Psalm 85:10

The psalm opens by remembering what God has already done. He brought back the captivity of Jacob, forgave his people’s iniquity and turned from his anger (Psalm 85:1–3). Then it prays for him to do it again, to turn his people, cause his anger to cease and revive them (Psalm 85:4–7). Verse 8 is the turning point. Prayer gives way to listening, and verses 9–13 tell what God’s answer will bring.

The return from captivity in verse 1 is most likely the return from Babylon, which places the psalm after the exile. The people were home again, but the land was poor, enemies pressed on them and many hearts had grown cold. They had yet to see the full restoration the prophets had promised in chapters such as Isaiah 40. They knew God had been faithful, and they still needed him to act. Psalm 85 is the prayer of the whole community, and the “I” of verse 8 speaks for them all.

“I will hear what God the LORD will speak” is a decision to wait and listen. The psalmist has made his request, and he is confident that God will answer it. He calls God by his covenant name, Yᵉhôvâh, printed “the LORD” in the KJV, the name of the eternal God who made promises to Israel and keeps them.

He knows what the answer will be before it comes: “he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints.” The word for peace, shâlôwm, names completeness, soundness, welfare and safety as well as peace, so the peace God speaks takes in a people’s whole life, with him and with one another. It is the peace of the priestly blessing, in which the LORD lifts up his face on his people and gives them peace (Numbers 6:26). God had told the exiles that his thoughts toward them were thoughts of peace (Jeremiah 29:11), and Isaiah says that the work of righteousness shall be peace (Isaiah 32:17), the same pairing this psalm reaches in verse 10. Those who receive it are named twice. “His people” are those he has bound to himself in covenant, and “his saints” are those set apart to him, one company seen from two sides.

God still speaks to his people. He speaks above all in his written Word, which is “quick, and powerful” (Hebrews 4:12), and by his Spirit, who guides believers into all truth (John 16:13). Prayer, the counsel of other believers and the events of life help us hear him, always in agreement with what he has said in Scripture. The psalmist’s “I will hear” is still where listening to God begins.

“Surely” opens verse 9 with certainty, and what follows is the first thing the psalmist hears. God’s salvation, yeshaʻ, is near. The word covers deliverance, safety, liberty and prosperity, every way in which God rescues his people and sets them right, and here it means the full restoration of the nation the psalm has asked for. The word for nigh, qârôwb, means near in place, time or kin. God’s salvation is close at hand, and it is close to a particular people. Isaiah gives the same promise in God’s own voice, that his salvation is near (Isaiah 46:13). For a people who had cried with the psalmist who asked why the LORD stands afar off (Psalm 10:1), this is God’s answer.

Those who receive it are “them that fear him”. The word yârêʼ describes one who fears, the reverent. This fear is the awe of a creature before a holy God, joined to trust and love, and it draws a person toward him and leads to obedience. Scripture calls the fear of the LORD the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10, Psalm 111:10) and a fountain of life (Proverbs 14:27). Verse 8 named these people “his people” and “his saints”. Verse 9 describes them by the posture of their hearts.

Verse 10 is the best-known line of the psalm. Four of God’s qualities are pictured as people. Two of them meet, and two of them kiss.

Mercy is cheçed, God’s kindness, loving-kindness and favour, the loyal love he shows his covenant people in delivering and forgiving them. Truth is ʼemeth, a word for stability, certainty and truth, and so for faithfulness and trustworthiness. Righteousness is tsedeq, rightness, righteousness and justice in conduct, judgment and speech. Peace is shâlôwm again, the peace promised in verse 8. The verb nâshaq means to kiss (its other senses are to touch and to be armed), and the kiss pictures affection and full agreement. The two lines are parallel, so the second repeats and strengthens the first.

God’s mercy always agrees with his faithfulness, and his righteousness is the ground on which true peace stands. His qualities work together in perfect harmony in everything he does. Another psalm puts the same qualities around his throne: “Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face” (Psalm 89:14).

Verse 11 carries the picture further. The qualities that met in verse 10 now fill earth and heaven. “Truth shall spring out of the earth” uses tsâmach, to sprout, spring up or grow, the word for a plant coming up out of the ground. “Righteousness shall look down from heaven” pictures God’s righteousness turned toward the earth with favour, ready to act. Truth rises from below and righteousness bends from above, and the two come together over the land.

The earth here can be the land of Israel itself, left desolate and now expected to flourish under God’s favour. That hope echoes the covenant blessings promised to an obedient people in Deuteronomy 28:1–14. Isaiah gives a similar picture of heaven and earth working together: “let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation” (Isaiah 45:8).

“Yea” opens verse 12 with the same certainty as the “Surely” of verse 9. The giver is Yᵉhôvâh, the faithful covenant God. The verb nâthan means to give, and it is used very widely, for putting, setting and making, and Strong’s also gives “yield”. What he gives is ṭôwb, good, a broad word that covers what is morally right, pleasant, beneficial and prosperous. “That which is good” takes in every blessing that comes from God’s hand, spiritual and material alike. James says the same of every gift: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

The second line names one such good: “our land shall yield her increase.” The word yᵉbûwl means the produce of the land, its crops and harvest. For a farming people, a full harvest was a plain sign of God’s covenant faithfulness, as his blessings promised rain on the land in its season (Deuteronomy 28:12, within the passage cited above). Barren fields were a sign of judgment, and the curses included the fruit of the land (Deuteronomy 28:18). So a land yielding its increase means the covenant blessings have returned, the hope the prophets also held out, as in the restored and blossoming land of Isaiah 35. Malachi gives a similar promise to a people who bring the whole tithe, that God will open the windows of heaven and pour out blessing (Malachi 3:10).

The psalm ends with God on the move. “Righteousness shall go before him” uses hâlak, to walk or go, and “before him” is built on pânîym, the face, front or presence. Righteousness, tsedeq, walks ahead of God like one who prepares his way, so everything he is about to do for his people will be just and faithful. The second line says what that righteousness does: it “shall set us in the way of his steps.” The verb sûwm means to put, place or set, and derek is a way, road or course of life. God’s righteousness places his people on the very path he walks. The KJV prints “us” in italics because the translators supplied it, and it rightly shows that the promise is for the whole people.

So God both leads and enables. David says the LORD leads him in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). Proverbs promises that he will direct the paths of those who trust him with all their heart (Proverbs 3:5–6), and through Isaiah he calls himself the God “which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go” (Isaiah 48:17). His people still walk the way he sets them in, by faith and obedience, as Moses told Israel to walk in all the ways the LORD commanded them (Deuteronomy 5:33). God sets the path and gives the strength, and his people walk in it.

Christ walked this path perfectly. He came to be baptized “to fulfil all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), and God made him to be sin for us “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). By his Spirit the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk after the Spirit (Romans 8:4), and Peter says that Christ left us an example, “that ye should follow his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). The “way of his steps” in this psalm is the way Christ has walked ahead of us.

The peace the psalmist waited to hear spoken has been spoken in Christ. Isaiah named him the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Paul says, “he is our peace”, the one who broke down the dividing wall and reconciled us to God through the cross (Ephesians 2:14–16). Jesus gave his own peace to his disciples, “not as the world giveth” (John 14:27), and that peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keeps the hearts and minds of those who are in him (Philippians 4:7).

He also brought salvation near. God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), and Christ himself lived in perfect reverence and obedience to the Father, “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). The warning against folly is answered in him too, for Christ is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30), and as we walk in the Spirit we are kept from fulfilling the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16).

These verses give God’s people a word to wait for and a way to walk in. The God who forgave his people once speaks peace to them again, brings his salvation near to those who fear him, and makes his glory live among them. In him mercy never cancels truth, and righteousness and peace embrace, which is why a holy God can forgive sinners and remain just. He gives what is good, from harvests to the gift of his Son, and his righteousness goes ahead of him to put his people on his own path. The psalmist’s first words are the place to begin: “I will hear what God the LORD will speak.”

The same psalm shows the shape of a life lived in that peace. God’s people hold truth together with mercy and seek peace that rests on righteousness, because that is who their God is, and they turn from the folly that once robbed them of his peace.