Commentary on Psalms Volume 3 John Calvin (continued)
Psalm 128
PSALM 128
This Psalm is akin to the preceding, and, so to speak, a kind of appendage to it; for it declares that the divine blessing, to the diffusion of which among the whole human race Solomon testified, is to be seen most conspicuously in the ease of God's true and sincere servants.
A Song of Degrees.
Psalm 128:1-3
1. Blessed is the man who feareth Jehovah, and walketh in his ways. 2. For when thou shalt eat the labor of thy hands, thou shalt be blessed, and it shall be well with thee. 3. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine on the sides of thy house, and thy children as olive plants around thy table. 546
"The tables of the Jews, as we may hence (and from 1 Samuel 16:11) infer, were round: they had sobs (Ezekiel 23:41) placed about them, on which (Genesis 27:19; Judges 10:6; 1 Samuel 2:5, 24, 25; 1 Kings 13:20) they sat, excepting at the Paschal feast." — Cresswell. In the Illustrated Commentary upon the Bible, the writer on this passage objects to the common reading — Fruitful vine by the sides of thine house. olive-plants round about thy table. "We do not remember," says he, "to have met with a single instance in the East of vines trained against the walls of a house, or of olives near or about a house. Neither have we read of such instances. The passage doubtless derives its figures from the fertility of the vine, and from the appearance of the olive, or the order in which olive-trees are planted." He accordingly proposes the following construction — "Thy wife, on the sides (interior apartments) of thy house, shall be as the fruitful vine; and thy children, round about thy table, like olive-plants."