Psalm 68:1-10

“Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.” (Psalm 68:5)

Psalm 68 has a reputation as the hardest poem in the Psalter, a chain of short and archaic units whose connections are difficult to trace; some have read it as an anthology of older fragments. Its opening line is the formula spoken when the ark set out at Numbers 10:35, which suggests a procession, and the first movement then retraces Israel’s own route, from the march through the wilderness to the quaking at Sinai to the gift of rain (vv. 7-9). Set between theophany and march is the psalm’s most quoted claim, that the God who rides the clouds is father of the fatherless and protector of widows (v. 5) and settles the solitary in a home (v. 6). Verse 18, just past the end of this selection, is the verse Ephesians 4:8 applies to Christ’s ascent, and that is how the psalm came to be appointed for the Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost.

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