Rescue the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner. (Psalm 81:4 DR)
It is often said that all evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothing, and the corollary of this is that sometimes by inaction we can become complicit in evil. Qui tacet consentit is the old common law maxim whereby silence gives consent, and such is implied here as the Psalmist expands upon the previous passage.
To judge for the needy and poor from before is now fleshed out, for such justice is not an abstraction but is a rescue for such persons from those who wish to oppress them. As noted in the previous passage, the rich and powerful have tremendous advantages in respect to various legal systems, even if those advantages aren’t explicitly codified in the law. But the sheer weight and force of their power, influence and wealth can tend to bend the law to their will, with the result that the poor and needy are at the mercy of the judge to judge justly, without respect to persons.
In this manner the Psalmist speaks to their judgment in the form of a command. The just judge is not to show partiality, but there is also implied a sense of realism of how the world is. That is, they should not judge in favor of the poor because they are poor and needy, but at the same time recognize the vulnerability of the man without means before the law. To judge justly is to deliver him from the hands of the sinners who often seek to bring the weight of their power and wealth against him to their advantage:
The judge does not discharge his duty by giving a just decision if he does not compel the rich and the powerful to make restitution to the poor and the needy, either by restoring what they took from them, or by compensating them for their losses through defamation or litigation; and he therefore says, “Rescue the poor” from the powerful, “and the needy” from the same sinner. A repetition for the sake of impression. In this point especially, should judges and princes show their power in protecting the poor. By so doing, they conciliate God and the people… (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 81, 4.)
St. Bellarmine makes an important point here, in that judging justly conciliates both God and the people. Injustice, as noted in the previous passage, is a form of blasphemy as it calls just what is not just and thus besmirches the One Who is Justice itself. But even on the societal level the people require justice, knowing that in disputes they will be able to have their case adjudged judiciously. Such confidence in the workings of justice provide confidence for commerce, family life, societal cohesion, etc. Once such confidence in the workings of justice are eroded, however, the rest of the society tends to go with it. We are not angels who can exist without systems of justice, but those systems of justice have to be seen to work on a regular basis, or else society cannot exist and flourish.
Thus the Psalmist calls for the judges to judge justly, and to be seen to judge justly through the recompence that St. Bellarmine notes, for not only does God love justice (cf. Psalm 10:8), but will also bless the society that practices it, as the Psalmist says elsewhere:
Blessed are they that keep judgment, and do justice at all times. (Psalm 105:3 DR)
Yet such words of the Psalmist apply not only to judges, but to all, for we are all called to work justice in our own lives towards our neighbors. This is both evidenced in what we positively do unto them as well as in whether we are complicit with evil by refusing to confront it when necessary, in effect proving the maxim that silence gives consent.
St. Augustine links this passage to the ultimate injustice done against our Lord in His condemnation unto death, and shows that it was not only those who had malicious designs against him or who actually put him to death who were guilty, but even those who not many days prior had been hailing Him as Prophet and King:
Deliver, then, the poor man, and save the needy from the hands of the ungodly. This is said that it might be known, that in that nation where Christ was born and put to death, those persons were not guiltless of so great a crime, who being so numerous, that, as the Gospel says, the Jews feared them, and therefore dared not lay hands on Christ, afterwards consented, and permitted Him to be slain by the malicious and envious Jewish rulers: yet if they had so willed, they would still have been feared, so that the hands of the wicked would never have prevailed against Him. For of these it is said elsewhere, Dumb dogs, they know not how to bark. Of them too is that said, Lo, how the righteous perishes, and no man lays it to heart. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 81, 3.)
Like a dog who doesn’t bark to warn of danger, those who fail to oppose evil end up complying with it to one extent or another. St. Augustine notes that there was initially a tremendous support for Jesus among the people of Jerusalem, in that those who sought His life knew they couldn’t do it out in the open for fear of the crowds turning on them. Thus they created the subterfuge of involving the Romans and occluding the reality; they hated Jesus because He claimed to be God, but they made the entire affair about treason and sedition against the empire so they could get the Romans to be the hand to strike the blow. In this manner it became more existential for the people, since now their nation and temple stood in the balance, for if they continued to support Jesus, the Romans might come and destroy the temple to put down what they might have seen as a rebellion (cf. John 11:48-51) Thus the same crowds which hailed Jesus as king would now claim that only Caesar was king, as compliance with evil through silence leads to greater degrees of cooperation.
On the contrary, the Psalmist calls for just judgment, which will involve confrontation with evil so that the wicked are punished and the innocent vindicated. In Proverbs a similar theme is reiterated:
Open thy mouth for the dumb, and for the causes of all the children that pass. Open thy mouth, decree that which is just, and do justice to the needy and poor. (Proverbs 31:8-9 DR)
To open the mouth and rescue the poor thus stand in contrast to the silent consent with evil that occurs when justice is not seen to be done.
I used Video Co-Pilot’s Orb plugin to create these spinning orbs or some reason; I guess I kind of liked the look. I applied various textures to the orbs via the plugin’s layer mapping system to give them a bit of depth, and then added in some glows and color correction.
The .gif compression really murders this one, unfortunately.
Enjoy.
Rescue the poor; and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner.
(Psalm 81:4 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here:
