Get Mad!
Burning indignation has seized me because of the wicked, who abandon Your Law. Psalm 119:53 NASB
Burning indignation – Once more the poet finds a rarely used word to arrest our attention. zalʿāpâ shows up only here and in Lamentations 5:10. It’s about heat, lots of heat. In Lamentations it describes the results of famine. Here it describes rage. Want to get mad about the state of the world? You’re in good company.
Something has grabbed me (that’s the verb for “seized”) and won’t let go. What is it that claws at me, holds me in a vise grip, causes me great pain and sorrow? The poet provides us with one word, and an explanation. rešāim—the wicked. “In contrast to ṣdq it denotes the negative behavior of evil thoughts, words and deeds, a behavior not only contrary to God’s character, but also hostile to the community and which at the same time betrays the inner disharmony and unrest of a man.”[1] The wicked—those who not only defy God but also destroy community. Those whose aim is exactly the opposite of the Torah, what in Greek we label as lawlessness. That they exist at all, grasping for power and control, undermining God’s purposes doesn’t just bother me. It makes me furious!
How can this happen? Why is it tolerated? “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”[2]
Mill is right. What makes evil so evil is that good men and women stand silent. In other circumstances we would call this enabling behavior. Co-dependent immorality. It takes a long time for humanity to wake up. God sends the prophets. They are rejected. God sends catastrophes. They are ignored. And finally judgment. But by then it’s too late. And all this time we had the instruction manual. We just refused to act upon it.
Glenn Back asked me if I was optimistic or pessimistic about the state of the world today. I answered him with the words of Abraham Heschel. “I choose to be an optimist despite my better judgment.” Of course, Heschel also said, “The pessimists went into exile; the optimists went into the ovens.”
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.[3]
Topical Index: zalʿāpâ, rage, wicked, evil, Psalm 119:53
[1] Livingston, G. H. (1999). 2222 רָשַׁע. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 863). Moody Press.
[2] John Stuart Mill, inaugural address, 1867
“Rage,”… indeed… “rage against the dying of the light!”
But make no mistake of self-deception, so as to assume some manner of self-reflected moral high ground that is in itself a lying darkness of hatred. No, that ground of righteous rage is taken only in prostration… by one who is bondslave… at the feet of the Lamb… by one who is found singing:
“Great and marvelous are your works,
Lord God All-Powerful;
righteous and true are your ways,
King of the ages!
Who would never fear, Lord,
and glorify your name?
For only you are holy,
because all the nations will come
and worship before you,
because your righteous deeds have been revealed.” (Rev. 15:3-4)