It’s easy to blame someone else for what’s wrong with the world. Yet how much of the wrongdoing and even evil attitudes also exists within? And what can we do about our own shadows if we want to help make the world a kinder place for all?
Today’s psalm begins a series of explorations that echo the existential questions of the Book of Job and offer inner debates about our choices to live lives of cruelty or care, good or bad attitudes and actions.
The poet recognizes that there is evil in the world, and that there are those whose actions cause great suffering. But were we born this way or does this slowly become how some people behave?
It begins in bed:
אָ֤וֶן ׀ יַחְשֹׁ֗ב עַֽל־מִשְׁכָּ֫ב֥וֹ יִ֭תְיַצֵּב עַל־דֶּ֣רֶךְ לֹא־ט֑וֹב רָ֝֗ע לֹ֣א יִמְאָֽס׃
In bed they plot mischief;
they are set on a path of no good,
they do not reject evil.
Ps. 36:5
What is being depicted here is the evolution of violence. Late at night, a quiet moment, someone can’t sleep, and thoughts arise, perhaps in response to the hurts or furies of the day, or many days prior.
A single late night thought becomes a plot, a plan, perhaps a nightmare. The next day, the plan takes shape and once on the path it is difficult to reject or return. Whatever the idea was, it now becomes a pattern, no matter how wrong, or harmful, or cruel. In this one verse the poet warns us that to prevent evil, we must be aware of how we begin, and how we can be the ones to help sever the painful process - with mindfulness and awareness, before it festers, and while we’re still in bed.
In this way this poem turns the dramas of the world into our inner battles. The psalm begins by naming what’s happening within each heart:
נְאֻֽם־פֶּ֣שַׁע לָ֭רָשָׁע בְּקֶ֣רֶב לִבִּ֑י אֵֽין־פַּ֥חַד אֱ֝לֹהִ֗ים לְנֶ֣גֶד עֵינָֽיו׃
“I know what Transgression says to the wicked;
they have no sense of the dread of God before their eyes.”
Ps. 36:2
What’s happening in the heart? Whose heart is it that’s wrestling between the options? It’s not so clear and Robert Alter tries to solve it:
The beginning of this psalm adopts an anomalous rhetorical device. “Crime,” as a personified figure, is presented speaking its pernicious speech within the heart of the wicked person. The Masoretic Text reads “my heart,” which has made interpreters strain to imagine a quasi- prophetic speaker who claims to know what Crime says inwardly to the wicked. More plausibly, a couple of ancient versions read “his heart.” In any case, this odd beginning also makes the genre of the psalm difficult to identify. It is not a supplication, but it puts into play the supplication’s characteristic contrast between the upright and the evil and also its confidence in God’s overarching justice. The translation emends “his eyes” at the end of this verse to “my eyes.”
The shift from ‘his’ to ‘my’ is major. There is no there there. We are all implicated and responsible and sometimes the problem ourselves.
If it's crime or wickedness that’s speaking in the heart then it is every heart, and every set of eyes, that sometimes looks away from the good and prefers to take the path that leads to harm and hurting.
Late night thoughts become the brooding that then breeds the bad behavior we will eventually regret.
The poetry continues to delve deep into these existential explorations of how our lives are at the center of what’s wrong and what can be repaired in the world. What can each of us commit to, in bed, on the road, in every interaction, to pause our pain-infused problems and commit to kinder, calmer, better and less harmful ways? Perhaps it begins with how we go to bed, let go of anger, and opt into kindness instead.
Image: The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin, 1940
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