Measured Response

Arise, Lord; save me, my God!  For You ^[d]have struck all my enemies on the ^[e]cheek; You ^[f]have shattered the teeth of the wicked.  Psalm 3:7  NASB

Have struck – If you wanted to rid yourself of all your enemies, would you be satisfied to simply strike them each on the cheek?  I don’t think so.  You and I would probably want to eradicate them.  The nuclear option.  Vaporize.  What good is simply giving them a slap?  They will still be there to come against us again.

That’s how we might think in the modern age but the verb nākâ wasn’t created for contemporary conflicts.  Note Wilson’s comment:

The root is used about five hundred times. But one must not hastily infer that since nākâ is such a common otroot, society as a whole was saturated with war and violence. That warfare and bloodshed did occur, sometimes with great frequency, must not be denied. Yet, the wide variety of ways in which the verb “to smite” is used throughout the ot is fitting evidence to warrant a somewhat different conclusion.

The verb nākâ is often used for “hitting” or “smiting” an object with one, non-fatal strike. . . In a large number of passages nākâ means to “slay,” “kill,” “strike dead” (cf. av “slay,” some ninety times). It is used of murdering another man (Ex 21:12; Josh 10:26 et al.) whether intentionally (II Sam 2:23) or unintentionally (Deut 19:4); of a man killing a lion (I Sam 17:35); of a lion killing a man (I Kgs 20:36); and of a worm attacking a plant so as to kill it (Jon 4:7). Another large group of passages uses the root in the sense of “attack” and/or “destroy,” the object being a group of people (Gen 32:8 [H 9], 11 [H 12]; Josh 8:21), a house (Amos 3:15), and a city (Josh 10:28 et al.).^[1]

Since the semantic range of this verb includes killing, could the psalmist use it as a disguised reference to exterminating the enemy?  That’s possible, but if that were the case, why include lĕḥî (cheek)?  It appears that extermination is not what the author has in mind.  To strike someone on the cheek was a sign of shame, and as you recall, the social world of ancient Israel was very much about public reputation.  A slap on the cheek meant submission and humiliation.  An enemy did not always need to be destroyed.  He only needed to be publicly disgraced.  Once that occurred, he no longer had power.  Removing the enemy’s standing was enough to defeat him.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here.  We live in a world where removal of enemies often means terminating them.  Death is our ultimate objective.  But notice the difference when public reputation is the currency of exchange.  Shame is the weapon of choice.  Why?  Because it removes the threat without destroying God’s creation of the person.  It offers the possibility of redemption.  It attaches punishment to communal position, not to physical existence.  There are, of course, times when execution is needed, but for the psalmist, in this verse, striking the cheek solves the problem and honors God’s handiwork at the same time.

Topical Index: strike, nākâ, cheek, lĕḥî, shame, reputation, Psalm 3:7

^[1] Wilson, M. R. (1999). 1364 נָכָה. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 578). Moody Press.