All right, you have a handout. Now we’re looking at the Psalms, and tonight we look at the poetry of the Psalms, and in a few minutes we will get to Psalm 133 to look at that. Let’s begin with prayer.
Our Father, we thank you again for this wonderful gift of your Word, and for this, which in so many ways to so many of us, is a particularly wonderful gift of the Psalms. These Psalms that mirror our souls in so many ways and echo every emotion as we bring it before you. And we ask that you would, through these studies, give us a clearer understanding. We pray that you’ll take our attention to see and to learn so that we may glean more and more profit from this wonderful portion of your Word. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
My plan in these evening messages is to take up one topic after another to help us to learn how to read the Psalms with more understanding. My plan for most of these sessions is to take up that topic, introduce it, give you a brief survey of it, and then take a sample Psalm to illustrate what we’re talking about. Tonight, we look at the poetry of the Psalms. It is the very nature of the book of Psalms that if you’re going to read it well, read it with understanding, we have to know something of its poetry, its poetic makeup, how it works. It’s necessary to a fuller understanding of the Psalms to understand how the poetry of the Psalms works. So we’re going to just survey a few of those leading features of the Psalms. You have it on your handout, and I’ll give three of them today—three leading features of the Psalms.
Number One, The Parallelism
Now this is most basic to everything about reading the Psalms, that in the Psalms you have a line of poetry and then you have another line that corresponds to that line, and they are in parallel. That’s what we’re talking about. Sometimes there’ll be three lines. These lines are sometimes called colons, and so when you read it, it’ll say this is a tricolon. But you have one line, and then the next two are indented underneath, and they are parallel to that first line in some way. And the important thing to do then is, as you’re reading through the Psalms, to recognize that parallelism and to ask yourself the question: how is this line two parallel to line one, or in some cases, line two and three? How are they parallel to line one? How does it reflect that? How does it add to it, or what? But you have these two parts then of each verse of the Psalms.
Sometimes you’ll have four lines in a given verse; that’s called a quatrain. They’re not as usual, but you do have some of that in the Psalms. But the trick now is to find out how that second line, sometimes second and third line, how does that correspond to that first line? So let’s look at Psalm 2 and verse 1. Notice we have: “…why did the heathen rage, and the people’s plot in vain?” You have two lines: why do the heathen—the nations—rage, and the second line corresponds to that: and the people’s plot in vain. There’s a certain rhythm and similarity of grammar and all of that, but the most important thing is a correspondence of meaning. The second line corresponds in meaning in some way to the first line.
Now, our poetry is based on rhyme and rhythm. That’s not as important in Hebrew poetry. It’s rarely the case. It’s parallel of thought; that’s important in Hebrew poetry. And that’s what’s going on here. We have: “Why did the nations rage?” And then again, the second line: “And the people’s plot in vain.” We’ll see more about how those lines correspond in a moment. But you have different terminology that you want to keep in mind if you read any of the books on the Psalms. A line is called sometimes a colon, sometimes a line, or half a verse is called a verset. Three lines is called a tricolon, and then so on.
Look at Psalm 1 and verse 1. Here we have a tricolon. We have three lines: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly.” There’s line one. Line two corresponds: “nor stands in the way of sinners.” Then line three: “nor sits in the seat of the scornful.” So you’ll see line two and three add to line one in some way. So the question then is just how do these lines correspond to one another?
Actually, there’s a long discussion about this, and in fact, the way I learned it in seminary has been outdated. There’s been some advances made in our understanding of Hebrew poetry since that time that have really revolutionized studies and clarified it somewhat. I won’t bore you with all the details of that. The old way of looking at it is still useful in some ways, and I’m going to highlight the three main ways that these lines are parallel, and then we’ll look at it a little bit further.
One is to say that the second line is synonymous to the first line. So this is called synonymous parallelism. So the second line basically echoes or restates in some way the first line. So look at Psalm 3 and verse 1: “Oh Lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising against me.” Notice that line two basically restates line one. That would be what we call a synonymous parallel. It’s just basically echoing. The idea in this kind of parallelism is to get the thought in stereo. You get it in two statements and not just one. So here we have a synonymous parallel: “Oh Lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising against me.” There’s no substantive difference between line two and line one in this case.
Now there’s another kind of parallel. It’s called antithetical parallelism. And if you like, look back at Psalm 1. In this case, in an antithetical parallel, the second line contrasts with the first line. So Psalm 1 verse 6: “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Now notice that line two is not saying the same thing as line one. We have two different statements. Now, in fact, they are making a common point, and that is here the destiny of the righteous is blessed, and by contrast now, the destiny of the wicked is judgment. So you have a contrasting way of saying it. So that’s antithetical parallelism. You have synonymous parallelism: the second line echoes the first, restates it. In antithetical parallelism, the second line contrasts with the first, making a common point, but by way of contrast.
And then the third one is a little bit more difficult to remember, and I’m not sure what to call it. The traditional term here is synthetic parallelism. You might want to think of it as completive parallelism, and that’s simply where the second line completes the thought or in some way adds to the first line. So in that respect, sometimes it reads more like prose. So, for example, let’s look at Psalm 1 verse 2: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night.” Now here we have the second line does not say the same thing as the first, and it doesn’t say anything by contrast, but rather what it does is it adds to the thought of the first line in some way, or further defines it. So in this case, we’ll read the verse again: “His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” So here he’s telling us, if you think about the parallel, because this man delights in the law (line one), then (line two) he meditates on it all the time. So it extends the thought somewhat. It’s not just a restatement; it advances the thought in some way.
Look at Psalm 2, verse 11: “Serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling.” On the older way of looking at this, it would have been called a synonymous parallel, but notice it’s not quite synonymous. Both of them have the notion of fear, but the second line adds something. It tempers it somewhat: “serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling.” So he’s telling us here that service that pleases the Lord is reverential. It’s marked by fear, and yet it’s joyful as well. It’s not reluctant. Service that pleases God is both worshipful and reverent, but it’s also joyful and it’s not reluctant. So it adds something to it.
Now in the older way, what you would have found in the books is to notice that the second line is generally synonymous with the first, and the newer way of looking at it, just to make the short way of saying it all, is that the typical one is this last one: synthetic parallel, or completive, however you want to say it—that the second line usually adds something to the first. So don’t look at the first; look at the second and say, “that’s not just a throwaway line.” That second line will add some detail that you need to recognize that informs something of the first line.
So, back to Psalm 2, verse 1: “Why did the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?” That is not simply a synonymous parallel, because “rage” is not the same as “plot in vain.” Notice you have the nations and the peoples; that’s basically parallel, but “rage” (line one) and “plot in vain” (line two) are not the same. It’s a further definition. In their rage, they’re plotting against God. How can we get away from his rule?
Look at verse 5 of Psalm 2: “Then he will speak to them in his anger and terrify them in his fury.” Now, “speak” is not the same as “terrify.” You have the parallel “speak” and “terrify,” “anger” and “fury” in the parallels, but they’re not just synonymous because “terrify” intensifies “speak,” and “fury” intensifies “anger.” Well, we could go through a lot of these kinds of things. Psalm 3 verse 7 is another good example. Let’s look at the first part here. We have a quatrain, actually—four lines: “Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God.” The second line adds something. The first line, “Arise, O Lord”—arise for battle, get up and go to fight, is the language. And then the second line specifies why: “to save me.”
So I could pile up the examples here, but the point is simply to look at that second line, or in some cases the second and third, and say, “How is this further informing line one?” Now, a little bit more to say about that in a little bit. I’ve got a lot of illustrations here we could make of that, but I think I’ll have to leave it at that. Parallelism is basic to Hebrew poetry. If you’re going to read the Psalms effectively, you cannot—please hear this—if you’re going to read the Psalms effectively with understanding, you cannot just read through it linearly like you read prose. It’s not made to work that way. You have to think: how does line two correspond to line one? And as you meditate on that, the thought of the Psalm will begin to emerge. All right, so the first feature of Hebrew poetry is the parallelism. That’s deserving; in some places you’ll get a whole course of study on that. But that’s all we’ll give it here.
Number Two, Its Brief and Its Terse
The second feature of Hebrew parallelism is it’s brief and it’s terse. It’s been said—I think it’s kind of humorous—that you can tell that it is poetry by all the white space on the page. Well, there’s a lot of white space in the Psalms. That’s because things are stated briefly, tersely, and then the second line, it’ll say it again briefly, with terseness, and then moves on to the next and the next. And you have to stop and consider what is in that little phrase. He’s not going to explain it as the prose goes forward like you would in narrative. But you have to think, “All right, in brief here, what is he saying?”
Often the psalmist will omit parts of speech; often it’s just compressed, and you have to think what’s going on in this particular case. So look at Psalm 1:4. Remember Psalm 1; you’re familiar with this Psalm, so I think I can assume a little here. Verses 1 to 3, he describes the blessed man: “Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night.” That’s verses 1 to 3. Verse 4 gives you the contrast: “the ungodly are not so.” It doesn’t go back through the “walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,” “stands in the way of sin.” It doesn’t go back through all of that. It just says, “not so the ungodly.” It’s brief and terse, but you’re meant now to go back. Not so in what way? And you go back and look at the description of the blessed man, the righteous man, and now we see the wicked man is the exact opposite of all that. But it says it in just the brief term: “the ungodly are not so,” or “the wicked are not so.” It doesn’t walk back through verses one to three, the description of the righteous, and give it now in a negative way; it just gives a brief contrast.
One fascinating example of this is in Psalm 4, and I plan to preach through this Psalm at some point, so we’ll save the details for that, but I’ll just mention it here. Look at Psalm 4, verse 6: “There are many who say, ‘Who will show us some good? Lift up the light of your face upon us, O Lord.'” Who will show us some good? What good? What good are they looking for? Now in fact, the Psalm does not say specifically. Now what I’ll argue when we work through this Psalm is that the psalmist here is working against the background of a drought. There are details in the Psalm that when you think your way through, you think, “Oh, okay, the king is struggling with a drought, and there’s some struggle in his administration because of that.” In fact, there’s some struggle in the cabinet, and there’s a potential coup, and all this, and people are praying, “Lord, show us some good,” and the good that they’re wanting is rain. But you don’t see that immediately. It’s brief, it’s terse, and you have to meditate and think through the Psalm. So in the white spaces, what is it I’m supposed to recognize? And you have to think your way through the Psalm to see that.
Well, there are other examples here. I don’t have time to work through them. But recognize that the point is not always—in fact often the point is not stated clearly and at length in an appointed way. It’s stated subtly and you have to think your way through. All right, poetry is the way it works. It’s stated briefly in a compressed way. I’ve got to take my time here and think my way through what he’s talking about.
Number Three, Its Imagery and Its Figures of Speech
All right, one feature then of Hebrew poetry, of the Psalms, is the parallelism. That’s basic to everything. Another one then is its brevity, its compressedness. And then the third one that I’ll mention, and this is true of all poetry, just like the second one is, and that is its imagery and its figures of speech. All poetry has this in some way and it’s one aspect actually of the brevity. It uses a figure of speech and a symbolic language, a figure of some sort to make a point, and it’s just highly symbolic and you have to recognize that in poetry to make sense of what’s being said.
It’s the same with our hymns today. If I were to have us sing, “There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,” we’re dealing with poetry. There’s symbolic language. There’s no literal fountain. There’s no place where you can plunge. But it’s poetic imagery to say we are cleansed through the sacrifice of Christ. It’s the same in the Psalms where you have this figurative language that is used, and if you don’t take time to consider the figure, you’ll miss some of the point.
So for example, Psalm 18. You know, I don’t have time to work through all of these either. I’ll just say briefly, you’ll recognize many of these. The Lord is spoken of as a rock. The Lord is our shield. The Lord is our rock, our hiding place. Under his wings we will trust and things like that. Some of the familiar symbolism of the Psalms.
Let me just point out a couple. Look at Psalm 84 and verse 9: “Behold our shield, O God. Look on the face of your anointed.” Now we have a parallel here. Who is the shield? I’m going to wait and let you think. Who’s the shield? “Look on our shield, O God.” Who’s the shield? Line two: “Look on the face of your anointed,” the king. So he’s talking about the king. So he’s praying here in Psalm 84 for the king. Look on our shield. Look on our king, O Lord, and protect him. So you have to understand the symbol. You have to take your time to think: what’s the shield? What’s he talking about? Talking about a shield that I’m holding up? No, it’s a figure. Look on our king and watch after him.
Look at Psalm 73, verse 23. Another interesting figure here. You might remember this is Asaph’s famous struggle with faith when he almost slipped away entirely, and he’s looking back on the time and how God restored him. And here he’s saying, in verse 23, that I’m continually with God, I’m in his presence always, and he says, “you,” that is God, “hold me by my right hand.” Does God actually hold you by the right hand? No, it’s figurative language, right? What is it speaking of? Speaking of providence, protection, in this case keeping him, preservation. But the point is made in a more graphic way by saying, “you hold me by my right hand.” And you get this imagery of a child whose hand is locked in with his dad’s or something like that. And be alert to that imagery. Clearly it’s the point of providence and protection, but it’s made in a more vivid way when you consider the imagery involved.
Psalm 37 is another. Psalm 37, verse 6: “He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday.” He’ll bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday. So here we have again parallel, and he’s speaking of righteousness and justice. These are common themes in the Psalms. But this one stamps the expectation more vividly. He’s not just saying, “Well, in the end, righteousness will triumph.” That’s what he’s saying here; that’s the point. But he makes it in a more vivid way: that righteousness will come as the light and his justice as noonday. In other words, justice is going to prevail and it’s going to prevail in a big way and everybody’s going to know it. It’s going to be like noonday bursting on the scene. It’s a marvelous anticipation, but you have to think about the figures, the symbolism involved.
Maybe one more. Psalm 56 and verse 8. If I can just find it. Here we have a lament psalm. The psalmist is complaining to God about the situation and then pleading with God for help. But in verse 8: “You have kept count of my tossings, put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” So here he’s speaking of his time in his lament, in this time of suffering, trial, opposition, whatever’s going on here, and he says that God has kept count of my tossing. So you get the figure of this guy, the psalmist, lying in bed, frustrated, unable to sleep because he’s concerned, and he’s tossing back and forth, and God has counted the tossings. Or, to use another figure: “put my tears in your bottle.” Here he’s been crying because of this opposition that he has, and every tear—God has bottled it up. It’s a beautiful imagery. It speaks of God’s concern. He’s keeping track of every detail of the psalmist’s experience. Take time, look at the figures, the symbolism, to get the sense and the spirit and the feel of the Psalm.
All right, that’s all I’m going to say about those, then we’ll move to Psalm 133. But one thing, just by way of exhortation with regard to reading the Psalms: the Psalms, you can see already, require thoughtful meditation, careful consideration. If you approach the Psalms like you do a narrative, where you read quickly through to the end to see what the point is, you’re going to miss it. You’ll pick up a gem along the way, and that’s good, but you’re going to miss the depth of what the psalmist is trying to say if that’s how you read it. This is poetry; it doesn’t work that way. You have to consider line two, line one—how are they related? What’s the symbolism involved? And this brief sentence, what is he saying in that? How is it significant to the rest of the Psalm, to the superscript of the Psalm, the setting? You have to think on those details in order to understand the Psalm. It’s cryptic, it’s subtle sometimes; that’s the nature of poetry. But the blessed man, remember Psalm 1, the blessed man is the man who meditates in the law of the Lord day and night. Do that with the Psalms and your reading will be enriched considerably. Take your time, consider the poetic aspects of it, as well as other things that we’ll see when we work our way through the Psalms.
All right. That then is a brief introduction to the poetry of the Psalms. Now let’s take one example and look at Psalm 133. We’ll spend the rest of our time here.
Psalm 133
Psalm 133 is a song of ascents. You’ll see that on the superscription: “A Song of Ascents.” And it tells us it’s a Psalm of David. Verse one: “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron running down on the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.”
All right, let’s read through it again. Verse one: “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron running down on the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.”
Now the parallelism here is actually pretty simple and straightforward. It’s all just completive. It reads more or less like prose in this Psalm. But it’s a good example, I think an outstanding example, of the use of imagery. It’s highly symbolic throughout. You have these similes: “it is like” (verse two), “it is like” (verse three). So he’s using symbolic language.
By way of overview, notice verse one: he gives his proposition and introduces the theme. “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.” There’s his theme: unity. Not just unity, but the blessedness and the pleasantness of unity. There’s the proposition: “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.” And now in verses two and three, he gives some illustrations of it. He illustrates the theme now with some similes: “It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion.” So he has his proposition, verse 1, and then the illustrations of that in verses 2 and 3. It’s like this. It’s like that. And then the last part of verse 3, he gives the explanation. He shows the reason underlying the theme: “For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.”
All right, let’s work our way through this quickly. First of all, then, the theme and the proposition of verse one. Again, the theme is not just unity, but the pleasantness or the blessedness of unity. Verse one: the harmony of the people is good and pleasant. That is, it’s beneficial, it’s delightful. It’s good and pleasant—beneficial and delightful. And then he sums up in verse 3 at the end, concluding: “there the Lord has commanded the blessing.” So his theme then is not just unity, but the blessedness of unity, of the experienced unity of the brothers.
All right, there’s the theme. Verse 1: “Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.” Notice, by the way, the brevity of this, the terseness of it. What unity is he talking about? He doesn’t say exactly, but there are some clues of what unity he has in view specifically. Look at the superscript. It’s a song of ascents. These are the pilgrimage psalms that the Israelites would sing in reference to their annual pilgrimage to Mount Zion to worship at one of the feast days. Probably this is the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths. Probably specifically, this is a Psalm of David for Psalms of Ascent which were used at those occasions. It is like—someone has suggested this Psalm of Unity was written by David in light of his accession to the throne being acknowledged by both the northern and southern kingdoms. I think rather that this is just written for the Psalms of Ascent.
One important scholar has made a case that all of these Psalms of Ascent, Psalm 120 to 134, were composed and compiled specifically for the dedication of the temple at the Feast of Tabernacles under Solomon, under King Solomon. And that theory works really well except for Psalm 126. That seems like a post-exilic psalm. But in any case, it does seem that these Psalms were brought together for that occasion, celebrating. So here we have all of Israel coming to Mount Zion on these worship days. There were three principal worship days that the faithful were called to come to Jerusalem to celebrate in these festivities. The Feast of Tabernacles was the most festive of those, and here they come, and it seems now that this Psalm was written for that. So it’s in view of all of Israel coming together to Mount Zion for a worship day of festivities in these days of worship, and David now says this time of worshiping together in festive celebration of God’s goodness to us is a particularly blessed thing. That doesn’t quite say all that explicitly, but in the brevity of it, with the clues that we have in the superscript and so on, it seems like that’s what’s going on.
All right, so then he’s celebrating now the joy of the 12 tribes together in the worship of God at the festival. This is a blessed event. That’s verse one. Now verses 2 and 3, he enhances that theme with two illustrations. And here we have the symbolic language we’ve been talking about in the Psalms. First of all, he likens the unity of the people to oil suffusing Aaron’s beard dripping onto his robe, which just seems strange to us. This is not something we witness every day, but that’s verse 2: “It is like the precious oil on the head running down on the beard and on the beard of Aaron running down under the collar of his robes.”
Now the reference here is back to Exodus chapter 29 and also in Exodus 30 and Leviticus chapter 8; we have the account of Aaron’s anointing. In Exodus 29 and 30, we actually have the recipe for this concoction that was put together for the anointing oil. And it was—I wrote it down because, no, I haven’t memorized all of this—but this compound of oil consists of 13 pounds of liquid myrrh, 6 1/2 pounds of cane, 6 1/2 pounds of cinnamon, 13 pounds of cassia, a gallon of olive oil. All of it’s mixed together. It’s a fragrant blend all together. This was like 45 pounds of liquid that was used. The point of all of that is to say that when you get this picture of the anointing of Aaron, don’t think of spritzing some water or spritzing some oil on Aaron. This concoction was to be used copiously—I hate to use the word, but dumped on Aaron. And so you get this picture of his hair soaked—not just every hair touched, but every hair soaked—running down on his beard, dripping down on his clothes. That’s the picture he’s giving here. That was the anointing of Aaron. And now this mixture, this compound that was used, was wonderfully fragrant. It was appreciated in that way. It’s called in Psalm 45 and verse 7, the oil of gladness, the oil of gladness. So he’s talking about then this fragrant aroma at this happy event of the anointing of Aaron as priest. And so what he’s saying now with that illustration is: the unity of the people is like that. It smells good, it’s a happy event, it’s a joyous occasion. Now it’s a little difficult for us to enter into that because that’s not a custom that we have, but that is the background of it to understand his figure.
The second thing he likens it to, in verse 3 now: “It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion.” So the unity of the people is like oil, poured over the head of Aaron, soaking all of his hair, running on his clothes, and he had this wonderfully fragrant smell and this joyous event. And now, verse 3: “It is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion.” Mount Hermon was a prominent mountain in the north, about 90 miles north of Jerusalem, and it was famous for its climate. You have the trees of Lebanon and the great cedars that grow to be so huge and so on. One of the things it was famous for was its climate. The dewfall in the mornings was often so heavy that it would be like rain had fallen. In an agrarian culture, that’s particularly important. It’s invigorating for the crops. It’s refreshing. It’s particularly important for them in that kind of a culture, an agrarian culture. So it’s a refreshment, a refreshing kind of simile here that he’s using.
But it’s also a metaphor. It’s a simile in that it’s “like” the dew of Hermon. There’s your simile. But it’s also a metaphor because it says it is like the dew of Hermon which falls on the mountains of Zion. Zion. You have two mountains here. You have Mount Hermon up in the north, 90 miles up, and you’ve got Mount Zion way down here in the south, the prominent mountain of the south where the temple stood. Mount Hermon, Mount Zion. The dew falls on Mount Hermon. It doesn’t fall on Mount Zion; it’s 90 miles away. But he said it’s like the dew of Mount Hermon falling on Mount Zion. So it is like Mount Zion is participating in the blessedness of the climate of Mount Hermon. So this dew that falls on Mount Hermon—it’s like we have experienced the same thing here. So Jerusalem now is benefiting, figuratively, metaphorically, Jerusalem is benefiting from the dewfall up on Mount Hermon. Its rich, lush climate has become of benefit now to Jerusalem.
All of that is figurative language illustrating the blessedness of the experienced unity of God’s people. Now there’s actually—the imagery here goes a bit deeper than that. You might remember from your Old Testament studies—Rick Cantor has just taught through Samuel recently, he’ll remember this—that there’s often been these tensions between the northern and southern tribes. Most recently there would have been the coup under Absalom and David had to crush the rebellion. Tension between the two tribes was often the case or familiar for that. There was civil war and so on. But Hermon now, the mountain of the north, representing the north, and you’ve got Mount Zion in the south—and when he’s using these illustrations, the dew of Mount Hermon falling on Mount Zion, the illustration tells us that the tensions between north and south are gone. And they are experiencing unity together, in fact, of mutual benefit to one another. So you have these two illustrations of blessedness, of the unity of the people of God. It’s a fragrant event, a joyous, festive event. It’s refreshing like the dew of Hermon falling on Mount Zion, and it’s invigorating, and it’s shared equally by the North and the South.
And then verse three at the end gives the explanation. There’s the explanation that’s coming: “For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.” Unity in Zion is God’s ordained place of blessing for the people. Now Zion is the place of the temple, is the place of God’s presence, but notice his point here is not that Zion is the appointed place of blessing. His point is that the unity of God’s people in Zion is God’s appointed place of blessing. The unity of the people in Zion is God’s appointed place of blessing, which is “life forevermore.”
So he’s referring here then, the psalmist is referring to Israel’s glory days when the twelve tribes united, coming together in the worship of God, rejoicing in the festivities together in combined worship before the Lord. This is the glory days of David and Solomon, and David is reflecting on it here in this Psalm and saying this is a particularly blessed thing and in fact this is where God has appointed blessing for his people—in the experienced unity in Zion.
At this point, what we should do with each of the Psalms—and we’ll deal with this at some point later in our studies as well—but we should do it with each of the Psalms, is to reflect in a big way: how is this theme that we have here reflected in the bigger picture? How is it reflected in the rest of the Bible? And so we have Mount Zion, which of course is represented in the New Testament as the people of God, the church. We have that in several occasions in Hebrews and 1 Peter and in the book of Revelation as well. This is the people of God. “We have come to Mount Zion to an innumerable company of angels.” Remember Hebrews chapter 12. This is a picture of the people of God. They’re united together in Christ, that matter of union in Christ together as one people; that’s a dominant theme in the New Testament as well. Ephesians chapter 2 and Ephesians 3, we have that. We’ve become one new man in Christ, Jew and Gentile. Jesus talked about it: “Other sheep I have which are not of this Jewish fold that I must go and bring them in.” We have this theme of the unity of the people of God which is dominant in the New Testament. In fact, Jesus said, this is what distinguishes us from the rest of the world: that we love one another as he has loved us. This experienced unity is to characterize the church as well.
And so what we ought to do, and we don’t have time this evening to do that, is reflect on how these themes that we’ve picked up now in Psalm 133 are carried forward in the New Testament in regards to the church. In the New Testament, we have the experienced unity of the people of God that is highly valued and prized by the apostles. Paul speaks of it frequently in his epistles. We have expressions like: be of one mind and of one spirit with one another, striving together for the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. In fact, let’s look at that passage, Ephesians chapter 4. It’s probably the main passage in the New Testament that expounds this idea of unity in an experienced way.
Ephesians chapter 4, beginning with verse 1: “I therefore a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. My grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift,” and then he goes on to say the diversity of gifts that we have in this unity that we have in Christ.
Paul here is telling us on the one hand of the foundational unity we have in Christ—one Lord, one faith, one baptism—we have so much in common. Those first three verses are telling us what we ought to do because of that: humility, with patience, and long-suffering pursue peace and the unity that we have that has been established in Christ. It ought to be something that we pursue at every cost in the local church. It’s worth every effort to maintain, and so be patient with one another, be long-suffering with one another. We require that now and then. And Paul says it’s worth exercising some patience, long-suffering with one another in order to maintain this unity that God has established in us.
Why? Well, Psalm 133, verse 3: it’s the place of refreshment and joy. It’s the place of blessing. I thought as I was thinking on this the other day, how do you estimate the experienced blessedness of unity in the local church? How do you estimate—how valuable is that? Now we have that here at RBC. I’m thankful for it. I’ve said that virtually every time that I come up to this topic on unity and getting along with one another. God has blessed us in a wonderful way at RBC and I’m grateful for that. We have the group from Pottsville here. For at least the last 16 of the 17 years I was there, we experienced that as well. Just times of wonderful blessing. I don’t know how to measure that. This is where your children hear the Word of God. They grow up hearing your faith reinforced. They see your faith exemplified in others. They see the love that you say ought to be exemplified in all of us. They see that in the relationships in the congregation. We experience that with one another. We are mutually encouraged by it. When there is this experienced unity in the congregation, you have to say with the psalmist, this is God’s appointed place of blessing. It’s difficult to measure just how valuable that blessing is.
Well, that’s what the psalmist says. This is God’s appointed place of blessing. In this atmosphere we grow. In this atmosphere we’re encouraged. Our children learn of Christ. It is of immense value. And all of that, by the way, in anticipation of the unity that we will have in Christ in the age to come. And all of this is a foretaste of that that we will experience in full later on. The experienced unity of the people of God is the divinely designated place of blessing.
One final observation here in Psalm 133. This occurred to me just the other day as I was thinking on this late in the week. Psalm 133 is not—it’s not what I’ve just been doing, exhorting you to unity. Psalm 133 is not an exhortation to unity. There is not a word of exhortation in Psalm 133. It is a celebration of unity of the people of God. And only after reminding us of the blessedness of the experienced unity of the people of God does it become now an exhortation to make sure you preserve that. Let’s work at it in our relationships to do that. But it all stems in the psalmist’s mind from, I think, from a right understanding of the value of this experienced unity of the people of God. And therefore, people of God, do all that we can to preserve that unity.