The Difficult Verses (2)

You have removed all the wicked of the earth like impurities; therefore I love Your testimonies.  Psalm 119:119  NASB

All the wicked – Well, I certainly wish this were true.  Perhaps some day it will be, but right now this statement seems as fictitious as you could imagine.  I can’t think of any period in any culture in human history where all the wicked were removed from the earth.  In fact, the statement as it stands isn’t even true during the time of the psalmist.  It seems this is more like a dream than reality.  Maybe it should be translated, “You will remove all the wicked from the earth.”  At least that would be palatable.

Notice the Chabad translation: “As dross, You cut off all the wicked of the earth; therefore I love Your testimonies.”  The Chabad translation keeps the Hebrew syntax which begins with sîgim, the dross in silver smelting.  Then we come to the verb šābat.  Do you recognize the word?  With the doubled middle radical, it’s sabbath.  In that usage, and only that usage, it means Sabbath, the day of rest.  Otherwise, the verb means “to sever, to put to an end.”  Here it is Hif’il perfect, that is, something done to someone or something as a completed action.  How we wish this were true, but it isn’t.  All the wicked have not been removed as dross.  So what can the poet possibly have in mind?  The version in Sefaria resolves the problem by translating the text as present, that is, a statement about the way God handles the wicked when He acts, not a statement about what He has already done.  It reads, “You do away with the wicked as if they were dross . . .”  That’s tolerable.  It’s descriptive.  When God acts against the wicked, He treats them like the impurities that rise from silver smelting.  But the translation doesn’t say that he has already done this in the past as a kind of example for what He will do in the future.  Are we justified in changing the verb tense so that it fits human history?  Are we to conclude that the psalmist was just writing hopeful dreams?  Older Christian commentaries offer little help, most treating the verse in the same way as Sefaria.

We could read the verse as proleptic, that is, a statement of anticipated divine action, much like the Tanakh’s claims about the Messiah.  God may have had this in mind all along, and so from His perspective it is a finished action, but it doesn’t appear that way for us.  With this in mind, Ibn Ezra adds “of the past” to the verse.  I’m not sure it’s justified.  The Radak takes a different approach.  He suggests that the focus of the verse isn’t about how this has or hasn’t been done.  Rather it is a warning that exhorts me to be sure I am not impure.  God acts in ways that reveal the “dross” of the wicked and He removes them, so I want to be sure I am not like them.  The verse helps me realize that absolute necessity of protecting myself from this fate.  Therefore, I attach myself to His testimonies.  But this ignores the fact that the second verb, ʾāhēb, is also a completed action.  It should be “I loved Your testimonies.”  Does that indicate a continuing alignment or something that was finished some time ago?  It seems that no matter which path we take to reconcile these thoughts, we come up wanting.  Maybe that’s just part of the messy Hebrew game.  At least we have something to think about.

Topical Index: sîgim, dross, šābat, cease, remove, wicked, testimonies, Psalm 119:119