Ps. 90.17 (establishment and the Temple)

Let the approval / of Yhwh our God / be upon us
the work of our hands / establish it for us
the work of our hands / establish it.   

We have already contemplated how this verse sheds light on the opening, first verse, and vice versa. What we saw, in summary, was that Yhwh’s ‘help in every generation’ was not a generalized ‘help’ but rather was one that ‘established the work of our hands’. It was something, in other words, that endowed man’s work with a type of perpetuity. In so doing, man’s work enters into and takes part in, Yhwh’s ‘work’; it enters in the realm of the divine, that neither begins nor ends, nor dies. The starkly transitory nature of man’s existence as ‘grass’ is here, in the ‘approval of Yhwh’, established and made perpetual “from one generation to the next”. 

Here, we see how this ‘establishment’ flows from Yhwh’s ‘approval’. In other words, the establishment of man’s hands is not only the granting of power (although it is) but is the manifestation of Yhwh’s approval, what the preceding verses have described as ‘joy’, ‘satisfaction’ and ‘loyal-love’. This, in turn, points to the phrase “Yhwh our God”, with its resonances of covenant. We have noted this throughout our reflections—that the signal phrase of the covenant is “You shall be my people and I shall be your God.” This language of ‘kinship’, whereby the people become ‘kin to Yhwh’, is the heart of the covenant. They both possess each other, in mutual obligations and fidelity. Important for our purposes is that this covenantal level deepens what we have just said—that the power which brings man’s works up into the realm of Yhwh is the power of the covenant between them. The covenant is what raises man into Yhwh’s life, because it is the covenant that makes them ‘kin’ to Yhwh. Importantly, as we have noted, it is not that man’s ‘life’ is taken up into  Yhwh approval. Rather, it is the ‘work of our hands’. Man’s mortality is not overcome; man’s futility in work and toil is. Again, it is the quality of man’s life that is redeemed; not the quantity. 

And so, the question is this: what could this ‘work’ be? I’ve already alluded to this in a previous reflection and the following is very speculative. However, I would suggest that what we might see here I is the ‘work’ of the rebuilt Temple. I want to make this argument in two ways. First, the opening section of the psalm focuses on three different spheres of existence: creation (mountains), man and time. All three of these, as we saw, were the ‘ultimate’ expressions of Yhwh’s sovereign mastery over his creation. Importantly, it is in the Temple that all three of these spheres enter into the holiness (the ‘owned-ness’) of Yhwh. The Temple is often portrayed as residing on a mountain. This ‘space’ is set apart as Yhwh’s own, his house. As such it is ‘holy’. Man is ‘made in the image of God’, and Israel, as a nation of ‘priests’, is likewise ‘set-apart’ and owned by Yhwh (this finds further concentration in the ‘high priest’). Time, likewise, is also made holy in the festivals, most centrally at the Day of Atonement when the One Temple is entered into by the One Man during the One Time that is most holy. In the second portion of the psalm, man is portrayed as living in a ‘time of wrath’ and futility. Nothing lives according to its purpose and everything is ‘toil and trouble’. This is man living in the spheres of ‘creation, man and time’, as they are emptied by Yhwh’s wrath. And now, in this third section, the psalmist explicitly places the listeners in the time of Moses, the wandering, and then refers to “a majestic vision” appearing to the children. This is why I would suggest that this psalm looks to a people in exile (in ‘wandering’) who have now (or, are hoping to) return to the land and thereby re-build the Temple---that space, where man and time are made over to Yhwh and are ‘established’. One final point, the second section, as we saw, centered on man’s sin and Yhwh’s wrath. It looked, particularly, at man’s hidden sins. This too, would be answered by this proposal—without a Temple, sins cannot be forgiven because no sacrifices can be made. And, there are sacrifices for ‘unknown sins’. Therefore, with the construction of the Temple, the ‘wrath’ of Yhwh that was ignited by these sins, would be turned away through sacrifice(s). Ultimately, I’m not too concerned with how speculative this is. What this says about the Temple and how it, as the place of Yhwh’s presence and ‘new Eden’, is true regardless—the Temple is the place where man is ‘redeemed’ through sacrifice, and taken up into Yhwh’s realm and, therein, brought within his ‘forever’.