In Remembrance

For You—whom You struck they pursued, and they recounted the pain of Your victims.  Psalm 69:27 [Hebrew Bible]  Robert Alter

Recounted – Think about the implications here.  First, the “victims” are God’s victims.  God is the One who caused the initial pain.  And God is the One with whom you must deal.  The enemies are mere by-standers to this divine drama. However (secondly), they have decided to take on God’s role as prosecutor, judge, and jury.  They have weaponized your past.  The Hebrew verb, sāpar, suggests that it isn’t just tales.  It’s been written.  It’s been made into a permanent record.  It can’t be erased.

We get the idea, but at this point a small technical textual issue arrives.  Are they simply reporting those past sins, or are they doing something a bit more wicked?  A consonant makes the difference.  “The Septuagint, by altering one consonant in the Hebrew verb, reads ‘they added to.’”[1]  There are many arguments that the Septuagint is the earlier, and perhaps more accurate, rendition of the Hebrew text.  It is at least 1000 years earlier than the MT, so perhaps it wasn’t the Septuagint that altered the consonant but the other way around.  And if that’s the case, then this phrase is more than the condemnation of parading past sins before the public.  It is also an expression of the additional pain that such actions cause.  It’s enough to have to deal with God’s confrontation and the subsequent remorse, humiliation, and castigation.  But now, as a result of this unwarranted display of reputation destruction, the entire process is intensified.  You have to live through it all over again.  You know you’ve been forgiven, but it doesn’t feel like it because everything you did is now on “live TV.”  What happened twenty years ago is today’s current news.

David’s complaint is as real as today’s destructive politics.  No one seems to care about the current issues.  What they chase are the mistakes of past lives.  What they want is complete character assassination.  What they seek is political murder.  This pursuit of extermination has happened over and over in human history.  Consider the treatment of the Jews as a people by Western powers.  Was there any period when being Jewish didn’t mean being suspected of hideous acts?  Was there any time when the political/media machine wasn’t dragging every possible damaging image before the public?  Apparently humanity loves victimizing others, and it really doesn’t matter if the “other” is an ethnic, racial, religious, or economic difference.  Men love gossip and in a culture where gossip is encouraged and accepted, no man is safe.  Douglas Murray’s comment about the power of internet social media should scare us all.  The tsunami of worldwide personal malice is upon us.  Anything can become a permanent comment on your life.

What is David’s solution, if any?  Do we just bear it?  Is it just part of a collapsing empire?  Do we accept it as God’s dealing with the nation?  How do we respond to this human evil?

Topical Index: sāpar, recount, write, victimize, internet, Douglas Murray, Psalm 69:27

[1] Robert Alter, the Hebrew Bible, Volume 3  Writings, p. 169, fn. 27.