I’m mesmerised at the moment by Psalm 87.
It has a poetic twist.
It assumes that being born in Zion (Jerusalem) puts one at the head of
the queue, but it also assumes that when God makes the roll-call he will simply
say each of us was born there.
The really mesmerising part of this is that those who sing
it have God say ‘I will record Rahab and Babylon among those who acknowledge me...
of Zion it will be said “this one and that one were born in her”’.
Rahab is Egypt – remember that the defining myth of the
people who sang the Psalm is that this is the country which enslaved them. And remember that Babylon is the country
which had recently destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and deported its people.
The present book of Psalms was the collection brought
together for and used in the newly rebuilt temple in Jerusalem. I don’t know why I hadn’t previously found it
astounding that they sang of Egypt and Babylon as sharing their inheritance.
It is the Psalm on which John Newton based his hymn ‘Glorious
things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God’, and these opening words of
the hymn are a direct quotation from the Psalm.
Newton’s mediation on it is that of an eighteenth century evangelical
who also wrote ‘Amazing Grace’, so his version spells out the consequences ‘if
of Zion’s city I through grace a member am’ given that ‘solid joys and lasting
treasure none but Zion ‘s children know’.
The Psalm ends with those born in Zion saying ‘all my fresh
springs are in you’ and Newton reads this alongside Jesus’ promise of living
water: ‘the streams of living waters springing from eternal love well supply
thy songs and daughters’.
But, as interesting as I’m finding it to trace how the
favourite hymn is simply expounding the Psalm, it is the thought of the people
of ‘Second Temple’ singing of God’s inclusion of both Egypt and Babylon which
is the fresh spring for me at the moment.
