Psalm 128

Psalms 128:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads A Song of degrees, one of fifteen psalms carrying the ascent title, sung by the bench's common reckoning on the pilgrim climb to Jerusalem for the feasts. The blessing opens on the fear of the Lord and lands at once on ordinary labor: thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands, happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee, a household blessing rather than a battle or a throne. Henry notes that the psalm answers Psalm 127's warning against labor without the Lord by showing labor blessed under him.

Psalms 128:3-4

The picture moves indoors: the wife as a fruitful vine by the sides of the house, the children as olive plants round about the table, a household pictured in growing things rather than in wealth or rank. Gill takes the vine's placement by the house wall as a figure of the wife's modesty and fruitfulness kept within the home, and the olive plants round the table as sons raised to bear fruit like their father. Verse 4 restates the whole picture as the reward of the man that feareth the Lord, closing the domestic scene where it opened.

Psalms 128:5-6

The blessing widens from the house to the nation without changing its source: the Lord shall bless thee out of Zion, and thou shalt see the good of Jerusalem all the days of thy life. A pilgrim singing this on the road to the feast asks for exactly two things at the end, long life to see his children's children and peace upon Israel, the private household folded into the public good of the city he is climbing toward. Spurgeon calls this the family psalm of the ascents, the personal blessing of the first four verses answered by the corporate blessing of the last two.