Ps. 62.5-7 (becoming the rock)

Yes / calmly wait for God / O my soul
for / my hope / is from him
Yes / he is my rock / where I am secure
my stronghold / where I am unshaken
my welfare / and my power / depend on God
I am / rock-strong / and secure / in God.   

These verses are largely a repetition of the opening and signal a shift in the psalm to a new focus. The opening verses prepared us for the attack of the wicked. Theses verses approach the infusion of God’s strength into the psalmist from a different angle—the vanity of the world. It is for this reason that, I think, we find additional language in these verses not found in the opening. Particularly, the claim by the psalmist that “my welfare and my power depend on God; I am rock-strong and secure in God.” This shift is important to note. In the opening, God’s Temple was portrayed as the source of the psalmist’s strength. It was, in a sense, the place to which he fled. In a sense, the psalmist seemed largely passive in light of the Temple’s (God’s) protection. Here, however, there is an added dynamic. Now, the psalmist is empowered and active(ated) by God: “my welfare and my power depend on God; I am rock-strong and secure in God.” The psalmist has appropriated those qualities of God that were previously attributed to the Temple: the ‘rock’ and ‘security’. If the psalmist were a plant, the first section would be about the shade afforded by the Temple; this section would be about the vitality and fruit-bearing capacity afforded him by the Temple. The reason this is important: the protection afforded the psalmist in the opening was to ward off the attacks of the wicked. Here, the empowerment afforded the psalmist is to be a display of the vitality of God in the face of the world’s vanity. The psalmist being ‘rock-strong’ will stand in direct contrast to the fact that “ordinary people are only a breath; an illusion are people of rank.” (vs. 9). Whereas they “rise on the balance” (vs. 9), the psalmist would tip it like a rock. In this we see two further important points: 1) the psalmist will stand to everyone else (from the ‘ordinary’ to the ‘high’) the way the Temple will stand to all of creation. We have spoken of this in other psalms: that goods are ‘good’ only when they are given by God in safety and perpetuity, and that is accomplished by and through (among other ways) God’s covenant power. Here, the Temple, as being the very dwelling of the forever-God, partakes of his permanence and becomes a rock in the face of the vanity and passing-nature (the ‘non-forever-time’) of the world (subject to vanity of grasping without God’s aid). The psalmist will, himself, partake of this permanence. 2) We see here the second ‘voice’ the psalmist is attempting to pacify through patience in God. The first voice, as we saw, was that he was a ‘tottering wall’; this voice is that he is mere breath.