Ps. 85.9 (Glory dwelling)

 Surely / his salvation is near / to those who fear him
so that Glory / may dwell in our land. 

From this point forward the emphasis in the psalm will be in the proximity of God to his people. This sense has been alluded in the opening section, especially in verse 6 where the psalmist asks that God “turn and give us life”, implying the distance of God from his people and his needing to (re)turn to them. Here, however, it enters into the psalm in a very pronounced fashion. His salvation “is near” and his Glory is ready to “dwell in our land”. The following verses signal a type of heralding of his presence, and the psalm concludes with a righteousness “preparing a way for his footsteps”. There is, then, the sense of proximity as a ‘coming to’ or a ‘returning’. It is not that the people are, exodus-like, to be removed from a land of idolatry, but that God is to return to the land. Further, this sense of proximity is couched in the terms of ‘salvation’ and ‘Glory’. As to ‘salvation’, it has been mentioned already in both petitions (vs. 4 and 7) and is specifically described as “your salvation”. What seems clear is that this ‘salvation’ pertains to the dynamic abundance of life. It is what exemplifies the exodus power of his redemption and what results as a gift from his loyal-love. It is, in this sense, the ‘gift of the covenant’. And, whereas it is something petitioned for in verses 4 and 7, here, following the ‘word’ provided to the priest/prophet, it is ‘near’. One catches here the Isaiah vision of a herald who can see, from afar, what is certain to occur very soon. 

Second, as if in its wake, the “Glory” of God comes to ‘dwell in our land’. This is a deeply important line. The “Glory” of God and its ‘dwelling’ almost invariably refers to the Temple. As such, this line points us in two directions. One, it casts a shadow over the first half of the psalm, causing us to read it in light of this ‘dwelling of the glory’ in the Temple. It also prepares us for the lines that follow that display an astonishing scene of God’s covenantal ‘powers’ uniting and encompassing the entirety of creation. It is, in a sense, a new Eden.