Psalm 133 — Unity of Brothers

FRANK: You cannot make the unity Psalm 133 is talking about. Not by effort, not by good intentions, not by finally getting everyone in the room to agree. It falls on you, or it doesn't come at all. Doesn't that turn everything the church usually says about unity upside down?

LINDA: Completely. Most of the time when the church talks about unity it's basically a to-do list. Try harder, be nicer, forgive faster. And here you are on day one saying, don't bother?

FRANK: Not don't bother. Just, don't manufacture. And I'll earn that, I promise. Welcome in, everybody, this is Dig Deeper, and today we've got one of the shortest psalms in the whole book and one of the strangest images in it. Psalm 133. Three verses about brothers living together, and it compares that to oil dripping off a man's beard onto his collar.

LINDA: Off his beard. Okay, you have to admit that is a weird thing to be moved by. If I said your family gets along like grease running down somebody's chin, that is not a compliment.

FRANK: [laughs] It really isn't, no. And yet that's exactly the picture David reaches for, and by the end I think you'll see it's the most generous image he could have chosen. Would you read it for us?

LINDA: Psalm 133. "See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, that ran down on the beard, even Aaron's beard, that came down on the edge of his robes, like the dew of Hermon, that comes down on the hills of Zion; for there Yahweh gives the blessing, even life forever more."

FRANK: There it is. Now, the first thing I want you to notice is that the psalm doesn't open with a command. It's not "brothers, be united." It opens with a finger pointing. "See how good." David isn't arguing with you, he's showing you something and inviting you to enjoy it. This is a wisdom poem, and wisdom poems don't lecture. They put a thing in front of you so beautiful you want it. Spurgeon has this line about the psalm right before this one in the collection, the one full of war and grief, and he says of this one, "That is full of war and lamentation, but this sings of peace and pleasantness." The tone throughout is one of peace. It sings. What does that tone do for you?

LINDA: It makes me want to believe it, which is exactly the problem. It's a beautiful song about people getting along, but the people I'm supposed to be one with are the same people who annoy me. The part of church I find hardest to believe in is real. So what is this actually pointing at?

FRANK: The oil. That's the first image, and it is not a random splash of ointment. This is anointing oil, the specially compounded stuff in Exodus twenty-nine and Leviticus eight. Myrrh, cinnamon, cane, reserved for one holy purpose. And Moses doesn't dab it on Aaron. He pours it. Pours it on his head so it runs down over the beard, down onto the priestly robes. And here's what makes me stop every time. Those robes had stones on them, engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. So the oil poured on the one high priest runs down until it's touching the names of the entire nation. Do you see what that means?

LINDA: The oil literally reaches the names of the tribes.

FRANK: Literally reaches the names. The consecration poured on the head ends up covering everyone. And that's how unity works. Not twelve tribes shaking hands with each other. One anointing, poured out at the top, running down until every last name is under the same grace. The blessing doesn't stay at the top. It flows down and covers the body.

LINDA: The consequence, before the cause, so I've got this straight. Everybody gets covered, and the reason they get covered is that it was poured on one man's head. Nobody in that picture is doing anything.

FRANK: Nobody in that picture is doing anything except receiving. And look at the grammar, because the poem is built to teach you that. Read it out loud and one direction takes over. The oil runs down on the beard. It came down on the edge of the robes. The dew comes down on the hills of Zion. Three times, down. The Hebrew poet has built a descent into the shape of the lines. Your eye starts high, at the head, and you get pulled down to the hem. Then it lifts you up to a snow-capped mountain, and pulls you down again. The verbs will not let you climb. They only pour.

LINDA: That opens up something I hadn't thought about. We picture unity going sideways, right, people across a room reaching toward each other. And you're saying the poem won't let you look sideways. It keeps aiming your eyes up and then down.

FRANK: It refuses the horizontal. And that's not decoration, that's the theology pressed into the form. You came expecting a psalm about brothers side by side, and the grammar keeps redirecting you, up to the source, down to watch the gift arrive. You cannot read it honestly and still imagine unity as something the brothers cook up between themselves. Every good and perfect gift comes down. The design of the lines teaches what the human heart forgets, that we are receivers before we're anything else.

LINDA: The person in the next pew who I quietly can't stand, though. Let me push here, because "receive it from above" starts to sound like a way of never actually dealing with them. I have someone in mind. Real person. What does the oil have to do with the fact that I would rather leave church before they corner me?

FRANK: Everything, but let me get you to the second image first, because it makes this concrete. The dew of Hermon. Mount Hermon is up at the far north edge of Israel, over nine thousand feet, snow on it deep into summer. The cold heights pull down this heavy, drenching dew, night after night, so much that the runoff feeds the springs that become the Jordan. An Israelite knew Hermon as the wettest place in the whole land. A mountain that never went thirsty. And Zion, down south—what's it like?

LINDA: Zion's the dry one.

FRANK: Zion's the dry one. Stand in Jerusalem from May to September and no rain falls at all. The hills go brown and hard. The only moisture is a thin dew that's gone by midmorning. Now hear the line again. Unity is "like the dew of Hermon, that comes down on the hills of Zion." Linda, that cannot happen. Hermon and Jerusalem are a hundred and thirty miles apart. Hermon's dew never reaches the south. The poet is asking you to picture the north's impossible abundance falling on the parched south. Two distant places, the wet mountain and the dry temple hill, made one and watered by a single descending mercy. What do you hear in that picture?

LINDA: The image of unity is itself two far-apart things brought together. That's kind of buried in there and it's the whole point, isn't it.

FRANK: It's the whole point. God pressed the meaning of gathered brothers right into the map of the land he gave them. He taught his people to long for it every dry summer they lived through. And here's the ache underneath all of it. This is not natural. Go back to Abram and Lot in Genesis thirteen. The land could not bear them both, their herdsmen quarreled, and Abram had to say, you go one way, I'll go the other. From nearly the beginning of the covenant family, kinship strains and brothers split up. Psalm 133 sings about the exact thing Abram's household could not pull off. Which tells you unity is not an inheritance you're born into. It's a rescue.

LINDA: A rescue. Not a skill.

FRANK: Not a skill, not an achievement, a rescue. And now watch where this reaches. We have a great High Priest. The oil poured on Aaron was always pointing forward. So when you ask about the person you'd rather avoid, here's the answer the psalm gives. The oil poured on the head of Christ runs down over the entire body, and his body is his church. The anointing of the Head becomes the anointing of the members, reaching to the last one at the hem of the robe. Your unity with that person is not a feeling you have to work up. It's the overflow of your union with him. Paul says God's purpose was to sum up all things in Christ, to gather what sin had scattered into one Head. It runs down from Christ, over his people, to the very edge.

LINDA: The name I have in my head right now. I don't want to be one with him. I know I'm supposed to say something warmer, but that's true. So what do I actually do on a morning when I feel none of this?

FRANK: You stay. That's the small, expensive part. The psalm says brothers "live together," present tense, still in the same room, and it never once says they earned the right to be there. So picture the actual moment. Service ends, he walks toward you, and everything in you is already planning the ninety-second exit. The polite smile, the glance at the phone, the "good to see you" that means goodbye. That is where "live together" gets tested. Not in your theology of church. In your feet. In whether they stay planted or start drifting toward the door. How does that feel?

LINDA: Staying while resenting someone is what I'm actually capable of doing. But what does that accomplish?

FRANK: Staying means you ask him a real question and you wait for the real answer. You don't check the time. And here's why you can do it when you don't feel it. You are not conjuring anything. Christ made you and that man one when he died. The unity is already true underneath your reluctance. You're not building it. You're living into what his blood already did.

LINDA: The blessing on all this, though. There's that last line, "there Yahweh gives the blessing." What's the weight of that verb underneath the English?

FRANK: Underneath that sits the strongest word in these verses. The verb behind "gives" is tsavah. It does not mean to hand over gently, or to offer. It means to command. To decree. It's the word for a king issuing an order that cannot be revoked. It's the word used when God commanded the light in the beginning, when he commanded his covenant to a thousand generations. So this is not a warm mood that happens to settle over a nice reunion. It's a royal decree.

LINDA: The command lands on a place, not just a feeling, is what you're getting at. There's that little word "there."

FRANK: There. Not everywhere in general. There, where brothers dwell together. God appointed a specific location for his commanded blessing, and the location is his gathered people. In the old covenant, there was Zion, the hill where the tribes assembled. And then follow that "there" into the Gospels and it moves. Jesus prays on his last night, "that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you." The place of the commanded blessing is no longer a hill. It's a people knit into the Son. And he says it flat out, "where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." There. Same decree. The location just came to us. That means what, exactly?

LINDA: Wherever his people actually gather—that's the location. Which means when I stand in that lobby not wanting to talk to that man, that's the "there."

FRANK: That reluctant lobby, that awkward stayed conversation, is the exact spot where the King has already ordered life forevermore. You do not summon this by the warmth of your feelings. Christ commanded it, Christ prayed it, and Christ secured it when he made the two of you one. Where his people gather in his name, the blessing is already decreed, and no one revokes the King's decree.

LINDA: Life forevermore. That's where it lands. Not "you'll feel better about the guy." Life that doesn't end.

FRANK: Life that doesn't run out. The dew of Hermon carried impossibly to the dry hills, the oil running down to the last stitch of the hem, all of it pouring toward one destination, life forevermore. You did not climb up to this. It came down to find you. Whatever peace you have with the people of God was purchased and poured out by the Head who bled at the top of a hill. What does that mean for what you do this week?

LINDA: If it's all coming down anyway, do I do anything at all, or do I just wait under the drip?

FRANK: You close the distance. Not to earn it, but because it's already true. Think of one person you've quietly drifted from at church. Used to talk, now you just nod across the room. And instead of a charge from me, let me just leave you with what David hands you first. He doesn't say fix it. He says, "See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity." See it. Want it. Then go send the message.

LINDA: Let it work on you, that word, tsavah. It's already commanded. You're not making it happen. You're catching up to it.

FRANK: You're catching up to it. That's the perfect place to land.

LINDA: This one's part of the Dig Deeper app, so if you're new here, go look up Dig Deeper in your app store and come walk through the rest of these with us.