Ritual Spots in Time

April 23, 2008

Reading through the Psalms in Robert Alter's recent translation I am reminded how much I love this biblical material. I was particularly taken by Psalm 73, which begins with a complaint about the wickeds' well-being:

"For they are free of the fetters of death,
    and their body is healthy.
Of the torment of man they have no part,
    and they know not human afflictions."
Thus haughtiness is their necklace,
    outrage, their garment, bedecks them.
Fat bulges round their eyes,
    imaginings spill from their heart. [vs. 4-7]

In a book which begins with assurance that God watches over the way of the righteous and that the way of the wicked will perish, it is a problem to see an evil person prospering.

Thinking too much about a prospering evil person could give one a crisis of some sort.. and that seems to be where this singer is heading until we reach the turning point of the Psalm:

Till I came to the sanctuaries of God,
    understood what would be their end. [vs. 17]

That verse encapsulates some kind of experience.. and it is hard not to ask: what happened to the singer in the sanctuaries of God? In the absence of specificity we should probably fill in all the ordinary things that took place: sacrifices, hymns, the priests going about their business, men and women supplicating God. In that mix something caught up our singer and made the world outside seem small and forgotten.

The singer then snaps back to the theme, but now he is able to see clearly what will happen to the wicked who are prospering:

How they come to ruin in a moment,
    swept away, taken in terrors! [vs. 19]

In this new vision the world is set right.. even if "out there" this is not actually true yet, and the wicked continue piling up wealth.

It occurred to me that this Psalm presents a wonderful picture of what human beings get out of any cultural text. Here we need to switch over to what Clifford Geertz wrote about cockfights in Bali:

Like any art form—for that, finally, is what we are dealing with—the cockfight renders ordinary, everyday experience comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have had their practical consequences removed and been reduced... to the level of sheer appearances, where their meaning can be more powerfully articulated and more exactly perceived. [pg. 443]

It may seem strange to characterize cockfights as an art form, but Geertz explicitly compares them to the experience of King Lear or Crime and Punishment. That is to say, these are each cultural texts that bring about a higher level of comprehension in the one who experiences it. With a great text we feel within ourselves more than enjoyment.. rather something more akin to a deep understanding. In symbolic form the lines and distinctions of our lives rise up before our eyes.. and we feel a sense of peace as these essential values are represented. (I wonder if this is what Aristotle was getting with katharsis?)

The singer of Psalm 73 alludes to the experience of a cultural form: worship in the temple. We don't get an exact description of what was experienced, but we see the result. The singer has had his vision of life renewed along the lines of the ethical ideal. The righteous will be rewarded while the wicked will be punished. This renewal comes with a certain feeling as well..

In this Psalm's ethical crisis, renewal, and reaffirmation of the ethical ideal we see mapped out the human response to central cultural texts. We may look to other sources to get the specifics of temple worship, but we could have no better insight into the way ritual forms reaffirmed the ethical ideal of ancient worshippers.