Psalm 84: pilgrimage song
This is one of those psalms where the NJB footnotes prove very useful. From them, we are able to see that it is a pilgrimage song used by those on the way to Jerusalem. Even more, from the reference to “early rain” in verse 6, we can ascertain that it was likely used during the Feast of Shelters.
The psalm expresses the writer’s desire to be close to God. The terms used are God’s courts, His altars, His House, Zion, His threshold. Earthly counterparts are contrasted with these Godly places in verse 10: “Better one day in your courts than a thousand at my own devices, to stand on the threshold of God’s house than to live in the tents of the wicked.” Notice how the author doesn’t make apples to apples comparisons here. He refers to God’s threshold, which is the entrance to the house but not inside the house, while he talks about living “in the tents of the wicked”. This is to make the contrast even more evident, which is the same reason for the “one day” to “thousand” days comparison as well.
I chuckled at verse 11 when I read it: “Yahweh refuses nothing good to those whose life is blameless.” After all, whose life is blameless but Christ’s? But one has to look at this in the historical context. The Feast of Shelters occurs five days after Yom Kippur, which is the most important Jewish holiday of the year. It is the Day of Atonement, when one obtains forgiveness for all of the sins from the past year. Therefore, it stands to reason that a person going to the Feast of Shelters would rejoice at having obtained reconciliation, and thus, a blameless life, in the eyes of God, after Yom Kippur. They could refer to their lives as “blameless”, more or less, if they hadn’t done anything bad in the few days between the two holidays.
By the same token, our lives can be blameless as well. You see, a Jew could obtain forgiveness from sins by making a sacrifice and confessing their sins over the head of that animal or bird. Their record after that reconciliation with God would be blameless. We too, can confess our sins and claim the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, thus reconciliating ourselves with God and obtaining forgiveness for our sins. Christ’s sacrifice rendered individual animal sacrifices unnecessary, since He was the sacrificial Lamb that the Old Testament prophesied.
While we do not have a Feast of Shelters, we can sing this psalm, if we so desire, on our way to church, knowing that we have obtained forgiveness through Jesus Christ and our prayers, encouraged by the hope of the new life that awaits us after this one, a life of eternity spent with God, in His courts.
