Hebrew Highlights 84 – CROWNED THE YEAR

Shalom, this is Yuval Shomron, coming to you from Jerusalem.

PSA 65:11-13, “Thou hast crowned the year with Thy bounty, And Thy paths drip with fatness. The pastures of the wilderness drip, And the hills gird themselves with rejoicing. The meadows are clothed with flocks, And the valleys are covered with grain; They shout for joy, yes, they sing.”

When in this Psalm we read, “Thou hast crowned”, these three words are translated from the one Hebrew, “Itarta”. This is another one of those words which is in a form we call “past prophetic”. As I’ve mentioned before in Hebrew Highlights, many promises and prophecies contain words in the past tense, when talking about the future. This is because of the wonderful truth that if God said it, it shall be. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

In this case also, God is speaking not of the past year, but of the upcoming one. We can see this from the context of the whole psalm.

As we begin another new year, we need to be saying to ourselves, “this will be our best year ever.” God has crowned it with His bounty. Now you might think this is presumptuous. Yet in JAM 1:17, we read, “Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow.”

God has always desired to give us good things, as emphasized in DEU 6:10-11, "Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which He swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you, great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you shall eat and be satisfied.”

Unfortunately, in our nagging sinful nature, we have a tendency to look back on our past failures, debts, and shortcomings, and assume that fate has destined us to suffer yet another year of the same old same-old. We need to stop listening to the voice of the accuser, and grab hold of 2CO 5:17. “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”

If the hills, the meadows, and the valleys are shouting for joy, and singing in anticipation of God’s goodness in the year to come, surely, we can do the same.

May God the Father grant you your best year ever!

Shalom, Shalom from Jerusalem.