Psalm 76:4
virtuous babbling
I remembered God, and was delighted, and was exercised, and my spirit swooned away. (Psalm 76:4 DR)
In the previous passage the Psalmist relates how his soul refused to be comforted by the things of this life, which is a perpetual source of tribulation. He now moves to complete that thought with the realization that God is his delight.
There is a dramatic flair to this passage in that he begins by stating that he remembered God, as if he had forgotten. But why should this be so? Precisely because the tribulations of this life can be so great that they occlude our vision of God. We can become so wrapped up in the suffering we experience and the seeming lack of justice around us that God becomes a distant memory. In the obscurity of the night of this life and this world it can be hard to have clear vision of God’s ways, and the temptation to be deceived into placing our hopes on what we can see is always present.
It is thus that the Psalmist seemingly remembers God, like waking out of a stupor. We have all had the experience of a thought which enters our minds unaware, and then we suddenly come to ourselves and realize what we are thinking about. It’s in that moment of decision that forms the crux of this passage, where he suddenly remembers God and finds his delight there. All the vexation which surround him seem to suddenly flee away as if awaking out of dream, and the catharsis of this coming to himself brings about the swooning of his spirit.
For the righteous man, the delights of this world are like a fleeting mist, a dream which fades immediately upon awaking. And just like the memory which seems so clear while asleep slips away upon waking, so the pleasures of this life which seem so delightful quickly pale in comparison with the joys of God’s presence and the promises of future communion with him:
Here is the great secret of God’s wisdom, that in this our exile, the recollection of God delights us more than the carnal pleasures around us; and, if the recollection of God delights us so much in the midst of the carnal allurements about us, how much more still not the actual presence of God delights us, when those allurements of the flesh shall have passed away? “And was exercised, and my spirit passed away.” After calling God to mind, and the pleasure I derived from doing so, I turned to meditation, and talked over with myself the miseries of our exile, and the joys of heaven until I fainted away in my desires for it. (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 76, 3.)
In the Latin version of the Psalms which St. Augustine read the term babbled is used for exercised, which he sees as a fitting response to the joys of God that the Psalmist discovers:
In that same comfort being made mindful of God, I have been delighted, and have “babbled.” What is, “I have babbled?” I have rejoiced, I have exulted in speaking. For babblers they are properly called, that by the common people are named talkative, who at the approach of joy are neither able nor willing to be silent. This man has become such an one. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 76, 5.)
There is an interesting juxtaposition here, for what is normally taken as a vice—that is, babbling—is instead turned into a virtue, for its object is worthy of the expression that babbling takes. The delights that the righteous find in God are so overwhelming and all-encompassing that they cannot but express their joy.
As Jesus is entering Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week the crowds are acclaiming him king and shouting Messianic proclamations such as Hosanna and blessed be the king who cometh in the name of the Lord. Some of the religious leaders rebuked the crowds and his disciples for these statements, reasoning that such would be inappropriate for an itinerant preacher from Nazareth. In St. Matthew’s Gospel Jesus’ response is thus:
Yea, have you never read: Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise? (Matthew 21:16 DR)
There is a certain fittingness here with the Psalm, for infants who are not yet able to speak still form sounds as they are learning, and often baby talk sounds to adults like babbling. Yet Jesus in quoting this Psalm seems to provide the prophetic backdrop for the Psalmist’s words, in that he is the expectation that the Psalms look forward to, and thus the crowds who in this moment recognize him as the fulfillment of the scriptures cannot but help exult in their God, as the Psalmist did long before.
I didn’t have a clear direction in mind or concept for this animation, but I was playing around with some other projects and thought it might be interesting to make it a bit more text focused. I thought it’d be apropos to have the first set of words propel the second, as if moving from one thought to the next.
I created some precomps with boxes and text and made them into 3D layers so I could adjust the X rotation. I did a bit of anticipation on the front end of the rotation and then a bit of overshoot at the end to give the boxes a feeling of weight and thus give the rotation a bit of visual heft.
This technique is pretty simple to pull off; I simply parented each row’s second word state to the previous word state and then animated the first word state rotation. At the final point of rotation before one state switches to the next I simply trimmed the layers appropriately to give the illusion of one flipping to the next, but in reality they are both animating exactly the same and it’s only a matter of timing.
Enjoy.
I remembered God, and was delighted, and was exercised, and my spirit swooned away.
(Psalm 76:4 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: