Ps. 65.9 (God's visitation)

You visit / the land / and give it abundance
greatly enriching it.
The divine channel / is full of water.
You provide grain / for mankind / by preparing / the land. 

Now, with sins removed, the earth “established” and the raging waters ‘stilled’, God ‘visits the land’ and gives it abundance. The land, like the Temple, has now been made a fitting place for God’s presence. It seems important, then, that what we find here is not the ‘dwelling’ of God, as we find in the Temple, but God’s ‘visitation’. This sense of ‘occupancy’ is not new. We noted how those God ‘chose and brought near’ were made to “dwell” in his ‘courts’. And, after the stilling of the chaos waters and raging nations, those who ‘dwelt’ at the end of the earth, looked on in fear at God’s “work”. Here, by contrast, is a ‘mere’ visitation. And yet, this seemingly momentary presence of God ignites the earth. It gives it its “abundance”, “dresses the valleys with grain”, “clothes the mountains with flocks” and merely in his ‘tracks’ does “fat drip”. The images are of overwhelming virility and life-multiplication (“subdue the earth and fill it”). This is the power of Eden, unleashed upon the world. Again—in contrast to man’s ‘dwelling’, this all occurs by the simple ‘visitation’ of God. There is the sense that God’s presence and life-giving power are utterly, shockingly, overpowering. All of this, of course, is but a reflection upon the providing of ‘rain’. It is rain that is referred to, here, as God’s visitation as it is the heavenly “channel” that overflows the sky, through the portals, and onto the earth. This ‘heavenly’ and life-giving water is to be understood in contrast to the ‘waters of chaos’ that God must ‘still’ in order for the land to be prepared for his visitation (in contrast to the formless ‘sea’ we have a ‘channel’). This ‘heavenly water’ is interesting as it flows through a ‘channel’ (something obviously constructed and made). We have had chance to remark on the nature of the Temple as a type of new Eden. In Genesis we see that the river Gihon runs from Eden—that same river that now runs from the Temple Mount and next to the Temple itself. It is, in other words, one of the primordial rivers of life. And, as we have also said before, the Temple is where heaven and earth coincide and meet; it is where God ‘dwells’ on earth. Any water flowing from the Temple would, therefore, be much more than mere ‘water’. Are we to hear in this heavenly ‘channel’ something like the Gihon? If so, what we would see is the Temple as, again, the source of God’s abundant visitation.