O Lord / my God / I have sought refuge in you
Save me
/ from all my pursuers / and deliver me
Lest they should rip me / like a lion
Tearing
me up / with no deliverer
The psalmist begins with a petition to Yhwh for deliverance.
He has sought refuge in Yhwh and asks Yhwh be that refuge, to save him from his
pursuers and deliver him. Yhwh is here a type of cave, a hiding place, for the
psalmist while he is in flight from his enemies.
The psalmist’s enemies are portrayed as lions who want to
‘rip the psalmist’ and ‘tear him up’. The psalmist envisions himself being
hunted and unable to outrun his enemies who are, lion-like, much more powerful
than himself. To see himself as one “with no deliverer” expresses this sense of
utter vulnerability, terror and panic in the face of their speed and strength.
If Yhwh does not “save” and “deliver” him, if Yhwh does not act as his
“refuge”, then the psalmist will be mutilated by his enemies and devoured.
O Lord / my God / if I have done this thing
If
there is injustice / in my hands
If I have repaid / my
ally / with treachery
And
rescued his adversary / empty-handed
Let my enemy pursue me / and overtake me
And let
him trample me / into the earth
And let
him lay my glory / onto the dust. SELAH
Here we see why the psalmist is being pursued—he has been
accused of treachery, of betrayal. What we see here is that the psalmist is
accused of disunity, of being the rupture in a relationship. In the calling
down a curse upon himself, we see the logic of judgment—if he has aided his
ally’s enemy; then his enemy should destroy him. This is the principle of
judgment that flows through every psalm. It is a principle that the psalmists
routinely call down upon their enemies. And yet, here, for one of the only
times in the psalms—perhaps the only time—the psalmist calls down this judgment
upon himself.
Note the similarity in these lines to the concluding lines
where the wicked “dig a pit only to fall in it themselves”. Here, the psalmist
says something very similar—if I have done this, then let me be destroyed.
Unlike the wicked, however, the psalmist calls down this judgement upon
himself. It is a crucial distinction. For the psalmist, his concern is that
righteousness be established, even if that establishment necessitates his own
destruction. For the wicked, on the other hand, when righteousness is
established, they will participate in it but unwillingly and unknowingly; they
will be overtaken by their own wickedness; or mistakenly fall into it.
The psalmist’s surrender to judgment is, in actuality, an
assertion of innocence and a plea for mercy. By calling down this judgment upon
himself the psalmist displays a horror at betrayal that is akin to Yhwh’s own
revulsion over it. There is something important in this—that the psalmist so
identifies with Yhwh’s passionate disdain for betrayal that he would consign
himself to destruction if he had betrayed an ally. This is the heart of a
servant—that the servant’s entire being would be made subservient to the good
of the other. To call for one’s own destruction if one violated the standard of
goodness, is to make oneself entirely, and without remainder, the instrument of
that goodness.
Arise / O Lord / in your wrath
Lift
yourself up / against the furious outbursts / of my enemies
Awake / O Lord / my God
Declare
a judgment
And let the assemblies of people / gather around you
And
above it / take your seat on high.
The psalmist now implores Yhwh to “arise” and “awake”. He
wants Yhwh to lift himself against the psalmist’s accusers and awake to declare
a judgment. The reverse of both these—the position that Yhwh is now in—is that
Yhwh is enmeshed—on the same level as—his enemies. Moreover, he is not enraged
or ‘wrathful’ but, so it seems, complacent. The psalmist wants Yhwh’s wrath to
meet the “furious outbursts”—anger for anger, but with Yhwh’s wrath lifting him
to his divine level of supremacy. In other words, his wrath will show him to be
who he is—the one who is above the nations and all powers.
But it is not simply that Yhwh will show himself to be the
Supreme. It is not simply a matter of power. His wrath is one of justice. The
psalmist wants Yhwh’s sense of justice to be enkindled—that is his wrath. He
wants Yhwh to “set things right”, to “establish the good” and redeem the
present order, straightening out what is crooked, healing what is broken, and
judging and destroying all that acts against his good will.
From this aggressive stance the imagery shifts to one of a
courtroom. There, Yhwh’s “rising” or “awakening”, is understood as his
ascending to his throne “on high”. As we will see below, Yhwh’s ascending his
throne is an act of a judge, sitting in judgment. He will “adjudicate the
nations”. Here, the “assemblies of the people gather around him”. His rising to
his throne is, simultaneously, a drawing of all people to himself; it is their
unification.
Importantly, as we will see, the psalmist here portrays
Yhwh’s judging the nations in a way similar to his opening request that Yhwh
judge him—just as the psalmist has submitted himself utterly to Yhwh judgment
(and has put his entire existence beneath his judgment), so too now does he
envision Yhwh rising and putting “all peoples” beneath his judgment.
The Lord adjudicates the nations
Judge
me / O Lord / according to my righteousness
And
according to my integrity / O Most High
Let the evil of wicked persons / come to an end
But
establish / the righteous
And scrutinize / the thoughts and emotions
O
righteous God
The psalmist asks Yhwh to judge and scrutinize all of
mankind—himself in particular and the thoughts and emotions of everyone. This
scrutinizing results in judgment—the ending of evil and the establishment of
the righteous. Judgment for the psalmist is according to his “righteousness”
and “integrity”. Again, we see here that
the psalmist believes himself innocent of the charges of betrayal, even though
he would willingly submit to destruction if he was guilty. He would, in other
words, submit to the judgment that he here requests of the wicked—that he would
“come to an end”.
Once the Lord rises, once he awakes, he ascends to his
throne. This ascension becomes the establishment of a divine courtroom, where
the Lord now acts as king-judge in establishing a correct order within the
cosmos. His ruling is cosmic—while it involves the psalmist, as the leader of
Yhwh’s people, it also stretches out to and covers the entire realm of man and
nations.
Here we find the ascension of Christ. Paul tells us that at
his ascension into heaven he is given ‘the name above all names’—the Lord. This
ascension follows his “sleep” of death and his being ‘enmeshed’ within the
cosmos, his (again from Paul) being made a slave and obedient to death. It is as
if his being “found in human” form, and his humbling himself to the point of
death, created a type of pit into which everything fell; he drew everything to
himself by being fully man and then voluntarily sinking to its depths, bending
the cosmos to himself. And then, taking everything with him into death, he
would also take it up with him in his resurrection. In his ascension, though,
he would rise to the throne of God. He would be given the Divine Name, and he
would begin the act of judgment. It is only now, in the Ascension, that this
judgment truly occurs, because it is only in the Ascension that the Victor who
was dead but now alive, is made into the perfect judge who can ‘scrutinize
thoughts and emotions’. “From there he will come to judge the living and the
dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”
In all of this we see how God’s judgment was always going to
entail the incarnation, and how the incarnation is aimed at the ascension. From
Adam (and, even before Adam) this is the goal all along. This is how it would
occur. This is how God would “rise to his throne”. He would do so as the
incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. The God who has redeemed them time-and-again, who
has delivered them, will become the incarnate man Jesus Christ. This is truly
astonishing because it means that every step along the way, is a step in the
direction of the Ascension.
My shield / is upon God
The one
/ who delivers / the upright of heart
God / is a righteous judge
When God judges, people are divided in two. He delivers
those who are “upright of heart” while he “sharpens his sword” and “bends his
bow” against those who “do not repent.” In the ‘time of the psalm’, however,
the people are not so easily divided. It is the time of God’s ‘slumber’ and his
being enmeshed, down ‘low’ in the powers of the cosmos. When God is ‘low’ and
‘asleep’, the world is likewise ‘low’ and ‘asleep’ in that it’s design is not
being realized. It is tainted, confused, and impure. But, this is also a time
of mercy, a time of abeyance of judgment so that people can “repent”. Looked at
from one vantage point, it is God’s unwillingness to engage in the world’s
injustices. But, from another, it is the time of patience and mercy. It is the
time “after the flood” when no longer will each wrong be met immediately with a
corresponding punishment; conversely, each righteous act will also not be
immediately met with a corresponding act of blessing.
The psalmist knows that Yhwh can and will awake and rise
above all of the powers. He knows that Yhwh is the only one upon whom he can
place his “shield” and regard as his protection. And he knows that when God
judges, the “upright of heart” will be delivered because God is a “righteous
judge”.
But God
is indignant every day
If a
person does not repent
He sharpens his sword
He has
bent his bow / and prepared it
And for it / he has made ready instruments of death
He will
make his arrows / fiery shafts
The judgment will also necessarily entail the destruction of
the wicked. The righteous’ ‘shield’ is upon Yhwh (either God is the shield
itself or he holds the shield for his servant) but for the wicked, in the
judgment they stand utterly exposed and defenseless. Whereas Yhwh acted as a
defense to the righteous, here he attacks the unrepentant—he sharpens his sword
and bends his bow. He readies the ‘instruments of death’. In all of this we see
how God’s judgment entails a type of war—shields for the righteous (shields
that either are God or are held by God) and swords and arrows. It will not
simply be a declaration of innocent or guilty but will be the punishment as
well. When God judges, the righteous and the wicked “become what they are”. The
world, which was previously confused due to God’s patience and mercy, is
divided and separated, as in creation itself when everything is “separated”
(earth from sea, day from night, water below from water above, etc…). It is the
ordering justice of God in re-establishing his creation.
In this verse, God is portrayed as the one who actively
attacks the unrepentant. As we will see, the psalmist will then shift
perspective and, there, the wicked will destroy themselves. In all of this,
perhaps we discern something important—that when Yhwh rises in judgment, and
when he re-establishes creation’s goodness and order through an act of
separation, the act of justice and separation will be a synergy between his
acting and the wicked’s acting. In other words, the destruction of the wicked
will entail as much of their destruction of themselves as it will entail Yhwh
“loosing his fiery shafts”, just as the redemption of the righteous will also
entail as much of their “integrity” and “righteousness” as Yhwh’s establishment
of them.
Lo / he is in labor with iniquity
And he
is pregnant with mischief
And
gives birth / to falsehood
He dug a pit / and excavated it
Then he
fell into the hole / he was making
His mischief returns / upon his own head
And his
violence / descends on his forehead
The images begin with those of potency, of what is about to
occur or be brought about: “In labor”, “pregnant”, “dug a bit”. In all of these
the wicked are attempting to bring about—to actualize—their “iniquity”,
“mischief” and “falsehood”. When the potency becomes actualized, though, what
occurs is not what the wicked expect—when their child is born, when the pit is
dug, their evil turns upon them, their children return to destroy them, the pit
they dug to trap the righteous, is something that they fall into. Everything
comes down on their own heads.
What we see here is that God, in his “rising”, his “waking”
and his “judgment” prevent the wicked from fully realizing their goals. In
fact, quite the opposite—his presence causes the wicked to not only be
thwarted, but to destroy the destroyers. There is a beautiful logic to this
because now the wicked is utterly destroyed by the wicked actually turning upon
its makers. With the destruction of its creators, wicked is utterly destroyed.
It is not simply a punishment, but a root-and-branch destruction of the wicked
itself. That is why it boomerangs back upon them—to cut it out from its
source.
Conversely, we might say that just as the wicked’s goals are
used to dis-create them, so too would the righteous people’s goals come “back
upon their heads” to re-create them. The “work of their hands” is realized in
God’s judgment. It is brought to fruition. They are engines of life and
therefore an astonishing, abundant life now returns on them. The seeds that
they sow now return, not in a harvest that correlates to their seed, but a
harvest that is lavish and utterly dwarfs their efforts.
If this is the logic of judgment then Christ’s life becomes
this fully realized seed that, in the judgment, is now made into the absolute
abundance. In the incarnation the Word and “Life of the Cosmos” becomes flesh
and brings that flesh to its utter completion and, in so doing, now enables
it—realizes it—to become the vehicle of heavenly and absolute blessing and
Life. .
I will laud the Lord / because of his righteousness
And I
will sing / the praise / of the name of the Lord Most High.
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