Psalm 99 (Revised Standard Version)
1 The LORD is King;
let the people tremble; *
he is enthroned upon the cherubim;
let the earth shake.
2 The LORD is great in Zion; *
he is high above all peoples.
3 Let them confess his Name, which is great and awesome; *
he is the Holy One.
4 "O mighty King, lover of justice,
you have established equity; *
you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob."
5 Proclaim the greatness of the LORD our God
and fall down before his footstool; *
he is the Holy One.
6 Moses and Aaron among his priests,
and Samuel among those who call upon his Name, *
they called upon the LORD, and he answered them.
7 He spoke to them out of the pillar of cloud; *
they kept his testimonies and the decree that he gave them.
8 O LORD our God, you answered them indeed; *
you were a God who forgave them,
yet punished them for their evil deeds.
9 Proclaim the greatness of the LORD our God
and worship him upon his holy hill; *
for the LORD our God is the Holy One.
Psalm 99
Our Holy Counselor
Should we be afraid of God? Anthropologists tell us that, in the history of religions, the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’ Humanity has always felt a shiver of awe, even dread, in the presence of what the great historian of religion, Rudolph Otto, called the numinous – the divine reality beyond our knowledge. Over time, as societies evolved from tribal into monarchal structures, the fear and trembling of the human before the divine in the heavens was increasingly symbolized by the abject obedience of subjects to their kings on earth. The parallel functions of “God” and “King” became almost inseparable. Many readers of the Bible simply take it for granted that people of faith should serve and obey their God as subjects in other times served and obeyed their kings. Love, and the grace that motivates the human heart to give of itself freely for the beloved, can seem to have no real role in such a divine-human relationship patterned on monarchy.
By the time the Psalms were composed, the religion of ancient Israel was already part of a structure that was strictly patriarchal and monarchal. The kingly imagery was carried, as if inevitably, into Christianity, especially when Christian emperors ruled vast parts of the known world. The composers of Church liturgies thought it entirely natural to refer to Christ as King, and to use “coronation psalms” – like Psalm 99 – as models of Christian worship.
What might “praise” and “worship” become, in a world of faith that is not founded entirely on the dynamics of unequal power that kingship implies? Jesus of Nazareth, and other Jewish teachers of his time, explored this question deeply. Knowing both Hebrew and Aramaic, Jesus would have been aware that the oldest meaning of melekh – the word we translate “king” – is “counselor.” We should wonder if that is the sense he had in mind, when he said to Pilate: “You call me ‘king.’ But the reason I was born … was to bear witness to the truth.” (John 18:37). Certainly, the essence of discipleship with Jesus is the “counsel of truth” - a far cry from the fearful servitude that royals force upon their subjects.
Rendering the psalms without recourse to the word “king” might seem impossible. But considering the root of melekh in “counsel” and remembering that the Holy Name (YHWH) does not in fact mean “LORD” (although that is the accepted ‘stand-in’) – we might read the opening of Psalm 99 in an entirely different way:
With the coming of our Holy Counselor,
all human divisions are shaken;
and the whole world now depends
on where this restless grace will settle!
(Rendered from the Hebrew by Henry Ralph Carse)