Ps 131 (carrying my soul)

Yhwh, / my heart / is not haughty

                Nor are my eyes / supercilious

Nor have I got involved / in matters too big

                Or too difficult for me

Indeed / I have composed

and quieted my soul

Like a weaned child / carried by his mother

                Like the weaned child / I carry / is my soul

Put your hope / Israel / in Yhwh

                From now on / and forevermore

The psalmist begins with a profession—his heart is not haughty and his eyes are not turned to large things. He does not attempt things too big or too difficult for him. This humbling of himself is something he has needed to achieve, though. He has composed and quieted his soul. It seems as if his natural tendency is to do these things—to have a haughty heart, to look at “large” things, to get involved in matters too big and difficult for him.

The imagery he then uses to describe his humbled soul is key. His quieted soul is like a weaned child who finds his trust and comfort and security in his mother. His ‘mother’ is one, now, who guides him and carries him. Before now, he guided himself. His heart was “haughty” in that regard. He directed his eyes (at things too big) and he “got involved in matters to big and difficult”. But not now. Now, he had made himself small. Not to the point of being an infant, but to that of a weaned child. He has made himself into a child needing to be carried rather than a man walking on his own. Importantly, he does not carry his own soul anymore. Yhwh is now his “mother”.

The psalmist then turns to all of Israel and urges her to be the same as himself—to become a child carried by Yhwh. To not be a nation whose heart is haughty or whose eyes look upon things too large; to not get involved in matters that are too big or difficult. From a national perspective, this temptation must have been large, and the call to child-like humility difficult. The psalmist urges Israel to “compose and quiet its soul”, to stop trying to lead itself, to be an elder-child among the nations but to be the weaned child of three years old. To always keep this stance of dependence on Yhwh at its center.

There is an important, deeper layer to this psalm. There are clear references throughout the psalm to its being directed toward, or against, royal figures. The haughty heart and the supercilious eyes, in particular. These are used to describe kings in Israel’s history that the Scriptures understood to be poor and failed kings. What is key to see here, though, is how this kingly reference refers us back to Adam, the primal “son of God” and “messiah of God” who is understood to be the Image-King-of-the-Garden. With Adam we see this primal king making this primal mistake when the serpent speaks to him—the serpent tempts him/Eve to have this heart and eyes that desires things “too big for them” (i.e., to become like gods). This primal failure is one that is going to be perpetuated through(out) his children. There will be a righteous son, though, too—a Seth that protects himself against the deceiver lurking at his door. And, in David, at least initially, this is fulfilled. He is the king who faithfully keeps himself nestled in Yhwh’s embrace. That is, until he too “looks and sees” something outside his reach—Bathsheba—and falls, terribly, from grace, pulling the entire kingdom down with him.

All of this ebb-and-flow of Israel’s kings reaches its climax in Christ. Paul neatly summarizes Christ’s fulfillment of this psalm when he says that Christ, although in the form of god, did not regard equality with god as something to be grasped at. But, instead, he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name above all names so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in the heavens, on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus here, in the direct middle of this hymn, accomplishes the psalm. He “composed and quiets his soul”. And he rests in the mission the Father gave to him, humbling himself entirely to the point of death. And, in that humility he became the most powerful Adam-King of God, being raised all the way to the very throne and receiving the name of God itself.  Mark in particular also makes this point rather vividly when, just after Christ is ‘anointed’ by the Spirit in the Jordan, he is “cast out” into the dessert by the Spirit where he remains faithful to his mission, despite (as in the other gospels) the temptations to rise above it. The Spirit’s role in all of this is key because it is the Spirit that carries Christ throughout. It is the Spirit that guides him and it is in the Spirit that Christ remains nestled in the Father’s embrace, like a child on its mother’s back.