Ps. 99.4 (building jacob)

You have established equity
deeds of justice / and acts of righteousness / in Jacob
you have done. 

What Yhwh ‘loves’, he has ‘established in Jacob’. It is important to note this ‘locating’ of Yhwh. It has occurred before when Yhwh is described as “in Zion” (vs. 2). Here, his equity is established “in Jacob”. The imagery of building—of establishment—is important. Yhwh’s “deeds of justice and acts of righteousness” are his acts of Yhwh-the-builder/shaper. As we said previously, this is, so to speak, Yhwh’s ‘internal life’ being built-into-Jacob.   What we see then, is this—Zion (the Temple) is Yhwh’s building, built for him; Jacob is the building, built by Yhwh in ‘equity’. The one, housing his glory, the other, housing his ‘equity’. What is key in this is that Yhwh’s equity is an act of separation; it declares innocent and guilty; it blesses and it ‘curses’. In some way this is the dynamic of creation itself, when Yhwh ‘separates’ the differing elements to create the stage of creation. That is what ‘equity’ does in the service of creating justice. This dynamic, established in Jacob, is given voice later in the psalm, when it says: “you were a forgiving god to them, though punishing their wrongdoing” (vs. 8). Absolutely crucial to this is the fact that this equity, in the midst of the fact that it enacts punishment, is a thing to be treasured. As in Genesis, “it is good”. It is creative; it is life-giving. This ‘equity’, this ‘justice’ is what “all the peoples” come to see as established by Yhwh in Zion and what, therefore, they praise Yhwh for. (vs. 3). It ‘radiates’, it ‘shines’, it is compelling, it is an object of beauty. It is understood to be that which ‘establishes’ life. This is the ‘beauty’ of Yhwh’s, so to speak, ‘internal life’, as expressed externally by his radiant glory, housed in the Temple..