How long / O Yhwh / will you continually / forget me
How
long / will you hide your face / from me
How long / must I set pain / in my soul
Grief
in my heart / by day and night
How long / will my enemy be exalted over me
The psalmist begins by questioning Yhwh. He wants to know
how long Yhwh will permit the present moment of suffering and injustice to
persist. Importantly, this time of injustice is described as a lack of Yhwh’s
remembrance and lack of his presence. Yhwh has “forgotten him” and “hid his
face” from him. It is key to see how the psalmist does not begin with the
‘exaltation of his enemies’ over him but with Yhwh’s absence. That is stands at
the root of his enemy’s exaltation and his suffering, and that is the greatest
tragedy to the psalmist. We might say that his enemies exaltation is more of a
symptom of the disease of Yhwh’s absence. This would align with other
understandings of evil and suffering that we have seen in other psalms where
the wicked are punished. There, what we find is that when Yhwh’s punishes the
wicked, in large part he simply allows them to fall prey to their own deeds:
they dig a hole for the righteous, but they fall in it themselves. Their evil
boomerangs back upon them. It is not, however, that this is simply a natural
outworking of evil. Yhwh must remove some type of protection from around them,
such that their own evil is now allowed to return on the wicked. Here is the
point, with the wicked, evil’s potential is actualized through Yhwh’s
‘absence’, through his permitting evil to work its course. Something similar is
going on here—evil is ‘exalted’ when Yhwh ‘forgets’ his people and when he
‘hides his face’ from them. This may seem contradictory because on the one hand
Yhwh’s punishment of the wicked is understood as a type of absence, while the
exaltation of the wicked is also understood as an absence. But the connecting
thread is who Yhwh is absent from. When Yhwh works judgment on the wicked, he
removes himself from the wicked and his ‘presences’ himself with the righteous.
When injustice is present, Yhwh is ‘absent’ from the righteous but seemingly
present with the wicked (or, he is at least permitting the wicked to succeed).
It is key to see that the absence of Yhwh is understood here
because of injustice and not simply because of an existential feeling of
emptiness. The psalmist, and those in his community, could, in that sense,
‘read off of history’ that God is absent.
It is a profound point—to see within suffering the absence
of God—because it points to a much deeper reality and truth—that in order to
see suffering as absence one must have a deeper conviction that flourishing is
the presence of God. It is because of what the psalmist has lost that he is in
such despair. Yhwh should not absent. That is the source of his cry and
question—“How long…?” Time should not experience Yhwh’s absence. It should be
full with it. His Presence should be stitched into the fabric of time itself,
such that the question, “How long…?” should never occur. That it is being
asked, means something is wrong. The enemy is in the ascendant.
In the book of Revelation is where we finally see this
consummation of the Presence over the Absence. There, throughout the entire
book, there is a clear sense that God is both present and absent from his
creation (he works, but only through intermediaries). Until the coming of the
new earth from heaven, the world is a place of light and darkness, flame and
shadow. But, when creation has been cleansed, such that the new creation can
descend from heaven, then does the Lamb himself become the Light, and there is
no need for a Temple because no longer is the Presence contained within the
holy-of-holies. The entire Cosmos is the holy-of-holies; it becomes the place
of absolute Presence-Without-Absence. Then, there “is no night” but only day.
But, until then, the cosmos is a mixture of presence and absence.
Here, because the psalmist is experiencing suffering he is,
necessarily, also experiencing Yhwh’s absence. As long as there is “pain my
soul”, there is an absence of Yhwh.
Look / Answer me / O Yhwh / my God
Enlighten
my eyes / lest I should / sleep the death
Lest my enemy should say / I have prevailed over him
Lest my
adversaries / should rejoice because I am shaken
But I have trusted / in your lovingkindness
My
heart shall rejoice / in your deliverance
I shall sing praises / to Yhwh
As soon
as he has dealt bountifully / with me.
The psalmist directs Yhwh to “look”, which requires Yhwh to
turn his face toward the psalmist, thereby reversing his ignoring of the
psalmist. In other words, in this psalm for Yhwh to ‘look upon’ the psalmist
means for Yhwh to work redemption, blessing and abundance. He also directs Yhwh
to “answer me” which would, likewise, mean Yhwh has recalled the psalmist from
his forgetfulness. Both commands aim to get Yhwh’s attention, to draw him and
his authority into the present thereby establishing a right order.
Interestingly, the psalmist never tells Yhwh to punish the
wicked. He does not ask Yhwh to judge them or let them fall into their own
traps. His sole focus is on his own glorification, his own ‘enlightening eye’,
and Yhwh’s dealing with him ‘bountifully’.
The command that Yhwh “enlighten my eyes” is the opposite of
the “sleep of death” where the eyes are permanently closed. It therefore does
not mean a type of mental enlightenment, only, but a also bodily redemption
away from death. This needs to be seen in the same context as the opening,
where the foundational complaint was Yhwh’s absence and then the wicked’s
ascendancy. As there, the psalmist’s source of life—what ‘enlightens his
eye’—is Yhwh turning back to him. It is, in other words, Yhwh’s presence. In
Yhwh’s light, he sees light; within Yhwh’s gaze is he given the ability and
power to gaze. It is not, then, first, bodily integrity, but Yhwh’s Presence
and attention. With that comes bodily integrity and life. With that, is the
‘pain in his soul’ and ‘grief in his heart’ turned into rejoicing, and the
signing of praises.
But this must not be seen as alternatives, as if Yhwh’s
Presence can somehow be enjoyed apart from its ability to bring abundance. It
is not, we might say, dis-incarnate. For the psalmist, the final act so to
speak, when he can ‘sing praises’, comes about after Yhwh “has dealt
bountifully with me.” In other words, yes, all of this is absolutely grounded
in the ‘first movement’ of Yhwh toward the psalmist, but this should not be
seen as a chronological ‘first’, but a first in the order of importance; it is
qualitatively ‘first’, not quantitatively first. The psalmist will know that
Yhwh has ‘turned toward him’ after he Yhwh has ‘dealt bountifully’ with him.
Yhwh’s Presence, Yhwh’s attention, is always-already life and bounty. That is
why these are not separate realities. His Presence is not an abstraction. This
is also why the psalmist is not being ungrateful or ‘materialistic’ when he
weds his praise of Yhwh to Yhwh’s dealing bountifully with him. It would be a
rejection of Yhwh to act otherwise. It would also be a rejection of the fact
that (with) Yhwh is life, and death is what he conquers.
There is, here, an important principle—that often the effect
of Yhwh’s Presence reveals more deeply his ‘qualitative priority’. The psalmist
here will come to see Yhwh’s turning to him “after the fact”, as it were, even
though he lives in the hope of that realization now.
This time before the realization—this time when the psalmist
knows of Yhwh’s ‘qualitative priority’ and that Yhwh will act—is the time
assured hope.
Psalmist often ask Yhwh to save them from death so that they
can continue praising him. If they were to descend to Sheol, they would go to a
place where there is no liturgy to Yhwh because his name is ‘forgotten’ there.
The purpose of redemption, then, is not simply to ‘save a life’. There is a
‘benefit’ we might say to Yhwh, in that he saves a liturgical person—someone
who can continue to render him a ‘sacrifice of praise’. This is not, however,
simply a one-way street. For the psalmist, the greatest blessing is to be
permitted into Yhwh’s presence and to praise him. But the emphasis does not
fall there, typically speaking. Instead, it focuses on what the psalmist can
render to Yhwh. That is what we find here—praise is given to Yhwh after Yhwh
deals bountifully with him.
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