The Return
For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mixed my drink with weeping. Psalm 102:9 NASB
Ashes – “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Ominous words from Genesis 3:19. We don’t like to think about them, but we know they’re true for every one of us. The psalmist uses a little word play to remind us that he’s feeling pretty much dead. His word is ʾēper, very close to the Genesis choice, ʾāpār (dust). I don’t think this is an accident. I have eaten ashes because, in the end, I am ashes.
Death is not a pleasant topic. As Elisabeth Kübler-Ross clarified in her now-classic book (On Death and Dying) most of us avoid the subject whenever we can, even when it’s happening to us. The psalmist doesn’t. He looks death squarely in the face, which is quite remarkable since in his day there was no substantial idea of an afterlife of reward. This life is what there is now. At this moment, this life looks a lot like returning to the dust. The psalmist has still not embraced Heschel’s remarks from yesterday’s investigation:
“To be able to pray, one must alter the course of consciousness, one must go through moments of disengagement, one must enter another course of thinking, one must face in a different direction. The course one must take in order to arrive at prayer is on the way to God. For the focus of prayer is not the self. . . Feeling becomes prayer in the moment in which one forgets oneself and becomes aware of God.”[1]
“In prayer we shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender. God is the center toward which all forces tend. He is the source, and we are the flowing of His force, the ebb and flow of His tides.”[2]
Importantly, the Hebrew word the psalmist chooses to express this pathos (ʾēper) is typically about worthlessness. “It denotes that which is the result of burning. It is used figuratively for what is without value (Isa 44:20) or loathsome (Job 30:19). It signifies misery (Ps 102:9 [H 10]), shame (II Sam 13:19), humility before God (Gen 18:27; Job 42:6), and repentance and contrition (Dan 9:3; Mt 11:21).”[3] Perhaps that’s how we feel when we reach this point in the journey. If God has abdicated, what point is there in living? If my misery is unabating, why continue to struggle? Ashes and dust are signs of mourning, of funerals. You will remember the biblical words “sackcloth and ashes.” “The mourner or penitent threw the ashes toward heaven, so that they fell back on himself, especially on his head, a custom attested among non-Hebrew also. In deep distress mourners sat on heaps of ashes (Job 2:8). Ashes on the head were also a token of humiliation and disgrace (II Sam 13:19).”[4]
But something is changing. This psalm starts with an admission of helplessness. Then it moves through a plea for intervention to a lengthy description of the psalmist’s current emotional and physical state. Basically, this is poetic drama, notifying God that things are not as they are supposed to be. And God is the only one Who can fix it. We have almost reached the bottom of the well, now that death turns us to ash, the end of the ego is in sight. Heschel hovers on the horizon. Soon. Soon we will have to change directions—and reverse ego.
Perhaps it’s not possible to “shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender” until we stand at the brink of our own grave. Perhaps denial is just too easy for us. Perhaps blame is the natural reaction to tragedy. It takes courage to admit that ashes are essential for growth, that pain is proleptic. It takes a long time to discover “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
Topical Index: ashes, ʾēper, ʾāpār, dust, death, Psalm 102:9
[1] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets: Two Volumes in One (Hendrickson Publishers, 1962), Vol. 2, p. 221.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Feinberg, C. L. (1999). 150 אפר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 66). Chicago: Moody Press.
[4] Ibid.
