Psalms 128
Butler1. BLESSED is every one that feareth the LORD, That walketh in his ways. 2 For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. 3 Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine, in the innermost parts of thine house:
Thy children like olive plants, round about thy table.
4. Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed That feareth the LORD. 5 The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: And thou halt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. 6 Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children. Peace be upon Israel.
THIS is a sunny picture of the family happiness of one who fears God and leads a holy life. P.—In the former Psalm the prophet treated of both national and domestic life. Here also he joineth the two together, yet hath he more respect to household government or matrimony, because it is the fountain and source of civil government. Hence this Psalm is an Epithalamium or marriage song, wherein the prophet comforteth them that are married, wishing unto them and promising them from God all manner of blessings. Luther.—This is a song of the home pure and simple. It is the “Home, sweet Home,” of the Hebrew race. Not that the commonwealth is altogether absent from the poet’s thoughts; his final aspiration is “Peace be upon Israel.” Nor does he altogether forget the fair and sacred city which God had chosen for “the habitation of His holiness;” he is still concerned for “the prosperity of Jerusalem.” But in this Psalm Israel and Jerusalem, the commonwealth and its capital, are viewed in their relation to domestic life and as contributing to its happiness. Cox.
1. Happy is every fearer of Jehovah, the (one) walking in His ways. As if he had said, However things may now seem to an eye of sense, it is still a certain truth that the truly happy man is he who fears Jehovah not in mere profession, but who testifies his fear of Him by walking in His ways or doing His commandments. A.—Dost thou fear God? Why, the Holy Ghost hath on purpose indicted for thee a whole Psalm to sing concerning thyself. So that thou mayest even as thou art, in thy calling, bed, journey, or whenever, sing out thine own blessed and happy condition to thine own comfort and the comfort of thy fellows. Bunyan.
They whose blessed state we are here assured of are such as fear the Lord, and walk in His ways; such as have a deep reverence of God upon their spirits, and evidence it by a regular and constant conformity to His will. Such are blessed (v. 1), and shall be blessed (v. 4). God blessed them, and His pronouncing them blessed makes them so. They are blessed now, they shall be blessed still, and forever. It is asserted (v. 4), with a note commanding attention, Behold, thus shall the man be blessed; behold it by faith in the promise; behold it by observation in the performance of the promise; behold it with assurance that it shall be so, for God is faithful; and with admiration that it should be so, for we merit no favor, no blessing from Him. H.
2. The labor of thy hands. This is the first part of the blessing—the quiet, peaceful life of a thriving, prosperous yeoman in the country, with no fear that the harvest will be trodden down by the invader before it is ripe, or the cattle swept off by some roving predatory tribe. The opposite condition is threatened as a curse in the law (Lev. 26 : 16 ; Deut. 28 : 30-33). P.
We are promised a blessing upon hard work and honest industry. Though we are in God’s hands, we are to be supported by our own hands. He will give us daily bread, but it must be made our own by labor. The promise is that labor shall be fruitful, and that he who performs it shall himself enjoy the recompense of it. S.
We value and we enjoy every outward good in exact proportion to its cost to us, in labor of brain or hand and in trial of heart. B.—Supposing it were possible that we could obtain the objects of our desire without any toil or trouble, we should not enjoy them. To benefit us really, they must be the growths of our own self-denial and labor. And this is the great lesson which the miracles of our Lord, wrought in the manner in which they were, unfolded. They teach us that, in both temporal and spiritual things, we should not so throw ourselves upon the providence or grace of God as to neglect the part we have ourselves to act—that God crowns every honest and faithful effort of man with success: “For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.” Macmillan.
3. The comparison would perhaps be brought out more clearly by arranging the verse as follows:
“Thy wife shall be in the inner part of thy house
Like a fruitful vine;
Thy children round about thy table
Like the shoots of the olive.”
In the inner part, literally, “the sides of thy house,” as in Amos 6:10, i.e., the women’s apartments, as marking the proper sphere of the wife engaged in her domestic duties, and also to some extent her seclusion, though this was far less among the Jews than among other Orientals. The “vine” is an emblem chiefly of fruitfulness, but perhaps also of dependence, as needing support; the “olive,” of vigorous, healthy, joyous life. P.
The general type of an Oriental house is—a court, with or without a fountain and garden, round the inner sides of which runs an arched colonnade; under the arches are doors which open on the living rooms of the family; these arches and the walls under them are often adorned with climbing plants that yield flowers or fruit. Some such dwelling as this seems to have been in the writer’s mind. And he compares the householder’s wife to a vine which adorns its inner sides; the image of “the vine” being employed not only to denote fruitfulness, nor only dependence, but the grace, the added comeliness and cheerfulness which every true wife and mother lends to the life of the home. Their children are compared to “olive plants”—the olive being often found in the court of an Eastern house—because the olive was a recognized Hebrew symbol of vigor, health, and joy. Cox.—The wife and mother is a fruitful vine and a faithful housekeeper; if you wish to find her, she is within the house; she is to be found both inside and outside the home, but her chief usefulness is in the inner side of the dwelling, which she adorns. S.
God has indicated in the structure of the physical frame, and in the mental characteristics which correspond, different spheres of duty for the husband and the wife. The adaptation of each sex to its sphere is equally perfect, and as both are parts of one indivisible race, the terms superior and inferior are not properly applicable. What is needed is a distinct recognition by each sex of its own sphere, and a cheerful acceptance of its responsibilities and duties. The object is unity through diversity, and, within limits, the greater the diversity the greater the beauty of the possible unity. M. II.
Thy children like olive plants. Follow me into the grove, and see what may have suggested the comparison. This aged and decayed tree is surrounded, as you see, by several young and thrifty shoots, which spring from the root of the venerable parent. They seem to uphold, protect, and embrace it. Thus do good and affectionate children gather round the table of the righteous. Each contributes something to the common wealth and welfare of the whole. W. M. Thomson.
4. Thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord.** Here we have the living fountain of the blessing which rests upon the conjugal and domestic state. When worldly prudence attempts to choose a wife and form a household, it can apply its hand only to so much of the work as has its seat upon earth and is visible to the eye of sense. It builds, so to speak, the first and the second story, adds cornice and pediment, and the fabric presents a fair appearance; but it has no foundation. Whenever you see the household of a married pair continuing to defy every storm, you may be sure that it rests upon a sure foundation, lying beyond the reach of human sense, and that that foundation is the fear of the Lord. To the fear of the Lord, therefore, the holy Psalmist has wisely given a chief place in this beautiful Psalm, which celebrates the blessing that descends upon conjugal and domestic life. Tholuck.
4,5. He shall be blessed in his wife, and blessed in his children; so blessed in both that the Psalmist calls all to behold it, as a beautiful, yea, wonderful sight, “Behold, thus shall the man be blessed.” And yet the man fearing God shall be blessed more than thus; his blessing shall come in the best way (v. 5), The Lord shall bless thee out of Zion; His temporal mercies shall come in a spiritual way; yea, he shall have spiritual blessings; and he shall have blessings beyond his own walls, Thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Israel. When a good man looks home to his own house and sees good there; when also he looks abroad to Jerusalem and sees good there, too, how full is his joy! how complete is his blessedness! and, Behold, thus the man is blessed that feareth the Lord. Caryl.
5. Looking on the beautiful family picture, the poet turns to greet the father of the household, and to wish him the blessing of which he has already spoken in such glowing terms. Out of Zion, as the dwelling-place of God, his earthly throne and sanctuary, whence all blessing comes. Then follows the truly patriotic sentiment—the wish that he may see the prosperity of Jerusalem, as well as that he may live long to see his children and grandchildren. The welfare of the family and the welfare of the State are indissolubly connected. P.
5,6. Every blessing enjoyed by the individual comes from the God of salvation, who has taken up His abode in Zion, and is perfected by participation in the prosperity of the holy city and of the Church as a whole, of which Zion is the centre. A New Testament hymn would here open up the prospect of the new Jerusalem. But the character of limitation to this present world stamped upon the Old Testament does not admit of this. The promise refers only to a participation during this life in the well-being of Jerusalem and to a life long-continued in one’s children’s children, and in this sense intercessory calls down peace upon Israel in all its members, in all places, and in all ages. D.
6. And see thou sons to thy sons. Peace (be) upon Israel! The first clause is a virtual promise of long life—thou shalt see thy children’s children. An interesting parallel is furnished by Zech. 8:4, the whole of which chapter is indeed a prophetic commentary on this Psalm. A.—Long life and the prosperity of the Hebrew commonwealth were the deepest desires of the Israelite indeed. And these blessings the poet invokes on the head of the happy father of the ideal household. Nay, as he remembers how many such households there are in the land, that they are the real strength and glory of the commonwealth and how utterly they may wither before the hot blasts of war and invasion, he breathes the higher and more comprehensive prayer, “Peace be upon Israel, that so these happy homes may abide and multiply in the land.”
“Home,” say the poets, “is the last relic of Paradise.” And however questionable that may be, there is unquestionably a breath as of Paradise in our Psalm. It is the picture of a happy home. God has blessed the land with peace. The husband and father goes forth to his daily toils, fearing no foe, saved from all anxiety by his trust in the Divine goodness and bounty. When the sun sets behind the western hills, he returns to “eat the labor of his hands,” to teach his children the fear of the Lord, to sing praises unto God. His wife is fair to him as the vine which hangs from pillar and arch on the sides of his house; his children are pleasant as the vigorous olives which enrich his fields. This happy home is open to the sky. Thoughts of God are as natural to him and more precious than thoughts of temporal good. He loves Zion. He prays for the prosperity of Jerusalem. Three times every year he leaves his home that he may stand in the courts of the Lord’s house. He lives in a constant reverence of Jehovah, and “walks in His ways,” go where he will. It is a very sunny picture; it is an ideal full of purity and charm. If we analyze the Psalm to discover the constituents of this happy and noble domestic life, we find three main elements in it—industry, tranquillity, godliness; and each of these springing from a sincere and constant faith in God. By subtle touches that are not to be defined, by the very choice of his words and figures, the poet makes us feel how calm and deep is the household peace which springs from faith in God, from the obedience to Divine laws which that faith prompts, from the confident hope for the future which it inspires. Cox.
Before the fall Paradise was man’s home; since the fall home has been his Paradise. Hare.
The family was constituted in the beginning by the direct act of God, and with His special blessing. The sacred union of a single pair is the source of all domestic happiness; and the family so constituted is the basis of a true social state, and the germ from which the nation itself must grow. Our Lord quoted this original form of consecration to show the sacredness and permanence of the marriage-covenant, and added, “What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” How tender and beautiful this care of the Creator for the welfare of the human race, through a provision that gives to natural affections the sacredness of a Divine ordinance and the promise of Divine benediction! They who would degrade marriage degrade man and dishonor God.
J. P. T.—The family constitution is in analogy with the moral government of God, as being a part of it and in subserviency to it. “Framed for this brief and transitory, yet all-important state of existence, and to expire with the last generation of human beings, still it points to what is permanent and unchangeable. In its constitution, as far as we can penetrate, it displays the nearest approach to the Divine government, and unquestionably it bears this resemblance with an immediate view to the best interests of that government. As man himself was originally created in the image of God, so it would seem, in the depth of his condescension, He intended to place him at the head of a government, the shade or similitude of His own.” (Anderson.) And as, in the Divine government, the glory of God is coincident with the well-being of the creature, so in the family the honor of the parent and the welfare of the child are coincident. So that the highest interest of the child, the highest honor of the parent, and the highest glory of God are coincident. J. Harris.
The family is a Divine arrangement, designed to be preparatory to the Church. Every truly religious family is a little church. Its office is to train up God’s children for individual membership in His greater Church on earth; even as the office of this is to train them more perfectly for their collective character, as “the bride,” the Church in heaven, which is on the morning of the great day of days to be presented to Christ, arrayed in divinely effulgent glories, for the enjoyment with Him of eternal blessedness and honor. J. S. Stone.—God confides to every believing household upon earth the task of taking the seed that these great sowers of the Word have sown and cherishing it beneath the tender and gracious and mighty influence of home. Such is God’s will and God’s purpose for the preservation of His faith. The family is its safe hiding-place, its true nursery, that none can invade or desecrate. Bishop Magee.
The divinely established home is the home where self-support and habits of industry are promoted; the home where, in privacy and underwise jurisdiction, children may be brought up in modesty, simplicity, and obedience; the home where family worship may be maintained and religious teaching imparted; the home where the outside world may be admitted at our own option, and for its good as well as for our advantage. Home is the appointed school for man’s symmetrical training—physical, intellectual, social, executive, and spiritual, and when man and woman make home a school for life, for body and soul, for the neighbor and for self, for temporal good and for eternity, then and then only do they use God’s best gifts of grace and of opportunity. J. H. Vincent.
The most beautiful and holy scene on earth is the Christian home. Constituted by the most intimate and peculiar relationships, sequestered from the general world by a common dwelling, and still more by peculiar affinities, united to each other by instinctive, intense, and indestructible affections, by community of interests, by identity of thought and habit and care, and imbued with a deep and pervading piety, its earthly love sanctified by heavenly, its common thankfulness finding expression by praise, and its common want in prayer, its tempers controlled, its affections hallowed, its virtues moulded and stimulated by the fear of God and the love of Christ—it realizes our highest earthly possibilities of sanctity and blessedness. Its natural affections are the most perfect and beautiful of which we are capable; and when these are hallowed and glorified by religious love and purity, they constitute a blessedness deep and inviolable and mysterious—a “peace that passeth all understanding, filling the heart and mind”—a blessedness so ineffable and holy that, as upon all deep blessedness, an awe rests upon it in the consciousness of him who realizes it. . . . The social intercommunion of our homes, so perfectly unique, founded upon affections so distinctive, the peculiar love of husband and wife, of parent and child, of brother and sister, must justly be regarded as one of the wisest provisions of our loving Father in heaven for our human happiness and sanctity. Just imagine the non-existence of these little social communities, our race multiplied in some way, each individual alone and isolated, save in the associations of accidental intercourse. How much the world would lose in kindly affection now developed and diffused by the genial influence of home alone! What inestimable treasure is its household love, hoarded in its million happy homes! What a qualification and correction of its hardness and selfishness! Where would the heart give forth its purest feelings, were they not solicited by the tender names of home? Where would its ruggedness be softened and fitted for kindly intercourse with men, if it were not there? Where would care relax its knitted brow and unburden its heavy heart were it not before the trusting love of brother and sister, husband and wife? In the crowd of men we should be utterly solitary; with appeals to our benevolence on every hand we should be utterly selfish; shut up in his own little self man would have no fear for misery, no sympathies for friendship, no heart for love; surrounded by the world’s temptations, he would have no sanctuary to which to flee, no pure and loving thought of mother and sister to arm him against temptation, and stimulate him to virtue. Thank God, we say, for the social and religious blessings of our homes. H. Allon.
Those who have homes should specially seek to keep them free from everything that is false. To accustom the young to the view of double dealing in those whom God has taught them first to revere is to sap the foundation of all faith. That God set the “solitary in families,” that He made a world with a father and mother, with brothers and sisters in it, and caused such pure affection to well up from these fountains, is His way of helping us to believe in genuine love. And yet it may be remarked here that while a home and children were intended to make men believers in unselfishness, some men may use them so that selfishness may grow. They may be made a more subtle means for the exercise of vanity and egotism. They should not close the door of the heart to the outside world, but open it more widely. If so used and filled with truth and pure affection, the family may be made the best of human agencies for destroying the unhappy distrust in all reality. Happy is the man who, when the outer streams become turbid, “can drink waters out of his own cistern, and running waters out of his own well;” and happy next is he who, when transparency seems to meet him no more in his later course, has such a fountain of purity to look back upon in an early home. Ker.
One of the most important requisites of home life is the intimacy that should exist between the parent and the child. This is, indeed, the foundation on which all good influences may be most securely laid. The control which is obtained through fear or force or bare authority has nothing abiding in it. Just as soon as the fear is outgrown or the force removed its power will pass away. But the influence which is at work where real sympathy and friendship exist between parents and children will abide long after the relation itself is severed, and will enter as a powerful factor into the whole life. There are two opposite extremes, both of which tend to prevent this sympathy. One is the prevailing fault of a past régime, which only required of this relation absolute authority on the one hand and absolute submission on the other. The spirit of the times has drifted us into an opposite extreme, equally unfavorable to true parental friendship. The desire to impose no unnatural restraint, and to grant all possible liberty, has had full sway, and the result has been, in many cases, not a knitting together, but a virtual separation, to a great extent, between parent and child. To steer between these two dangers—to avoid, on the one hand, the austere discipline that engenders fear and dislike, and, on the other, the weak laxity and slackness that verge into indifference, should be the aim of every parent. To do this is not merely to seek an average between severity and indulgence; it is rather to establish such an intimate relation of love and confidence that the temporary displeasure of the parent shall be the keenest penalty, and the unrestrained expression of his affection the sweetest indulgence.
The friendship which should underlie this relation is not that of equals; it has a different root and bears very different fruit. The authority of the parent wisely and lovingly exercised, the obedience of the child gladly and freely rendered, are both essential to the growth of this peculiar friendship. That they may rightfully fill their office, there must be a firm, stanch, and loving loyalty and fidelity, each to each. The parent must truly sympathize in all the child’s experiences and feelings; the child must look up with fullest confidence and loving trust to the parent as his best friend. There must be honest and genuine feelings, tenderly expressed, not in words alone, but in all the involuntary and spontaneous action of daily life. Founded on such an intimacy, and upheld by such principles, the homes of our land will indeed minister, as nothing else can, to the happiness of society and the character and welfare of our national life. Ledger (Philadelphia).—(Read Ps. 68:6.)
Among the mightiest influences of our homes are their memories. They bring happiness or bitterness, according as they are sweet and tender, or painful and evil. There is no need of argument to prove the influence of home memories in the formation of character. When one’s childhood home has been true, its memories never can be effaced. Its teachings may long remain unheeded, and life may become a sad waste. Sin may sweep over the soul like a devouring flame, leaving only blackened ruin; but the memory of the old home lives on, like a solitary star burning in the gloom of night. Even in revels and carousals its picture floats in the mind like a vanished dream, and often it wooes the wanderer back. It was the memory
of home that touched the prodigal son. But it is only of a Christian home that the best memories are borne. An ungodly home twines about the tender lives of the young within its doors no such sacred cords to bind them to truth, virtue, and love. The intercourse of an unloving household leaves no such joy-fountains, but rather bitter regrets and griefs, in the hearts of its members. And in a Christless, prayerless home, sorrows are not transfigured and changed into blessings. It is only when the cross is the centre of all that the memories of a home are hallowed benedictions. S. S. T.