Psalms 133
Psalm 133 carries the heading A Song of degrees of David - one of the fifteen short psalms (120-134) sung by pilgrims on the long climb up to Jerusalem for the great feasts. The word translated degrees means steps or goings-up, and these songs were the music of that ascent. What makes this one remarkable is its subject. Pilgrims came up to the city from every direction, strangers to one another, tribes and families converging on one place - and at the top of that climb stands a song not about the temple or the journey but about the people themselves, gathered, and at one.3
It opens with a single word held up like something on display: Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! (v. 1). David does not argue that unity is good; he points at it and asks us to see it. Two adjectives pile up - good and pleasant - the first weighing its worth, the second its sweetness. Then come two pictures, and they share a hidden shape: both describe something that comes from above and flows down. The first is the holy oil of the priesthood: unity is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments (v. 2). The oil is poured on the head and keeps running - down the beard, down the robe, all the way to the hem - so that the consecration of the head becomes the consecration of the whole man.
The second image lifts the eyes north to the highest peak in the land: As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion (v. 3). Hermon's snowmelt feeds a famously heavy dew; here that abundance is pictured settling, against all geography, on the hills of Zion far to the south - distant places joined by one gift falling silently from heaven. And the psalm ends by naming where all of this leads: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore. The oil that flows from the head, the dew that descends from above, the blessing that is commanded and not earned - the apostles will hear in every one of these the gospel: a oneness Christ prayed for and purchased, an anointing that flows from Him as the Head to every member of His body, and a life that has no end.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Psalm 133:1-2 · A Song of degrees of DavidBehold, How Good and How Pleasant
1Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! 2It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
The psalm begins with a word that does a great deal of work: Behold. It is the word you use to point - to make someone stop and look at what they would otherwise walk past. David could simply have said that it is good for brethren to dwell together; instead he sets the thing up like an exhibit and asks us to see it. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! Two words carry the weight. Good measures its worth - this is right, it is the way things ought to be. Pleasant measures its sweetness - it is not merely correct but lovely, a delight to live inside. Put them together and you have the rare thing the psalm wants us to notice: a unity that is both morally good and actually enjoyable. We tend to take such moments for granted when we have them and ache for them when we do not. The first work of this song is simply to make us pay attention - to recognize that brethren genuinely at one is not ordinary, not guaranteed, and not to be wasted; it is something to be beheld.1
The first picture for this unity is the holy anointing oil, and the detail the psalm lingers over is its movement: it is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments (v. 2). This is the oil of Aaron's consecration - the sacred compound, prepared by God's own recipe, poured on the high priest's head to set him apart for holy service (Exodus 30:22-33). Watch where the psalm makes the oil go. It is poured on the head, but it does not stay there. It runs down onto the beard - and the song pauses to name him, even Aaron's beard, so we picture a real face - and keeps going, down to the skirts of his garments, the very hem of the robe. The point is the flow. What is poured on the head reaches the whole man, top to bottom; nothing of him is left untouched by the anointing that began at his head. Hold that image of a consecration that starts at the head and runs down to cover the entire body. It is precisely the shape the New Testament will give to the people of God.
It is worth asking why David reaches for this picture - the priestly oil - to say what unity is like. He could have compared it to many pleasant things. He chooses the most sacred substance in Israel's life, the oil that no one was permitted to duplicate for common use, the oil whose touch made a man holy. The comparison says something the rest of Scripture confirms: that brethren dwelling together in unity is not merely agreeable, the way a calm household or a friendly town is agreeable. It is holy. It belongs to the realm of the set-apart and the consecrated. When people who might have divided are instead at one, something of God's own holiness is resting on them, as surely as the oil rested on Aaron. And like the oil, that unity is not self-generated - the priest did not anoint himself; the oil was poured on him from outside and above. So the very first image quietly tells us where this good and pleasant thing comes from. It descends. It is given. It consecrates whatever it touches.
Psalm 133:3There the LORD Commanded the Blessing
3As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.
The second image lifts our eyes north, to the tallest mountain in the land: As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion (v. 3). Mount Hermon, snow-capped much of the year, is famous for a dew so heavy it can soak the ground like rain - the kind of life-giving moisture that keeps things green through a rainless summer. The psalm takes that abundant northern dew and pictures it descending, against all the rules of geography, on the mountains of Zion far to the south. Hermon and Zion are nearly a hundred and fifty miles apart; no literal dew travels between them. That is the point. The image joins two distant places - the far north and the holy city - under one falling gift, just as the previous picture joined head and hem under one running oil. And like the oil, the dew comes down. It is not pumped up from below by human labour; it descended, settling silently in the night from the sky. Both of the psalm's pictures, then, say the same quiet thing about unity: it is something poured out from above, a gift that falls, refreshing and joining what it touches. The dew, like the oil, comes from heaven.3
The little word there gathers up everything the psalm has said and brings it to a single place: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore. Where the oil flows down and the dew descends - where brethren dwell together in unity - there the LORD has appointed His blessing to rest. Two things in this closing line repay attention. First, the blessing is commanded. The LORD does not merely permit it or make it available; He orders it into being, the way He once spoke and it was done. The blessing on a united people is not a fragile hope but a thing God has decreed. Second, the blessing He commands is named, and it is the largest gift imaginable: life for evermore. Not merely a long life, not merely a comfortable one - life that does not run out, life that outlasts time. The psalm has climbed from a thing to behold (v. 1), through the oil and the dew (vv. 2-3a), to this: that the place of unity is the place where God commands unending life. The good and pleasant thing turns out to open onto the greatest blessing there is.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Psalm 133 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for yachad (v. 1, “together / in unity,” sounded twice in the Hebrew), for shemen (v. 2, the “precious ointment” of priestly anointing), and for the long Jewish discussion of how Hermon's dew is said to descend on the mountains of Zion.
- Psalm 133 ↔ John 17 · John 13 · Ephesians 4 · John 10Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Psalm 133 to the New Testament - the prayer that they all may be one (John 17:21), the mark of discipleship in love for one another (John 13:35), the anointing that flows from Christ the Head to the whole body (Eph. 4:15-16), and the life for evermore the LORD commands (John 10:28).
- Psalm 133 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Psalm 133 - the meaning of A Song of degrees, the picture of oil running down from head to hem, the geography of the dew of Hermon upon the mountains of Zion, and the force of the closing there the LORD commanded the blessing.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Behold, How Good and How Pleasant
- John 17:20-21that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.The unity of verse 1 made the burden of Christ’s prayer - a oneness patterned on the Father and the Son.
- John 13:34-35By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.The sign of the disciples - the love that makes “brethren dwelling together in unity” visible to the world.
- Exodus 30:30-33Thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons... it shall not be poured upon man’s flesh... it is holy.The holy anointing oil of verse 2 - poured on Aaron’s head, set apart, never to be counterfeited.
- Ephesians 4:3Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.The unity the psalm beholds, named in the church as a unity of the Spirit to be kept.
There the LORD Commanded the Blessing
- John 10:28I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.The “life for evermore” of verse 3 placed in the hand of the Son, who gives it to His own.
- John 17:3this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.Eternal life defined - set, as in the psalm, beside the prayer that His people would be one.
- Ephesians 4:15-16the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together... maketh increase.The oil running from the head to the body (v. 2) - the anointing that flows from Christ the Head to every member.
- Acts 2:17I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.The oil and the dew poured down from above - the Spirit poured out on the gathered people of God.
- Psalm 132:13-14For the LORD hath chosen Zion... This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell.The companion Song of degrees on Zion as the place God chose to dwell - “there” the blessing is commanded.