Ps. 100.5 (forever loyal-love and faithfulness)

For Yhwh is good / his loyal-love is forever
and for generation after generation / is his faithfulness. 

These are words of praise that could, certainly, be pronounced outside the Temple. However, when we view these as Temple-proclamations, there is, perhaps, a depth that is added to them. The Temple is the place where heaven and earth meet. It is a type of Eden; or, Eden is a type of Temple. It is the realm of Yhwh’s presence. As such, to enter into the Temple is to enter the realm of the sacred and the holy. It is not, in this way ‘set apart’ from earth; it is where earth meets heaven and is lifted up into the divine realm. We might say, in the Temple the people enter (really) into the forever of Yhwh. We haven noted this in many other psalms: this “forever of Yhwh”, this sacred realm of Yhwh consummation and communion. It is the realm from which the covenant (with its ‘forever’ binding power) and promises flow. It is the realm that substantiates, solidifies and leavens the life of Israel. As Ezekiel would later envision—everything ‘flows from’ the Temple, and the Temple is the ‘ground zero’ of creation, the ‘spring of the earth’. The entire earth is to be brought into the presence of Yhwh, beginning with the Temple. I pause over this because these lines, spoken from the pilgrim-in-the-Temple, are praise enactments of this forever—“his loyal love is forever”, “from generation after generation…”. The primal, forever power of Yhwh to safeguard and nourish his people (his loyal-love and faithfulness) are concretely met in the Temple, in his presence. We might say, the Temple is the Old Testament’s central sacrament; it is what it represents. To enter into the Temple is not to enter into a ‘space’ where Yhwh’s general attributes can be praised; to enter the Temple is to enter into those attributes, because it is where Yhwh is. This is, as in Eden, where man “walks with God”. More to the point as described in these verses—this is where the forever of Yhwh, as enacted in the perpetuity of his people, is found. In other words, in the Temple is the life of the people that sustains them as “a people” throughout generations. Their cohesion, their life, their integrity, their unity, over time, finds its source and vitality in the forever of Yhwh as established in this Temple, in his “loyal-love” and in his “faithfulness”. Yhwh’s ‘forever’ is his constantly enacted “loyal-love” and “faithfulness” toward them (again, as in Eden).