They have not called upon God: there have they trembled for fear, where there was no fear. For God hath scattered the bones of them that please men: they have been confounded, because God hath despised them. (Psalm 52:6 DR)
The vexation of the good at the hands of the wicked is a common theme in the Psalms, and here the workers of iniquity from the previous passage eat up my people as they eat bread. Their wickedness is wanton and gluttonous, directed against the good and at their expense. The wicked seem to prosper in this life, as their lack of scruples in acquiring power and wealth and glory allows them to accumulate these things more readily. The Psalmist elsewhere gives classic voice to this conundrum:
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)
The hope of the wicked, however, is in this life and its riches and goodies, and it is the fact that they often attain these things now that can give the impression of their blessedness, or at least of an indifference of God’s justice towards them. After all, if it is the things of this world that they crave, and it is those very things that they receive, then would not that be them getting what they want, and thus attaining to some form of blessedness?
In response to the wicked who at up his people as they eat bread, the Psalmist now counters the purported blessedness of the wicked. Their evil finds its primordial movement in the first clause, which is that they have not called upon God. The things which they desire arise from their own lusts and concupiscences, and thus they seek these things with all their hearts. They have oriented and framed their existence around the attainment of pleasures and all that this world has to offer, opting for the satiation of the appetites here to blessedness with God in eternity. In fact, that they have not called upon God indicates that God does not enter into the calculation for them—so to speak—we are back at the opening verse in which they live as if they say in their hearts, there is no God.
St. Augustine notes an even deeper depravity at work here, in that there are many who will pay lip service to God and even openly profess Him, but then will call upon the Lord so as to satisfy their own lusts, rather than seeking His will:
On God they have not called. He is comforting the man that groans, and chiefly by an admonition, lest by imitating evil men, who ofttimes prosper, they delight in evil doing. There is kept for you that which to you has been promised: their hope is present, yours is future, but theirs is transient, yours sure; theirs false, yours true. For they upon God have not called. Do not daily such men ask of God? They do not ask of God. Give heed, if I am able to say this by the aid of God Himself. God gratuitously will have Himself to be worshipped, gratuitously will have Himself to be loved, that is chastely to be loved; not Himself to be loved for the reason that He gives anything besides Himself, but because He gives Himself. He then that calls upon God in order that He may be made rich, on God does not call: for upon that He calls which to himself he wills to come. For what is to call upon but to call unto himself? Unto himself therefore to call, is the meaning to call upon. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 52, 8.)
There is yet again the inversion of the Lord’s Prayer here, for whereas with humble heart we ask God for our daily bread out of His goodness and for His sake, here the wicked ask of God for things that they may spend them on their own lusts, as St. James states:
You covet, and have not: you kill and envy and cannot obtain. You contend and war, and you have not: because you ask not. You ask and receive not: because you ask amiss, that you may consume it on your concupiscences. (James 4:2-3 DR)
As both St. Augustine and St. James note, to not call upon the Lord is not only a matter of neglecting to pray, but also praying without a heart humbled for the Lord and docile to his will. There becomes no practical difference between the man who says in his heart there is no God and thus does not pray, and the man who prays that he may receive according to his lusts, for in his heart he too only desires the thing he wishes to receive, and in this manner also says in his heart there is no God. If we pray to God for the things we desire so that we may have them outside of His will or because we think He is some cosmic vending machine, what we really desire are those things, rather than God:
For when thou sayest, O God, give me riches: thou wilt not that God Himself should come to thee, but that riches should come to thee. But if upon God thou wast calling, to thee He would Himself come, Himself would be thy riches. But now thou wouldst have coffer full, and conscience void: God filleth not coffer but breast. What do outward riches profit thee, if inward need presseth thee? Therefore those men that for the sake of worldly comforts, that for the sake of earthly things, that for the sake of present life and earthly felicity, call upon God, do not call upon God. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 52, 8.)
The seeming blessedness of the wicked is shown to be empty and hollow in the following clause, in that they have trembled for fear, where there was no fear. Their fear lies entirely in the locus of their hope, which is in the fading and transient things of this world. It is the ephemeral nature of riches and wealth and glory and power that makes the wicked fear, for even though they place their hope and happiness in these things, they know within themselves that they are not solid hopes. Wealth can be lost, power can be overthrown, health can be taken at a moment’s notice. They thus strive to mitigate these losses, and necessarily perceive everything as a danger to them. Since they place all their hopes in these things, life becomes a zero-sum game in which everyone else and every circumstance is a potential threat to what they hold so dear. As the Scripture says:
Sleep is sweet to a labouring man, whether he eat little or much: but the fulness of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. There is also another grievous evil, which I have seen under the sun: riches kept to the hurt of the owner. For they are lost with very great affliction: he hath begotten a son, who shall be in extremity of want. (Ecclesiastes 5:11-13 DR)
St. Augustine draws this out with his usual insight:
For is there fear, if a man lose riches? There is no fear there, and yet in that case men are afraid. But if a man lose wisdom, truly there is fear, and in that case he is not afraid. Hear, distinguish, understand such men: there is entrusted to some one or other a bag, he will not give it back, for his own he counteth it, he thinketh not that it can be demanded back, already for his own he will keep it, he refuseth to give it back. Let him observe what he feareth to lose, and what he will not have: into jeopardy come money and fidelity; whichever is more valuable, therein the heavier loss is to be feared. But thou, that thou mayest keep gold, dost lose fidelity: with heavier loss thou art stricken, and thou of thy gain hast rejoiced: in that case thou hast feared with fear, where there was no fear: give back the money: too little I say, “give back;” lose the money, lest thou lose fidelity. Thou hast feared to give back money, and hast willed to lose fidelity. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 52, 8.)
In the moment the riches (or whatever thing it is) seems to be so paramount, and its loss so great, that the very thought of losing what one at one time did not have seems overwhelming. Yet the deception is in the possession, as if the greatest evil is to not possess that thing. For the moment one no longer possesses that thing, there is no more fear of losing it. But since the things of this world are transitory anyway, they will inevitably be lost, and thus any fear of losing them is a fear where there is no fear. Much weightier, St. Augustine says, is to lose virtues like fidelity, for these are ways in which we imitate God and thus are not things of this world that will inevitably fade away. The things of this world we can choose to hope in and possess, but we ultimately have no means of possessing them forever. Virtue, on the other hand, cannot simply be taken from us by machinations of men or circumstances or even death; we have to choose to abandon virtues like fidelity in favor of the lesser goods of this world. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the Scriptures say, which has as a corollary that such a fear of God is that we stray from His will and fidelity to His law, rather than losing the baubles of this life that come and go:
The Martyrs took not away property of other persons, but even their own they despised that they might not lose fidelity: and it was too little to lose money, when they were proscribed; they took also their life when they suffered: they lost life, in order that unto everlasting life they might find it. [Matthew 10:39] Therefore there they feared, where they ought to have been afraid. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 52, 8.)
In the example of the Martyrs we see those who have their fear well placed; that is, they fear losing fidelity to God far more they fear losing the pleasures of this world or even their own lives. There is an irony in that this proper fear is really no fear at all, because fidelity to God can never be disappointed and has stored up for it an exceedingly great reward. But when we fear the loss of the things of this world, we turn our fears into unfounded fears where there is no fear.
The end result is described by the remainder of this passage in which God hath scattered the bones of them that please men. Bones are often symbolic of strength and stability, and thus when men place their hopes and trust in the bones of this world such as that please men and men seek after, they inevitably have those bones scattered by God, either by means of other men who are seeking after those very same things and will happily take them, or in the final judgment when the works of men will be brought to light and judged. God does not despise them absolutely, as if He has created them for being confounded or scattered. Rather, they are confounded because within their hearts they have said there is no God and live accordingly. They despise the goodness and graciousness of God that seeks their repentance, and all the gain that they may accumulate in this world will afford them nothing in the day of judgment. In terms of the manifest judgment and the hidden judgment, they can easily take the lack of punishment here and now and the seeming blessings they acquire here and now as evidence of God’s approval of their ways or at least disinterest. But the fear they have is misplaced. They fear where there is no fear in that they fear the loss of the things of this world, when rather they should fear that their purported blessedness in this life is hardening their heart towards God such that they may never repent. In other words, they should fear to presume upon God’s mercy and longsuffering which leads to repentance, lest they only ever please men rather than pleasing God with a contrite and humble heart.
I found this figure from an old Beatus Apocalypse and isolated in Photoshop. In After Effects I shrunk it down quite a bit and precomped it, and then made it into an sprite for a Trapcode Particular Emitter. I offset the rotation and such to creates this falling stream of figures.
In the background I used Stretch on an abstract image and then applied a bunch of glitch and halftone effects to create a somewhat unsettling look.
Enjoy.
They have not called upon God: there have they trembled for fear, where there was no fear. For God hath scattered the bones of them that please men: they have been confounded, because God hath despised them.
(Psalm 52:6 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here:
