1 Jehovah, who can be guest in Thy tent?
Who can dwell in Thy holy hill?
2 The man walking blamelessly, and doing righteousness,
And speaking truth with his heart.
3 He has not slander on his tongue,
He does not harm to his comrade,
And reproach he does not lay on his neighbour.
4 A reprobate is despised in his eyes,
But the fearers of Jehovah he honours;
He swears to his own hurt, and will not change.
5 His silver he does not give at usury,
And a bribe against the innocent he does not take;
He that does these things shall not be moved for ever.
The ideal worshipper of Jehovah is painted in this psalm in a few broad
outlines. Zion is holy because God's "tent" is there. This is the only
hint of date given by the psalm; and all that can be said is that, if
that consecration of Thy hill was recent, the poet would naturally
ponder all the more deeply the question of who were fit to dwell in the
new solemnities of the abode of Jehovah. The tone of the psalm, then,
accords with the circumstances of the time when David brought the ark to
Jerusalem; but more than this cannot be affirmed. Much more important
are its two main points: the conception of the guests of Jehovah and the
statement of the ethical qualifications of these.
As to structure, the psalm is simple. It has, first, the general
question and answer in two verses of two clauses each (vv. 1, 2). Then
the general description of the guest of God is expanded in three
verses of three clauses each, the last of which closes with an
assurance of stability, which varies and heightens the idea of
dwelling in the tent of Jehovah.
It is no mere poetic apostrophe with which the psalmist's question is
prefaced. He does thereby consult the Master of the house as to the
terms on which He extends hospitality, which terms it is His right to
prescribe. He brings to his own view and to his readers' all that lies
in the name of Jehovah, the covenant name, and all that is meant by
"holiness," and thence draws the answer to his question, which is none
the less Jehovah's answer because it springs in the psalmist's heart
and is spoken by his lips. The character of the God determines the
character of the worshipper. The roots of ethics are in religion. The
Old Testament ideal of the righteous man flows from its revelation of
the righteous God. Not men's own fancies, but insight gained by
communion with God and docile inquiry of Him, will reliably tell what
manner of men they are who can abide in His light.
The thought, expressed so forcibly in the question of the psalm, that
men may be God's guests, is a very deep and tender one, common to a
considerable number of psalms (v. 5, xxvii. 4, lxxxiv. 5, etc.). The
word translated "abide" in the A.V. and "sojourn" in the R.V.
originally implied a transient residence as a stranger, but when
applied to men's relations to God, it does not always preserve the
idea of transiency (see, for instance, lxi. 4: "I will dwell in Thy
tent _for ever_"); and the idea of protection is the most prominent.
The stranger who took refuge in the tent even of the wild Beduin was
safe, much more the happy man who crept under the folds of the tent of
Jehovah. If the holy hill of Zion were not immediately mentioned, one
might be tempted to think that the tent here was only used as a
metaphor; but the juxtaposition of the two things seems to set the
allusion to the dwelling-place of the Ark on its hill beyond question.
In the gracious hospitality of the antique world, a guest was
sheltered from all harm; his person was inviolable, his wants all met.
So the guest of Jehovah is safe, can claim asylum from every foe and a
share in all the bountiful provision of His abode. Taken accurately,
the two verbs in ver. 1 differ in that the first implies transient and
the second permanent abode; but that difference is not in the
psalmist's mind, and the two phrases mean the same thing, with only
the difference that the former brings out his conception of the rights
of the guest. Clearly, then, the psalmist's question by no means
refers only to an outward approach to an outward tabernacle; but we
see here the symbol in the very act of melting into the deep spiritual
reality signified. The singer has been educated by the husks of ritual
to pass beyond these, and has learned that there is a better
dwelling-place for Jehovah, and therefore for himself, than that
pitched on Zion and frequented by impure and pure alike.
Ver. 2 sums the qualifications of Jehovah's guest in one comprehensive
demand, that he should walk uprightly, and then analyses that
requirement into the two of righteous deeds and truthful speech. The
verbs are in the participial form, which emphasises the notion of
habitual action. The general answer is expanded in the three following
verses, which each contain three clauses, and take up the two points
of ver. 2 in inverted order, although perhaps not with absolute
accuracy of arrangement. The participial construction is in them
changed for finite verbs. Ver. 2 sketches the figure in outline, and
the rest of the psalm adds clause on clause of description as if the
man stood before the psalmist's vision. Habits are described as acts.
The first outstanding characteristic of this ideal is that it deals
entirely with duties to men, and the second is that it is almost
wholly negative. Moral qualities of the most obvious kind, and such as
can be tested in daily life and are cultivated by rigid abstinence
from prevailing evils, and not any recondite and impalpable
refinements of conduct, still less any peculiar emotions of souls
raised high above the dusty levels of common life, are the
qualifications for dwelling, a guarded guest, in that great pavilion.
Such a stress laid on homely duties, which the universal conscience
recognises, is characteristic of the ethics of the Old Testament as a
whole and of the Psalter in particular, and is exemplified in the
lives of its saints and heroes. They "come eating and drinking,"
sharing in domestic joys and civic duties; and however high their
aspirations and vows may soar, they have always their feet firmly
planted on the ground and, laying the smallest duties on themselves,
"tread life's common road in cheerful godliness." The Christian answer
to the psalmist's question goes deeper than his, but is fatally
incomplete unless it include his and lay the same stress on duties to
men which all acknowledge, as that does. Lofty emotions, raptures of
communion, aspirations which bring their own fulfilment, and all the
experiences of the devout soul, which are sometimes apt to be divorced
from plain morality, need the ballast of the psalmist's homely answer
to the great question. There is something in a religion of emotion
not wholly favourable to the practice of ordinary duties; and many
men, good after a fashion, seem to have their spiritual nature divided
into water-tight and uncommunicating compartments, in one of which
they keep their religion, and in the other their morality.
The stringent assertion that these two are inseparable was the great
peculiarity of Judaism as compared with the old world religions, from
which, as from the heathenism of to-day, the conception that religion
had anything to do with conduct was absent. But it is not only
heathenism that needs the reminder.
True, the ideal drawn here is not the full Christian one. It is too
merely negative for that, and too entirely concerned with acts.
Therein it reproduces the limitations of the earlier revelation. It
scarcely touches at all the deeper forms of "love to our neighbour";
and, above all, it has no answer to the question which instinctively
rises in the heart when the psalm has answered its own question. How
can I attain to these qualifications? is a second interrogation,
raised by the response to the first, and for its answer we have to
turn to Jesus. The psalm, like the law which inspired it, is mainly
negative, deals mainly with acts, and has no light to show how its
requirements may be won. But it yet stands as an unantiquated
statement of what a man must be who dwells in the secret place of the
Most High. How he may become such a one we must learn from Him who
both teaches us the way, and gives us the power, to become such as God
will shelter in the safe recesses of His pavilion.
The details of the qualifications as described in the psalm are simple
and homely. They relate first to right speech, which holds so
prominent a place in the ethics of the Psalter. The triplets of ver. 3
probably all refer to sins of the tongue. The good man has no slander
on his tongue; he does not harm his companion (by word) nor heap
reproach on his neighbour. These things are the staple of much common
talk. What a quantity of brilliant wit and polished sarcasm would
perish if this rule were observed! How dull many sparkling circles
would become, and how many columns of newspapers and pages of books
would be obliterated, if the censor's pencil struck out all that
infringed it! Ver. 4 adds as characteristic of a righteous man that in
his estimate of character he gives each his own, and judges men by no
other standard than their moral worth. The reprobate may be a
millionaire or a prince, but his due is contempt; the devout man may
be a pauper or one of narrow culture, but his due is respect, and he
gets it. "A terrible sagacity informs" the good man's heart; and he
who is, in his own inmost desires, walking uprightly will not be
seduced into adulation of a popular idol who is a bad man, nor turned
from reverence for lowly goodness. The world will be a paradise when
the churl is no more called bountiful.
Apparently the utterance of these estimates is in the psalmist's mind,
and he is still thinking of speech. Neither calumny (ver. 3) nor the
equally ignoble flattery of evil-doers (ver. 4) pollutes the lips of
his ideal good man. If this reference to spoken estimates is allowed,
the last clause of ver. 4 completes the references to the right use of
speech. The obligation of speaking "truth with his heart" is pursued
into a third region: that of vows or promises. These must be conceived
as not religious vows, but, in accordance with the reference of the
whole psalm to duties to neighbours, as oaths made to men. They must
be kept, whatever consequences may ensue. The law prohibited the
substitution of another animal sacrifice for that which had been vowed
(Lev. xxvii. 10); and the psalm uses the same word for "changeth,"
with evident allusion to the prohibition, which must therefore have
been known to the psalmist.
Usury and bribery were common sins, as they still are in communities
on the same industrial and judicial level as that mirrored in the
psalm. Capitalists who "bite" the poor (for that is the literal
meaning of the words for usurious taking of interest) and judges who
condemn the innocent for gain are the blood-suckers of such societies.
The avoidance of such gross sin is a most elementary illustration of
walking uprightly, and could only have been chosen to stand in lieu of
all other neighbourly virtues in an age when these sins were
deplorably common. This draft of a God-pleasing character is by no
means complete even from the Old Testament ethical point of view.
There are two variations of it, which add important elements: that in
Psalm xxiv., which seems to have been occasioned by the same
circumstances; and the noble adaptation in Isa. xxxiii. 13-16, which
is probably moulded on a reminiscence of both psalms. Add to these
Micah's answer to the question what God requires of man (ch. vi. 8),
and we have an interesting series, exhibiting the effects of the Law
on the moral judgments of devout men in Israel.
The psalmist's last word goes beyond his question, in the clear
recognition that such a character as he has outlined not only dwells
in Jehovah's tent, but will stand unmoved, though all the world should
rock. He does not see how far onward that "for ever" may stretch, but
of this he is sure: that righteousness is the one stable thing in the
universe, and there may have shone before him the hope that it was
possible to travel on beyond the horizon that bounds this life. "I
shall be a guest in Jehovah's tent for ever," says the other psalm
already quoted; "He shall never be moved," says this one. Both find
their fulfilment in the great words of the Apostle who taught a
completer ideal of love to men, because he had dwelt close by the
perfect revelation of God's love: "The world passeth away, and the
lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."