In the last two episodes we looked at Gail O’Day’s piece entitled “Surprised by Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman” that appeared in the volume A Feminist Companion to Matthew.1 (If you’ve missed those two episodes, pause this one and check them out. They provide context for this one.) Last time we ended by talking about lament psalms and O’Day’s position that, at least in terms of form, this pericope in Matthew is best explained by a comparison with psalms of lament known from the Hebrew Bible. Toward the end of part three of her piece, O’Day briefly goes over Psalm 13 which, to quote her, is “a succinct example of the basic lament form” (p. 120).2 Recall that, as we saw in the previous episode, she laid out the features that tend to make up a lament: (1) an address to God; (2) the registering of a complaint; (3) a petition for God to act; (4) giving of motivations for why the deity would want to act; (5) imprecations. In her consideration of Psalm 13, she notes the presence of these features.
First, there is the address to the deity in vv. 1-2: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” (NRSV)3 The repetition of the question “How long?” (ʿad-ʾānâ in Hebrew) gives a sense of prolonged despair to the psalmists plight. Commenting on v. 2, Robert Alter writes,
The cry of desperation – “How long?” – from a person whose anguish seems protracted indefinitely is a recurrent feature of the psalms of supplication. The apparent logical contradiction between ‘how long’ and “always” [cf. “forever,” NRSV] actually makes psychological sense: from the speaker’s tormented perspective, it feels as though God is forgetting him forever.4
That feeling, however, is not itself eternal and absolute. Walter Brueggemann and William Bellinger note in their commentary on vv. 1-2, “The phrase ‘how long’ is not a request for data concerning a timetable; it is a statement of impatient hope. Not only is the present circumstance unbearable; it cannot be endured, and it need not last if YHWH will simply pay attention.”5
Next, following O’Day, we find in v. 3 the petition: “Consider and answer me, O LORD my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death.” At this juncture you might be thinking, “If death gives relief and the petitioner will be with his god in the afterlife, why not just welcome it?” That’s because there was no developed idea of the afterlife in ancient Israelite religion. In his book Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife, Bart Ehrman observes that ancient Israelites didn’t believe in a “soul” that survives postmortem. There was no heaven or hell to which the righteous or unrighteous respectively would go to once they died. Instead, biblical authors spoke of a place known as Sheol. For example, when Job speaks in Job 17:7-10 of his mortality, he opines, “As the cloud fades and vanishes, so those who go down to Sheol do not come up; they return no more to their houses, nor do their places know them any more” (vv. 9-10). The language is one of finality. “Sheol was the realm of death, to be avoided as long as possible,” writes Ehrman. “It is not that it was boring; it was that it was a complete diminution of life, to the point of virtual nonexistence. And if one does not exist, one cannot enjoy the good things in life.”6 Thus, while death might bring relief for the psalmist, it would not be because he would be in God’s presence. Instead, he would just be dead forever.
In v. 4, O’Day notes, there is a double motivation, the third feature of psalms of lament: “My enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed’; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.” She writes, “The psalmist knows himself to be in constant pain and sorrow, threatened by enemies, absented from God’s presence, standing on the verge of death” (p. 120). But what motivation does this actually provide the deity? Brueggemann and Bellinger are helpful here: “[T]here is as much at stake for YHWH as there is for the petitioner. If the enemy can ‘prevail’ (see also Ps 12:4), this will represent a defeat for YHWH who has not ‘prevailed.’ Thus YHWH must act for the speaker in order to exhibit YHWH’s own sovereign power evidenced in YHWH’s capacity to sustain the life of the petitioner.”7
With v. 5, “the mood of the psalm changes,” in the words of O’Day. “But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” Despair momentarily gives way to praise. Perhaps it is because the psalmist’s prayers have been answered, as O’Day suggests. Or perhaps it is a sign of newfound resilience.8 Whatever the case may be, the psalmist offers praise to Yahweh.
At the end of part 3, O’Day draws attention to the candidness of psalms of lament like this one: “What is most astonishing about Israel’s lament psalms is that the candid speaking of pain in the liturgy actually worked: the transformation of pain and the meeting of need did indeed take place. Reality does seem to change for the petitioner from the beginning of the psalm to the end. Israel boldly, often brazenly, placed its claims before God, and God listened and responded” (p. 121). The responsiveness of the deity was evidence of his vitality and virility. Should he choose to act, nothing could stand in his way.
But what bearing does all of this have on the Canaanite woman’s interaction with Jesus from Matthew 15? I’m sure some of you are already connecting the dots, a task which we will undertake together in the next episode.
That’s all the time we’ve got this week. See you next time! And remember, in the words of Richard Elliot Friedman, “One does not need to deny what is troubling [about the Bible] in order to pay respect to what is heartening.” Thanks for stopping by.
- Gail R. O’Day, “Surprised by Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman,” in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 114-125. ↩︎
- See also Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger, Jr., Psalms, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 75. They write, “Of all the many psalms of lament and complaint, Psalm 13 is the clearest, purest example of the genre.” ↩︎
- Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of biblical texts are from the New Revised Standard Version. ↩︎
- Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 2019), 3:47-48. ↩︎
- Brueggemann and Bellinger, Psalms, 76. ↩︎
- Bart D. Ehrman, Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 86. ↩︎
- Brueggemann and Bellinger, Psalms, 76-77. ↩︎
- Cf. Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, Kregel Exegetical Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, Inc., 2011), 1:368. ↩︎
The Amateur Exegete 