David’s Ozymandias

“When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish before your presence. For you have maintained my just cause; you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment. You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish; you have blotted out their name forever and ever. The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins; their cities you rooted out; the very memory of them has perished.” (Psalm 9:3–6, ESV)

Again, David’s praise is borne out of his deliverance. We see this time and time again in the Psalms, reminding us since the fall there has been a culture war between what St. Augustine calls the City of God and the City of man.

While the motives and the weapons of the City of Man are carnal, the motives and weapons of the City of God are spiritual—to the pulling down of strongholds. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” (2 Corinthians 10:4, ESV)

The everlasting ruins, the rooted out cities, and the perishing memory of the enemies of God as described by the Psalmist sound like distant echoes of Shelley’s Ozymandias.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”