Come,
Bless
Yhwh, all you servants of Yhwh,
Who are
standing / in Yhwh’s house / by night.
Raise your hands / towards the holy place
And
bless Yhwh
May Yhwh bless you / from Zion
Maker
of heaven / and earth.
This psalm stands at the end of the processional psalms.
In the Scriptures, the night is the beginning of a new day,
not its conclusion. In this psalm, this “beginning” is not simply chronological
because the liturgy occurs at this “beginning”. In other words, in this psalm,
the beginning of this is liturgical. The “day” begins utterly oriented to Yhwh
such that time itself is beginning in this dynamic of blessing—of Israel
‘blessing’ Yhwh and Yhwh, in turn, blessing Israel. It is a beginning in the
sense that Genesis is a beginning—it is pointing to a fundamental, abiding,
grounding reality. Time is becoming sacred—becoming ‘blessed’.
And it does so not simply through time but through Yhwh’s
servant’s orientation to Zion, Yhwh’s house. As time is now being oriented to
the sacred, so too are Yhwh’s servants literally orienting themselves toward
the sacred and, thus, themselves participating within the sacred blessing of
Yhwh. They are standing in the sacred realm of Yhwh’s house. This physical
location is not simply geography. They stand literally within the sphere of the
sacred and the holy, the sacramental sphere and center of the earth, where
heaven comes down and Yhwh is present.
And finally, it is not simply time and the servant’s bodies,
but their hearts are also oriented toward Yhwh as they “raise their hands
towards the holy place, and bless Yhwh”. This is not simply gesturing but a
raising, like a sacrifice, their hearts toward the holy place.
Time, bodies, and hearts—all of them being made sacred—are
now met with Yhwh returning the momentum down upon them and blessing them from
Zion. Their utter orientation to Yhwh turns into Yhwh’s utter orientation
toward them. They become the “apple of his eye” as they mirror his own holiness
and blessing to him.
Now, there is a deeper level to this when we consider the
superscription to the psalm which indicates that it is the last of the
processional psalms. We saw above that the psalm begins “in the beginning” of
the day. The fact, then, that the psalm ends at the beginning is highly
significant. In a sense, the processional psalms conclude in this “new day”. It
is as if the processional psalms are the first six days of creation leading up
to the final, Sabbath day of creation, the day that they were made for, the day
that is actually their (formal) cause.
For the Christian, this takes on an even deeper meaning when
we consider that the Resurrection occurs on the eighth day, which means also
the first day of the week. The Christian Sabbath does not simply occur on the
first day of the week; it also occurs on the “final day”, the eighth day, the
day of consummation and completion. It is the completion of the old creation
because it is being brought into the new creation. The end, purpose and goal is
in the beginning. In other words, this psalm shows the Christian reality of the
entire realm becoming sacred within the descending heaven-to-earth as portrayed
in Revelation. The Christian Sabbath is an already-but-not-yet participation
within the sacralized creation.
Chronological, but theological. Moreover, their physical
location and direction is “towards the holy place”. Their hearts are also
turned toward Yhwh, “blessing him.” What we see here is a type of absolute
turning to Yhwh in time, space and interiorily. Everything is grounded, or
“begins”, here. And, because it all begins here, it also “begins” in Yhwh’s
blessing “you from Zion”.
And yet, this psalm stands at the end of the processional
psalms. Everything has been heading toward this psalm, in a sense, toward this
new day, this new beginning, this “raising your hands toward the holy place”.
And in this perhaps we see here a reflection of creation itself as it heads
toward the ‘seventh day’, with each day before like a day in the procession. In
other words, this is a type of Sabbath psalm—with the end being the beginning,
signaling a return to the beginning of the procession.
The “holy place” and Zion are the Temple, and it is, in many
ways, “heaven and earth”. It is an Eden, a meeting place of heaven and earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment