Psalm 131
If anyone in Israel had reasons to be proud, it was David. The eighth son of a common citizen, he began as a humble shepherd and yet became Israel's greatest
Psalm 131—132
enemy (vv. 22–23; 132:18), horn (v. 24; 132:17), and throne (v. 29). (For other "Zion psalms," see 24, 48, 68, and 89.) The completion of the temple was no assurance of God's blessing on Israel, for the important thing was that the people fulfill their responsibilities toward the Lord.
God's goal for us is emotional and spiritual maturity (1 Cor. 13:11; 14:20; Eph. 4:13–15), and God sometimes has to wean us away from good things in order to give us better things. Abraham had to leave his family and city, send Ishmael away, separate from Lot, and put Isaac on the altar. Painful weanings! Joseph had to be separated from his father and his brothers in order to see his dreams come true. Both Jacob and Peter had to be weaned from their own self-sufficiency and learn that faith means living without scheming. The child that David described wept and fretted but eventually calmed down and accepted the inevitable. The word describes the calming of the sea or the farmer's leveling of the ground after plowing (Isa. 28:25). Instead of emotional highs and lows, the child developed a steady, uniform response, indicating a giant step forward in the quest for maturity. Successful living means moving from dependence to independence, and then to interdependence, always in the will of God. To accept God's will in the losses and gains of life is to experience that inner calm that is so necessary if we are to be mature people.
Give God His Rightful Place (vv. 1–5) The ark represented God's throne on earth (80:1; 99:1 nasb, niv) and its rightful place was in the Holy of Holies of God's sanctuary. Unless God is on the throne of our lives, no enterprise we attempt can be really successful. The ark had been in several places before Solomon put it into the temple (2 Chron. 5). The ark went before the children of Israel as they followed the cloud and pillar of fire through the wilderness, and it also went before them into the water as the people crossed the Jordan River and entered Canaan. It is possible that the ark was temporarily at Bethel (Judg. 20:27) and then Mizpah (Judg. 21:5), but it finally rested at Shiloh (1 Sam. 1—3). The wicked sons of Eli used the ark as a "good luck charm" and took it into battle against the Philistines, but the Philistines captured it (1 Sam. 4—5). Frightened by the judgments God sent, the Philistines returned the ark to the Jews, and for twenty years it rested in the house of Abinadab in Kirjath Jearim (1 Sam. 6:1—7:2). When David became king, he wanted the ark in Jerusalem and prepared a tent for it, but his first attempt failed (2 Sam. 6:1–11). The ark remained in the house of ObedEdom for three months, and then David successfully brought God's throne to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 6:12–19; 1 Chron. 15—16). It appears that the tabernacle of Moses and its holy furniture were in Gibeon (1 Chron. 21:29). David had two great ambitions: to bring the ark to Jerusalem and then to build a glorious temple to house it. He even made a vow to the Lord, and the Lord permitted him to fulfill the first desire but not the second (2 Sam. 7). David had gone through much hardship with reference to the building of the temple (v. 1; 1 Chron. 22:14), for the wealth he turned over to Solomon came from the spoils of his many battles. The worship leader called on God to "remember—pay attention to" what David had done, for humanly speaking, without David there would have been no temple. Even purchasing the property on which the temple was built cost David a great deal of pain (2 Sam. 24). The words spoken in verse 4 do not mean that David forsook sleep all those years but simply expressed the passion of his heart and the desire to accomplish his goal quickly (Prov. 6:4). "The Mighty One of Jacob" (vv. 2, 5) is an ancient name for Jehovah, for Jacob used it in his last words to his family (Gen. 49:24; and see Isa. 1:24; 49:26; 60:16).
Hope—Anticipate the Future (v. 3) Infants do not realize that their mother's decision is for their own good, for weaning sets them free to meet the future and make the most of it. The child may want to keep things as they are, but that leads to immaturity and tragedy. When we fret over a comfortable past, we only forfeit a challenging future. In the Christian vocabulary, hope is not "hope so." It is joyful anticipation of what the Lord will do in the future, based on His changeless promises. Like the child being weaned, we may fret at our present circumstances, but we know that our fretting is wrong. Our present circumstances are the womb out of which new blessings and opportunities will be born (Rom. 8:28).