An Applied Promise
You made men ride over our heads; We went through fire and through water,
Yet You brought us out into a place of abundance. Psalm 66:12 NASB
Place of abundance – What do you really want out of life? Peace? Prosperity? Security? Companionship? Love? What will you really get? Oh, that one’s easy. Death. All the rest is sort of up in the air. Death is guaranteed, the lucky life isn’t. Still, the Psalmist tells us that after all those trials, those oppressive burdens, God will bring you out to a place of abundance.
Or maybe he doesn’t really say this.
Who do the pronouns refer to? Who is this verse really about? “Our,” “we,” and “us” are about Israel in the past. Israel experienced captivity. Israel knew oppressive burdens. Israel went through the fire (Sinai) and the water (twice). And then, eventually, arrived in the Promised Land. Maybe all of this poem is about historical events, not about promises for the future. Maybe we really can’t appropriate it for ourselves, as we are apt to do. Maybe what we have here is a recounting of Israel’s progression, not a promise that can be applied to our circumstances. Oh, we might be able to identify. We probably also felt at one time or another as if men were riding over our heads (like the oppressive nature of political incompetence) or that we’ve gone through fire and water. We might hope that God will bring us into a place of abundance. After all, everybody wants “peace in our time,” or so we’re told. But this is Israel’s poetry and it’s about Israel’s relationship with Israel’s God, so maybe this time we need to stop doing application sermons and just listen to the words as if we were the original audience, an audience of Israelites who knew very well what had happened in their particular past.
We get some clues from the verbs. The first two (“You made” and “We went”) are qatal perfect, that is, completed actions. But the sentence that begins, “Yet You brought us,” is different. That verb is a vav-consecutive + imperfect. You remember the odd construction of this verb, a verb tense that implies past, present, and future all at once. We should read this as “You brought, are bringing, will bring us.” Not exactly the panacea we thought. The Psalmist isn’t saying that God finished the program when the children of Israel crossed the Jordan. That was only a small part of the bigger plan that won’t be done—ever. There is a Promised Land, and at one point in the past Joshua led the people into it, but it wasn’t all of what was promised as the Promised Land. “The earth is the Lord’s” is the bigger picture, and this little verb, with its very funny time sense, tells us that there’s a lot more to come, and, in fact, there’s more happening right now that fits into “Yet You brought us.” Maybe there’s some legitimate application here after all.
But let’s be clear about this. The plan always involves Israel. There are no substitutes for that. Israel is the intercessor between God and the nations. The plan will eventually restore all creation. It’s in progress. But the covenant promise that makes this progress possible goes through Abraham and his offspring. We can join them. We don’t replace them. This verse is both historical and proleptic, and in both cases, it is very Hebraic.
Topical Index: place of abundance, vav-consecutive, history, future, Psalm 66:12
