Bible Commentaries

‘IF HE SLEEP, HE SHALL DO WELL’

‘So He giveth His beloved sleep.’

Psalms 127:2

We take the ‘sleep’ in our text as denoting death, and confine ourselves to an illustration of the passage under this one point of view. Here we have an idea which it would be well to work out in detail. God values death. He must value that which He reserves for the objects of His love. There are two great reasons to be given why death should be regarded as a gift to the believer, and why, therefore as being a gift, it should be called precious or valuable in God’s sight.

I. Regard the believer as testifying to the finished work of Christ.—What evidence of the complete success of the scheme of redemption can exceed or equal that which is furnished by the death of God’s saints? That which they could never have learned from natural theology the Gospel has taught them: they have learned how to die. Thus the Gospel is put, as it were, to the greatest possible trial; and the trial does but issue in full evidence of its sufficiency.

II. Regard the believer as admitted in and through death into final security.—Having fought the good fight and kept the faith dying as well as living, the righteous are henceforward placed beyond the reach of danger. Nothing can put their salvation in peril. If they be not crowned till the morning of resurrection, a crown is laid up for them which ‘no thief can rifle and no moth corrupt.’ The death is a precious gift because the life is perilous; and God bestows a benefit on His people when He has gathered them into a separate state, because then they can be no more tempted to the forsaking of His law, no more exposed to the assaults of the Evil One, no more challenged to a battle in which, if victory be glorious, there is all the risk of a shameful defeat.

Canon Melvill.

Illustration

‘Sleep is here not contrasted with labour, but with trouble and care, and expresses the freedom from trouble and the peace of the man who reposes in God’s protection. The explanation of the last clause of the verse which is now generally followed is this: God is represented as giving to those whom He loves “in sleep,” that is without any fatiguing toil on their part, all things that are for their own good. Sleep is evidently contrasted with the late working of those who do not give themselves up to God’s protection, and who are alluded to in the first part of the verse.’

Psalms 128:1

THE PICTURE OF A GODLY MAN

‘Every one that feareth the Lord.’

Psalms 128:1

I. This is a perfectly-cut cameo—the picture of a godly man, who fears God, and walks in His ways.—It is a picture of an ideal home, such as was to be found in the best days of the Hebrew people, and is still to be found wherever the light of Christ has shone. Here is the husband and father, reverent and devout, coming from the hour of his private prayer, with the peace of God on his face, happy in himself and home, a benediction to wife and children, respected among his fellow-men, and successful in garnering the results of his toils. Our late Poet-Laureate has told us that ‘the woman’s cause is man’s; they rise or sink together, dwarfed or god-like, bond or free. If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, how shall men grow?’

But surely the contrary holds also, that where man is noble, chivalrous, high-minded, leal-hearted, the woman (other things being equal) will become his worthy helpmate. If, then, a man fears God and walks in His ways, it will have the most ennobling effect possible on the wife, in the innermost parts of the house, and on the children around his table. Thus shall the man be blessed.

Then comes the statelier Eden back to man,

Then reign the world’s great bridals, chaste and calm;

Then springs the crowning race of humankind.

May these things be!

II. Though it seem impossible that the Psalmist’s ideal should ever be realised, yet go on fearing the Lord and walking in His ways.—Be not weary in well-doing. Finally, the right, and holy, and loving influence of your Christian character will gain its silent mastery, as God’s will in the great household of creation.

Illustration

‘This psalm is not supplementary to Psalms 127. Even externally they do not indicate any closer connection, or least of all, such a resemblance that one psalm is to be regarded as a response to the other, sung by the congregation in chorus. There is a similarity in some of the ideas, in the aphoristic mode of expression, and in the felicitation at the end of the one and at the beginning of the other, but these do not oblige us to hold a contemporaneous composition.’