Psalm 67:3

how to melt mountains

As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. (Psalm 67:3 DR)

As the Psalmist considers the wicked who are scattered by the power of God, he recognizes an important point that might get lost in the seeming repetition of the previous thought. Sometimes the parallelism of the Psalms is found within the expansion of thought from one half of a verse to the other, but often also from verse to verse (at least as it is rendered in versed editions of the text).

For after describing their scattering, he goes into more detail about that dispersion, comparing them to smoke that vanishes or wax that melts away, both powerful images in and of themselves. For whereas in the former verse he describes how they are scattered (i.e., the power of God arising), here he describes why. Thus these two verses are intimately linked.

The conceit we often have as humans is that we have some mastery of our lives and of this world, and this can actually go both ways. For the prideful and ambitious they can think themselves master of their own destinies, whereas from the side of the persecuted they can imagine these same persons as untouchable and unopposable. This forms the basis of the Psalmist’s lament in Psalm 72:

For there is no regard to their death, nor is there strength in their stripes. They are not in the labour of men: neither shall they be scourged like other men. (Psalm 72:4-5 DR)

He sees them as having their own way in the world without consequences, and thus his heart faints in despair because they prosper while the wicked seem to prosper. The iniquitous in this view can seem larger than life, as if nothing can stop them.

But in Psalm 67 the Psalmist takes a different view, for instead of framing the power of the wicked in comparison to other men (as in Psalm 72), he frames it in comparison to God’s power. But he doesn’t merely consider God’s power abstractly, but specifically in reference to how God has acted in history on behalf of his people, thus linking it to his own time and circumstances.

Seen in this light, the power of the wicked is as smoke that wisps away or soft and melting wax; that is, of no concern whatsoever:

The celerity and facility with which the presence of Christ scatters sinners could not be more expressively conveyed than by comparing them to the smoke that is dispelled by the wind, or wax that melts before the fire, and is consumed by it. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 67, 2.)

But again, he considers this not abstractly, but concretely— this occurs at the presence of God. The implication thus is that the righteous have nothing to fear from the wicked when they draw near to God’s presence, for even “the mountains melted like wax, at the presence of the Lord” (Psalm 96:5 DR).

The Psalmist in a prophetic manner thus anticipates the sacraments, especially that of the Eucharist, which is the fullness of the presence of God, being the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. To draw near to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is to draw near to the presence of God in a total way, not merely mystically or spiritually. This union of God with man in the sacrament is a forestate of the Beatific Vision, where the power of evil and sin is no more. This is why the Psalmist can confidently assert:

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 26:1 DR)

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This animation was pretty simple, mostly because I wanted some wispiness like smoke vanishing away. I decided to use a script called Nebulosity which creates volumetric Fractal Noise patterns. I mostly just played around with the settings until I got something I liked and then added in the text. I also applied Red Giant’s HeatWave to get some heat distortion, which is why is blurs in and out at certain points.

Enjoy.

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View a higher quality version of this gif here: