In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Last week we began to talk about Psalm 67. This week we go into the middle part of that psalm, and this part of the psalm has some of the most obscure wording that you’ll find anywhere in the Scriptures. So you might ask the question: Why is it that we have obscure passages in Scripture? St. Augustine says:

Some of the expressions are so obscure so as to shroud the meaning in the thickest darkness, and I do not doubt that all of this was divinely arranged for the purpose of doing pride by toil and by preventing a feeling of satiety in the intellect, which generally holds in small esteem what is discovered without difficulty.

So his point is that we have difficulties in Scripture because, number one, the fact that we have things that are difficult to understand and that require a great deal of labor, in some cases there might be passages that we never really fully understand individually. These things subdue our pride; they humble us, because we see that the things of God are higher than our thoughts. But also it prevents a feeling of satiety in the intellect, and that word is something that we don’t run across very often, but basically that’s the feeling that you have, or at least most of us have, on Thanksgiving Day when we’ve just finished the meal and we land ourselves on the couch and we feel like bloated jellyfish that have just washed ashore on the beach and we’re just lying there: “Ahh, there’s nothing else that I could possibly want.” Someone could bring by your favorite dish and you wouldn’t want it, because you think you’ve had everything you could possibly have.

And what St. Augustine is saying is that we should never get to that point with Scripture, because we always are wanting more. There’s things that we don’t understand, so we’re always driven to want more. And he says that we hold in small esteem that which we get without difficulty, and that is certainly something we see as true. I know I can remember listening to a missionary talk about this principle. I believe he had been a missionary in India or some third-world country where they had been in the practice of just handing out literature for free, and they found that people didn’t treat that material as being worth anything because they didn’t have to pay anything. So then they started charging them some small amount, which in American money didn’t even begin to cover the cost of the printing, but for the poor people that they were giving it to, it was enough that they placed a value on it. When they did that, people would buy those pieces of material and they would actually read them, because it had some value attached to it. So when we have to labor for the meaning of Scripture, it causes us to treasure that which we find in Scripture.

St. Augustine also says:

Accordingly, the Holy Spirit has, with admirable wisdom and care for our welfare, so arranged the Holy Scriptures as by the plainer passages to satisfy our hunger and by the more obscure to stimulate our appetite.

So in other words, there are some things in Scripture that are sort of the low-hanging fruit that are easy to understand. Everybody can understand, “So God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosever believeth in him shall not perish but shall have everlasting life.” That’s a truth that everyone can grasp, even someone who’s not very familiar with Scripture. And St. Augustine points out that we really have to reach a point where we have covered the easy and obvious things of Scripture before we’re in a position to begin to understand the deeper things, but these deeper things are there to drive us deeper, to make us want to learn more and to never reach that point where we think we know it all so we don’t need to even bother with the Scriptures.

O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people,
When thou didst traverse the wilderness,
The earth was shaken
And the heavens dropped dew
At the presence of the God of Sinai,
At the presence of the God of Israel.

There are several different layers of meaning here. One is the obvious meaning. This is hearkening back to the people of Israel going through the wilderness after they were delivered from slavery and heading to the land of promise. But St. Augustine and also Cassiodorus speak of Christ crossing the wilderness when he came to the Gentiles, by reaching out to the Gentiles who were in sort of a spiritual wilderness. He crossed the wilderness.

But also Christ went before us, in his death on the cross, and after the resurrection and the ascension; the dew that is referred to is the descent of the Holy Spirit. And to make clear to the Jews that this was the same God as the Old Testament, he references the God of Sinai.

A rain freely given shalt thou ordain, O God, for thine inheritance. Yeah, it became weak, but thou shalt restore it.

The giving of the Law showed the people of Israel their sin and their guilt, but they were unable to fulfill the Law apart from the grace of God, which on the feast of Pentecost was freely given as an abundance of rain, and it gave new life and strength to his people.

Thy living creatures shall dwell therein; thou hast prepared it in thy goodness for the poor man, O God.

The imagery that’s referenced here is that of a desert that’s made to bloom, and now animals are made to dwell in there, and there is an abundance of fruit in the land that was once a desert. And the Fathers say that the living creatures that are made to dwell in this desert are the Gentiles, and the Gentiles were poor in spiritual knowledge, and therefore it was “for the poor man, O God.”

The Lord shall give speech with great power to them that bring good tidings.

Basically, what it’s talking about is the strength and the power that God gives to those that proclaim the good tidings, beginning with the apostles, but even down to this present day.

He that is the king of hosts of his beloved one shall divide the spoils for the beauty of his house.

Christ said in the gospels, “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.” Christ has bound the devil, and he has taken spoils which are those who were taken as plunder from the devil, that is, the lost, the wicked, and sinners, who were brought into the Church to adorn his wedding feast with guests.

If ye sleep among the lots, ye shall have the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her pinions of sparkling gold.

The word “lots” in Scripture is very often used for the inheritance of the Jewish people, that is referenced even in the New Testament as a lot and a portion that referred to the land that each person was given when they came into the promised land. So the word in Greek is often used in reference to inheritance. And how do we receive an inheritance? We receive an inheritance through a testament or a will. So the Fathers, in this case Blessed Theodoret, St. Augustine, and Cassiodorus—the three commentaries that I had at hand, that I was able to consult on this—they all said the same thing, and this is certainly not the most obvious meaning that you would derive from it, but he says that the lots that we sleep among are the Old and the New Testament. And by sleeping in it, it means that we rest in the teachings of the Scriptures.

This is a theme that you find throughout the Fathers. And just as an aside I sometimes hear people that say, “Well, I read the Fathers; I don’t read the Scriptures. Well, in the Orthodox Church we have the Tradition of the Church; we don’t worry so much about the Scriptures.” But the fact is that you can’t begin to understand the Fathers if you don’t understand the Scriptures, because the Fathers are constantly referencing the Scriptures, even when they’re talking about some other subject and not commenting directly on the Scriptures. They make so many references to the Scriptures that if you don’t… if you’re not familiar with what they’re referring to, you won’t have a clue as to what they’re talking about.

“The wings of a dove covered with silver” is the Church that will speedily bear us up to our heavenly homeland if we rest in God’s word. The Church has the innocence of a dove, and her teachings shine as bright as silver. And at the resurrection, the Church shall be adorned in gold, for we’re told in Psalm 44, “At thy right hand stood the queen, arrayed in a vesture of inwoven gold, adorned in varied colors.”

When he that is in the heaven ordaineth kings over her, they shall be made snow-white in Selmon.

The kings that are here referenced are those that are ordained over the Church as apostles, or their successors, the bishops. The word “Selmon” or “Zalmon” means in Hebrew “shadow,” so as the Archangel Gabriel said to the Virgin Mary, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” So the Fathers say what this is saying is that the apostles and their successors are given power to overcome sin. And “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” So that’s referring to the cleansing that we receive through the apostles and their successors; we have the power to remit sins or to not remit sins.

The mountain of God is a butter mountain, a curdled mountain, a butter mountain.

This is one where I often hear people saying, “What in the world is a butter mountain?” Well, keep in mind that when the Jews were talking about the promised land, how did they refer to it? They referred to it as a land of milk and honey. In our day, when we have so much food, we don’t think about what it’s like for people who have a very sparse diet, but for people who mostly lived on vegetables, fat in their diet was something that was very desirable, because if you have a little bit of fat in your beans or with your corn or your wheat or whatever, it satisfies you and you can go much longer before you feel hungry again. So fat and richness are images that are thought of as good, whereas we think of fat: “Oh, we want to cut fat out of our diet.” That wasn’t the way people in the Old Testament thought about it.

The word that’s translated as “butter mountain” or “butter” could be translated as “rich”; it could also be translated as “fat” or you could say a “fertile mountain.” But this refers to the richness of God’s grace. And the mountain that’s referred to is the mountain of God, mountain of Zion, which in the Old Testament, of course, is the place of the temple, but is also the image of the Church. Why does it refer to a curdled mountain? Well, infants who can’t eat solid food were given curdled milk to give them something a little bit more solid to eat.

The mountain in question, as I said, is the mountain of Zion or Jerusalem. It’s also used in reference to the Virgin Mary. In the canon for the Akathist, the hymn to the Theotokos, we read this refrain:

With voices of song and faith, we cry aloud to thee, who art worthy of all praise: Rejoice, butter mountain, mountain curdled by the Spirit!

Of course, during Pascha, we hear the words:

Shine, shine, O New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee. Dance now, and be glad, O Zion, and do exult, O pure Theotokos, at the arising of him whom thou didst bear!

The Virgin Mary is the mother of the Church, and she’s assembled the Church.

Why suppose ye that there be other curdled mountains? This is the mountain wherein God is pleased to dwell. Yeah, for the Lord will dwell therein to the end.

There are many that make claims that they are the true religion, or their group is the true Church. There are many counterfeits, but there is no place like the Church. The Church is where we find truth, where we find salvation, where we find the real teachings that Christ handed down to his Church that were given to us so that we might be saved. It’s only in that mountain that you find his grace and are truly satisfied.

The chariot host of God is ten thousandfold; yea, thousands of them that abound in number. The Lord is among them at Sinai, in his holy place.

When you think of a chariot host that’s “ten thousandfold, yea, thousands of them,” that’s a lot of chariots. In ancient warfare, to have even maybe a dozen chariots could make the difference in a battle, but if you had tens of thousands of chariots, that would just be such an overwhelming force that there be no army in the world that would have been able to withstand.

Unlike in the Old Testament, where the grace of God was poured out only on the few, with the New Testament there’s a great multitude of the saints. In addition to those hosts that we can see, we have the heavenly hosts of the armies of the angels and the saints. This brings to mind a passage that comes from 2 Kings (or 4 Kings in the Orthodox Study Bible), chapter 6, but this is where Elisha, who had been letting the king of Israel what the plans of the king of Syria were, and so the king of Syria kept being foiled at every turn, and finally he was told, “Well, they have this Prophet Elisha, and he tells… Every whisper that you have in your palace is passed on to the king of Israel.” So the king of Syria sent his army to go and capture Elisha so that he could put an end to this.

One morning, his servant woke up and it says that he went out and there was an army surrounding the city with horses and chariots, and his servant said to him, “Alas, my master, what shall we do?” And he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And you can imagine the servant thinking, “This guy is crazy. There’s more with us than with them? There’s just the people in this little town here.” And Elisha prayed and said, “Lord, I pray: Open his eyes that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and behold: the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

This is the heavenly reality that most of us don’t get to see, but it’s the truth, that we’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses; we’re surrounded by angels, there to defend us. And if we have an awareness of that, we should draw strength and courage.

Thou hast ascended on high. Thou leddest captivity captive. Thou didst receive gifts among men (yea, for they were disobedient), that thou mightest dwell there.

St. Paul commented on this verse in Ephesians 4, and he says:

Now this “he ascended,” what does it mean but that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

So what’s being referred to here is that it’s talking about Christ’s ascension, but then it’s saying he first descended into the lowest parts of the earth, and he led those that were held captive free. Also, in the psalm it says that Christ receives gifts, whereas when St. Paul quotes this psalm, he actually says that Christ gives gifts to men.

Blessed Theodoret says that both things happen. He receives the faith of those who believe in him, and he gives them spiritual gifts. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, the disobedient, and poured forth his grace upon us, that he might come and dwell in us. As Christ said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with me.” Amen.