Ps. 108 (Part One--the Day of the Lord)

My heart is steadfast / O God

I will sing and celebrate with music / from my heart

Wake up / harp and lyre

I will wake up / the dawn.

I will give you thanks / among the peoples, Yhwh

Celebrate you/ with music among the nations

Because your loyal-love / towers above the heavens,

Your faithfulness / reaches the skies.

This psalm is composed in darkness. It exists towards the end of day, in the dead of night. The psalmist is looking forward to the “the dawn”. Framed this way, the psalmist is not simply speaking about an hour. This is theological time. As the psalm progresses, what we come to realize is that the darkness of night—of the ‘spent day’—is the ‘time of the enemy’ (vs. 13-14). This time, though, is coming towards a close. In Scripture, the ‘day’ ends as dawn begins.  It does not end in the middle of the night, as it does for us. This psalm then stands at the close of the previous day. It has been spent. The dawn is coming. In other words, the psalmist stands in the type of between-time, this liminal place, between the day that is over and the new day that is set to arrive. This ‘already-but-not-yet’ time.

The psalmist speaks from within this ‘between time’. And, importantly, the psalmist himself already stands within the new day. His heart is ‘steadfast’, which mirrors Yhwh’s “loyal-love” and “faithfulness”. It is because his ‘heart’ is already moving toward the ‘day’ that he can speak to his musical instruments and, in fact, begin himself to “wake up the dawn”. This is crucial. The ‘dawn’ or ‘new day’ is not something that is simply and inevitably arriving, like a day that follows night. This new ‘day’ is something that the psalmist himself can call forward. What we see here is profound—prayer can bring the dawn. The psalmist can stand between night and day and turn the clock forward. And this occurs, not simply through prayer, and not simply through petitions, but through music and through the anticipation of what this new day will bring.

This new day will be a time of music among the nations, a time when Yhwh’s name will not be celebrated simply within the confines of Israel or the Temple and Sanctuary, but a time when Yhwh’s praise covers the earth. If the psalmist is a type of king—a type of David and Messiah—then he will be the conductor king of a liturgical empire. “The peoples” and “the nations” are often the ones at war with Yhwh and his people. But here, the chaos of the nations and people have been tamed and a shalom inhabits the world. This is the ‘day’ that the psalmist is ‘awakening’ and pulling into the present.

Now, as we move deeper into this psalm we begin to see something remarkable about how this new day arrives and how the psalmist himself participates within its arrival. Note how the psalmist’s heart is already participating in the ‘new day’. It is ‘steadfast’. This ‘steadfastness’, as we have said, mirrors Yhwh’s own loyal-love and faithfulness. But Yhwh’s loyal-love and faithfulness is not something conditioned by the passing days. It ‘towers above the heavens’ and ‘reaches to the skies’. Because it stands ‘above the heavens’, it is the ‘always’ time of Yhwh. It stands above the sun and moon that mark the day and night. As such, it is not something that fades. It stands in its own realm; its own sphere. And the psalmist—and this is the key—is able to reach into that sphere, beyond the ebb and flow of day and night, and call that sphere down to earth. And it is here where we come to learn that this ‘new day’ is, in fact, the “day of the Lord” becomes it comes from his realm. It encompasses the earth, but it also extends far beyond it, revealing that Yhwh has the dominion and kingly authority over it all but grants his psalmist—his David—the ability (as in Psalm 2) to participate within his rule and authority and to establish his peace on the earth.