Ps. 84.3 (birds of the incarnation)

Even a bird / finds a home
and a swallow / a nest for herself
where she can put her young
near your altars / O Yhwh Sabaoth
my King / and my God. 

It is not the case that psalmist’s rarely think of themselves a metaphorically like an animal. It is that they rarely, if ever, sustain the metaphor with such beauty, delicacy and care. In another, very similar psalm, the psalmist is likened to a deer in parched land away from the Temple. There is a crucial distinction in these lines. The psalmist is not identifying with the bird. We must be aware of the fact that the psalmist has, upon entering the Temple, noticed these birds, a detail that, in and of itself, surely is unnoticed by the vast majority of pilgrims. And, further, he not only notices them but finds in them the reverse pole to his ‘long and wasting away’. If his ‘heart and flesh’ cry out, these birds are the ‘response’, representing in their closeness to God’s presence what he longs for. These birds are to the psalmist, real and literal inhabitants of God’s dwelling. 

This is the real key to this verse: that the psalmist sees in these birds a deep and rich reality. They are not metaphoric, they are not a symbol. He truly envies these birds and their ability to literally dwell close to God’s presence. For the psalmist, God’s presence in the Temple is real; it is not a mental attitude or disposition. This is why an animal can be an object of envy for him. These birds may, in fact, reveal more of the reality of the Temple and its beauty than all of the Temple-psalms combined. Until one could look at these birds and truly envy their closeness to God one has not yet grasped the reality of God’s presence in the Temple (it may be that this is nearly impossible for a people almost antagonistic to sacred space as contrasted to sacred time/attitude). Their lack of rationality is no hindrance to the psalmist’s perception of their treasured status. 

Dwellings. The psalmist provides us another key insight through these birds. What the psalmist finds so amazing about these birds is not that they can, when they desire, fly into the Temple. Rather, it is the fact that they can “dwell in the Dwelling”. There is an important merging of the fact that, as in vs. 1, this is God’s dwelling whereas now the birds are permitted to build “a home”. Within God’s Dwelling there is space for other ‘dwellings’. It is not the case that the Dwelling can only be a place-of-visitation. Rather, it can be, and is, a place wherein one can build a home. This is thematically important. We saw how the psalmist’s longing is a total longing. His entire being longs for the Temple. That desire could not be satisfied unless it would be possible for a home to be built within the Temple. More important still, the presence of God would not be one that could or would allow the total saturation of one’s being were it not possible that one could dwell in his dwelling. If one could not dwell in the Dwelling, there would be a remainder to one’s life that could not be consummated by God’s presence; something ‘profane’ (or, secular) would remain. 

This points to something momentous: these birds intimate the Incarnation. Man’s entire being can ‘dwell’ in the ‘Dwelling’. Man’s being, in its entirety, can be a ‘dwelling’ or ‘tabernacle’ to God. In the flesh of Christ we see the ‘Dwelling’ of God in the ‘dwelling’ of man.