Canter Bridge

The exclamation, the sensuous enthusiasm of the summons that comes to us in the 8th verse of this psalm of testimony and wisdom surprises. If such an invocation to sensation is just about imaginable in the context of witness, it is utterly defiant of the disciplined reflection of classical wisdom.

Yet here it is:

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! (Psalm 34:8 ESV)

Perhaps the particular challenge that an acrostic psalm (alphabetically ordered) thrusts against the prowess of its composer explains this ranging wide of the customary field of play. We might imagine that the poor guy will say just about anything as long as it begins with the right letter. Or conversely, if we’ve sung or read this language of sanctified gustation one time too many, its impertinence might even escape our attention.

But tasting and seeing? Is this how the canonical songs of Israel are meant to speak about human interaction with that people’s invisible deity? Things get a little reckless before the poet settles back down into the conventional syllables of wisdom in the verse’s second half.

We will make more sense of this momentary break-out into holy sensation when we realize the the object of tasting and seeing is the fact that YHWH is good. This is no casual religious blather. To the contrary, the psalmist alludes here to something rather solemn, to the closest thing to a creed that we find in the Hebrew Bible:

The LORD is good; his mercy endures forever!

Few Israelites would be unfamiliar with this credo, this fundamental assertion that YHWH need not be the object of our crazy fears, need not be suspected of mixed motivations. We need not wonder whether or not he is consistent, whether what we see in YHWH is what we get.

No, YHWH is good. In what way is he good? Well, his חסד, his loyal love is inexhaustible. It does not run itself dry, does not fickly change direction, does not go half-way in covenantal loving.

The two components of this quasi-creed are not likely independent if parallel expressions of truth. Rather, the second unpacks the first. It sets forth the evidence. It explains in what way YHWH is fundamentally, reliably good. The verse has not two truths to tell, but one. YHWH is good in that his unique, burning, growing love does not end before it has accomplished its purpose.

Every Israelite, we might suppose, has recited these words and in some measure believed them to be true.

The psalmist, despite the acrostic challenge, is not merely stringing words together, casting about for any words that fit his pattern. There is far more literary dexterity and far more theological depth in these lines than that.

He is, rather, alluding to Israel’s declaration of faith and at the same time recognizing the limitations of its frequent reciters. At the risk of sounding merely sentimental, the psalmist wants more than simple assent to abstract truth.

So he calls his reader to press more deeply into the existential, sensate experience of YHWH’s goodness. With daring physicality, he dares him to taste. To see. To know by experience what he has affirmed with his community.

Reservations theological and liturgical are for one moment put on hold. The profound beauty of truth’s recitation is asked, for this instant, to step into the shadows and wait there for a moment while the knowers of YHWH’s truth become the consumers, the ingesters of his goodness.

Then, quickly, we are returned to the settled blessedness of his trustworthy refuge in the verse’s second half. But we are different now, for we have savored goodness so rich, so complex, so compelling that we will never again murmur our creed with eyes completely dry.