Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on July 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The generative peculiarity of the twenty-third Psalm lies in its refusal to compromise the threat.
The valley of deep darkness (traditionally, ‘the valley of the shadow of death’) and the surrounding enemies remain intact. Their destructive capacity is not underestimated nor is the enemies’ sinister intention disavowed. They are simply left, in the poetics of the psalm, to be what they are. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on June 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The architecture of ontology in the Hebrew Bible both distances YHWH from his human creatures and brings him very near to them.
YHWH’s altitude—he is portrayed as lofty, exalted, lifted up—is paired in compassionate paradox with his proximity to the most lowly. In one stirring passage in the book of Isaiah, he is exalted and yet lives with the lowly and crushed. In the hundred thirty-eighth psalm, he sees the lowly with exquisite precision.
Though the LORD is on high, he looks upon the lowly,
but the proud he knows from afar. (Psalm 138:6 NIV)
Ordinary conceptions of exalted power are subverted yet again in the second line of the quoted verse, for there he perceives from afar the person who exalts himself to apparent proximity with YHWH. To attempt to move nearer to YHWH by self-exaltation is in fact to distance oneself in a tragic feat of self-deception. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on June 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The visual profile of a piece of Hebrew poetry laid out on a page is occasionally striking. It is no wonder that the aniconic tradition of Hebrew letters develops an artistic whimsy that sets it to playing with the shapes and potentialities of Hebrew script.
Like a teacher’s strong arm on the wrist of a young pupil as he sits before a drawing, Psalm 136 directs the reader’s eye from one corner of its modest shape to the other. She teaches him to see this and then that, to glimpse the magical order in the jumble. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on June 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The Hebrew word אז (‘then’) is a hinge that occasionally turns more than the expected weight.
In Isaiah 35, for example, אז is the pivot at the beginning of the memorable phrase ‘Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the mouth of the dumb unstopped.’ The text contrasts the hearers’ present despondent state with the euphoria that shall accompany liberation and restoration.
(more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on May 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Reliable instruction for life not only directs one’s steps on right paths and busies one’s hands with labors that matter.
It also sets the heart to singing.
Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my sojourning. (Psalm 119:54 ESV)
If we have sung our loudest and our best in the mosh pit, it becomes difficult to imagine instruction’s restraint generating music that is worth the listening. When release and self-realization have been the consistent theme of our favorite melodies, we struggle to comprehend that ‘statutes’ and ‘songs’ should occur in the same sentence. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged Proverb, Proverbios, Psalms, Salmos, texturas, textures on May 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »
La visión bíblica proverbial palpita al ritmo del corazón humano. Ella sabe lo que lo aflige y conoce las palabras que lo curan, reconoce la pérdida que mata al alma humana y las buenas noticas que lo vuelven a la vida.
13:12 La esperanza que se demora es tormento del corazón; Pero árbol de vida es el deseo cumplido.
Si la esperanza que se demora enferma al corazón, entonces la pregunta que surge después de leer el Salmo 88 es: ¿qué tipo de medicamento nos provee este salmo? Esta oscura articulación sobre la pérdida constante a la que los seres humanos nos vemos sometidos no contiene una sola palabra de esperanza de tiempos mejores. De hecho, se ha señalado el Salmo 88 dentro de los ‘salmos de lamento’ como aquel que no manifiesta movimiento alguno en sentido de la esperanza. Simplemente es una crónica del final de las cosas, asignando la causalidad de la catástrofe a YHWH, quien no vacila ni se disculpa. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Proverbs, Psalms, textures on April 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The biblical proverbialist deploys sharp insight into the rhythms of the human heart. He knows what news ails and the report that cures, the loss that deadens the human soul and the novelty that brings it back to life.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
If hope deferred sickens the heart, then one wonders what kind of medicine comes to us in the eighty-eighth psalm. This dark articulation of loss contains not one word of hope. Indeed it has been singled out as the only exemplar in the ‘psalms of lament’ that contains no movement towards hope’s expectation of better things. It simply chronicles the end of things, assigning the causality of catastrophe to YHWH with neither flinching nor apology. (more…)
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on January 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The eleventh psalm has often been quoted as a counsel of despair.
If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? (Psalm 11:3 NRSV)
Whether as a summons to vote this or that political party into office or a warning against the dismantling power of a culture’s decay, the psalmist is brought in to verify that righteous deeds become impotent when the wider culture has crossed a certain threshold of barbarism.
Most modern English translations of the Bible make a critical placement of the quotation marks that turns these words into the counsel of the despairing who have lost their confidence in YHWH. They are probably right to do so.
In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to me, ‘Flee like a bird to the mountains; for look, the wicked bend the bow, they have fitted their arrow to the string, to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?’
Read in this way, the psalm does not counsel despair. It refutes it.
For two reasons, the poet reckons that discouragement is implausible. First, the discouraging word directed at him does not take into account his own programmatic decision to trust in YHWH.
Second, such pessimism fails to fathom the searching, testing gaze of YHWH, who has not left his throne. Nor does it contemplate YHWH’s moral passions.
The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD’S throne is in heaven. His eyes behold, his gaze examines humankind. The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked, and his soul hates the lover of violence. On the wicked he will rain coals of fire and sulfur; a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup. For the LORD is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright shall behold his face.
As long as YHWH still hates the lover—splendid paradox—of violence, the discouraging word rings emptily. So long as YHWH still loves righteous deeds and brings the doer of them into intimate conversation with himself, despair is not only implausible. It sounds faintly ridiculous.
Posted in textures, tagged biblical reflection, Psalms, textures on January 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Both the righteous sufferer and the gloating murderer speak to the absence of God.
The former employs a question mark, the latter an exclamation point. So do they determine their own destiny.
The tenth psalm bursts upon its reader with one of the psalter’s classic, pained questions:
Why, O LORD, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? (Psalm 10: 1-2 NRSV)
When the righteous sufferer addresses the hiddenness of God, he knows that something is wrong and pleads for it to be set right.
By contrast, the troubler of the poor affirms God’s absence as the convenient status quo.
They stoop, they crouch,
and the helpless fall by their might.
They think in their heart, ‘God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.’
The righteous lament God’s hiddenness. The wicked declare it their stage and prance blood-stained and cackling upon it.
The psalms know that YHWH’s absence is not the final word, even as they plead for the void to be filled by his raised arm. The wicked imagine that—since no just Governor watches or cares—all things are possible.
The righteous prays for resolution. The wicked assumes continuity.
The world hangs on a prayer.
Posted in reseña, tagged Psalms, reseña on January 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The abstract of this article reads as follows:
Life in this world is the only life, according to the ancient biblical belief. Robert Alter (Uri) in the introduction to his translation of the book of Psalms (2007) explains why he sometimes chose one word and not another to remain faithful to the biblical belief of Psalms, and discarded here and there the excess baggage of belief in the world to come, which throughout the generatins has clung to certain words and expressions that appear in the psalms. Two texts from Modern literature, one Hebrew, the other Russian, exemplify in this article the tension between belief in this world and belief in the world to come of two female protagonists, independently of each other. The last part of the article relates to a personal event that illumines something about Robert Alter, the man and the translator.
The author’s poignant tribute to the great Robert Alter’s method and legacy highlights Alter’s option for shedding the ‘baggage’ attributable to Christian quotation, doctrine, and eschatology in favor of the concreteness that is arguably native to the Hebrew psalms themselves. Ben-Dov’s development of two moments in literature in which the protagonists found it necessary to negotiate ‘this-worldliy’ and ‘other-worldly’ reception of the psalms frames Alter’s choice of the former in the introduction to his celebrated translation of the biblical psalms.
Canter Bridge 