Psalms 84:8-9 (ESV)
O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!
Psalm 84 is a pilgrim psalm. It is a song that the people of Israel would sing as they traveled to Jerusalem for the Day of Atonement and/or other feasts like Pentecost. The people are coming to worship and are, in this song, employing God to both hear them and look upon them with favor. The recognize that He is their shield. There is a two-way appeal to the above two verses taken from the middle of the song. They people are asking God to hear them as they cry out, but they are also asking that God responds by blessing them. They ask that God look on “the face of your anointed.” This is a popular phrase in Psalms:
Psalms 31:16 (ESV)
Make your face shine on your servant;
save me in your steadfast love!
Psalms 67:1 (ESV)
May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
Psalms 80:3 (ESV)
Restore us, O God;
let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Psalms 119:135 (ESV)
Make your face shine upon your servant,
and teach me your statutes.
Any good favor we have is because God “shines His face upon us.” The phrase means that He looks on us with favor. We have nothing good unless it comes from God and flows from His grace:
James 1:17 (ESV)
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
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