His tent is in Salem, his dwelling place in Zion. – Psalm 76:2

Today's Scripture Reading (August 8, 2022): Psalms 75 & 76

Salem. The contemporary usage of the word brings images of witches and mass hysteria. After all, the best-known stories about Salem took place in Salem, Massachusetts, where the infamous Salem Witch Trials began in 1692. The witch trials started with the accusations of twelve-year-old Abigail Williams and nine-year-old Betty Parris against their neighbors about the supposedly strange events the girls had witnessed at their homes. Abigail and Betty were cousins, and Abigail was an orphan who had come to live in the house of her aunt and uncle. Betty's father, Samuel Parris, was a well-known and influential Christian minister from the Salem Church. On the charges raised by these two girls, twenty people were executed in Salem on charges of witchcraft over the next two years, nineteen were hung, and one was pressed to death. Abigail Williams disappeared from the public record after the Salem Witch Trials. What happened to her is unknown. Betty Parris lived a long life, dying at seventy-seven, but she never retracted her accusations about the witches living in Salem during the late seventeenth century.

That might be the image we have of Salem today, but as Asaph writes his Psalm, it is a different Salem and a different set of circumstances that is on his mind. Salem was another name for Jerusalem or Jeru-Salem. And Asaph's Salem was not the home of witches but the home of God.

The King James Version translates the word we have here as "tent" (sok) as "tabernacle." But the 'tabernacle' proper (Mishkan) never dwelt in Jerusalem. During this era, the tabernacle proper was pitched in Gibeon. At the same time, the Ark of the Covenant never dwelt in Gibeon; it was only just the shell of the Tabernacle and the utensils needed to perform the sacrifices that were kept in Gibeon. Even without the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle continued to be used as a place of sacrifice. The Ark of the Covenant was at Kiriath-Jearim during this period in Israel's history. It stayed there until David moved it to a tent he made for it in Jerusalem, where it remained until Solomon built the Temple.

Regardless of what the tent in Jerusalem was called, Asaph believed the tent in Jerusalem must be the dwelling place of God because that is where the Ark of the Covenant existed. Sacrifices might have continued to be offered in Gibeon, but God was in Jerusalem. And so, Asaph informs his readers that God's tent (NIV – Tabernacle KJV) was in Salem or Jerusalem; therefore, his dwelling place must also be in Zion, again indicating Jerusalem. But Asaph's argument was not because Jerusalem was the home of the Tabernacle proper and the site of all sacrifices but because the Ark of the Covenant existed in a humble hut or tent that was pitched inside David's city.     

Today's Scripture Reading: Psalm 77