Psalms 127
What Happens in This Chapter
This short psalm says that human effort comes to nothing unless the LORD is behind it: building a house, guarding a city, working from before dawn until after dark. It then names children as a gift the LORD gives, and compares them to arrows in a warrior's hand. The man with many of them will not be put to shame when he faces his opponents at the city gate.
If the LORD does not build the house, the people building it are working for nothing. If the LORD does not guard the city, the guard on watch stays awake for nothing.
1Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
The Hebrew word for "house" means both a building and a household or family line, the descendants a man builds up. Both senses are in play here, and the psalm moves in the second half of the poem to children.
2It does no good for you to get up before dawn and stay up late, working hard for the food you eat. God gives sleep to the one he loves.
2It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
"The bread of sorrows" is bread got by painful toil, food earned the hard way. The last line is ambiguous in Hebrew and translators split over it: it can mean "he gives sleep to the one he loves" (rest instead of anxious overwork) or "he gives to the one he loves while that person sleeps" (provision without the striving).
3Look: children are a gift the LORD hands down, and a baby born is a reward from him.
3Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
A "heritage" is an inheritance, property handed down within a family, not earned or bought. In Israel that meant chiefly land, which stayed in the family across generations. Calling children a heritage puts them in that category: something received from the LORD rather than achieved.
4Children born to a man while he is young are like arrows in the hand of a soldier.
4As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
"Children of the youth" means children born to a man while he is still young, so that by the time he is aging, they are grown and able to stand up for him. Arrows were a soldier's reach: they let him act at a distance and in numbers.
5Happy is the man who has a quiver filled with them. He will not be put to shame when he faces his enemies at the city gate.
5Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
A quiver is the case a soldier carried his arrows in, holding a dozen or so. The city gate was not just an entrance but the town's public square and courtroom: the elders sat there and legal disputes and property claims were argued in the open. A man with grown sons standing beside him at the gate had backing in a lawsuit and could not be pushed around.
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