Today’s Passage: Psalm 84
How lovely is Your dwelling place. From its first line this psalm is one long ache to be near God. The soul longs and then faints for the courts of the LORD, and heart and flesh together cry out for the living God. Even the little sparrow has already made her nest near the altar, while the singer is still outside. One day in those courts, he will say, outweighs a thousand spent anywhere else. That, when you come down to it, is the whole psalm from beginning to end: the wanting to be near.
As you read, hold this: How lovely is Your dwelling place.
Context The sons of Korah, according to Gittith
The heading reads, “For the choirmaster. According to Gittith. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.” BSB’s footnote is honest about that middle word: Gittith is most likely some musical or liturgical term, and it stands over Psalm 8 and Psalm 81 as well. Beyond that, nothing more can be said about it with any confidence.
The sons of Korah were Levites, and among the duties handed to them was the keeping of the gates, first of the tabernacle and later of the temple (1 Chronicles 9:19). So the very men who wrote this longing were the ones who stood at the doors of the house they longed for.
Psalm 84:1-2 (BSB)
For the choirmaster. According to Gittith. A Psalm of the sons of Korah.
¹ How lovely is Your dwelling place, O LORD of Hosts! ² My soul longs, even faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
This is not an argument he is making but an exclamation he cannot hold back: how lovely. And once he begins, the longing refuses to stay tidy. It gathers up soul and heart and flesh all at once. He longs, and then, past longing, he faints. Here is a whole person, body and soul together, wanting the same thing at the same time.
Psalm 84:3 (BSB)
³ Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she places her young near Your altars, O LORD of Hosts, my King and my God.
Then he looks up and notices the small birds, who have already come by the thing he is fainting for. They tuck their nests into the stonework and raise their young within sight of the altar itself. There is something almost comic in the picture, and it is meant to be felt that way. The little bird is home, and he is still outside.
Psalm 84:4-7 (BSB)
⁴ How blessed are those who dwell in Your house! They are ever praising You. Selah ⁵ Blessed are those whose strength is in You, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. ⁶ As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; even the autumn rain covers it with pools. ⁷ They go from strength to strength, until each appears before God in Zion.
There are those who already dwell in the house, and there are those who are still out on the road, and the psalm has room enough for both. Verse 6 stops to give the travelers their picture.
Word study The Valley of Baca (Psalm 84:6)
Hebrew: בָּכָא (Baka), pronounced bah-KAH. Strong’s H1056. Its root is the verb בָּכָה (bakah), Strong’s H1058, which means to weep. BSB also notes an alternate reading, Valley of Poplars, after a tree known for finding its sap even in dry ground. Either way, the two readings agree on the setting, a hard and arid stretch of country, and not a garden.
The pilgrims do not sit and wait for the hard part to be over. They pass straight through a place named for weeping, and by the very act of walking through it toward God, they leave springs behind them.
They go from strength to strength. This is not strength worn down and spent by the time Zion finally comes into view, but strength renewed along the way, carrying each one until he stands at last before God.
Psalm 84:8-9 (BSB)
⁸ O LORD God of Hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah ⁹ Take notice of our shield, O God, and look with favor on the face of Your anointed.
Here the psalm pauses to pray for someone else, for the one it calls our shield and God’s anointed, almost certainly the Davidic king. Then, having prayed for him, it returns again to its one great subject.
Psalm 84:10 (BSB)
¹⁰ For better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
A single day near God outweighs a thousand spent anywhere else, and then he names the position he would rather hold: the lowest post inside the house. A doorkeeper stood at the threshold, on his feet, serving. Remember that the sons of Korah actually held that very post, so this is no abstract preference of theirs. It is a whole family of gatekeepers saying plainly that the door of God’s house is better than the most comfortable tents pitched outside it.
Psalm 84:11-12 (BSB)
¹¹ For the LORD God is a sun and a shield; the LORD gives grace and glory; He withholds no good thing from those who walk with integrity. ¹² O LORD of Hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in You!
A sun and a shield, grace and glory, and no good thing withheld from those who walk with Him. Then the last line comes back around to the name it began with, LORD of Hosts. How lovely is Your dwelling place. That longing, it turns out, was never naive.
How lovely is Your dwelling place.