Canter Bridge

In this moment we seem inebriated by our own self-esteem, yet with little hope of achieving it via the intoxicating route we have chosen. So it may seem a harsh time to speak of God laughing sarcastically at the little efforts of humankind to establish its status and prerogative. Yet the psalms choose just that image when their writers imagine the Lord who rules over the nations surveying efforts to unseat him.

This laughter is a fine sound—a manner of euanggelion—for those Israelites who find themselves encircled by gentile foes whose declared enmity against the God of Jacob must have painful consequences for his daughters and sons. Often the mention of heaven cackling at schemers’ designs is preceded by some self-assured statement on their part to the effect that ‘no one hears’ or ‘no one sees’.

Take Psalm 59.

Here the writer is preoccupied with what appears to be a bellicose threat by gentiles against the people of Israel and/or Judah. His description of warfare in canine terms is gripping:

Each evening they come back,
howling like dogs
and prowling about the city.
There they are, bellowing with their mouths,
with sharp words on their lips—
for ‘Who,’ they think, ‘will hear us?’ (Psalm 59.6-7 NRSV)

Then the sound of laughter:

But you laugh at them, O LORD;
you hold all the nations in derision.
O my strength, I will watch for you;
for you, O God, are my fortress.
My God in his steadfast love will meet me;
my God will let me look in triumph on my enemies.

The image marks moves against YHWH’s sovereignty over his world as the stuff of lunacy. Such insurrection seems prudent from a certain level but laughable when the proper perspective is gained.

Or take—more famously—Psalm 2, a paean of confidence in the Lord’s historical architecture and the status of his anointed king:

Why do the nations conspire,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and his anointed, saying,
‘Let us burst their bonds asunder,
and cast their cords from us.’

He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the LORD has them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’ (Psalm 2:1-6 NRSV)

It would be a too common mistake to read into such scoffing hilarity an adversarial role on the part of YHWH towards the peoples as nations. To the contrary, the same material presents a commitment to their redemption that is at points breathtaking in its scope and beauty. Yet there runs through such passages a strong current of humility and,  sometimes, of humiliation. That is, redemption in the psalms and prophets comes to the nations as they subject themselves to the God of Jacob and sometimes even to Jacob/Israel itself. Needless to say, the history of interpretation has labored long to discern just what shape such subjugation—forced or embraced with joy—might take.

When this variety of divine laughter is heard, it is not leveled against non-Jews in toto, but rather against the nations as they seek to escape the determined sovereignty of YHWH not only over his people Israel but over the whole created world. For the writers who indulge in the genre, YHWH’s realm includes not just his Abrahamic tribe but also—the phrase is important for its fixing of God’s attention on people—the tevah, the ‘whole inhabited world’.

It is folly, indeed it stands as something of a joke, that little men and women should think themselves capable of resisting such ruling power.

It is more to their benefit, the literature seems to suggest, to find his mercy in his force, his goodness in his counsel, his future—veiled by chaos’ bewildering fog—in the story.