Episode Details

Psalm 72: Rain Upon the Mown Grass

Of all the images Scripture gives us of the good king, this one is perhaps the most startling: "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass." Not rain upon a garden in its glory, but upon grass that has been cut — shorn, diminished, lying flat and spent. This is where the true king arrives: not at the feast but at the aftermath. The psalm builds an empire of justice outward from this single tenderness — sea to sea, river to the ends of the earth — but it never loses its center. The king who rules all nations is the same king who delivers the needy when he cries and spares the poor who has no helper. "Precious shall their blood be in his sight." One suspects the psalmist could see, even if only in outline, that the throne of heaven would one day look less like a palace and more like a cross. The final line — "the prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended" — closes like a great door. But the kingdom it described has no such ending.

00:00 Give the King Thy Judgments
01:00 Dominion from Sea to Sea
02:00 His Name Shall Endure Forever