Ps. 89.5 (heavenly hierarchy)

So the heavens have praised / your wondrous work / O Yhwh;
your faithfulness also / in the assembly of the Holy Ones. 

In working my way through this psalm my understanding of these verses has shifted a few times. Initially I thought that the heavens were praising the Davidic covenant, that somehow this election by Yhwh of David and his people was so astonishing that even the Holy Ones found it to be a source of liturgy to God. I think there may still be something to this. However, what I have come to see is that the ‘movement’, so to speak, goes in the reverse, not from earth to heaven, but from heaven to earth. What I mean is this—verses 1 through 6 form an incredibly compact unit. So compact, in fact, that I cannot go into all the details here. An overriding arrangement, however, is that verses 1-2 describing ‘heavenly faithfulness’, verses 3-4 the Davidic covenant and then 5-6 the heavenly faithfulness again. Some suppose that verses 3-4 were inserted into the psalm; I actually like that idea but it is somewhat irrelevant to my point—what we see is that this heavenly liturgy ‘bookends’ the covenant with David. It surrounds it, literally, in a formal fashion. The point is important—that in and through David this ‘heavenly faithfulness’ is instantiated (covenantally, or sacramentally, enacted) on earth. This reversal of what I had previous thought is significant—to biblical man the Davidic covenant takes on an aura of extreme and overpowering glory. Heaven is made present on earth through him and his lineage. The covenant, in other words, brings heaven down to earth. In so doing, this ‘descent of heaven’ also raises earth up into the heavenly realm. They unite in David (just as the Temple becomes the meeting of heaven and earth; it is no coincidence that both the ‘house of God’ and the ‘house of David’ are simultaneous in the granting of the Davidic covenant…). And so, when one enters into the Davidic covenant, they enter into this heavenly liturgy, which is an astonishing event. It is a reality that even the “Holy Ones” (those beings of terrifying glory and power) praise! 

For a moment we should reflect on how and why the psalmist introduced this ‘hierarchy’ of beings (these “Holy Ones”). I think there are at least two reasons. First, the psalmist is clearly at a loss in describing the glory and power of the Davidic covenant. It explodes all earthly conceptions and, importantly, its source actually explodes even all of the heavenly conceptions as well. Just as overwhelmed are the earthly participants are these heavenly ones. What we see then is that the introduction of these heavenly beings serves to intensify in an extreme fashion the sense of the glory inherent in the Davidic covenant. The heavenly beings do not ‘get in the way’—the hierarchy does not obscure. Rather, the opposite: their wonder only serves to more fully reveal the power contained in the Yhwh’s faithfulness, works and loyal-love. Second, this ‘royal retinue’ around the God-throne will be mirrored later on earth around David. Just as Yhwh is ‘without compare’ to those around him so too is David ‘without compare’ to the kings of the earth. Just as Yhwh is the ‘most high’, so too is David the ‘most high’ of the earth-kings. There are many more parallels that we will explore in this regard. However, for now, what we need to see is that David’s ‘glorious authority’ on earth, as seen through his being ‘raised above’ those around him, is the instantiation on earth of Yhwh’s ‘glorious authority’ in heaven. As such, this ‘hierarchy’ again serves only to deepen the revelation, not obscure it. It affords us something we would not have otherwise seen.