Friday in the 23d Week of Ordinary Time, September 11, 2020

Psalm 83

How lovely are your tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord. Yea, my heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God. For the sparrow has found herself a house, and the dove a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.  Blessed are they that dwell in your house, O Lord: they shall praise you for ever and ever. Blessed is the man whose help is from you: in his heart he has disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears, in the place which he has set. For the lawgiver shall give a blessing, they shall go from virtue to virtue: the God of gods shall be seen in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold, O God our protector: and look on the face of your anointed. For better is one day in your courts above thousands elsewhere. I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners. For God loves mercy and truth: the Lord will give grace and glory. He will not deprive them that walk in innocence of good things: O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusts in you. 

Psalm 84 (83, in the Septuagint and Vulgate), used for the responsorial psalm for today’s Mass, consists of a prayer expressing a deep desire for God and his “courts”.  It expresses love for God, confidence in his power, and it describes the glory of God’s dwelling on earth, the temple in Jerusalem.  It would seem to be a psalm sung by Israelite pilgrims making their journey to the temple on the occasion of the one of the great feasts.  The Christian can interpret this psalm according to its spiritual sense as describing the soul’s longing to be with God in heaven.

“How lovely are your tabernacles”.  The Hebrew word here translated does mean “tabernacles”, and not “tents”, as the word is sometimes rendered.  A “tabernacle” is a more permanent abode.  In the days before the temple was built, the ark of the covenant was kept in a “house”, as at Shiloh, over which a tent was pitched.  The house is a “tabernacle”.  We might think of it as the sanctuary of the ark, where the priest would minister.  To say that these tabernacles are “lovely” is to express one’s desire to be present within them, as the priest is, that is, to be on intimate terms with the Lord in his service.  “O Lord of hosts!”  “Hosts” is a translation of the Hebrew sabaoth, which means “armies”.  The “hosts” are military in nature and for the Israelites the hosts could have meant the angels (commonly called the “sons of God”), or simply as an indication of God’s raw power, his omnipotence.  We pray at Mass, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts”, a phrase taken from .isaiah 6, 3.  The Latin prayer transliterates the word directly from the Hebrew: Dominus Deus sabaoth.  

“My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God.”  The Israelites used parallelism in their poetry, and we see an example of it here.  The first phrase, “My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord”, expresses a thought either complete in itself, or nearly so.  The phrase immediately following it then either adds detail to this first phrase, or completes it.  This devise provides a rhythm to the text and also aids in its interpretation.  Here, the second phrase, “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the living God”, tells us that not only does the psalmist’s nephesh — his life-force, his soul — long and faint for God’s courts, but so does his heart and his basar— his flesh — rejoice in the “living” God — as opposed to the “dead” gods of stone whom the Gentiles worship.  The psalmist’s whole person, mind, body, and soul, longs for God and rejoices to know him.

“For the sparrow hath found herself a house, and the dove a nest for herself where she may lay her young ones: your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.”  This verse also consists of a parallelism: the sparrow and the dove.  St. Augustine says that these two birds are figures for the “heart” and the “flesh” spoken of previously.  The restless sparrow — the heart — at last finds of a home for itself while the dove — the flesh — can bring forth young, that is to say, it may perform good works.  The context for this is “your altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God”.  The priest offers some prescribed animal or other food to God on the altar dedicated solely for this purpose.  The victim that is offered is a figure for the one on whose behalf it is offered, and the altar is a figure for God himself.  The offering is sacrificed, that is, rendered in such a way that it cannot be reused.  Here, then, we see the heart and flesh of the offerer given up entirely to the service of God.

“Blessed are they that dwell in your house, O Lord: they shall praise you for ever and ever.”  Those who dwelt in the temple of Jerusalem, that is, the temple complex, were those concerned with the worship of God.  These would have included the priests, the Levites, and those who sang in the choirs.  The worship of God continued all day and all night and so it was necessary for those who led it to live in the temple’s vicinity.  Spiritually, we understand these dwellers as the member of the Body of Christ, who worship God continuously (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18: “Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”), and belong to him — dwell in him — no matter where they go.

“Blessed is the man whose help is from you: in his heart he has disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears, in the place in which he has been set. For the Lawgiver shall give a blessing, and he shall go from virtue to virtue. The God of gods shall be seen in Zion.”  The believer in Christ “ascends” step by step in virtue and good works, just as a temple or an altar is built, stone by stone, brick by brick.  The virtuous man makes progress in this “vale of tears”, ascending Mount Zion to where the heavenly Temple is set.  The phrase “God of gods” is a Hebraism that expresses the superlative.  It can be rendered as “the all-powerful God”, or “the God whose power is beyond imagining.”  We see this expressed in Latin at the end of prayers: in saecula saeculorum, which can mean “world of worlds”, or “world without end”, or “ages of ages.”

“O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold, O God our protector: and look on the face of your anointed.”  Here, the psalmist prays for the king, the “anointed”, whose capital was at Jerusalem, or, perhaps, the priest in the temple, offering the psalmist’s sacrifice.  Looking upon his “face” meant looking favorably upon the offering, that is, the one on whose behalf the offering was made.

“For better is one day in your courts above thousands elsewhere. I have chosen to be an abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tabernacles of sinners.”  The psalmist expresses his thoughts here in another parallelism.  The courts of the Lord is the psalmist’s sole, longed-for home.  He would rather spend one day there than thousands of days in any other place, including the palaces of kings and of rich merchants.  In fact, he would rather be destitute in the courts of The temple than to be rich in the company of nobility.  True wealth, he knows, is the possession of God.  To love the Lord with all his might, strength, and mind is not simply to obey the law; it his his every joy to do so.  The Christian begins to do this here in performing good works and in contemplation, and he is made perfect in it in heaven, for “God loves mercy and truth”, and so he “will give grace and glory” to the one who truly loves him.  The lover of God does not need fear destitution on this earth incurred for the service of God: “He will not deprive them that walk in innocence of good things.”  

The psalmist brings his prayer full circle with: “O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusts in you.”  He begins by praying, “My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord”, a personal expression of trust in the fulfillment and joy found in God’s presence, and he concludes with the general, “Blessed is the man”.  The psalmist reflects on how God has blessed him, and knows that this almighty, all-loving God blesses all others who similarly trust in him.  This trust flows from hope, and hope is a kind of knowledge.  We can give ourselves entirely to him because we know who he is, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.