Psalm 84

Psalms 84:1-2

The Hebrew title, which this page's text does not show, reads To the chief Musician upon Gittith, A Psalm for the sons of Korah, the same tune name carried by Psalms 8 and 81, read by the commentators as either a Philistine instrument brought from Gath or a treading song sung at the winepress. Amiable renders a word for loveliness, and the longing that follows is total, soul longing and fainting, heart and flesh together crying out, the whole person reaching for the living God rather than an idea of him. The courts named are the temple's, and a Korahite, whose family kept the gates of that house (1 Chr 9:19), writes as a man shut out from his own post.

Psalms 84:3-4

The sparrow and the swallow have found a home at the very altars, the birds' unthinking nearness a rebuke to a man who longs for the same ground and cannot reach it. Verse 4's blessing falls not on visiting the house but on dwelling in it, and the praise named is continual, they will be still praising thee, worship as an unbroken occupation rather than an occasional act. Selah closes the verse, one of seventy one such marks in the Psalter, and no one knows with certainty what it means, a musical pause, so the Septuagint's diapsalma, or a lifted voice, or an instruction to weigh what was just said, each reading named by its own holders.

Psalms 84:5-7

Blessed here falls on the pilgrim already on the road, the man whose heart holds the ways to Zion even before he arrives. Baca is read by the commentators either as a place named for its balsam trees or for its own barrenness, a valley of weeping crossed on the way up, and those who pass through make it a well, turning the low place into a source rather than only enduring it. The Lord answers the pilgrims' own digging with rain that fills the pools further, and the company that set out from weakness arrives having gone from strength to strength, not worn down by the road but renewed by it until every one appears before God in Zion.

Psalms 84:8-9

hear my prayer: The psalm turns from meditation to direct petition, hear my prayer, give ear, addressed to the God of Jacob who once heard that patriarch at Bethel and Peniel. Thine anointed in verse 9 is the Hebrew mashiach, and read in its own setting names the reigning king, for whose life and access to the sanctuary a Korahite gatekeeper's family would have prayed as a matter of course. Because the word also names the one the New Testament identifies with Jesus, some of the older commentators extend the prayer messianically, a reading held by its own holders and not required by this verse's own wording.

Psalms 84:10-12

a doorkeeper in the house of my God: The comparison in verse 10 sets a single day against a thousand elsewhere, and the office named, a doorkeeper, is the lowest post in the temple's service, the very kind his own family the sons of Korah held at the gates (1 Chr 9:19); he would rather stand at the threshold of God's house than dwell inside the comfortable tents of the wicked. Verse 11 pairs sun and shield, warmth and light for the way with protection from what the way threatens, and adds grace now and glory to come, no good thing withheld from those who walk uprightly. The psalm closes where it began, on blessedness, but the blessing has moved from mere possession into trust itself, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.