Psalm 9:36

it's hard to punch with a broken arm

Break thou the arm of the sinner and of the malignant: his sin shall be sought, and shall not be found. (Psalm 9:36 DR)

From the human point of view the power of the wicked often seems to be invincible—until it isn’t. Great and sudden collapses are many times the end of a regime or a truly wicked man, wherein one moment they seemed to be secure in their power forever and then the next are thrown down and forgotten.

And of course no one thinks it’s going to happen to him. The rapid succession of emperors in the late Roman Empire seen in hindsight makes one wonder why anyone of them would have sought such a position with certain death or overthrow almost a certainty. Yet no doubt each imagined that with him things would be different. he was smarter, more powerful, had a better army, etc.

Yet like an arm that is powerful when whole and can do many and wondrous things yet becomes a flopping and useless appendage when broken, so the power of the wicked is fleeting, the proverbial house of cards that collapses when its breaking point is reached. For when its power is predicated on wickedness, greater wickedness can overcome it and will always seek to do so; the human heart’s lust for power is thus rule by ouroboros.

After all, since sin is the deficiency of a good, all evil laws and power built upon them are predicated on a unstable foundation and in effect cannibalize a good (civilization) to maintain their control. This then logically requires greater deviations from the good and a further degradation of society, as each successive ruler must overcome the previous by means of this same dynamic, and thus in the natural course of fallen humanity might makes right.

This is the dynamic that the Psalmist has been expounding upon in his prophecy of the coming Antichrist, with the twist that in the Antichrist’s regime it will not simply be rule by sheer power but by a great deceit in which the world will follow him by aligning itself with his inversion of good and evil.

But in the judgment that the Lord will bring upon the man of sin and those who follow him, this seemingly impregnable fortress of man’s perverted unity will be suddenly broken; just when the Antichrist seems to be at his height will his downfall occur. In this case the Psalmist images this as the breaking of his arm, symbolizing the overthrow of his power and rendering him utterly impotent before the judgment seat of God and against the Church whom he persecuted:

“Break the arm of the sinner and of the malicious;” of him, namely, of whom it was said above, “He shall have dominion over all his enemies.” He called his power then, his arm; to which Christ's power is opposed, of which it is said, “Arise, O Lord God, let Your hand be exalted. His fault shall be required, and he shall not be found because of it;” that is he shall be judged for his sins, and himself shall perish because of his sin. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 9. 32.)

In the judgment of the Lord against the wicked this power is broken, but it should also be remembered that (following St. Augustine) this Psalm has been drawing out both the hidden judgment and the manifest judgment. Part of the motivation for the hidden judgment is that God in His long-suffering refrains from immediate judgment so that men will either repent of their sins or will confirm themselves in their wickedness.

This is perhaps developed here as the Psalmist draws out the parallelism between the arm of the sinner and the arm of the malignant. It is a repetition of sorts following the mode of the poetic form, but also forms a progression of sorts in which the sinner is expanded into the malignant. Evagrius of Pontus draws this out more explicitly:

The sinner is the one who sins out of lust and human weakness; the wicked one is he who follows after evil with a deliberated plan. (Evagrius of Pontus, Notes on the Psalms, 9[10].36. ACCS.)

As we have seen earlier, a mark of the reign of the Antichrist is that men will choose to follow him and his inversion of good and evil. Their wickedness will thus follow this paradigm as outline by Evagrius, in that they will want this perverted inversion as opposed to normal human weakness in the face of temptation. This is the great deception that will come with the coming of the man of sin, as St. Paul explicitly states:

And in all seduction of iniquity to them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying: That all may be judged who have not believed the truth, but have consented to iniquity. (2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 DR)

The love of truth is implicitly contrasted with the love of error, this love being a deliberation of the will and thus their consent to iniquity.

However, it might be wondered why the psalmist therefore speaks of the arm of the sinner and of the malignant being broken, if the malignant are those specifically in view? This relates to the long-suffering of God towards the sinner that he might repent and turn from his ways. The Psalmist draws back in scope to encompass the entirety of time before the Antichrist and during, which presumably serves as a warning to the sinners to turn from their ways before their weakness turns to malignancy.

After all, this deception is not restricted to the Antichrist’s reign; it is present and lying in wait when we are tempted even though weakness, for the more we capitulate to sin the more our wills are turned to it, and if we deliberately choose to commit grave evil we cut ourselves off from grace and suffer the mortal wound of sin.

However, while there is still an opportunity for repentance the arm of the sinners can be broken by responding to the grace of the Lord through repentance:

“Break thou the arm;” that is, the power and strength of the sinner, that so humbled, he may repent and sin no more; so that afterwards “his sin shall be sought, and shall not be found…” (St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, 9, 35.)

This potential dichotomy between the sinner and the malignant is carried forward into the end of this passage, with the same passage applied differently for each class. The sinner who repents and has his arm broken will no longer have sins sins counted against him; in this manner his sin shall be sought and shall not be found. Seen from the other side the transformation and renovation of the heart that occurs in Baptism causes the soul to seek after virtue and to avoid vice; thus when temptation comes that sin will be sought (by the temptation) but will not be found when he overcomes it.

For the malignant, however, the breaking of the arm refers primarily to their power being broken and the judgment leveled against them. They still desire to sin and rule in that malignancy, but the judgment that is upon them prevents them from fulfilling their desires. In this manner they will seek to sin and do evil but will be so broken in judgment so as to be unable to do so. When they were at their height they imagined themselves to be secure, but in judgment will be cast down:

Let no one be arrogant about the pinnacle of power or be puffed up; it is a precarious and risky position that topples the careless with great ease. (St. Chrysostom, Commentary on the Psalms, 10.11. ACCS.)

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I had used the arm of a statue before, and since I was being lazy I decided to reuse it for this animation. Not much to this one; I added some slight rotation and position wiggle on the arm and then duplicated it for a little faux chromatic aberration. I then added in a bunch of textures and blended them together and wiggled the position and rotation of some of them.

Pretty simple.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: