Psalm 4:8
ok, it's a little corny...
By the fruit of their corn, their wine and oil, they are multiplied. (Psalm 4:8 DR)
Our culture is obsessed with stuff and the attaining of stuff. It’s usually not even because the stuff is even that great (since most is cheap nonsense) but rather just attaining stuff for the sake of attainment.
I’m reminded of a scene from Deep Space Nine where Quark and Odo are talking about acquisition, and Odo wryly notes how humanoids relate to possessions:
I'll never understand this obsession with accumulating material wealth. You spend your entire life plotting and scheming to acquire more and more possessions until your living areas are bursting with useless junk. Then you die, your relatives sell everything, and start the cycle all over again. (Odo, Q-Less, DS9 1:6)
Quark’s retort is: Isn't there anything you...desire? He finally concludes by offering Odo a latinum plated bucket to sleep in.
In this verse the meaning could go a couple ways. The “good things” from the earlier verse could be referred to here, as in they are evidence in the fruit of the corn, wine, oil, etc.; that is, God’s blessings and the reward for hope and trust in the Lord are evidenced in this prosperity.
St. Augustine takes a different approach, understanding these things as being the fruit of the interlocutor’s question about who shewheth them good things. He sees them as fixated primarily on external, material goods, and in that sense they seem in this life to receive what they desire. Often they find success and have their external goods multiplied.
In many places in the Psalms this seeming injustice is noted:
But my feet were almost moved; my steps had well nigh slipped. Because I had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners… Behold these are sinners; and yet abounding in the world they have obtained riches. And I said: Then have I in vain justified my heart, and washed my hands among the innocent. (Psalm 72:2-3, 12-13 DR)
But St. Augustine observes:
For multiplication does not always betoken plentifulness, and not, generally, scantiness: when the soul, given up to temporal pleasures, burns ever with desire, and cannot be satisfied; and, distracted with manifold and anxious thought, is not permitted to see the simple good. (St. Augustine)
What we see as blessings in the form of material prosperity or the increase of goods can actually betoken a spiritual emptiness, as it is easy to allow the external goods of this life to obscure our vision of God. Jesus’ parable of the rich man with the barns comes to mind, as well as the many injunctions against the love of wealth and money which form a difficult barrier to attaining the kingdom of heaven.
The heart which truly trusts in the Lord is not concerned with the acquisition of material wealth as an end unto itself, but desires purity and simplicity of heart; as our Lord said, the pure in heart will see God.
For this animation I left it ambivalent, since the verse can (I believe) be interpreted legitimately in various ways. However, I really wanted to capture the idea of multiplication, and in light of St. Augustine’s interpretation I thought that making it feel sort of overwhelming was a fitting feel for the piece.
I used a couple images, one of corn and one of candy corn, because, hey, why not! The animation is pretty straightforward; I created precomps of each image with enough padding within the precomp to have the spacing I wanted, where the images wouldn’t overlap but still feel like they might. I then applied the Motion Tile effect to each and modified the Center Position parameter.
The most difficult part was getting the padding of the precomps right, since the Motion Tile effect is based on the pixel size of the layer, but once I got that figured out it was merely a matter of getting the timing down and making sure the position looped properly.
I don’t often use drop shadows, but I applied that within a Layer Style just so to the overlapping would feel like it had more depth to it.
Enjoy.
By the fruit of their corn, their wine and oil, they are multiplied. (Psalm 4:8 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: