Psalm 128
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Speaks with:Psalms 112×1Psalms 119×1Psalms 103×1Isaiah 3×1Isaiah 62×1Isaiah 65×1
Summary
Chapter summary
The household blessing: 'Blessed is every one that feareth Jehovah, that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labor of thy hands.' Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine in the innermost parts of thy house; thy children like olive plants round about thy table. 'Behold, thus shall the man be blessed that feareth Jehovah.' The blessing widens from house to city to nation: 'Jehovah bless thee out of Zion… yea, see thou thy children's children. Peace be upon Israel.'
Context
Poetry · David, Asaph, Sons of Korah, others — Psalms overview
The world behind this chapter
Psalms 128The history
The two plants named are the ones every household grew. Grapevines were trained along the inner walls of a courtyard, where the shade and the runoff kept them going, so the vine really was at the sides of the house. Olive trees send up young shoots from the base of the trunk, and a mature tree stands in a small crowd of its own saplings — which is the picture of children around the table.
Eating the fruit of your own hands sounds obvious until you know the alternative. In that world an army, a raiding party, or a tax collector routinely arrived at harvest and took the crop, and the curses of the covenant list exactly that as a punishment: you will plant and another will eat. To get to eat your own harvest was a real and specific blessing.
Seeing your children's children was the long-range version of the same thing. Life was short, infant deaths were common, and a man who lived to see grandchildren had beaten hard odds.
The blessing at the end comes from Zion, which is where the pilgrim singing it was headed. The song ties the small house in the village to the sanctuary on the hill.
What it meant to them
This follows the psalm about houses being built in vain, and it shows the other side: here is what it looks like when God does build it.
The scale is deliberately modest. No throne, no army, no fame — bread, a wife, children, grandchildren, and peace over Israel. For the people singing it that was the whole hope.
Sources cited
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament , Psalms
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Psalms 128. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.