Ps. 78.72 (David: conclusion and beginning)

And so he shepherded them / with his upright heart
with his skillful hands / he led them. 

There are several things to note about this concluding verse. 

David’s heart. One of the most important, perhaps, is the inclusion of David’s ‘upright heart’. This detail is something found throughout the Scriptures in reference to David (he was ‘after God’s own heart’). However, it has particular importance in this psalm. The reason: Israel’s failure has been described, repeatedly, as a failure of their hearts. In verse 8 we see the faithless generation that is described as failing to “keep its heart steady”. This failure serves as a type of summation of everything that will follow. The entire generation is subjected to this judgment. In verse 37, in the midst of their false return to God, Israel’s heart is “not steadfast with him, and they were not faith to his covenant.” This ‘cardio-failure’ is deep, perhaps the primal source of Israel’s rebellion. Here, then, for the first time, and in the final verse, we are given the single description of a man whose heart is ‘upright’. In this psalm David is the only positive figure. In him, therefore, Israel finds its fulfillment. He is, Mary-like, the one that responds adequately.  

Heart and conclusion. Likewise, by signaling this faithfulness in the concluding verse the psalm in a way, shows that only now are things really ‘on track’ for the very first time in Israel’s history. This is actually the beginning, not the end. History can now move forward rather than devolving into the downward spiral that has characterized Israel since their liberation from Egypt. In David God has found a true covenant partner.  And, until that point, time (and history) cannot really ‘get off the ground’ but, rather, oscillates and circles back on itself in a terrible movement of blessing, rebellion, curse and further rebellion (again, Mary-like…).  

David’s hands. We have commented at some length already on how in David God’s ‘hands’ are now transferred to David’s hands. What we need to see now, though, is how the conclusion of this psalm mirrors the conclusion of Psalm 77 and provides its ‘answer’. In our analysis of Psalm 77 we determined that there was a note of ambivalence at its end. The final verse reads: “You led your people like a flock, by the hand of Moses and Aaron.” The language is strikingly similar. Yet, we argued, this was almost nothing more than an aching memory. Here, by contrast, the psalm has moved to a triumphal conclusion. And, interestingly, throughout the entire recounting of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, neither Moses nor Aaron are mentioned. Indeed, the only name mentioned in the whole psalm is David. The point, I think, is that psalm 77 flows into 78 whereby the entire generation of the exodus is placed under a massive question-mark. Indeed, in 78, the whole time leading up to David was a period of ‘drukeness’ and ‘sleep’ (78.65). It is only now when that aching memory can be resolved into the period of Yhwh’s wakefulness. And this comes about through Zion and David. It is their hands, and not Moses and Aaron’s, that introduces the note of hope and recreation necessary within Israel. Moses and Aaron led with their hands, David leads with his skillful hands and his upright heart.  David has become, for Israel, the new Adam, and Zion has become the Eden.