1A song of ascents.
all you servants of the LORD,
who stand in the LORD’s house through the nights.
2Lift up your hands toward the holy place
and bless the LORD.
3May the LORD bless you from Zion,
He Who makes heaven and earth.
PSALM 134 NOTES
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1. bless the LORD, / all you servants of the LORD. This extremely succinct psalm, the last of the fifteen songs of ascents, has a pronounced liturgical character. The worshippers are enjoined to bless—that is, to praise—the LORD, and God in turn is asked to bless—that is, to provide bounty to—the individual worshipper. The effect of summarizing liturgical intonation was perhaps deemed appropriate as a conclusion to the cycle of fifteen psalms.
who stand in the LORD’s house through the nights. The acts of the sacrificial cult were completed by sundown, but the reference here could be either to the tending of the fires and the Temple lamps through the night or to those who stayed to pray, or perhaps to partake of the sacrificial feast, through the hours of the night.
2. holy place. The Hebrew qodesh (“holiness”) is often a designation of the sanctuary, although it might also be an epithet for the heavens, as the poetic parallelism of Psalm 150:1 suggests: “Praise God in His holy place [qodsho], / praise Him in the vault of His power.”