Psalms Through the Centuries, Volume 3. Susan Gillingham
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28). At the top left we see the wicked, reading from scrolls (verse 9), and in the bottom right is another group trampling on the poor and a different group gorging at a table full of food. The hand of God comes out from heaven to grasp the psalmist’s right hand (verse 23) and above a group of angels is another wingless angel holding a whip (suggested by the Latin ‘flagellabuntur’ and ‘flagellatus’ of verses 5 and 14), who is driving a large number of the wicked into a fiery pit of Hell (verse 27).20 The *Stuttgart Psalter (fol. 85r) depicts the psalmist sitting with a mare and colt (like Utrecht, following verse 22), thus illustrating in a single image a more Christian reading of the psalm, where Jesus enters Jerusalem on these animals in Matt. 21:2–7.21
A more overtly Christian reading is found in the twelfth-century *St Albans Psalter. In the illuminated initial ‘Q’ (for Quam bonus Israel in verse 1), the psalmist, stripped to the waist, turns, terrified, to look up at God in heaven: this also illustrates the hope for survival beyond death in verses 22–26, verses which were used by the Prioress, Christina of Markyate (to whom the Psalter was dedicated), after she had given her final vows.22
Turning to examples from poetry, an intriguingly personal use is by George *Herbert in The Temple. ‘The Collar’ follows the same theme on the unjust success of the wicked in the first part of Psalm 73, although Herbert’s start of the poem (lines 3–9) is even more angry and intense than the psalm itself.23 This is partly due to the fact that Herbert’s speaker is not outside the sanctuary (i.e. unable to find an answer until he goes to it, as in Ps. 73:17) but actually within it, ‘at board’ (i.e. at the altar) all along: ‘He struck the board, and cry’d, No More/I will abroad!’ (lines 1–2). Although the speaker is tempted to affirm and share in the prosperity of the wicked, there is eventually some epiphany and resolution:
But as I rav’d and grew more fierce and wilde
at every word
Me thoughts I heard one calling, ‘Child!’
And I reply’d, ‘My Lord.’
(Lines 33–36.)24
Another personal literary appropriation of this psalm, also reflecting on the problem of injustice and the plight of the righteous and the wicked, with an explicit Christian focus, is found in John *Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: as Christian sinks in the mire, despairing that he will die for his sins, Hopeful responds by citing Ps. 73:4–5: ‘the troubles and distresses that you go through in these waters are no sign that God hath forsaken you; but are sent to try you…’25
The last part of the psalm, with its references to the life beyond, has provided the most explicit Christian readings. This is found especially in both metrical psalmody and hymnody. Charles *Wesley, for example, on his death bed, reflecting on verse 25 (‘Whom have I in heaven but you?…) dictated the following hymn to his wife: ‘Jesus, my only hope thou art, Strength of failing flesh and heart: O could I catch a smile from thee, and drop into eternity!’26
The ending of the psalm, with its suggestion of the afterlife, has inspired several musical arrangements. Heinrich *Schütz arranged verses 25–26, using a double chorus, as the second of three motets (1636): this was commissioned by Prince Heinrich von Reuss, to be used at his funeral.27 Dietrich *Buxtehude (c. 1668) composed ‘Herr, wenn Ich nur Dich habe’ on the same verses, as a plaintive solo with strings. The Hungarian composer Franz Liszt’s ‘Mihi autem adhaerre’ (1868) is another example, composed for the Mass of St. Francis, based on verse 28 of this psalm.
The other prominent theme of the psalm, namely its vision of the wicked oppressors who are finally destroyed by God, is found in Lauryn *Hill’s track ‘The Final Hour’, on her 1998 solo album ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’:
You can get the money
You can get the power
But keep your eyes on the Final Hour…
And I remain calm reading the 73rd Psalm
Cause with all that’s going on I got the world in my palm.28
Much of this reception has been specifically Christian; there is little use of the psalm in Jewish music or art, and not much evidence of it in Jewish or Christian liturgy, despite its twin themes of injustice and life beyond death. But since the Second World War there have been several post-Holocaust reflections on the psalm, of which Martin *Buber’s ‘Why do the Wicked Prosper?’ is particularly pertinent. Given that the wicked clearly do not ‘fall’ in this life, as the psalmist hoped, Buber considers that the problem for the suppliant and for those using the psalm today is as much psychological as theological: he protests that God is not absent, even if we perceive him to be so. Buber’s interpretation of the whole of Psalm 73 has influenced several later post-war Jewish writings.29 From this the psalm might also be applied to the history of white privilege and black oppression, where verse 17 (‘until I went to the sanctuary of God’) has a real force.30
It is nevertheless surprising to find that a psalm with such a clear theme of justice and injustice, with so many universal implications, has not produced a richer history of reception.
Psalm 74: A Communal Lament about Ongoing Exile
Psalm 74, like Psalm 78, is entitled ‘A Maskil of Asaph’ and each has an instructional element. Each looks back to the past as a means of facing the future, but whilst Psalm 78 is more positive, Psalm 74 does this by way of lament, using mythical traditions, with Babylonian and Canaanite associations, concerning God’s battle with the chaotic sea (the ‘Chaoskampf’). It falls into three strophes: verses 1–11, beginning and ending with the question ‘why?’; verses 12–17, which is a hymn on God’s kingship; and verses 18–23, which form a series of imperatives, echoing verses 2–3. We have already noted its links with its neighbouring psalms, pointing to the probability that its inclusion here was deliberate.31
Although the setting is most probably the Babylonian attack in 587/6 BCE, later Jewish reception applies the theme of grief for a city torn apart with strife to new situations. One obvious period is when Antiochus Epiphanes took over the Temple, burnt swine’s flesh on the altar and erected a statue to Zeus in c. 167 BCE. The *Targum’s addition to verse 22 (‘remember the dishonour of your people by the foolish king all the day’) seems to be an implicit reference to this Gentile king.32 Another period of strife was the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE: later Jewish commentators on this psalm refer explicitly to Titus’ acts of desecration (lying with a prostitute on a Torah scroll, slashing the curtains of the Temple) as if the psalm were a prophetic witness to this period.33 Other Jewish comments on verse 1 (‘O God, why do you cast us off forever?’) interpret the psalm in the light of the experience of ongoing exile, still under ‘Rome’, but now symbolised, even after Alaric’s sack of Rome in 410 CE, as all hostile Gentile powers: ‘The first (Babylonian) exile was limited to seventy years; but this second (Roman) Exile still continues, with no end in sight.’34
The Christian reception also has examples of using the psalm as part of an expression of grief over a lost homeland. Such a literal appropriation is found, for example, in the Huguenots’ use of it, when in the seventeenth-century, under Louis XIV, they were driven out of their homes, and entered Geneva singing this psalm.35 In the twentieth-century we read of a comment pencilled by *Bonhoeffer in his Bible against verses 8–11 (‘…they burned all the meeting places of God in the land…’). He simply wrote 9.11.38—the date of Kristallnacht and the start of the pogroms, so in this case we see a Christian empathy with the Jewish cause: Bonhoeffer’s identification with the Jews, even though it took him to his death, is well known.36
Christian reception in the earlier commentary tradition has, however, usually read the psalm allegorically. *Athanasius viewed the psalm as about Christ’s incarnation