³³ He turns rivers into a desert, springs of water into thirsty ground,

³⁴ a fruitful land into a salty waste, because of the evil of its inhabitants.

³⁵ He turns a desert into pools of water, a parched land into springs of water.

³⁶ And there he lets the hungry dwell, and they establish a city to live in;

³⁷ they sow fields and plant vineyards and get a fruitful yield.

³⁸ By his blessing they multiply greatly, and he does not let their livestock diminish.

³⁹ When they are diminished and brought low through oppression, evil, and sorrow,

⁴⁰ he pours contempt on princes and makes them wander in trackless wastes;

but he raises up the needy out of affliction and makes their families like flocks.

⁴² The upright see it and are glad, and all wickedness shuts its mouth.

⁴³ Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord.

(Psalm 107:33-43)

I find that it makes more sense to read certain portions of Scripture backwards. Such is the case with Psalm 107:33-43.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;

⁸ the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.

The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;

the Lord loves the righteous.

⁹ The Lord watches over the sojourners;

he upholds the widow and the fatherless,

but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

(Psalm 146:7b-9)

I was struck this morning by the repetition of the divine name in this brief space of two-and-a-half verses. Five consecutive occurrences of YHWH as subject in five consecutive clauses is unusual for Hebrew syntax and thus catches the eye. Much more common is the syntax of v. 9 where the first clause introduces YHWH as subject and the subsequent clauses in the verse refer back to YHWH with the pronoun “he.”

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.

(Psalm 102:3-4, ESV)

Dry bones. What an appropriate metaphor for a living death – a seemingly unending season of joyless, hopeless existence when we feel so dead for so long that we no longer see the point in going on.

For Solomon . . .

. . . The prayers of David, son of Jesse, have been fulfilled

Psalm 72:0, 19; (MT, Psalm 72:1, 20)

Up until recently, I had always simply read the final verse of Psalm 72 as an indication that the collection of Davidic prayers was complete – perhaps an indication that an earlier edition of the Psalter concluded with this psalm. Of course, in the Book of Psalms as we now have it, one finds a number of other Davidic psalms after Psalm 72. I read it, therefore, as nothing more than old scaffolding of the developing structure of the Psalter that someone had forgotten to remove once the collection as a whole was finished (mid 4^th century BCE?).

While I still believe that this verse may have originally had this significance, I now read it differently in the light of the heading of Psalm 72 (“for Solomon”) and in the light of the Psalter as a whole. The fact that this psalm is dedicated to Solomon points to the moment when Solomon succeeded David as king, i.e. at the time of David’s death (1 Kings 1). Could this have been David’s deathbed prayer – a prayer for his son and for the success of his reign? The content of the psalm is certainly fitting for such an occasion. The prayer asks God to grant the new king wisdom and compassion for the people of God, especially for the poor and oppressed. It asks that God would guide him to exercise his power for justice and for the cause of the marginalized, the mistreated, and the poor.