Rain on Mown Grass

Rain on Mown Grass May 9, 2017

Psalm 72 is one of the most majestic, calmly triumphant Psalms in the Psalter. Attributed to Solomon, or written for Solomon, it is redolent of the glories of his reign. This king has received judgments from the God of Israel, and that enables him to pass judgment. Gifts from God to the king (v. 1) flow from the king to his people. The king’s name endures, but only because it is incorporated into the name of Yahweh, whose name is blessed forever. He establishes justice only because he has first received justice. Under his reign, justice comes from the mountain of Yahweh’s house, from the mountain of the king’s palace, from the mountaintop that is the king himself, and flows down as peace to the land below.

The king’s justice has particular benefits for the needy and poor. He passes judgment in their favor, rescuing them from those who would exploit their vulnerability and weakness. He saves (yasha) the needy, and, simultaneously, crushes the oppressor. Like Yahweh crushing the head of Rahab, like Yahweh saving Israel from Egypt, so the king has compassion on the poor. This is a liturgical celebration of that preferential option for the poor, a Psalm that makes care of the poor, vulnerable, weak, destitute, and isolated the standard of justice for society. If the least are not cared for, if you need money to get a fair hearing in a court, if the poor have no opportunity to flourish, then the society is not just.

Beyond the borders of Israel, the king commands nomads. Even his enemies pay homage. As CJ Labuschagne has demonstrated at length, the Psalms are intricately patterned poems, often using numerology to highlight themes and to lend texture. In the 17 verses of Psalm 72 (apart from the concluding doxology), there are 137 words. The central word is “Sheba,” no doubt an allusion to the Queen Sheba who visited Solomon to see the greatness of his glory.

On either side of “Sheba” are 68 words, 4 x 17. 17 is the numerical value of the word for kabod, “glory,” often used as a substitute for “Yahweh,” and the number 4 often refers to the universal extent of something—four corners of the earth, four winds of heaven. Sheba’s name—the Queen who pays homage to Solomon and acknowledges Yahweh’s love for Israel—is set in the midst of numerical testimonies to the universal glory of Yahweh’s reign. Sheba is not alone. She comes with the kings of Tarshish and the islands, with the kings of Seba—four groups of rulers, another numerical hint that king Solomon shares in or mediates global reach of Yahweh’s rule. 

Enemies lick the dust, like the serpent judged by Yahweh in the garden (cf. Micah 7:17). Other rulers pay homage to the king of Israel in the way they would pay homage to the Lord himself. They prostrate themselves before him. They bring “tribute” offerings—minchah, the word translated as “grain offering.” They “bring near” presents; the verb is qarab, used for the liturgical approach of Israel and the qorban gifts that Israel brings. Homage to Yahweh’s king is a form of homage to Yahweh himself.

Nature itself participates in the justice and good order the king establishes. While he reigns, there will be an abundance of grain, gigantic as cedars of Lebanon (v. 16). The city flourishes like a green field; the city becomes a garden, fresh as Eden (v. 17).

It’s all summed up by the lovely phrase of verse 6: The king is like rain upon the mowing, like showers that water the earth. Rain refreshes. Rain cleanses. Rain glorifies and brightens. Rain on the mowing is a promise of a new harvest beyond today’s harvest. Earth depends on showers from heaven to produce anything. Without showers, there is no abundance of grain, no fruit trees like cedars of Lebanon, no green cities, no life.

The king has been given justice, and when he does justice, the land becomes fruitful. No enemies plunder and devastate the land. The rich can’t seize and exploit the poor, so everyone has enough. Good rule is as necessary to the flourishing of the land as rain is to the growth of plants and the cycle of life. Without rain, the earth produces nothing, and if the earth produces nothing everything dies. Without just rule, the garden withers to a wasteland.

We often think of power as the ability to bend others to our will, or as the force to curb or suppress bad behavior. Those are legitimate exercises of power, but power is more fundamentally empowerment. We exercise power by granting power to flourish. As parents, as employers, as church leaders, as political rulers, in whatever sphere we exercise power, we aim to be as rain on mown grass, as showers that water the earth.

Psalm 72 feels all the more majestic and calmly triumphant because of what precedes it. The Psalter is divided into five books, a fivefold book of song that matches the fivefold book of Torah. Psalm 72 comes at the end of Book 2, which begins with Psalm 42 (42/43). As James Jordan has noted, Book 2 begins with 8 Psalms by Levites (7 by sons of Korah, one by Asaph), followed by 21 Psalms by David. David’s Psalms begin with Psalm 51, Miserere, David’s Psalm of lament after his sin with Bath-Sheba. The Psalms of kingship begin in abject repentance and sorrow.

The Psalms that follow are largely Psalms of distress and battle. David prays when Doeg the Edomite turns him in to Saul and when the Ziphite betray David. David prays when the Philistines take him captive in Gath, and when he is on the run from Saul. Again and again, he is at the point of death. He is threatened by mighty men with tongues as sharp as razors (52:2). Violent men seek his life (54:3). His enemies pursue him, and leave his heart anguished by “terrors of death” and his body by “fear and trembling” (55:1-5). “My soul is among lions,” with teeth like spears and arrows (57:4). He is threatened by serpents and cobras, spawn of Satan (58:3-5). He considers that God has rejected him and broken him, and remains angry with him (60:1). He is drowning and the Lord has to come to rescue him from the deep mire and the flood waters (69:1-4).

There are moments of triumph, especially as we get to the end of the sequence. David calls on the earth to shout joyfully to God and to see the awesome works He has done (66:1, 5). He sings battle hymns: “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered, and let those who hate him flee before him” (68:1, the great Huguenot battle Psalm). But even at his most triumphant, David doesn’t describe his situation as Psalm 72 describes Solomon. David is never at peace, never without enemies threatening, never at rest. David is beleaguered; David’s son, though, rules in peace. David’s son comes into Sabbath rest.

That’s the sequence of the royal Psalms of Book 2—from repentance through the anguish of opposition and suffering to the triumphant conclusion of Solomon’s reign. But it would be a mistake to think that Psalm 72 alone is a true Psalm of kingship. Rather, the whole sequence from suffering to Sabbath, through humiliation to exaltation, is a royal sequence. 

In the Psalter, suffering and Sabbath are distributed to two separate kings—David and Solomon. But the sequence hints at a king who will embrace the both poles of royalty, who will suffer like David and reign like Solomon. And once we catch that Messianic note, we can see that Psalm 72 stretches beyond Solomon to another, better king. Solomon’s reign was glorious, and he did justice. But he also oppressed his own people, as Jeroboam charged. He received tribute from distant kings, but the Lord also raised up rivals to discipline him for his idolatry. The Psalm is about Solomon, but it reaches beyond Solomon to a future king, another son of David, whose reign will be a reign of unalloyed justice, who will bring peace, who will save the poor and needy, who will receive tribute from conquered kings, who will make the earth flourish like Eden.

Psalm 72 as a “celebration” of just rule. It is also a prayer. English translations differ on how they render the verbs of the opening verses. Are they futures (“he will judge,” “the mountains will bring peace,” “he will vindicate the afflicted”) or wishes and requests? Older versions use the future, but more recent ones take the whole Psalm as a prayer for a king, for Solomon, and, given Solomon’s failures, a prayer for another Solomon, an idealized son of David. And so the Psalm becomes not only a Messianic Psalm but a Messianic prayer, chanted century after century, until finally answered by the incarnation of the Son of God, the rain that comes from heaven to water the earth.

Messianic Psalms are still songs of the church. We await the full justice of the eschatological reign of Jesus, the greater Solomon. And in the meantime, the Psalm is a prayer for good rule. Jesus fulfills this Psalm, but He himself rules through human beings who carry out His justice. Psalm 72 is  a prayer that He reign in such a way that the kings of the earth bring him tribute and prostrate themselves before him. It’s a prayer that kings reign so as to deliver the needy in their cry and crush the oppressor. It’s a prayer for just society.

Verse 12 introduces a twist. Verses 12-15 seem to simply repeat what was said at the beginning of the Psalm. Why say it again? The substance is the same. Both speak of the needy, afflicted, and poor. Both speak of deliverance and salvation. The two sections are distinguished by a grammatical difference. The first section is a prayer that the Lord would give the king just judgment to deliver the afflicted and crush the oppressor. Verse 12 begins with “for,” or “because.” The Psalmist has just prayed that the Lord would give the king a long reign, make him like rain on mown grass, bring other kings to pay tribute to him. And he asks that the Lord would bless the king in this way because he delivers the needy, because he has compassion, because he rescues from oppression and violence, because the blood of the poor is precious in his sight. A long, prosperous, glorious reign comes with a condition: He must use his power to help the needy. The form of the prayer is: May he reign while the sun endures because he has compassion on the needy.

And, conversely, if not, then not. If he doesn’t use his power to crush the violent and save the victims, if he instead uses his power to extract from and squeeze the weak to enrich himself or his powerful cronies, then this prayer is not for him. He has become a predator, who drinks the blood of the weak considering it precious. Then other Psalms come into play: “O God, shatter their teeth in their mouth; break out the fangs of the young lions, Yahweh. Let them flow away like water that runs off. . . . like a snail which melts as it goes along, like the miscarriages of a woman which never see the sun” (Psalm 58:6-9). Then in a different sense we pray that God would “give judgment” to the king.


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