“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness”: The weakness, silence and death of dûwmîyâh (דּוּמִיָּה) in an experiential synthesis of a mysterious paradox

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Truly my soul silently waits (dûwmîyâh) for God;
From Him comes my salvation.
He only is my rock and my salvation (yeshuah);
He is my defense…
In God is my salvation and my glory;
The rock of my strength,
And my refuge, is in God

Trust in Him at all times, you people;
Pour out your heart before Him;
God is a refuge for us.

Selah

Surely men of low degree are a breath/vapor/vanity (hebel),
Men of high degree are a lie/deception (kâzâb);

[The Hebrew reads, “Only a breath [are] the sons of mankind, a lie [are] the sons of man”]
If they are weighed on the scales,
They are altogether lighter than vapor (hebel).

Selah

(Ps 62:1-2a, 7-9).

And He said to me,

My grace is sufficient for you

μοι Αρκει σοι η χαρις μου

For My strength is made perfect in weakness

η γαρ δυναμις εν ασθενεια τελειται

Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities,

That the power of Christ may rest upon me

(II Cor 12:9).

Introduction

In Psalm 62, the silence of destruction and death, as we will see from a brief study of dûwmîyâh, brings forth the life of true waiting upon God. For it is God alone Who is our “salvation” (yeshuah), our “rock”, our “defense” and our “glory.” This is why we “wait in silence.”

For we “sons of man” are a mere “breath”, a “vapor” (hebel), which are here one moment and gone the next. Trust in ourselves, therefore, or in one another for that matter, is as stable as the dew.

And so many of us can attest from our experiences (not from reading or from theological discussion alone, though we must continue to read and discuss:) that such flesh-and-blood experiences of pain and suffering, injustice and hardship—whatever “thorn” JHWH places in our “flesh”—has made this fact of our “hebel-ness, of man’s inability to intervene to “save” us undeniably real to us.

What then do we do?

We wait in silence (dûwmîyâh) upon JHWH.

All orthodoxy is paradoxy

When we are truly weak, such a weakened, even despicable state—when accepted in faith—can work within us a mysterious, divine strength.

When poor, we begin to experience the riches of eternity.

When foolish, a wisdom not of this world.

When suffering, when dying, the seed of a vital life that can never die.

As expressed here and examined in more depth in an earlier writing, our experience of paradox signals to us that the eternal Kingdom of God is breaking into the fallen structures of This Now Age (ὁ νῦν αἰών). And that works, carves, digs into us as a plough. That reality, in the words of the Apostle (spoken, we remember after literally being stoned), “comes with much tribulation” (Acts 14:22)

And it is implanted into the depths of our human heart/soul/spirit/nous, where it grows up, transfiguring our person

Through co-suffering (sympáschō, Rom 8:17)

Through co-crucifixion (systauróō, Rom 6:6; Gal 2:19)

Through co-burial (syntháptō, Rom 6:4)

With Christ

By baptism into His death (Rom 6:4; Col 2:12)

Whereby

We are raised up

In the likeness of His Resurrection (τῷ ὁμοιώματι…τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἐσόμεθα, Rom 6:5)

That we might live together with Him (syzáō, Rom 6:8)

In the Present now (ὁ νῦν καιρός, Rom 8:18) which is being redeemed unto eternal glory (Eph 5:16).

Eternity, then, begins to reconfigure the depths of our personality as we become vitally united with the eternal Christ such that for us the “Paradoxy of Orthodoxy” begins to take effect in ways that confound our earthly (psychicos) understanding (I Cor 2:14, Jam 3:15).

And as becomes absolutely clear, this is not an easy process; not “seductive” (to use the words of Florensky); not a path that is a “broad and wide way” (hodós),” to use the words of Christ (Mt 7:13-14). Rather, it comes to us, it is experienced in ways that will continually defy our ability to manipulate and control. For it is the “narrow and hard (literally, “having suffered” [thlibó, τεθλιμμένη] path”—yet the only path “that leads unto life.”

A witness

We begin a brief discussion on these words of supreme paradox in the writings of Paul by first offering a witness of one who appears to have experienced dimensions of this paradox, as that is the only way, it seems, that we can enter into its wisdom—through enfleshed experience that transcends mere theological-sounding words—or, as expressed in the last writing, experiential wisdom.

We will offer little comment as the words below (which come from our longitudinal mixed, methods study being carried in our clinics) speak for themselves.

Then I know, in fact, I am sure, that the Spirit is actually filling me up…when I’m becoming totally weak.

Whether it’s some sickness and the working of a disease process or the increasing force of sleep deprivation, my body and mind is in a completely—and consciously—weakened state.

The only way I can describe those moments is that I literally have no more strength to take one more step forward…but I do. I literally can’t, but I do.

And I have no more mental endurance to think one more thought…but I do.

Because, though in a very real sense it really is weakness; yet, at the very same time, it is actually not weakness. It makes no sense…at least not on one level. But on another level it does.

The reason being is that in those moments I am given a heightened awareness of movements I otherwise would not see and with such awareness, with such a sharpened intellect, that I am more present, more in the moment than ever before.

Even to the degree that I know, as it were, what to do before I do it.

And then I do it—and it’s the right thing to do.

I can’t explain it.

Again, it doesn’t make any sense

All I know is that in those moments, I feel as weak—physically, emotionally, spiritually—as I’ve ever known.

And yet—and yet—I feel strong with a different dimension of strength that I have never known and over which I have absolutely no ability to control.

All I can do is what the Psalmist says, “wait upon the Lord” [we would refer to you to dûwmîyâh of Ps. 62:1]. Which is to say, my waiting comes out of the silence of my own destruction. My strength comes out of my weakness.

So is one recent description of this paradox.

Maybe accurate. Maybe not. It is for you to decide.

Psalm 62 & the concept of dûwmîyâh

The Hebrew word that begins Psalm 62 referenced by this suffering person is dûwmîyâh (דּוּמִיָּה). And while we may first look past its etymology, its verbal root, fascinatingly enough, is damah (‎דָּמָה), which means ‘to cease, be cut off, destroyed, be brought to silence, be utterly undone.’

Hmm?

I though my silent waiting upon God was due to the beautiful stillness of my wonderfully-developed, beautifully-crafted spirituality…

When, however, we look at how this word is actually used in the OT (i.e. applying the method of kataphysic inquiry), we meet such passages as Isaiah 6, where it becomes much clearer:

Is 6

1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. 2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one cried to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”

4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.

5 So I said:

“Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;
For my eyes have seen the King,
The Lord of hosts.”

This is a different stillness, an other-worldly stillness—a holy stillness. For it comes only to those who have recognized that their own sins have cut them off from the presence JHWH; that they have been cut off and their lives utterly destroyed; that there is nothing they can say or do to bring them back into communion with God. This, we might say, is the womb, out of which true stillness is born.

In the words of Ignatius of Antioch (died c. 110) in letters written en route to his violent martyrdom in Rome, and with this we close:

Bear with me. I know what is expedient for me. Now am I beginning to be a disciple…(5.3)

The pangs of a new birth are upon me…

Bear with me, brethren. 

Do not hinder me from living…

When I shall have arrived there I will be a human being…” (6.2)

That is to say, when I am horribly, unjustly, brutally murdered, destroyed, martyred for my faith in Christ Jesus, I will be a human being…”

Suffering, death.

Birth.

New life.

And it is only our participation through the Spirit in Christ's rejection, crucifixion and cutting off (Ps 22) in silence from the Father, that our damah is transformed into the life-giving dûwmîyâh of faithful love and trust in God.

Amen!

So let it be!