Who May Dwell on God’s Holy Mountain? AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast BibleProject

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Episode: Who May Dwell on God’s Holy Mountain?

Author: BibleProject Podcast
Duration: 01:02:39

Episode Shownotes

The Mountain E9 — The mountain theme shows up again and again in biblical narrative, but it’s also prominent in the Psalms. Particularly in Psalms 15-24, the biblical authors reflect on the traits of the one who can ascend and dwell on God’s holy mountain. At first, this question focuses

on King David and his royal successors as they endure suffering, despair, and ultimately vindication, which leads to blessing for Israel and the nations. But eventually, it’s not just the Davidic king but a whole community of the faithful ascending the mountain! In this episode, Jon and Tim survey the mountain theme through the Psalms scroll and reflect on what it takes to be with God there.View more resources on our website →Timestamps Chapter 1: Recap of Where We’ve Been (0:00-10:21)Chapter 2: Psalm 2: God’s Anointed One on a Mountain (10:21-19:34)Chapter 3: Psalms 15-24: The King and His Crew Ascend the Mountain (19:34-51:05)Chapter 4: A Hyperlink in Revelation 2 to Psalm 2 (51:05-1:02:39)Official Episode TranscriptView this episode’s official transcript.Referenced ResourcesThe Arrival of the King: The Shape and Story of Psalms 15-24 by Carissa QuinnCheck out Tim’s library here.You can experience our entire library of resources in the BibleProject app, available for Android and iOS.Show Music“Sum Sum” by Ben Bada Boom“Sunkissed Cycles” by lloom“Astér” by KissamiléBibleProject theme song by TENTSShow CreditsProduction of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer. Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode and also provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty does our show notes, and Hannah Woo provides the annotations for our app. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie.Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Full Transcript

00:00:05 Speaker_05
Welcome to Bible Project Podcast. Today, we continue to explore the theme of the mountain.

00:00:10 Speaker_05
Through the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible, we've discovered that mountains are an overlapping space where heaven and earth unite, where God's presence and abundance dwells. And humans are invited to ascend the mountain.

00:00:25 Speaker_05
And when they do, they're faced with a crisis. Will they surrender everything and trust in God's wisdom so that blessing can spread out to all the land? Well, the problem is almost all humans cling to their own wisdom and fail this test.

00:00:40 Speaker_05
So we're left waiting for a better mountaintop intercessor to come.

00:00:45 Speaker_03
Whether it's the Adam and Eve story, the Abraham story, the Moses story, the David story, the Elijah story, the reader is thinking, okay, we need somebody who will go up there and surrender and then bring the blessing of the mountain presence down to everybody else.

00:01:00 Speaker_05
This theme is what we're going to look at now in the scroll of Psalms. And as we do, we're going to see two different pictures of the mountaintop intercessor to come.

00:01:10 Speaker_03
Psalm 2 begins with a portrait of the nations in rebellious uproar against Yahweh and his anointed. So he's going to bring violent justice, shatter the nations like pottery and break them with a rod of iron.

00:01:25 Speaker_03
But then we get another portrait in Psalm 15 through 24. It's about the arrival of a king who has suffered and been vindicated by God out of his suffering, holds a feast on Mount Zion that summons the righteous and the nations and even the dead.

00:01:43 Speaker_03
And then that king has a righteous crew who enters in with him. They will ascend and then Yahweh will enter and meet them in that place too.

00:01:53 Speaker_05
Today, Tim Acke and I talk about the mountain theme and the scroll of Psalms, reflecting on these two very different portraits and how they are reconciled in the person of Jesus. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim. Hi, John. Hey. Hey. All right.

00:02:15 Speaker_05
We get to jump into the scroll of Psalms.

00:02:18 Speaker_03
Psalms. Psalm. Well, the Psalms scroll. The Psalms scroll. Because there's many Psalms. But then when you are talking about any individual Psalm, you say it in the singular. Psalm 1. Okay. Psalm 2. Sheesh. Sometimes people say Psalms 1 and Psalms 2. Oh, right.

00:02:33 Speaker_03
That's a no-no. Well, it's just, it's not grammatically coherent. It's not accurate.

00:02:37 Speaker_05
Okay. We're in the Psalm scroll. Yep. Talking about the mountain. We're talking about the mountain. Yeah.

00:02:42 Speaker_05
You know, let's not do a big recap, but I did have a lingering question that actually our colleague Brad was just chatting with me about, which is with Elijah, we talked about him kind of ending on a- Yeah, sad note. Sad note.

00:02:56 Speaker_03
Yeah, yeah.

00:02:57 Speaker_05
But the way the Hebrew Bible continues the story of Elijah is he is kind of a hero, right? Later, he ascends to heaven. Right? That's pretty baller. And then in the Jewish tradition, he's celebrated as like, there's another Elijah to come.

00:03:15 Speaker_05
He's like, he becomes this figure who's highly acclaimed. Yeah, that's right.

00:03:20 Speaker_03
Yeah. He is the most Moses-like figure in the former prophets. So you have the Moses figure in the Torah, and he is who he is, and he sets a template.

00:03:32 Speaker_03
And then, out of all the prophets that appear in the former prophets, by which I mean Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, that's a section of the Tanakh, Hebrew Bible, he's the prophet who gets the most airtime alongside Samuel.

00:03:47 Speaker_03
And Samuel's portrayed with lots of hyperlinks to Moses too, but Elijah in particular. And Elijah's the only one, the only other character than Moses who goes up Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai doesn't appear in any other story.

00:04:00 Speaker_03
Yeah, but he goes up there and he kind of like misses it. And the whole thing is an inversion of the Moses story. So instead of going up, and surrendering his life to release the mercy and blessing to the rebellious people below, like Moses does.

00:04:17 Speaker_03
He goes up. And he's so consumed with his own self and his own mind, he accuses the people even more instead of advocating for them. And he does want to surrender his life, but not for anybody else, but for himself. So it's an intentional inversion.

00:04:36 Speaker_03
However, he was still the prophet who confronted the people in their covenant unfaithfulness. He forced them to make a choice. And he brought a covenant curse upon the land. He struck the land with a curse.

00:04:48 Speaker_03
When Malachi says there is another Elijah to come, he talks about Elijah coming to turn the hearts of Israel back, or else the land will be struck with a covenant curse. And that's exactly the choice that Elijah put in front of the people.

00:05:03 Speaker_05
I was also confused by how we looked at David's failures and then immediately he celebrated. And you said, it seems like God is viewing these characters and attributing to them like their best day. Their best day.

00:05:21 Speaker_03
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:05:22 Speaker_05
Yes. And like Elijah has a great day.

00:05:24 Speaker_03
Similar. Yeah, he does. Powerful day on Mount Garden. On Mount Garden.

00:05:28 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:05:28 Speaker_03
On Mount Test? No, not so much.

00:05:30 Speaker_05
Okay, so how this fits with the whole mountain theme is there is a space where God and humans work together, but it's a unique space because of the connection to God.

00:05:43 Speaker_05
And I started last week using the word atmosphere just to kind of give me a picture of like, there's something different about the environment and the way you interact in the environment.

00:05:51 Speaker_05
Moses, when he goes up Mount Sinai and he's in it, he like becomes one with God in this really beautiful, unique way with the divine counsel. He's invited in.

00:06:03 Speaker_05
And when Elijah goes up Mount Carmel, Mount Garden, there's a sense of like him and God are on the same page. That's his day. That's his best day. That's his best day.

00:06:12 Speaker_05
And so you get these two portraits of like, hey, on our best day, we can be like one with the creator of the universe. It's possible. It's possible. In fact, it's what we're made for. It's what we're made for. Yeah.

00:06:23 Speaker_05
And that kind of feels like kind of central to this theme, but then there's this fragility to it because even Elijah.

00:06:29 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:06:29 Speaker_05
And I guess Moses, we didn't talk about his kind of failure moments, but like Elijah, like immediately the next chapter, he's like out into the wilderness. And when he ascends the mountain again, it's the inversion.

00:06:40 Speaker_05
He sends the mountain, the Mount Sinai, the mountain of Yahweh to meet with God and he misses God.

00:06:46 Speaker_03
Yes. Okay. So that's the human drama all built on the premise that the cosmic mountain is where the land, which is the human space meets heaven, which is God's space. And that's an ideal setting for which humans are made to live in union with God.

00:07:04 Speaker_03
However, being that close to heaven on earth, tends to force humans to make decisions. The crisis. Into the crisis of whether they're going to trust God's wisdom or their own.

00:07:18 Speaker_03
And when people blow it, they find themselves estranged from the life of heaven on earth, usually because they're clinging to their own wisdom, their own plans, their own desires for the good. And so there's a dual movement.

00:07:31 Speaker_03
Sometimes the drama is about a human being called up or going back up a mountain.

00:07:37 Speaker_05
So Abraham bringing Isaac up the mountain.

00:07:39 Speaker_03
Yep, David. And they have to surrender in order to access it. But then if somebody's in that space and they really surrender, the pattern is that it releases the heaven on earth blessing to wider than the mountain, down the mountain.

00:07:55 Speaker_03
So after Moses does his thing, he requests that God still go with the people. And then all of a sudden the mountaintop presence moves down into the camp. In the tabernacle. In the tabernacle.

00:08:06 Speaker_03
And then when David does that, the mountaintop presence takes up residence, you know, a significant residence there on the mountain. With Elijah, up on Mount Carmel, that's what happens. God's heavenly presence comes down.

00:08:21 Speaker_03
But then on Mount Sinai, he doesn't surrender. Elijah doesn't. And so he's relieved from his duties. So it's a dual movement. We need the heavenly presence to fill the earth so that... Oh, we don't want it trapped up on the mountain. Yeah.

00:08:36 Speaker_03
Who can ascend the mountain of the Lord? It's just like only some people on their best day.

00:08:41 Speaker_05
Only some people on their best day. And it creates a crisis, and the way through that crisis is self-surrender. And when that happens, the blessings unleash down the mountain.

00:08:51 Speaker_03
That's right.

00:08:52 Speaker_03
And so, whether it's Adam and Eve's story, the Abraham story, the Moses story, the David story, the Elijah story, all the plot conflicts drive the story forward so the reader is thinking, okay, we need somebody who will go up there and surrender.

00:09:07 Speaker_03
and then bring the blessing of the mountain presence down to everybody else.

00:09:14 Speaker_05
So that's how this is connected to the Suffering Servant theme as well.

00:09:18 Speaker_03
So we'll go there. What I want to go to now is just after we've done all these stories in the Torah and Prophets, I want to reflect on the role of the mountain theme in the Psalms.

00:09:31 Speaker_03
Because the way the mountain shows up in the Psalms, it's about the same drama. And so we're only going to have a chance to touch down in a few famous last words, probably one and a half.

00:09:43 Speaker_03
But at least I just want to highlight it because the way the mountain is described is very similar to the multi-dimensional portrait of the cosmic mountain in the Torah and Prophets. So to the Psalms scroll we go. Okay, Psalm Scroll has 150 poems.

00:10:25 Speaker_03
Psalm 1, it's famous. We won't take time to read it except to just remember the portrait that it describes somebody who meditates on God's instructions, Torah, day and night. And they become, in contrast to everybody else,

00:10:40 Speaker_03
who's conniving and scheming and making fun of everybody. This person becomes like the tree of life planted by a stream of water, just offering fruit to everybody. And it ends, the poem ends by saying, listen, there's two ways to be human.

00:10:58 Speaker_03
you should really consider choosing the Meditate Torah Tree of Life way because it will go great for you. How good is life for those who choose that route? So that's the first.

00:11:09 Speaker_03
It's about people becoming like trees of life in the Garden of Eden if they live by God's instruction. Psalm 2 gives a complementary portrait of the same basic idea, but in a bit of a different frame, and the cosmic mountain is at the center of it.

00:11:25 Speaker_03
It begins with the portrait of the nations in rebellious uproar against Yahweh and his anointed. Famously, why are the nations in uproar? Why did the people scheme vain things? All against Yahweh and his anointed one.

00:11:40 Speaker_03
So, his king, his royal priestly representative on earth. In fact, God is depicted as, look at the language here, the one who sits in the skies, he laughs at these rebel kings. It's silly to him. Yeah. He mocks them.

00:11:57 Speaker_03
In fact, he makes fun of how these puny little humans think that they're powerful because they ride these horses with big heavy spears with metal on the end. And they think that makes them like God. He speaks to them in his anger.

00:12:12 Speaker_03
They've been slaying the innocent. He doesn't take kindly to that. He will terrify them in his fury, saying, and then here's God's quote, as for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain. There it is. The holy mountain. The holy mountain.

00:12:29 Speaker_03
Zion. Yeah.

00:12:31 Speaker_03
So you've got the nations down on the land, you've got God up in the skies, and then you have God's anointed representative on the holy mountain, which is essentially the meeting place of the sky and the land, which is identified here with Zion and the descendants of David ruling there.

00:12:50 Speaker_03
That's the first portrait. The mountain is described as the place where God has appointed a representative to subdue the chaos nations below, to bring order and justice,

00:13:01 Speaker_03
And the meeting place of heaven and earth is called the holy mountain, and the anointed king is sort of like the meeting place of God and human with the representative on the mountain. This is God's solution to the rebel nations.

00:13:17 Speaker_05
Now, when we read David's story, it ended with him making a sacrifice up on the mountain, which would be the place where the temple would go. So this is the meeting place of God and man on the mountain, and this is Jerusalem.

00:13:32 Speaker_05
And Zion, a way to reference Jerusalem, right?

00:13:35 Speaker_03
Yeah, most likely Tzion in Hebrew means some sort of bare rock. Referring to one of the higher points,

00:13:44 Speaker_03
of ancient Jerusalem, which was where the temple was eventually built, and which the narrator of that story tells us is also where Abraham surrendered Isaac over to God in Genesis.

00:13:55 Speaker_05
Yeah. So kind of on a surface level, this feels like kingly propaganda for a nation in a way.

00:14:02 Speaker_03
Oh yeah, if you just read Psalm 2, like posted on the, if it was inscribed on the pillar of David's palace, you would be like, oh yeah, I read a poem like this when I went to the palace of the Assyrian kings. Right.

00:14:14 Speaker_05
This king is important to God and this king's gonna rule the whole world.

00:14:21 Speaker_03
Yeah, in fact, violently so. He's going to bring violent justice, shatter the nations like pottery and break them with a rod of iron.

00:14:30 Speaker_05
It's like, whoa, that's intense. What it feels like is going through this theme though, the cosmic mountain, it feels like there's a layer underneath of this.

00:14:39 Speaker_05
This is not just strictly talking about David and his right to just take out his neighboring enemy nations. There's more?

00:14:48 Speaker_03
Yeah, so here we have to remember the cyclical, paralleling nature of all the characters and generations of the biblical story, going all the way back to Adam and Eve.

00:14:58 Speaker_03
So they were the first royal priests stationed on the holy mountain to bring order to the garden and to rule over the wild animals. So that's the first kind of template.

00:15:11 Speaker_05
And the only enemy really is the serpent.

00:15:14 Speaker_03
That's right. Yeah, exactly. That's why later in the Psalms, these rebel nations are hyperlinked directly to the snake. So the Adam and Eve analogy is really important for understanding the line of David ruling in Mount Zion.

00:15:29 Speaker_03
as a beacon of God's justice and order against the rebel nations. That's also our analogy. And that's really the main one. The other one would be Moses and his royal priestly role on Mount Sinai with the idolatrous rebel covenant breakers below.

00:15:47 Speaker_03
And so God speaks his wisdom and justice and instruction that he's supposed to bring to the people below, to bring order to them, and so on. So those are kind of the two main parallels underneath here.

00:15:58 Speaker_03
But then also important is that the Torah and prophets taught you that it's when the royal priestly figure gives up their life on behalf of others on the holy mountain.

00:16:12 Speaker_03
That's when the kingdom of God and the blessing, you know, spreads from the holy mountain. But that's not in this song. Nope. No. And that's, this is so important that we read the Hebrew Bible as a unified story that leads to the Messiah.

00:16:27 Speaker_03
And we're back to, I don't know, like a mosaic. This is one tile and it's the first mountain tile. You have to keep reading.

00:16:35 Speaker_05
Because here's what I personally want this psalm to do.

00:16:39 Speaker_03
Oh, yeah.

00:16:39 Speaker_05
It is to talk about the anointed one on the mountain, but then bring him up as the suffering servant. Yeah. And then he's not just crushing enemies, he's also blessing the nations. Yeah.

00:16:50 Speaker_05
And maybe the emphasis is more on blessing the nations than crushing the enemies. Like, that's where, like, my modern intuition or whatever, like my... That's great.

00:16:56 Speaker_03
No, that's not modern. That's your biblical intuition.

00:16:59 Speaker_06
Okay.

00:16:59 Speaker_03
That's why you need to keep reading. Especially, it's why you need to read Psalms 15 through 24, which are all about. You just summarize Psalm 15 to 24.

00:17:09 Speaker_03
But this is so key, reading the Hebrew Bible, especially in context, and especially, what do you say, a composite scroll like the Psalms, that has poems that come from many diverse times and places in Israel's story.

00:17:23 Speaker_03
And so, you know, it's not hard to imagine this serving a role in David's court, this poem by itself.

00:17:31 Speaker_05
Yeah. So here's what I'm kind of learning in a way is these poems could have existed for another purpose.

00:17:38 Speaker_03
And many of them certainly did.

00:17:39 Speaker_05
Yeah. And so when they're brought into this collection, they're being repurposed. It changes their meaning. Changes their meaning. Yes. So this could have been used as a propaganda poem at some point.

00:17:49 Speaker_03
It's not hard to imagine. serving that role. But then the question is, what is the function of this poem within the psalm scroll within the Hebrew Bible?

00:17:59 Speaker_03
And then all of a sudden, the same words have a different meaning, or have deeper layers of meaning.

00:18:07 Speaker_05
of like the perspective that we talk about in reading the Bible, we talk about seven characteristics. What part? Unified. That's unified.

00:18:14 Speaker_03
Yep. Unified means both the unified story of the Bible is the biggest context for any individual little story or poem. And then unified also means unified editorially or compositionally in terms of how the books are composed.

00:18:30 Speaker_03
So the biblical authors brought together material from lots of different times and places but they've put it in a certain context that determines its meaning in this context. And this is a wonderful example.

00:18:45 Speaker_03
Actually, let's move forward and then we'll come back to this. And then we actually know how one of the earliest followers of Jesus understood Psalm 2, reading it in light of the unified shape of the Psalm scroll in a super cool way. Okay.

00:18:59 Speaker_03
So we'll come back to Psalm 2. So, real quick, just a word search on mountain in the Psalms gives you just a little over 50 hits.

00:19:40 Speaker_05
So this is one of 50.

00:19:42 Speaker_03
Yeah, so the mountain, the holy mountain gets brought up in the next poem, Psalm 3.

00:19:48 Speaker_03
There's poems about going up to the mountains, about the psalmist, the poet, being trapped in mud or surrounded by animals and God lifted them up and placed them on the high mountain. God responding from his holy mountain and bringing justice.

00:20:05 Speaker_03
So you could just do a whole mountains theme study just through the Psalms. That is super, super interesting. What I want to focus on is a unified subsection of Psalms called Psalms 15 to 24, and it's unified in lots of ways.

00:20:20 Speaker_03
It's unified as a symmetry. The first poem, 15, matches 24, and then you can match as it goes in from there.

00:20:28 Speaker_04
So there's kind of a center.

00:20:30 Speaker_03
Yeah, and I am so happy to announce real-time the release of a new scholarly treatment of Psalms 15-24 by a scholar who served on our BioProject Scholar team, Carissa Quinn.

00:20:42 Speaker_03
It's her dissertation, published, called The Arrival of the King, the Shape and Story of Psalms 15-24. And it's a study of the design of the subsection and of how it's arranged to tell a story about the arrival

00:20:56 Speaker_03
of a king from the line of David to come to the holy mountain. It is so awesome. So the first poem in this subsection, what we call Psalm 15, and it's a psalm connected to David, and it begins like this.

00:21:11 Speaker_03
O Yahweh, who can reside in your tent, and who can dwell on your holy mountain?

00:21:20 Speaker_05
Okay, Moses.

00:21:22 Speaker_03
Yeah, totally.

00:21:23 Speaker_05
Yeah, Moses. Moses on his good day. Moses on a good day. The priests. Yep. They're supposed to be able to go in the tent.

00:21:29 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:21:29 Speaker_05
Yeah. Is this a rhetorical question?

00:21:31 Speaker_03
So notice that the holy mountain, it's just assumed that you know what that is. Okay. All the way back to Psalm 2.

00:21:39 Speaker_05
Okay.

00:21:39 Speaker_03
But also Yahweh's tent is up there, which you could say, well, yeah. Or they're put in parallel. They're put in parallel. David did bring the tent, the tabernacle, up there.

00:21:49 Speaker_03
That's when he danced, you know, in a rather risque tunic, at least one of his wives thought. But tent and mountain are in parallelism. Which actually, those are an important parallel. You go up to the mountain and you go into the tent.

00:22:04 Speaker_03
In both cases, the ascent to God's presence is either up or in.

00:22:08 Speaker_05
And you have to go up the mountain. The tent can actually come down to you.

00:22:11 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, totally. But in this case, the tent is up on the mountain. So the whole question is, it presumes that there's some problem. Who can actually go up the mountain?

00:22:21 Speaker_05
Yeah, it's not easy.

00:22:23 Speaker_03
Yeah, it's not easy. Here's a short list. The one who walks blamelessly. It's the word tamim. This was the word used for the first time in the Bible to describe Noah.

00:22:36 Speaker_05
He was righteous and blameless. So Noah's in the running.

00:22:40 Speaker_03
So the one who walks in, it's the word wholeness. Wholeness. Your wholeness of character. Who you are on the outside is who you are on the inside. Total alignment.

00:22:50 Speaker_05
Completeness? Like, is that the same idea? Be complete? Yeah, from the Sermon on the Mount.

00:22:55 Speaker_03
Yeah, this is the Hebrew word underneath. The Greek word used in Matthew.

00:23:00 Speaker_05
Be complete. Which is sometimes translated perfect, and you can kind of see what they mean by that.

00:23:06 Speaker_03
But yeah, blameless, whole, complete, those are feel... This is also the word used to describe the types of animals that can be sacrificed. It's often translated without blemish. And that's not about whether they're morally perfect. Moral intuitions.

00:23:23 Speaker_03
They have no spots. They have no deformation.

00:23:25 Speaker_05
Scars and deformation. It becomes an image in a way.

00:23:30 Speaker_03
A tamim animal is a representative for a person who's not tamim, and God will accept the tamim representative. So the one who walks with tamim, the one who does what is

00:23:42 Speaker_03
Right, it's our word righteousness, who does what creates right relationships between people.

00:23:47 Speaker_05
Wait, is the word righteous there or is it a different word?

00:23:49 Speaker_03
It's the word righteous. Who does what is righteous. He does righteousness. He speaks honestly, truth in his heart. He doesn't slander with his tongue. He does no harm to his friend.

00:24:03 Speaker_05
Slander gets really specific all of a sudden. Psalm 1 also talked about kind of the slander.

00:24:08 Speaker_03
Yeah, it's the contrast of speaking honestly. If you speak truthfulness with people, you know, you're level set with them. But then contrast, what's the opposite of truth is speaking behind someone's back. So you're violating truthfulness.

00:24:24 Speaker_05
You can jump into a lot of different ways that righteousness or blamelessness kind of manifests itself.

00:24:31 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:24:32 Speaker_05
One is in how you speak and talk about people and use your tongue. And that's the one that the psalmist chooses. So it just seems- That's right.

00:24:41 Speaker_03
Yeah. And notice he doesn't slander with his tongue or harm his friend or disgrace his neighbor. Disgrace is, we're talking in an honor-shame context. People's kind of role in the public hierarchies of value.

00:24:54 Speaker_03
So to disgrace someone is essentially to try and get a leg up on them. on the social rank. Loving his neighbor. Verse 4, keep going, he honors those who respect Yahweh, he takes an oath even to his own injury and doesn't retract it. What is that?

00:25:11 Speaker_03
I'll say, you made a promise. Hey, I'll, let me help you tomorrow with your fence. And then like a tree falls on your fence. And then it's like, oh man, well, I said I was gonna help you.

00:25:23 Speaker_05
That's a lot more work than I expected.

00:25:24 Speaker_03
But now it's way more work and it's gonna cost me a whole day. Okay, well, I made a promise. So it keeps promises even if it's to your own disadvantage. Okay. He doesn't lend his money with interest. This is a big deal in the laws of the Torah.

00:25:39 Speaker_03
If you lend money to someone who needs money more than you do, don't profit off of their financial need. He doesn't take any bribes against the innocent. The one who does these things will never be shaken.

00:25:53 Speaker_03
What's interesting is that word, shaken, is a motif word used in the Hebrew Bible, but particularly in the Psalms. It can describe people, but it also can describe the de-creation because, like in Psalm 46,

00:26:11 Speaker_03
The de-creation of the world is described as the mountains shaking into the sea.

00:26:16 Speaker_05
So it's a word to describe crumbling, de-creating, turning back into the ground.

00:26:21 Speaker_03
That's right. So the person who essentially is a righteous person, who can ascend the mountain, Well, this kind of person, and that person actually will become like a mountain that is not shaken. That's the play.

00:26:37 Speaker_05
Because on the mountain is the tree of life. And if you're connected to that, then you're not going to shake back down into the earth.

00:26:45 Speaker_03
So, on one level, you could read Psalm 15 and you're just like, okay, man, well, I want to go be with Yahweh on the mountain, so I'm going to aspire to be like this. And on one level, that's right and good.

00:26:57 Speaker_03
On another level, this is in a collection of scrolls that keep telling stories about humans. who very rarely have great days where they can go up the mountain.

00:27:09 Speaker_03
Most often they have mediocre days and sometimes they have really bad days where there's no way they'd ever go up the mountain on that day. And that often it's the same person.

00:27:20 Speaker_03
So you also walk away from that question, who can dwell on your holy mountain, and you're like, well, not very many.

00:27:28 Speaker_05
It's a very short list, and even that short list can only do it on their best day. Yeah, that's right.

00:27:34 Speaker_03
So it kind of raises a problem, too. So what is interesting is the Psalm to follow, all the way through Psalm 23, starts focusing in on David and the kings from his line.

00:27:47 Speaker_03
And it begins with 16 of David celebrating the inheritance that God gave him and how close he feels to God. Psalm 17 is a prayer of David where he cries out for vindication.

00:28:02 Speaker_03
He cries out for God's presence and for God to show loyalty to him, because there's bad guys out there who want to get me. Psalm 18 retells and reflects on the story of how God rescued David, like from Saul and all his enemies, and God did respond.

00:28:19 Speaker_03
Psalm 19 comes along, and 19 is all about the Word of Yahweh is true, reliable, good. That's what David, back in Psalm 18, said that he trusts in that.

00:28:31 Speaker_03
You start walking through and you're like, oh, I'm being told a story, but not in a normal narrative way, but in a sequence of poems. Psalm 20 is a prayer to say, Yahweh, when the king calls to you, answer him from your holy mountain.

00:28:47 Speaker_03
Psalm 21 is much the same, may Yahweh answer the line of David from the holy mountain.

00:28:53 Speaker_03
And then right near the center of the section is the famous Psalm 22, which is about, it's in the mouth of David, but the opening line is, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it's a poem teeing you up for the previous poems.

00:29:09 Speaker_03
I've been preparing you for a moment when the King from the line of David will be in a moment of need. from enemies and cry out to Yahweh. And how Psalm 22 begins is, My God, I'm calling to you by day and you are not answering me.

00:29:26 Speaker_03
By night, but I have no rest. So Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes when he's hanging on the cross, is this powerful poem that describes the king at his lowest moment. He is not up on the holy mountain reigning and bringing God's justice.

00:29:44 Speaker_03
He is being surrounded by chaos creatures, bulls and lions and dogs. But then he says, hasten to help me. Verse 20, rescue my life from the sword. Save me from the lion. And I'm going to go to NIV, and then right at verse 21, there's a pivot.

00:30:07 Speaker_03
From the horns of the wild ox, you answer me. There's an answer. Yeah. At the moment, like you're about to get gored by a huge wild ox. God answers this. And then verse 22, it just pivots. And we go from the lowest pit back up to the heights.

00:30:25 Speaker_03
I'm going to celebrate your name among my siblings. In the midst of the assembly, I will praise you.

00:30:31 Speaker_03
So all of a sudden he starts describing a big worship feast in the temple courts where he's going to celebrate what God did to deliver him because he didn't despise the affliction of the afflicted one.

00:30:47 Speaker_03
This is the word Jesus uses when he describes in the third beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount. The meek? The unimportant. Yeah, it's translated meek in our Bibles, but those who are the oppressed, the unimportant and the afflicted ones.

00:31:02 Speaker_03
So he stood up for him. Yeah, and it doesn't say how. It just says that God did. And so the king... Oh, not the king, God did. God did. God answered this guy's prayer. And now he's celebrating.

00:31:16 Speaker_03
And then he says, so let the oppressed or the afflicted ones hear with me, eat and be satisfied, let your hearts live forever. You can almost hear the clink of the wine cup.

00:31:27 Speaker_03
And then we're told that this deliverance of the king and the worship party he's having in the temple courts is somehow connected to all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to Yahweh.

00:31:42 Speaker_03
all the families of the nations will worship Yahweh because the kingdom belongs to Yahweh. He rules over the nations.

00:31:52 Speaker_05
So this is the blessing unleashed.

00:31:53 Speaker_03
Yes, yeah. It's a puzzle. You had a suffering king from the line of David.

00:31:58 Speaker_05
Yeah, he's about to get gored. And suddenly God answers his prayer. And it's almost like you fast forward to the end of the story. Yes, exactly.

00:32:06 Speaker_03
Yes. All of a sudden, he's up in the temple celebrating a feast with the poor, announcing that God reigns and his kingdom is forever.

00:32:16 Speaker_05
The whole earth is full of blessing.

00:32:18 Speaker_03
And all the nations get the blessing. Ah, even those who go down to the dust will worship him. Even the one who cannot keep his nephesh, his being, alive.

00:32:34 Speaker_03
So even the dead will somehow not be separated from the worship and celebration of God because of the suffering and vindication of this Davidic King. You're just like, oh my goodness, what is this poem about? Okay, that's Psalm 22.

00:32:54 Speaker_05
That's Psalm 22. I just want to remember. The mountain is not mentioned. The mountain is not mentioned. It's implied.

00:33:00 Speaker_03
It's implied?

00:33:01 Speaker_05
How's it implied? Ah, because he's up in the temple. Because that's where the feast, the assembly, that term, the assembly, that's referencing... Yep, the worshiping assembly in the temple courts.

00:33:13 Speaker_03
He just sacrificed animals to thank God. Yeah, that's where all this food's coming from. Okay, the feast. But where's the feast? I feel this is all implied. It is all implied. It's all implied, and the Psalms often do this.

00:33:26 Speaker_03
The Psalms assume you understand the worship liturgies described in the Torah.

00:33:30 Speaker_05
So you're getting this all from, from you comes my praise in the great assembly.

00:33:34 Speaker_03
and I will pay my vows in front of those who fear him." So, in other words, when you cry out, deliver me. He delivers you. Then you go to the temple, you say, God, thank you for delivering me.

00:33:49 Speaker_03
Let me pay back what I owe you in the form of animal sacrifices, the shalomim, the peace offerings. And then I invite all my friends and especially the poor. And we have a party. And we have a big party and we worship God.

00:34:02 Speaker_03
The afflicted will eat and be satisfied. And then we invite the nations and then even the dead. Whoa. Even the dead get invited to this worship party. It's got cosmic. It's got cosmic.

00:34:13 Speaker_05
Okay, let's remember, Psalm 15, which starts this section, is who can ascend the Mount of Olives. And then it says, it's going to be someone who's got their act together.

00:34:25 Speaker_03
Someone who's got their act together.

00:34:27 Speaker_05
Yep. In a way that should be inspiring, but also the best of us on our best day could barely pull this off.

00:34:34 Speaker_03
And then the Psalms start talking about David and the king's line from David. Okay.

00:34:39 Speaker_05
So you're anticipating, okay, it's from this line. Yes.

00:34:42 Speaker_03
And who are constantly delivered from peril and brought into God's presence.

00:34:45 Speaker_05
Okay. Yes. And then ultimately this person, suddenly we find them in a pit. Yeah. About to just be destroyed. Yep. By wild animals.

00:34:55 Speaker_05
The one that we thought, okay, this is the person that's going to send the Mount of Yahweh is instead being about to be gored by a wild animal.

00:35:05 Speaker_03
But they cry out to God. This one cries out to God. And God hears the cry of this suffering one. And then it's just scene cut. Then the poem just cuts to the celebration.

00:35:20 Speaker_05
Yeah. If you were creating a movie, we would have ended like act one, and then we would have cut to like the final scene of the movie.

00:35:28 Speaker_03
That's Psalm 22. And again, it's highly significant that this is the poem Jesus quotes from as he's hanging on the cross.

00:35:35 Speaker_05
It'd be like at the end of act two, because that's kind of the lowest point, right?

00:35:39 Speaker_03
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, it would be the crisis moment where you think the whole thing's crashing down.

00:35:44 Speaker_05
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, it's like, you don't get to see how that's resolved. Act two doesn't end.

00:35:50 Speaker_03
It ends with the suffering one just saying, God, help me, please.

00:35:54 Speaker_05
It's that moment, yeah, where act two usually like is ending.

00:35:57 Speaker_03
Oh, and then it cuts blank. And then there's just text on the screen that says, and God answered his prayer.

00:36:05 Speaker_05
Okay. Yeah. And then it like fades up from black and you've got that final scene in the movie where everyone's celebrating and you're like, well, how did we get here?

00:36:15 Speaker_03
Yeah. But the party's huge. It's like the king, first it's the poor, then it's all the nations, and then it's even the dead.

00:36:21 Speaker_05
How did we get to this party?

00:36:23 Speaker_03
Yep. It's wild. And this is called the kingdom of God. That's the kingdom is Yahweh's. So, Psalm 23 is, in a way, another version, the famous Psalm 23. I mean, this is the most famous poem in the whole collection.

00:36:41 Speaker_03
In a way, it's a retelling of Psalm 22 with different language. Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want. What's the word want? Oh, I will not have lack. Okay. I will not lack anything that I need. Okay. He gives me green pastures.

00:36:59 Speaker_03
He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in the path of righteousness. There we go. You need that. Ascend the mountain.

00:37:07 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:37:07 Speaker_03
You kind of need a guide. Yeah. For his name's sake. Yahweh's with me. I trust Yahweh. He'll bring me to Eden spots. This is a psalm of David? Yep.

00:37:17 Speaker_05
Okay, so this is a psalm of the anointed.

00:37:19 Speaker_03
Yeah, the guy who just suffered and was vindicated in the previous poem.

00:37:23 Speaker_05
This is his psalm. Yeah.

00:37:25 Speaker_03
Even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, there we are. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so distant? But he says, I will fear no evil because you are with me.

00:37:38 Speaker_05
Which is the opposite of you have forsaken me.

00:37:40 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Your rod and your staff bring me comfort. You prepare a table so you give me a feast even and before my enemies. So look at how Yahweh's with me. He gives me Eden, grass and waters wherever I go.

00:37:58 Speaker_03
Even in the darkest valley, so the opposite of the high place, the opposite of Mount Eden, Even there, I can have an Eden feast when my enemies surround me. And you go back and you think about Psalm 22. He's crying out with enemies surrounding him.

00:38:16 Speaker_05
It does jump cut to the Eden feast.

00:38:18 Speaker_03
Yeah. And here, it's surrounded by enemies. You anoint my head with oil, which has the royal connotations here of the anointing. My cup overflows.

00:38:28 Speaker_03
Goodness and loyal love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever.

00:38:37 Speaker_05
I will ascend the mountain.

00:38:39 Speaker_03
Yeah, so we go from the valley to the cosmic mountain.

00:38:43 Speaker_05
Valley of the shadow of death.

00:38:44 Speaker_03
And actually Eden is with this guy in both places. I can be in the valley and you still give me Eden there. But surely, the little taste of Eden, even in the dark death valley, will culminate in the great feast in the house of Yahweh up above.

00:38:59 Speaker_03
The mountain isn't mentioned, but the house of Yahweh is. And then you get Psalm 24. Okay, so this is a culminating poem. It's so rad. It comes in three parts. First, the land is Yahweh's.

00:39:17 Speaker_03
and everything it contains, the world and all those who dwell in it. For he has founded it, that is the land, upon the seas and established it, the land, on the rivers.

00:39:30 Speaker_05
Yeah, this is the ancient cosmology, God ordering out of the chaotic seas. Underneath the land is the chaos, but also the source of life, like both waters. Chaotic waters, life-giving waters, the land is there, God ordered it.

00:39:46 Speaker_03
Yeah, underneath this is the image of the land sits on pillars, supported above the chaos waters that are below it and all around it. But notice the main claim is not that, it just assumes.

00:39:57 Speaker_03
If Yahweh is the founder of the dry land, then that means everything on the dry land is Yahweh's. And those who dwell in it.

00:40:07 Speaker_03
So it's the word sit, take up residence, but it was the word used in the last line of Psalm 23, which is about dwelling in the house of Yahweh. So there's a special place that belongs just to Yahweh. like the house of Yahweh on the mountain.

00:40:22 Speaker_03
But all the earth is Yahweh's. But then Psalm 24 says, don't forget though, like if we're going to talk about Yahweh's house, let's remember all of the dry land is Yahweh's. Even those who dwell on it. That's the first part of the poem.

00:40:38 Speaker_05
Well, that kind of helps recall, too, what happened at the end of 22. That's the cosmic feast.

00:40:43 Speaker_03
Oh, yes. That's right.

00:40:45 Speaker_05
That's when all the land is now really the house of Yahweh. Yeah.

00:40:51 Speaker_03
Okay. The second part of the poem. Who can ascend onto the hill of Yahweh? Who can stand in his holy place? Here's our question again from the beginning of Psalm 15.

00:41:05 Speaker_05
Okay, now it's at the end.

00:41:06 Speaker_03
Remember there it was tent and mountain. Who can ascend the mountain of Yahweh? Who can dwell in his tent? Here it's who can ascend the hill of Yahweh? Who can stand in the holy place? So holy place meaning temple or tabernacle.

00:41:22 Speaker_03
And the hill meaning mountain. Cosmic mountain. The one who has clean hands and a pure heart. Jesus borrowed the phrase pure of heart in the Beatitudes from this poem here. He also picks up another phrase.

00:41:38 Speaker_03
The one who has clean hands means what you do, your actions, have a purity to them. And that outward purity in your actions is a mirror of an inward purity in your heart. So this is another way to describe, what was it, Tamim?

00:41:54 Speaker_03
Oh, Tamim, yeah, that's right. That's exactly right, yep. The one who doesn't lift up his Nefesh is being to anything false. It's an image of offering up your life. I'm raising my hands because it's the word lift up.

00:42:11 Speaker_03
So you can lift up your life and offer it to something that's true and good and beautiful or something that's an illusion, false. The one who never swears an oath with deceit.

00:42:23 Speaker_03
You don't represent yourself as being truthful when actually you're going to do something else. That one will receive a blessing from Yahweh. He will receive righteousness from the God of his salvation. You can receive righteousness.

00:42:40 Speaker_03
That sounds like Paul the Apostle. Right standing with God. Yahweh will recognize you as someone who's in right relationship with Him, and you'll get the blessing.

00:42:51 Speaker_05
When you are, but this person is in right relationship with people.

00:42:55 Speaker_03
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's good. The one who's in right relationship with people will be recognized as one who's in right relationship with God. Yeah, that's right.

00:43:05 Speaker_05
But it's a God that rescues. What's the rescue from?

00:43:08 Speaker_03
Well, yeah, you got to think back to all the previous poems about being rescued from the chaos and your enemies. Yahweh will rescue the one who's in right relationship with Him and bless them. And that's the one who can ascend the hill of the Lord.

00:43:26 Speaker_03
And then we're told, verse 6, this, that is all that, is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, namely, Jacob.

00:43:40 Speaker_05
Okay. Okay, two things. One, I thought we were talking about like a king here. Yeah, good point. Now it's a generation. Now it's a whole crew. It's a big crew.

00:43:51 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:43:52 Speaker_05
Jacob? Namely Jacob? Why would we call this person Jacob?

00:43:54 Speaker_03
Well, so it's shorthand for the descendants of Jacob. Okay. Yeah. It's interesting. In some translations, they've paraphrased and interpreted So NIV says, this is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob.

00:44:09 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's how I'm familiar with it. But the word God isn't there in Hebrew. It just says, who seek your face. Jacob. And it's not likely that they're seeking Jacob, their ancestor's face. But they're being called Jacob.

00:44:24 Speaker_05
Seems connected to the remnant. Exactly. There is the anointed one to come, but he's got a crew.

00:44:31 Speaker_03
Jacob was the descendant of the 12 sons, named the 12 tribes.

00:44:37 Speaker_05
Yeah. So from Jacob is Israel.

00:44:39 Speaker_03
Yes, exactly.

00:44:41 Speaker_05
And Israel will be a crew, a nation, a people.

00:44:47 Speaker_03
Yeah, that seek God's face. And how do you know they're seeking God's face? Well, clean hands, pure heart, truthfulness. And then you go back to 15, they don't lend money with interest. They speak what's truthful and good about people.

00:45:06 Speaker_03
So first of all, let's just notice the actual person of Jacob was nothing like this. The Jacob in Genesis. He was a lying cheat for most of his life. Only once he suffered a lot did he ever straighten up.

00:45:23 Speaker_03
So that itself is interesting, but he has a couple of good moments on his best day. So all of creation is Yahweh's and the dry land is Who can ascend the hill of the Lord?

00:45:39 Speaker_03
And so this question, who can ascend the hill of the Lord, is also asking a more cosmic question of like, who can really become covenant partners with the holy, generous, just Creator God of the sky and the land? And he's forming a crew.

00:46:01 Speaker_03
He's forming a crew. Yeah.

00:46:03 Speaker_05
It's interesting that Jesus uses a lot of these words in his nine statements at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount when he's kind of defining his crew.

00:46:13 Speaker_03
That's right. How good is life for the pure in heart, for they will see God. Yeah. And that's what he's reflecting here. The pure heart who seek God's face. And he says, you will be. They will see God. Yeah. So we just described the whole earth as God's.

00:46:28 Speaker_03
Then we re-asked our question, who can really enter into partnership in the presence on the cosmic mountain with God? And you're like, well, I guess the king, whose story was kind of told in the Psalms to follow.

00:46:43 Speaker_03
And then we have the final third of Psalm 24. Psalm 24 has a riddle-like structure, has three parts, and you're like, what do these have to do with each other? Lift up your heads, O gates,

00:46:57 Speaker_03
Be lifted up, O ancient doors, so that the King of glory may enter in.

00:47:03 Speaker_05
Okay. Open up the gates.

00:47:05 Speaker_03
Yeah. So this is like you're a doorman or a door woman at the doors of the temple, the royal residence of Yahweh, the King of all creation.

00:47:16 Speaker_05
This isn't the gates to like the city. This is the gates to the temple.

00:47:21 Speaker_03
Well, it's where is God's home? So he's going to have to go through the gates of the city, but the city and then God's house are kind of identified with each other. So the king is arriving. King is arriving. Who is the king of glory?

00:47:35 Speaker_03
Yahweh, strong and mighty. Yahweh, mighty in battle. Oh, back in Psalm 18, that's how David described Yahweh who rescued him from his enemies. Lift up your heads, O gates, lift them up, ancient doors, so the King of glory may come in.

00:47:52 Speaker_03
Who's the King of glory? Yahweh of armies. He's the King of glory. So it's about an entrance celebration of Yahweh coming as the King to enter into his royal residence. Those are the three parts of Psalm 24.

00:48:10 Speaker_05
That was the third part. What was the first part?

00:48:13 Speaker_03
First part was the land is Yahweh's and everything on it. Second part, who can ascend to the hill of Yahweh?

00:48:20 Speaker_05
Yeah, it's the generation.

00:48:22 Speaker_03
The generation. So that's about everything is Yahweh's. So in a way, the whole thing is this cosmic mountain.

00:48:29 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:48:30 Speaker_03
Second part, what humans can go up to be in.

00:48:35 Speaker_05
Well, what's interesting about the second part is while we've been focusing on one person, This focuses now on a whole crew.

00:48:44 Speaker_03
That's right. Yeah, it's good. It's as if what the story of David and David's seed has been told in the Psalms to precede is now gets all focused in on not just that king, but like a crew.

00:48:58 Speaker_05
So you got the anointed king, kind of like the human king. who then also has his crew, they've ascended the mountain.

00:49:07 Speaker_03
He went into suffering, terrible suffering, cried out to God, who gave him Eden in the valley of death and the reward of Eden on the mountain.

00:49:17 Speaker_05
And then there's this hope here in Psalm 24 that the whole generation will ascend. That's right. But then it ends with Yahweh himself.

00:49:24 Speaker_03
Yeah, or coming down or coming in. Coming in. Yeah. So it's all the land is Yahweh's house. Who can ascend into the house on the hill of Yahweh? Well, this crew. And then when you have this crew ascending the hill of Yahweh, Yahweh meets them there.

00:49:42 Speaker_03
Yahweh comes in and meets them there. He's the King of all creation. So this whole collection, 15 to 24, is about the arrival of a King who has suffered,

00:49:54 Speaker_03
and been vindicated by God out of his suffering, holds a feast on Mount Zion that summons the righteous and the nations and even the dead.

00:50:06 Speaker_03
And then if that king has a righteous crew who enters in with him, they will ascend and then Yahweh will enter or descend or ascend and meet them in that place too.

00:50:21 Speaker_03
So whatever it means for Psalm 2 to say, I have appointed my king on Zion, my holy hill, Psalm 15 to 24 just adds a lot of color to that. Okay, I told you I'd show you something interesting. Yes. All the way back in Psalm 2.

00:51:10 Speaker_03
So what it means to read the Psalms is to learn how to read them as a mosaic. Unified. Read each one individually for what it's saying, but then plug it into its bigger context. And that's just what it means to read the Bible in general.

00:51:24 Speaker_03
So what's really fascinating is back where I told you back in Psalm 2 verse 9, the King bringing God's justice to the earth is described as breaking the nations with a rod of iron.

00:51:38 Speaker_05
Yeah, it's a battle image.

00:51:40 Speaker_03
And shattering them like clay pots. Yeah. So that verb, break them, it's the Hebrew verb ra'ah, raish ayin ayin. And it means to shatter. Okay. It's this synonym with another Semitic word, ratsatz, shatter. However, it is spelled with the same consonants

00:51:59 Speaker_03
as the word to shepherd. So the verb to be a shepherd or shepherd is also raah, spelled with the same letters. So it's a homonym. It's a homonym. And you remember shepherding also came up in the section of Psalms. Yahweh is my shepherd. Yeah.

00:52:17 Speaker_03
So what is really fascinating, this line from Psalm 2 is, quoted in the Revelation, the Apocalypse, the last book of the Christian Bible, multiple times.

00:52:32 Speaker_03
But in particular, where the resurrected Jesus is speaking to the seven churches at the beginning of the Revelation.

00:52:40 Speaker_03
And in chapter 2, when he's speaking to a group of his followers in this ancient city of Thyatira, he always talks about a challenge that they have set before them. And then he says, if you meet the challenge, he calls that overcoming.

00:52:54 Speaker_03
He says, the one who overcomes and keeps my deeds until the end, to that one I will give authority over the nations. And that one will shepherd them with a rod of iron as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces.

00:53:13 Speaker_03
as I too have received authority from my Father." So it's a long quote from Psalm chapter 2. But Jesus is saying that this is true of his crew. So in other words, he's taking the promise that God said to David,

00:53:30 Speaker_03
And he said, first of all, that's what I've received from my father. So that's me. I'm the King from the line of David. And if you're one of my disciples, I will give you what is mine, which is to rule over the nations.

00:53:44 Speaker_03
You're like, whoa, that's interesting. And then right here where he quotes from the phrase that in our English translation say, you will break them with a rod of iron. But remember, that word can be translated as shepherd. Because it's a homonym.

00:54:02 Speaker_03
Because it's a homonym. Here in Greek, you have to make a choice.

00:54:05 Speaker_05
Yeah, because Greek, it's not a homonym.

00:54:07 Speaker_03
Yeah, totally. So it's translated here in this Greek quotation in Jesus' mouth is, he will shepherd them with a rod of iron.

00:54:16 Speaker_05
Well, what translation are you looking at? Because the translation says rule. Okay.

00:54:19 Speaker_03
Yes.

00:54:20 Speaker_05
It says rule. Literally shepherd is the numeric standard.

00:54:23 Speaker_03
And then they have a footnote to say, well, they're making a little, they're interpreting the interpretation here. It's literally the word shepherd.

00:54:29 Speaker_05
Okay. What's the word? Poimano. And it means shepherd.

00:54:34 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:54:34 Speaker_05
Yeah. That was NASB you said? It was a numeric standard. Yeah.

00:54:38 Speaker_03
Yeah.

00:54:39 Speaker_05
Were they trying to smooth this out a little bit there?

00:54:40 Speaker_03
Yeah, they were. They're trying to metaphorically interpret shepherd in terms of ruling.

00:54:47 Speaker_05
Because they're like, hey, this is a quote from Psalm 2.

00:54:50 Speaker_03
Psalm 2 is about a king ruling with justice. and even violent retributive justice. But that verb. Hebrew, the verb can mean both. It could mean shepherd or it could mean break. Now the parallel line says you will shatter them like pots.

00:55:07 Speaker_05
Yeah, so that's a clue.

00:55:08 Speaker_03
Yeah. So the question is why, when Jesus, right, re-quotes this, and then that's represented in Greek, does break become shepherd? Which is a much more positive image. shepherding the nations with a rod. And that comes from Psalm 23.

00:55:28 Speaker_03
So in other words, this reflects Jesus and his early followers reading the Psalms in light of each other. And so the violent imagery of Psalm 2 gets reshaped with the language of Psalm 23. And it's not that they're playing fast and loose.

00:55:46 Speaker_03
It means that they're reading, however the king brings justice in Psalm 2, you have to read that in light of what the king goes through in Psalms 15 to 24.

00:55:56 Speaker_05
You could focus on God's justice. When he's going to come to unleash his blessing, there's going to be justice. There's going to be some shattering. Because things that should not exist are going to be shattered.

00:56:10 Speaker_03
Humans, individually and corporately represented by their governing figures, do things to each other that are wrong. God will not let injustice persist into the new creation.

00:56:23 Speaker_05
So you can focus on the shattering, but then when you look at Psalm 22 and it's the nations feasting, then we can focus on that. And so there's this blessing being unleashed.

00:56:35 Speaker_03
Focus on the one who suffered and gave up his life for those violent nations. and opened up the possibility of Eden feasts in the valley or on the cosmic mountain.

00:56:49 Speaker_05
It feels like with Revelation, it's kind of this, it's mixing them in a kind of a cool way because it's taking the Psalm 2, which feels like the justice moment, inserting the word shepherding, which is kind of bringing in the Psalm 23, Psalm 22, Psalm 23 perspective.

00:57:04 Speaker_05
And it makes you really wrestle with that tension.

00:57:06 Speaker_03
Yeah. However, This suffering seed from the line of David is going to bring justice. We have to connect that to the suffering for others done out of love and care and mercy. And we have to learn how to hold those two together.

00:57:25 Speaker_03
In other words, there are aspects of the Christian tradition that represent Jesus coming, you know, at the end of days. You know, with the sword in His hand, kicking butt. Riding the white horse.

00:57:36 Speaker_03
Yeah, and that's not how the last book of the Bible presents Jesus. He comes with a sword coming out of His mouth. It's a metaphor of His words that speak truth, they speak justice, but they also speak mercy and love.

00:57:51 Speaker_03
And he's bloody before the battle begins, and he is shepherding with his iron rod. In other words, they repurpose the violent imagery in light of the suffering love of the crucified Jesus. And holding those together is the key.

00:58:08 Speaker_05
Because the tension is that you could experience that day in terror, right? You could be shattered on that day.

00:58:15 Speaker_03
Yeah, that's right.

00:58:17 Speaker_05
But that isn't the purpose, is just to go and shatter. It's to make things right. That's right.

00:58:23 Speaker_05
And that the emphasis, it seems like what you're saying, when Jesus and his apostles and his followers start reflecting on this, the emphasis they start putting it on is of the way of reconciliation.

00:58:36 Speaker_03
That's right, actually, and that's how Psalm 2 ends. Therefore, kings, show discernment. These are the kings of the nations. Yeah, take warning, you rulers of the earth. Worship Yahweh with reverence. Rejoice with trembling.

00:58:52 Speaker_03
Isn't that a great combination? Pay homage to the sun, literally kiss the sun like he holds out his hand so that he doesn't become angry and you perish in your way.

00:59:04 Speaker_03
His anger could be kindled quick, but how good is life for those who take refuge in him?

00:59:12 Speaker_03
So it's a real choice, but even the intensity of that anger, John, you know, when Jesus re-quotes Psalm 2, he wants to modify that intense judgment anger in light of the suffering of the shepherd. The Psalm 23.

00:59:32 Speaker_03
Yeah, the merciful suffering love of the shepherd. And I think to be a Christian means to hold justice and love together. even when they feel like they're in tension with each other.

00:59:45 Speaker_03
So here we are again, the holy mountain has been both ascended and then its blessings released out to others because of the one who has ascended the hill of the Lord on behalf of others, whether they're qualified to go up there or not. So fascinating.

01:00:03 Speaker_03
Yeah. So there's a lot more in the Psalms. Just notice that this is exactly the main ideas connected to the mountain that we've seen in all the stories so far. And here it is in the book of Psalms.

01:00:18 Speaker_05
Thanks for listening to Bible Project Podcast. Next week, we'll continue the theme of the mountain in the scroll of Isaiah, focusing on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.

01:00:29 Speaker_03
It's described in the poetry of Isaiah as a new Eden, as a cosmic mountain through which God wants to spread divine rule and blessing to all of the nations.

01:00:40 Speaker_03
And there's a reality gap between the ideal Mount Zion and then the actual Mount Zion that Isaiah finds himself in.

01:00:49 Speaker_05
That's next week. Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit. We exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. And everything that we make is free because it's already been paid for by thousands of people just like you.

01:01:02 Speaker_05
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