Sacramental Living

This is the fourth part of a continuing post.

Read Part 3 here.  Read Part 2 here.  Read Part 1 here.

WARNING: Academic content ahead …

The Korahite Psalms (42-49; 84-85; 87-88) serve as an excellent study in the thematic web woven from the foundation laid in Psalms 1 and 2 of torah, pathway, and refuge. The process of ‘refuging’ in the torah pathway begins with faint hope and profound devotion, moves to proclaiming joy in YHWH’s presence, and ends with absolute abandonment. From heaven to hell, the full gamut of love, rage, fear, peace, anxiety, despair, and hope is here. Specifically, these psalms consist of Zion songs (46, 48, 84, 87), a wisdom psalm (49), a wedding song (45), an enthronement psalm (47), and laments (42-44, 85, 88). ¹

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This is the third part of a continuing post. Read Part 2 here.  Read Part 1 here.

WARNING: Academic content ahead …

This one way of torah is called “the way of the righteous” (Psalm 1.6).  The way–derek–is the “means by which one lives and moves and has one’s being.”[1] By negation in verse 1, it can be assumed that the righteous are to walk, stand, and sit somewhere.  But if the way does not lie with the wicked, or sinners, or scoffers, then where?  The location must be an all-consuming place of completion.  This is suggestive by the attempts of the psalmist at completion: “walk,” “stand,” “sit;” “day,” “night.”[2] The derek metaphor, and its synonym ‘orach–‘path’–, are pervasive throughout the Psalter.  Psalm 1 is brilliantly making a match between torah and derek. 

Torah is the one way, the one path, for the righteous who would live life in delight.  The preponderance of laments in the Psalter would seem to squelch this delight of living life in the path of torah.  Yet, the delight is not so much a happy outlook, but rather an assurance that life is contained within the life of YHWH.  The dichotomy of either/or melts away.  God makes room in his life for much struggle, pain, grief, anger, and fatigue while the righteous journey on the pathway.  Co-mingling with torah as the pathway there can be this paradox, because of the concept of ‘refuge.’

‘Refuge’ does not appear in Psalm 1, many might declaim.  Indeed.  However, here we find the link from the pathway of torah in the first Psalm to ‘seek refuge’–chaseh–in Psalm 2.  The link is nestled in the last two verses:

Serve Yahweh with awe; reverence and worship him, or he will grow angry, and you will die in the way; for his consuming fire quickly kindles.  Happy are all who seek refuge in him.  (Psalm 2.11-12 orig. trans.)

Chaseh is the verbal form of mahseh.  That the verbal and not the nominal form appears in Psalm 2 connecting the idea of pathway is significant.  This is the major point of departure for the present work from current study on metaphor in the Psalter.[3] The idea of chaseh is to be active within refuge: “Happy are all who are refuging in YHWH.”  Such a verb-ifying of the noun ‘refuge’ seems to render the most accurate understanding of the Psalter’s intent in assigning Psalms 1 and 2 as prelude to the Psalms.  Thus, God is not a static, impassable being that is the goal of seekers longing for refuge.  Torah does not serve as simply a direction toward God-as-refuge implying “destination and permanent residence.”[4]

In sum, there is a way.  That way is the one way.  It is a pathway called torah.  The righteous are those who delight in the story of God that YHWH has initiated and invited all to be active participants in.  Much activity takes place within this story.  The story is a journey wherein worshippers are seeking refuge–‘refuging’–in the openness of YHWH’s life.

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[1] William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002),32. The remainder of this discussion concerning ‘pathway’ is heavily dependent on Brown, 31-53.  Though major differences will be spelled out here, Brown has done significant work in linking the metaphors of torah and derek.

[2] James L. Crenshaw, The Psalms: An Introduction (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 58.

[3] Particularly see Brown, Seeing the Psalms,18-53.

[4] Ibid., 32.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:

Do you see the verbage playing out this way?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
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This is the second part of a continuing post.  Read Part 1 here.

The “one way” is introduced in Psalm 1 indirectly as a negative statement concerning the “path that sinners tread” (v.1).  In other words, the one way is the ‘not’ toward the “[h]appy are those” in verse 1.  Happiness through “delight . . . in the torah of the LORD” (v.1).  Notice that delight does not come from, out of, beside, nor any other host of prepositional possibilities in relation to torah; rather delight is found ‘in’ torah.  To this concept of placement ‘in’ torah we shall return.

Many English translations of Psalm 1 generate sterile understandings and limited scope for the meaning of torah.  Later-day Christianity succinctly refers to torah as the law, or the Old Covenant.  Yet, after reading Psalm 1 (and subsequently Psalm 19 and Psalm 119) certainly law cannot be the exhaustive meaning of torah.  Indeed Hans-Joachim Kraus states that “[u]nder no circumstances should we translate torah as ‘law,’ or introduce a corresponding understanding in legalistic terms.”[1] Kraus proposes ‘instruction’ as a fuller understanding of torah suggesting this gives the “impression of something living, dynamic.”[2] But semantics becomes a brain-numbing exercise at this level when ‘law’ and ‘instruction’ can be considered so vastly divergent in connotation.  Indeed, instruction hardly gives any indication of a living or dynamic understanding as relayed in the text of Psalm 1.  Here torah is likened to a living and active stream giving human life wholeness.  What understanding of torah would feed such a lively metaphor?

Torah is arguably the most important part of the Tanakh, because it is the written record of YHWH’s self-revelation as the God of all creation to a peculiar Hebrew people.[3] Indeed, torah is a narrative–a story–of God’s covenantal relationship with a particular people in space and time.  It is this sweeping, almost cosmic, defining of torah that gives the Psalter liberty to implement such playful imagery concerning YHWH’s story.  And indeed, torah is clearly situated as emanating from YHWH and generated by his initiative, not simply a story about YHWH.  This is how delight can come from being ‘in torah.’  When a community finds itself involved in YHWH’s story, there is delight, there is happiness because life is occurring as it was intended from the mind of God.

Now, we must wonder: what does a people do who find themselves in torah?  Verse 2 continues: “on torah they meditate day and night.”  The verb hagah here translated as “meditate” is elsewhere translated differently: “As a lion or a young lion growls over its prey . . .” (Isaiah 31.4).  There is something visceral and vocal to this meditation.  The Hebraic understanding of hagah is rooted in communal worship.  The holy din of worshippers singing and chanting psalms in the ancient temple feeds the connotations of hagah.[4] Meditation then is not some isolated mental exercise, nor a closet spiritual experience.  To be swept into torah–YHWH’s story–means to fully and actively rehearse that story in community fashion at all times, because the “streams of water” (Psalm 1.3) are continually flowing.  Thus, there is no time for the “happy” to consider following the “path that sinners tread.”  Instead, hagah must be constant and ongoing.  This conceptual reality of torah implies movement over against stasis.  Life in torah is a journey, not a destination.  There must be much room in YHWH’s story to move about for so many happy ones to take delight and be always on the move.  Life is decisive because of YHWH’s story.  The gifting of this story to humanity generates the Psalter’s confidence that “torah is the only thinkable response”[5] and the one way in which to journey and live life.  If torah is “all-embracing in its scope,”[6] there is no dichotomy of equal and opposite opportunity in Psalm 1.

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[1] Hans-Joachim Kraus, Theology of the Psalms, trans. Keith Crim (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), 34.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The first five books of the Hebrew Bible are similar in structure to the five-fold division of the Psalter, thus Psalm 1 is claiming that the Psalter is a reflection of Torah.

[4] See James Limburg, Psalms (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000), 2ff.

[5] Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 39.

[6] William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 57.