Ps. 87.5a (established fruitfulness)

Of Zion indeed / it will be said
“Everyone was born in her.
The Most High himself / has established her.”

The previous verse initiated us into the explosive and tremendous power of fruitful unity that God establishes in Zion. There, the emphasis fell on specific nations that not only surround Israel but nations that were its most threatening enemies. Through Zion, they become not only pacified, but, in fact, ‘sons of God’, born through Zion. Here, that power is evoked again but in the broadest manner possible. Now, no specific nation is referenced because the claim for Zion’s motherhood has become absolute and total: “Everyone was born in her”. It is at this point that we see Zion as the ‘new Eve’—the mother of ‘all the living’. Her unity extends far beyond the subjugation of Israel’s enemies to her motherhood. She becomes the ‘womb’ for all mankind. 

Establishment and fruitfulness. The following verse, on first glance, seems odd. We just concluded with Zion’s total motherhood of ‘everyone’. The following verse will likewise be in regard to her motherhood. So why the reference to the Most High’s establishment of Zion between these two? Preliminarily, we must conclude that this ‘establishment’ is related to Zion’s fruitfulness. In other words, it is the Most High’s ‘establishment’ that empowers her to be this world-mother to the all the living. This type of initiative on God’s part, as it relates to fruitfulness, is similar to that which he promised to Abraham. God’s primal command to Adam and Eve was “to be fruitful and multiply”. When we get to Abraham, however, we find a man and wife whose fruitfulness is essentially ‘dead’. It is into this ‘death’ that God makes the promise not that Abraham will be fruitful and multiply but that God will make him fruitful and multiply. In other words, the children of Abraham, his ‘life from death’, is one that is sourced in the divine fruitfulness of blessing and power. For Abraham, this power not only brings ‘life to his body’, but becomes an astonishing and utterly prodigal fruitfulness (“as many as the stars” or “sand on the shore”). Through Abraham, God’s fruitfulness is unleashed upon the earth. I think something similar is at work here in the sandwiching between the lines on fruitfulness this “establishment” by the Most High. Now, unlike through Abraham, a male, this Zion-woman, will become the one through whom God’s fruitfulness will be unleashed.