Ps 125 (removing the scepter)

Those who / trust in Yhwh

                Are like Mount Zion

                Which is immovable / abiding forever

Jerusalem has mountains / around it

                And Yhwh is around his people

                Henceforth / and forevermore

The scepter / of wickedness

                Will surely not remain

                Over the land / allotted to the righteous

Or else the righteous might turn

                Their hands / to wrongdoing

Do good / Yhwh / to the good

                To those with upright hearts

But those who turn aside / to their crooked ways

                May Yhwh / remove

                Together with the evildoers

Peace be upon Israel.

The Land is the center of the psalm. The people are compared to Mount Zion, while Yhwh is compared to the mountains around it. Both of which are described as partaking of Yhwh’s “forever.” And yet, “over the land” is the “scepter of wickedness”. The psalmist asks that Yhwh “remove [from the land]” those who are unfaithful to the covenant and the “evildoers”.

We see a few things in these images. The first is, intriguingly, that the people are compared to Zion while Yhwh is compared to the mountains around Zion. It is not an expected portrayal because Zion is understood as Yhwh’s abode. The mountains around Zion are not sacred mountains. And yet, for the psalmist, he sees something in this topography that is crucial. Those who are “in Yhwh” stand, like Zion, within an even greater protective embrace by Yhwh, like the surrounding mountains. Their covenant faithfulness makes them the sacred heart, or center, of the Land, with the rest of the Land “mobilized” as a protection over them. Yhwh is both center and circumference.

Also, Zion is described as “immovable” and “abiding forever”. Zion stands firm against the forces and agents of chaos (the nations) in the way creation itself is set up against chaos. One could say that Zion is the ‘wellspring’ of creation, or where creation “become creation” because it abides and participates within Yhwh’s Forever blessing. This sense of an abiding stance against chaos is here juxtaposed with the “scepter of wickedness”. While Zion participates within Yhwh’s abiding, the scepter “will not remain”. It is the opposite of Zion. It is like creation subject to vanity and futility—it cannot endure; it does not participate within Yhwh’s Forever. It will never fully accomplish its goal or hit its mark. It is, nonetheless, dangerous because, like the fruit of the Garden, it can “turn the righteous hands to wrongdoing.” This ‘scepter’ can create subjects, it can infect the Land, and the righteous, introducing chaos into the Land. For that reason, the psalmist asks that Yhwh remove the cancer to prevent its spread—to “remove those who turn aside and the evildoers”.

Importantly, Yhwh accomplishes this by a two-fold action. First, he does “good to the good”. In a way, he makes the Zion-people more ‘into Zion’—they become more and more this immovable, abiding force of creation against the evildoers and covenant-breakers. Second, he removes the wicked and the covenant breakers. And, this is how the psalm comes full circle. Those who ‘trust in Yhwh’ are likened to Zion, the wellspring of creation. They become ‘the good’. And Yhwh, in his removal of the wicked, becomes like the mountains around Zion, protecting Zion from contagion. Again Yhwh is both center and circumference, now in his power of blessing and removal. It is in this two-fold action that “peace” comes upon Israel.

In the gospels, particularly Mark, this two-fold action continues but now it is raised to a new, almost final, level. The gospel, importantly, opens with Christ being propelled into the dessert to battle Satan. That is his first mission; his first attack. He is not, like Joshua or Moses, first attacking either the Egyptians or the human inhabitants of the land (here: the covenant breakers and the evildoers). He is attacking the source itself, the “scepter of wickedness” that attempts, and has, to create Satanic disciples within the Land, or, at least, has enslaved those within the Land (through possession, disease and impurity). In this way, he is like a new-and-son-of-David, ridding the land to bring peace to it so that the new Temple can be established. Recall that in David’s time, the land had to first experience peace before the Temple could be constructed. In Mark, Christ is this Messiah-mission to rid the Land of impurity. This is deeply significant. If the old Temple could be constructed within the Land, even though the “scepter of wickedness” still hung over it, then when Christ directly battles that “scepter”, thus removing it entirely, then the new Temple that he is preparing for must be one that far exceeds the glory and holiness of the old. Strangely, as we know from John and Paul—the Temple he is preparing for is his own body, in which all of humanity will not be a part of. In Acts, we see that once Christ accomplishes the final defeat of Satan, then the Holy Spirit can be given and the New Temple established. There can be no greater “good” than this giving of the new covenant, sealed in the Holy Spirit. The Church is now not “like Zion”, but is Zion, the Temple, being built up through the participated-in-Christ-flesh of Christians. In them there is this new Zion and, accordingly, a “new creation”. This momentum of battle with the demonic, initiated by Christ, is carried forward until Revelation where it will be completely accomplished.