“Each Human in their own narrow confines of life is like the worm burrowing within a bitter herb, ignorant of a better and greater world beyond their little restricted domain. A human being must broaden horizons to include the larger life, the infinite world around one, the world with which one must maintain relations.”
Aaron David Gordon was an early 20th century labor leader, thinker and Zionist (which may mean very different things for different people, back then and right now) for whom the return to the land was all about the return to the physical labor of the sacred dimension of cultivating all land. He was also a poet and one of his poems echoes the sentiments of today’s psalm, a poem that ponders the foundations of fear - and of faith.
Psalm 53 is almost identical to psalm 14 - with just one difference. In 14 the wicked ones ignore life’s large dimensions and the possible presence of the divine aspect, fearless in their abusive pursuit of power. The only thing that may change their minds is fear invoked by righteous people who will somehow wake them up. In today’s psalm it’s the same baseline mean motivation - but what may induce the fear and will to change is the terror of dire consequences.
The difference is about attitude - do we see and say ‘what is’ or do we focus on what is absent - and not part of the bigger picture. Do we focus on what is or on what isn’t.
The poet’s focus is on those deemed wicked, sometimes translated as ‘scoundrel’ or ‘fool’ but there is even more to look for here when it comes to the translation:
אָ֘מַ֤ר נָבָ֣ל בְּ֭לִבּוֹ אֵ֣ין אֱלֹהִ֑ים הִֽ֝שְׁחִ֗יתוּ וְהִֽתְעִ֥יבוּ עָ֝֗וֶל אֵ֣ין עֹֽשֵׂה־טֽוֹב׃
The wicked thinks,
“God does not care.”
Mortals’ wrongdoing is corrupt and loathsome;
no one does good.
Ps. 53:2
But there are other ways to translate what’s written here.
The JPS choice “God does not care” read the Hebrew ‘Ein Elohim” is the belief that there is a god but it is not a god that cares about what happens. But the Koren version prefers ‘there is no god’, while Stephen Mitchell’s choice is: “The ignorant say to themselves, “All things are accidental, there is no justice on earth.”
How we read the word ‘Ein’ which means ‘not’ makes a big difference. And it’s about how we deal with what is or isn’t apparent to us.
The same word repeats when the poet imagines the divine response, looking from above at the corrupt creation:
כֻּלּ֥וֹ סָג֮ יַחְדו נֶ֫אֱלָ֥חוּ אֵ֤ין עֹֽשֵׂה־ט֑וֹב אֵ֝֗ין גַּם־אֶחָֽד׃
Everyone is dross,
altogether foul;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
Ps 53:4
‘Not one’ who does good echoes the fool’s denial of existence. It’s the same ‘Ayin’
So what do we make of these nihilistic, negational approaches?
Ezra Butler helps to bring this perennial question of perspectives to our daily lives - how we each choose to be in the world. Do we choose to live our lives looking at what is not - or do we insist on looking for what is present - whatever goodness is apparent even if it feels like there is nothing t/here. It has to do with whether we live life with strict and firm certainties or whether we are open to the ambiguity that is part of the spice and mystery of life. It has to do with how we translate ‘Ayin’:
“When you live in a world of certainty, and “ein” only means “there isn’t”, the fool says “there is no God” and God says “there are no good people”.
When you live in a world of questioning and “ein” means “where is?”, even though others may call you a fool, you question, “where is God?” And God questions “where can I find the good people?”
Gordon responds to the psalms in one of his poem, a secular farmer dreaming of the day in which the love of land and love between people will be all that we celebrate, and all that there is of life:
“Each human needs to be new, every human - a new approach to the world, as they each one is the first Adam. With no new sky there is no new land; with no God, there is human in the image of God, there is no life in the image of God.”
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