Psalms 127
Butler1. EXCEPT the LORD build the house, They labour in vain that build it: Except the LORD keep the city, The watchman waketh but in vain.
2. It is vain for you that ye rise up early, and so late take rest, And eat the bread of toil: For so he giveth unto his beloved sleep.
3. Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: And the fruit of the womb is his reward. 4 As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, So are the children of youth. 5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: They shall not be ashamed, When they speak with their enemies in the gate.
THIS and the next Psalm form two bright companion pictures of social and domestic life, and of the happiness of a household which, trained in the fear of God, is blessed by His providence. “These pictures,” says Isaac Taylor, “are mild and bright; humanizing are they in the best sense; they retain certain elements of Paradise, and yet more the elements of the patriarchal era, with the addition of that patriotism and of that concentration in which the patriarchal life was wanting. The happy religious man, after the Hebrew pattern, possessed those feelings and habitudes which, if they greatly prevail in a community, impart to it the strength of a combination which is stronger than any other; uniting the force of domestic virtue, of rural, yeoman-like, agricultural occupations, of unaggressive defensive valor, and of a religious animation which is national as well as authentic and true. Our modern learning in Oriental modes of life and its circumstances and scenery may help us to bring into view either of two gay pictures— that of the Hebrew man in mid-life, at rest in his country home, with his sturdy sons about him; his wife is still young; her fair daughters are like cornices sculptured as decorations for a palace; or else the companion picture, with its group on their way Zionward, resting for the sultry noon-hour under the palms by the side of a stream, and yet home, happy home, is in the recollection of the party; but the hill of God, ‘whereunto the tribes of the Lord go up,’ is in the fervent purpose of all; and while they rest they beguile the time with a sacred song and with its soothing melody. Happy were the people while their mind was such as this, and such their habits, and such their piety!” P.—This and the next may very certainly be described as domestic Psalms. The theme of both is the home life of Israel; the former speaking rather of the home in the city, the latter of the home in the country. The one speaks of domestic life in its relation to national life; the other speaks of the home pure and simple, as it stands alone, with the pure, gracious heaven above it. Cox.
This Psalm can never be out of season, the design of its author being to teach us the necessity of a dependence upon God and His blessing, in every work to which we set our hands. No work can prosper without Him, nor can any design miscarry under His favor and protection. Bishop Horne.
God’s blessing on His people as their one great necessity and privilege is here spoken of. We are here taught that builders of houses and cities, systems and fortunes, empires and churches all labor in vain without the Lord; but under the Divine favor they enjoy perfect rest. Sons, who are in the Hebrew called “builders,” are set forth as building up families under the same Divine blessing, to the great honor and happiness of their parents. It is the Builder’s Psalm. “Every house is builded by some man, but He that built all things is God,” and unto God be praise. S.
That everything depends upon God’s blessing, the poet proves by examples taken from the divinely ordained circles of the family and the state. The raising of the house that affords us shelter, the stability of the city in which we dwell securely and peacefully, the acquisition of the possessions that maintain and adorn life, the begetting and upbringing of sons who prove a strong support to their ageing father—all these are things that depend upon God’s blessing. D.
1. All our intense care in the acquisition or accomplishment of any object, without the Divine co-operation and blessing, will be fruitless. It is utterly in vain that we should labor for that on which our heart is set, so as to leave ourselves neither re t nor comfort, if the counsel of the Lord, which alone can stand, be adverse to our views. Duties are ours, events are God’s; and the way is to do these duties free from anxiety, because trusting in Him; and He will give us all that He knoweth we have need of. Chalmers.
The watchman waketh in vain. The best guardians of your property are the men who, morning and evening, implore the favor and protection of God; the righteous, for whose sakes God ever spares or mitigates His judgments; who implore God to be your defence by night, and who acknowledge His merciful protection with the returning light of day. These are our watchmen and our bulwark. Oh, when shall all learn to commit their property, their families, and their lives to God as to a Father who is all-wise and powerful and kind! J. P. T.
He that closeth his eyes at night without prayer lies down before his bed is made. He is like a foolish captain in a garrison, who betakes himself to his rest before he hath set the watch for the city’s safeguard. God is His people’s keeper; but can he expect to be kept by Him that chargeth not the Divine providence with his keeping? The angels, at His command, pitch their tents about His saints’ dwellings. But God looks, that by humble prayer we should beg of Him their ministry and attendance about us. Gurnall. Their thoughts are vain who think that their watching can preserve the city which God Himself is not willing to keep. And are not theirs as vain who think that God will keep the city for which they themselves are not careful to watch? The husbandman may not therefore leave his plough, nor the merchant forsake his trade, because God hath promised, “I will not forsake thee.” Hooker.
The Psalmist does not bid the builder cease from laboring, nor suggest that watchmen should neglect their duty, nor that men should show their trust in God by doing nothing; nay, he supposes that they will do all that they can do, and then he forbids their fixing their trust in what they have done, and assures them that all creature effort will be in vain unless the Creator puts forth His power, to render second causes effectual. Happy is the man who hits the golden mean by so working as to believe in God, and so believing in God as to work without fear. Much can be done by man; he can both labor and watch; but without the Lord he has accomplished nothing, and his wakefulness has not warded off evil. S.
There is progress in life, there is progress in history, because the Lord is building, working, and watching with man; and man is learning—slowly, alas! and by stages that seem imperceptible each moment, visible only over a long range of generations—that the one way of life, the one fountain of blessing, is the taming of his self-will to build, and watch, and work with God. The great concern of man’s life on earth is the discovery and establishment of a harmony between himself and God. The concord of man’s thought and activity with God’s is the secret upon earth of all true, real, and abiding work. Man is the architect of his own character and his own destiny. Principles and habits of moral judgment and action are the true house of the soul, wherein it dwells and from which it comes forth to work benignly or malignly for itself and mankind. Of that house man is the architect, not God; that house he is daily building, and that building will abide and be the home or the prison of the soul throughout eternity. If you would build wisely, look to the foundations. Christ is the one Rock on which the house of life must rest if it is to escape the floods and fires by which all that is perishable must perish, and be lifted on high among the imperishable things through eternity. And build daily in conscious, blessed dependence on the co-operation of a higher hand. There is One working with you, working in you, who alone can make your building of the house of life a large and lasting success. J. B. Brown.
2. Ye that rise. The Hebrew expression runs literally, “making early to rise, making late to sit (down),” i.e., going forth early to labor, and returning late at night to take rest. It is an artificial lengthening of the natural day. P.
We should give over undue and anxious labor to accomplish our designs. The law of work is in our nature. The limitations of effort are set forth in nature. In order that all may be accomplished by the human race which is necessary to be done for human progress, all men must work. But no man should work beyond his physical and intellectual ability, nor beyond the hours which nature allots. Deems.
So He giveth His beloved sleep. It is vain for you to be early to rise and late to rest, eating the bread of hard labor (Hebrew). “So,” i.e., all this, “God will give to His beloved with sleep.’ The beloved of God who trust His care and enjoy His blessings shall obtain their bread along with needful sleep—i.e., bread, and sleep besides—without sacrificing sleep to excessive unreasonable toil. So I prefer, on the whole, to interpret this somewhat difficult clause. C.
I am inclined to prefer the rendering, “So He giveth His beloved sleep,” though it is difficult to explain the reference of the particle “so.” I suppose it refers to the principle laid down in the previous verse, there being a tacit comparison, “as all labor is vain without God’s providence, as He builds the house, as He watches the city, so He gives the man who loves Him and leaves all in His hands calm, refreshing sleep.” There is no discouragement here to honest labor. It is undue anxiety, a feverish straining, a toiling, as if toil of itself could command success, the folly of which is condemned. Compare for a similar sentiment Prov. 10 : 22, “The blessing of Jehovah maketh rich, and toil can add nothing thereto.” The teaching is that of our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, God’s “beloved” are not exempted from the great law of labor which lies upon all, but the sting is taken from it when they can leave all results in a Father’s hand, with absolute trust in His wisdom and goodness. P.
Quiet sleep is the gift of God, and it is the love of God to give quiet sleep. Have we through God’s blessing this benefit, let us abundantly give praise and live praise unto God hereupon. Yea, large praise belongs to the Lord for quiet sleep. P. Goodwin.—Sleep is God’s gift to His beloved. We owe it to His goodness that our sleep is safe (Psalm 4 : 8), that it is sweet (Jer. 31 : 25, 26). Then God gives us sleep as He gives it to His beloved when with it He gives us grace to lie down in His fear (our souls returning to Him and reposing in Him as our Rest), and when we awake to be still with Him, and to use the refreshment we have by sleep in His service. H.
When a man’s capacity, full spent in good, comes to its limit, and conscience audits the reckoning of its hours, to fall back into God’s sole keeping and be recruited by unconscious rest in His bosom is the true Christly sleep, at once a natural bestowment and a supernatural gift. Be it in a palace or a hovel, be it on the land or on the sea, be it in outward calm or storm, be it with man’s approbation or without, the resting place is glorious, the rest itself a baptism of peace—“God giveth His beloved sleep.” H. B.
The most unwelcome guest after a sinful day is God. The most joyful guest after a day of honest and faithful service is God. And here is where so many families miss the joy of Christian life. Where the evening song and prayer is in the home, there God comes with a smile and a blessing that calms us to rest. He lifts off our hearts the burden of daily care, and we find sleep, knowing that He is watching over us. Interior.
3. Behold,** as drawing particular attention to one marked example of God’s good gifts; which none can question is emphatically His gift; on this the poet lingers, “allured by the charm of the subject,” for such there was, especially to an Oriental, to whom a numerous progeny was the first of blessings, giving value and stability to all others. P.
Children are an heritage of the Lord. The Psalmist speaks of what children are unto godly parents, for unto such only is any blessing given by God as a reward, and the Psalmist expressly speaks of blessings which God gives His beloved ones. T. Goodwin.—There is no reason why you should be apprehensive for your families and country; there is no reason why you should weary yourselves with such great and such restless labor. God will be with you and your children, since they are His heritage. Le Blanc.—He who gave them will feed them; for it is a fact, and the maxim formed on it has never failed. “Wherever God sends mouths, He sends meat.” “Murmur not,” said an Arab to his friend, “because thy family is large; know that it is for their sakes that God feeds thee.” A. Clarke.
Children are an heritage of the Lord, and as God’s heritage children are worthy of honor, as precious in God’s sight. “Fathers,” says the inspired apostle—and the father always includes the mother as his “better half”—“provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged.” There is no surer way of provoking a child to discouragement than by withholding from him that honor for his nobler nature which is fairly his due; and he who fails to honor his child fails in his duty to his child. Our children deserve honor from us; for they are one generation older than we are and they are beginning life on the elevation at which we are quitting it. They have, in the very nature of things, finer possibilities than it was ours to realize, because they are our children; and the probability is that their faults are not so marked or so injurious as ours have been. While we fail to give our children the honor that is their due, we hold them back from the progress they might be making; whereas, while we give them their meed of honor and respect, we are thereby helping them upward and forward, by inciting them to a struggle for the lofty ideal we perceive and point out to them as their own. If, indeed, we cannot see anything to honor in our children, in one direction or in another, we are helpless to be their helpers in that direction; for honoring a child is an essential factor in the helping of a child. H. C. T.
One of the first duties of a genuinely Christian parent is to show a generous sympathy with the plays of his children; providing playthings and means of play, inviting suitable companions for them, and requiring them to have it as one of their pleasures, to keep such companions entertained in their plays, instead of playing always for their own mere self-pleasing. Sometimes, too, the parent having a hearty interest in the plays of his children, will drop out for the time the sense of his years, and go into the frolic of their mood with them. They will enjoy no other time so much as that, and it will have the effect to make the authority, so far unbent, just as much stronger and more welcome, as it has brought itself closer to them, and given them a more complete show of sympathy. Bushnell.
4. These sons of a man’s youth are particularly mentioned, because they would naturally grow up to be a support and protection to their father in his old age, when he would most need their support. P.—Our children are what we make them. They are represented “As arrows in the hand of a mighty man,” and arrows go the way we aim them. Anon.—“Children of the youth” are “arrows in the hand,” which, with prudence, may be directed aright to the mark, God’s glory, and the service of their generation; but afterward, when they are gone abroad in the world, they are arrows out of the hand; it is too late to bend them then. But these “arrows in the hand” too often prove arrows in the heart, a constant grief to their godly parents, whose gray hairs they bring with sorrow to the grave. H.
5. Among the Jews a numerous offspring was regarded as a marked instance of Divine favor, and the birth of a child was hailed with thanksgiving as a special gift of God. In all our earthly experiences there is no expression of Divine love to be compared with this. What love the babe brings! what love it inspires! what hope it awakens! what joy it kindles! how it draws around it all the hearts of the household in a tender sympathy, a sacred unity, which should bind them all the closer to their Father in heaven! J. P. T.
A recent discovery of classical sculptures has recalled attention to the fact that the ancients had, so far as appears from their works, no appreciation of the beauty of childhood. “The artists whose work has afforded models for all time have not left a single specimen of that beauty which modern eyes most admire, the beauty of childhood.” And in Grecian and Roman literature there is none of that happy picturing, that dwelling with delight upon the beauties of childhood that seem to have entered into the very essence of modern natures. To the Romans, “infancy was only a journey toward manhood; the sooner it was over the better.” “The sympathy with childhood, which gives its coloring to modern literature and art, is to be traced back to utterances which have influenced more than the literature and art of modern Europe. ‘Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven,’ was a saying new to the world. The fresh aspect under which all weakness, all dependence appeared in the light of that teaching was evidently bewildering to its hearers.” It took centuries for the Christian world to take in the full meaning of that utterance, which has not been realized as a fact of ordinary life till nearly our own time. Popular Science Monthly.
Not be ashamed. The father and such a host of sons surrounding him (this is the complex subject) form a phalanx not to be broken through. Unjust judges, malicious accusers, false witnesses, draw back in alarm from before a family so capable of defending itself. D.
In the gate, here mentioned chiefly as the place of judgment, as well as of all public acts. The allusion is to lawsuits, in which, if unjustly accused or brought before an unrighteous judge, a man need not fear lest he should be “put to shame,” i.e., lose his cause; his stalwart sons would not suffer might to prevail against right. P.
Able enough he shall be to defend himself and keep off all injuries, being fortified by his children; and if it happen that he hath a cause depending in the gate, and to be tried before the judges, he shall have the patronage of his children, and not suffer in his plea for want of advocates; his sons will stand up in a just cause for him. W. Nicholson.
Fairly read, the Psalm has a remarkable unity of thought. Not only does it take for its theme the dependence of man on God, it also limits its illustrations of this theme to the circle of domestic and civic life. Home and its happiness, the State and its security, are all of God; we can neither found nor maintain them apart from Him; if we trust in Him, we need not exhaust ourselves with toil, nor fret ourselves with care; He will give us success even when we seem to fail, and bless us even as we lie asleep; let us therefore rest in Him. Of course the Psalmist intends no disparagement of honest labor and a wise vigilance, any more than our Lord did when He bade us not be careful for the morrow because the morrow would take care of itself. What he deprecates, what he condemns, is that excessive devotion to labor, that undue and self-defeating anxiety, that feverish straining after immediate success and immoderate gains, which are often as fatal to the very ends men pursue as they always are to the dignity, enjoyment, and peace of human life. By all means “take thought,” if you would build up either the home or the commonwealth; be diligent and strenuous in endeavor, be provident, be circumspect; but remember it is the blessing of the Lord that really builds the house and keeps the town, that fills the house with the stir of children and peoples the town with strong and valiant men to defend its gates. Cox.
I have lived for a long time [eighty-one years], and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the sacred writings, that “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall proceed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests; our prospects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, or conquest. I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business. Benja-
min Franklin, Speech in Convention for forming a Constitution for the United States, 1787.
If the bounties of heaven were given to man without prayer, they would be received without acknowledgment. Prayer, administering the perpetual lesson of humility, of hope, and of love, makes us feel our connection with heaven through every touch of our necessities; it binds us to Providence by a chain of daily benefits; it impresses the hearts of all with a perpetual remembrance of the God who giveth all. Croly.
The Psalm has a lesson for us. It reminds us that we depend on the Divine bounty for the blessings we most covet and prize, for the happiness of home, for the success of our labors, for the security and advancing welfare of the commonwealth. It affirms that we build in vain unless God build with us, and that we watch in vain unless God watch with us. And it rebukes that excessive addition to labor, and that feverish anxiety as to the outcome of our labors, which, as we all feel, is exhausting our energies and making our life hard and bitter to us. Everywhere in our own experience, no less than in the chronicles of the past, we find proofs that only as men live in harmony with the Divine will can they prosper and be happy, whether in their domestic or in their national relations and affairs. But to do the Divine will, to keep the moral laws in which that will has expressed itself, is to secure and enjoy the Divine blessing. When, as we build, we seek to do that which is right and good and true, God builds with us, and all the forces of the universe are on our side. When, as we watch the affairs of the State, and take our part in them, however small, we feel our dependence on the all-wise Disposer of events and put our trust in Him, God watches with us and over us. He blesses us in our work. He blesses us while we sleep. Let us, then, be careful that we do not exhaust our strength in incessant toils and in the anxieties which are even more exhausting than toil. Let us do the duty of the day with a cheerful diligence, and leave results in the hands of Him “in whose hands are all our ways.” Thus trusting in Him, He will bless us with rest, and prosper us while we rest, and make our life bright and happy because we rest in Him. Cox.