Road rage is just one of our human ways of losing our cool in public context and pouring out our wrath, often in the pseduo-privacy of our cars, upon another driver whether they or we are wrong or right. I remember my late father’s juicy Polish coming out as he drove us around and was often furious at other drivers. I later learned that those curses that he likely picked up as a child were not to be repeated in polite Polish company.
Road rage is hardly the only setting for verbal abuse. In our current culture, and during these difficult days of ongoing war, it’s going around a lot, with bitter blame and harsh hateful speech that is spilling out all over. The power of words is astounding and thus is the public fear of them. Perhaps that’s why the poet of today’s Psalm devotes so many verses to blunt words of rage and curses against his people’s enemies. In the war of words - Psalm 109 is famous for containing an arsenal of curses born of rage and desire for revenge.
It’s painful to be reading these ancient words today, mid-war, and hard to hold in one’s heart this history of violence. Fact of fiction, the desire for survival and the demise of one’s enemies is found in every cultural domain and national epics and poems, often as the creative tools of the oppressed and dispossessed - ways to handle defeat and disgrace, while dreaming of better days. But what happens when these sentiments, brewing over centuries, become part of the nation’s nature? What do we do with this inherited rage when the nation is again at war?
Can we find some sort of hidden blessing inside this narrative of crushing curses on the ones we are told to hate and annihilate?
Psalm 109 takes verbal violence against the nation’s enemies into another level - whatever the historical background for this poet’s litany of fury - it comes out with every possible curse against the enemy. And there’s one root that keeps showing up - the word that we know to be Satanic - the definition of Satan itself.
We’ve met Satan below the bible belt before -- the concept shows up as a word that means ‘obstruction’ and only later would it evolve to be the type of demonic devil or lord of evil that we think of today.
In this psalm, among the curses hurled at the other side, the satanic shows up in multiple ways, and most intriguing - as a verb.
The chapter, composed by David, begins with the poet’s complaint against the other people who hate and humiliate him. Why do they hate me so much? He wonders, with a very pious tone:
תַּֽחַת־אַהֲבָתִ֥י יִשְׂטְנ֗וּנִי וַאֲנִ֥י תְפִלָּֽה׃ וַיָּ֘שִׂ֤ימוּ עָלַ֣י רָ֭עָה תַּ֣חַת טוֹבָ֑ה וְ֝שִׂנְאָ֗ה תַּ֣חַת אַהֲבָתִֽי׃ הַפְקֵ֣ד עָלָ֣יו רָשָׁ֑ע וְ֝שָׂטָ֗ן יַעֲמֹ֥ד עַל־יְמִינֽוֹ׃
They answer my love with accusation
and I am but a prayer.
They repay me with evil for good,
with hatred for my love.
Appoint someone wicked over him;
may an accuser stand at his right side;
Ps. 109 4-6
The Satanic shows up twice in these verses, in different grammatical contexts. The first is a verb -- ‘yistenuni’ is translated here as “They answer my love with accusation” - or in other words - they hate me. The Satanic here is a feeling of animosity, perhaps surprising to David who claims he’s done no wrong to deserve such satanic dismay. We know enough of his political history and military campaigns to know otherwise - but let’s not go there.
The second Satanic mention is ‘an accuser’ that David prays will stand at his enemy’s side, supposedly to dominate and defeat. Here Satan is not a verb but an idea, a malevolent presence that is closer to what we imagine this mythic thing to be today.
Satan shows up a few times in this verbally violent chapter.
Robert Alter helps us understand a little better how to make sense of it:
“The term “accuser”, satan, which is used as a verb in verse 4 and recurs in the plural at the end of this speech in verse 20 and again in verse 29, has a juridical connotation, as it does in the frame story of Job, where it designates Job’s accuser or adversary in the celestial assembly.”
Alter helps us unpack this term not as pure evil but as a term to be used in legal proceedings - a definition that designates the enemy of justice and the norm.
The Talmudic sages saw this Satan as something much less legal and much closer to home. In Tractate Baba Batra, Resh Lakish is quotes as teaching:
“Satan, the evil inclination, and the Angel of Death are one.”
Satan, through his eyes, is not an other or a foreign enemy no matter how vile. It’s the same as the death drive that is what we all one day be subjected to, and it’s the force within each one of us that defines decent and good behavior, leading us astray in ways that often harm ourselves and others.
Satanic, through this reading, is not the rage at someone else but an inner conversation at the forces of fury that are within each one of us - as individuals and nations.
During these days of Elul, it’s helpful to take stock of the ways we use words to blame or name each other, implicate and deprecate the satanic that is never us. Road rage or cyber bullying, political protests and social criticism can get ugly and at times should be passionate and powerful -- but as long as remember that the urge to blame the other is as good as it’s on to us to know that we can carry as much blame. Each one of us can also contain the satanic - and has the power to take responsibility for that, with more kindness, humility, and patience -less hatred that leads to more loss.
David prays here that Satan stands at the right side of his enemy - an intriguing concept that predates our sense of right and wrong and left or right but also has some very ancient cultural connotation. Who’s on the right side of history and who gets to sit on the right side of the one in charge? That’s happening in tomorrow’s chapter, once famous for being a primary prooftext of bitter disputes between Jews and Christians.
It’s helpful to let out steam and let a juicy curse out at times. I learned that from my father.
But it’s also on us to learn from our tradition how to channel our rage in ways that will not implicate others as demonic or satanic when it’s on us to own up to our own complexities, as angels and demons - combined. Using our words wisely and with a bit more awareness will go a long way as we reflect on ways with which we are complicit with the worlds’ problems - and what can we each do to right the wrongs.
The words quoted earlier from this chapter echo for me here - ‘I am a prayer’ - what if every word we speak or write was not with with vengeful animosity but as yearning for reversal of the harm?
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I am reminded, as I read this, of the note I wrote to myself earlier this year when I was in the midst of an interpersonal conflict: Communicate Toward Connection. The reminder to myself showed me how easily I swerved toward blame and therefore disconnection. That friendship eventually did disconnect but it was because of a divergence of values, not because I had burned it down in angry haste, which makes its end much easier to accept.