Psalms Through the Centuries, Volume 3. Susan Gillingham

set alongside images of the crucifixion: this is evident in the *Khludov Psalter (fol.83r), the *Pantokrator Psalter (fol. 115v), the *Barberini Psalter (fol. 143v), the *Bristol Psalter (fol. 139r), *Theodore Psalter (fol. 111r and 111v), and the *Hamilton Psalter (fol. 159r).¹⁷⁸ One of the reasons for these latter images may be the use of the psalm, from the eighth-century onwards, in Good Friday liturgies and in burial liturgies such as the Office of the Dead.¹⁷⁹ So whilst one tradition rejoices in military victory for the faithful, the other laments the departed.

The political resonance of this psalm was a key motif in metrical psalmody in the seventeenth-century. The version by *Sternhold and Hopkins was apparently sung by Cromwell before the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, when an allied army of Parliamentary and Scottish troops led by Sir Thomas Fairfax and the Earl of Manchester inflicted a heavy defeat on the Royalists. Cromwell wrote about the outcome that ‘God made them as stubble to our swords…’, an allusion to Ps. 83:13.¹⁸⁰ It is easy to see how the Sternhold and Hopkins version could be applied to seventeenth-century politics:

      Make Them Now and Their Lords Appear

       like Zeb and Oreb then;

       As Zebu and Zalmana were,

       the kings of Midian;

      12. Who said, let us throughout this land,

       in all the coasts abroad,

       Possess and take into our hand

       the fair houses of God…

      17. And let them daily more and more

       to shame and slander fall,

       And in rebuke and obloquy

       confound and sink them all;

      18. That they may know and understand

       thou art the God most high

       And that thou dost with mighty hand

       the world rule constantly.

      The references to the scheming of the nations and then to their ultimate defeat has enabled this psalm to be used in many different political, social and ecclesial contexts, by Jews and Christians alike. The enemies may be identified in different ways both within and between the two traditions, but the final appeal to God’s ‘world rule’ is a constant in each.

      Psalms 84–89: The Korahite Collection: ‘Will God Remember Zion?’

      Psalms 84–88: ‘Restore us Again, O Lord!’

If the *Asaphite psalms lament God’s absence in Zion, the *Korahite psalms as a whole long for a deeper experience of God’s presence there. The editors seem to have intentionally placed these collections side by side. So Psalm 84, heading up this second Korahite collection, and coming after the Asaphite psalms, seems to have an intentional setting. There are some specific links contrasting Psalm 84, despite its yearning for the Temple, with Psalm 83. The tents (’oholim) of the enemies in 83:6 are now the tents (’oholim) of wickedness, more generally, in 84:10, which the psalmist rejects; the ‘faces’ of the enemy in 83:16 are replaced by the ‘face’ of God’s anointed in 84:9, using the same Hebrew word in each case.

The role of the editors—again, suggesting the first stages of reception history—is also evident in the similarities between this and the collection of other Korahite psalms in Psalms 42–49. As was discussed in the commentary for Psalms 42–29, there is a corresponding format of personal lament about the Temple (42–43/84); communal lament about the loss of land (44/85); psalms associated with David (45/86); Zion and Kingship Hymns (46–48/87); and a final lament on innocent suffering (49/88). Psalm 89, being a complex composition, stands outside this sequence. The shared language includes expressions such as ‘the living God’; ‘your dwellings’; ‘the house of God’; ‘the city of God’; ‘holy mountain’; ‘Jacob’.¹⁸¹ This suggests that each Korahite collection was intended by the editors to introduce and close Books Two and Three, although the fact that Psalms 43–49 predominantly use the name Elohim for God and Psalms 84–89 usually call God Yahweh suggests that they came originally from different provenances.

      Psalm 84: Longing for the Temple

Psalm 84 has several liturgical associations. For example, in all three strophes (1–4, 5–7, 8–12) the term ‘Lord of Hosts’, reminiscent of the prophet Isaiah’s vision of God in the Temple in Isaiah 6, occurs (verses 1, 3, 8 and 12). The motif of ‘blessed’ at the end of the first strophe (verse 4), the beginning of the second (verse 5) and the end of the third (verse 12) also suggests liturgical influence. It is unclear whether the suppliant is literally entering the Temple, or whether, like its counterpart, in the first *Korahite collection, Psalms 42–43, the psalm has been composed far from it, using liturgical language in memory of the Temple; this would continue the theme of ongoing exile which is throughout Book Three. *Kimḥi, for example, sees Psalm 84 as about David fleeing from Saul to live in Philistia, where he longed to be in the sanctuary of God (at this stage, not the Jerusalem Temple, as yet unbuilt), and so argues that the early setting corresponds with the present Jewish experience of Diaspora without a Temple. According to Kimḥi this makes sense of the reference to the homing instincts of the birds in the sanctuary (verse 3).¹⁸²

Verse 3 is a one of the three most debated verses in the reception of this psalm. Whereas the ‘home’ and ‘nest’ are, in Jewish reception, an allusion to the Temple, in Christian reception they refer to the church—according to *Jerome, a place of rest for the body and soul, inaugurated through Christ.¹⁸³ Another issue is whether verse 3 is about a future (eternal) rest or an imminent (this-worldly) one. Many Jews read the verse in the latter way. *Rashi, for example, understands the ‘sparrow’ as a metaphor for the congregation of Israel, still not having found a home.¹⁸⁴ He also reads ‘the tents of wickedness’ in verse 11 (Eng. v. 10) in the light of Ps. 83:6 (‘the tents of Edom’). Reading Edom/Esau as European Christendom, Rashi thus argues that this psalm is about Jerusalem as the proper home of the Jews alone.¹⁸⁵ However, not surprisingly, a Christian reading, using Heb. 13:14 as an example, reads verses 3 and 4 as not only about the church but about the Christian’s pilgrimage towards a heavenly sanctuary. *Calvin, for example, notes how the blessings of pilgrimage (verses 4 and 5) are also interspersed with great hardships through the ‘Valley of Baca’ (verse 6), yet the final verse of the psalm ends with a final blessing and confident prayer.¹⁸⁶

A second disputed verse is 84:6. Here both the *Septuagint and *Vulgate translate ‘Baca’ metaphorically as a ‘valley of tears’, taken from the Hebrew b-k-h, ‘to weep’. It could however refer literally to a pilgrimage to the Temple through a Valley called Baca. *Targum, meanwhile, identifies baka’ with the bitter-tasting balsam shrub grown in the valley of the same name (see 2 Sam. 5:23–24), and so views it as a reference to *Gehenna and the bitter experience of being transported from a near-death experience back to life. ‘The wicked who pass through the valleys of Gehenna weep tears; they make it as a spring.’¹⁸⁷

Verse 9 (‘look on the face of your anointed’) also has an interesting reception history. *Aquinas (of whom it is said verse 10 inspired his choice to become a *Dominican friar) read this as the voice of Christ in the psalm, praying to the Father on behalf of the Church, and advises this psalm be read alongside the Gospel of Matthew.¹⁸⁸ *Rashi, in order to counter a Christian reading, inserts ‘David’ before the ‘anointed one’, thus giving the verse a historical focus.¹⁸⁹

It is not surprising that this psalm has played a prominent role in Jewish liturgy. It is often used at Jewish weddings and indeed opens the marriage service of the Reform Synagogues of Great Britain.¹⁹⁰ Its theme of yearning for the Temple also gives it a place in the *Siddurim: verse 5 is often cited after the *Pesuke de-Zimra and the Torah reading and before Psalm 145 in the *Ashkenazi morning service, and in the Sephardic tradition the psalm opens the afternoon service.¹⁹¹