Ps. 102.13-14 (Pt. 2; servants and nations)

Then nations / will revere / Yhwh’s name
all the kings of the earth / your glory
when Yhwh / has rebuilt Zion
revealing himself / in his glory
having regard / for the prayer / of the destitute
instead of despising / their prayer. 

These verses represent the crux of the psalm, the turn from sickness to healing, from shame to honor and glory. We need to highlight several things in this regard. The first is the relationship between Yhwh’s servants and the nations and kings of the earth. As we saw in the previous reflection, the servants perceive in the ‘rubble of Zion’ the sure hope of its rebuilding and Yhwh’s return. They ‘favor’ Zion, in its destruction, when no other person (nation or king) would. For their understanding of Yhwh leads them to the sure belief that Zion will be rebuilt. They do not love Zion’s rubble because they ‘love brokenness in itself’. They love the rubble because they are utterly convinced that Yhwh will not forever forget the things which are is. The ‘nations’ and ‘kings of the earth’ on the other hand will only revere Zion (and Yhwh) once it is rebuilt. For them, Zion-as-rubble is Zion-as-purely-abandoned-and-destroyed. They see nothing in its rubble. As such, in ‘the time of Zion’s destruction” there are two ‘realities’ so to speak. For the servants, they reside in the ‘sure hope of glory’; for the nations, they look forward to this glory (in some sense) as well but for them they are ‘far from Yhwh’ and are “without hope”. We might say the servants have a deep sense of resurrection, while the nations do not. This is a first insight. A second is that the psalmist describes the nations as also consisting of “kings of the earth”. In other psalms this designation is somewhat negative. They are ‘earthly (as opposed to divine) kings’. And in many they are subject to judgment because of their rebellion against Yhwh. Here, however, when they make their first appearance, they are portrayed in an almost wholly positive light. Even though they were likely the cause of Zion’s destruction, they are here first seen giving reverence to Yhwh upon its being rebuilt. They are, in other words, in the same position as Yhwh’s servants. They have moved “into the same time” as the servants: the “time of glory”. The servants and the nations. This begins to open up a very profound insight as to how the servants and the nations relate to each other. We need to recall that it is the ‘favor of Zion’s rubble’ that is the precondition of Yhwh’s rebuilding and re-inhabiting of Zion. Their reverence was a petition that was answered by Yhwh. As such, we might say, that is their ‘mission’ to the nations. They ‘maintain the prayer’ that will, ‘when the time is right’, be what Yhwh ‘answers to’. In other words, without them, there would be no action at the ‘right time’ (perhaps, no ‘right time’ at all). This is not merely important; it is (one of) the absolutely central and most important mission(s) possible. The servants “keep alive” the very possibility of redemption and resurrection (by seeing (favoring) in the rubble of Zion, its rebuilding).