Scripture Daily

Context No. 2089 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 68:1-16: in context

1Let God arise! Let his enemies be scattered! Let them who hate him also flee before him. 2As smoke is driven away, so drive them away. As wax melts before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. 3But let the righteous be glad. Let them rejoice before God. Yes, let them rejoice with gladness. 4Sing to God! Sing praises to his name! Extol him who rides on the clouds: to the LORD, his name! Rejoice before him! 5A father of the fatherless, and a defender of the widows, is God in his holy habitation. 6God sets the lonely in families. He brings out the prisoners with singing, but the rebellious dwell in a sun-scorched land. 7God, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness... Selah. 8The earth trembled. The sky also poured down rain at the presence of the God of Sinai— at the presence of God, the God of Israel. 9You, God, sent a plentiful rain. You confirmed your inheritance when it was weary. 10Your congregation lived therein. You, God, prepared your goodness for the poor. 11The Lord announced the word. The ones who proclaim it are a great company. 12“Kings of armies flee! They flee!” She who waits at home divides the plunder, 13while you sleep among the camp fires, the wings of a dove sheathed with silver, her feathers with shining gold. 14When the Almighty scattered kings in her, it snowed on Zalmon. 15The mountains of Bashan are majestic mountains. The mountains of Bashan are rugged. 16Why do you look in envy, you rugged mountains, at the mountain where God chooses to reign? Yes, the LORD will dwell there forever.

This psalm of God's triumphant march exalts him as the champion of his people, before whom his enemies scatter like smoke. But amid the images of power comes a tender picture of the God who cares for the isolated and alone. A father of the fatherless, and a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families; he brings out the prisoners with singing. The God who scatters his enemies stoops to gather the lonely, giving belonging to those who have none, setting the solitary into families.

The line to hold is this: God sets the lonely in families. Amid the psalm's images of God's triumph and power, this is a picture of surpassing tenderness. God attends not only to nations and armies but to the individual who is alone, isolated, without belonging. And what he does for such a one is to set them in a family, to give the solitary a place to belong, to end the isolation of the lonely by bringing them into a family. The God who marches in triumph stoops to gather the lonely and give them a home. There is comfort here for all who know loneliness and isolation. To be lonely, without belonging, cut off, is a particular kind of suffering, and it can feel that no one attends to it, that we are alone in our aloneness. This psalm says that God attends to exactly this: that he sets the lonely in families, that his care reaches the isolated and gives them belonging. God does not overlook the solitary; he gathers them, sets them in families, ends their isolation. Even when human belonging fails us, God provides: though my father and mother forsake me, the psalmist says elsewhere, the LORD will take me up. And God's provision of family for the lonely is not only a promise for the age to come but a present reality, for he sets his people in a family now, the household of faith. You are members of the household of God, Paul says to those who were once strangers. The church is meant to be exactly this, the family in which God sets the lonely, where the isolated find belonging, where those without earthly family are gathered into the family of God. This both comforts and calls. It comforts the lonely: God attends to your isolation and sets the lonely in families; you are not overlooked in your aloneness. And it calls the rest of us: for if God sets the lonely in families, then his people are to be a family that welcomes the isolated, gathering in the lonely as God gathers them, giving belonging to those who have none. God sets the lonely in families; and that is both his tender promise to the isolated and his call to his people to be the family in which the lonely find their home.

When I know loneliness and isolation, feeling cut off and without belonging as though no one attends to my aloneness, can I take comfort that God sets the lonely in families, attending to exactly this suffering and gathering the solitary into belonging, and can this same truth call me, where I am not the lonely one, to help make God's people the family in which the isolated find their home?

Sources