Psalms 84:11

For the Lord God is a sun and shield,.... Christ is "the sun of righteousness", and it is in the house of God that he arises upon his people with healing in his wings, Malachi 4:2 he is like the sun,

For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. For the Lord God is a sun and shield.

A sun, to enlighten, and quicken, and direct, and comfort all his people; whereas they that live without God in the world walk in darkness, and know not whither they go, as is said, . Shield, to save his people from all their enemies, and from those dreadful and deadly miseries which attend all other men. Grace; his favour and friendship, which is better than life, , and all the blessed fruits of it. Glory; not the vain-glory and splendour of this world, of which David would not have spoken so magnificently, because upon all occasions he expresseth a great contempt of those things; but the honour which comes from God here, and that eternal and ineffable glory laid up for God’ s people in the future world. No good thing; nothing that is truly good in itself, and which is good for them; for sometimes afflictions, which are evil in themselves, are good and necessary, and highly advantageous to good men; and the good things of this world would do them much hurt; which is verified by frequent experiments. Them that walk uprightly; that worship God sincerely, and order their conversations aright; which clause David seems to me to add designedly to prevent or remove an objection against what he had now said, which might be taken from his own case, whereby it appeared that God was no such sun or shield to him, but exposed him to great and sore calamities; which being certain and evident, David here assigns the true reason of it, which was not from any defect in God’ s goodness and sufficiency, but only from his own gross miscarriages, whereby he had clouded this sun, and cast away this shield, and forfeited these privileges by departing from his integrity.

Psalms 84:11 For the LORD God [is] a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good [thing] will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.Ver. 11. For the Lord God is a sun and shield] A universal, all-sufficient, and satisfactory good, proportionate to our necessities. The Lord will give grace and glory] One would think that were enough, yea, but then here is more than enough, "No good thing will he withhold," &c., and thence is David’ s desire so to be about him.

Verse 11. For the Lord God is a sun and shield] To illuminate, invigorate, and warm; to protect and defend all such as prefer him and his worship to every thing the earth can produce. It is remarkable that not one of the Versions understand the שמש shemesh, as signifying sun, as we do. They generally concur in the following translation: "For the Lord loveth mercy and truth, and he will give grace and glory." The Chaldee says, "The Lord is as a high wall and a strong shield; grace and glory will the Lord give, and will not deprive those of blessedness who walk in perfection." Critics in general take the word as signifying a defence or a guard. Instead of שמש shemesh, sun, Houbigant reads שמר shemer, a keeper or guardian, and says that to represent God as the sun is without example in the sacred writings. But is not Malachi 4:2, a parallel passage to this place? "Unto you that fear my name, shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings." No MS. countenances the alteration of Houbigant. The Lord will give grace] To pardon, purify, and save the soul from sin: and then he will give glory to the sanctified in his eternal kingdom; and even here he withholds no good thing from them that walk uprightly. Well, therefore, might the psalmist say, Psalms 84:12, "O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee." ANALYSIS OF THE EIGHTY-FOURTH PSALM This Psalm may be divided into the following parts: - I. The psalmist, absent from the public worship of God, shows his love to the house of God, and his desire to be present in it, Psalms 84:1-3. II. The happiness of those who continue in that assembly, Psalms 84:4-7. III. He prays for restoration to it, and sets down the causes, Psalms 84:8-11. IV. The blessedness of the man who trusts in God, Psalms 84:12. I. 1. He begins with the pathetical exclamation, "How amiable are thy tabernacles!" A mode of expression which intimates there is none equal to them. 2. He expresses his ardent affection to the house of God: - 1. "My soul longeth," c. 2. "My heart and flesh cry out," c. 3. He laments his absence from God's house. The sparrows and swallows have their respective houses, where they may be present, build, hatch their young, &c., but he could have no access to God's house. And this he expresses in an affecting appeal to God to move his pity: - 1. "O Lord of hosts!" I acknowledge thee as my Leader. 2. "My King." I acknowledge myself as thy subject. 3. "My God." Whom I serve, and have taken for my portion. II. The happiness of those who have liberty to worship God in his temple. 1. "Blessed are they." They enjoy thy ordinances, and have blessings in all. 2. "Who dwell:" Who continue in union with God, ever prizing his ordinances. 3.

11. a sun and shield] R.V., A sun and a shield. Nowhere else in the O.T. is Jehovah directly called a sun, though the ideas conveyed by the metaphor are frequent. Cp. Psalms 27:1; Isaiah 10:17; Isaiah 60:19-20; Malachi 4:2. Perhaps the prevalence of sun-worship in the East led to the avoidance of so natural and significant a metaphor. Even here the oldest Versions either had a different reading or shrank from a literal rendering. The LXX and Theodotion have: For the Lord God loveth mercy and truth. The Targ. paraphrases, For the Lord God is like a high wall and a strong shield, reading shemesh (= sun), but taking it in the sense of battlement (R.V. pinnacles) which it has in Isaiah 54:12. The Syr. gives, our sustainer and our helper. Only the later Greek Versions and Jerome render the Massoretic text literally. the Lord &c.] Favour (Genesis 39:21), honour (Psalms 85:9; 1 Kings 3:13) and prosperity (Psalms 85:12) are the reward of the upright. Cp. the parallel in Proverbs 3:33-35, which speaks of God’s blessing on the habitation of the righteous, of His bestowal of favour on the lowly, and of the honour which is the inheritance of the wise. Grace and glory suggest to us ideas which were hardly in the Psalmist’s mind, though his words include all divine blessings, and he would not have drawn the sharp distinction between temporal and spiritual things which we are accustomed to do. But the temporal blessings of the Old Covenant are the types of the spiritual blessings of the New; and the promise, like so many sayings in the Psalter, receives a larger sense and a spiritual meaning in the light of the Gospel. See Romans 5:2; 1 Peter 5:10. them that walk uprightly] Making sincere devotion to God and perfect integrity in their dealings with men the rule of their lives. Cp. Psalms 15:2, note; Psalms 101:2; Psalms 101:6.

For the Lord God is a sun - The Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate render this, “For the Lord loveth mercy and truth.” Our translation, however, is the correct one.

11. A sun—To enlighten, enliven, and gladden. See Malachi 4:2; Psalms 4:7. Shield—The symbol of defence. Psalms 84:9. Grace and glory—The idea is, salvation and honour.