NOTES for Psa 110

The psalmist glorifies God for what belongs to His very essence and is revealed in His works: beauty, justice (righteousness), mercy and generosity, faithfulness, truth, and judgment. In a certain sense, all these are names of God. And when Jesus teaches all of us how to address God and how to pray, He first reveals to us another name — Abba, a very tender form of the word "Father." And He continues: "Hallowed be Thy name!"

The works of the Lord stand firm for ever and ever; nothing can compare with them. But if so, why does He allow His people to take possession of the inheritance of the nations? Of course, this primarily means the Promised Land, won back from the pagans, but is that all? Might the lands of Palestine also be an image of another, spiritual inheritance?

With such an interpretation, it is easy to succumb to the temptation of regarding the many manifestations of pagan customs as an inheritance to be assimilated. We know that many Israelites reasoned in precisely this way, and the Bible repeatedly shows where this led.

Yet the land was promised to Abraham’s descendants not only long before Joshua’s wars, but even before the pagan peoples whom Joshua drove out had established themselves there. The land they possessed was not their own. And if the question is whether we need to assimilate genuinely valuable achievements of culture and technology that took shape in a pagan environment, it is worth considering: did paganism really produce them? Were they not drawn from another source, like lands that were not intended for the pagans?