1 I rejoiced when they said to me,
To the house of Jehovah let us go.
2 Standing are our feet
In thy gates, Jerusalem.
3 Jerusalem that art built [again]
As a city that is compact together.
4 Whither went up the tribes, the tribes of Jah,
--[According to] the precept for Israel--
To give thanks to the name of Jehovah.
5 For there were set thrones of judgment,
Thrones for the house of David.
6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem;
Prosperous be they who love thee!
7 Be peace within thy bulwark,
Prosperity within thy palaces.
8 Because of my brethren and my companions' sake
Let me now wish thee peace.
9 Because of the house of Jehovah our God
Let me now seek thy good.
This is very distinctly a pilgrim psalm. But there is difficulty
in determining the singer's precise point of view, arising from the
possibility of understanding the phrase in ver. 2, "are standing,"
as meaning either "are" or "were standing" or "have stood." If it
is taken as a present tense, the psalm begins by recalling the joy
with which the pilgrims began their march, and in ver. 2 rejoices
in reaching the goal. Then, in vv. 3, 4, 5 the psalmist paints
the sight of the city which gladdened the gazers' eyes, remembers
ancient glories when Jerusalem was the rallying-point for united
worship and the seat of the Davidic monarchy, and finally pours out
patriotic exhortations to love Jerusalem and prayers for her peace
and prosperity. This seems the most natural construing of the psalm.
If, on the other hand, ver. 2 refers to a past time, "the poet,
now again returning home or actually returned, remembers the whole
pilgrimage from its beginning onwards." This is possible; but the
warmth of emotion in the exclamation in ver. 3 is more appropriate to
the moment of rapturous realisation of a long-sought joy than to the
paler remembrance of it.
Taking, then, the former view of the verse, we have the beginning and
end of the pilgrimage brought into juxtaposition in vv. 1 and 2. It
was begun in joy; it ends in full attainment and a satisfied rapture,
as the pilgrim finds the feet which have traversed many a weary mile
planted at last within the city. How fading the annoyances of the
road! Happy they whose life's path ends where the psalmist's did! The
joy of fruition will surpass that of anticipation, and difficulties
and dangers will be forgotten.
Vv. 3-5 give voice to the crowding thoughts and memories waked
by that moment of supreme joy, when dreams and hopes have become
realities, and the pilgrim's happy eyes do actually see the city.
It stands "built," by which is best understood _built anew_, rising
from the ruins of many years. It is "compact together," the former
breaches in the walls and the melancholy gaps in the buildings being
filled up. Others take the reference to be to the crowding of its
houses, which its site, a narrow peninsula of rock with deep ravines
on three sides, made necessary. But fair to his eyes as the Jerusalem
of to-day looked, the poet-patriot sees auguster forms rising behind
it, and recalls vanished glories, when all the twelve tribes came up
to worship, according to the commandment, and there was yet a king in
Israel. The religious and civil life of the nation had their centres
in the city; and Jerusalem had become the seat of worship because it
was the seat of the monarchy. These days were past; but though few
in number, the tribes still were going up; and the psalmist does not
feel the sadness but the sanctity of the vanished past.
Thus moved to the depths of his soul, he breaks forth into exhortation
to his companion pilgrims to pray for the peace of the city. There is a
play on the meaning of the name in ver. 6_a_; for, as the Tel-el-Amarna
tablets have told us, the name of the city of the priest-king was Uru
Salim--the city of [the god of] peace. The prayer is that the _nomen_
may become _omen_, and that the hope that moved in the hearts that
had so long ago and in the midst of wars given so fair a designation
to their abode, may be fulfilled now at last. A similar play of words
lies in the interchange of "peace" and "prosperity," which are closely
similar in sound in the Hebrew. So sure is the psalmist that God will
favour Zion, that he assures his companions that individual well-being
will be secured by loyal love to her. The motive appealed to may be so
put as to be mere selfishness, though, if any man loved Zion not for
Zion's sake but for his own, he could scarcely be deemed to love her
at all. But rightly understood, the psalmist proclaims an everlasting
truth, that the highest good is realised by sinking self in a passion
of earnest love for and service to the City of God. Such love is in
itself well-being; and while it may have no rewards appreciable by
sense, it cannot fail of sharing in the good of Zion and the prosperity
of God's chosen.
The singer puts forth the prayers which he enjoins on others, and
rises high above all considerations of self. His desires are winged
by two great motives,--on the one hand, his self-oblivious wish for
the good of those who are knit to him by common faith and worship; on
the other, his loving reverence for the sacred house of Jehovah. That
house hallowed every stone in the city. To wish for the prosperity
of Jerusalem, forgetting that the Temple was in it, would have been
mere earthly patriotism, a very questionable virtue. To wish and
struggle for the growth of an external organisation called a Church,
disregarding the Presence which gives it all its sanctity, is no
uncommon fault in some who think that they are actuated by "zeal for
the Lord," when it is a much more earthly flame that burns in them.