Ps. 85.8 (Yhwh indeed)

 I will hear / what God has to say
Yhwh indeed / will command well-being
for the loyal members / of his people
But / don’t turn back to folly. 

It has been suggested that the first line of this verse is the statement of a priest or prophet who receives a ‘word of the lord’. This makes a great deal of sense. The petition(s) has been made and now comes the answer, delivered through a designated receiver of God’s word(s). It is important to sense the impact of these words in light of what has preceded. The psalmist, and God’s people, has placed before God a past that is full of hope and a future that is full of despair. Within the space between those two they have issued a petition to God to perform a new exodus, to ‘turn to them’, grant them salvation and to end his wrath. The future of an endless wrath is terrible and terrifying. It will seep forward, blanketing ‘generation to generation’, obliterating their sense of continuity with their fore-fathers (the past will be dead) as well as their fundamental experience of life. While they may continue to exist, they will not have any life within them.  They stand on a precipice. One can picture the people waiting, with breathe held, as to whether God’s anger will continue or whether they can expect the unleashing of his exodus power. 

It is within that plight that God delivers a word. And it is a word specifically designed to answer their petitions and concern. He answers that the past will live once again. God will act with them the way he acted with their fathers.  More centrally, their questions regarding the future exhibit a sense of dire uncertainty, a sense that God’s perpetual anger will not leave them in a state of ‘confidence’ but one of silence. Now, that is reversed. “Yhwh indeed will command well-being.” In a single word the cloud that was to become the future is dispelled. This will happen. This sense of certainty will now be heard in all of the following verses, but the initial note is struck here. 

The second note that we need to draw attention to is the at first glance odd description of God “commanding well-being”. It is as if ‘well-being’ were almost a third party that stands ready to be deployed by Yhwh on behalf of his faithful ones. This sense of a distance between God and that which he commands recalls to mind the opening liens where God ‘pulls back’ or ‘turns away’ from his own anger and wrath. Up to this point God’s only action toward himself is that of restraining his anger. The sense here is of the reverse—he now commands his desire for ‘well-being’ and sends it to his people. This note will also gather momentum in the following verses as God ‘heralds himself’ to Israel’s deliverance.