Ps. 93.5 (the beginning of the beginning)

Your testimonies / are sure indeed
holiness / befits your house
O Yhwh / for endless days. 

The only other thing that is ‘possessed’ by Yhwh in this psalm is his throne; “Your throne was established long ago.” Here, it is your testimonies that are ‘sure indeed’. These testimonies of Yhwh partake of the same solidity and established nature of the throne and, like the world, they are ‘firmly established, immovable’. As such, they stand in contrast to the impermanent and shapeless waters that, by their very nature, are not established. They stand in contrast to the waters in another important way as well. The waters are portrayed as “roaring with a thunderous voice”. This ‘roar’ is not music; it is chaotic, disorganized sound. It is the antithesis of structured words or music. The sound the waters make reflects the nature of the waters: disorganized, unstable, and chaotic. By contrast, Yhwh’s ‘words’ are ‘testimonies’. They are formed sounds—words—that express Yhwh’s shaping and good will; his ‘sure’ and ‘holy’ will. Further, they are ‘graceful words’ in the sense that they are spoken for Yhwh’s people, as instruction and guidance; they are meant to be a path of blessing and holiness. It is, in the context of this psalm, the ‘wise words of a king’ as he forms, shapes, instructs and guides his people; they are the ‘words of the kingdom’, a type of ‘sermon on the (temple) mount’. The ‘roar of the waters’ is simply destructive; it serves no other end; it utterly lacks this ‘concern and care for the other’ but, instead, focuses entirely on its own formless momentum (of chaos and destruction). 

It seems deeply significant that from this ‘sure instruction’ the psalmist now turns to the ‘holiness’ that ‘befits your house’. I detect in this line an aesthetic sense of holiness. What I mean is that the psalmist sees holiness as a type of beauty, or glory. Like some perfectly placed or designed space, it is what is ‘fitting’ for Yhwh’s house. It is, in the words of verse 1, the ‘clothing’ of Yhwh’s house; that which does not conceal, but reveals the house in its adornment. Further, this ‘holiness’ is something that, in its close relationship to Yhwh’s testimonies, is a source of blessing for Yhwh’s people. It, in a sense, emanates the ‘blessing-power’ of Yhwh, the life-giving, excessively abundant and prodigal joy of Yhwh. Again, in juxtaposition to the ‘waters’, we find here ‘life in abundance’, not a ‘roaring, thunderous voice’ and destructive ‘pounding’. 

The house. The Temple also clearly stands in contrast to the ‘waters’, in a similar fashion that the world, the throne, and the ‘testimonies’ do. Yhwh’s ‘house’, the Temple, is the embodiment of Yhwh’s creative, life-giving graciousness toward his people. It is a house, and so it is ‘formed’ in contrast to the waters; it provides shelter and protection. It is a place of communion, where Yhwh and man meet, where heaven and earth, like a husband and bride, ‘become one’. It is oriented to this ‘I-thou’ dynamic, and was created (‘established’; vs. 1, 2) for it. The waters are simply, and only, chaos. Their only orientation is, if anything, an ‘I’ orientation (and, not even that). And, whereas the ‘house’ is one of banqueting and festivity, the ‘waters’ is one of war and thunderous noise. 

Endless days. The final line is poignant in many ways. First, as we have seen, in this psalm the ‘deeper in the past’ one can establish one’s power, the more present that power actually is. So, the fact that Yhwh is ‘from eternity’ and his throne was established ‘long ago’, means that it surpasses every other power that came after and as such is more present and effective now. Here, we see how this reality is understood as perpetual. It encompasses the present but now is seen as extending ‘for endless days’. This is precisely the point—the ‘more past’ means also the ‘more future’. The further back Yhwh’s authority extends, the further forward it extends as well. If it is ‘from eternity’ it will be ‘to eternity’. This all encompassing nature of Yhwh’s authority, as portrayed in time, also highlights an further important contrast with the waters—the waters are entirely and only portrayed in the past tense. Yhwh’s power is both eternally past, present and eternally future. As such, Yhwh is both always-already before the waters and always-already after the waters. The waters are ‘contained’ within the realm of Yhwh’s sovereignty and cannot exceed it, either into the past or the future. They will ‘come to an end’ (as Revelation says). The psalmist has then, even in the structure of the psalm, encompassed the waters within Yhwh’s power. One final point in this regard—the psalm ends on this ‘endless days’ and, as such, points to a reality we have noted before—that in Yhwh the ‘end’ is often just the ‘beginning of the beginning’. What I mean is that this psalm leaves us at the point of a type of infinite horizon, leading into Yhwh’s endless days. In a sense, it leaves off ‘at the beginning’, in the ‘holiness that is befitting your house’. We might even say—it leaves off at the precise point that Revelation leaves off, with the ‘descent’ of the Bride/holy-of-holies, and beginning of the ‘endless day’.