On the Lips of Eve: Psalm 139

There isn’t a word on my tongue Lord that you don’t already know completely. 

It can be interesting to imagine Psalm 139 coming from the lips of Moses, or Eve, or Job. It actually sounds very much like Job, This psalm with its harmonic notes and painting in similar hues as the book of Job. What we hear today is the cosmic sweetheart song. The verses that were ‘edited for content’, those verses skipped in the middle are a different key: an even earthier intimacy, and, straight-up vengeful anger. ‘If only, you God, would kill the wicked, These people talk about you, but only for wicked schemes’. Whatever the situation that led to the elaborate artistry of this psalm, it bears a strong suggestion of persecution may be due to such wholehearted devotion to God. Yes, I can imagine the whole psalm on the lips of Job. 

Then there are the other verses we skipped, Earthy, feminine ones that invite me to imagine Psalm 139 on the tongue of Eve. God is certainly so close, right there walking in the garden in that primordial time before time. I can imagine Eve being furious at the forces that oppose God, It only takes a bit of coloring outside the lines, and outside the garden. However, she comes to mind more for phrases such as: God knitting us in our mother’s wombs, and other subtle playful references to the creation stories, both hers, and the seven-day refrain of it was good, it was good. And speaking of coloring outside the lines, there are also in this whole psalm some illusions to creation stories of other ancient religions. 

Yet what really connects Eve with this psalm in my imagination is the repeating of the word know. Seven times in the whole psalm. Know as in the source of the phrase biblical knowledge. It doesn’t always mean that, but it does always convey the kind of relationship you might have if you shared a garden with God. 

Psalms are high art, carefully crafted art - so that even if you have never felt such closeness with God something in the poetry delights you, causes you to lean in, hum that tune for just a moment. This psalm in particular is a decentering poem of big faith, perhaps bigger than you feel sometimes. Could you give voice to this psalm in prayer for someone in your life, someone who needs to know they are not alone, that they are beloved, someone who is so caught in the heap that they cannot even express such feelings? 

Psalms are art, but they are not silly. They are likely rooted in real experience. All the experiences of life: the orientation, disorientation, and reorientation of this continuing COVID-tide moment are known in the Psalms. They are ready to pray words we didn’t know we needed, singing refrains we know by heart but forget to sing. This song, this psalm, was deep knowing truth: true for someone like Eve, and like Job, and for Teresa of Calcutta and Martin Luther King, Jr. and you and me. What makes scripture scripture it has a way of knowing our truths and birthing our imaginations that are already but also not yet. 

There isn’t a word on our tongues that God doesn’t already know.

RCL A Track 1 Proper 11: Psalm and Gospel

Christ Church, Ridley Park, PA

Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania

July 14/19, 2020