. All that the psalmist can do, as the psalmist does here, is implore Yhwh for help and rescue.

It is, I think, important to pause over this because it delves into an important aspect of how evil is portrayed in this psalm. The attacks come “without reason” (3). I think this lack of reason, this lack of form or shape, is why the psalmist finds them to be, fundamentally, a lie. These are “deceitful mouths” (2) that have opened against the psalmist. They are “lying tongues” (2). One has the picture here of gruesome, almost absurd, images of gaping maws, of disembodied or largely extended (and distended) mouths and tongues, surrounding the psalmist. He is—surrounded by words, by lies, by deceit. The image is crucial and poignant. The fact that these evil men are portrayed as mouths and tongues points to the grotesque, misshapen, and inherently absurd nature of their accusations. It is a disturbing, dramatic image.

The disturbing nature of the image mirrors, or is a reflection of, the words spoken. The curses are of a profound, all-encompassing destruction—the lies seek the destruction of his very life; they want his children to be childless; his wife to be a widow; to leave his entire family penniless and without aid or consolation of any kind; and for all of his assets to be exacted. This is the destruction and death. But, there is something they do want to live on, to abide in perpetuity—they want his parent’s sins to stand in Yhwh’s presence forever. This ‘abiding presence’ of sin is important to note because whatever is in Yhwh’s presence participates in Yhwh’s own Forever. Yhwh’s presence causes things to endure beyond what they could on their own. Outside of Yhwh’s presence, everything is vanity and everything decays. What we see here is the complete and shocking reversal of what is usually prayed for. Typically, a psalmist asks for goodness to be in Yhwh’s presence. Here, the accusers ask for Yhwh’s presence to ignite a perpetual dark-flame. This is the opposite of resurrection power—it will cause the ongoing and perpetual destruction of the psalmist and all of his family line. They will never escape from this because it will be perpetually remembered and enacted by Yhwh.

There is another image that is worth pausing over—and that is the concluding curses. There, the wicked engage in a type of cursing that is very close to other types that we see in the psalms. The wicked state, “He loved cursing, may he experience it / He did not like to bless / may it keep its distance from him. / He made cursing his habit / may it seep into him like water / into his bones like oil. / May it be like the clothing he wears, / as tight as the belt he always has around him.” Here we find the familiar logic of punishment—it works in reversals; it ‘boomerangs’ back upon the person. If the psalmist kept blessing away from his mouth, then blessing should be kept from him. Conversely, if he was familiar with curses, then curses should become familiar and close to him. That logic is familiar, the imagery is not. He wants the curses to “seep into him like water, into his bones like oil”, to be kept close to him “like his belt.” And it plays an important point in the psalm. Later, the psalmist describes himself as being so thin from fasting that his “knees cannot support me” (24). He is becoming a wraith through religious deprivation, probably in an attempt to gain Yhwh’s favor. He appears to be a physical emblem of shame. It would not be surprising if other saw him as carrying within him the curse that the wicked have levelled at him—that Yhwh’s curses are “seeping into him like water, in his bones like oil”. For the psalmist, though, when Yhwh acts, he will counter all of this. Yhwh’s deliverance will be manifest. He himself will be Yhwh’s “handiwork” (27). This deliverance will “confound” the wicked but “gladden” the psalmist. Here is the important point—the result of the trial will be manifest through the psalmist’s body. Either he will be a curse, with the curses seeping into him. Or he will be a blessing, able to show forth the healing and prodigal work of Yhwh in his body.

One final thing to note about the curses levelled at the psalmist—how are we to understand them? Are these curses simply statements that are to be made at the psalmist’s trial or does the wicked person believe them to be effective (meaning, to reach into the divine realm)? If we say the wicked believe them to be effective, then the wicked believe that they have the ability to manipulate Yhwh. It strikes me that the wicked believe they will ‘work’. There is something deeply significant about this. In this psalm, the wicked “mouths” believe that they can either convince Yhwh himself that the psalmist is wicked or that Yhwh is indifferent to the fact that their words are not true. The first option, if true, would be terrifying in that the wicked would be able to harness the power of heaven to their own wills. The second is no less terrifying in that Yhwh himself is not concerned about truth. Either way, Yhwh would appear to be one of the many ‘gods’ of other pantheons, either able to be manipulated or one who exhibits all-too-human traits of vanity and power (as if he were some Baal, Zeus or Osiris).