Shoftim- RH Ellul (Psalms)

Psalm 27: A Hymn of Trust

This week marked the opening of the month of Elul, “the month of compassion and forgiveness,” the season of preparation for the solemn Days of Repentance. One of the better known customs during this season among Ashkenazim is the recitation of Psalm 27, morning and evening, for fifty-one days (the numerical value of na, “I beseech you”)—from the very beginning of Elul, during the Ten Days of Awe, and through Sukkot and Hoshana Rabbah.

What is the message of this psalm? What makes it so special, that it was chosen as a kind of leitmotif for this period of profound solemnity? At first blush, the psalm resembles many other psalms of personal travail, in which the author alternates descriptions of his troubles and the situation of being beset by enemies, with expressions of deep and abounding trust and confidence in God.

Psalm 27 begins with the words, Hashem ori ve-yish’i: “The Lord is my light and my help: whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?…. Even if an army encamps against me… if they rise against me to make war… my heart shall not fear…” (vv. 1-3). Verses 1-6 are a declaration of total trust in God: despite the external threats and myriads of foes, he feels secure and confident, even joyful, in God’s protection. “He shall shelter me in his sukkah (pavilion/shelter) in an evil day, he will protect me under the cover of his tent” (v. 5).

(The imagery of this last verse, coupled with the opening verse, is seen by the midrash as alluding to the sequence of the festivals of Tishrei: the “light” of renewal and acceptance of Divine Kingship on Rosh Hashanah; the “salvation” of atonement and forgiveness on Yom Kippur; and the sense of “protection” during Sukkot, often as paradigmatic of feelings of security).

At verse 7 there is a turn: from expressions of hope and trust, to begging God to hear his voice and grant his prayer, including protection from bad people and things, and not to hide His face. But the essential request is that already articulated in verse 4: “But one thing I ask of the Lord– to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life…” This is reminiscent of several other mystical psalms we have studied earlier, such as Pss 42-43 and 63, in which the Psalmist expresses his desire, first and foremost, to enjoy the presence of God, “to gaze upon the beauty / pleasantness of the Lord (la-hazot be-no’am HaShem) and to frequent His Temple.”

It seems to me that the “Temple,” both here and elsewhere, is used both in the literal and metaphorical sense: the longing for God and the longing to be in the Temple are closely related to one another.

There is an important issue here, lurking beneath the surface: we tend to think of “really” religious people, those who express the type of sentiments found in these psalms, as somehow living on a different plane than ordinary folks: as paradigms of elevated consciousness and God awareness, who are somehow not troubled by the mundane concerns of the rest of us. The feeling is that such verses were uttered by extraordinary, sensitive souls, who have somehow succeeded in making “spirituality” their first and almost exclusive concern in life, transcending the practical business of life with which ordinary mortals spend most of their walking hours: with earning a livelihood, hoping and wishing and caring for the welfare of those close to us, maintaining good health, etc.; as well as the fears, such as illness, poverty, violence and war, natural disasters (such as the one that befell the most prosperous nation on earth this week, exposing the vulnerability of even the wealthiest and strongest society), social dislocation. Somehow, in our guts we feel that the people who are filled with God-awareness, who feel God’s presence in everyday life, who seek No’am Hashem, who gain, not only comfort and consolation, but real joy from closeness to God, belong to a breed apart. We Jews may not have the monastic model of total renunciation of the world, in the sense of eschewing marriage and family and becoming a total recluse or medicant, but we do have our folk legends of saints: of the talmid hakham whose entire world is the study of Talmud; the Kabbalist or Hassid who engages in meditations and yihudim for hours each day; the “holy fool,” who trusts so totally in God that, beyond certain very minimal needs, he gives away to the poor whatever he earns each day. Such people have created for themselves a world that shields them from both the rough-and-tumble of ordinary life, as well as from the down-to-earth, concrete pleasures and joys of this life.

But the thought occurred to me that this is precisely the point: what the psalm seems to saying—and this applies to a host of other psalms as well—is that the two realms are in fact closely related. The person who trusts in God, and finds comfort in Him, is not a recluse, removed from the real world, but a person who lives in the world, suffers its difficulties, and within that setting and context feels God’s hand as somehow helping and comforting him. He is most probably an utterly ordinary person; what sets him apart from others is no more and no less than his different attitude towards his troubles.

One verse near the end of the psalm catches one’s attention: “For my father and mother have abandoned me, but the Lord has gathered me in” (v. 10). The image of the parent is that of unqualified love. There is no time (assuming things go well, and the parents are not seriously emotionally disturbed) when a person feels such a sense of total, effortless security as when he is a child, knowing that his parents will feed him, clothe him, bathe him, nurse him if he’s sick or injured, hug him and comfort him and reassure him of love when he’s “picked on” or beaten up by “bad kids.” Even into adult life, the presence and love of parents remains a unique source of love. Even the best marriage, in which there is unqualified love and acceptance, also entails, and rightly so, a certain balance of reciprocity, of sharing and partnership, of mutual caring and giving. This is quite different from the model of unconditional love and giving which we receive from our parents in infancy and early childhood, whose imprint and taste remain into later life.

Thus, we may imagine that the “abandonment” spoken of here may be the result of death; on some level, every adult feels a strange sense of aloneness after the death of a parent—no matter how successful and well-established one may be in life, there is an inevitable sense of aloneness and even abandonment (which is perhaps why mourning for a parent is deeper and of longer duration than that for other kinfolk). Even though death is hardly a volitional act, still less a deliberate abandonment, to the “inner child” that exists in each of us it is somehow felt that way, whether consciously or not. Thus, in one of the most telling, “Freudian” verses in the entire Bible, we are told that Isaac found comfort with his wife Rivkah after the death of his mother (Gen 24:67). Love between man and woman is seen here, not as romance or eros, but as a kind of substitute for the loss of that unique mother-love. (But see also Rashi on that verse, with its emphasis on the spiritual features of Jewish womanhood—the candle burning from Erev Shabbat to Erev Shabbat, and so on—portraying both women as representing a kind of eternal feminine.)

On a deeper level, of course, one might say that all life is a series of separations, of letting go of those relationship and connections that give one a sense of support and strength, but that sooner or later must end (see on this Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses)—save the one relationship that never ends: namely, that with He who is Endless (Ein Sof)—God. Then again, elsewhere in Psalms, such as, most dramatically, in Ps 131:2 (“My soul is calm and content, like a child at its mother breast, so is my soul like a child”), there is the reverse image as well: that trust in God is like the trust in parents, utterly calm and content.

Interestingly, nothing is said in this psalm about “frumkeit”— studying Torah or doing mitzvot or performing teshuvah or needing expiation (kaparah) for sins—or, for that matter, even of the need for heshbon nefesh, for soul-searching—all of which are basic motifs of this season. Rather, the central and almost exclusive message here is one of basic trust. As if to say: the most basic religious emotion is a deep, abiding, existential trust in God.