CONTEXT/STUDY
OVERVIEW: This psalm emphasizes humanity’s dependence on God, and each of our Reformation-era exegetes develops this theme in their commentary. However, they emphasize various aspects and implications of this theme, including the vanity that comes when God’s blessing is not valued, God’s blessing of children, and the didactic function of this psalm in teaching that all human leadership, whether public or private, is primarily a gift from God.
A DOCTRINAL PSALM. MARTIN LUTHER: Psalm 127 is a doctrinal psalm. As such it teaches that both governmental and domestic rule are gifts of God and are in God’s keeping. For when he does not grant peace and a good government, no wisdom, regulation, struggle, nor preparedness aid us in keeping peace. Where he does not prosper us with wife, child, and servants, there all worrying and labor are in vain. SUMMARIES.
Herman J. Selderhuis and Timothy George, eds., Psalms 73–150: Old Testament, vol. VIII, Reformation Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2018), 306.
THIS [PSALM] pure expression of conscious dependence on God’s blessing for all well-being may possibly have special reference to the Israel of the Restoration. The instances of vain human effort and care would then have special force, when the ruins of many generations had to be rebuilt and the city to be guarded. But there is no need to seek for specific occasion, so general is this psalm. It sings in a spirit of happy trust the commonplace of all true religion, that God’s blessing prospers all things, and that effort is vain without it. There is no sweeter utterance of that truth anywhere, till we come to our Lord’s parallel teaching, lovelier still than that of our psalm, when He points us to the flowers of the field and the fowls of the air, as our teachers of the joyous, fair lives that can be lived, when no carking care mars their beauty.
Alexander Maclaren, “The Psalms,” in The Expositor’s Bible: Psalms to Isaiah, ed. W. Robertson Nicoll, vol. 3, Expositor’s Bible (Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co., 1903), 311.
DEVOTIONALS
The first part of the psalm focuses on work. All hard work leads to profit (Proverbs 14:23), but “unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” (127:1). There is no ultimate profit, benefit, reward, or point to hard work unless you are working for the Lord. When you are working for God—whatever it is that you are doing, if you are doing it for him, that is to please him—then there is point to it all. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men” (Colossians 3:23, NIV).
With this focus on God and the eternal confidence that comes with the personal knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we can know that our “labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). But if we are not working “for the Lord,” if the Lord is not “building the house” or “watching over the city,” then rising up early, going late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, all this is ultimately “in vain” (127:2).
The question then is how to ensure that the Lord is building the house of our lives? It comes down to our relationship with God: first of all, that we have put our faith in God, received the grace of Christ through that faith, and been transformed by his Holy Spirit. The house of our lives now is something that the Lord is building, and we are his. And then having committed our lives to Christ as a disciple, we do what we are doing for God. We aim to please him. We work as “unto the Lord,” not as people pleasers, but as God pleasers. We want to follow what he says in his Word. We obey his voice. None of us do it perfectly, for we are still sinners. But our desire now is to build his house, to expand his kingdom, to give our lives for his glory. And then our hard work has meaning—and eternal meaning.
The second half of the psalm switches from the public sphere of work to the private and the family. While some eat the bread of anxious toil to try to advance their career, and neglect their family, the psalmist reminds the reader that the family is the place of blessing for those who are parents. “Children are a heritage from the Lord” (127:3). They are “like arrows in the hand of a warrior” (127:4). With such a family you will not be put to shame even by your enemies in the public sphere, at the “gate” (127:5). Your family becomes a ballast and a resource, a testimony to who you are, a support and a shield. Next time your children are annoying you, remember: a heritage from the Lord, arrows in the hand of a warrior.
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I am lucky to have lived long enough to appreciate this psalm. It takes a long life for most of us to see the hand of the Lord in our lives and in the lives of others. In particular, I am glad to have had children. It is not until we are old that we begin to understand the value of children.
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I certainly agree with that. My youngest daughter (42) and her family live nearby and are such a blessing. If you could not tell I love verse one. We used this as our main text when deciding what to call our construction ministry years ago, Faith Builders Ministry.
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