The Psalms Are for Workers

Matthew Kaemingk

---

Let your work be manifest to your servants,
     and your glorious power to their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
     and prosper for us the work of our hands—
     O prosper the work of our hands! (Psalm 90:16–17 NRSV)

When it comes to work and worship, we might not expect too much from the book of Psalms. The Psalter’s primary focus is clearly on God, not workers. Moreover, these ancient songs, poems, and prayers were collected largely to serve worshipers in the sanctuary, not workers in the fields. We don’t expect the psalms, which are focused on God and composed for the sanctuary, to intersect with the raw reality of everyday work in the fields and the market-places. And yet, that is exactly what the psalms do.

The lyrics of the psalmists are shot through with workplace images, ques- tions, and issues. Israelite merchants, shepherds, and farmers were regularly exposed to a multiplicity of labor-oriented metaphors and imagery strewn throughout their songbook.¹ A rudimentary word search quickly reveals the repetitive appearance of workplace terms and images:²

The psalms sing of rains and harvests (Pss. 67:6; 85:12; 147:8). They pray about being weary and worn out (Pss. 6:1–6; 31:10; 102 inscription). They shout about carrying work to God in thanksgiving (Pss. 51:19; 66:15; 107:22). They protest about evil people prospering in the marketplace (Ps. 73:3–12). They lament about being cheated and falsely accused (Pss. 55:11; 62:4; 69:4; 109:4). This, quite simply, is a songbook for workers.

The psalms are not a spiritual escape from Israel’s markets and fields. Their lyrics emerge out of, and directly engage, the lives and labors of the people.³ John Goldingay explains that when the people cry out, “Prosper for us the work of our hands—O prosper the work of our hands!” they mean what they say.⁴ “Hey God,” they shout, “just grant that all the hard work we do in sowing and plowing, in building and planting, pays off rather than being a waste of time. Please, for your name’s sake, don’t let all of this hard work slip away. Establish it.”                                   

The psalms have a unique ability to directly engage the vocational longings of workers—both ancient and contemporary. Their lyrics are capable of accomplishing two functions at once. They’re specific enough to connect with the raw day-to-day experience of an ancient farm laborer in the fields, yet they’re broad enough to resonate with the vocational experiences and emotions of a twenty-first-century financier in a New York City high-rise.⁵

Worshiping Workers into God’s Work

I meditate on all your works
     and consider what your hands have done. . . .
Show me the way I should go,
     for to you I entrust my life. (Psalm 143:5, 8)

Examining the workplace images and metaphors strewn throughout the psalms, we make one discovery that is both immediate and instructive. Within their lyrics the “works of God’s hands” are primary, while those of human hands are nearly always secondary. Whenever the psalmists mention a specific workplace issue, that discussion is almost always surrounded with voluminous accounts of God’s work and God’s actions.⁶ Through the psalms, Israel’s workers are continually instructed to ponder and sing about the work of God’s mighty arms, hands, and fingers (Pss. 8:3; 77:15; 136:12).           

In the psalms, the works of God’s hands provide an interpretive lens for the work of our hands—not the reverse. The Psalter here is functioning under a simple but powerful assumption: a worker can’t understand the place or purpose of their work in the world until they learn to sing, pray, and meditate on God’s work in the world. Singing about God’s work with force, conviction, and regularity is the critical hermeneutical lens through which a worker can more clearly understand and begin their own labors in the world. God, accordingly, has a lot of diverse “jobs” in the psalms.

protector (7:9)	planter (44:2)	seamstress (139:13)
maker of the stars (8:3)	scheduler (74:17)	craftsman (139:14)
manager (8:5–6)	tender of grapes (80:8–9)	physician (146:8)
judge (9:16)	liberator of those who toil (81:6)	foster parent (146:9)
provider (16:5)	irrigator (104:13)	border guard (147:13)
midwife (22:9)	public defender and advocate for the poor (113:7)	cook (147:14)
teacher (25:12)

God is also repeatedly depicted as an engineer carefully laying sturdy foundations for cities and for the very earth itself (Pss. 24:2; 87:1; 89:11; 102:25; 104:5).⁷

Psalm 23 famously depicts the almighty God working as a humble shepherd. John Goldingay notes that herding sheep in the ancient world was “a despised occupation.”⁸ It was dangerous work—smelly, dirty, and difficult. Our modern visions of a quiet and peaceful hillside filled with fluffy white sheep grazing wistfully on wavy green grass should be replaced with fearful encounters with wild beasts, bandits, and robbers followed by images of muddy, cold, and sleepless nights next to filthy animals. Yet the psalmist displays no discomfort describing God’s work in the world using the humble vocation of the shepherd.

The primary purpose of Psalm 23 is obviously to illustrate something about the work of God—not the work of shepherds. However, imagine a group of shepherds singing this psalm together night after night. Those from higher socioeconomic classes might look down on their humble vocation, but in this psalm the shepherds are invited to sing about a deity whose work is somehow comparable to theirs. Shepherds image God when they protect those under their care, skillfully locate fresh water for their flocks, ward off danger, and provide a sense of rest and security. Singing Psalm 23, a group of shepherds can gather to praise a deity who is not at all embarrassed to be compared to them.

In the second half of Psalm 23 God suddenly takes on a whole new job: a party host. Like a waiter, Yahweh patiently sets a table, prepares a meal, and fills drinks (a little too full). The psalmist makes it clear that the faithful work of God will encircle, follow, and nourish him “all the days” of his life. The psalmist’s daily work—however mundane—will be protected, guided, and nourished by the overflowing work of God.

In Psalm 65 the Israelites sing of “God the farmer,” who, according to Goldingay, is busy “driving home with his cart so full of rich grain that it is overflowing from the cart and thus from its tracks.”⁹ He translates verses 9–10 in this way:

You have attended to the earth and watered it;
     you greatly enrich it.
God’s stream is full of water;
     you prepare their grain because thus you prepare it,
Saturating its furrows, smoothing its grooves,
     you soften it with rains, you bless its growth.
You have crowned the year of your goodness;
     your cart tracks flow with richness.¹⁰

Here the laboring deity “attends” to the soil “like a farmer caringly watering his animals. God thus enriches the land and makes it abundant. God constructs a fine irrigation system, with a stream or channel delivering water in a controlled way from God’s storehouses.”¹¹ Farmers gather in the sanctuary to sing of God as the digger of channels, the director of waters, the blesser of seeds, and the harvester of grains.

Comparing the almighty God of the universe to a lowly sheep herder or farmer may have been disruptive and perhaps even a little embarrassing to the ancient ear. The song does not quite have the same effect on the modern ear. The terms “shepherd” and “farmer” are too remote for most of us, too arcane. It might be a helpful exercise for contemporary worshipers to imagine singing an adapted version of Psalm 23 in which God is depicted as our ICU nurse, our security guard, our waiter, or our HR representative. These careers are uncomfortably close to our own—awkwardly adjacent. Singing songs that compare the extraordinary works of almighty God to our quotidian labors fills us with a sense of discomfort that is both appropriate and revealing. That discomfort should be interrogated. . . .                         

The psalms depict God faithfully at work in the world alongside the worker. Sometimes Yahweh’s works are grand and cosmic, such as laying the foundations of the earth and handcrafting the stars (Pss. 19:1; 24:2; 102:25). Sometimes they are small and humble, such as shepherding lambs, gently watering seeds, attending to the soil, and carefully knitting together infants in their mothers’ wombs (Pss. 23:2; 65:9; 139:13). Whether great or small, cosmic or quotidian, God’s complex works surround our own. Singing together in the sanctuary, we are reminded of this simple but life-changing truth: God’s work gives meaning to ours.

---

This article is an excerpt from Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson, Work and Worship: Reconnecting Our Labor and Liturgy (Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2020). Used by permission.

---

Matthew Kaemingk is assistant professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary and associate dean for Fuller Texas (Houston). Matthew also serves as a scholar-in-residence at the Max De Pree Center for Christian Leadership.

---

Image: Joan Miro, The Wagon Tracks

1. Scripture regularly uses agricultural metaphors and terms to help workers understand and connect with God. Oded Barowski writes, “Israel’s closeness to the soil and her dependence on it are evident in the use of agriculturally related terminology as metaphors throughout her literature. Proverbs and allegories, blessings, prophetic speeches, and psalms use agricultural symbolism extensively. Gideon (Judg. 8:2), Jotham (Judg. 9:8–15), Samson (Judg. 14:8), and Nathan (2 Sam. 12:1–4) use agricultural allegories when trying to clarify a problem. Israel was likened by the prophets to a vineyard (Isa. 5:1–8), a grapevine (Jer. 2:21; Ezek. 17:6–10; Hos. 10:1).” Barowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 11–12.[↩]
2. The word count is based on the New International Version.[↩]
3. Those interested in exploring the topic of work in the psalms further might benefit from exploring the commentary on the psalms recently completed by the Theology of Work Project at www.theologyofwork.org.[↩]
4. Goldingay, Psalms, 3:34.[↩]
5. Our usual disclaimer applies here. Those who want a full and exhaustive historical examination of the psalms need to look elsewhere. Our goal here is to briefly excavate and examine a few select intersections between worship and work in the psalms. We’re primarily interested in contemporary appropriations of the psalms for modern workers.[↩]
6. There are many examples of this. The best might be Psalm 104.[↩]
7. John Goldingay remarks, “‘Founding’ is thus equivalent to ‘building,’ ‘making,’ or ‘creating,’ which have the same implication. But the verb ‘found’ is especially familiar in connection with the founding of the temple and other buildings, especially after exile. Naturally, that is regularly portrayed as human work, which it literally was (Ezra 3:6–12; Hag. 2:18; Zech. 4:9; 8:9). The founding of Zion was the work of the Jebusites, taken on by David and subsequent kings. The psalm begins by claiming the founding of Zion was actually Yhwh’s work.” Goldingay, Psalms, 2:633.[↩]
8. Goldingay, Psalms, 1:348.[↩]
9. Goldingay, Psalms, 2:282.[↩]
10. Goldingay, Psalms, 2:273.[↩]
11. Goldingay, Psalms, 2:281.[↩]