by C. S. Lewis
The choice of Psalm 85 for Ascension Day again depends on an interpretation found in the New Testament. In its literal sense this short, exquisite lyric is simplicity itself—an expression of wonder at man and man’s place in Nature (there is a chorus in Sophocles not unlike it) and therefore at God who appointed it. God is wonderful both as champion or ‘judge’ and as Creator. When one looks up at the sky, and all the stars which are His work, it seems strange that He should be concerned at all with such things as man. Yet in fact, though He has made us inferior to the celestial beings, He has, down here on earth, given us extra-ordinary honour—made us lords of all the other creatures. But to the writer of Hebrews (2:6–9) this suggested something which we, of ourselves, would never have thought of. The Psalmist said ‘Thou has put all things in subjection under his (man’s) feet’ (6). The Christian writer observes that, in the actual state of the universe, this is not strictly true. (Man is often killed, and still more often defeated, by beasts, poisonous vegetables, weather, earthquakes, etc.) It would seem to us merely perverse and captious thus to take a poetic expression as if it were intended for a scientific universal. We can get nearest to the point of view if we imagine the commentator arguing not (as I think he actually does) ‘Since this is not true of the present, and since all the scriptures must be true, the statement must really refer to the future’, but rather, ‘This is of course true in the poetic—and therefore, to a logician, the loose—sense which the poet intended; but how if it were far truer than he knew?’ This will lead us, by a route that is easier for our habits of mind, to what he thinks the real meaning—or I should say the ‘over-meaning’, the new weight laid upon the poet’s words. Christ has ascended into Heaven. And in due time all things, quite strictly all, will be subjected to Him. It is He who having been made (for a while) ‘lower than the angels’, will become the conqueror and ruler of all things, including death and (death’s patron) the devil.
To most of us this will seem a wire-drawn allegory. But it is the very same which St Paul obviously has in mind in 1 Corinthians 15:20–28. This, with the passage in Hebrews, makes it pretty certain that the interpretation was established in the earliest Christian tradition. It may even descend from Our Lord. There was, after all, no description of Himself which He delighted in more than the ‘Son of Man’; and of course, just as ‘daughter of Babylon’ means Babylon, so ‘Son of Man’ means Man, the Man, the archetypal Man, in whose suffering, resurrection, and victories all men (unless they refuse) can share.
And it is this, I believe, that most modern Christians need to be reminded of. It seems to me that I seldom meet any strong or exultant sense of the continued, never-to-be-abandoned, Humanity of Christ in glory, in eternity. We stress the Humanity too exclusively at Christmas, and the Deity too exclusively after the Resurrection; almost as if Christ once became a man and then presently reverted to being simply God. We think of the Resurrection and Ascension (rightly) as great acts of God; less often as the triumph of Man. The ancient interpretation of Psalm 8, however arrived at, is a cheering corrective. Nor, on further consideration, is the analogy of humanity’s place in the universe (its greatness and littleness, its humble origins and—even on the natural level—amazing destiny) to the humiliation and victories of Christ, really strained and far-fetched. At least it does not seem so to me. As I have already indicated, there seems to me to be something more than analogy between the taking up of animality into man and the taking up of man into God.
But I walk in wonders beyond myself. It is time to conclude with a brief notice of some simpler things.
One is the apparent (and often no doubt real) self-righteousness of the Psalms: ‘Thou shalt find no wickedness in me’ (17:3), ‘I have walked innocently’ (26:1), ‘Preserve thou my soul, for I am holy’ (86:2). For many people it will not much mend matters if we say, as we probably can with truth, that sometimes the speaker was from the first intended to be Israel, not the individual; and even, within Israel, the faithful remnant. Yet it makes some difference; up to a certain point that remnant was holy and innocent compared with some of the surrounding Pagan cultures. It was often an ‘innocent sufferer’ in the sense that it had not deserved what was inflicted on it, nor deserved it at the hands of those who inflicted it. But of course there was to come a Sufferer who was in fact holy and innocent. Plato’s imaginary case was to become actual. All these assertions were to become true in His mouth. And if true, it was necessary they should be made. The lesson that perfect, unretaliating, forgiving innocence can lead as the world is, not to love but to the screaming curses of the mob and to death, is essential. Our Lord therefore becomes the speaker in these passages when a Christian reads them; by right—it would be an obscuring of the real issue if He did not. For He denied all sin of Himself. (That, indeed, is no small argument of His Deity. For He has not often made even on the enemies of Christianity the impression of arrogance; many of them do not seem as shocked as we should expect at His claim to be ‘meek and lowly of heart’. Yet He said such things as, on any hypothesis but one, would be the arrogance of a paranoiac. It is as if, even where the hypothesis is rejected, some of the reality which implies its truth ‘got across’.)
Of the cursing Psalms I suppose most of us make our own moral allegories—well aware that these are personal and on a quite different level from the high matters I have been trying to handle. We know the proper object of utter hostility—wickedness, especially our own. Thus in 36, ‘My heart showeth me the wickedness of the ungodly,’ each can reflect that his own heart is the specimen of that wickedness best known to him. After that, the upward plunge at verse 5 into the mercy high as heaven and the righteousness solid as the mountains takes on even more force and beauty. From this point of view I can use even the horrible passage in 137 about dashing the Babylonian babies against the stones. I know things in the inner world which are like babies; the infantile beginnings of small indulgences, small resentments, which may one day become dipsomania or settled hatred, but which woo us and wheedle us with special pleadings and seem so tiny, so helpless that in resisting them we feel we are being cruel to animals. They begin whimpering to us, ‘I don’t ask much, but’, or ‘I had at least hoped’, or ‘you owe yourself some consideration’. Against all such pretty infants (the dears have such winning ways) the advice of the Psalm is the best. Knock the little bastards’ brains out. And ‘blessed’ he who can, for it’s easier said than done.
Sometimes with no prompting from tradition a second meaning will impose itself upon a reader irresistibly. When the poet of Psalm 84 said (10) ‘For one day in thy courts is better than a thousand’, he doubtless meant that one day there was better than a thousand elsewhere. I find it impossible to exclude while I read this the thought which, so far as I know, the Old Testament never quite reaches. It is there in the New, beautifully introduced not by laying a new weight on old words but more simply by adding to them. In Psalm 90 (4) it had been said that a thousand years were to God like a single yesterday; in 2 Peter 3:8—not the first place in the world where one would have looked for so metaphysical a theology—we read not only that a thousand years are as one day but also that ‘one day is as a thousand years’. The Psalmist only meant, I think, that God was everlasting, that His life was infinite in time. But the epistle takes us out of the time-series altogether. As nothing outlasts God, so nothing slips away from Him into a past. The later conception (later in Christian thought—Plato had reached it) of the timeless as an eternal present has been achieved. Ever afterwards, for some of us, the ‘one day’ in God’s courts which is better than a thousand, must carry a double meaning. The Eternal may meet us in what is, by our present measurements, a day, or (more likely) a minute or a second; but we have touched what is not in any way commensurable with lengths of time, whether long or short. Hence our hope finally to emerge, if not altogether from time (that might not suit our humanity) at any rate from the tyranny, the unilinear poverty, of time, to ride it not to be ridden by it, and so to cure that alw
ays aching wound (‘the wound man was born for’) which mere succession and mutability inflict on us, almost equally when we are happy and when we are unhappy. For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. ‘How he’s grown!’ we exclaim, ‘How time flies!’ as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.
APPENDIX I
SELECTED PSALMS
Psalm 8
Domine, Dominus noster
1. O Lord our Governor, how excellent is thy Name in all the world: thou that hast set thy glory above the heavens!
2. Out of the mouth of very babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of thine enemies: that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
3. For I will consider thy heavens, even the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained.
4. What is man, that thou art mindful of him: and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
5. Thou madest him lower than the angels: to crown him with glory and worship.
6. Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of thy hands: and thou has put all things in subjection under his feet;
7. All sheep and oxen: yea, and the beasts of the field.
8. The fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea: and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the seas.
9. O Lord our Governor: how excellent is thy Name in all the world!
Psalm 19
Coeli enarrant
1. The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2. One day telleth another: and one night certifieth another.
3. There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them.
4. Their sound is gone out into all lands: and their words into the ends of the world.
5. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun: which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course.
6. It goeth forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and runneth about unto the end of it again: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
7. The law of the Lord is an undefiled law, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, and giveth wisdom unto the simple.
8. The statutes of the Lord are right, and rejoice the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, and giveth light unto the eyes.
9. The fear of the Lord is clean, and endureth for ever: the judgements of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether.
10. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey, and the honeycomb.
11. Moreover, by them is thy servant taught: and in keeping of them there is great reward.
12. Who can tell how oft he offendeth: O cleanse thou me from my secret faults.
13. Keep thy servant also from presumptuous sins, lest they get the dominion over me: so shall I be undefiled, and innocent from the great offence.
14. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart: be always acceptable in thy sight.
15. O Lord: my strength, and my redeemer.
Psalm 36
Dixit injustus
1. My heart sheweth me the wickedness of the ungodly: that there is no fear of God before his eyes.
2. For he flattereth himself in his own sight: until his abominable sin be found out.
3. The words of his mouth are unrighteous, and full of deceit: he hath left off to behave himself wisely, and to do good.
4. He imagineth mischief upon his bed, and hath set himself in no good way: neither doth he abhor any thing that is evil.
5. Thy mercy, O Lord, reacheth unto the heavens: and thy faithfulness unto the clouds.
6. Thy righteousness standeth like the strong mountains: thy judgements are like the great deep.
7. Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast; How excellent is thy mercy, O God: and the children of men shall put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.
8. They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of thy house: and thou shalt give them drink of thy pleasures, as out of the river.
9. For with thee is the well of life: and in thy light shall we see light.
10. O continue forth thy loving-kindness unto them that know thee: and thy righteousness unto them that are true of heart.
11. O let not the foot of pride come against me: and let not the hand of the ungodly cast me down.
12. There are they fallen, all that work wickedness: they are cast down, and shall not be able to stand.
Psalm 45
Eructavit cor meum
1. My heart is inditing of a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made unto the King.
2. My tongue is the pen: of a ready writer.
3. Thou art fairer than the children of men: full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blessed thee for ever.
4. Gird thee with thy sword upon thy thigh, O thou most Mighty: according to thy worship and renown.
5. Good luck have thou with thine honour: ride on, because of the word of truth, of meekness, and righteousness; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.
6. The arrows are very sharp, and the people shall be subdued unto thee: even in the midst among the King’s enemies.
7. Thy seat, O God, endureth for ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.
8. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: wherefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
9. All the garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia: out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.
10. Kings’ daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colours.
11. Hearken, O daughter, and consider, incline thine ear: forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house.
12. So shall the King have pleasure in thy beauty: for he is thy Lord God, and worship thou him.
13. And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift: like as the rich also among the people shall make their supplication before thee.
14. The King’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.
15. She shall be brought unto the King in raiment of needlework: the virgins that be her fellows shall bear her company, and shall be brought unto thee.
16. With joy and gladness shall they be brought: and shall enter into the King’s palace.
17. Instead of thy fathers thou shalt have children: whom thou mayest make princes in all lands.
18. I will remember thy Name from one generation to another: therefore shall the people give thanks unto thee, world without end.
Psalm 68
Exurgat Deus
1. Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him.
2. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away: and like as wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish at the presence of God.
3. But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God: let them also be merry and joyful.
4. O sing unto God, and sing praises unto his Name: magnify him that rideth upon the heavens, as it were upon an horse; praise him in his Name JAH, and rejoice before him.
5. He is a Father of the fatherless, and defendeth the cause of the widows: even God in his Holy habitation.
6. He is the God that maketh men to be of one mind in an house, and bringeth the prisoners out of captivity: but letteth the runagates continue in scarceness.
7. O God, when thou wentest forth before the people: when thou wentest through the wilderness,
8. The earth shook, and the heavens dropped at the presence of God: even as Sinai also was moved at the presence of God, who is the God of Israel.
9. Thou
, O God, sentest a gracious rain upon thine inheritance: and refreshedst it when it was weary.
10. Thy congregation shall dwell therein: for thou, O God, hast of thy goodness prepared for the poor.
11. The Lord gave the word: great was the company of the preachers.
12. Kings with their armies did flee, and were discomfited: and they of the household divided the spoil.
13. Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove: that is covered with silver wings, and her feathers like gold.
14. When the Almighty scattered kings for their sake: then were they as white as snow in Salmon.
15. As the hill of Basan, so is God’s hill: even an high hill, as the hill of Basan.
16. Why hop ye so, ye high hills? this is God’s hill, in the which it pleaseth him to dwell: yea, the Lord will abide in it for ever.
17. The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: and the Lord is among them, as in the holy place of Sinai.
18. Thou art gone up on high, thou hast led captivity captive, and received gifts for men: yea, even for thine enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them.
19. Praised be the Lord daily: even the God who helpeth us, and poureth his benefits upon us.
20. He is our God, even the God of whom cometh salvation: God is the Lord, by whom we escape death.
21. God shall wound the head of his enemies: and the hairy scalp of such a one as goeth on still in wickedness.
22. The Lord hath said, I will bring my people again, as I did from Basan: mine own will I bring again, as I did sometime from the deep of the sea.
23. That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies: and that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same.
24. It is well seen, O God, how thou goest: how thou, my God and King, goest in the sanctuary.
25. The singers go before, the minstrels follow after: in the midst are the damsels playing with the timbrels.
26. Give thanks, O Israel, unto God the Lord in the congregations: from the ground of the heart.