Jail Time

Let those who rejoice at my calamity be ashamed and brought to confusion; let those who magnify themselves against me be clothed with shame and dishonor. Psalm 35:26

Brought To Confusion – What is the worst kind of punishment imaginable in the Hebrew worldview?  We have to shift our thinking considerably to recognize it.  In our world, the worst kind of punishment is often the loss of freedom.  We lock up criminals, removing their personal freedoms because we believe that incarceration is the opposite of what men value most.  This action reveals that our true paradigm is based in the Greek idea of freedom, that is, unrestricted liberty.  But this is not the way the Bible looks at the world.  In the biblical account, the very worst thing that can happen to me is to be publicly shamed, to be humiliated, to lose the respect of my community, to be dishonored.  A man who loses his reputation is a man who has been punished to his very core.

The biblical ethos of community is at the heart of this kind of punishment.  If my life is saturated with involvement in community, if I exist only as an active participant in the life of the community, then removing me from the community is the worst thing that can happen to me.  To be publicly shamed is to become a non-person, an outsider, a moral leper.  Our contemporary fixation on individuality prevents us from seeing the enormous impact of such punishment, but this tragic occurrence wasn’t lost on the children of Israel.  In their view, no man is an island.  We are all one.  To be put outside was often the equivalent of death.

The 35^th psalm is a psalm of the plaintiff cry of a man who is wrongfully accused and unjustly abused.  In this psalm, the victim cries out to God for justice – and reprisals against his enemies.  We might be shocked that the victim implores God to bring havoc on these wicked men.  We might wonder what happened to grace when we read his words asking God to measure out punishment.  The psalmist merely reveals what our hearts often conceal.  We do feel this way and the psalmist gives us permission to voice our anger.  We do want justice.  We do want our enemies to fail, to be punished, to fall victim to their own traps.  But we must notice that David’s psalm does not demand God’s revenge.  David asks that his enemies be publicly exposed for who they really are and that public humiliation become the punishment they justly deserve.  David asks God to strip them of their false reputation.

“It is much more difficult to regain reputation than it is to lose it,” says the old Communist soldier in the movie The International.  He understood the power of community.  Our individualism often prevents us from recognizing that there are forces much stronger than incarceration for dealing with moral failures.  Once the Church knew this.  Excommunication was a deadly blow.  Today we have moved so far from the strength of community that even our system of justice no longer recognizes who we are together.  But David didn’t forget and neither does God.  To be put “outside” is a terrible thing to endure.  Perhaps David’s cry will help us realize just how much we belong to each other.  We are in this together.  Our moral and psychological anchors chain us to the souls of our brothers and sisters.  We need each other – for encouraging and for deterring.  Reputation matters more than we think.  It has heavenly connections.

Topical Index:  brought to confusion, yachperoo yachdav, reputation, shame, Psalm 35:26