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Psalm 92

Thanksgiving for Vindication

A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath Day.

It is good to give thanks to the L ord,

to sing praises to your name, O Most High;

to declare your steadfast love in the morning,

and your faithfulness by night,

to the music of the lute and the harp,

to the melody of the lyre.

For you, O L ord, have made me glad by your work;

at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

How great are your works, O L ord!

Your thoughts are very deep!

The dullard cannot know,

the stupid cannot understand this:

though the wicked sprout like grass

and all evildoers flourish,

they are doomed to destruction forever,

but you, O L ord, are on high forever.

For your enemies, O L ord,

for your enemies shall perish;

all evildoers shall be scattered.

But you have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox;

you have poured over me fresh oil.

My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;

my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants.

The righteous flourish like the palm tree,

and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.

They are planted in the house of the L ord;

they flourish in the courts of our God.

In old age they still produce fruit;

they are always green and full of sap,

showing that the L ord is upright;

he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

12 The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree. He now passes to the consideration of another general truth, That though God may exercise his people with many trials, subject them to hardships, and visit them with privations, he will eventually show that he had not forgotten them. We need not be surprised that he insists so explicitly and carefully upon this point, as nothing is more difficult than for the saints of God to entertain expectations of being raised up and delivered when they have been reduced almost to the state of the dead, and it does not appear how they can live. Some think the cedar is mentioned from the fragrancy of its smell, and the palm for the sweetness of its fruit; but this is too subtile a meaning to attach to the words. The sense seems simply, that though the righteous may appear for a time to be withered, or to have been cut down, they will again spring up with renewed vigor, and flourish as well and as fair in the Church of God as the stateliest trees upon Lebanon. The expression which is employed — planted in the house of the Lord — gives the reason of their vigorous growth; nor is it meant that they have merely a place there, (which can be said even of hypocrites,) but that they are firmly fixed, and deeply rooted in it, so as to be united to God. The Psalmist speaks of the courts of the Lord, because none but the priests were allowed to enter the holy place; the people worshipped in the court. By those who are planted in the Church he means such as are united to God in real and sincere attachment, and insinuates that their prosperity cannot be of a changeable and fluctuating nature, because it is not founded upon anything that is in the world. Nor indeed can we doubt that whatever has its root, and is founded in the sanctuary, must continue to flourish and partake of a life which is spiritual and everlasting. It is in this sense that he speaks of their still budding forth, and being fat, even in old age, when the natural sap and juices are generally dried up. The language amounts to saying that they are exempt from the ordinary lot of men, and have a life which is taken from under the common law of nature. ⁵⁹⁹⁵⁹⁹ “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. Being thus planted and watered, they shall not only bring forth the fruits of righteousness, but shall continue and go on to do so, and even when they are grown old; contrary to all other trees, which, when old, cease bearing fruit; but so do not the righteous; grace is often in the greatest vigor when nature is decayed; witness Abraham, Job, David, Zechariah, and Elisabeth, and good old Simeon, who went to the grave like shocks of corn fully ripe.” — Dr Gill.
It is thus that Jacob, speaking of the great renovation which should take place in the Church, mentions, that at that happy period he who was an hundred years old should be a child, meaning that, though old age naturally tends to death, and one who has lived a hundred years is upon the very borders of it, yet in the kingdom of Christ; a man would be reckoned as being merely in his childhood, and starting in life, who entered upon a new century. This could only be verified in the sense, that after death we have another existence in heaven.

⁵⁹⁹ “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. Being thus planted and watered, they shall not only bring forth the fruits of righteousness, but shall continue and go on to do so, and even when they are grown old; contrary to all other trees, which, when old, cease bearing fruit; but so do not the righteous; grace is often in the greatest vigor when nature is decayed; witness Abraham, Job, David, Zechariah, and Elisabeth, and good old Simeon, who went to the grave like shocks of corn fully ripe.” — Dr Gill.