Ps. 62.8 (from 'my soul' to 'O people')

Trust in him / at all times / O people
pour out / your hearts / before him.
God / is our refuge. 

This verse functions as an important pivot leading into the next verse in two ways. First, the individual focus is here broadened to “you people”. They are, like the psalmist, to make God “our refuge”. In this regard they are to partake of all of the same modes of “Temple solidity” we have referred to in previous reflections: they are to participate in that which makes them “rock-strong” in contrast to those who are “mere breathe”. Second, this section of the psalm focuses on the seemingly general principal of vanity that afflicts all people. From ‘low to high’ they are mere breath (vs. 9). This general sense of vanity is countered here by moving the “people” into the sphere of patient trust in God’s deliverance. It is, I think, important that, previously, all of the addresses had been to “O my soul” whereas now it is “O people”. They are being incorporated into precisely the same address the psalmist has been making to his soul. Likewise, just as God has been designated “my refuge” or “my stronghold” in the previous verses, now he is understood to be “our refuge”. Perhaps what we find here is that the psalmist’s answer to the world’s vanity cannot be one that is purely individual—that in order for the totalizing power of vanity to be fully ‘met’ by God, it must be met by a ‘people’, a ‘family of God’ that, corporately (as a “nation of priests…”), shows forth God’s power over the vanity and fleeting nature of chaos and destruction (the 'corporate' power of vanity is met by the 'corporate' power of God's family). Finally, I have to wonder whether the ‘pouring out’ of the heart is to refer, in some way, to a ‘poured out’ sacrifice in the Temple. Is it that, just as the psalmist finds his security in the “rock” (of the Temple), so too are the “people” to find the same security by coming to Temple and ‘pouring out’ libations in sacrifice, representing the ‘pouring out’ of their hearts to God (“before God”)?