Psalm 85
To the choirmaster. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah.
1 Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
2 You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. Selah
From the opening verses it’s clear that this psalm is post-exilic, acknowledging God’s favor in returning the people to the land from which they had been taken. The phrase “restored the fortunes of Jacob” is literally “you brought back the captivity of Jacob.” Bringing back from captivity is a thing that just didn’t happen in the ancient world. Once a people were conquered they were assimilated into the dominant culture and eventually ceased to exist, forever lost to history. But the Jews were different because they had hope. They had the promises of the prophets that they would return and they held on to these and to their faith until God brought them back and restored them as a people living in their ancestral home. But there wasn’t just the problem of restoring them physically to the land, there was also the need for spiritual restoration. They had violated their covenant with God, trampled on his grace, and aroused his jealous anger. What could be done to make it right? It took an act of God. He forgave their iniquity and covered all their sin. The word “covered” is the common word for atonement, represented by the sprinkling of the blood of the innocent on the mercy seat, the lid of the ark of the covenant which held the law of God. Our sins are covered by blood. That’s how God did it. The just demands of the law were met by a perfect sacrifice so that when God looks to see our transgressions of the law they are not apparent because the blood blocks his view of them. Of course all of this is figurative, but it is a picture that anyone can understand. Our sins are out of God’s sight. He has forgiven them and remembers them no more. This is nothing that we can earn or merit but is purely a gift of God’s grace. What God did for the nation of Israel he has done for each of us who trust in the covering of Jesus. The covering and the forgiving came at great cost to God personally, such is the measure of his love. ‘
3 You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.
4 Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us!
The restoration of Israel required the repentance of God, his turning away from all wrath and anger. We learned in Sunday school that repentance was doing a 180, turning in the opposite direction, and that is the sense of this verse. God was rightfully angry and his wrath was fully deserved. There are moral laws that when they are broken can only bring harm to those who break them. These are fixed in the moral universe and no amount of rationalizing and denying can change them. God’s divine anger is justified and so to turn away from that anger requires that God repent and not treat us as our sins deserve. These verses bring home to me the weight of what God has done. I am the chief of sinners and yet God has shown me mercy, and this through no effort or grand repentance of my own. I don’t deserve any of it, but it is freely given. His wrath is set aside and his righteous anger does not fall on me even though it should. The prayer of restoration is fitting as the psalmist calls upon the “God of our salvation,” This is what salvation means, not just rescue from a bad place, but restoration to wholeness, a return to the way the relationship is supposed to be. The one who has been forgiven much should be motivated to love much. The evidence of restoration and repentance is a heart for others, knowing the great debt from which you have been relieved should motivate you to relieve others of that burden. As an illustration of the kind of forgiveness involved here, I’m thinking of a marriage, the most significant covenant, outside of our relationship with God, that anyone will enter. When that covenant is broken through infidelity, the victimized spouse is rightly angered. I can’t imagine the wrath and pain I would feel at my spouse and at their partner in sin. It’s not just that a law has been broken, it’s the relationship that has forever been damaged, trust that has been violated, the realization that I have been intimate with a stranger. What would it take to forgive and forget? How difficult would it be to put away wrath and live fully restored again? I’m not sure it’s humanly possible. And yet this is what God has done for us.
5 Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations?
6 Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?
Even though God has miraculously returned Israel to Zion and “restored her fortunes”, the nation is still not independent and they still have plenty of enemies who would love to see them fail. Think about it from the perspective of the people of the land: all of a sudden the former inhabitants of your property who were driven off 70 years ago are back to claim what was theirs. However, you are the one that has been tending the vineyards and building the houses and towns. The level of animosity toward these “foreigners” who were taking jobs and property of the “natives born” must have been high. And to the Jewish immigrant it may have felt that God had not stopped being angry with them. Life was still hard and the future still uncertain. Would there ever be an end to the uncertainty? Could they ever rest and rejoice? The story of the return from exile is filled with challenges and hardships. Just read Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther (where enemies plotted genocide). When bad things happen it may seem like God is angry and failing to keep his promises. It may be impossible to see the end of the pain and suffering (I’m thinking of parents I know who have lost children), and indeed, that kind of grief is never turned to joy. The psalmist expresses his honest emotion here in questioning the goodness and power of God, and apparently that is okay to do. It’s certainly not the first time the psalmist has questioned God’s will in the circumstances in which he finds himself. The important principle is that we move through the questions and into faith.
7 Show us your steadfast love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation.
8 Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly.
The psalmist’s doubts give way to faith in these verses as he prays for God to show his steadfast love and grant his salvation to his people. He is confident that his prayer has been heard and he will hear the voice of the LORD communicate directly in this situation, speaking peace to their fears. The word “peace” is shalom and more than a sense of calm, it means wholeness, completeness, contentment, not necessarily the absence of conflict. Life will always have conflict. Interpersonal relationships, culture, external events, temptations -- these will always challenge shalom, but God speaks it to us again and again. In Psalm 29 God grants his people peace in the midst of a ferocious storm. In a gale on the Sea of Galilee Jesus speaks peace to the storm and all is well. Listen for his voice in the storm today, speaking peace over you. And in the storm, do not be tempted to turn back to folly. Don’t give up on faith when things don’t go your way. Disappointment is a fact of life, so don’t be stupid and surrender your peace for a poor substitute from the world. There are lessons from Israel’s history here. Freed from captivity in Egypt they grumble in the wilderness. Discontent with God’s leadership, they ask for a king like all the other nations. Wanting more prosperity they prayed to foreign gods to gain an advantage. Compromise killed their shalom. If you want to experience peace in the storm you must listen for God’s voice in that storm. He is there in the boat with you saying, “Fear not. I am with you. Peace. Be still.” Don’t give up too soon. This is folly.
9 Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land.
10 Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.
11 Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.
The psalmist’s prayer turns to absolute confidence as he expresses the reality that God’s nature triumphs over our trials. His salvation is near to those who fear him. Rescue is just around the corner for all who revere and respect him. The result of God’s saving presence is that glory sets up its home in the land and lives there. God’s beauty and praise inhabit the cities and towns and farms. In this remarkable poetic verse, the various characteristics of God’s nature are personified (portrayed as persons) so that they meet and kiss one another. God’s steadfast love (hesed) and his faithfulness/truth (emeth) howdy with one another. His righteousness/justice (zedek) and his peace (shalom) kiss each other (the parallel line suggests the kiss as a form of greeting, not romantic). YHWH is all of these in One, and seeing this from the New Testament lens it’s not difficult to see how Jesus embodies all four: grace and truth, justice and peace. Jesus shows us what God looks like on the ground, when God invades the world that we live in, these four qualities follow. The result is fruitfulness and prosperity. Faithfulness/truth springs up from the ground. It grows like a plant, naturally, organically, and irresistibly. righteousness/justice like the sun, looks down from the sky, ever present, warming and giving life and light. When God’s salvation bursts into our world in the form of the person of Jesus, the good life is the result. Through the gospel, the attributes of God are sown in human beings, and they become more like him, spreading grace and truth, justice and peace throughout the world. This is a tall order, and certainly on my own I cannot embody these characteristics, but I have Jesus as my model and the Holy Spirit as my teacher, encourager, and inner transformer, powered by Jesus’ victory over the flesh: his resurrection.
12 Yes, the LORD will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.
13 Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps a way.
The prosperity of the land is linked to the blessing of YHWH. He will give what is good and the land will give its increase. (The verb “give” is in both lines). Every good gift comes down from heaven from the Father of lights (James 1:17).This is not the prosperity gospel because the verse that follows returns us again to the idea of character and Christlikeness. Right living (personified) goes before God and he makes a path for us to follow. We follow in his footsteps. God is not merely desiring to bless his people with material things, he desires harmony with them expressed through living in obedience to his law and consequently in harmony with creation and creature. Peace and justice would break out in this world if everyone were following in God’s footsteps as expressed to us in Christ. This is the kind of fruitfulness and justice that the text is speaking of, a better world where men and women love one another and treat others as divine image-bearers. If we desire the good of our land (our eretz), we will not seek political solutions to spiritual problems. If you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In our nation’s search for utopia, we’ve bought into the lie that politics and policies can fix everything. The only way things can be “fixed” is through the transformation of individuals through the power of the gospel. It is heresy to suggest otherwise, and the author of this psalm expressed this truth unequivocally centuries ago. God gives what is good in relation to how good we are at living in harmony with his world. Wrong-living invariably leads to wrong results. This is an aspect of the justice of God. There are natural consequences to living outside the boundaries that God has prescribed. Denial of those prescriptions doesn’t change reality and will not result in good and “increase” in our land. As just one example, consider the declining birthrate in the West as men and women look to themselves for creating the good life rather than creating a good life for others (their children). This self-preoccupation is a far cry from following the footsteps of Jesus on the path he walks. Jesus walked to Jerusalem, to the cross, to self-denial. This is the way.