(director: don’t destroy, in stone, of David at Saul’s sending to watch the house to kill him)

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Psalm 59 starts straightforwardly with a fourfold wish for rescue (“free me…evacuate me… free me… rescue me,” 1-2) and a threefold “not guilty” plea (“no crime is mine | no wrong is mine Lord / no fault is mine,” 3b-4a). By its second half, however, the psalm labors to reconcile its three invocations of God as strength (`oz) with its three invocations of God as care (chesed). “Strength” and “Care” are proximate or paralleled all three times:  “Strength | for you I wait / for God | my Fort // my God my Care | goes before me” (9-10a), “I sing | your strength / and ring out at dawn | your care” (16), and “My Strength for you | I want to play / for God my fort | God my care” (17). 

In a call for rescue from enemies encircling like packs of wild dogs, the combination of might and caring makes sense. Freeing another person requires motive and means. Love without power spins its wheels; power without love careens. Only together can kindness and strength free.

The sticky question, however, is what strength and care are to do with those enemies once the liberation is complete. And in verses 11-13, the speaker seems wildly incapable of deciding:

don’t slay them  | or my people will forget       

strew them | with your force        

and take them down | Our Shield my lord

for the fault of their mouth | the words of their lips

may they be caught | in their conceit

and for the curses | and lies they recount

finish them in rage | finish them off entirely                   

that they may know | God reigns

in Jacob | to the ends of the earth        

Having roused “the Lord | God of Forces / God of Israel,” and asking God in battle gear “to deal with | all the others” (5), the speaker asks now for these enemies to be spared, dispersed, and demoted (11). Then, promptly, she asks for them to be wiped out (12-13). Verse 13, as it stands, seems like a contradiction in terms: “finish them off entirely / that they may know | God reigns” (13a-b). If the goal is to teach “them” that God reigns, death would seem to be both definitively instructive but not particularly useful.

Which response does the speaker want from God “my Fort / my God my care” (9-10)? Is it to not “feel for | all the harmful traitors” (5) or to “finish them in rage” (13)? Does the speaker not see these differences, too blood-blinded to tell that scattering enemies and eradicating them are completely different responses? Or is this one long slippery slope, from God’s laughing and scoffing at enemies to making an example of them to finishing them off? Are all these responses equal parts Strength and Care?  

The psalm’s two refrains show clearly the questions are not resolved. “My Strength… / God my fort | God my care” (17, cf. 9-10) lead us one way, pairing kindness and power. Those dogs that twice come snarling at dusk (6-7, 14-15), even after the call for their obliteration, they lead down another road entirely.