Psalm 133

In my mind, this Psalm about unity falls a little short. At first glance, this beautiful picture of the blessing and goodness of a peaceful community seems almost beyond reproach, but upon careful inspection the final words of the Psalm provide a contrived conclusion that is (thankfully) inconsistent with the thrust of the verse.

The beginning phrase of Psalm 133, “how good” echoes the “it was good” of the Genesis creation narrative by utilizing the same Hebrew word.

Verse 1 points out that it is not the brotherhood itself, but living together in unity that is worthy of being called “tov.” Tov means good or appropriate. It means the brotherhood fulfills the purpose that it was designed for. For brotherhoods, it seems that unity is the point and the purpose of their creation.

The “good” of vs. 1 is repeated in vs. 2. This time the NRSV translates the word as “precious.” In the Hebrew you get this sense of continuity. You realize the song is going somewhere, that there is something happening.

The repetition doesn’t stop there though. The unification of brotherhood is likened to both oil and dew. It’s setting is on the top of heads and of mountains. The oil and the dew runs down from the top. Three times the same word, “yarad” is used. The oil and dew “goes down” and covers the head, the beard, the mountain.

The oil and the dew reaches out farther. The oil covering the adjoining collar. As it continues to flow, the dew from Hermon spans the 200 kilometers between it and Mt. Zion.

Psalm 133 is progressive. It starts with brothers, but by the end of it, the blessing has stretched and covered the nations of Israel. The repetition of terms not only emphasizes the terms themselves, but builds momentum. The language sends us shooting through the text and out the end into the future. The images grow too. First, the brotherhood image expands to the priesthood Aaron represents. Then it stretches again to Mt. Zion and covers the space of separation of the North and South kingdoms. Finally, what was a temporal and limited experience in verse 1, brothers who live together in unity, becomes metaphysical in verse 3 with the ending line of God’s blessing resulting in “life forevermore.”

The reader gets the sense that the trickle-down effect of unity is going somewhere.

The masculine imagery in the text is over the top. One can’t miss the manliness in this 3-verse Song of Ascent nor in its context. The beard, the brothers, and the name Aaron are surface level masculine references; though the NRSV and some other versions choose to translate brothers more neutrally as “kindred.” When one considers the setting of these Psalms in religious life and practice, there seems to be continuity between the overt male references and the implied ones. It could have been the men going up to the festivals together, the Levites, or Nehemiah’s cohort that used the Songs of Ascents originally.[1] In every instance the images conjured and recorded in corresponding Biblical narratives seem to include men as the primary, if not the only, gender represented.

While I’d like to say that I was keen on the overt masculinity of Psalm 133, it was my husband who pointed it out at first. On a male-only church retreat he was directed to memorize Psalm 133 as a founding vision for a kind of male Christian brotherhood that the leaders were seeking to create. Augustine himself attributed the development of monasteries to this Psalm.[2] Apparently, I’ve always missed the male-ness of it all.

There is a bit of shock on my part now thinking that this lovely picture of people living together in unity might not go so far as to include me.

However, perhaps the explicit maleness of it all combined with the main move of expanded perspective in the Psalm should give us more hope than pause when it comes to inclusion. Once I would have been considered an outsider for not being Jewish, but now through a weird dream where God expanded Peter’s vision for God’s kingdom, I am able to be included in those traveling toward Zion.[3]

I wonder if the movement outward in this Psalm continues even now. Perhaps the intention of the repetition is to create an expansion of how we think about living together. Perhaps life together has within it a seed of creation that continually expands.

Perhaps it is not just the unity, but the overarching process of unity flowing down that is called “good.” Maybe my first reading about the word “good” being applied to living together in unity was wrong; or at least fell short. Now it is clear that it is not the initial unity, but the nature of unity that is inherently inclusive, expansive, and flowing down to reach places that were once considered on the outside that is called “good.”

The symbols and the repetition in this Psalm have a literary impact on its meaning. What was once separate, the mountains, the collar, eternity, has now been included in this free fall of appropriate (good) unity. The expansive nature of unity is where God has ordained blessing, life forevermore.

I maintain that this Psalm about unity falls a little short. It stops with men. It stops with Israel. It stops in its setting in history. It stops with “good.”

However, this Psalm about unity goes on too. In the way this Psalm covers mountains not yet named it goes on. In the way this Psalm paints a picture of the nature of unity it goes on. In the way this Psalm opens a future of a new creation it goes on.

[1] Hossfeld, Frank-Lothar; Zenger, Erich. Psalms 3: A Commentary on Psalms 101-150. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011. Liebreich, Leon. “The Songs of Ascents and the Priestly Blessing,” Journal of Biblical Literature 74, (1955): 33-34. Goulder, Michael Douglas. The Psalms of the Return Book V. Psalms 107-150. Edinburgh: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 1998

[2] Berlin, Adele; Duran, Robert; Newsome, Carol, The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume IV, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996

[3] Acts 10:9-16