The most frequently used and important word in Psalm 85 is a very common Hebrew word that means to return or turn back. It occurs five times in the first 8 verses of the psalm. The first time is in verse 1: You have shown favor, O Yahweh, to your land. You have turned back the captivity of Jacob. The second time is in verse 3: You have taken away all your wrath. You have turned back from the burning of your anger. Next is verse 4: Turn us back, O God of our salvation, and cause your vexation with us to cease. Verse 6: Will you not turn back? Will you not restore us to life that your people may rejoice in you? Finally, verse 8: He will speak peace to his people, and to his saints, but let them not turn back to folly.
The psalm uses the word in different contexts and with a slightly different connotation each time it appears. In verse 1, it has to do with bringing his people back from their captivity in Babylon. In verse 3, it is the turning back of his anger. Verse 4 may seem to be the same use as verse 1, but the Scriptures often use the word as a description of conversion from sin, and that is its idea here: turn us back from our sins. I believe that the NKJV has misinterpreted verse 6. The prayer means, Will you not turn back to us? The turning here is a turning of God. He had turned away from his people, but they ask him to turn back, to show them again his favor.
These four turnings back are the work of God: he turns back our captivity, turns back his wrath against us, turns us back from sin, and turns back to us with his favor. Two have to do with us: turning us back from captivity and sin. And two have to do with him: turning back his anger from us, and turning his favor toward us. The final turning back belongs to us. Verse 8 is a warning that we, having experienced all these gracious turnings back of God, must not turn back to the folly which brought his anger on us in the first place and made this prayer necessary.
The psalm belongs to the time of the return from captivity in Babylon, and probably, more precisely, to the time of the sins of the people during the times of Ezra and Nehemiah. Their sins had brought judgment in Beabylon, but God had been gracious. Now they have sinned again, and, basing their cry for help on God’s former mercies, they cry again for forgiveness and salvation.
It’s a bold prayer. After great judgment, they sinned yet again. But still they dare to ask for forgiveness. But their hope of forgiveness has nothing to do with their own righteousness or penitence. They look instead to the goodness of God. Mercy and truth have met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed. Truth shall spring out of the earth, And righteousness shall look down from heaven. That is and will always be in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose death God displays both his righteousness and his mercy. He will speak peace to His people.