Psalms (2)–
Manuscripts of the Gods: The Bible and Ancient Cultural Thresholds
by James Whitlark, Ph.D.
Transport
| Thence, O all–pervading, come or from the heaven or
from the luminous world. Here he brightens the words. —Rigveda1.1.12.9 (Pandit 109) |
Somewhat similarly, in Psalm 50 sacrifices are continually before God in the temple (50.8), yet He also comes in glory, surrounded by fire and tempest (50.3). Presumably, without such a visible manifestation, he manifests in the Psalm itself, speaking in the first person. In addition, He from morning until night summons the earth to Him (50.1). Yet, unlike the .Rgvedic passage, there is an ethical distinction in His attitude toward the words that evoke Him (or register the presence already there). Although both wicked and just call him through his scriptures, when he comes he will rend the former and save those who bring a sacrifice of thanksgiving (50.14–23).
Although a deity is, in a sense, present, listening to the prayers that constitute each hymn, believers’ psychological approach to the Divine is difficult to envision without some metaphor of movement. In the .R gveda, a boat or more often a chariot is the favored vehicle. The latter is also the most prominent in the Bible. For instance, God “maketh the clouds his chariot” (Ps 104:3). Yet in Psalm 68:18, since He always occupies his sanctuary, His transport may remain there (depending on how one fills in the syntactical lacunae, where translators offer various guesses): “Chariot(s) of God … twenty thousand, thousands of thousands [literally, repetitions]: the Lord … among them, … Sinai, in the holy place” The Hebrew for chariot, merkabah, means also seat. From the first century B.C.E. to the tenth C.E., there flourished a mystical literature describing that merkabah in an ecstatic vision of the divine throne thus simultaneously suggesting movement and stillness (Blumenthal 1978, 5). These works, however, have their source in such Biblical passages as Psalms 68:17 or 104.3.
Similarly, the Rigveda describes “the Father” as seated in heaven
on his chariot (1.164.12). In such a vehicle, gods come to accept prayers (e.g.,
6.35.1, 7.28.1); conversely, those prayers ascend in or like chariots, bearing spiritual
food as sacrifice (e.g., 1.46.7; Miler 54). Consequently, the sacrifice itself is
likened to a chariot (10.130.7) as was any wish considered a “chariot of the mind”
(m–a noratha) (O’Flaherty 56). And of most interest, the text is a spiritual
vehicle, e.g., 10.135, describing the making of a chariot of thought in such a way
that it refers to the hymn as well (O’Flaherty 56-57). Combining mental and verbal
imagery, Hymn 1.20.2 mentions “mind–fashioned, word-yoked” horses (Pandit 233; Miller
54).
Recalling these conventions, how, for instance, might a reader interpret Psalm 40.6–9?
| Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou
opened: burnt offering and sin offering has thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law [torah] is within my heart. |
Parallel to his coming is his being in the heavenly book as one
with the scriptures (torah) in his heart. He both contains and is contained
within God’s book, entering the divine presence through texts. And this entry substitutes
for sacrifice, rendered unnecessary by God’s opening his ears to the holy words and
imprinting his heart (rather than extracting it).
Topic (from topos, the Greek for
Place)
|
The undying syllable of the song is the final abode where all the gods have taken their seat. What can one who does not know this do with the song? Only those who know it sit together here. —Rigveda1.164.39 (O’Flaherty 80) |
| Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. |
God and the poems (songs) both form a place to protect the faithful. The metaphor
of God as place is common in psalms, particularly in the image of Him as a protecting
Rock, often associated with Mount Zion. (Psalm 48.3 further compares it to Zaphon,
the Ugaritic Olympus (Guthrie 89).) The notion of a divine environment also occurs
in such Christian formulae as Acts 17.28 (“In whom we live, and move, and have our
being”) or the Gnostic Christian “Triparite Tractate” (“the Father was like a thought
and a place…”(1.60.5, Robinson 64). Are we to imagine concentric circles: humanity
within God, Himself within language? Or humanity within language within God?
The metaphors vacilate as if the relationship were uncertain or unknown. And there
are other kinds of blurring. In Psalm 32, for instance, immediately upon mentioning
His songs, the LORD begins one of them, speaking verses that promise aid. This poem
of deliverance merges with the rest of the psalm, appropriate to its assumed divine/Davidic
authorship, so that one might think of the whole psalm as the environment of the
divine/human meeting. Again in 119.114–115: “Thou art my hiding place and my shield:
I hope in thy word. Depart from me, ye evildoeres: for I will keep the commandments
of my God.” By the reference to the commandments (and the verses position with 119,
all of which concerns the Torah), God’s word equals scripture. In verse 114, finding
hope within it parallels hiding within God.
The Encounter
|
Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. —Psalms 44:22 |
Much of the psalm’s beauty derives from how perfectly it evokes
divine encounter. Its first sentence includes the Tetragramaton, implicitly a calling
on God. Symmetrically, it also ends with reference to YHWH. In between, He is reminded
to act kindly “for his name’s sake” (23.3). A more–direct summoning, pronouns shift
to second person, addressing Him as actually arriving in the recitation of the psalm.
Ascribed to David, its use of the first person becomes the voice of a king speaking
for his community, yet in the idiom of a humble shepherd. Therefore, it stands not
merely for God as trustworthy guardian but likewise for David, the paradigmatic ruler
who dwells with his sheep/people in a palace. The people are united and as passively
adherent as sheep to the royal/divine will. Even the rod of chastizement comforts
them. Although reference to a valley of shadows probably indicates a prelapsarian
world, God’s protective presence amidst ample water and vegetation makes the setting
resemble that premordial place of human/divine encounter, Eden, if not on earth at
least in Heaven. And if the mortals can only reach the celestial abode by dying like
sacrifices, they will still commend God’s goodness and mercy.
At any rate, from the Hindu vantage we adopt in this chapter, Taxilans
would be accustomed to and therefore expect hymns inculcating willing sacrifice.
The Rigveda traces itself to the death of Purusha, who gave himself as material for
a creation: “[10.90.9] From that sacrifice [of Purusha] completely offered were born
the hymns and chants; the metres were born from it; the sacrificial formula was born
from it” (MacDonell 200). To reconcile the Vedic sacrifice of an (unwilling) horse
with the Dharma Sastra’s injunction “Harm not any creature,” some commentators interpret
the obscure term adhvara in the Rigveda to mean “free from violence” (Pandit
7). If the scripture says that the killing is without violence, then it must be voluntary
at some invisible level whatever it appears to be on the surface. The Bhagavadgita
reveals that sacrifice, sacrificer, and the god for whom the oblation occurs are
all the same person. No one actually dies, and the immolation is ultimately voluntary.
In the Rigveda, sacrifice links mortals and immortals conferring various benefits:
Wisely I have partaken of the sweet food that stirs good thoughts, best banisher
of care, to which all gods and mortals … come together. (8.48.2; MacDonell 155)
Like fire kindled by friction inflame me; illumine us; make us wealthier. For then,
in thy intoxication, O Soma, I regard myself as rich. Enter [into us] for prosperity.
(8.48.6; MacDonell 158).
The sacrifice is less an idea for philosophical extrapolation than a custom that the poet must explain in whatever ways will best induce “enthusiam”—both emotional contact and being entered by a god, if the substance consumed is personified as a divine being.
Enthusiasm in the latter sense also characterizes the Christian mass, while the psalms at least express emotional commitment: “… I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD” (27.6). “I will offer unto thee burnt sacrifices of fatlings, with the incense of rams; I will offer bullocks with goats” (66.15). “I will go into thy house with burnt offerings: I will pay thee my vows” (66.13). “I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD. I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people,” (116.17–18). “Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice” (50.5). “Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the most High” (50:14).
Sacrifice follows or forms some textual compact between mortal and immortal: the original patriarchal covenants confirmed by offerings, the private vows requiring oblations, the scripturally required scapegoating and thankofferings. According to Harvey H. Guthrie, Jr. “… the same word (todah) denotes ‘thanksgiving,’ ‘thankoffering” or “thanksgiving sacrifice,” and ‘song of thanksgiving.’ Three separate, if related, thoughts were for the Israelite one” (Guthrie 149-50). And J. R. Porter contends, “there are a number of psalms where a response to an enquiry seems to be uttered by a priest or a prophet as the result of some distinct sign provided by the accompanying sacrifice” (Porter 207). Othmar Keel argues, “In the psalms, praise repeatedly takes the place of sacrifice (Pss 40:6–10; 50; 51:15–17; 69…30–31). Consequently, in Ps 148:9–12, the earth, trees, animals, rulers, and common men do not appear in an offertory procession, but are summoned instead to praise” (Keel 59).
The most pervasive way the psalms rouse sacrificelike emotions, however, involves a convention best seen in Judges 3.15–25. A sustained metaphor likens the killing of Eglon, the obese king of Moab to the sacrifice of a fatted calf (Alter 1981, 39). Indeed, a widespread practice in ancient times was the dedication of enemies’ deaths to one’s gods. The psalms also connect war and sacrifice, though in a complex manner, e.g., 27.2, 6:
| When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came
upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell. …. And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the LORD. |
The phrases “to eat up my flesh” employ the same Hebrew words for “eat” and “flesh”
as in God’s reference to sacrifice in Psalm 50.13: “Will I eat the flesh of bulls
…?” Since Psalm 27 does not say the enemies turn to cannibalism because of starvation,
their literal or metaphoric devouring him may allude to devotees sharing a victim
sacrificed to some god. With a customary biblical irony, those who might have offered
him to their deities fall at the hand of his.
The destruction of enemies is a great leitmotif of the Psalms. One word for foes, ’ôyêb occurs seventy–four times, and there are multiple instances of such synonymns as ‘âr, tsârar, tsar, andshârar. One paraphrasis (“those who hate [sânê] me”) recurs eighteen times. As in Psalm 27, these opponents are implicitly or explicitly equated with the wicked, i.e., the adversaries of God. Their divinely accomplished annihilation occasions rejoicing, as in 137.9: “Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”
The highly emotional quality of the psalms may require an undertone
of violence, a perennial source of excitement. Of course, not all violence is sacrificial,
but the very idea of holy war conflates violence and the sacred. Certainly to preserve
his people from foreign influences but also perhaps as a kind of sacrifice, God repeatedly
commanded his armies to destroy all property and persons that they encountered. Also
admittedly, not all sacrifices are violent, yet the association of the two in the
Tanakh is far from infrequent. Even the commonest Hebrew word for sacrifice “z–a
ba.h ” more precisely designates “slaughter”; “mizb–e a.h” or altar etymologically
signifies a place of slaughter (van den Born 2083. Not only animal sacrifices but
other kinds as well might be apotropaic use of chaos against itself. For instance,
“Butter [employed in the Vedic sacrifice] is symbolic of primeval chaotic matter,
the seed of the creator, and the sacrifical oblation. The creator churns chaos” (O’Flaherty
37.n). And as we have noted, sacrifice was an integral part of worship. God commands
twice in Exodus, “… none shall appear before me empty[–handed]” (Exodus 23.15 and
24.20).
Rûwa‘ and Rûwach
As part of the general union of order and disorder, each psalm provides some
“chaotic” variation of the theurgic pattern: empowering, a sanctified place for the
encounter, coming into the presence of the divine, and, finally, a contact that rends
quotidian life like the blow of a sacrificial knife. One of the psalms’ most common
self–descriptions (e.g., 47.1, 69.13, 66.1, 81.1, 95.1, 95.2, 98.4, 98.6, 100.1)
is rûwa‘ : “to mar (espec. by breaking); fig. to split
the ears (with sound), i.e., shout (for alarm or joy):—blow an alarm, cry
(alarm, aloud, out), destroy, make a joyful noise, smart, shout (for joy), sound
an alarm, triumph” (Strong 107). In the Bible as a whole, the word’s most famous
use is in Joshua 6, where it five times describes the sound that topples Jericho.
Like mantric, empowering sound in general, it is a resonance that transcends earthly
meaning, a force so great as to be potentially destructive.
In Psalms, the King James Version most often translates it as a “joyous noise.”
Given an early meaning as a din or alarm, “noise” was almost an
inevitable translation of rûwa‘ , especially since “noise” also could
denote an agreeable sound—a sense now exceedingly rare. Nonetheless, “chaos” theory
has begun to re–employ “noise” with a positive connotation. In Genèse,
for instance, Michel Serres celebrates the fall of Babel for introducing “beautiful
noise” (la belle noiseuse, more literally, noisy beauty) (203). Based on “chaos”
theory, he notes that noise equals those sounds that resist reduction to simplistic
stereotypes. With deliberate paradox, noise stands to him for the irreducible complexity
of great art. Recalling this approbation of roughness, we can once again appreciate
the pronoun shifts and mysterious disjunctions of Psalms. If their self–description
as rûwa‘ is a reliable clue, they may also have been performed at a
volume reminiscent of a rock concert or a war chant.
With an undertone of violence and iconoclasm, the ear–splitting rûwa‘
of psalms evokes the divine Mysterium Tremendum.
|
Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about him. (Psalm 50.3) |
The meteorological turbulence arises from his language: “Fire, and hail; snow, and
vapour; stormy wind [rûwach] fulfilling his word” (Psalms 148.4); “he
commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind [rûwach], which lifteth up the
waves thereof” (Psalms 107.25). Meaning simultaneously wind, breath, and spirit,
rûwach is the literal storm that accompanies Him and the breath of the
word creating it and an expression of His divine spirit. Comparably, the Rigvedasings:
“Breath of the gods, germ of the world, this god [V–a ta, wind] fares according to
his will. His sounds are heard.… To that V–a ta we would pay worship with oblation”
(10.168.4, MacDonell 218–219.) The Rigveda describes the Maruts (storm gods) as “singers”:
“Though primarily representing the sound of the winds, their song is also conceived
as a hymn of praise. Thus they come to be compared with priests.…” (MacDonell 22).
And wind transports the Divine, as in Psalms 18.10 and 104.3, where YHWH arrives
upon the “wings of the wind.”
Perhaps the most fit setting for YHWH’s epiphany is the wilderness:
“The voice of the LORD shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh” ( Psalms 29.8). He claims
the “wild beasts” as his own (Psalms 50.11). His closest contact with his people
was in the desert of Sinai: “O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when
thou didst march through the wilderness” (Psalms 68.7, see also 78.15, 78.17, 78.19,
78.40, 78.52, 98.5, 106.9, 106.14, 106.26, 107.4, 136.16). Indeed, he overturns the
established order, deconstructing boundaries between wild deserts and well–watered
areas that can be cultivated: “He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and watersprings
into dry ground.… He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and dry ground
into watersprings” (Psalms 107.33, 35).
Abrasiveness may also characterize the worshippers, as when a hymn acts as a kind
of alarm clock: “Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? arise, cast [us] not off for ever.”
(Psalms 44:23).
Implicit in the need to call out is some sense of separation from the addressee. This alienation may become intense. Psalm 74.9, for instance, complains, “No signs appear for us; there is no longer any prophet; no one among us knows for how long.” One part of the Rigvedaeven requires those performing it to chant: “Those who recite the hymns are glutted with the pleasures of life; they wander about wrapped up in mist and stammering nonsense” (10.82.7; O’Flaherty 36). Garbled and/or lacking interpreters, the scriptures may become meaningless. “Yaska, the author of the Nirukta, the oldest extant commentary (c. 500 B.C.) on about 600 detached stanzas of the RV.… quotes one of his predecessors, Kautsa, as saying that the Vedic hymns were obscure, unmeaning and mutually contradictory” (MacDonell xxix ). Is it not appalling that the oldest interpretation of them is a break in communication with the Divine? Or is rupture of understanding the occasion of interpretation? Scriptures generally presume that salvation comes through language. Thus, one of the most terrible curses of the psalms is “O LORD, confound their speech, confuse it!” (55.10). The Rigveda twice expresses fear of a madness that will anihilate the power of speech (7.104, 10.87; Keith 237). Yet as a dialogue with the Divine, hymns constantly risk misunderstanding and strained relationships—the “noise” that never completely disappears in communication.
Even those moments in hymns that imply a divine epiphany do not
eradicate alienation, for, in the presence of the divine, humans are uneasy:
Bending the knee, sitting down to the south do ye all greet favourably this sacrifice;
injure us not, O Fathers, by reason of any sin that we may have committed against
you through human frailty (10.15.6, McDonell 180).
Confessions of sinfulness and pleas for forgiveness permeate the Psalms to an even
greater degree.
We should not presume that hymns even take the meliflousness of
their own poetry for granted. Consider, for instance, Rigveda7.103, a sustained comparison
of its own hymns to the croaking of frogs: “One [of the frogs] lows like a cow, one
bleats like a goat” (MacDonell 144). Their voices are inspired by a god (Parjanya)
and part of the natural cycle. That is sufficient to make the hymns sacred. In the
ancient world, there may well have been a more “chaotic” aesthetic than we expect.
Certainly, before spreading literacy taught order, decorum, and correctness, the
ambience could well have been a joy in the thundrous rûwa and sublimely
tempestuous rûwach—an experience that never became tame however many
times the hymn was recited.
Despite this turbulence, hymns, once they entered the canon, came to be interpreted
by religious communities as symbols of pious hopes. According to the Talmud, “He
who sees the Book of Psalms in a dream may hope for piety” (Berakhot 57b;
Sarna 1993, 34). Because of the prestige of Psalms, Philo and Luke (24.44) term the
Bible “the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms,” disregarding the variety
of genres in the third section of the book (the Writings) (Sarna 36). Naturally,
maintaining a particular way of reading requires a strict control of how the texts
are interpreted and by whom. Just as Judaism traditionally forbad Talmudic study
by women, so the Mahabharata proclaims, “For a woman to study the Vedas indicates
confusion in the realm” (Riencourt 178). As we have seen, however, learning by experiencing
confusion is an integral part of Psalms and the Rigveda.
Continue to Ecclesiastes (1)
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