Fear is a big factor in how we do or don’t show up for life. When real danger is part of our daily reality we cultivate ways with which to be alert, face the fears and seek whatever helps us to make it through.
But how deep is the impact of these fears, some primal, some imaginary, some very real - on our inner lives? What does it mean for individuals or nations to live with phobias of real or made up enemies and causes for concern? Is there a way in which these fears can also help us be better at being alive, closer to the core of it all?
This Pslam begins with a quasi historical allusion to what once was a civil war in Israel -- David, from the tribe of Judah, became king only after the fight against the first king - Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin. What exactly happened there is not fully known but the fighting between these two leaders and the tribal legacies they represent is well documented in the Books of Samuel and Kings. It’s possible that today’s chapter begins with a veiled allusion to David’s predecessor - who was also his father-in-law, and friend turned into enemy:
שִׁגָּי֗וֹן לְדָ֫וִ֥ד אֲשֶׁר־שָׁ֥ר לַֽיהֹוָ֑ה עַל־דִּבְרֵי־כ֝֗וּשׁ בֶּן־יְמִינִֽי׃
Shiggaion of David, which he sang to GOD, concerning Cush, a Benjaminite.
Ps 7:1
Nobody is clear on what ‘Shiggaion’ means - possibly a musical instruction or a ‘prayer indicating errors’, and it’s not quite clear who Cush is either. Some scholars suggest that it is either referencing Saul or one of his heroes with whom David had to fight as he struggled to become the next king.
But this is not just about possible history or forgotten battles, but about the human condition familiar to all.
This chapter is full of angst and fear, asking God for help and for revenge against the enemy.
The fear seeps in through every word - the imagery is that of beasts that may rip him apart unless protected and saved:
יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱ֭לֹהַי בְּךָ֣ חָסִ֑יתִי הוֹשִׁיעֵ֥נִי מִכׇּל־רֹ֝דְפַ֗י וְהַצִּילֵֽנִי׃ פֶּן־יִטְרֹ֣ף כְּאַרְיֵ֣ה נַפְשִׁ֑י פֹּ֝רֵ֗ק וְאֵ֣ין מַצִּֽיל׃
O my ETERNAL God, in You I seek refuge;
deliver me from all my pursuers and save me,
lest, like a lion, they tear me apart,
rending in pieces, and no one save me.”
This is the kind of fear that is the stuff of nightmares: Lions eating us alive with nobody to stop it. Lions are the symbol of Judea and so on some level this transcends the private horror to become the all too tragically familiar fear of violence and terror that the Jewish people - and so many other people — sadly continue to know.
But there is also something tender here, the fear is not just of the enemy - but of the intimacy of finding out way into the sacred - into reality of our fragility and our relationship with the source of all - what’s beyond our control, and beyond our fright.
Joy Ladin's Psalms is a stunning book of contemporary poetry, a product of the author’s “decades-long fascination with the biblical psalms, particularly the Davidic psalms, which portray the tempestuous, sometimes awful intimacy of the Divine-human relationship.”
In this poem, the lion is us, and the human is a rabbit, and the fear becomes a tangible, sensory invitation to feel - not to freeze -- perhaps to open oneself to feel anything at all?
“You scare me the way I scare the rabbit
In my path. I freeze,
Brown eye fixed on your approaching
shadow.
Sometimes you rip me to shreds,
Sometimes squeeze
Till my ribs crack, always
You watch me bleed and blossom
Curiously, from a distance,
As though I were a furry blur of terror
Frozen between surrender
And the urge to disappear
Into the undergrowth
Of forever. You’ll scare me
To one death or another
If you come closer.
I smell you on my clothes, my books,
The toys of my children scatter,
My two or three private parts
Devoted solely
To radiating pain, my organs
Of need and pleasure. Why do you bother
To provoke this terror
In something small and unimportant
That asks nothing
But to be allowed to vanish?
Why do you bother with us at all
When your being is bounded
By no conditions
But absolute freedom
And absolute distance
From the bits of bone and truth
That comes closer and closer to freezing
The closer we come
To you?”
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