Down and Out

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

Whom You struck – When did God strike you?  The verb is nākâ, used some 500 times in the Tanakh, often for physical injury or even death.  But that’s not the way it’s used here.  “Of particular theological importance is the fact that God is often the subject of nākâ. It is God who ‘smites’ people with blindness (II Kgs 6:18) and plagues (Deut 28:22, 27–28, 35). He brings judgment upon man for his sin (I Kgs 14:15; Lev 26:24), even death (II Sam 6:7).”^[1]  David employs the verb to describe those times when God dished out punishment for his sins.  He remembers them all too well.  He paid—dearly.  He knows it.  God knows it.  And some others know it.  The debt is remitted.

But his enemies have no intention of letting it go, even if God has been satisfied.  David lives in the 10^th Century B.C.E. social media age.  Since reputation and shame were public coinage, his foes know they can smear him with whatever they find in his past.  The strategy hasn’t changed.  In fact, we now live in a world where biblical forgiveness is impossible.

“As the work of Jon Ronson and others on ‘public shaming’ has shown, the internet has allowed new forms of activism and bullying in the guise of social activism to become the tenor of the time.  The urge to find people who can be accused of ‘wrong-thinking’ works because it is part of their business model.”[2]

“Here lies an additional quagmire.  There is little enough recourse when old school journalism tramples across someone’s life.  But on the internet there is not even a regulatory body to appeal to if your life has been raked over in this way.  Thousands—perhaps millions—of people have been involved, and there is no mechanism to reach all of them and get them to admit that they raked over your life in an unfair manner.”[3]

“Part of forgiveness is the ability to forget.  And yet the internet will never forget.  Everything can always be summoned up afresh by new people.”[4]

Robert Alter comments on this verse: “The idea is close to the proverbial kicking someone who is lying down.”[5]  Your enemy seems victorious.    You’re down for the count, but as you lay there on the floor, he takes relish in kicking you over and over.  His intention is not to win.  It is to kill, to destroy, to make you suffer as much as possible.  Even God doesn’t act this way.

Perhaps you can empathize.  You’ve acknowledged your sins.  God has dealt with you.  You’ve accepted His decision and turned your life around.  But there are others who won’t let it go.  They use your past as a weapon against you, hammering your reputation despite the changes you’ve made.  They are the mini-gods of vengeance, caring nothing about forgiveness.  How do you deal with them?

Topical Index: strike, nākâ, forgiveness, reputation, vengeance, Psalm 69:27

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

[2] Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (Bloomsbury, 2019), p. 108.

[3] Ibid., p. 176.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Volume 3 Writings, p. 168, fn. 27.