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Hard on the heels of the Bible’s only other single-line acrostic, Psalm 112 shifts focus from the Lord, “feeling and tender” (111:4), to the virtuous person, the upright, the level, who is also “feeling and tender | and just” (112:4). While Psalm 111 celebrates the deeds of the Lord, particularly “all his mandates / being upheld | always and ever” (111:7b-8a), Psalm 112 characterizes the ideal devotee: “firmed his heart | leaning on the Lord / upheld his heart | he does not fear / as long as he sees | his enemies get theirs” (112:7b-8). Psalm 111 ends with the rhetoric of a wisdom psalm: “the start of sense | reverence for the Lord” (111:10). Psalm 112 begins with a similar convention: “all set, one revering | the Lord” (112:1). Peas in a pod, these two poems, though it is unknowable whether the two are the work of the same hands. Whoever fashioned this second psalm took the ribs of the first: “always standing” (111:10; 112:9), “and his justice | always standing” (111:3, 112:3).   

But where the first psalm links the fidelity of the Lord to the perpetuity of laws, which are to be “studied | by all who revel in them” (111:2), the second psalm turns to the person who “has reveled much” “in his orders” (112:1), linking prosperity to justice. Psalm 111 names justice once. Psalm 112 makes justice its full refrain (112:3, 9), and adds two mentions of the just person (4, 6) near the center of the psalm. This just person is characterized repeatedly in economic terms. He has “riches and wealth | in his house” (3). He is moved emotionally but not physically: “one feeling | who lends / he sustains his things | with right / oh ever | he is not budged” (5-6a). And he is generous: “he has dispensed | he has given to the poor” (9a), “his horn | is lifted with heft” (9c). This heavy horn at the end of the psalm completes the vigorous seed at the start—the promise of bounty fulfilled. It is affluence, shared.

The more it’s studied, however, the darker this psalm’s vision of a just economy becomes. Any compression of virtue and wealth into a single variable comes with inequitable consequences, especially in the implied association of poverty and depravity. The rich just person “gives” to the poor (9a) and “lends” (5), but without asking after the unevenness of wealth. Wealth comes to the good, the psalm implies, while the bad “sees | and seethes / he grinds his teeth | and wastes away” (10). This is the exact rhetoric of the so-called “politics of envy,” which paints have-nots as jealous of their moral and financial betters.

Even worse, the reader must decide what to make of this threatening line: “he does not fear /as long as he sees | his enemies get theirs” (8b). The line is ambivalent in its preposition, “as long as” could be “until,” and strange in its tying of the heart of the just person who “does not fear” (lo’ yir’a) to yire’h, the seeing of the fate of the enemies. Who are these enemies? The next line has disturbing implications: “he has dispensed | he has given to the poor” (9). How does the syntax read? Is the one whose heart is firm unafraid because his enemies get theirs? Or is it that he will not fear until  his enemies get theirs? Or is the sense that, until (or as long as) he sees revenge on his enemies, he will give to the poor? Are these poor in fact his enemies, or others he sees as lusting after his wealth?          

It may well be true, as the psalm concludes, that “the lust of cheats | is lost” (10). We might just be talking about different cheats.