Susan Gillingham - Psalms Through the Centuries, Volume 3

One important verse in Christian exegesis is 85:11 (‘Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky’). By the time of *Augustine this was seen as a prophecy about the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation. Augustine writes:

Truth hath sprung out of the earth: Christ is born of a woman. The Son of God hath come forth of the flesh. What is truth? The Son of God. What is the earth? Flesh…But the Truth which sprang out of the earth was before the earth, and by It the heaven and the earth were made: but in order that righteousness might look down from heaven, that is, in order that men might be justified by Divine grace, Truth was born of the Virgin Mary… 208

This in turn influenced the developing liturgical use of this psalm: it was used in Christmas Day liturgies in ancient Roman Rites, and is still a psalm for Christmas Day as prescribed in the * BCP .

Another important verse is 85:10. This reads: ‘Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other’. This verse is used in Langland’s allegory of the Four Daughters of God In * Piers Plowman , Passus XVIII. 209Psalm 85:2 (‘You forgave the iniquity of your people’) is used first, as it witnesses to the possibility of the forgiveness of sins. The setting is an evocative description of the passion and death of Christ. ‘Will the Dreamer’ then observes the dispute between (the female personifications of) Mercy, Peace, Truth and Righteousness, ‘the four daughters of God’, whose four qualities come from 85:10. Truth and Mercy are in Hell: Mercy (‘steadfast love’) suggests that the patriarchs and prophets can be redeemed from Hell, but Truth (‘faithfulness’) insists that no one could be released from ‘that inferno’. Peace arrives to agree with Mercy, whilst Justice (‘righteousness’) takes up Truth’s point: all those condemned to eternal punishment cannot be saved. Righteousness and Truth read the Bible literally, without compassion, resembling the old covenant, whilst Mercy and Peace read the Bible more figuratively and imaginatively. The crucifixion, however, supports the former view: it brought about forgiveness of sins and release from death for all who have the humility to respond to it. Christ finally appears at the end of Passus XVIII and cites a verse from Ps. 51:4: true penitence reaps its rewards.

The use of Ps. 85:10 to describe the ‘Four Daughters of God’ was not original to Langland; it was developed from a much earlier Jewish tradition of four virtues by the throne of God, inspired by the visions of Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 and the tradition of the four angels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel) for example in 1 Enoch 9 and 10. 210This motif was taken up in the Middle Ages by Christian thinkers such as the Cistercian Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux and *Hugh of St Victor. An eleventh-century church vestment preserved in the Diözesanmuseum at Bamberg has the most unusual representations of 85:10 on its shoulder pieces: here the two pairs are cited alongside the two lists of six of the twelve tribes of Israel. 211Several later medieval miniatures develop this motif: one, from the fifteenth-century * Missel de Paris , from the school of Jean Fouquet, is of the Trinity, surrounded by three angels, and below them, personifications of Mercy and Truth and Righteousness embracing Peace. 212The ‘Four Daughters’ are also found in a fifteenth-century morality play, The Castle of Perseverance (where Mercy is in white, Justice red, Truth ‘sad green’, and Peace, black) which centres around the hero Humanum Genus, representing all humankind, eventually being admitted to heaven. 213

Images of this verse are also often found in thirteen and fourteenth-century hand-produced Books of Hours, usually in the Annunciation section, alongside verse 11, now clearly read as about the Virgin Mary and the Incarnation. There are many representations of verses 10–11 in art; William *Blake’s is probably the best known. The title of his painting (completed in 1803) is ‘Mercy and Truth are met together, Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other’. There are in fact only two figures embracing, under God the Father and his twelve angels of light: these are of an adult Christ and Mary. This image is represented here as Plate 5.

This interpretation of verse 11 (‘faithfulness will spring up from the ground’) also accounts for the frequent use of the figure of the Virgin Mary in illustrations of this psalm. The *Stuttgart Psalter (fol. 100v) has two images: the upper one recalls the Visitation (verse 4, with its ‘restoration’ theme) and the lower one is of Mary and Elizabeth in embrace (illustrating verses 10 and 11, but outside the tradition of the ‘four daughters’). 214An image in the * Theodore Psalter (fol. 113v, alongside verse 11) depicts the Virgin Mary embracing Elizabeth in front of a building with a cross and two basilicas; on the roof the young Christ blesses the young John the Baptist. The text is Luke 1:39–56. 215Similar images are found in the *Khludov Psalter (fol. 85r), the *Pantokrator Psalter (fol. 118v), and the *Barberini Psalter (fol. 146v).

Some Psalters develop the motif of forgiveness of sins found in the psalm; using verse 2 (‘You pardoned all their sin’). This is also found in the Khludov Psalter (fol. 84v), the Pantokrator Psalter (fol. 118r) and the Barberini Psalter (fol. 145v).

Few Jewish illustrations of this psalm are to be found. One contemporary image, adopted by UNESCO in its work on justice and peace, is by the French artist *Benn, created in 1964, which is again of verse 10: ‘Righteousness and peace kiss each other’. A light blue background highlights a white dove, symbolising peace, flying downwards, and a bluebird, symbolising righteousness, flying upwards. They touch each other, beak to beak: a red line runs across the page but another double red loop over it ostensibly links the two birds together. 216

Although the psalm is not rich in reception in Jewish tradition, it offers a rich literary and visual reception in Christian tradition. This is mainly because of the popular appeal of just two verses (10–11). Unusually, one focus is on the women ‘hidden’ in this psalm: Mary, Elizabeth and the ‘Four Daughters of God’.

Psalm 86 has a unique title amongst the *Korahite Psalms, as ‘A Prayer of David’. It is the most personal in Book Three, and is a good example of a later Davidic ‘imitation’. But again the placing does not seem to be totally accidental: there are some associations with Psalm 85, not least in the theme of God’s steadfast love (85:10; here verses 5, 13 and 15) and the combination of ‘love and faithfulness’ ( ḥesed ve’emet ) which are found in Pss. 85:10 and 86:15. Similarly the themes of ‘fear’ and ‘glory’ occur together in 85:9 and 86:11–12.

Psalm 86 in this Second Korahite collection corresponds to the royal Psalm 45 in the first: both focus on the king. Throughout the three strophes (verses 1–7, 8–13, 14–17) we find several motifs from other psalms. Examples include its cluster of imperatives (‘cry’; ‘hear’; ‘save’; ‘protect’); its references to ‘your servant’ (verses 2, 4, 16); and its expression ‘poor and needy’ (verse 1). One seminal example is the adaptation, in verses 5 and 15, of an ancient creedal formula found in Exod. 34:6 (‘. the Lord. merciful and gracious… slow to anger…’) and used in other biblical texts (for example, Ps 103:8, 145:8, Neh. 9:17, Joel 2:13 and Jonah 4:2). This rich intertextuality raises questions about which text ‘received’ from another. 217Another issue of reception history is that, given the end of Psalm 72 clearly states that the prayers of David had ended, why did the editors include another Davidic psalm here, and indeed elsewhere in Books Four and Five of the Psalter? It would seem that the ongoing interest in David as the paradigmatic psalmist lived on beyond Books One and Two, even if those books contain by far the most psalms ascribed to David.