15 Break the arm of the wicked and evildoers;
seek out their wickedness until you find none.
16 The Lord is king for ever and ever;
the nations shall perish from his land.17 O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek;
you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear
18 to do justice for the orphan and the oppressed,
so that those from earth may strike terror no more.
It is going to be a sparsely populated landscape if God heeds HP’s prayer here. A world in which there is absolutely no room for “wickedness” is a world that will not have room even for me.
The problem with HP’s dualistic, enemy-formation worldview is that it inevitably leads to dissimulation. I cannot possibly pray that God might “seek out their wickedness until you find none,” without seeing that I am asking for my own banishment from the land. Any fingers pointed at my “enemies” are always equalled by the fingers pointing back at my own life. I am not without guilt. And, in the absence of grace, I am without hope.
Perhaps even HP opens a crack to this awareness, as he goes on to proclaim, “O Lord, you will hear the desire of the meek/humble/poor/oppressed.”
This resonates with Jesus who is reported in Luke’s Gospel to have said,
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God (Luke 6:23).
To be “poor” has nothing to do necessarily with being in dire straits financially. To be “poor” as Jesus uses it here, means to be aware that to get anywhere on the steep journey of the spiritual life I am going to need “the helper of the orphan” (10:14). I am dispossessed, cut off from my true home in the Divine. Only when I am willing to cry out for help will I begin to turn back and be able to return home. This is the cry that I will not utter as long as I insist on seeing the “wicked” only as someone other than myself.
How do I see wickedness manifesting in my daily life?
Lord help me to open to your help.
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nb: Today is our last Psalm study on zoom as we take a break for the summer. It has been a gift to walk along with thirteen wise pilgrims and wrestle with the words of HP. At this point I am not sure what we will study in the fall when we return to regular activities.
In A Spacious Place 
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June 24, 2021 at 8:35 am
bobmacdonald
13 in the study – a goodly number. I hope you all continue with the psalms. The NT ‘solution’ to the problems you see in the OT does not come from ignoring the problem of our own nature as enemy – of ourselves, of our neighbour, and of God.
If we must think in English, enemy is used as a gloss in the NT. Probably we could trace it back via the Greek translation to aib. Certainly there are many such links from the common Greek to the LXX and via that to the Hebrew. We won’t clean our lenses and destroy our own internal enemies without some work.
Some time ago during this study, I mused on the use of the gloss enemies in the NT
>>… do we create enemies? Does God or y-h-v-h have enemies or foes or adversaries?
It appears that some Biblical writers would allow this. Notably Paul (Romans 5) and James (James 4). Are these later uses reflecting the enemies / foes / adversaries of the Old Testament?
The underlying question is, What is God like? Does the character of God permit the idea of ‘enemy of God’, or is that a human projection onto God’s character?
The character of God is noted in Psalms 8 –
From the mouths of babies and nurslings, you have founded strength,
for the sake of your adversaries,
that you might cease enemy and vengeance.
So if God has adversaries or foes (which maybe should be removed as an unnecessary gloss) then who are they? Us?
Note: I couldn’t find many places in the OT where God ‘has’ enemies though there are implications in the letters of Paul and James. God delivers enemies into our hands and God destroys enemies on our behalf. <<
I have my own explanations using the crucifixion of Jesus as to how the transformation of enemy into colleague works. How would I apply it to the enemies we have in our current situation?
I, who have been God's enemy, (Romans 5) name my enemy as someone who pursues a policy of destruction for others, whether they are motivated to kill or to displace, or to impoverish, or to destroy the world's resources, or to believe a lie. If I were to be friends with these worldly powers, I would make myself God's enemy again (James 4).
So my prayer is Psalms 10 S and T
Shatter the arm of criminal,
and for an evil one, search out its crimes till none is found.
This is my prayer for the leaders of Cargill who worship Mammon, and for the chief of China who allows the destruction of its people, and for the oligarchs of Russia whose coal mining threatens its local people and the whole world, and for my Christian republican friends who cannot see the truth, and for the ill and dislocated who fear Islam, and for the Christian leaders who like China cannot face the destruction they cause and have caused through racism and colonialism.
When God searches us out then we are exposed. Our shame will tell us if we have any conscience left.
I would note again that zrr, adversary, is a different grunt in Hebrew and a different concept in the trace of language from Hebrew through Greek and Latin to our English NT. But we need the same solution, to put to death our deeds of the flesh that the Spirit may work life in our mortal bodies. Then, maybe, we can help 'repair the world' that God loves in the way he has demonstrated.