Kevin J Youngblood
O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
2 He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart;
3 who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
4 in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
5 who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things shall never be moved.
The answer then, presumably coming from YHWH himself, takes the form of a profile – a list of character traits belonging to the refugee who seeks sanctuary with YHWH and his people. Initially, I read this as a list of prerequisites as if there were a screening process at the opening of YHWH’s tent such that only those who already displayed these qualities could find a place in YHWH’s community. This may in part be facilitated by the tendency our English translations have of consistently and simplistically rendering the verb forms that occur in the initial questions in the psalm as future tense. This, however, is not the only possibility, and, in this context, I find it a little misleading. More likely, they should be translated something like “Who may continue sojourning in your tent? Who may continue dwelling on your holy mountain.” The idea is not that a person must already be fully spiritually formed and ethically pure before seeking refuge in YHWH’s tent, but rather that persons who do take such refuge should be transformed by the experience, should begin to resemble the god with whom they’ve identified in their flight.
The second is “who swears to his own hurt and does not change.” This line from Psalm 15 has always stopped me in my tracks. Every time I read it I have to stop and pray. I am so prone to prioritize my own convenience, to idolize comfort. There is an important balance in scripture between avoiding foolish and hasty vows and being willing to commit oneself wholeheartedly to promises and people and seeing it through. These two things in particular are very convicting to me and I want to be someone characterized by these traits. Perhaps even more important and shocking, however, is that YHWH is characterized by these traits. YHWH never flatters nor slanders. When he says that he loves me he means it. YHWH also maintains commitment at his own pain and expense. If the cross teaches us anything, it teaches us that. Those who live in YHWH’s presence, of course, begin to look more and more like him, like the kind of persons whose integrity is evident in their every word and action.
AMEN