Ps. 78.68 (new Adam, new Eden)

But he chose / the tribe of Judah
Mount Zion / which he loved. 

New Adam, New Eden. Once Yhwh awakens he engages, generally speaking, in two acts: destruction and creation. The verses of destruction are 66-67 and comprise four lines. The verses of (re)creation are 68-72 and comprise eleven lines (nearly three times as long). The psalmist’s focus is not only clearly on the act of recreation, and not only is recreation the goal of the verses of destruction, but there is a lavish pausing over the election of David and Zion that is unlike anything in the poem; it lacks the deep note of irony of the provision of ‘bread and meat’ of verses _. In other words, the verses of destruction have removed from the psalmist’s tone the ambiguity inherent in the previous portions of the psalm caused by Israel’s rebellion.  In a sense, the verses of destruction have, flood-like, returned the earth to its pre-rebellion state of pure response to God’s presence. And, in the wake of this destruction the first act of (re)creation is a ‘choosing’ of a tribe and the establishment of a sanctuary (a choosing of a new Adam and the establishment of a new Eden…). This ‘choosing’ is the act of covenant-blessing and represents, it seems, something like the choosing of the ‘younger son over the older’ (something that is prerogative of the patriarch of a family on whom to bestow his blessing). The point (on one level at least) is that in this new, definitive act of God he begins with an election. God (or, man) needs not only a new home (after Shiloh) but a new man (a new Adam; after Ephraim). This ‘choosing’ will, it seems, be unlike the choosing of Ephraim and have within it the sense of it being grounded on God’s own power and initiative. The ‘choosing of Ephraim’, by contrast, it could be argued, was grounded on Ephraim’s own adhering to the ‘statutes and ordinances’. Judah’s choosing is more entrenched, grounded on something that establishes it on a firmer rock such that it will prevent the cyclical rebellion of Ephraim to gain sway over (or, entirely frustrate) the covenant goal itself. In order to do so a ‘new covenant’ will need to be enacted, a covenant that will contain within itself not only a sense of irrevocability but the fact that its genesis begins as a firm response to the frustrated covenant with Ephraim—meaning, it will have ‘built into it’ man’s rebellion and, hence, the ‘answer’ to that rebellion. This is why this covenant is not merely a starting over but a raising up. Judah and Zion. We also must draw attention to the fact that in this single verse is contained, in seed, the covenant with David that includes and necessitates the building of the Temple. We recall that the monarchy and the Temple not only had their genesis together but were, in fact, utterly intertwined within the Davidic covenant: “I shall build your house and you shall build mine…”. One aspect of this we have contemplated before is that this represents a type of Eden-Adam dynamic, with the king’s very mission tied to the establishment and the defense (liturgical and military) of the Temple and, indeed, their very creative origins come about at and for each other. For our purposes right now we need to only point out that the previous mountain (Shiloh) in this psalm was stained (and, hence, rejected) by the ‘high places’ constructed by Israel on the surrounding hills. Here, with Judah (David) and Zion, we have the emergence of the Israel-that-will-worship-in-truth. David is that new representative of Israel that will not rebel against God’s established liturgical home, but will, instead, become what Israel-in-the-Land was to be: the liturgical empire of God.