Psalm 15

Psalms 15:1

The question who shall abide in thy tabernacle, who shall dwell in thy holy hill opens what the commentators call an entrance liturgy, a form Psalm 24:3 also carries almost word for word, who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place. Both psalms answer with a life rather than a ritual, character named as the condition for standing in God's presence rather than any offering brought. The tabernacle, God's own tent among the people, sets the question inside the worship the nation actually practiced rather than as an abstract moral survey.

Psalms 15:2-3

The answer begins with a walk before it names a single deed, uprightly and righteousness and truth in the heart set as the root before the fruit of speech follows: no backbiting, no evil to a neighbour, no reproach taken up against one. Spurgeon reads the order as deliberate, character first and conduct after, since a man who backbites has already failed at truth in the heart before his tongue ever moves. The neighbour named three times in two verses keeps the whole description inside ordinary community life rather than private devotion alone.

Psalms 15:4

The description turns to judgment, a vile person contemned in this man's eyes while he honoureth them that fear the Lord, right estimation of others named as part of the same integrity as right speech. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not is read by the older commentators as the test case of the whole psalm, a man who keeps a promise even after it costs him, which is the point at which most professed integrity breaks. Barnes notes that Scripture nowhere asks such a man to be released from a rash vow, only that he be the kind who does not look for the release.

Psalms 15:5

The final pair moves to money, not putting money out to usury against a poor neighbour, which the law had already forbidden among Israelites at Exodus 22:25 and Leviticus 25:36, and not taking a reward against the innocent, the refusal of a bribe to convict a man who has done no wrong. He that doeth these things shall never be moved answers the psalm's opening image directly, the holy hill of verse 1 now the stability granted to the man who lives this way rather than a place he simply visits. Gill reads the promise as covering both this life and beyond it, a man built on this character having nothing under him that can give way.