Als God ons thuisbrengt = Home From Our Exile, 1967 - 1994

This psalm may be one of the few examples in the Psalter of an Oracular Consultation. In a Lamentation, there are generally three phases: the psalmist expresses depression at current plight and anger at being abandoned by God. This compels the psalmist to seek an oracular consulation with a Temple priest, a private moment of spititual comfort. The final outcome of this is a song of confidence with renewed confidence in God. In most psalms of lament, this private phase of consultation is omitted, for obvious reasons. Personal testimonies may at some stage have been written on fragments of parchment and deposited in a Temple chest, from which later editors took extracts and wove them into catechisms about a faithful Deity. Our present form of the psalm suggests post-Exilic redaction, as indicated by the influence of Wisdom Literature which appeared only in later Judaism. The references to earlier cultic roots, however, predate the Exile since these allude to the ancient custom of weeping when sowing, to fertilize the ground through sincere sorrow for past offences. This would ensure an abundant harvest. From this grew the old Christian tradition of Ember Days, of penitential processions around the fields (and later around the interior of the churches) to ensure a productive sowing and eventual reaping, as signs of hope and gratitude in the mercy of a bountiful God.