Ps. 69.32-33 (Look!)

Look! / The humble folk / will rejoice
those who seek God
so let your hearts revive.
For Yhwh / hears to needy
and he does not despise prisoners / who belong to him. 

These verses are, thematically, central to the psalm. The opening word signals the direction the psalmist is now moving—public display of God’s deliverance. As we saw with the wicked and their unraveling, so too now are the righteous ‘unraveled’ from their enemies. We recall that the overriding ‘curse’ that is weighing down on the psalmist has been that of public humiliation, scorn and reproach caused by the inactivity of God. He has been made to look like an idiot. Further, his ‘idiocy’ is not merely an isolated, individual problem; it has the potential of infecting others. Specifically, it is in danger of seeping into the lives of those “who wait for God” and “seek God”. The psalmist’s appeal to God for deliverance is, in large part, his plea that God intercept this infection of disgrace from overflowing into the people—and the only way this can be accomplished is through deliverance (through God enacting his covenant power and revealing to everyone that the ‘idiot’s’ zeal is, in fact, honored). This is why the psalm now shifts from the personal deliverance of the psalmist in verses 29-31 to the communal deliverance of those who “seek God” in verses 32-33. With the ‘raising up’ of the one who was potentially the source of the infection, so too has all of his ‘flock’ been raised up with him. And, with the rising of this ‘body’, so too does the public command emerge: “Look!”. God’s deliverance is on display, visible, and assured. The gap between God’s seeing and his acting has been closed and the zeal for God now coincides with God’s authorial power honoring that zeal. Those who, in verse 6 were in danger of being ‘humiliated’ (those who ‘seek God’) are instead ‘full of rejoicing’ (we might even say, they “have good things to eat”). The point is not private, spiritual strengthening but public, concrete deliverance. God will act, for “Yhwh hears the needy and does not despise prisoners who belong to him.” If the psalmist and his people are in exile, and if the Temple has been destroyed (as seems to be the case based on the ending of the psalm), then this forward looking gaze (…”Look!”) of deliverance is ordered to something specific, not general: return; a new exodus; a new temple; a new land; a new time during which God will reign as king and his borders will be held in safety and in perpetuity (…all of which sounds a lot like Revelation).