Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35

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

Psalm 68 has a reputation as the most difficult Hebrew in the Psalter, with an unusually high number of words found nowhere else, and it reads less like a single composition than like a procession assembled from older pieces. It opens by quoting the formula spoken whenever the ark set out (Num 10:35) and then marches from Sinai (vv. 7-8) toward a sanctuary on Zion, with storm imagery the whole way. The epithet in v. 4, usually rendered as riding on the clouds, is the standing title of Baal in the Ugaritic texts, claimed here for the LORD. Set against that scale, v. 5 locates God’s household among orphans, widows, the solitary and prisoners, and it has become the psalm’s most quoted line. The verses the lectionary omits include v. 18, which Ephesians 4:8 quotes of Christ’s ascent, and that citation is the reason this psalm is appointed for the Sunday after the Ascension.

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