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Psalms to Savor By
David Klinghoffer |
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King David composed the greatest prayers ever written. I mean the Book of Psalms, which form the backbone of Jewish liturgy and figure prominently in Christian prayer as well. A few months ago, many of the psalms didn't seem addressed to me or to anyone I know, expressing as they do the feelings of a people directly threatened by evildoers. There's a psalm, No. 91, that appears in the morning prayers of the Jewish Sabbath. I used to rush through this one, which speaks of God as a "refuge" from various terrors: "For He will deliver you from the ensnaring trap, from devastating pestilence. … You shall not fear the terror of night nor the arrow that flies by day; nor the pestilence that walks in gloom; nor the destroyer who lays waste at noon… No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your tent." During the weeks that America worried at the thought of anthrax (or smallpox) in our "tents," those references to "plague" and "pestilence" were a comfort. The psalms also have a more unnerving theme: Calling God's wrath down on His enemies, who "join together against the soul of the righteous, and the blood of the innocent they condemn. Then the Lord … turned upon them their own violence, and with their own evil he will cut them off, the Lord, our God, will cut them off" (No. 94). Before September 11, Americans lived in security. We still do, for the most part, but we can understand a little better the conditions of peril that earlier generations keenly felt, and to which the psalms are so powerfully addressed. Those conditions explain why Jews and Christians once took rather seriously a concept that till recently, outside the Bible Belt, was a bit of an embarrassment. I refer to the belief that a Messiah or a Returned Messiah will appear and, amid some outstanding special effects and much cutting off of the wicked, transform reality. Neither Christians nor Jews are intended to regard this world with complacency and satisfaction. As Maimonides writes, a Jew who doesn't actively look forward to the ultimate Redemption, the coming of the Messiah, has missed the point of much of the rest of Jewish practice and belief. This is hard stuff for a modern American, who tends to be rather satisfied with life as it is. I still don't feel personally ready for the Redemption — I've got quite a lot of growing and improving yet to do. But frankly the idea of seeing the bad guys, like bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, get theirs at the hand of an awesome messianic figure is looking more and more attractive. Such sentiments don't come easily to anyone who prides himself, or once did, on an urbane distaste at the idea of villains receiving any retribution other than a proper, dispassionate trial in U.S. courts governed by all constitutional proprieties. However the Bible conceives the world in very real terms, and recent events have clarified what the real world is about. It's about the struggle between goodness and wickedness, about which our Constitution is not the ultimate authority. This doesn't add up to much comfort if you have lost a loved one to terrorism. Nevertheless I offer the observation that lately my spiritual life has, I think, deepened; and very likely you could say the same of yourself. For this, with regret at the terrible price of the lesson, I'm grateful. |
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hen
they write Osama bin Laden's obituary, let it be recorded that he
unwittingly did one thing for which Christians and Jews can feel
an ironic gratitude. For there are aspects of Biblical religion
that make sense now, to me at least, in a way they did not before
September 11.
