Were it not for Yhwh
Who
took our side
Let
Israel declare
Were it not for Yhwh
Who
took our side
When
men attacked us,
Then they would have / swallowed us alive
So
furious was their anger / against us
Then the waters / would have overwhelmed us
The
torrent / would have gone above our necks
Then it would have gone above / our necks
Those
raging waters
Blessed is Yhwh
Who did
not let us be
A prey
to their teeth
We have escaped / with our lives / like a bird
Out of
the fowler’s trap
The trap is broken
And we
have escaped
Our help / consisted in the name of Yhwh
Maker
of heaven and earth.
The entire community has gathered together in order to offer
thanksgiving to Yhwh for his deliverance of them. They were on the verge not
simply of defeat but of annihilation. The fierceness and rapidity with which
they were attacked is described as their being almost “swallowed alive.” They
were not a prey that was hunted, killed, and then devoured. Their enemies,
rather, were “so furious with anger” that the hunt and their death was almost a
simultaneous action. Their enemies’ anger is compared is a “torrent” and
“raging waters”; their enemies were oceanic in their fierceness and in their
strength. They were the agents of chaos that are almost always pictured as
coming from the sea or as “the waters”.
The imagery here is more-than-human. The waters, the maw,
and the torrent are all expressions of Sheol. Israel’s enemies are not simply
flesh, even though the psalmist describes them as “men who attacked us.” Behind
them, or inspiring them, is Sheol.
On the far side of their deliverance, they “bless Yhwh” who
saved them from the Sheol hunter, almost snatching them from his mouth, from
the trap which had been sprung. Yhwh reaches into the maw and the trap and
breaks it open so that his people can escape. The Name breaks them. The Name
was their help. The Name freed them from the sea of chaos, the maw and the trap
and set them again into life. This Name is the one who “made heaven and earth”.
It is interesting that the Name is the “maker of heaven and
earth” and does not mention water. On the one hand, “heaven and earth” simply
means the Cosmos. He is the creator of everything. On the other hand, in this
psalm with its emphasis on the chaos waters almost overwhelming his people, its
absence is notable. He did not ‘create’ this chaos. He did not create this
predator of his people. He did not make its maw or its trap. And that is why
he, the creator of all, can be “against it”. It is why the presence of his Name
is not performing an act of contradiction by destroying something that bears
its mark. Yhwh, in taking “their side” is not standing against himself or his
creation.
In this we can recall Abram, through whom the nations would
either be blessed or cursed. This collective thanksgiving can be seen as one
that takes place within this Abram covenant. They are the people against whom
the nations throw their fury and their oceanic rage, but they do so against the
people that have been given Yhwh’s presence-blessing. Abram and his children are
the measure, the cannon of the Cosmos. In a sense, they carry forward this
creation of “heaven and earth”. They will be the sacred chalice, holding the
Name; they will the dangerous arc that cannot be improperly touched. However
they are approached, the approaching ones will be judged. They did not come to
bring judgment, but how the nations respond to them will be their judgment.
This can be deepened even further. Abram son, Isaac, stood
were these people stood—staring into the maw of Sheol and certain death. And
yet, at the last moment, when the waves were just about to cover him, Yhwh
intervened on his behalf and reestablished him in life. From that sacrifice
sprung the Abrahamic covenant and the people of Israel. They would then,
forever, be marked as the people who stood in the face of death and were saved
from its trap at the last moment by Yhwh’s grace. Each act of deliverance after
that, from Egypt to Babylon, would be a rescuing and reenactment of this
moment. They would be Isaac all over again, made into a people that, literally,
lived by the grace of Yhwh.
If, in Abram and Isaac, the people are placed close to death
through Yhwh’s commandment, how much more so will Yhwh save them from their,
and Yhwh’s, enemies? Can we not see in this near-sacrifice of Isaac that if
Yhwh saves from his own commands, then he will save them much more from the
chaos-waters that stand opposed to him and his creation?
Abraham ‘hands over’ Isaac to Yhwh. Yhwh, in turn, ‘hands
over’ his name to Israel. By handing over the Name to Israel, and enabling them
to call upon it and make Yhwh present, Yhwh began the process that would lead
to the final ‘handing over’ of the Name, when it would become flesh and then
‘handed over’ to be crucified and raised again.
In Christ we see these two coincide—he becomes the fully human Abraham
who sacrifices everything over the Father, and he becomes the Father who hands
over the Son.
In this psalm, what breaks the fowler’s trap and what robs
Sheol of its prey, is the Name. The Name has “come close” to Israel and, in so
doing, has become a type of explosive force of redemption for them. It is not
merely protective, shielding them from Sheol and death, but also actively
“breaking” their authority and power. In the gospel of John, Jesus is the Name.
Paul says that when Jesus was lifted up he was given “the Name above all
names.” He has become the Isaac-as-Name, sacrificed so that his death will
destroy death itself, will rob Sheol of its subjects, and release Israel from
its pharaohs.
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