Ps. 15 (Temple entry)

In the psalms, there is no greater human yearning than to experience Yhwh’s presence within the Temple. It is the absolute pinnacle, destination and fulfillment of all desire; for the psalmist, it is a torrent of desire. When the psalmist attempts to describe the experience of Yhwh within his Temple, his language tends to be the most poetical of all passages; it has to bend in order to give some sense of the reality of the Presence. Yhwh’s presence is experienced as one of wild and festive delight. It is prodigal, overflowing and partakes of the joyfully ‘useless’ quality of beauty and glory.

It is, also, tremendum—a terrible and terrifying beauty. Indeed, the first time that Israel, as a people, approach Yhwh it is at Sinai. And they cower in fear at his presence. They tell Moses to experience Yhwh in their stead. Yhwh’s presence is not tame or pretty. It is tremendous. And it judges. That which is impure and that which is not holy, is not permitted and, more importantly, is potentially destroyed in the Presence. This experience can be traced down through every prophet who is brought into Yhwh’s presence, from Ezekiel to Isaiah.

The Presence is, then, blessing and threat. It is a blessing to those who are conformed to its own holiness and a threat to those who are not.

This is precisely why the pilgrim, standing at the threshold of the Temple, poses a question to Yhwh about who is worthy to enter into his Temple. The question itself embodies the psalmist’s understanding that the Presence is both tremendum and the ‘fulfilment of all desire’, both threat and blessing. In other words, the Presence itself is what calls forth this question; in a way, the Presence asks the question before the psalmist does. This fact leads to a final consideration before we look more closely at the psalm itself.

The Presence—the Glory of Yhwh—because it is both threat and blessing, is a consuming beauty. What I mean is that, as the fulfillment of all desire, as that which the psalmist desires more than anything, and, at the same time, that which utterly judges the psalmist, the Presence is not something the psalmist experiences as an object. Rather, and more aptly described, it is the Face. It is the Lord over all who stand in its presence. Once in the Presence, one is immediately made aware that one is surrounded, hemmed in, and always-already seen; one cannot hide from this beauty. It creates a world around the pilgrim.

 

With all of this in mind, the question the pilgrim poses to Yhwh and Yhwh's response takes on a much greater depth. The psalmist essentially asks, "Who is worthy to see you?" Yhwh responds that the one who is worthy to look upon him must himself look and act like this. We should note here that what Yhwh describes is not an act of cultic purification; there are admonishments about ritual purity here. Those requirements, I believe, are simply assumed by the pilgrim. What Yhwh does require is more closely aligned to the requirements, for example, in the Decalogue—the realm of human freedom that either responds to Yhwh or not. And, as with the Decalogue, many of these requirements are those that cannot be enforced by the community (how would the community ever know if you ‘coveted your neighbors wife’?). Instead, it requires an interior policing of the individual; a personal adherence to the Torah of Yhwh. What we witness here is that the Presence consumes and has authority over even this interior realm. To be aspire to be in the Presence, one must come to grips with the fact that the Presence searches out the heart, the hidden recesses of each person, and it weighs that person’s interior adherence to the Torah.

More deeply still is this: the pilgrim's entire life (his cultic to his personal, interior life), therefore, must mimic the Presence itself. His life is, itself, a theophany of the theophany he is eagerly wanting to see.  And here we come to the truly profound realization that it is in these commands that man is most fully understood as the ‘image of God’, and why man in particular is the greatest theophany of God in so far as his interior life is lived in obedience to Yhwh’s Torah. Man, in his obedience to Torah, reveals Yhwh to a degree that no other creature can. Man’s obedience is, for this reason, a revelation of the ‘glory of Yhwh’, a theophany. The pilgrim that does this spreads the Temple-life across creation, bringing Yhwh’s holiness that is experienced in the Temple into the community and creation as a whole. That is why life-and-liturgy  can be so intimately wed together.

This is, in fact, what Adam and Eve were created to do. Eden, while closely mimicking the Temple and, in particular, the holy-of-holies, and while Adam and Eve are, in some sense, understood as the regal and priestly authority in Eden—Eden is not itself the Temple. What we see is that Adam and Eve were created in order to spread the holiness of Yhwh throughout all of creation, through their ‘images’. Had that occurred, creation would have been the Temple without the need for Temple in Jerusalem. And, it is this vision, precisely that concludes Scripture in Revelation when the Bride descends upon the earth. At that time, there will be no Temple or sun, because the Lamb will be the light—all of creation will, at that point, become the Temple and holy-of-holies.

Ps. 14, Part 2, conclusion

All of that said, why is this ‘third option’ appear to be a valid choice? Why is earth allowed to at least appear to be self-sufficient? In asking this we should glimpse that the heart of these fools is the heart of Adam. When he succumbed to the lie of the Tempter, he was not engaging in idolatry; he was not explicitly acting in rebellion against Yhwh. He was, instead, choosing himself. For the Scripture writers, it this primal choice that stands at the heart of every other choice against Yhwh. And, in this choice, he became, at least for a time, the atheistic fool of Psalm 14. What we see then is that creation itself allows for this ‘space’ to be created, where man can inhabit the lie that he is his own measure. It is not immediately met with rectifying justice. In Psalm 14, we see that this ‘space’ can actually persist for quite some time. Long enough in fact that those who should possess the ‘fortunes’ of the world have actually had those fortunes consumed by the wicked. In other words, things can become completely inverted, with the fools on top and the wise on the bottom, much like the exodus and much like the various captivities.

 It is because this inversion is possible that the psalmist, towards the end, looks forward to the time when heaven will again assert itself and reorder everything. When the ‘captivity’ of the righteous will end and their fortunes be restored. When appearance and reality will once again coincide (in many ways what Adam accomplished was the severing of appearance and reality). Importantly, however, even within this inversion, Yhwh tends to maintain a realm where appearance and reality, where earth and heaven, still coincide—and he does so on Zion and in the Temple. It is there where earth and heaven meet. It is there where Yhwh, the king of heaven, dwells. And this is why, at least in part, the psalmist sees deliverance coming ‘from Zion’. Against all of the folly of the ‘sons of men’, who think that the earth has either been abandoned or severed from heaven, there remains a place that Yhwh claimed particularly for himself. And throughout the prophets, it this place that becomes ‘ground zero’ for his redemption. Constantly, Zion is understood as the place from which ‘living water’ will flow and cover the earth in life-abounding prodigality. The beginning of the end of exile will start in Zion.

Notably, this is why, when Jesus is crucified, ‘blood and water’ flow from his side. Jesus, as the new Temple, became that source of sacrificial blood and cleansing water that was to issue from the Temple at the end of time.

Ps. 14 (atheism and bread)

We have seen how, in many psalms, there are two competing spheres—that of Yhwh’s and that of chaos and destruction. To live in the sphere of Yhwh is to live in faithfulness to him and his Torah. To live in the sphere of chaos is, usually, to live either in idolatry or rebellion against Yhwh and his people. Implicit within both of these spheres is the fact that man lives his life embedded within a divine realm. Even when man is engaged in idolatry or rebellion, he is still interacting with a divine realm of the gods and understands his life to be measured by that realm.

 In psalm 14, however, we are given a glimpse into another mode of existence for those who live apart from Yhwh. In this psalm, the ‘sons of man’ are not worshipping another god, nor are they rebelling against Yhwh. Instead, they are acting as if Yhwh had no authority whatsoever over them and their actions. They are, in effect, practical atheists. I say ‘practical’ because their type of atheism is “spoken in their hearts” (vs. 1). It is, so to speak, the guiding assumption behind their every action; the air they breathe, in other words. Their lives are lived in atheism, not (cognitively) at atheism. Crucially, for them the earth has been severed from heaven and the divine realm; it operates, solely, according to the will of man and is governed, solely, according to man’s power. Here, man is not measured by heaven, but by man.

 For the psalmist, this severing of earth from heaven does not lead to a prudently, well-ordered society. Instead it becomes, literally, consumed in perversity, ‘horrible deeds’ and corruption. More deeply still, this realm attempts to destroy those who wish to maintain faithfulness to Yhwh and heaven. Here we get to the central image of the psalm: the act of feeding.

 Throughout the Scriptures man is reminded that “he does not live by bread alone”. When Israel is journeying through the dessert, this becomes a literal reality, when ‘bread from heaven’ descends once a day for six days. Each day the Israelites can gather it, but only what they can eat for that day. If they gathered more it would spoil. On the ‘sixth day’, they could gather twice as much and that portion, interestingly, did not spoil on the ‘seventh day’.  The Israelites are, here, not ‘living by bread alone’ because they must gather the bread in a faithfulness to Yhwh that includes faithfulness to the Sabbath itself. This ‘bread’ is a type of ‘creation bread’—produced for six days and then ‘resting’ on the seventh.

 In Psalm 14, though, the ‘sons of man’ do not observe this. They do live by bread alone. “They have eaten bread; on Yhwh they have not called.” For them, eating lacks any reference to a transcendent realm of giving and production.  It is, moreover, entirely non-liturgical (they do not ‘call’ to Yhwh). There is no Sabbath consumption or rest. And it is here that the psalmist reveals his craft most fully by combining this ‘eating of bread’ with the “consumption of my [Yhwh’s] people.”  For the psalmist, their consumption of purely earthly bread is an expression of their consumption of Yhwh’s people and the utter depravity and corruption that marks their lives. Just as the bread has no transcendent reality to it, so too does God’s people have no inherent value. For these men, bread and men are equally susceptible to their wills and dominion.

 At a deeper level still, what we find here is that an ambivalence to God leads to an ambivalence towards man. The image of ‘consuming’ Yhwh’s people is rather dull in comparison with other images in the psalms that tend to describe the wicked as attacking God’s people, or ‘tearing at them like a lion’. Here, though, something in a sense more perverse is at work. God’s people are simply fodder. They have no worth. This denigration is intimately tied to their denigration of Yhwh.  The psalmist makes this clear when he weds their atheism to being “fools” and then Yhwh chastises them for “failing to understand” when they consume his people. There is a deep sense that these men are faulty, utterly blind to the heavenly reality that surrounds them and measures them.

 It should be clear at this point that for those who live within Yhwh’s realm, the realm of the ‘sons of man’ is a terror. The will of man severed from faithfulness to Yhwh is and leads to corruption, perversity, oppression and willful confusion. In other words, remaining aloof from Yhwh and the divine realm places one in the realm that is understood as wickedness and chaos. Earth is made to be in relation to Heaven, like a bride to a bridegroom. When the ‘sons of man’, attempt to sever that relationship, the kingdom entrusted to them becomes folly. Man cannot live by bread alone because man cannot serve himself alone. There is Yhwh, and there is death (as the story of Genesis and Deuteronomy make clear). Man cannot set up a ‘third realm’ and operate independently of those two choices. When they try, they will still fall into the realm of chaos and death, but they will inhabit that realm in a particular mode of evil. This is the great lie of the psalm—the belief that man can ignore that choice and instead choose himself alone. To not choose Yhwh is to choose destruction.

Ps. 13 (hope overtaking)

The most important line in the psalm is when the psalmist demands from Yhwh, “Look! Answer me! O Yhwh, my God!”. One might say that this is the final deafening, and demanding “knock” of, “knock, and the door shall be opened to you.” It is preceded by the no less subtle ‘knocks’ of “How long…” in verses 1-2, all of which are, in reality, demands, not questions.

 

However, although that line is the most important, the key to the line is actually found in comparing it to the opening line of the psalm. There, the psalmist ‘asks’ “How long O Yhwh? Will you forget me forever?” The Name, as in many psalms, is referred to in the very first line. Here, psalmist inserts the Name into the midst of his agonized cry, attempting to draw Yhwh’s presence into his affliction in order to reverse it. For him, time has derailed. Without the Presence, time is chaotic; it is ‘forgotten’ time and it exhibits all the characteristics of a state of existence apart from the Presence—incoherence, confusion, oppression and death.

 

When the psalmist again refers to the Name, however, he will add an important phrase to it, “O Yhwh my God.” This small phrase turns the psalm around from despair to one of impervious hope. The phrase “my God’ calls to mind the covenantal bond between Yhwh and his people, “You shall be my people, and I shall be your God.” Yhwh is his name, but he is Israel’s God, wed to them with bonds of loving-kindness and faithfulness. It is this covenantal bond that opens up the sphere within which the psalmist can demand that Yhwh listen to him, turn his Face toward him and deal with him ‘bountifully’. It is this covenant sphere that makes possible the powerful assurance of the closing lines. Notice how the closing lines are covenantal in shape: “But I have trusted in your lovingkindness. My heart shall rejoice in your deliverance. I shall sing praises to Yhwh, as soon as he has dealt bountifully with me.”

 

The covenant is not a sphere within which man has no claim on Yhwh, within which there can be no demanding “knock”. In fact, within this covenantal sphere, we witness the expectation of bountiful deliverance. Within this sphere the “heart that experienced grief day and night”(vs 2)  is turned into a “heart that shall rejoice in your deliverance.” (vs. 5).  It is a sphere within which the ‘rejoicing of the enemy’ (vs 4) will be turned into a ‘rejoicing in your deliverance.’ (vs. 5). The liturgy of chaos will turn into the liturgy of Yhwh.

 

We might say it this way—when Yhwh covenanted himself to his people (when they could add “my God” to Yhwh), he gave birth to them. They became constituted as covenant people, a people whose very structure was encased within the faithfulness of Yhwh (from the bottom to the top and from ‘the east to the west’). Their enemy would be Yhwh’s enemy and Yhwh’s enemy (Death) would be theirs. As a covenant people they could speak Yhwh’s faithfulness back to him in the form of demand without that demand somehow lessening their sense that Yhwh’s response is always-already a response that overwhelms them in its bounty and makes them erupt in rejoicing and singing praise. It also, for this very reason, provides the space within which, in a span of 5 verses, the psalmist can move into a hope and expectation that overwhelms his despair.

Ps. 12 (speech and creation)

We have often spoken about the realm of Yhwh and the realm of the wicked and chaos. In this psalm, those realms are primarily described as being creations of speech. Speech is not simply something that happens within each realm. Speech does not merely reflect a reality; it is something that actually creates those realms. Genesis is good example of this, with creation itself flowing from the words of Yhwh. Creation is the (ongoing) speech of Yhwh. Moreover, when the serpent speaks to Eve, her disobedience creates a realm of serpent-duplicity within the Garden that then requires hers and Adam’s expulsion. Those who are within either realm, are, so to speak, what is spoken. Speech is performative in that sense. For Yhwh, it is prodigally life-giving; for the wicked, it allures to self-mastery and power but is, in the end, chaotic and death-dealing. That is why the psalmist is in such dire need of help from Yhwh. He is about to be consumed by the realm created by the speech of the wicked, and he wants Yhwh to speak into that realm in order to protect him and redeem him. That ‘help’ will come in the form of Yhwh’s “shining words”.  

 

For the wicked, their realm is created by vain speech, flattery and duplicity. It is full of “great words”. One can here catch the echo of the serpent, who tempts Eve to disobey Yhwh in order to constitute herself within the Garden, to become like Him. The lie here is not that speech is ineffective, or that speech is not performative. The lie is that speech that severs itself from Yhwh becomes “vanity” and “double” and, inevitably, “devastates the afflicted” and “makes the poor groan”. It becomes, in other words, the vehicle of oppression and death while, at the same time, giving those in power the impression that they are their own masters, that they are the “great words” of the people, and that they do deserve the “flattery” that is the community’s  currency. For those who are abandoned to this realm, the speech imprisons them. It anticipates every objection to its power and persuasively lulls everyone into a status quo. It makes the afflicted and poor either invisible or justifies their position. It becomes the Egypt that oppresses the Israelites in their midst (Egypt is the Serpent-speech in national form). For those who can see beyond the flattery, though, it creates a kingdom ruled simply by the will to power and domination.  

 

Yhwh’s speech is entirely different. Whereas the wicked’s speech is double and, accordingly, “full of dross” (pure metal mixed with impurity), Yhwh’s speech is “silver refined in a furnace, gold purified seven times.” Yhwh’s speech is an act of redemption from the oppressed. It creates a realm within the “kingdom of the wicked” that “guards from this generation” and “sets him in safety”. Moreover, Yhwh’s speech, in contrast to the destruction of the wicked, reverses and upends the realm of the wicked. The realm of the wicked is, as we have seen, a realm of public display that is mere flattery and vanity. This public nature of the wicked is integral to their power because it communally reinforces their own mastery. When Yhwh acts, he also acts publicly, but reverses the wicked’s glory into shame. He shamefully “cuts off their lips and tongue.” This is not simply a muting of the wicked. It is also a humiliation of the wicked. They are now on display. Their reversal will not be in some private dungeon or prison. It will take place in the public square. It will ‘out’ every form of duplicity and unrighteous power. The wicked will be forced to experience the hellish truth of their vanity and deception. This is the ‘effect’ of Yhwh’s speech within the kingdom of the wicked. For a time, it will ‘protect and guard’ but it does not simply protect. It also will eventually judge and set things to right. It purifies because it is purity.

 

Within the time of the Church, one can read this psalm in a two-fold manner. On the one hand, it can be a psalm spoken by Christ to the Father. As he is lifted up on the cross, abandoned by “the Twelve” (remnant tribes of Israel) indeed he could look out over Jerusalem and say, “Help, Yhwh, for the faithful one has come to an end, for the honest persons have disappeared from among the sons of man.” And as he looks out over a Jerusalem effectively ruled by Rome he could say, “They speak vanity, each with his neighbor, with flattering lip and double heart they speak.” He would also anticipate that his death would be the event that would inaugurate his Father’s kingdom, the event that would begin in the Resurrection when the Father would say, “Because of the devastation of the afflicted, because of the groaning of the poor, I will not arise, I will set him in safety. I will shine forth for him.” The Resurrection, then, is understood as the “pure utterance of Yhwh” one that is “silver refined in a furnace, gold purified seven times.”

 

But, like creation, the Resurrection is not simply an event that happened in the past but is one that is ongoing. Each baptized person is baptized into Christ’s death and Resurrection. Accordingly, the ‘second creation’ (the Resurrection) is an ongoing affair. As such, the Church can now pray this psalm in the position of Christ, now with the assurance that the Resurrection obtained by Christ is one that is assuredly granted to all the baptized who are ‘in his body’. Indeed, the Church is, itself, built out of this reality. It is the speech of the Trinity, “silver refined in a furnace, gold purified seven times.”

Ps. 11 (the Temple and the Resurrection)

The ‘refuge’ that the psalmist finds in Yhwh is not abstract. He is not confident that his soul will be delivered, regardless of whether the evil destroy his body. Instead, he is certain that, contrary to his friends imprecations, that Yhwh sees his plight and will, concretely and historically, destroy the wicked who are imminently set to destroy him. Indeed, he calls upon images of shocking and total destruction—of “coals, fire and brimstone…raining down from heaven” to destroy the wicked. For the psalmist, to be “in-Yhwh-in-the-Temple” is to stand within the realm of the One who can mobilize the power of heaven instantly in order to protect “the righteous”. One is not confined to worldly dynamics of fear-and-flight when one stands in-Yhwh-in-the-Temple. Instead, the earth is made porous to heaven; it stands within the glory of heaven; it stands, in the words of the psalm, within the “gaze of Yhwh” who “scrutinizes the sons of man.”

 

This, I believe, is the point of the psalm. The psalmist’s friend who is telling him to flee is confined within a world whose foundations are not only being shaken but are, in fact, shakable. For the psalmist’s friend, the imminence of the attack (“look!, the wicked are bending the bow!”) has led his vision of how the world stands in relation to the righteousness of heaven to be largely severed. Fear (and concern) has, quite literally, consumed him. For him, the world is in a darkness that only the wicked have the ability to see within. In such a world, at a time when destruction is apparently certain, the only option is flight. And those, the ‘righteous’, who are under attack, are mere “birds” who can only “flutter to the mountain.” The world is—only—what it is. The “mountains” are no longer sacred places where heaven and earth meet, but are mere ‘mountains’ where one can only hide; if the ‘foundations’ are shaking, then one can only retreat to the highest place(s) on earth.  

 

For the psalmist, Yhwh’s presence in the Temple is a direct refutation of his friend’s fear and concern. The world is not only what it is. The world is instead “scrutinized” by Yhwh. Importantly, the psalmist plays with the image of seeing to make his point. The psalm ends with the righteous ‘seeing the Face’, but in the middle of the psalm all of the ‘sons of men’ stand within the ambit of Yhwh’s eyes. The Face that is in the Temple, is the same Face whose eyes can gaze, absolutely, over the entire earth. The reason this is so is because in the Temple heaven and earth meet. That is the point of placing these lines directly in the middle of the psalm—“Yhwh is in his holy temple; Yhwh’s throne is in the heavens.” The Temple, which stands on Mount Zion, is not merely a mountain but the dwelling of Yhwh and the place through which his heavenly throne exerts its control over the world. This is why, for the psalmist, the foundations of the world are not being “being torn down” as his friend believes. The world is, literally, in the Temple, within the heavenly control of Yhwh.

 

Within this reality, the imminence of the wicked’s attack will be met by the shockingly fast judgment of heaven, when it will “rain down coal, fire and brimstone.” This is, crucially, why the present moment can be described as a “time of testing”. It is meant to purify the righteous, as through fire, while the wicked are destroyed with fire. To stand within the Temple is to stand within a furnace-that-is-Yhwh. It is, moreover, to stand within the flame that does not destroy (as with the burning bush, as with the ‘three’ in Daniel) the righteous but will consume the wicked (as in Daniel). And, at the end of the testing, when the righteous have been further purified, they will be permitted to see, in the Temple, the Face. This ‘end of testing’, like the judgment, though, is not understood as beyond history; it is an historical conviction. The radical wedding of Yhwh to the Temple, assures the psalmist of Yhwh’s radical faithfulness to the righteous when they “seek refuge in Yhwh”.

 

At a deeper level, what we are witnessing here is the germ or adumbration of resurrection faith, a conviction that it is the ‘living’ that will, concretely, witness the faithfulness of Yhwh. This resurrection faith, in the context of this psalm, is rooted in the conviction that Yhwh, when he gives himself to the Temple, really and truly, and faithfully, does give himself. The Temple is not disposable, exchangeable or merely a metaphor. It is the physical embodiment of Yhwh’s faithfulness to his people. It is the place where the ‘earth’ fully becomes the earth by being wed to and in relation to heaven. Within this place, there can be no death, only deliverance. There is life , abundant and prodigal and overflowing.  

 

For the Christian, the Temple was not done away with. It was intensified. Christ is the new and eternal Temple, the living Temple. And, as John would say, those who live “in him” live, already, in the resurrection. When the Christian prays this psalm, they pray it “in Christ” (just as it is ‘in Yhwh’) and they can, just as concretely (indeed, more concretely) as the author, expect a concrete and historical deliverance from enemies. A deliverance that is not ‘in heaven’, but ‘in the resurrection’, because it is in the resurrection that our Temple now lives and is being built up.

Ps. 9

Memory, Mortality and the Forever. In Deuteronomy 8, Yhwh warns the Israelites against ‘forgetting Yhwh your God by not keeping his commandments’. If they do, the final outworking of their forgetfulness will be a belief that all of the good that they experience in the Land was won by their own efforts and not by Yhwh’s covenant blessing. Their hubris will lead to their perishing “like the other nations before you”. They will become, in a type of terrible mockery, a mirror of their enemies. The resonances to Psalm 9 are deep. The psalm concludes on a foreboding note: “Put fear in them, O Yhwh, let the nations know they are only human.” This line is the conclusion to several verses that say much the same thing but in different ways: when Yhwh reveals himself, the “wicked shall return to Sheol, all nations that forget God” (they shall return to the dust from which they came). Their destruction will not be partial, but complete and total: they will “perish; their name wiped out forever and ever.” Their cities will be “perpetual ruins and their “memory perish”. Those who ‘forget Yhwh’ will themselves be forgotten. On the other hand, for those who ‘remember Yhwh’, they will stand within the authority of him who “reigns forever”, and who has “established his throne of judgment.” He judges the entire world and is known as the “Enthroned One of Zion.” He is the “Avenger of Blood” who does not forget the cry of the afflicted. In Yhwh, the “memory of the afflicted” will not “perish forever”, unlike the nations. Those who remember Yhwh will never be forgotten. Life, death and the ability to be remembered among the people is wed, absolutely, to remembering Yhwh, as in Deuteronomy 8. Everything pivots around this central theme. To remember Yhwh is to stand not simply within the realm of Yhwh’s forever, but, more precisely in this psalm, it is to stand within the realm of Yhwh’s delivering and saving help.

 

There is a deeper implication to all of this than what might be gathered from an initial reading. Importantly, the psalmist, and the writer of Deuteronomy, understand that for those who ‘remember Yhwh’ (those who obey his commandments), they are blessed with a long life. They will not be like ‘the other nations’ whose names, at some point, are forgotten. Israel will, in other words, enter into the realm of Yhwh’s ‘forever’. They will enter into his memory. Something truly profound opens up here. This is not simply prolongation of life, a quantitative measuring. It is, rather, quantitative and qualitative. It is the life of those who are covenanted to Yhwh. Israel’s life will become immortal within the realm of Yhwh’s remembrance, but immortal because of the presence of Yhwh in her midst. Israel, as a nation, will be(come) the Adam (the ‘firstborn’) that Adam failed to be. In this psalm, to stand within the realm of Yhwh’s remembrance means to stand within the flood of his righteousness that will be unleashed on the earth, cleansing it from all wickedness. It will ‘lay waste’ to the memory of the wickedness (vs. 5); it will ‘uproot its cities’ (vs. 6); it will ‘judge the world’ (vs. 8).  And in the wake of this flood, Zion and the Enthroned One will remain. Its ‘gates’ will resound with the exuberant praises of deliverance. This cleansing-and-renewal is what stands at the heart of this psalm and, importantly, it emanates from, or is enacted by, the profound presence of Yhwh as his ‘forever’ is made present.