Psalm 11:9
spinning your wheels
The wicked walk round about: according to thy highness, thou hast multiplied the children of men. (Psalm 11:9 DR)
Usually we find a certain catharsis when a story or book or whatever comes to a satisfying ending. This could be—in the case of stories—either good or bad, happy or sad, but as long as it brings it to a conclusion that wraps recapitulates the entirety of the preceding narrative or work, we deem it successful. There is little more frustrating than a work that “leaves you hanging” or, worse, completely botches the ending and thus taints all that came before.
As this Psalm concludes it can seem prima facie to end on a disjunctive note. For while the majority of the Psalm is framed in terms of a complaint, as it nears the end it feels like it is moving towards a resolution. But here in his final verse a seemingly unrelated and disconnected idea is set forth which seems on the surface level to hijack the arc and—for lack of a better term—end badly.
To compound matters, the subject matter itself is obscure and not immediately obvious in import. The Psalmist mentions that the wicked walk round about, and then in the poetic fashion of parallelism expands upon that thought in terms of God— according to His highness— multiplying the children of men. What exactly are we to make of this?
St. Augustine perceives the whole of the Psalm as bookending here with the opening inscription, which—to be fair—is often passed over as merely biographical information or other such items. However, the idea of the octave mentioned in the inscription finds it fulfillment here, and thus the Psalm is able to recapitulate the whole.
The octave, it will be remembered, is in St. Augustine’s thought, correlated with the idea of rest, especially the rest of God’s people in eternity, beholding the Beatific Vision. This is now contrasted with the previously mentioned generation (v. 8) the Lord will deliver the righteous from, those who hope in Him. But what does this deliverance consist of?
If the octave is the future rest, then the wicked who walk “round about” those who will not enter into that rest. One is reminded of Psalm 94 which is the Invitatory for the Divine Office. As the Psalm concludes we read:
Today if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts: As in the provocation, according to the day of temptation in the wilderness: where your fathers tempted me, they proved me, and saw my works. Forty years long was I offended with that generation, and I said: These always err in heart. And these men have not known my ways: so I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest. (Psalm 94:8-11 DR)
Those who did not enter into God’s rest (the octave) are those who rejected God and displeased him, and their punishment was to literally walk around the desert for forty years, never entering into the promised rest. St. Augustine perhaps has this idea in the background as he explains this verse:
“The ungodly walk in a circle round about” [Psalm 11:8]: that is, in the desire of things temporal, which revolves as a wheel in a repeated circle of seven days; and therefore they do not arrive at the eighth, that is, at eternity, for which this Psalm is entitled. So too it is said by Solomon, “For the wise king is the winnower of the ungodly, and he brings on them the wheel of the wicked.” (St. Augustine, Exposition on the Psalms, 11, 9.)
The idea here is that the ungodly and wicked exist in a purely temporal sense; they go from day to day and week to week, wandering the desert of this life, as it were, never entering into the octave of rest. Their focus in on this world and its allures, and thus they can never lift their eyes to heaven so as to obtain the Beatific Vision.
The deliverance that the righteous receive from “this generation” is that they are no longer chained to earth, locked into the temporal cycle that spins like a wheel. Most ancient cultures viewed time and history as a cyclical wheel that spun round about for eternity, with all of humanity forever caught up in this never-ending cycle. Fate is a cruel task-master from which there is no escape.
In his wisdom and “highness” God has made humanity for Himself, to love and adore him for eternity. This “multiplication” of the children of men is not a scourge to the righteous, but rather the bountiful gift of God to His creation. There is a certain indetermination here (from the human perspective), in that this multiplication can be towards the octave of rest or the cyclical prison wheel of this world.
Like those who were tested in the desert, there is for all of us a choice to harden our hearts or to harken to His voice. After all, the Psalmist in verse 7 says that the words of the Lord are pure words, and thus the one who harkens to them will have eternal riches.
The conclusion of the Psalm is thus a microcosm of the choice that lies before each of us; whether we will harken to the voice of God and enter in the octave of His rest or harden or hearts and “walk round about” without entering into his rest:
For there is in temporal things too a multiplication, which turns away from the unity of God. Hence “the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthy tabernacle presses down the mind that muses upon many things.” [Wisdom 9:15] But the righteous are multiplied “after the height of God,” when “they shall go from strength to strength.” (ibid.)
For this animation I wanted to try out a fun plugin called Aura which is useful for creating repeating patterns of waves. I believe it is built somewhat on the old Radio effect in After Effects, but obviously has way more features.
I wanted to create the feeling of a never ending cycle or tunnel of waves, and this plugin was perfect for that. I won’t bore you with the parameters I used, but it didn’t take long to set up the system and get a look I liked. After that it was basically just adding some color correction and adding some text. Pretty simple stuff really, but still fun.
Enjoy.
The wicked walk round about: according to thy highness, thou hast multiplied the children of men.
(Psalm 11:9 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: