Back to Square One

“I have become mute, I do not open my mouth, because it is You who have done it.”  Psalm 39:9  NASB

Become mute– Where have we heard this before? Oh, yes, verse 2.  The same verb, the same tense.  Bound.  Tied up.  But between verse 2 and verse 9, David has really said quite a bit.  He has revealed his sense of finitude, his awareness that he is just like all other men, the press of life transitory nature, the fact that God alone is hope, and his own culpability in the crimes against him. He has revealed himself as fragile, dependent and insignificant, and in doing so, he has confronted everyone in the audience with the same dilemmas.  Having said what needed to be said, he returns to silence—at least to poetic silence, that place were the poet/narrator continues to explore the feelings of the subject as if removed from the actual experience.

But this time the verse is a little different, and the difference is critically important. In verse 2, David wrote that his silence even restrained him from doing good.  Now he focuses on a different element.  at-tah a-sita, “it is You who have done it.”  David claims that God Himself is the cause of this silence.  How is this possible?

Let’s concentrate of the feelings of powerlessness that possess us when we consider the futility of our lives.  If God is truly God of all, if He is the Master of everything, the Creator, Sustainer and Finisher, isn’t He also responsible?  Yes, your theology might give you rational gymnastics to avoid this conclusion, but do your feelings lie?  If your birth, the place of your birth, the age of your birth, the ethnicity, culture and social circumstances of your being born are not your choice, then who decided all this?  If your death, the place, time, event, impact and influence of your passing are, once again, not your choice, then who is responsible?  Should we not conclude that the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God is actually culpable for all that proceeds from His decisions? Isn’t that how we feel when we are confronted by the transience of birth and death?

David writes that he feels bound, constrained by some force preventing him from issuing the summary judgment over the wicked.  He demonstrates that we, all of us, are just as bound for we too are both innocent and wicked, just as this Hebrew king is.  And if we are held responsible for living in the tension between birth and death, isn’t God also in the dock with us?  Didn’t He engineer our lives from before the beginning?

Theologically David might be wrong.  Perhaps there’s some clever argument that exempts God from responsibility for His actions.  But clever arguments aren’t on trial here.  What is on trial is the overwhelming despondency of recognizing our true state.  Now how will the audience respond?   Is Maté’s remark true for God too:  “Blame becomes a meaningless concept if one understands how family history stretches back through the generations.”[1]  Does family history stretch back to Genesis 1:1?

Topical Index:  blame, despondency, at-tah a-sita, “it is You who have done it,” Psalm 39:9

[1]Gabor Maté, When the Body Says NO, p. 216.