The womb forgets him; the worm feeds on him sweetly; he is remembered no more; wrongdoing breaks like a tree, establishing that the wicked will be utterly obliterated from memory and existence, their wrongdoing ultimately producing nothing of substance. The forgetting by the womb suggests that even the most fundamental human connection—the maternal relationship—will not sustain memory of the wicked in perpetuity. The worm feeding sweetly presents a grotesque inversion of the image of the poor's suffering: the wicked's death becomes food for vermin, their bodies consumed in the same way they consumed the living poor. The breaking of wrongdoing like a tree suggests that injustice, despite its apparent strength, ultimately shatters under the weight of its own nature.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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