Psalms 132

1. LORD, remember for David All his affliction ; 2 How he sware unto the LORD And vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob ; 3 Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, Nor go up into my bed ; 4 I will not give sleep to mine eyes, Or slumber to mine eyelids ; 5 Until I find out a place for the LORD, A tabernacle for the Mighty One of Jacob. 6 Lo, we heard of it in Ephrathah : We found it in the field of the wood. 7 We will go into his tabernacles ; We will worship at his footstool. 8 Arise, O LORD, into thy resting place ; Thou, and the ark of thy strength. 9 Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness ; And let thy saints shout for joy. 10 For thy servant David’s sake Turn not away the face of thine anointed. 11 The LORD hath sworn unto David in truth ; He will not turn from it : Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne. 12 If thy children will keep my covenant And my testimony that I shall teach them, Their children also shall sit upon thy throne for evermore. 13 For the LORD hath chosen Zion ; He hath desired it for his habitation. 14 This is my resting place for ever : Here will I dwell ; for I have desired it. 15 I will abundantly bless her provision : I will satisfy her poor with bread. 16 Her priests also will I clothe with salva- tion : And her saints shall shout aloud for joy. 17 There will I make the horn of David to bud : I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed. 18 His enemies will I clothe with shame : But upon himself shall his crown flourish.

THIS Psalm is a prayer that God’s promises made to David may not fail of fulfilment, that He will dwell forever in the habitation which He chose for Himself in Zion, and that the chil- dren of David may forever sit upon His throne. It opens with a recital of David’s efforts to bring the ark to its resting-place ; it ends with a recital of the promises made to David and to his seed. There has been much difference of opinion as to the occasion for which the Psalm was written. P.

The Temple in Jerusalem was itself a prophe- cy. The true abiding-place of God, the true meeting-place of God and man, the true seat of the oracle, the true place of the real sacrifice, was the Temple of Christ’s body. The anointed king in the holy hill of Zion was a prophecy. The true Son of David, the everlasting King, is Jesus the Anointed. Then, again, the New Testament teaches that besides this one real Temple, Christ Himself, He is building through all the ages an habitation for God—the Church. Hence our Psalm has been universally and wisely applied to the Church of these Christian days, and its invocations and promises claimed as expressive of the desires and confidences of Chris- tian people in their work for God. We are God’s building, and we are God’s builders too. The Psalm is full of strength and encourage- ment for us in both characters. We may call it the Song of the Builders. It falls into two parts—man’s and God’s. In the former (vs. 1-10) we have the toil that went before the completion of the Temple, and the prayer for the Divine blessing on it, now that it is com- plete. In the latter we have God’s answer, guaranteed by His oath, corresponding to and surpassing all the petitions of the prayers. A. M.

1. Remember, O Jehovah, for David, all his affliction. This Psalm contains a commemora- tion of David’s zeal for the house of God (vs. 1-9), and a prayer that it may be rewarded by the fulfilment of the promise to him and to his house (vs. 10-18). The common version (re- member David and all his afflictions) omits a preposition and inserts a conjunction, both with- out necessity. The precise sense is his being afflicted. The distress referred to is the great anxiety which David felt, first to reunite the ark and tabernacle, and then to build a more permanent sanctuary. This zeal for the house of God is one of the most characteristic features in the history of David, and for this he was rewarded not only with a promise that his son should execute his favorite design, but also with a promise that God would build a house for him, by granting a perpetual succession in his family upon the throne of Judah. A.

3. Tent of my house, i.e., “the tent which is my house” (as in the next clause, “the couch which is my bed”), a good instance of the way in which the associations of the old patriarchal tent-life fixed themselves in the language of the people. P.

6. We heard of it at Ephratah. The only explanation, equally agreeable to usage and the context, is that which makes Ephratah the ancient name of Bethlehem (Gen. 48:7), here mentioned as the place where David spent his youth, and where he used to hear of the ark, although he never saw it till long afterward, when he found it in the fields of the wood, in the neighborhood of Kirjath-jearim, which name means Forest-town, or City of the Woods. A.

6-8. On the whole, whichever interpretation we adopt, the general scope of the passage seems to be, Remember Thy servant David; remember all his efforts to build Thee an habitation for Thy name; he gave himself no rest till he had brought the ark to Zion. We heard where the ark was; we went to fetch it, saying one to another as we brought it to its new abode, “Let us come into His dwelling,” etc. And now, by the memory of David, by the memory of Thy covenant with him and his faithfulness to that covenant, we plead with Thee. Reject not the prayer of our king, who is David’s son; grant him the request of his lips, fulfil all his desires. P.

7-9. By a sudden transition the ark is supposed to be brought to its destined home and all is ready for worship. Pertinent now is the solemn public prayer that God Himself would arise and come into this place of His abiding rest—the seat of His visible presence (the Shekinah) being above the mercy-seat, upon the lid of the ark of the covenant and underneath the cherubim. The words of this prayer are those used by Solomon at the dedication of the first temple when he came precisely to this point—the consecration of the ark and the prayerful invocation of God’s presence to abide there (2 Chr. 6:41), “Now, therefore, arise, O Lord God, into Thy resting-place, Thou and the ark of Thy strength; let thy priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and let Thy saints rejoice in goodness.” C.

8,9. The Psalmist asks first that God would dwell in the completed Temple, and that the symbol of His presence may now at last, after so many wanderings, rest there. It had journeyed before the people in their wilderness marches. It had been planted in Shiloh, and had deserted that sanctuary which He once loved. It had tarried for a while at Mizpeh and at Bethel. It had been lost on the fatal field of Aphek. It had been carried in triumph through Philistine cities, and had been sent back in their terror. It had lain for three months in the house of Obed-edom. For twenty years it had been hidden in Kirjath. It had been brought up with song and dance to David’s house, and now it stands in the holy place. There may it abide, and go no more out. He prays that the priests may be not merely in name and office, nor in symbolical attire, but in inmost reality, clothed with righteousness, may be pure and good as their office demands, and not, like the miserable sons of Eli, who had lost the ark at Eben-ezer, robed in violence and crime. He prays that the gathered Israel may receive such communications of God’s love that their hearts and their lips may be filled with joy. And he prays, as at the beginning of the Psalm, that the memory of David may avail to bring down answers of peace to the prayer of David’s son. May we not from all this draw a needful lesson for ourselves as to the one great blessing which all builders for God should desire. To be filled with God, to be pure and good, to be glad and jubilant, to have perpetual access with prayers to His mercy-seat, and large answers to the God-pleasing petitions—these are the true notes of the Church, and of the individual Christian man. What do we desire most for our brethren and for ourselves? Is the sum of all our hopes and wishes for both gathered in the one mighty petition, “Arise, O Lord, into Thy rest, Thou and the ark of Thy strength?” Do we see all other gifts wrapped up in that? Do we long for it, in the firm confidence that when He comes He will bring all that we need, that His indwelling, and it alone, at once constitutes His Church, and endows her with power, purity, and gladness; while it secures that all her work shall prosper, and that the house, which she builds for God, shall stand forevermore?

9. The Psalm prays that the priests may be clothed with righteousness. In the new Israel, as in the first constitution of the old, all the people are priests. Righteousness, then, is to be the robe of every Christian soul. Now, do not lose the force of this petition by thinking that “righteousness” is a hazy theological virtue, having little to do with every-day life, and small resemblance to secular morality. To be good, to be gentle and just, loving and truthful, self-forgetting and self-ruling, honest and true, kind and helpful, to live in the exercise of the virtues, which the consciences and tongues of all men call lovely and of good report, and to add to them all the consecration of reference to Him in whom these parted graces dwell united and complete—this is to be righteous, as the Psalmist conceived of it. The Gospel has taught us yet deeper thoughts associated with the Word. Thank God for that “fine linen, clean and white, the righteousness” with which Christ covers our wounded nakedness. It becomes ours, though no thread of it was wrought in our looms. But remember that growing purity in life and deed is the main proof that Christ’s righteousness is indeed ours. If we are to do God’s work in the world, we must be good, true, righteous men. That robe, like the silken vest in which the knight, in the old legend, went forth to fight, is our true mail. It will turn blows, and deaden cuts, and stay thrusts that will dint and shear through and pierce every other defence. Be you equipped with the armor of righteousness, and wear for all your protection the white robes of God’s priests. Be you armed with the weapons of righteousness, and use, for your assaults on evil, mainly a holy life. There is none other in all the armory like it. The true power of the Christian soldier lies in character, character, character! A. M.

And let Thy saints shout for joy. Holiness and happiness go together. The sentence, while it may read as a permit, is also a precept; saints are commanded to rejoice in the Lord. Happy religion which makes it a duty to be glad! Where righteousness is the clothing, joy may well be the occupation. S.

10. The frequency with which God is urged to hear and answer prayer for David’s sake is not to be explained by making David mean the promise to David, nor from the personal favor of which he was the object, but from his historical position as the great theocratical model, in whom it pleased God that the old economy should reach its culminating point, and who is always held up as the type and representative of the Messiah, so that all the intervening kings are mere connecting links, and their reigns mere repetitions and continuations of the reign of David, with more or less resemblance as they happened to be good or bad. Hence the frequency with which his name appears in the later Scriptures, compared with even the best of his successors, and the otherwise inexplicable transfer of that name to the Messiah Himself. It is in this unique character and office, as the servant of the Lord, that David is here mentioned, first by his own name, and then as the Anointed King of Israel, whose face Jehovah is entreated not to turn away, a figure for refusing him an audience, or at least denying his petition, which we know to have been used in David’s times. A.

11. The Lord hath sworn.** That this is a prophecy of the Messiah, we have the authority of Peter (Acts 2: 30). This promise to David occurs (2 Sam. 7: 12) and hath a two-fold sense, relating to Solomon in type and shadow, to Christ in truth and substance. Bishop Horne.

12. Forevermore.** The temporal kingdom of David continued in the line of David till the birth of Christ, when the spiritual kingdom commenced in the person of this Son of David, of which there shall be no end. Dimock.—The kingdom of Judah might have stood to this day had its kings been faithful to the Lord. No internal revolt or external attack could have overthrown the royal house of David; it fell by its own sin, and by nothing else. The Lord was continually provoked, but He was amazingly longsuffering, for long after seceding Israel had gone into captivity, Judah still remained. Miracles of mercy were shown to her. Divine patience exceeded all limits, for the Lord’s regard for David was exceeding great. The princes of David’s house seemed set on ruining themselves, and nothing could save them; justice waited long, but it was bound at last to unsheathe the sword and strike. Still, if in the letter man’s breach of promise caused the covenant to fail, yet in spirit and essence the Lord has been true to it, for Jesus reigns and holds the throne forever. David’s seed is still royal, for he was the progenitor according to the flesh of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. S.

14-18. In Zion, His chosen and dearly beloved dwelling-place, Jehovah blesses whatever belongs to the necessities of her temporal life, so that her poor do not suffer want, for Divine love loves the poor in an altogether special manner. His second blessing concerns the priests, for through these He will hold communion with His people. He makes the priesthood of Zion a real saving institution; He clothes her priests with salvation, so that they do not merely mediate it instrumentally, but possess it personally, and their whole appearance is one that proclaims salvation. And to all her saints He gives cause and matter for great and lasting joy, inasmuch as not only in word but also in deeds of grace He acknowledges the Church, in which He has taken up His abode. There in Zion is indeed the kingship of promise, the kingship to which the fulfilment cannot be wanting. To the house of David, which David, as its ancestor, and the anointed of God, who is reigning at the time, represent, He will make a horn to sprout; He has set in order a lamp for it, which shall never be extinguished. D.

14. This is My rest forever. Of the Christian Church we may affirm with undoubtedly certainty, that it is God’s rest forever; after this dispensation of His will there will never succeed another; Christianity closes and completes the Divine communication from God to man; nothing greater, nothing better can or will be imparted to him on this side eternity; and even in heaven itself we shall, through an everlasting duration, be employed in contemplating and adoring the riches of that grace, the brightest glories of which have been realized in the consummations of Calvary, the ascension of the Messiah, the breaking down of all national peculiarity, and the gift and mission of the Divine Spirit. Morison.

Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any. Nothing is visible but the merest outline of dusky shapes. Standing within all is clear and defined, every ray of light reveals an army of unspeakable splendors. Ruskin.

14-16. God’s presence is an earnest of all good; for all this follows upon “here will I dwell.” By it He giveth meat to the hungry, and comfort to the poor, even the Bread of Life to the believing and repenting soul; by it He Himself is the sanctification of His priests, and His righteousness and salvation is their most glorious vesture; and by His presence He maketh His elect ever glad, filling their hearts with joy and their mouths with songs. Burgon.

It is necessary for some people to remember that cheerfulness, good spirits, light-heartedness, merriment, are not unchristian nor unsaintly. We do not please God more by eating bitter aloes than by eating honey. A cloudy, foggy, rainy day is not more heavenly than a day of sunshine. A funeral march is not so much like the music of angels as the songs of birds on a May morning. It was not the pleasant things in the world that came from the devil, and the dreary things from God; it was “sin brought death into the world and all our woe;” as the sin vanishes, the woe will vanish too. God Himself is the ever-blessed God. He dwells in the light of joy as well as of purity, and instead of becoming more like Him as we become more miserable, and as all the brightness and glory of life are extinguished, we become more like God as our blessedness becomes more complete. The great Christian graces are radiant with happiness. Faith, hope, charity—there is no sadness in them—and if penitence makes the heart sad, penitence belongs to the sinner, not to the saint; as we become more saintly, we have less sin to sorrow over. No, the religion of Christ is not a religion of sorrow. It consoles wretchedness and brightens with a Divine glory the lustre of every inferior joy. It attracts to itself the broken-hearted, the lonely, the weary, the despairing, but it is to give them rest, comfort, and peace. It rekindles hope; it inspires strength, courage, and joy. It checks the merriment of the thoughtless who have never considered the graver and more awful realities of man’s life and destiny, but it is to lead them through transient sorrow to deeper and more perfect blessedness, even in this world, than they had ever felt before the sorrow came. Dale.

Christian, what ill news hath Christ brought from heaven with Him, that makes thee walk with thy folded arms and pensive countenance? To see a wicked man merry or a Christian sad is alike uncomely. “A feast is made for laughter,” saith Solomon. I am sure God intended His people’s joy in the feast of the Gospel; mourners were not to sit at God’s table (Deut. 26). Truly the saint’s heaviness reflects unkindly upon God Himself; we do not commend his cheer, if it doth not cheer us. O Christians, let the world see you are not losers in your joy since you have been acquainted with the Gospel; give not them cause to think by your uncomfortable walking, that when they turn Christians, they must bid all joy farewell, and resolve to spend their days in a house of mourning. Gurnall.

17, 18. “I have arranged” (put in order) “a lamp for mine anointed,” referring to the lamps kept in order by the priests in the temple. This usage seems to furnish the figure; its significance comes from the relation between light and truth, so that this signifies the light of salvation which the Messiah sheds forth on a morally dark world. Glorious victory shall be his reward; his enemies clothed with the shame of overthrow and defeat; his own crown flourishing in perpetual beauty and glory. The figure here follows that in v. 17, the horn shooting up as a vegetable growth, so the crown puts forth blossoms and flowers of celestial beauty. C.

14-18. Notice that each single petition is enlarged in the answer to something much greater than itself. The Church asked God to arise into His rest; and He answers by adding the promise of perpetuity: “This is My rest forever; here will I dwell.” He adds a blessing not sought when He promises abundance for all, and bread to fill even her poor. The Church asked for robes of righteousness for the priests; and He replies with robes of salvation, which is the perfecting and most glorious issue of righteousness. The Church asked that the people might shout for joy; and He replies with an emphatic reduplication of the word, which implies the exuberance and continuance of the joyful acclaim. The Church asked for favor to the king; and He replies by the promise that the horn of his power shall continually increase, that light of guidance and gladness shall be always his, that victory over all his enemies shall attend his arm, and an ever-blossoming crown be on his head. Put this in its widest form, and what does it come to but that great law of His grace, by which He over-answers all our poor desires, and giving us more than we had expected, shames us out of our distrust? And this law holds for us in all our works and in all our prayers. These transcendent answers belong to us as truly as they did to the waiting multitude, who thronged the courts of the temple. We have work to do for God, and the courses of the walls of His house are but rising yet. The true builder is that greater than Solomon, of whom it was written long ago, “Behold the Man whose Name is the Branch—He shall build the Temple of the Lord, even He shall build the Temple of the Lord, and He shall bear the glory.” The day shall come when the weary work of the ages shall be accomplished, and the glory of the Lord shall fill that wondrous house. Here we ask that God would dwell with us, and there “the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and God Himself shall walk in them.” Here we ask for righteousness as our garment, and there it shall be granted us to be arrayed in “fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints.” In that tabernacle that shall not be taken down, see that you build on the one foundation some gold and silver and precious stones, which the declaring day and the revealing fire shall manifest to have been wrought in God. Then our work, abiding, shall bring to us the endless glory with which God at last overpays the toils, even as now He over-answers the poor prayers of His laboring servants. A. M.

Thus the song reminds us how God meets and outdoes our requests, and is ever more ready to give than we are to ask. It speaks to us of Him who was at once David’s Son and Lord, the true “horn” and “lamp”—that is, the light and strength of the world. The seed of David no longer occupies a throne, if Christ be not the promised “seed.” There is no longer a Temple, a place in which God and man may meet and rest and dwell together, if Christ be not at once Temple and Ark, Oracle and Sacrifice. The “Anointed One” who reigns forever, and whose crown still “blossoms” into new vigor and beauty, is, must be, He whom we call the Christ or Anointed One of God. And, therefore, grand as the Psalm was when it was first sung by the Levitical choirs, full as it was of glorious and pathetic memories to the later pilgrims who went up to Zion, it has reserved its fulness of meaning and the excellence of its glory for us, if only we have found the Son of God in that Son of Man who was “of the house and lineage of David.” Cox.

It is no marvel that the literature of a nation whose chief bond of national union was the law should have been intensely patriotic; for the nation possessed the noblest and the truest incentive to patriotism; and in its literature this patriotism found an utterance that is unrivalled elsewhere in any language. The hill of Zion is a fair place, and the joy of the whole earth, the city of the great King. God is well known in her palaces as a sure refuge. The city of the Lord of hosts, the city of our God (Psalm 48: 2, 3, 8). Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined (Psalm 50: 2). Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in itself. Oh, pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sake I will wish thee prosperity; yea, because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good (Psalm 122: 3, 6-9). Can anything be more beautiful? Can anything be more eloquent? The Psalmist was the most ardent of patriots, because his country was the chosen of God. Therefore he could

say, The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, thou city of God (Psalm 86 : 2, 3). “The Lord hath chosen Zion to be a habitation for Himself; He hath longed for her. This is My rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein” (Psalm 132 : 14, 15). And in this revelation was the ultimate fulfilment of the earlier promise of the law, There shall be a place which the Lord your God shall choose to

cause His name to dwell there (Deut. 12 : 11). Thus every portion of this ancient literature is intimately bound up with every other. The prophecy with the poetry, and the poetry with the history, and all together with the law, and the law of Moses is not only an integral element in the composition of the Old Testament, but is also the corner-stone of its internal structure, and the firm, essential basis of its organic and indestructible unity. S. Leathes.