Ps. 57.5 (heaven increases earth)

Rise up / over the heavens / O God

over all the earth / be your glory! 

We have emphasized throughout this psalm the importance of geography/location. In vs. 1, the psalmist is under the ‘shadow of your wings’, which we interpreted as meaning he was in the Temple and close to the arc of the covenant with the wings of the cherubim. He had retreated to the Temple in order to avoid the Destruction that was outside and that might ‘pass him by’. The psalm then shifted to heaven: it was ‘from heaven’ that God’s help would come (his loving-kindness and faithfulness). Again, though, the psalm’s perspective moved down to earth where the psalmist was sleeping in the midst of enemies (now, lions). There is, clearly, a sense that earth needs the power of heaven in order to be put to right. The fact that the prayer emerges from beneath the wings in the Temple is instructive in this regard in that the psalmist is petitioning God from that place where heaven and earth intersect, where God dwells on earth. It is in the Temple where we fully come to see how God’s height in the heavens increases the power of heaven on earth; the ‘refuge’ of the Temple only increases as God rises in the heavens (as his rising is a rising in power over all other powers). This conception is fully realized here. The first phrase asks God to ‘rise over the heavens’ with the understanding that such rising will spread his ‘glory’ over all the earth. This is not ‘ascent’ as a type of leaving, but ascent as a form of ever-greater power. The higher God ascends in the heavens the more his glory (that manifestation of his regal power as king) will wash “over all the earth”. What we come to realize (and this is really the point) is that heaven and earth are intimately related to one another. To go ‘into heaven’ is not to enter some realm opposed to earth. As Genesis makes clear, earth and heaven have been separated; but they have not been pit against each other. They are, rather, like a bride and a groom, dialogue partners, separated so as to be made for each other. Earth can desire heaven without wanting to be heaven, nor seeing heaven as simply ‘far away’. This is confirmed, to some extent, by the use of “Rise up…”. We have noted how, in other psalms, this term is connected to God ‘rising up’ when the arc of the covenant was lifted and taken into battle, signaling God’s movement with the Israelites into the fray. The ‘rising up’, then, is a call to God for him to be the Warrior King. Here, though, that ‘rising up’ actually moves “over the heavens”. He is ascending to the highest height, and such ascension, in a relational way, fulfills all the earth (his glory now spreads over the earth).