23:6 - Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life . . .

Bringing his affirmation of all that the Lord means to him to a roaring crescendo, David raises his voice with an emphatic article, 'ak, "surely, yes, surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

So well loved is this verse by all Christians everywhere, so comforting, so assuring, one ventures to comment on it—like restoring Michelangelo's paintings in the Sistine Chapel—with trepidations. We add only this remark: though the cadence of the English translations is perfect, "follow" is far too weak to adequately capture the force of the original. The root of that verb in the Hebrew, radap, is used about 144 times in the OT. Only in a small handful of occasions is it ever translated by an English equivalent that is not negative and forceful. The majority of the occasions it is translated by, and the true sense of the verb is, "pursue," to come racing at an object with such determination as to overtake and fall on it. Thus, Laban, enwrathed that Jacob had slipped away with his family without informing him, pursued Jacob for seven days until he caught him in Gilead (Gen 31:23). Pharaoh, regretful of his apparent softness, and his army pursued the Israelites and followed them into the sea (Exo 14:23). The Lord promised Israel that if she disobeyed, then he will send their enemies pursuing after them, and they will stumble over one another even though no one is pursuing them (Lev 26:36-37).

Surely goodness and mercy wil come pursuing after me all the days of my life." Wow!

Christians, of course, are able instantly to endorse and appreciate the wonderment of this assertion. God's goodness, afterall, is the hallmark of the gospel. "Yes," we would say, "God hates sin, but he loves the sinner." The New Testament, though, does not exactly say this. It says, in fact, that God hates sin, yes, but he also hates the sinner. There cannot be one with the other. We are, Paul reminds us, "objects of wrath" (Rom 9:19; Eph 2:3), who are "storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed (Rom 2:5). Yet God pursues us with his love, most supremely in sending his only beloved Son after us. Rather than allowing his wrath to fall upon us as we deserve, he allows his wrath to fall upon his Son instead. "I am the good shepherd," Jesus says, "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (Jn 10:11). That is the full measure of God's goodness and love that pursues after us.

We are all the more priviledged than David in the knowledge of this amazing love. Yet even David knew the implication of God's pursuit in love enough to claim with assurance that he "will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

The traditional Hebrew text reads, "I shall come back again and again to be present in the house of the Lord," which may be a compressed way of saying, "I shall come back again and again to be present in the house of the Lord" . . .The words are those of one who knows that there can be no continuing satisfying life for him unless it is centered on worship. To the house of the Lord, to God's dwelling place in the midst of his people, he shall return again and again and to renew his vitality through joining in worship and sharing a vision with the people of God. Theology divorced from worship is arid; life devoid of worship has limited horizons."

Robert Davidson, The Vitality of Worship: A Commentary on the Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids/Edinburgh: Eerdmans/Handsel, 1998), 85.