Psalm 67 Commentary

Psalm 67 is one of the shorter songs of all the 150 psalms.  Yet twice in these brief verses—at the end of verse 1 and again at the end of verse 4—we find the mysterious Hebrew word selah inserted into the text.  No one to my knowledge claims definitively to know what this word means.  It may be a musical notation or a reading prompt (or both) and some speculate that it signals some kind of a rest.  Selah may essentially signal to the reader, “Pause here.  Linger a moment over what you just read or sang.  Ponder it.”  It may be an indication or a sign that the author thinks what they just wrote is worthy of such meditative relishing.  Psalm 67 may be short but twice the author wants us to slow down.  Don’t rush it.  Linger on these thoughts.

If so, then the first such meditation moment is after reading a riff on the familiar words of the Aaronic Benediction from Numbers 6: “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us.”  And so stop here.  Let that image sink into your heart and mind.  In the Ancient Near East it was a privilege and a blessing if a sovereign lifted your face to his face, if the king in essence beamed his light to you as a sign that you are accepted, you are worthy to be in the presence of a powerful figure.  If you had come to make a request, having the king’s face turned toward you and in essence shine on you indicated you were going to have your wish granted, your request filled.

But now magnify that by a factor of, oh, let’s just say by a factor of infinity when it comes to God’s turning his face toward you and shining his divine light on you.  The very prospect of that is sufficiently stunning that the writer of Psalm 67 would (we think) have you linger over it just a bit before moving on.  But if so it may also be an opportunity to pause before you move on to the next thought in verse 2.

Because why might it be important to have God’s face turned toward you and shine upon you?  Just for personal benefit?  Is this important because of how warm and fuzzy it may make you as an individual believer feel?  Is this what today we might call a “Me and Jesus” moment only?  No.   After pausing to ponder the blessing of God we then move on to verse 2 that tells us that this blessed turning of God toward us sets up a far bigger goal of God’s ways becoming known to the whole earth and of having the salvation God brings made known to all the nations of the world.  The kind of benediction hinted at in verse 1 is no private religious affair.  It instead inspires a kind of global vision for spreading the knowledge of the one true God of the universe.  And that is certainly something worth pondering too.

This also sets up the middle three verses of 3-5 that center on a fierce desire for all the peoples of the earth and all the nations of the world to render up due praise and thanksgiving to God both for who God is but also for all the prudential and wise ways God guides our lives in this God’s good creation.  Only when all peoples and nations know and understand and appreciate who God is and what God does will all be well in this world.  Only when all people can sing in the joy of knowing God will there be a chance for shalom to break out on a global scale.  Until then, the creation is incomplete.  Or at least the creation (or a part of it) is wrongly oriented.

Of course, what is easy to forget in reading something like Psalm 67 is that all those other nations and peoples are not necessarily going to appreciate the psalmist’s desire that they all become members of Israel’s choir in singing to Yahweh.  Other nations and people have their own ideas on gods and goddesses and what it means to honor them and so when it comes to your desire for us to sing your religious songs, well you can keep that to yourself thank you very much.

It may also go without saying—but now I will say it anyway—that it would be no more popular in our 21^st century world right now.  When we hear—as we have been hearing—of Christian pastors, who in the U.S. anyway, want to all-but outlaw other faiths like Islam so as to make only the Christian faith the religious coin of the realm, well, even many of us who are devoted followers of Jesus find that distasteful or troubling.  And if even some Christians find this difficult, you can but imagine what people of other faiths make of it.

But why is that?  Why do even those of us who adhere to the Christian faith find some of this upsetting?  Wouldn’t we all agree that all things considered it would be wonderful if everyone could confess Jesus as Lord and Savior?  Don’t we believe that is finally the dearest truth of them all to embrace and so wouldn’t we want others to share our faith?  Well, we would likely say “Yes” to that kind of sentiment.  So what is bothersome about those who now wish to outlaw or sideline or marginalize other faith traditions is their method and rhetoric.  We may agree that proper witness to our faith is wonderful but we wish to do so in ways consistent with the Gospel and with the Jesus at the center of it.  What is troubling about the approach of some today is that it is finally all about a wielding of raw political power and coercion, of subjugation and dominance of others.

But none of that seems to be the way of Jesus.  And if that is not the way of Jesus, then it also will never be productive in getting people to the real Jesus either.  Yes, for now that means we are called to make room for the beliefs of others even if we disagree and even if we’d be happy to share in genuine but gentle ways what our faith means to us.  And it may mean that for now we will live in a world where the vision of Philippians 2 is not fully here: when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord of all.

That is our final vision too and it goes along very well with the middle section of Psalm 67.  But let’s remember: those words about bowed knees and confessing tongues in Philippians 2 come at the end of a song that celebrates how Jesus emptied himself of his glory and power so as to become the humble servant of all, even to the point of sacrificing his life on the cross.  That, and not some top-down and power-driven coercive political strategy is the path to helping all confess Jesus as Lord.  If the Church tries to get to that goal through other paths—and history shows the Church has surely tried exactly that from time to time—then we will never get anyone to the real Jesus.  We may even drive them away from Christ.

So yes, we want God’s face to shine on us and yes, that is no private religious experience but rather a blessing that aims us at a global mission of witnessing to our faith.  But we bear that witness in ways that remind others of the real Jesus instead of distorting who Jesus is and was and what he called his followers to do (and how he called them to do it).

When we witness to Jesus in ways that model how Jesus lived and talked, then we may have a shot at having others come to know the blessing of God’s face shining upon also them and being gracious to them.

Illustration Idea

Because the writer of Psalm 67 may—as suggested above—have wanted us to pause and linger over verse 1 and its riff on the Aaronic Benediction, I offer in place of the usual illustration idea a chance to meditate indeed on the prospect of God’s turning his face upon us and shining on us by way of a wonderful John Rutter choral anthem on this blessing.

You can view Rutter’s conducting a massive choir in singing this blessing here.