Psalms 99:6–8

Psalms 99:6 — "Moses and Aaron were among his priests"

The psalmist's choice of language here is arresting and deliberate. Moses is never called a "priest" in the Pentateuch — that title belongs to Aaron and his sons. Yet the psalm brackets Moses and Aaron together under the priestly category, with Samuel added in the fuller verse. The Hebrew kohen (priest) here functions in its broader, pre-institutional sense: one who stands before God on behalf of the people. This is a liturgical bold stroke. Moses interceded on Sinai (Exod 32:11–14), stood in the breach (Num 14:13–19), and mediated the covenant — acts that are priestly in their very nature even if not in their title. Aaron, of course, held the Aaronic priesthood formally, but the psalm subsumes both figures under a single vocation: those who call upon His name. The phrase "among his priests" (bekohanav) underscores that these towering figures, as great as they are, serve within God's order — they are not autonomous holy men but instruments of the divine economy. Samuel, mentioned in the second half of the verse in the Hebrew original, reinforces this pattern: the great judge and prophet who also interceded definitively for Israel (1 Sam 7:8–9; 12:23).

Psalms 99:7 — "He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud"

The pillar of cloud is a signature of God's covenantal nearness (Exod 33:9; Num 12:5). It is simultaneously a vehicle of divine communication and a veil that preserves the transcendence of the Holy. God answers the intercessors, but His answer comes through the cloud — He does not appear face to face in naked glory but accommodates Himself to human capacity. Theologically, this verse establishes the pattern of divine condescension that runs through all of Scripture: God speaks, God answers, but always through the mediating structures He Himself establishes. For Catholics, this is the seed of what will flower in the doctrines of Scripture, Tradition, and sacramental mediation — God reaching down through visible, created realities. The cloud also points to the Shekinah glory, the real presence of the divine among the people, which patristic writers consistently read as a type of the Holy Spirit and, ultimately, of the Incarnation.

Psalms 99:8 — "You answered them, Yahweh our God"

The shift to direct address — Yahweh our God — is a liturgical embrace. The community is not merely reciting history; they are making it present. God's answering of Moses and Aaron is invoked as a basis for present confidence. The verse also contains a profoundly honest theological tension: God answered them and forgave the people's sins, yet God also punished their misdeeds (noqem al-alilotam — avenging their wrongdoings). Forgiveness and justice coexist without cancelling each other. This is not contradiction but the fullness of divine holiness: mercy does not dissolve accountability. The intercessors themselves bore consequences — Moses was barred from the Promised Land (Num 20:12) — yet God's faithfulness to the covenant was never revoked. The verse thus articulates a mature, non-sentimental theology of grace.

Catholic tradition reads this passage as a revelation of the theology of intercession, mediation, and priestly ministry that reaches its consummation in Jesus Christ. The Catechism teaches that "from the beginning, God invites human beings to a relationship with Himself and entrusts them with a mission" (CCC 2084), and Moses and Aaron represent this pattern in its Old Testament fullness.

St. Augustine, in his Expositions on the Psalms, reflects on how Moses interceding for Israel despite their idolatry prefigures Christ interceding for sinners on the Cross — the true High Priest who "always lives to make intercession" (Heb 7:25). The pillar of cloud, for Augustine, is the obscurity through which God speaks to the Church in this age, before the beatific vision replaces the cloud with light.

The Council of Trent, in its Decree on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (Session 22), cites the perpetual intercessory sacrifice as the fulfillment of all Old Covenant priestly mediation. Moses and Aaron's intercession, effective but limited, gives way to Christ's sacrifice, which is once-for-all yet perpetually present in the Mass.

St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica II-II, q. 83) treats prayer as intercession modeled on the great intercessors of Scripture, holding Moses up as proof that prayer for others participates in divine providence. That God both forgave and punished (cf. v. 8) also illuminates the Catholic doctrine of temporal punishment — that forgiveness of guilt does not always immediately remove all consequence (CCC 1472–1473), a cornerstone of the Church's teaching on purgatory and penance.

For contemporary Catholics, Psalm 99:6–8 offers a powerful corrective to two opposite errors in the spiritual life. The first is the error of presumption — the assumption that because God is merciful, human sin carries no weight. Verse 8 is clear: God answered, and God held accountable. The lives of Moses and Aaron remind us that even the greatest servants of God experience the consequences of their failures. Confession is not a reset button that erases all temporal consequence; it is the beginning of restored relationship that still invites serious amendment of life.

The second error is discouragement — the feeling that our intercession is too small, our faith too weak, to matter. These verses insist that God has always worked through human mediators, through flawed figures like Aaron who built the golden calf and Moses who struck the rock in anger. Catholics can approach intercessory prayer — for family members, for the sick, for the Church — with genuine confidence, not because of their own holiness, but because God has established intercession as the very structure of His saving plan. Concretely: bring your intercessions to Mass, where they are united to the one perfect intercession of Christ, and trust that the cloud still speaks.