Ps. 78.62 (given over)

He allowed his people / to be given / to the sword
and he was furious / with his heritage. 

This verse confirms much of what we have explored in the previous verses regarding the relationship between the sanctuary the Land and the people. The sanctuary, established on God’s mountain, is what makes the territory into God’s ‘holy territory’. Likewise, it is what makes that territory into a place of safety and blessing. Without it, the people are left vulnerable and “without god”. They have become like a city whose walls have fallen (Jericho-like). Without the ‘dwelling of God’, man becomes homeless, prey to invaders. This reality is captured in this verse, as the active ‘giving to captivity’ of his liturgical emblems (his ‘power’ and his ‘glory’: his arc) becomes the passive ‘allowing his people to be given’ to the sword. Both are ‘given’, one actively to the foe, the other, is simply permitted to be ‘given’. This is a deeply significant object of meditation: that the abandoning of his sanctuary (and liturgical center) becomes for his people the most dangerous reality possible; they become like sheep without a shepherd. A land without a sanctuary (a dwelling of God) becomes a land of extreme violence and predation; the ‘holiness’ that previously conquered the nations is now absent and the flood of chaos that had been pushed back by its authority is now permitted to engulf the people. This is creation without God’s dwelling in its midst, enacting his blessing power over the forces of chaos. In other words, for chaos to enter all God needs to ‘do’ is abandon his dwelling. In this single act two things are handed over ‘to the enemy’: ‘his sanctuary’ and ‘his people’.