Ps. 98.7-9 (Pt. 1; righteousness, Paul and the Flood)

Raise a shout / before the King / Yhwh
Let the sea / and all within it / resound
the world / and those who dwell in it
let the rivers / clap their hands
let the mountains / shout in unison
before Yhwh / for he is coming
for he is coming / to judge the earth
he will judge the world / with righteousness
and its peoples / with equity. 

To continue the previous reflection I want to propose a reading of something that Paul said in Romans regarding the ‘righteousness of God’ that is now, through Christ, ‘given to all’. We tracked a type of ‘progression’ in the previous reflection of Yhwh’s redemption as beginning, first, in Israel, that redemption being manifest to all the nations, and then, as we see today, of a ‘coming of Yhwh’ at which time the entire world (and nations) would be ‘enfolded’ within the redemption wrought for Israel. The word ‘righteousness’ plays an important part in this. In the section on Israel’s redemption, Yhwh “reveals his righteousness” to the nations by “remembering his loyal-love and faithfulness to Israel”. In today’s verses, the entire span of creation, from water-to-earth-to-man, erupts in praise because, when Yhwh comes, he will “judge the world with righteousness”. What Yhwh revealed to world by his redemption of Israel will now be what he employs to judge the world. This, as we said yesterday, is the ‘enfolding’ of the nations into a type of Israel-redemption. What began in Israel will, when Yhwh comes, consume the world. This is where I wonder if Paul fits in—that the Scriptures bear witness to a time when Yhwh will ‘come’ and judge the world, at which time the righteousness that was established in Israel would flood out into the world. And that Paul understands the ‘coming of Yhwh’ as Jesus Christ. That it was through him that the Israel-redemption-righteousness has now, as if bursting through a dam, spreading across the world and incorporating all of the nations into Yhwh’s righteousness. As he would say elsewhere—the ‘dividing wall’ has been torn down.