Psalms : Volume 2 (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms): Psalms 42-89

© 2007 by John Goldingay

Published by Baker Academic

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Series Preface

Author’s Preface

Abbreviations

Psalms 42–43: Coping with Separation from God’s Presence

Psalm 44: Coping with Defeat

Psalm 45: The True King and True Queen

Psalm 46: Trust and Stop

Psalm 47: God Has Begun to Reign

Psalm 48: God Made Known in the City of God

Psalm 49: Can Death Be Escaped?

Psalm 50: Worship and Life

Psalm 51: Sin, Cleansing, Renewal

Psalm 52: Divine and Human Commitment

Psalm 53: Is God There?

Psalm 54: The Name That Rescues

Psalm 55: How to Throw Things at Yhwh

Psalm 56: Fear of Humanity, Trust in God

Psalm 57: Simultaneously Expecting and Possessing

Psalm 58: The Gods Must and Will Fulfill Their Responsibility

Psalm 59: How to Pray in Terror

Psalm 60: How to Claim God’s Past Word

Psalm 61: How Prayer Suspends the Distantness

Psalm 62: The Heart of Old Testament Theology

Psalm 63: A Threefold Dynamic for Life

Psalm 64: The Power of Language and the Power of Recollection

Psalm 65: Politics and Harvest, Israel and the World

Psalm 66: Praise and Thanksgiving, Community and Individual, Israel and the World

Psalm 67: Blessed for the Sake of the World

Psalm 68: God Then and Now

Psalm 69: When People Mock Zeal for Yhwh’s House

Psalm 70: A Plea for Haste

Psalm 71: The God of Past, Present, and Future

Psalm 72: A Vision for Government

Psalm 72:18–20: Coda to Book II

Psalm 73: Yes, God Will Restore Me

Psalm 74: What Is Permanent?

Psalm 75: In Your Way and in Your Time

Psalm 76: Revere or Fear

Psalm 77: The Pain and the Hope of Recollection

Psalm 78: The Story That Needs Passing On

Psalm 79: When Nations Attack Us and Scorn God

Psalm 80: Praying for Joseph

Psalm 81: Do Listen!

Psalm 82: God Must Accept Responsibility

Psalm 83: Confrontation, Shame, Death, Acknowledgment

Psalm 84: The Double Good Fortune of the Trusting Person

Psalm 85: God Speaks of Shalom

Psalm 86: A Servant’s Claim on His Master

Psalm 87: The Nations as Citizens of Zion

Psalm 88: Abba, Father

Psalm 89: Facing Two Sets of Facts (Again)

Psalm 89:52: Coda to Book III

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Subject Index

Author Index

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Writings

Series Page

Series Preface

At the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, a wise father warns his son concerning the multiplication of books: Furthermore, of these, my son, be warned. There is no end to the making of many books! (12:12). The Targum to this biblical book characteristically expands the thought and takes it in a different, even contradictory, direction: My son, take care to make many books of wisdom without end.

When applied to commentaries, both statements are true. The past twenty years have seen a significant increase in the number of commentaries available on each book of the Bible. On the other hand, for those interested in grappling seriously with the meaning of the text, such proliferation should be seen as a blessing rather than a curse. No single commentary can do it all. In the first place, commentaries reflect different theological and methodological perspectives. We can learn from others who have a different understanding of the origin and nature of the Bible, but we also want commentaries that share our fundamental beliefs about the biblical text. Second, commentaries are written with different audiences in mind. Some are addressed primarily to laypeople, others to clergy, and still others to fellow scholars. A third consideration, related to the previous two, is the subdisciplines the commentator chooses to draw from to shed light on the biblical text. The possibilities are numerous, including philology, textual criticism, genre/form criticism, redaction criticism, ancient Near Eastern background, literary conventions, and more. Finally, commentaries differ in how extensively they interact with secondary literature, that is, with what others have said about a given passage.

The Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms has a definite audience in mind. We believe the primary users of commentaries are scholars, ministers, seminary students, and Bible study leaders. Of these groups, we have most in mind clergy and future clergy, namely, seminary students. We have tried to make the commentary accessible to nonscholars by putting most of the technical discussion and interaction with secondary literature in the footnotes. We do not mean to suggest that such information is unimportant. We simply concede that, given the present state of the church, it is the rare layperson who will read such technical material with interest and profit. We hope we are wrong in this assessment, and if we are not, that the future will see a reverse in this trend. A healthy church is a church that nourishes itself with constant attention to God’s words in Scripture, in all their glorious detail.

Since not all commentaries are alike, what are the features that characterize this series? The message of the biblical book is the primary focus of each commentary, and the commentators have labored to expose God’s message for his people in the book they discuss. This series also distinguishes itself by restricting its coverage to one major portion of the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, the Psalms and Wisdom books (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs). These biblical books provide a distinctive contribution to the canon. Although we can no longer claim that they are neglected, their unique content makes them harder to fit into the development of redemptive history and requires more effort to hear their distinctive message.

The book of Psalms is the literary sanctuary. Like the physical sanctuary structures of the Old Testament, it offers a textual holy place where humans share their joys and struggles with brutal honesty in God’s presence. The book of Proverbs describes wisdom, which on one level is skill for living, the ability to navigate life’s actual and potential pitfalls; but on another level, this wisdom presents a pervasive and deeply theological message: The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7). Proverbs also raises a disturbing issue: the sages often motivate wise behavior by linking it to reward, but in reality, bad things happen to good people, and the wise are not always rewarded as they expect. This raises the question of the justice of God. Both Job and Ecclesiastes struggle with the apparent disconnect between God’s justice and our actual life experience. Finally, the Song of Songs is a passionate, sensuous love poem that reminds us that God is interested in more than just our brains and our spirits; he wants us to enjoy our bodies. It reminds us that we are not merely souls encased in bodies but whole persons made in God’s image.

Limiting the series to the Psalms and Wisdom books has allowed us to tailor our work to the distinctive nature of this portion of the canon. With some few exceptions in Job and Ecclesiastes, for instance, the material in these biblical books is poetic and highly literary, and so the commentators have highlighted the significant poetic conventions employed in each book. After an introduction discussing important issues that affect the interpretation of the book (title, authorship, date, language, style, text, ancient Near Eastern background, genre, canonicity, theological message, connection to the New Testament, and structure), each commentary proceeds section by section through the biblical text. The authors provide their own translation, with explanatory notes when necessary, followed by a substantial interpretive section (titled Interpretation) and concluding with a section titled Theological Implications. In the interpretation section, the emphasis is on the meaning of the text in its original historical setting. In the theological implications section, connections with other parts of the canon, both Old and New Testaments, are sketched out along with the continuing relevance of each passage for us today. The latter section is motivated by the recognition that, while it is important to understand the individual contribution and emphasis of each book, these books now find their place in a larger collection of writings, the canon as a whole, and it is within this broader context that the books must ultimately be interpreted.

No two commentators in this series see things in exactly the same way, though we all share similar convictions about the Bible as God’s Word and the belief that it must be appreciated not only as ancient literature but also as God’s Word for today. It is our hope and prayer that these volumes will inform readers and, more importantly, stimulate reflection on and passion for these valuable books.

It has long been observed that the book of Psalms is a microcosm of the message of the Old Testament. Athanasius, the fourth-century theologian, called the Psalms an epitome of the whole Scriptures. Basil, bishop of Caesarea in the same time period, regarded the Psalms as a compendium of all theology. Martin Luther said the book is a little Bible, and the summary of the Old Testament. The book of Psalms is theologically rich, so the readers of this commentary are privileged to be guided by John Goldingay, one of the foremost experts on biblical theology today. Our prayer is that as you read the Psalms with this commentary, you will grow in your knowledge of the God who reveals himself through the prayers of his ancient people.

Tremper Longman III

Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies

Westmont College

Author’s Preface

The Psalter is divided into five books, presumably by analogy with the Torah. That division of the Torah is somewhat artificial (notably, between Exodus and Leviticus), and the division of the Psalter is much more so. So the fact that this volume covers books II and III and thus Psalms 42–89 is convenient, but a little arbitrary.

Admittedly to make that statement is to take a position on a topic of interest in current study. For most of the twentieth century, scholarship on the Psalms focused its attention on individual psalms and largely ignored their position within this larger whole. Then, in the pendulum fashion of scholarship, near the end of that century the structure of the Psalter as a whole became a topic of interest. Indeed, the cutting edge of scholarship came to be the question of the arrangement of the psalms and the way sequences of psalms belong together and expound a theological view of their own.[1] The reader of this commentary should be aware that I am not enamored of this study. It seems to me to involve too much imagination in the connecting of too few dots. I recognize that there are often links between adjacent psalms, but I remain of the view that the main focus of psalm study needs to be the individual psalm.

An opposite subject of study is the redactional history of individual psalms. I also find this speculative, and I prefer to focus on the psalms as we have them. For these two forms of study, the reader will have to look elsewhere.

I noted in the preface to volume 1 that my starting point for the commentary is the Masoretic Text as it appears in the Leningrad Codex copied by Samuel ben Jacob in the eleventh century and published in NJPS and BHS. I have assumed that this is a broadly reliable guide to a textual tradition going back into the pre-Christian period. In the translation, I have also included some alternative renderings based on the LXX or other ancient versions where these seem to reflect different Hebrew traditions (though I have assumed that much versional variation over matters such as suffixes cannot be assumed to indicate a different Hebrew tradition). I have assumed that variants in post-MT Hebrew MSS constitute post-MT errors or corrections rather than preservations of pre-MT readings, but I have occasionally referred to such variants on that understanding. I have noted some modern proposals for emending the text, though I rarely followed them, and I have also rarely followed modern proposals for understanding Hebrew words in light of Arabic or Ugaritic.

In translating the Psalms, I have often let the Hebrew’s gendered language stand where, for instance, using a gender-inclusive plural would obscure the dynamic of the poetry, and in other respects I have aimed at a translation that sticks closely to the dynamics of the Hebrew, even if this sometimes means it is not as elegant as a translation for reading in church. All Bible translations are my own except where otherwise noted. References are to the versification in English Bibles; where the printed Hebrew Bible differs, its references follow in square brackets (e.g., Ps 51:1 [3]), except that I omit these in the case of cross references to other verses within the psalm I am commentating on. References to parts of verses such as v. 1a and v. 1b generally denote the verses as subdivided by MT, but where verses comprise more than two cola (or where I differ from MT in understanding verse divisions), I have often used references that correspond to the subdivisions in my translation. Thus, I have referred, for instance, to v. 1c and v. 1d rather than to v. 1bα and v. 1bβ and have used Greek letters only to mark subdivisions within a colon.

The introduction to the commentary appears in the first volume. I here repeat only the abbreviations, glossary, and bibliography in forms adapted to the contents of this volume. I particularly draw the reader’s attention to the glossary, which comments on important words asterisked in the body of the book.

I am grateful to Micah Haney for checking biblical references and spotting other slips and to Federico Roth and Daryl Jump for their work on the indices.

Abbreviations

Bibliographic and General

Old Testament

New Testament

Psalms 42–43

Coping with Separation from God’s Presence

Translation

The leader’s. Instruction. The Korahites’.

⁴²:¹Like a deer[1] that strains

toward streams of water,

So my whole person strains for you

with all my longing, God.

²My whole person thirsts for God,

for the living God;

When shall I come

and see the face of God? [Tg]/appear before God? [MT]

³My tears have been my food

day and night,

While people say to me all day,

Where is your God?

⁴Of these things I shall be mindful

as I shall pour out my feelings,

That I shall pass into the shelter;[2]

I shall lead them in procession to God’s house, [MT]

[or, That I shall proceed into the shelter of the majestic one,

to God’s house, (cf. LXX)]

With the sound of thanksgiving resounding,[3]

a tumult keeping festival.

⁵Why are you cast down, my soul,

and tumultuous within me?

Wait for God, because I will yet confess him

for the deliverance that comes from his face.[4]

⁶God, my soul is downcast within me;

therefore I am mindful of you,

From the land of Jordan and the Hermons,

from Little Mount.

⁷Deep is calling to deep

at the sound of your waterfalls;[5]

All your breakers and your waves

have passed over me.

⁸By day Yhwh will command his commitment,

and by night his song will be with me.

A plea to my living God:

⁹I will say to my craglike God,

Why have you put me out of mind,

why do I go about dark?

Because of the oppression by the enemy,

¹⁰because of the slaughter in my bones,

My foes have reproached me

as they say to me all day,

Where is your God?

¹¹Why are you cast down, my soul,

And why are you tumultuous within me?

Wait for God, because I will yet confess him,

the deliverance of my face, my God.

⁴³:¹Contend for me, God,

determine my case.

From a nation that does not keep commitment,

from someone deceitful and wicked, rescue me.

²For you are the God who is my stronghold;

why have you spurned me?

Why do I go about dark,

because of the oppression of the enemy?

³Send your light and your truthfulness;

they themselves can lead me,

They can bring me to your holy mountain,

to your dwelling,

⁴So that I can come to God’s altar,

to the God of my joyful rejoicing,

And I will confess you with the lyre,

God my God.

⁵Why are you cast down, my soul,

and tumultuous within me?

Wait for God, because I will yet confess him,

the deliverance of my face, my God.

Interpretation

Psalm 42 comprises two stanzas with similar refrains. Psalm 43 is a further similar unit with the same refrain as appears at 42:11; 43:2 also takes up words from 42:9. Psalm 43 has no heading, unlike Pss. 34–42 and 44–70 (though LXX provides a heading corresponding to the familiar Composition. David’s). Either a single psalm has been divided into two, perhaps to facilitate liturgical use as happened to Pss. 9–10, or Ps. 43 was composed to accompany Ps. 42.

Psalms 42–43 together manifest a balance between lament, plea, and looking to the future such as often appears in prayer psalms. They speak for someone who longs to get to the temple but cannot do so. We do not know the reason. This might be illness or the conflict the psalms refer to, or simply the fact of living too far away; most Israelites would be unable to visit the temple at will. The psalm has often been read as a kind of journal of a spiritual struggle, with the suppliant striving to find faith (see the refrain) but finding it hard to do so, yet gradually working toward plea and hope.[6] But the prayer’s careful composition in three stanzas (with the standard features of a prayer psalm such as lament, plea, and a looking to the future) suggests that this is an oversimplification. Like other psalms, the prayer reflects real struggles and longings, but it has taken these as the raw material for a prayer composition that we can imagine being used by an ordinary individual, by a leader, or by the congregation. The rhythm is predominantly one that has only two stresses in the second colon of each line (often 3-2), the rhythm characteristic of more pensive prayers.

Psalms 42–43 include twelve occurrences of God, unqualified by pronouns or other qualifiers. In Pss. 1–41 one would often have found the name Yhwh rather than God; in Pss. 42–43 Yhwh comes only once. This general preference for God rather than the name Yhwh continues through Pss. 42–83. This may be an instance of the varied inclination to avoid using the name Yhwh that developed as centuries passed, perhaps to avoid giving too esoteric or parochial an impression of the God whom the Israelites worshipped, perhaps to safeguard against casual use of the name.[7] One can see that in some instances parallelism between Yhwh and some variant on God such as the living God or my God would have worked (e.g., 42:2a, 11; 43:4b, 5). Perhaps these Elohistic psalms have been revised to remove most of the occurrences of Yhwh, or perhaps this was simply the preferred usage in some circles (for instance, in northern Israel). See further on Ps. 53.

The leader’s. Instruction. The Korahites’.

Heading. See glossary.

42:1–5. The first stanza expresses a longing to come to God (vv. 1–2), articulates the grief of being cut off from God (v. 3), recalls the joy of having access to God (v. 4), and urges the self to live in expectation of deliverance (v. 5). It opens by addressing God (v. 1), moves to reflection (vv. 2–4), and ends in argument (v. 5).

⁴²:¹Like a deer that strains

toward streams of water,

So my whole person strains for you

with all my longing, God.

Thus the psalm begins with four lines expressing that longing. All four are more or less parallel, though each goes beyond the previous one. Thus v. 1a sets out a simile and v. 1b interprets it, v. 2a repeats v. 1b with some nuancing, and v. 2b sharpens the point with a rhetorical question. Conversely, there is no parallelism within the lines, except in v. 2a. The simile in v. 1a would be easy to identify with. Human beings, too, knew what it was like to be without water and to long to find a stream (with little possibility of doing so in the summer, when few streams still flow) or to come to a canyon where one might expect to find a stream and to discover it dry. The verb occurs only here and in Joel 1:20, in a similar connection; the meaning of cognates suggests it means inclining the head in a direction.[8] The second line’s talk of my *person straining for you emphasizes the way the whole being, body and spirit, is straining with intensity.

²My whole person thirsts for God,

for the living God;

When shall I come

and see the face of God? [Tg]/appear before God? [MT]

The third line begins with another occurrence of nepeš. Here it is more significant that nepeš can refer specifically to desire and longing. The line restates the simile/metaphor in more everyday terms by speaking in terms of thirst and then nuances the description of God, who is the living God. In the context we might wonder whether to make a link with the life-giving nature of water and the death-threatening nature of the suppliant’s position, and one might even think of translating the expression more literally as the God of life. But there are no such implications when the expression recurs in 84:2 [3]; what that psalm has in common with this is an orientation toward seeking to get to the temple. More likely, then, the title the living God is one that belongs to the temple as a source of life, and this is the first indication of such an orientation to getting to the temple. That point is then made a little more explicit in the parallel line, v. 2b. The suppliant wants to appear before God (so MT), indeed wants to see God’s face (more likely the original pointing; cf. Tg).[9] In either case, the temple is where that happened. A religion that uses images could speak more literally of seeing God; in the religious practice that the OT approves, there were no images of God, and thus seeing God is a more metaphorical idea for having a sense of being in God’s presence, though it also implies that seeing God’s *face means having prayers answered. Evidently the suppliant cannot go to the temple to have recourse to God in the place where God had promised always to be available, though we do not know why, at least not yet.

³My tears have been my food

day and night,

While people say to me all day,

Where is your God?

Two further linked lines follow. They manifest no mutual or internal parallelism, though in general terms they continue the parallelism that ran through vv. 1–2. The tears give a more literal suggestion of the depth of the suppliant’s longing, albeit as a hyperbole,[10] while day and night underlines that. Instead of eating, all the suppliant does is cry. And the taunting questions of other people externalize the question that presses itself in the suppliant’s own mind. The comment on God’s location has different implications from those in vv. 1–2. By the end of v. 2 it seemed clear where God is. God is in the temple, and the problem is that the suppliant cannot get there. There was no problem about God’s location; the problem lay in the suppliant’s location. Here the matter is differently conceived. While God was committed to being in the temple and could always be met there, this did not mean God was confined to the temple. God could act anywhere, and did come to meet people’s needs anywhere. So why was God not reaching out to wherever the suppliant was? The people who ask the question may or may not be Israelites, but either way they probably have a theory about that. It might be that God is not capable of doing so; the implication may then be that God is incurring discredit through failing to act on the suppliant’s behalf. Or it might be that God has abandoned the suppliant. The foes may infer that there is good reason for God’s doing so and that they may then appropriately attack the suppliant themselves, knowing they are on God’s side. Although formally the suppliant is involved in reflection and is not addressing God, the suppliant knows that God will overhear this reflection, and it is meant for God’s ears.

⁴Of these things I shall be mindful

as I shall pour out my feelings,

That I shall pass into the shelter;

I shall lead them in procession to God’s house, [MT]

[or, That I shall proceed into the shelter of the majestic one,

to God’s house, (cf. LXX)]

With the sound of thanksgiving resounding,

a tumult keeping festival.

The suppliant returns to looking to the future and expresses a determination to be *mindful of the experience to come; the verbs in v. 4a–b are cohortative. Being so mindful is an integral aspect of pouring out one’s nepeš (*person). Literally, "I pour out my nepeš on myself: this outpouring is not something that happens inside the person but something externalized. It is as if the feelings overwhelm the person. The suppliant went to pieces,"[11] but the person deliberately lets that happen. This verb, too, is cohortative.

Verse 4c–d identifies more explicitly what these things are. The EVV take the yiqtol verbs to refer to the past, but LXX more plausibly assumes that they have their more usual future reference. In keeping with the longings of vv. 1–2, the suppliant is looking forward to joining in the festal procession in the temple, God’s shelter or tent (cf. 27:5–6); perhaps using the former term (sak) makes a link with the Feast of Sukkot. For the first time in the psalm, the second colon then seriously takes the first colon further, at least in the form suggested by MT’s consonants, which speak of leading people in a slow and deliberate movement.[12] The suppliant is then not an ordinary worshipper but a worship leader.

Verse 4e–f adds anticipation of the noisy enthusiasm of such events, with the gratefulness to God this noise expresses. The second colon follows on from the first with a reference to the tumultuous, noisy crowd (hāmôn, from hāmâ) and with its talk of this crowd keeping festival (ḥāgag). That word comes to mean making merry or reeling about (1 Sam. 30:16; Ps. 107:27), which gives one the flavor of a festal celebration. Such is the celebratory worship that the suppliant looks forward to.

⁵Why are you cast down, my soul,

and tumultuous within me?

Wait for God, because I will yet confess him

for the deliverance that comes from his face.²

The first stanza closes with the refrain that will recur in slightly varying forms. The first line is neatly parallel.[13] The first verb usually refers to a physical bowing down, a literal humbling or a self-lowering in connection with mourning (35:14; 38:6 [7]). The second is the verb from which the noun tumult comes. It thus suggests the contrast between the suppliant’s former and present circumstances. Both involve turmoil, but an unhappy inner turmoil has replaced the celebratory communal turmoiling crowd that the suppliant once led. That is reality; yet the line begins Why? The psalm began by addressing God, but it has apparently been addressing the self through vv. 2–4, and here it continues to do that but also begins to argue with the self. Yet the fact that the psalm began by addressing God and will be doing so again in v. 6 reminds us that this account of an internal conversation, like vv. 2–4, is also formulated for God to hear. It thus forms a variant on the statement of faith and hope that often comes in a prayer psalm and a variant form of the declaration of intent to come to *confess God for the answer to one’s prayer. Further, it thus forms part of the motivation for God to answer the prayer. It says to God, Do you see how I am battling with this experience?

More commonly such a *Why? question in a prayer would address God, and it might receive an answer. This might take the form of a rebuke, or the form of a promise that God is acting. Here the dynamics are simultaneously similar but quite different. It is not God who encourages the suppliant to hope nor some priestly or prophetic servant of God. The suppliant has to accept responsibility for his or her own encouraging. The content of the argument is similar to what might appear in a word from God. God’s *face will turn to the suppliant, God will act in *deliverance, there is reason to *wait for God, the suppliant will be able to return to make *confession of that. These motifs come not in a word from God to which the suppliant responds, but in words that the suppliant addresses to the self, which does not respond.

Jesus takes up the words of vv. 5–6 in Gethsemane (Mark 14:34; cf. John 12:27).[14]

42:6–11. The suppliant has not won the argument; the situation in vv. 6–11 is the same as that in vv. 1–5. Once again the psalm begins by addressing God (vv. 6–7), then moves to reflection (vv. 8–10), and finally comes back to argument (v. 11).

⁶God, my soul is downcast within me;

therefore I am mindful of you,

From the land of Jordan and the Hermons,

from Little Mount.

The turning to God in vv. 6–7 begins by expressing to God the terms of that argument in v. 5; each word in the first colon in v. 6a–b comes from there. But the suppliant now intends to take the argument further, and that by another act of *mindfulness (cf. v. 4), though the way this works out is a little paradoxical. Initially vv. 6c–7 offer another expression of pain that goes behind and beyond the one in vv. 1–2. We know that the suppliant is unable to go to the temple. In v. 6c–d that is apparently pictured as being as far away from there as it is possible to imagine while still being on the borders of the land, though the details are uncertain. Hermons is unusually plural, though that is intelligible as a way of referring to the several peaks of the mountain at Israel’s far northeastern frontier. There the Jordan rises from the foothills of Mount Hermon, and the land of Jordan might thus also point to that area, but it might equally point to the Jordan River area more generally as Israel’s natural eastern frontier. Little Mount is often transliterated as Mount Mizar, but such a mountain is otherwise unknown.[15] So we cannot be sure of the geographical references, but even if they were literal geographical notes for the psalm’s author, for subsequent users of the psalm they are metaphors for being far away from Jerusalem.[16]

⁷Deep is calling to deep

at the sound of your waterfalls;

All your breakers and your waves

have passed over me.

A reference to Mount Hermon and the Jordan headwaters could link with the imagery in v. 7. The streams that come together to form the Jordan pass through several waterfalls and cascades of crashing waters where deep calls to deep, and breakers and waves pass over rocks and bathers. The sound of the worshipping crowd and the prospect of passing on into the temple is here replaced by the sound of the crashing waters that are passing over the suppliant.[17] The imagery of breakers and waves is independent of this particular geography (e.g., 88:7 [8]) and links more directly with the idea of death as a force that overwhelms and drowns us (e.g., 2 Sam. 22:5; Jon. 2:3 [4] uses the same phrase as here in connection with another geography). Here the point is that deathly forces are overwhelming the suppliant, but the crashing Jordan headwaters could provide an image for that. "The poet who desperately seeks water finds it, but it is not life-giving water—it is destructive. God sends water, overwhelming, destructive of life. God, who was to have been the life of the psalmist, has become his death."[18] Indeed, this is the psalm’s third watery image: the suppliant longs for refreshing water, weeps watery tears, and drowns in death’s waters.[19] Among other peoples, the idea that such forces are overwhelming us would imply that Death in person has taken hold of us. The psalm’s commitment to the fact that Yhwh is the only God means this cannot be so, or at least only metaphorically. The waves and breakers that overwhelm are Yhwh’s. That is both a further distress and a comfort. There is no one else working against us who might frustrate Yhwh’s purpose.