Psalms 133
Butler1. BEHOLD, how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity!
2. It is like the precious oil upon the head,
That ran down upon the beard,
Even Aaron’s beard;
That came down upon the collar of his garments;
3. Like the dew of Hermon,
That cometh down upon the mountains of Zion:
For there the LORD commanded the blessing,
Even life for evermore.
HERDER says of this exquisite little song, that “it has the fragrance of a lovely rose.” Nowhere has the nature of true unity—that unity which binds men together not by artificial restraints, but as brethren of one heart—been more faithfully described, nowhere has it been so gracefully illustrated, as in this short ode. True concord is, we are here taught, a holy thing, a sacred oil, a rich perfume, which, flowing down from the head to the beard, from the beard to the garment, sanctifies the whole body. It is a sweet morning dew, which lights not only on the lofty mountain-peaks, but on the lesser hills, embracing all, and refreshing all with its influence.
The title of the Psalm gives it to David. But in truth there is not a syllable in the Psalm which can lead us to any conclusion respecting its date. Such a vision of the blessedness of unity may have charmed the poet’s heart and inspired the poet’s song, at any period of the national history. And his words, though originally, no doubt, intended to apply to a state, would be equally true of a smaller circle, a family or a tribe. P.
1. By general consent of lexicographers and critics, the Hebrew words translated “together in unity” mean together in place, and leave unity in feeling and spirit to be inferred. The writer must be supposed to think of the great religious festivals which brought the masses of the people together for the delightful service of public religious worship. This service was morally and politically wholesome; it was socially delightful to the whole people, old and young; it could scarcely fail to exert a precious religious influence upon all. The bringing of the whole people together in one place during these great festivals served to bring their hearts together in fraternal union. C.
This is one of those bursts of feeling the truth and beauty of which every human heart at once acknowledges. Separation, isolation, discord, are unnatural and inhuman. To appreciate as it deserves this rich gift of God, we must look at it in family life. The words suggest to us at once the picture not of a nation or of a numerous society, but of a family. We seem to hear the voice of an elder brother, whose heart cannot contain itself for thankfulness at the sight of peaceful family union. Something has stirred his spirit to detect the greatness of that blessing which has perhaps been interrupted or too long unconsciously enjoyed. H. M. Butler.
Pleasant. The same word which is used here for “pleasant” is used also in the Hebrew for a harmony of music; for the pleasantness of a cornfield; for the sweetness of honey, and of sweet things in opposition to bitter things. And thus you see the pleasantness of it, by its being compared to the harmony of music, to the cornfield, to the sweetness of honey, to the precious ointment that ran down Aaron’s beard, and to the dew that fell upon Hermon and the hills of Zion; and all this to discover the pleasantness, profitableness, and sweetness of the saints’ agreement. It is a pleasant thing to behold the sun, but it is much more pleasant to behold the saints’ agreement and unity among themselves. W. Bridge.
There is nothing that would render the true religion more lovely or make more proselytes to it than to see the professors of it tied together with the heartstrings of love. If God be one, let all that profess Him be of one mind and one heart, and thus fulfil Christ’s prayer, “that they all may be one.” T. Watson.—In church fellowship we can dispense with uniformity if we possess unity. Oneness of life, truth, and way; oneness in Christ Jesus; oneness of object and spirit—these we must have, or our assemblies will be synagogues of contention rather than churches of Christ. The closer the unity the better; for the more of the good and the pleasant there will be. Christian unity is good in itself, good for ourselves, good for the brethren, good for the outside world; and for certain it is pleasant; for a loving heart must have pleasure and give pleasure in associating with others of like nature. A church united for years in earnest service of the Lord is a well of goodness and joy to all those who dwell round about it. S.
The great law is, work together if you would work with strength. To separate ourselves from our brethren is to lose power. Why, half-dead brands heaped close will kindle one another, and flame will sparkle beneath the film of white ashes on their edges. Fling them apart and they go out. Rake them together and they glow. Let us try not to be little feeble tapers, stuck in separate sockets, and each twinkling struggling rays over some inch or so of space; but draw near to our brethren, and be workers together with them, that there may rise a glorious flame from our summed and collective brightness which shall be a guide and hospitable call to many a wandering and weary spirit. A. M.
2. The first figure is taken from the oil which was poured on the head of the high-priest at his consecration. The point of the comparison does not lie in the preciousness of the oil, or in its all-percading fragrance; but in this, that being poured on the head, it did not rest there; but flowed to the beard and descended even to the garments, and thus, as it were, consecrated the whole body in all its parts. All the members participate in the same blessing. This is the point of the comparison. Other thoughts may be suggested by it, as that the spirit of concord, both in a state and in a family, will descend from those who govern to those who are governed; or, again, that concord is a holy thing, like the holy oil, or that it is sweet and fragrant, like the fragrant oil; but these are mere accessories of the image. P.—The point of the comparison is the uniting power of brotherliness, as that which inwardly unites those who are locally the farthest apart from one another, and also brings them externally together. When brethren united in harmonious love also unite locally, as is done in Israel at the great feasts, then it is as when the holy, precious chrism upon Aaron’s head—the chrism that breathes forth the blended odor of many spices—trickles down upon his beard, which flows down far over the upper border of his robe. It then becomes clearly perceptible and even outwardly visible, that Israel far and near is permeated by one spirit and bound together in unity of spirit. D.
The precious oil; literally the good oil, the sacred oil, for the preparation of which special directions were given, and which was to be devoted exclusively to the consecration of holy things and persons (Ex. 30 : 22, 33). Hence the image implies not only the whole body is united, but that the whole body is consecrated. Aaron, named not because he only was thus anointed, but as the representative of all priestly anointing. P.—In the consecration of the Aaronic order, the inferior priests were only sprinkled with this oil mixed with the blood of the sacrifice, but in the unction of the High Priest the oil was so copiously poured forth as to “run down upon the beard and even to the skirts of his garments.” This was because it pointed to him who received the Spirit “without measure.” He was “anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows;” i.e., above those who possessed with him a fellowship or similarity of office, as types of himself. Aaron was anointed high priest; Saul was anointed king; Elisha was anointed prophet; Melchizedek, king and priest; Moses, priest and prophet;
David, king and prophet; yet none was ever anointed to the joint possession of all these dignities together save the Christ of God, the anti-type of them all. Christians derive the name of Christians from their profession of Christ, and the nature and character of Christians from their union to Christ. It is their peculiar privilege and distinguishing joy “to have the unction from the Holy One, and to know all things” that are necessary for them to know. Bush.
3. The second image expressive of the blessing of brotherly concord is taken from the dew. Here, again, it is not the refreshing nature of the dew, nor its gentle, all-pervading influence which is the prominent feature. That which renders it to the poet’s eye so striking an image of brotherly concord is the fact that it falls alike on both mountains; that the same dew which descends on the lofty Hermon descends also on the humbler Zion. High and low drink in the same sweet refreshment. Thus the image is exactly parallel to the last; the oil descends from the head to the beard, the dew from the higher mountain to the lower. (Hermon in the north, and Zion in the south, may also further suggest the union of the northern and southern tribes.) P. —This is one of the most beautiful images in the Psalter, an illustration of the blessings of unity, drawn by one who had looked upon the mountains with the eye of a poet, as well as upon the sanctuary with the eye of a saint. Bishop Alexander.
As the sacred oil sanctified the whole body, so by the single ministry of the dew the whole land was united and blessed, each province serving the other; and, in like manner, love is the uniting and sanctifying force of life. It overpasses all lines of demarkation, all social gulfs and barriers. At once bond and benediction, it draws all aims and interests to a common centre, in which they blend and multiply and grow strong. Cox.
Hermon must not be thought of as a mere peak. It is a mountain-range, substantially distinct, yet forming a part of the anti-Lebanon, and extending thirty miles, in a crescent of snow-capped mountains, from the southwest to the northeast. You journey beside it from morning to evening, and at night camp at Kefr-Hauwar with its white ridge resting on the dark sky and illuminating your northern horizon. From this long, crescent-shaped ridge mountain-ribs jut out, declining to hills as they near the plain. These ribs you cross in making your way south of Hermon from Bāniās to Damascus. Dulles.—Hermon itself, although its peak was scarcely within the limits of the Holy
Land, yet, as its southern, eastern, and western slopes were shared by the three tribes of Dan, Naphtali, and Manasseh, must be considered a mountain of Palestine, of which it was the northwestern boundary. It is the culminating point of the anti-Lebanon range, the watershed east of Jordan, and which, in its prolongation, forms the mountain ranges of Bashan, Gilead, and Moab. It towers into the region of perpetual snow, between nine and ten thousand feet above the sea, and worthily holds the name of “Jebel esh Sheikh,” the chief mountain; not quite so lofty, indeed, as the summit of Lebanon, but, with its isolated white-tipped cone, far grander in appearance. Its name Hermon signifies “lofty peak.” The expression, “the dew of Hermon,” seems to have been proverbial, and is well explained by facts. Hermon, unlike most other mountains, springs from its base at once. It is more than ten thousand feet above the sunken valley of the Jordan from which it rises, and which seethes in a tropical heat. The vapors exhaled by the sun from the vast swamps of Huleh rise during the day to the higher regions, and, congealed by the snows of the mountain, descend nightly in most copious distillation, saturating everything on its sides. Tristram.
“The dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion” is now become quite clear to me. Here as I sat at the foot of Hermon, I understood how the water-drops which rose from its forest-mantled heights, and out of the highest ravines, which are filled the whole year round with snow, after the sun’s rays have attenuated them and moistened the atmosphere with them, descend at evening-time as a heavy dew upon the lower mountains which lie round about as its spurs. One ought to have seen Hermon with its white-golden crown glistening aloft in the blue sky, in order to be able rightly to understand the figure. Nowhere in the whole country is so heavy a dew perceptible as in the districts near to Hermon. Van De Velde.
We had sensible proof at Rasheiya of the copiousness of the “dew of Hermon.” Unlike most other mountains which gradually rise from lofty table lands and often at a distance from the sea, Hermon starts at once to the height of nearly ten thousand feet, from a platform scarcely above the sea-level. This platform, too—the upper Jordan valley, and marshes of Merom—is for the most part an impenetrable swamp of unknown depth, whence the seething vapor, under the rays of an almost tropical sun, is constantly ascending into the upper atmosphere during the day. The vapor, coming in contact with the snowy sides of the mountain, is rapidly congealed, and is precipitated in the evening in the form of a dew, the most copious we ever experienced. It penetrated everywhere and saturated everything. The floor of our tent was soaked, our bed was covered with it, our guns were dripping, and dewdrops hung about everywhere. No wonder that the foot of Hermon is clad with orchards and gardens of such marvellous fertility in this land of droughts. Tristram.
The Lord commanded the blessing. Where love reigns God reigns. Where love wishes blessing, there God commands the blessing. This makes Christian brotherhood so good and pleasant; it has Jehovah’s blessing resting upon it, and it cannot be otherwise than sacred like “the precious ointment,” and heavenly like “the dew of Hermon.” S.
Even life for evermore. “The gift of God,” says the apostle, “is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Consider what this life includes and what it is. As the initial element, it includes the remission of all the guilt of sin, past and to come; the absolute removal of already incurred condemnation, and the cleansing of the soul from sin’s defiling effects. Sin, the occasion of condemnation, and so the source of death—sin, with all its effects, must first be removed. Its condemning power must be annulled, its dominion must be broken, its defiling effects must be counteracted. All these results are wrought completely for and in the believing, saved soul by the blood of Christ. And as death is thus taken away, so also life is wrought in the soul—life, whose essential principle is holiness, is wrought by the Spirit of Christ. Holiness, conformity of mind and heart with God, is established in the soul as its ruling principle; ruling through this life, though subject to sharp and severe conflict with the old self-asserting lusts, aided by the world’s attractions and Satan’s influences. Thus, in every soul that simply receives and rests upon Christ, that accepts His blood as justifying and His Spirit as renewing unto holiness, thus eternal life is begun. By the one justifying act of Christ, performed for the soul at the moment of its receiving Him, that soul is forever after released from condemnation, raised from spiritual death. By the one quickening act of the Spirit of Christ, the soul begins a life of holiness, is introduced into spiritual conformity and likeness to God, as its forever-abiding condition. That soul may, indeed, sin through all the days that it remains in the body, but never again can its sins bring it under the jurisjurisdiction of the law, under its condemnation of death. It may, indeed, be tempted to sin, but the Omnipotent energy that has begotten it unto the life of holiness will recover and deliver it again; will enable it to hold on in its struggle with and give it victory after victory over the evil. And in the end, when it is sundered from the flesh through which all its temptations come, the soul’s eternal life is perfected. Its union and communion with God is from thenceforth personal and perfect. Its conformity of thought and feeling, its likeness to God in character and in every movement of the spirit, is absolute and complete. And this intimate, endearing fellowship, this immaculate holiness, is its state of blessedness forever! And this eternal life, begun in the soul here and perfected hereafter, this eternal life, with its consummate satisfaction of blessedness, is the gift of God! It is the free donation of His sovereign grace, offered in the abounding riches of His mercy to every one who will receive it by faith in His Son Christ Jesus. B.
We must learn to love the unselfish Christ before we can love selfish men. We must learn to love the perfect Christ before we can love imperfect men. No man, save only Christ, ever did love men altogether as they should be loved. And we shall gain a true love for them only as we love Him, and, by love for Him, are transformed into His likeness. Only as the mind of Christ dwells in us shall we rise to the love which is like the sacred oil that ran down Aaron’s beard, like the gentle dew with which Hermon, out of its abundance, blessed the craving slopes of Zion, the love which is more holy than priest or mountain, which is the sweetness of life on earth, and the germ and power and blessedness of life forevermore. Cox.
Eternal life also is to know God, and God is love. This is Christ’s own definition. Ponder it. “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent.” Love must be eternal. It is what God is. On the last analysis, then, love is life. Love never falleth, and life never falleth so long as there is love. No worse fate can befall a man in this world than to live and grow old alone, unloving and unloved. To be lost is to live in an unregenerate condition, loveless and unloved; and to be saved is to love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth already in God. For God is love. H. Drummond.
Unity and peace is said to be like the dew of Hermon, that descended upon Zion, where the
Lord promised His blessing. Divisions run religions into briars and thorns, contentions and parties. Divisions are to churches like wars in countries; where war is, the ground lieth waste and untilled; none takes care of it. It is love that edifieth, but division pulleth down. Divisions are as the northeast wind to the fruits, which causeth them to dwindle away to nothing; but when the storms are over, everything begins to grow. When men are divided, they seldom speak the truth in love; and then, no marvel, they grow not up to Him in all things which is the Head. It is a sad presage of an approaching famine, not of bread nor water, but of hearing the Word of God when our controversies about doubtful things and things of less moment eat up our zeal for the more indisputable and practical things in religion. Bunyan.—Satan gains very much by the disunion of Christian hearts, and the falling out of those which have given their names to religion; and therefore he leaves no way of temptation unattempted to set such at odds. He labors mightily, and prodigiously prevails at this day, by vexing their judgments with opinionativeness, self-conceited speculations, and thoughts of separation, to drive them by degrees from divorce of judgments in some singular apprehensions to disaffection; from disaffection to faction, from faction to schism, from schism (to speak in softest phrase) to many dreadful distempers. R. Bolton.
Christian brethren, surely we have this reason for unity. Many unfriendly eyes mark our strifes. They give great occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. And the enemy takes the occasion. The bitter enmities, the groundless and deplorable schisms, in the Church of Christ, form a stock commonplace on the lips of the enemies of our holy faith. The outer world, too, is always ready to set the stumbling or failure of any professed believer to the discredit of all. And such, in its essential nature, is all contention, that it is quite impossible to engage in it without throwing down some of the fences which guard us against our spiritual foes, our ensnaring temptations. Angry and vindictive feeling; unfairness and untruthfulness; the arts of misrepresentation, and the arms of intimidation where that is possible; the eyes shut against light, whether from argument or information — shut sometimes unconsciously, sometimes half consciously, sometimes quite consciously; these are the kind of things that come of falling out by the way among Christians. Boyd.
Surely there is no better way to stop the rising of new sects and schisms than to reform abuses, to compound the smaller differences; to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; and rather to take off the principal authors by winning and advancing them, than to enrage them by violence and bitterness. Bacon.—Our Lord is repeating down through all time the rebuke He gave to the uncharitableness of John, and the one-sidedness of Martha, and the murmurs of His disciples—is teaching us to look with an approving eye on every honest effort to do good, and to take pleasure in the wide variety of human character and Christian grace. Ker.
The pulse quickens and the eyes fill with tears at the bare thought of this vision of peace, at this distant but blessed prospect of a reunited Church. What dark doubts would it not dispel! What deep consolations would it not shed forth on millions of souls! What fascination would not the spectacle of concordant prayer and harmonious action among the servants of Christ exert over the hearts of sinners! With what majestic energy would the reinvigorated Church address herself forthwith to the heartier promotion of man’s best interests, to the richer development of the Christian life, to more energetic labors for the conversion of the world! H. P. L.
Though the Church of Christ has rent its own unity, we can see what may be called the breadth of view of the Great Head, in that He does not identify Himself with their narrowness, nor confine His reviving influences to any one portion where His truth remains. The showers of His grace come from too high a source to be limited by the walls they build against each other. Ker.
The kingdom of Christ, not being a kingdom of this world, is not limited by the restrictions which fetter other societies, political or religious. It is in the fullest sense free, comprehensive, universal. It accepts all comers, irrespective of race, or caste, or sex. It has no sacred days or seasons, no special sanctuaries, because every time and every place alike are holy; above all, it has no sacerdotal system. It interposes no sacrificial tribe or class between God and man, by whose intervention alone God is reconciled and man forgiven. Each individual member holds personal communion with the Divine Head. To Him immediately he is responsible, and from Him directly he obtains pardon and draws strength. This, then, is the Christian ideal: a holy season extending the whole year round; a temple confined only by the limits of the habitable world;
a priesthood co-extensive with the human race. Bishop Lightfoot.