Ps 143

Yhwh / hear my prayer

                Listen to my plea / for aid

                In your faithfulness / answer me / in your consistency

But do not enter / into legal proceedings / with your servant

                Since in your sight / no living person / can ever be in the right

For the enemy / has persecuted me

                He has crushed my life / into the ground

He has made me / sit in darkness

                Like those long dead

My spirit within / has fainted

                In my inner being / my heart is shocked

I remember / times long ago

                I muse on all your activity

                On what your hands / have done / do I meditate

I stretch out my hand / to you

                I am like parched ground / in my yearning for you. SELAH

The psalm begins as many do—with a demand that Yhwh hear the psalmist plea for aid. The basis for the request is Yhwh’s faithfulness and consistency. The psalmist then realizes that the basis for his claim implies that he too is faithful and consistent. He wants to ward off that claim though and asks Yhwh to not enter into a legal proceeding with him because he, or anyone, will not be “in the right” in Yhwh’s sight. This is an important claim to pause over. In many psalms, in fact in most of them, when a psalmist asks Yhwh for aid, the psalmist will point to the fact that the psalmist has lived up to the covenant standards. It is because he has done so that he essentially asks that Yhwh live up to his standards as well—he asks Yhwh to be faithful as the psalmist has been faithful. Here, though, that claim is explicitly rejected. The psalmist will not appeal to his own faithfulness or rightness in front of Yhwh. The question is why wont he? There are no claims to sinfulness in the remaining portion of the psalm; there is no confession even.

Perhaps it is important that the psalmist does not identify himself, personally, in this regard. Instead, he groups every living person into the category of “not in the right”. Are there other indications of this ‘group approach’ in the psalm? On the one hand, there is not. The remaining portion of the psalm is entirely personal. There is no “us” referred to but only “me” and “I”. On the other hand, the psalmist’s persecutor is clearly a group but is then made an individual. They are his “enemies” at the end of the psalm, and it is from them he seeks deliverance, but throughout the body of the psalm it is the “enemy”. “He” crushes the psalmist and makes him sit in darkness. I think this is important in understanding why the psalmist consigns all of humanity to “not in the right”. It is not as if the psalmist sees himself as in the same category as his enemies. And, it is not simply that he is in the covenant and they are not. Rather, what we see here is that the psalmist is doing what David does in Psalm 51—the more David makes himself into an object of wrath, the more he makes himself into an object of mercy. In other words, what I think the psalmist is doing here is the more he places himself and others into the category of “not in the right”, the more he appeals to Yhwh’s mercy within the covenant. Interestingly, in this way it functions in much the same way as those psalmists who appeal to their faithfulness—they know Yhwh, and they know how to make Yhwh listen. Some appeal to Yhwh’s sense of justice, while others, like here, appeal to Yhwh’s mercy.

We should note that the psalmist calls on images of being “in Yhwh’s sight”. Here, to “be in Yhwh’s sight” is to be in a “legal proceeding” with Yhwh. Later in the psalm, however, the psalmist asks Yhwh to “not hide your face from me” or he will “become like those who descend to the Pit.” On the one hand, he is asking to not “be in Yhwh’s sight” while on the other he asking Yhwh to not hide his face from him. This is not a contradiction, though. Yhwh’s gaze is a dynamic reality and cannot be reduced to single approach. When Yhwh is angry, psalmists will often ask Yhwh to turn his face away from them. When the psalmist, however, is in need redemption, they often ask Yhwh to turn his face toward them. It is not always consistent, though. Sometimes it is the complete opposite—they understand their plight to be a result of Yhwh having ignored them and left them to their enemies; of having “turned away his face.”. And sometimes when they are suffering they understand it be caused by the “heat” of Yhwh’s gaze. In this psalm, the psalmist employs both images, addressing Yhwh from both angles. In the first, Yhwh’s gaze is the gaze of the courtroom; that gaze would frustrate mercy. The gaze of the second stanza, however, is the gaze of life—when the “light of Yhwh’s face” shines on those who are close to death.

The psalmist’s life is the prize. The enemy is attempting to crush it into the ground. He is driving the psalmist’s life to Sheol and the Pit. The battle is not measured, however, simply in terms of the cessation of breathing. “Life” is a spectrum—the closer the psalmist gets toward Sheol, the more the enemy is winning, and the reach of death is one that begins in the psalmist “spirit”. It is “fainting” and it has “failed”. The psalmist’s heart has been “shocked” and is unable to move. That said, it is not entirely without movement. It can still “remember” and “muse on all Yhwh’s activity, on what Yhwh has done.” It can “meditate” and “yearn” for Yhwh. This “spirit” waits for Yhwh’s “good spirit” to lead him out of the Pit it currently has been pushed into, and “onto level ground”.

Hurry / answer me / Yhwh

                My spirit has failed.

Do not hide your face / from me

                Or I shall become like those / who descend to the Pit.

Let me hear / in the morning / news of your loyal love

                Because in you / I trust.

Let me know / the way I should go

                Because to you / I direct my desire

Let me be freed / from my enemies / Yhwh

                To you I come / for shelter

Teach me / to do your will

                Because you are my God

May your good spirit / lead me

                Onto level ground.

For your name’s sake / Yhwh / give me life

                In your consistency / bring me out of trouble

And in your loyal love / destroy my enemies

                And annihilate all who attack my life

                Because I am your servant.

It is notable that while the psalmist declares in the first stanza that he should not be called upon to enter into a legal proceeding with Yhwh in order for Yhwh to redeem him, here he calls upon Yhwh for deliverance and yet follows it up with a series of “because…”. “Because I trust in you”, “because to you I direct my desire”, “to you I come for shelter”, and “because you are my God.” In other words, he makes his actions the basis for Yhwh’s deliverance. I believe what we see here is the dynamic of covenant relationships. On the one hand, the psalmist can declare that he has no ‘standing’ before Yhwh to plead for aid and yet, on the other hand, he does have standing to plead for aid as a covenant partner. In other words, the covenant itself provides this basis for the request. It is not the individual psalmist standing against Yhwh. It is the psalmist-as-a-covenant-partner standing against Yhwh. And, in that regard, one can really say that because the covenant comes from Yhwh, freely, then it is Yhwh standing against Yhwh, as his covenant partner speaks to him to engage the covenant power of redemption and blessing. The covenant creates the ‘arena’ within which Israel will petition Yhwh to act.

Seen within this context, we would have to modify an understanding of how the petition ‘works’. Because the basis for the petition itself is given by Yhwh, then it is not as if you have this autonomous psalmist/covenant-partner somehow compelling Yhwh, against his freedom, to come to his aid. Yhwh’s freedom gave the psalmist the words to speak back to him in the first place. There is no real competition between the psalmist and Yhwh in this regard, nor a competition between earth and heaven. The entire movement, the entire dialogue, is grounded in the prior opening up of Yhwh to his people. It is, in a word, like creation itself which springs, unbidden, from Yhwh and yet, once established, has its own freedom to participate within the act of creation. The covenant and creation partake of this same ground—the powerful act of life, goodness and beauty. They are like fountains, ever-creating the space within which the partner (creation or Israel) operates and giving to the partner the ability to enter into and participate within that fountain-act. When the psalmist asks to be “heard in the morning” or to “know the way I should go” or be “taught to do your will” or “given life for your name’s sake”—it is all an attempt to re-incorporate him back within the fountain flow of Yhwh’s power, presence and blessing. The evil that is oppressing him, that is imprisoning him and driving his life into the ground, is removing him from this dynamic quality of Yhwh’s presence-blessing. It is causing him to slow-down, to be removed from the momentum of Yhwh’s life, to steadily move toward the inertia of Sheol. That is what he wants “destroyed” and “annihilated”—all that would dim the tide of Yhwh’s blessing and life; that would stand between him and the covenant power. In a way, it is as if he is asking for Yhwh to remove a clog to fountain flow.