Psalms 128

The psalm opens on the very word the whole book of Psalms opens with: Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. Psalm 1 began Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the LORD; here the same blessing is pronounced, but stretched wide - not the man, the singular exemplary saint, but every one that fears the LORD. The door is open to anyone. And notice how the verse pairs two things that belong together: to fear the LORD and to walk in his ways. The fear is not a feeling held privately while life goes on as before; it is a reverence that puts the feet in motion, that shows up as a way of walking, a direction of life. The God-fearer is known not by what he says he reveres but by the path he actually takes. The blessing of this psalm rests on a life that has bent itself Godward and then started walking - ordinary, day-by-day obedience, one step after another, in the ways of the LORD.¹

The first blessing named is so plain it is easy to miss how good it is: For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee (v. 2). To eat the labour of thine hands is to enjoy the fruit of your own work - to plant and actually eat the harvest, to build and actually live in the house, to earn and actually keep what you have earned. In a world where so much labour was swallowed by invaders, by famine, by oppressors who reaped where they had not sown, this was no small thing; the prophets warned that under judgment a people would build houses, but not inhabit them and plant vineyards, but not drink the wine thereof. The blessing here is the reverse of that curse: work that is not stolen, toil that comes back as bread on the table. It dignifies ordinary labour and the ordinary satisfaction of a meal earned honestly. Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee - not because life is easy, but because the God-fearer's work is woven into a life God Himself is keeping.

Now the song moves indoors, to the warmest scene in the psalm: Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table (v. 3). Two living, growing images. The wife is a fruitful vine - not an ornament set against the wall, but a vine bearing fruit, full of life, climbing the very sides of the house so the home itself seems alive and green. The children are olive plants - young olive trees, slow-growing and sturdy and long-lived, the most valued tree in the land, set round about thy table. Picture it: the family gathered to eat, and ringing the table like saplings around a parent tree, the children. The table is the heart of the house, the place of gathering and nourishment and shared life, and around it grows a little orchard. Then verse 4 sets a seal on the whole picture: Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the LORD. The word Behold asks us to stop and look - this, the fruitful vine and the ring of olive plants, the homely glory of a flourishing household, this is what the blessing of the God-fearer looks like.

The blessing now lifts its eyes from the single household to the city of God: The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion: and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life (v. 5). Two things are worth noticing. First, the source - out of Zion. The blessing on the home does not arise from the home itself, from the diligence of the worker or the warmth of the family; it flows down from the place where God dwells, as if the whole flourishing of an ordinary house were a stream running out from the presence of God on His holy hill. The pilgrim singing this song was, after all, on the road to Zion; the psalm tells him that what he goes up to seek there will come back down with him into his own doorway. Second, the scope - all the days of thy life. This is not a single good season but a settled, lifelong goodness; the God-fearer is promised not one harvest but a life lived within the sight of God's good toward His people. To see the good of Jerusalem is to watch the welfare of the whole people of God, and to find one's own small household woven into that larger, lasting blessing.³

The last verse stretches the blessing across time and out to the whole nation: Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children, and peace upon Israel (v. 6). First it reaches forward through the generations - thy children's children. To live to see one's grandchildren was, in that world, the picture of a full and favoured life, the sign of God's long faithfulness to a family over time; the olive plants around the table (v. 3) grow up and put out shoots of their own, and the God-fearer lives to see it. But the psalm does not end with the family. It widens one final time, past the household and the grandchildren, to the whole people: and peace upon Israel. The Hebrew word is shalom - not merely the absence of war but wholeness, soundness, the deep well-being of a people at rest under God. The song that began with one reverent man ends with a benediction over a nation. The blessing was never meant to stop at the edge of one family's table; it runs out, household by household, until it becomes peace over the whole people of God.