Psalms 85
Psalm 85 is a song of the sons of Korah, and it begins not with a request but with a memory. LORD, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob. Before the singer asks God for anything, he rehearses what God has already done - the anger turned away, the iniquity forgiven, the sin covered over. This is how the psalm builds its courage to pray. It does not approach God as a stranger but as One whose kindness is already on the record. The memory of past mercy becomes the ground of present hope: the God who once did this can be asked to do it again.3
The prayer, when it comes, is unusually tender. Turn us, O God of our salvation… Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? These are the words of a people who have been restored and yet still feel the absence of fullness - brought home, perhaps, but not yet renewed; forgiven, but waiting for joy to return. They ask not merely for circumstances to change but for life itself to be quickened: Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation. It is the prayer of every season when faith has gone quiet and the heart longs to be made glad in God again.
And then the singer does the bravest thing in the psalm: he stops asking and listens. I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people. What he hears is a vision so beautiful it has echoed down the centuries - Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven (vv. 10-11). Four great attributes of God, which so often seem to pull against one another, are here gathered into a single embrace. The early Christians, reading these lines, found that they pointed past the psalm to a place where the meeting actually happened - where God drew near, His glory dwelt among us, and the One who came was full of grace and truth.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 85:1-3 · To the chief Musician, A Psalm for the sons of KorahThou Hast Covered All Their Sin
1LORD, thou hast been favourable unto thy land: thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob. 2Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people, thou hast covered all their sin. Selah. 3Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.
The psalm opens by looking backward, and every verb is in the past tense: thou hast been favourable… thou hast brought back… thou hast forgiven… thou hast covered… thou hast taken away. This is not yet a prayer; it is a remembering. Before the singer asks God for a single thing, he rehearses, out loud, the long record of God's kindness. There was a time when the land lay under judgment and the people were carried far from home - and God brought back the captivity of Jacob. There was guilt that should have ruined them - and God forgave the iniquity and covered all their sin. There was wrath that burned against them - and God turned from the fierceness of His anger. This is the wise way to begin any prayer: not with the problem in front of you, but with the proven goodness behind you. Memory is the soil that hope grows in. A God who has done this before is a God you can dare to ask again.
Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger (v. 3). The language is striking: God is pictured as turning - as One whose face had been set against His people in judgment, and who has now turned that face back toward them in favour. The Bible does not flinch from speaking of God's anger as something real; sin is not a trifle, and the holiness that loves what is good must oppose what is destructive. But notice the direction of the whole verse. The anger is described only so that its removal can be celebrated. The wrath is taken away; the fierceness is turned from. The lasting word over God's people is not His displeasure but His returning kindness. This is the rhythm the prophets knew when they sang, his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life (Ps. 30:5). The singer remembers a God whose judgment had a limit and whose mercy did not - and on that memory he is about to build a prayer.
Psalm 85:4-7Wilt Thou Not Revive Us Again
4Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause thine anger toward us to cease. 5Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations? 6Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? 7Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation.
Now the tense changes, and the psalm becomes a prayer. Turn us, O God of our salvation (v. 4). It is a remarkable request when you set it beside verse 3. There the singer remembered that God had turned from His anger; here he asks God to turn us. The same verb works both ways - God turns toward His people in mercy, and God turns His people back toward Himself. This is one of the quiet treasures of the verse: the singer knows that even his own returning to God is something God must work in him. He does not say, “We will turn ourselves,” nor does he say, “Leave us as we are.” He prays for a turning that begins in God and takes hold of the human heart - God's initiative and the people's response held together in a single word. To pray turn us is to confess both that we cannot revive ourselves and that we truly will be changed.
The deepest cry of the section is verse 6: Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? The word again is the ache of it. These are people who have known revival before - who remember what it was to be glad in God - and who feel that gladness has gone quiet. They are not asking for something they have never tasted; they are asking for the return of something they have lost. And mark the goal they name: not comfort, not prosperity, not even relief from their enemies, but that thy people may rejoice in thee. The end of revival is joy, and the object of that joy is God Himself. This is what makes the prayer so searching. A people can be restored to their land, their routines, even their religion, and still be a long way from rejoicing in God. The singer is not content with the outward forms of recovery. He wants the inner spring of joy reopened - and he knows only God can do it. Every generation that has felt its faith grow flat has prayed some version of this verse.
Psalm 85:8-13Mercy and Truth Are Met Together
8I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly. 9Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him; that glory may dwell in our land. 10Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. 11Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven. 12Yea, the LORD shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase. 13Righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way of his steps.
After all the asking, the singer does something we rarely think of as part of prayer: he goes quiet and listens. I will hear what God the LORD will speak (v. 8). Having poured out his petitions, he now waits for a reply - for prayer is not only speaking to God but waiting on Him to speak. And he is confident of what he will hear: for he will speak peace unto his people. The Hebrew word is shalom - not the mere absence of conflict but the presence of wholeness, the settled well-being of a life set right with God. God's answer to a praying people is a word of peace. There is one sober note attached: but let them not turn again to folly. The peace God speaks is not a license to drift back into the very sins that brought the trouble; it calls for a people who will keep listening rather than wander off. But the dominant note is grace. The God who is asked to revive does not answer with a scolding. He answers with peace.
Verse 10 is the jewel of the psalm, and one of the most beautiful sentences in all of Scripture: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. These four are not first of all virtues for us to practise; they are attributes of God Himself - His steadfast love, His faithfulness, His justice, His peace. And the wonder of the verse is that they meet. So often, to our eyes, they seem to pull in opposite directions. Truth insists that wrong be named; mercy longs to forgive it. Righteousness requires that things be set right; peace wants the quarrel to end. We are forever forced to choose - to be honest or kind, to uphold the standard or let it go. But in God these four do not compete. They run to each other. Mercy and truth are pictured embracing like long-parted friends; righteousness and peace lean in and kiss. The verse does not explain how God holds them together without compromising any of them - it simply sees that He does, and stands amazed. The rest of Scripture will show the place where the meeting actually happens.
The psalm ends on the move: Righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way of his steps (v. 13). Having pictured righteousness looking down from heaven, the singer now sees it walking - going out ahead of God like a herald clearing the road, and then turning to lead the people along the very path God Himself treads. There is a beautiful reversal in the last line. The psalm has been about what God does for His people; now it speaks of where the people are taken - set… in the way of his steps. The God who comes near does not only forgive and revive; He sets His people walking in His own footprints. This is how the psalm of mercy ends: not in passive relief, but on a road. The same righteousness that ran down from heaven to embrace peace now goes out before us and calls us to follow in its tracks. To be met by God's mercy is, in the end, to be put on God's way - and to walk where He walks.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 85 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for chesed (v. 10, “mercy,” steadfast covenant love), emeth (v. 10, “truth,” faithfulness), the prayer shuv / “turn us” (v. 4), and the cry to be revived (chayah, v. 6).
- Psalm 85 ↔ John 1 · John 14 · Romans 3Intertextual BibleTraces the verbal threads tying Psalm 85 to the New Testament - the glory that came to dwell and the One full of grace and truth (John 1:14-17), the peace spoken to His people (John 14:27; John 20:19), and the God shown to be just, and the justifier in the gospel (Rom. 3:26).
- Psalm 85 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 85 - the memory of restored fortunes in verses 1-3, the difficulty of the verbs in the prayer of verses 4-7, and the personified attributes meeting and embracing in verses 10-13.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Thou Hast Covered All Their Sin
- Psalm 32:1Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.The same covered sin of verse 2 - the blessing Paul makes the heart of the gospel in Romans 4:7.
- Psalm 30:5For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life.The turned-away wrath of verse 3 - judgment with a limit, favour without one.
- Ephesians 1:7In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.How God covers sin without overlooking it - the forgiveness of verse 2 accomplished in Christ.
- Micah 7:18-19he retaineth not his anger for ever... thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.The God who turns from anger and covers sin (vv. 2-3), sung by the prophet who delighted in mercy.
Wilt Thou Not Revive Us Again
- Psalm 80:3Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.The same prayer as verse 4 - a people asking God to do the turning that restores them.
- Lamentations 5:21Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.The cry of verse 4 from the ashes of Jerusalem - even our returning is God’s work.
- Habakkuk 3:2O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years... in wrath remember mercy.The prayer for revival of verse 6 - and the same plea that mercy outlast wrath.
- Luke 2:30-31For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people.The salvation begged for in verse 7, granted at last as a child held in the temple.
Mercy and Truth Are Met Together
- John 1:14And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory)... full of grace and truth.The glory come to dwell (v. 9) and the meeting of mercy and truth (v. 10), arrived in a Person.
- John 14:27Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.The peace God promised to speak (v. 8), spoken by Christ to His own.
- Romans 3:25-26that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.How mercy and truth meet without either being broken (v. 10) - God just and justifying at once.
- Ephesians 2:14-17For he is our peace... and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.Righteousness and peace kissing (v. 10), and the peace spoken (v. 8) - fulfilled in the One who is our peace.