Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin
JOHN CALVIN
12. The righteous shalt flourish like the palm-tree, 1078 he shall be multiplied as the cedar in Lebanon. 1079 13. Those who are planted in the house of Jehovah shall flourish in the courts of our God. 14. They shall still bud forth in old age; they shall be fat and green; 15. That they may show that Jehovah is upright, my rock, and that there is no iniquity in him.
12 The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree. He now passes to the consideration of another general truth, That though God may exercise his people with many trials, subject them to hardships, and visit them with privations, he will eventually show that he had not forgotten them. We need not be surprised that he insists so explicitly and carefully upon this point, as nothing is more difficult than for the saints of God to entertain expectations of being raised up and delivered when they have been reduced almost to the state of the dead, and it does not appear how they can live. Some think the cedar is mentioned from the fragrancy of its smell, and the palm for the sweetness of its fruit; but this is too subtile a meaning to attach to the words. The sense seems simply, that though the righteous may appear for a time to be withered, or to have been cut down, they will again spring up with renewed vigor, and flourish as well and as fair in the Church of God as the stateliest trees upon Lebanon. The expression which is employed — planted in the house of the Lord — gives the reason of their vigorous growth; nor is it meant that they have merely a place there, (which can be said even of hypocrites,) but that they are firmly fixed, and deeply rooted in it, so as to be united to God. The Psalmist speaks of the courts of
The palm is one of the noblest and most beautiful of trees. It is more remarkable than any other tree for its straight, upright growth, and hence its Hebrew nameתמרtamar It frequently rises to the height of more than a hundred feet; and its leaves, when it arrives at maturity, are often six or eight feet in length, and broad in proportion. At the age of thirty it attains its greatest vigor, and continues in full strength and beauty for seventy years longer, producing every year about three or four hundred weight of dates. It is crowned at the top with a large tuft of spiralling leaves about four feet long, which never fall off, but always continue in the same flourishing verdure. And it has been said that when loaded with any weight it possesses the quality of resisting it, and of rising upwards and bending the contrary way, to counterbalance the pressure. This tree, then, so distinguished for its uprightness, loftiness, fecundity, longevity, perpetual verdure, and power of resistance, is employed with great elegance to express the spiritual beauty, elevation, fruitfulness, constancy, patience, and victory of the righteous.
The cedars of Lebanon are a favourite image with the sacred writers. They grow to a prodigious size, rise to an enormous height, and spread their branches to a great extent, affording a grateful shade. They continue to flourish for more than a thousand years; and, when cut down, their wood is so durable that it has obtained the reputation of being incorruptible. How striking, then, the image, "The righteous shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon," like that massy, lofty, umbrageous, and incorruptible tree, which continues to flourish from generation to generation, which survives empires, and is still vigorous when a thousand years have passed over it.