Psalm 99

This morning's lectionary readings threw me head long into some of my favorite Psalms. I have always been fascinated with the poetry of the "Kingly Psalms," the ones that begin with God's reign. Psalm 97 and 99 are just such Psalms, and 99 seems to be a beautiful retelling of God's faithfulness to his people. I was struck initially by verse 4, "The King in his might loves justice. You have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob." God executed justice and righteousness in Jacob, what a feat. Josh and I have just finished Genesis 49, where Jacob prophesies concerning his sons, and then finally dies. Until recently, I have missed the themes of justice, righteousness and grace in the life of Jacob. I have always been taught and had the overall impression that Jacob was a swindler, completely unconcerned with justice. This it seems is a bad, thin reading of these stories. Jacob certainly was crafty (which in OT language is often synonomous with wisdom), but his years of working and being taken advantage of, of being tricked out of a precious son left Jacob, it seems to me, a longing for justice. Justice which God provided, when at the end of his life his boy is returned and he can give blessings and curses to his own sons. What is particularly revealing in Psalm 99 though, is that we are given Jacob as a paradigm for God's justice and righteousness. This paradigm is filled in further by verse 8, "O Lord our God, you answered them [Moses, Aaron, and Samuel included]: you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings." Perhaps we mis-state the radical difference between God's grace and his justice. Perhaps all of God's justice is grace, and perhaps we ought not be more concerned with either the forgiveness or the avenging. We must bow to our own inability to speak truthfully of God's mystery, and be thankful that He is holy.