Ps 123 (Look up)

I look up / to you

          Enthroned in heaven.

Just as the eyes / of slaves

          Look to / their master’s hand.

As the eyes / of a slave girl

          Look to her / mistresses hand.

So our eyes / look to Yhwh our God

          Till he gives us / liege aid.

Give us / liege aid / Yhwh / give us liege aid

          Because we have had more than / our fill of contempt.

More than our fill / we have had

          Of the mockery / of the carefree

          The contempt / of the arrogant.

The psalmist stands as the people, as their representative. In a previous psalm, the psalmist also looked “up” to the mountains asking where his help would come from. There, we saw that his gaze was turned toward Jerusalem and the Temple, the place where heaven and earth met, because it was from there that Yhwh would enact his protection and guide the psalmist back to himself.

Here, again, the gaze turns ‘up’, but now it looks to the Divine Throne. This does not necessarily mean that his gaze is looking beyond the Temple to heaven. Isaiah, while in the Temple, has a vision of Yhwh’s throne as well and the Divine Court. The Temple was understood as the footstool to this Divine Throne and, thus, to look to the Temple was also to gaze up to heaven. That being said, while there is no contradiction in terms, there is a sense that the heavenly court room and throne is not contained in the Temple. That it can’t be simply equated with it. That was always understood. And here, the psalmist now looks directly to that Throne.

When he “looks up to Yhwh, enthroned in the heavens”, all of those with him turn their eyes to Yhwh as well. They are looking to the seat, literally, the throne of heavenly authority. It is a crucial image to see—this throne established in heaven itself on which Yhwh sits. It shines forth, it embodies, it encapsulates Yhwh’s sovereign mastery over the cosmos in a way that the Temple is the center of all of human gaze on earth. This heavenly throne

He looks to this enthroned Yhwh as a slave looks to the master’s hand or the slave girl to her mistresses hand. There is a drama here of petition and giving. The psalmist and his people stand empty of power but full of contempt and mockery. In fact, for a time they could stand underneath the weight of the mockery. It was only when the mockery reached overflow that they looked to Yhwh for aid. They are not simply ‘full’ of mockery. They are more-than-full. They are overwhelmed, drowning in contempt. There is no remainder..

And yet, although they inhabit a realm of no-glory similar to slaves, they are not the slaves of the arrogant. They are Yhwh’s slaves; they serve in his household, not the household of the arrogant and the carefree. By calling themselves ‘slaves of Yhwh’, the glory they have been robbed of is, in fact, an affront to Yhwh. It is because of this ownership that they can  look, as to their master, to the Enthroned One who sits within a powerful glory that dwarfs the arrogant and the carefree. Although they stand at the bottom, they can bypass the arrogant and look to the one who can provide them divine, heavenly aid from the Heavenly Throne itself.

The psalmist and the group do something here we see in other psalms—they portray themselves as abject and deprived of glory in order to ‘entice’ Yhwh to act on their behalf. David will do the same in Psalm 51, where by making himself more an object of wrath, he makes himself more into an object of mercy. This ‘enticement’ is not simply in the imagery used but also in the references to the covenant. The psalmist refers to Yhwh as “our God” which echoes the covenant phrase, “You will be my people and I will be your God”. Then, the psalmist notes that they are not only slaves, but also “lieges” of Yhwh, therefore entitled to his aid. In this we see that their gaze to Yhwh is not simply the gaze of an undeserving people. They are, in a very real sense as Yhwh’s covenant partner, and even as his slave, entitled to his aid and help. Slaves in Israel were not simply objects of exploitation but were entitled to greater care and concern than most other slaves in the surrounding areas. There is a type of ‘natural’ and ‘covenantal’ form of justice here that is called for, and that the psalmist and the people are entitled to, from Yhwh.