Psalm 85:8-13 Commentary

Here is another Lectionary example of a relatively short psalm that for some reason is not recommended in its entirety.  Since there is nothing in verses 1-7 that say anything different than the assigned verses here, there’s no harm in just doing the final six verses but equally there’d be no harm in reading the whole psalm in worship and preaching on the whole poem too.

On the one hand this appears to be a post-exilic psalm that reflects Israel’s joy once the Persian leader Cyrus—called God’s “messiah” in one Old Testament passage—released them from their long captivity after Persia vanquished Babylon.  The kind of joy and blessing we see reflected in Psalm 85 captures how the people must have felt.

On the other hand, however, the historical record of what life was like post-exile does not indicate that the conditions on the ground in Israel were anywhere near this sunny.  The people never fully re-established themselves into anything that bore some resemblance to the pre-exile days, especially if you go as far back as the reigns of David and Solomon.  They were still officially under Persian rule and before too long Persia would be replaced by Alexander the Great and he’d be succeeded (as it were) by the Roman Empire.

What’s more, leaders of the post-exilic community faced a lot of stiff headwinds.  Nehemiah encountered a lot of opposition to rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls.  Ezra did his best to restore the Temple but initially at least the result was just shabby enough that those older folks who could remember the splendor of Solomon’s Temple could only weep over how far short the semi-repaired Temple looked.  (And the Temple would never re-gain its old luster until Herod rebuilt it centuries later).

So it is a little hard to square all that with the portrait of rich divine blessings on the land that we find in the 85^th psalm.  Although it could be noted that the middle verses here (4-7) may reflect the reality that things were not quite as wonderful as the opening and closing verses may make them out to be.  There is in those middle verses still the need to plead with God for an improvement both in their standing before God and in their condition in the land.  So those verses may serve as a kind of reality check.

But if some of Psalm 85 does not seem to line up exactly with reality, that is more than true for the closing verses.  They are certainly utterly poetic and lyric but they also seem to be more aspirational than actual.  “Love and faithfulness meet together, righteousness and peace kiss each other.”  If only on any average day we could look out at our wider world and see nothing but good examples of such meetings and kisses!  Go to any news website like CNN or Fox News and scroll down as far as you can and it is unlikely you’d see any current news or any instances of Breaking News that celebrate the meeting up of wonderful virtues or any people or leaders who well embody love, faithfulness, righteousness, or peace.

You most certainly, however, would be able to locate news events that come close to the opposite of all that.  Hatred and warfare seem to meet together pretty often.  Injustice and conflict too often appear to be kissing cousins too.  And so we look at the end of Psalm 85 and heave a heavy sigh over the disconnect of this lyric vision of God striding through our lands with righteousness going out before him and what actually seems to march through our lands more days than not.

But that may be all the more reason why we need the lyric vision of Psalm 85.  Whether or not it describes what we experience in this world, these words do depict what we believe will ultimately be true in God’s peaceable kingdom.  What’s more, as authors like Nicholas Wolterstorff point out (see his book Until Justice and Peace Embrace), when we pray a line like “Your kingdom come . . . on earth as it is in heaven,” we are not merely praying for God to get busy doing something to bring the kingdom more fully into our midst but also that we ourselves need to get busy to bring the kingdom to bear wherever we find ourselves.

We need to help people see the meeting up of love and faithfulness, the kiss and the embrace of righteousness/justice and peace.  The shalom we pine for must be the shalom we work for in the here and now.  In the past we have likely heard the derisive line about some people who are “So heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good.”  But that ought never be aptly applied to followers of Christ Jesus the Lord.  Christ’s rule at the right hand of God the Father has direct implications on the ground level of this earth today.

Psalm 85’s vision might on one level break our hearts compared to what we see when we look around us in society and the wider world.  But on a higher level that same vision should quicken our step as we seek to live in ways as church communities and as individual believers to be transparent to the closing vision of this psalm.  One hopes that it could be said of also us now and then—and perhaps much more frequently than just occasionally—that righteousness goes before us as well and prepares our shared path forward.  Then Psalm 85 becomes not merely aspirational but inspirational and not for some misty future in the sweet by and by but for today as well.

Illustration Idea

The conclusion of Psalm 85 is often referred to by people who seek to pursue public justice as a means to achieve something closer to the biblical concept of shalom than what we generally see in this world. (And this fits Psalm 85 because words often translated as “righteousness” in the Bible can just as easily lead to the idea of “justice.”)  The philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff was mentioned above and here is something he once wrote in a theology journal on this topic:

“I will mention two clues as to how the biblical writers think of the contours of justice. First, over and over they say that God loves justice. In the current political climate in the United States, the justice that comes into view is seldom anything other than retributive justice. It is a reliable rule of thumb that when contemporary American politicians speak of justice they have in mind punishing criminals. But nowhere do the biblical writers suggest that God loves punishing people. So when they say that God loves justice they must have something in mind other than retributive justice. When God, speaking through Amos, said, ‘Let justice roll down like a mighty river,’ the meaing is not, ‘May prisons multiply and police forces expand.’  God did not mean, ‘May criminals writhe as they receive their just deserts.’”