Ps. 87.7 (familial liturgy)

And the singers sing / as they dance
“All my springs / are in you” 

In this concluding verse I want to focus on a few things. In particular, the shift in imagery from the motherhood of Zion to her being the source of “all my springs”. The dominant image of Zion up to this point has been that of the beloved mother of all the living. As we have indicated, rather interestingly, her only activity in the psalm is ‘giving birth’. She is the object of attention (and love) and proclamation, but she is only active in her giving birth. There is a deeper level of significance to this, as we start to see in this final verse. As mother, she is also the source of the world’s familial relationship to Yhwh: it is through her that everyone becomes a ‘child of Yhwh’. The unity she provides is the unity of her womb. It is, also, the unity of origins. It is the fact that everyone is born in and through Zion that is in focus; their life begins in her. Here, the image shifts but not the theme. Zion is now not the ‘mother of all the living’ but a type of headwater to “all my springs”. In other words, just as ‘everyone’ is born in Zion so too, now, are these ‘springs’ now seen to flow from Zion. Springs are often an image for ‘life’. As such, all of life is now seen as originating and flowing from Zion. There is perhaps a deeper implication to this verse. We have seen how all the nations are ‘born again for the first time’ in Zion. Zion, unlike Eden, is made into the source of all life, within time (not at the beginning of time). As such, her ‘becoming mother of all the living’ through the election of Yhwh transfers to her all of the world. They, in a sense, are adopted into the family of God through her. As the nations are ‘reborn’ in Zion, so too are their life-giving springs (those springs that they would have regarded as constituting the divine headwaters) transferred to Zion.  I think this is why the verse refers to all my springs, just as the psalm earlier referred to everyone being born in Zion. There is the sense that Zion becomes the ‘absolute mother’; there is no remainder existing outside of her. All water—all life—is transferred to and flows from her.


The final thing to note about this verse is that it concludes the psalm on a liturgical note. There has been a hint of this earlier, in verse 3, where it is claimed that “glorious things” are spoken of Zion. However, it is only here where the psalm finds its consummation in liturgical praise. Concluding the psalm thus tracts several other psalms we have looked at—by which I mean that praise and liturgy often marks the ultimate end of God’s action on behalf of his people. For example, in psalms of deliverance, the deliverance itself is only penultimate to the ultimate act of offering liturgy to God. Here, the image is different but the result the same—the psalm moves from “love of Zion”, to “children of Zion”, to “familial liturgy”. As such, the actual ‘birth of everyone from Zion’ is not the ‘end’ toward which the psalm is headed but, rather, the liturgy those children offer in Zion. Notably, this ‘liturgy’ is actually a song of praise to Zion. “All my springs are in you” with ‘you’ being clearly Zion. This, of course, is no diminishment to Yhwh. Yhwh ‘established her’ and, through his love of her, made her divinely fruitful. She is his ‘bride’ and, as such, any glory given to her is one which he intended to be lavished upon her.