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Lenten Season · Easter Vigil Sixth Reading · Year A

Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11 (John 6:68c)

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

Moses with the Tables of the Law, Guido Reni
Moses with the Tables of the Law, Guido Reni, c. 1624Galleria Borghese, Rome
Reni's Moses holds the tablets upright and looks past them, painted with the cool clarity and the upward gaze he was famous for.The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple. More to be desired are they than gold, sweeter also than honey.Guido ReniA Bolognese painter of refined, upward-gazing figures, enormously admired in his own century and out of fashion for most of the next two.Galleria Borghese, RomeCardinal Scipione Borghese's villa, built to hold art he acquired by means that were not always legal, and still hung as he arranged it.Galleria Borghese, Rome

Overview & Insights

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalm 19:1)

Mays has made a convincing case for the pairing of the Torah psalms (Pss. 1 and 2; 18 and 19; 118 and 119)[1] in order to present the eschatological kingdom of God, which will come in the context and through the instrumentality of Torah piety.[2] In the case of Psalm 18, David’s deliverance from Saul is a foreshadowing of future salvation. Psalms 18 and 19 both give a picture of God’s appearance, Psalm 18 in terms of the exodus and Sinai (18:7–15), and Psalm 19 in terms of the heavens’ declaration of God’s glory (19:1–6) and the Torah’s enlightenment (19:7–11).[3] When one should have expected the Lord to speak from his heavenly temple in 18:6b, David gave witness to the silent, yet powerful, voice of God that articulated God’s mighty acts in David’s time, akin to the mighty acts of God in the time of the exodus and Sinai (18:7–15). Again, in 19:1–4, rather than human speech, we hear God’s voice in the wonders of nature.

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Take it further: Psalm 19:8, 9, 10, 11 (John 6:68c)

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