1A song of ascents for Solomon.
If the LORD does not build a house,
in vain do its builders labor on it.
If the LORD does not watch over a town,
in vain does the watchman look out.
2In vain you who rise early, sit late,
So much He gives to His loved ones in sleep.
3Look, the estate of the LORD is sons,
reward is the fruit of the womb.
4Like arrows in the warrior’s hand,
thus are the sons born in youth.
5Happy the man
who fills his quiver with them.
when they speak with their enemies at the gate.
PSALM 127 NOTES
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1. for Solomon. The ascription to Solomon probably is triggered by the reference to the building of a house at the beginning of the poem, “house” in Hebrew also being the term for the Temple.
build a house. The Hebrew bayit equally means “house” and “home.” The emphasis in the second half of the psalm on progeny suggests that both senses of the word are in play here.
2. sit late. That is, sit to eat (an activity mentioned in the next verset) after a long day of labor. The idea of labor is picked up from verse 1.
eaters of misery’s bread. This Hebrew phrase, leḥem haʿatsabim, looks like an allusion to Genesis 3:17, “with pangs (beʿitsavon) shall you eat from it [of the soil] all the days of your life.”
So much He gives to His loved ones in sleep. This whole verset is rather crabbed in the Hebrew. In the Masoretic Text one finds a singular “loved one,” though two manuscripts and the Septuagint and Syriac show a plural. The spelling of “sleep,” shenaʾ, with an aleph instead of a heh at the end, is odd, and the word lacks the prepositional prefix (“in”) that one might expect. The somewhat conjectural meaning, which many interpreters propose, is that while people labor long and hard to earn their bread, God gives just as much to those He favors even while they sleep.
3. sons. The Hebrew banim can also mean “children” (as in the King James Version), but the martial imagery of the rest of the poem argues for the masculine sense of the term.
4. Like arrows in the warrior’s hand, / thus are the sons born in youth. This line appears to reflect an idea that sons begotten when a man is young are especially vigorous—hence the simile of swiftly flying missiles—because their begetter is vigorous. (In Lamentations 3:13, “shafts of his quiver” is a kenning for “arrows,” and this verse may well be a play on that poetic formula.) The man who begets many sons in his youth creates the equivalent of a little army on which he can depend. In the social structure of ancient Israel, this may not have been an entirely fanciful notion. One might recall that David’s original power base was in part a kind of family militia, led by his three nephews.
5. They shall not be shamed / when they speak with their enemies at the gate. Some scholars correct the plural verbs of the Masoretic Text to the singular to make them refer to the man who has begotten all these sons. But because the gate was a place where one confronted attacking enemies, and because “to be shamed” is often linked in Psalms with military defeat, the more likely reference is to the brave sons parleying with the enemy and preparing, if necessary, to do battle.