Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5

“Your children will be like olive shoots around your table.” (Psalm 128:3)

Psalm 128 is one of the fifteen Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120 to 134), the collection associated with pilgrimage up to Jerusalem, and it is closely bound to Psalm 127 before it: both treat household and children, and 127’s declaration that children are a heritage from the LORD is answered here by olive shoots around a table. The form is a wisdom blessing rather than a petition, opening with the beatitude that also opens the Psalter at 1:1. Vine and olive are the images of settled agricultural life (compare Deuteronomy 8:8), and the psalm’s movement is outward: from the labor of one man’s hands (v. 2) to his table (v. 3) to Zion and the peace of Jerusalem (vv. 5-6). The household is not treated as an end in itself but as the smallest unit of a city’s welfare, which is why the blessing is pronounced from Zion rather than from the home.

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