1A song of ascents for David.
Look, how good and how pleasant
is the dwelling of brothers together.
2Like goodly oil on the head
coming down over the beard,
over the opening of his robe.
3Like Hermon’s dew that comes down
4For there the LORD ordained the blessing—
life forevermore.
PSALM 133 NOTES
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1. Look, how good and how pleasant / is the dwelling of brothers together. This poem is a kind of idyll celebrating harmonious life together in a fruitful land. A sense of quiet rapture is conveyed at the outset through three words of emphasis—“look” (hineh), and then twice “how” (mah).
2. Like goodly oil on the head. In the Israelite world, as in ancient Greece, rubbing the hair and body with aromatic olive oil was one of the palpable physical pleasures of the good life.
Aaron’s beard that comes down / over the opening of his robe. This initially puzzling line makes good associative sense. The “coming down” of the oil from head to beard is picked up in the “coming down” of the beard itself—a beard of evidently proverbial amplitude, that of the first high priest—over the opening of the robe. The full beard is presumably an image of vigor and abundance.
3. Like Hermon’s dew that comes down. Now we have a third “coming down”—the dew on this northern mountain. The dew is understood to be an agency of fruitfulness, especially important in the long dry season when no rain falls.
on the parched mountains. The Masoretic Text reads “on the mountains of Zion,” which does not make much sense because Mount Hermon is geographically removed from the Judahite mountains around Jerusalem, and dew certainly does not travel in this fashion. The translation adopts a small emendation, reading tsiyah, “parched land,” for tsiyon, “Zion.”