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Lord, who will sojourn in Your tent, who will dwell on Your holy mountain? Psalm 15:1 Robert Alter
Sojourn/ dwell – Who do you suppose the psalmist has in mind? You have all the clues you need: a tent, a mountain, a temporary encampment, a permanent residence. Who else could it be but Moses? The tent of meeting, the stay on Sinai, lead us to the story of Moses. He goes up the mountain for forty days. He descends and occupies the Tent of Meeting exclusively for the rest of the wilderness journey. But the closer we look at this allusion, the more we must wonder how it can apply. The psalmist is about to give us a description of the character of a person who can sojourn in God’s tent, who can inhabit God’s holy mountain, and the description raises some questions.
First, however, we should pay closer attention of the verbs of location: gûr and šākan. You will recognize the first verb from its derivative gēr, the stranger in the midst. “The root means to live among people who are not blood relatives; thus, rather than enjoying native civil rights, the gēr was dependent on the hospitality that played an important role in the ancient near east. When the people of Israel lived with their neighbors they were usually treated as protected citizens; foreigners in Israel were largely regarded as proselytes.”[1] The designation is applied to Israel in Egypt; those who were removed from their true homeland now living as foreigners in another Kingdom. The point is that the tent of the Lord is also a temporary location. God is in the midst as an exile because He and His people are not yet in the Land, but even under these circumstances, it is possible to come close to Him. Someone will occupy the temporary habitat with the Lord, just as Moses did. Who will that be?
The poetic parallelism moves us forward. Now the focus is on a permanent location, one where the occupants dwell. Here the verb is šākan. You might also recognize this verb from its derivative, miškān, the Tabernacle. Ultimately the word elicits images of the Temple. Another derivative is šākēn which means “neighbor.” We have transitioned from strangers in a strange land to neighbors in a land of our own. We have moved from the tent to the Temple. The question raised by this parallelism is simple: Is it the same person who will be with God in both locations? The answer comes from an investigation of the behavior of such a person. The background to the answer comes from the association of the Tabernacle with the Law. Victor Hamilton writes:
What is the relation between Sinai and the tabernacle? Moses receives the tablets from God on the mountain, the top of which is completely enfolded by a cloud and the glory of God. There he also receives instructions in building the tabernacle. After its completion the glory of God, once on Sinai, now fills the tabernacle. What happened at Sinai is continued in the tabernacle. There is a continuity between God’s former revelation of his will and his continual revelation in the tabernacle.[2]
Is the Tent of Meeting really transitory? Any more so than the moveable Tabernacle? Is the Temple permanent? It seems that all these physical locations are nothing more than useful accommodations at various times. What do they accommodate? A particular kind of permanence, that is, the permanence of the Torah, something which will not pass away until heaven and earth pass away. God’s permanent location among men is not a place. It’s a code.
Now the question becomes, “What are the characteristics of someone whose life reveals the code?”
Topical Index: gûr, sojourn, stranger, šākan, dwell, neighbor, Tabernacle, Psalm 15:1
[1] Stigers, H. G. (1999). 330 גּוּר. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 155). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 2387 שָׁכַן. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 926). Chicago: Moody Press.
