Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 84:2
My soul longeth, yea even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
2. My soul hath pined, yea, even fainted. The verbs are perfects, and it seems best to suppose that he is recalling the earnest longings which are even now finding satisfaction, as his feet stand in the Temple courts, and his heart and flesh sing for joy unto the living God. The latter verb denotes joyous singing, such as that with which pilgrims enlivened their journey. Cp. Jer 31:12; and the cognate substantive in Psa 42:4. Soul, heart, and flesh, the emotions, the reason and the will, with the living organism of the body through which they act, make up the whole man. See Psa 16:9; Psa 73:26; and cp. 1Th 5:23.
the living God ] The same phrase ( El chay) as in Psa 42:2. God Himself is the final object of desire: the Temple is only the means of realising His Presence.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
My soul longeth – The word used here means properly to be pale; then, to be faint or weak; and then, to pine after, to long for, to desire earnestly. It would properly denote such a longing or desire as to make one faint or exhausted; that is, it indicates intense desire. In Psa 17:12, it is applied to a hungry lion; Like a lion that is greedy of its prey. In Gen 31:30, it conveys the idea of intense desire: Because thou sore longedst after thy fathers house. For an illustration of the sentiment here expressed, see the notes at Psa 42:1-2.
Yea, even fainteth – Is exhausted; fails of its strength. The word means properly to be completed, finished; then to be consumed, to be spent, to waste or pine away. Gen 21:15; Jer 16:4; Lam 2:11; Job 19:27.
For the courts of the Lord – The word used here refers to the different areas around the tabernacle or temple, within which many of the services of public worship were conducted, and which were frequented by different classes of persons. See the notes at Mat 21:12.
My heart and my flesh – My whole nature; my body and my soul; all my desires and aspirations – all the longings of my heart are there. The body – the flesh – cries out for rest; the heart – the soul – for communion with God. Our whole nature demands the benefits which spring from the worship of God. Body and soul were made for his service, and the necessities of neither can be satisfied without religion.
Crieth out – The word used here – ranan – means properly to give forth a tremulous sound; then, to give forth the voice in vibrations, or in a tremulous manner; and thence it may mean either to utter cries of joy, Lev 9:24; Job 38:7; Isa 12:6, or to utter a loud wail Lam 2:19. Its common application is to joy Psa 98:4; Psa 132:16; Psa 65:8; and it might be rendered here, Sing unto the Lord, or Rejoice unto the Lord. The connection, however, seems to demand that it be understood as the cry of earnest longing or desire.
For the living God – God, the true God, considered as living, in contradistinction from idols, always spoken of as dead. Compare Psa 63:1.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 84:2
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
The profoundest hunger of human nature
The words soul, heart, flesh, are here used to represent the whole man, human nature in its entirety; and this human nature is here longing, craving, hungering, crying out for the living God, nothing less. This means–
I. That nothing less will satisfy humanity. Not a whole universe, not a million pantheons of dead gods; it is the living God.
II. That humanity requires no logic to prove that there is a God. So inwrought into man is the belief of His existence, that the whole being cries out for Him.
III. That anti-theism is anti-humanity. Anti-theism is a lie to our common nature. (Homilist.)
The hearts cry after God
I. The desire of heart and flesh–the living God. Sibbes well observes that the desires of the heart are the best proofs of saintship; and if a man wishes to know whether he is really a saint or no, he can very soon find out by putting his finger upon the pulse of his desires, for those are things that never can be counterfeit. You may counterfeit words; you may counterfeit actions; but you cannot counterfeit desires.
1. Every saint has within his breast that which is actually born of God, and therefore it cries out after its own Father.
2. Every believer has the Spirit of God dwelling within him, and if he has the Spirit of God dwelling within him, it is only natural that he should desire God.
3. The experience of earth often makes you long more for God. After you have discovered the hollowness, the disappointing nature of the world.
II. The intensity of this desire.
1. It is an intensity that drowns all other desires Crieth out for God. I passed a little child the other day being led by the hand by a kind-faced policeman; and as the little thing walked by his side, I could hear it amidst its sobs, continually crying, Father! father! father! father! Yes, in this great city-full of people, the only face the child waned to see was the face of its father. He knew he had lost a fathers hand, for he had wandered from a fathers side, and he wanted father back again. My heart and my flesh crieth out for God. Just as a lost child cares not for a million faces it may meet along the road–it wants to look at its fathers face–so the true born child of God can rest satisfied with nothing short of a sight of his God. My heart and my flesh crieth out for God.
2. It is an intensity of desire that creates pain. The language of our text is the language of a soul which can bear its anguish no longer in silence. It is a cry extorted by inward pangs. (A. G. Brown.)
The souls want of God
The chief want of man is God. The soul is for God, and God for the soul. What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
1. The first step in this answer to the deepest want of human nature is the conviction that God is–that God lives. Heart and flesh cry; where is the response? Joyful is the moment in the souls experience when the reality of Gods being comes over us with its full power. The first need of the soul is to feel that God is real–the great reality and essence of all things. And if sin had not shut up and darkened the windows of our being, this gracious light would flow in on every side.
2. Then we are to feel that He is Present and Living. The belief of not a few seems to be in a past God, a deceased, departed Deity, and the world as a huge skeleton out of which all the soul has gone, not an abode for the indwelling Power, but the ruins of His former stately palace. But He has not made the world and then retired from it. He is not an absentee proprietor. He is the present Creator, the living God, as on the worlds first morning. He dyes the flower, and ripens the corn. Laws are but His uniform modes of working. Forces are but the heavings of the indwelling Almightiness. He is, and He is present. He overflows creation. He is all in all.
3. But the heart and flesh have another note in their cry, and it is for a Good Being, or, as our Saxon has it, God, that is, the Good, whom we may love. God, the Good, is in all systems, all beings, and in all working according to His own being, that is, for good. Father is His proper name. Nature, Providence, Jesus, all teach this comforting lesson. And When the heart in its hopes and affections, and the flesh in its griefs and pangs, cry, the response comes from every side, and is echoed and re-echoed in endless and harmonious sounds–God is good.
4. The want of the soul is not only for a good, but for a great God, whom we may adore. It admires greatness with an even earlier and intenser admiration than goodness. Our tastes change very much from youth onward. Things we once passionately admired cease to move us. The soul has got beyond them. It exhausts one thing after another. But there is one youthful sentiment that is never outgrown–that rises with our intellectual stature, and spreads with our moral expansion, and soars with our spiritual aspirations–and that is our faith in the Great God–
And, as it hastens, every age
But makes its brightness more divine.
5. The nature of man has been so created as to seek after a Wise and Infinite Intelligence. We admire with huge respect the men even who have been able to pocket a little science, who can read a dozen languages, who are largely conversant with affairs, and know things as they are. A skilful invention is heralded from hemisphere to hemisphere. He who has read one of the characters in Natures alphabet, or spelled out a few syllables or words in her mighty lore, is hailed with all the titles of glory. But no libraries, geniuses, scientific or literary associations, no fragments and crumbs that fall from the table of knowledge, can meet the unextinguishable thirst of man for the spiritual and the immortal. Let him not think to fill an infinite craving with anything less than the Infinite. But if I have at all rightly interpreted the significance of this cry, which is for ever ascending from the breast, and seeking after God, you may ask, How shall it be satisfied? I would not dogmatize, and say by any one way, but rather by all ways. It is more in the waiting, receiving, and teachable state of the soul, than it is by methods, cultures, churches, and dispensations. Seek, then, for the truth, and in the truth God will ever be coming, and entering in and taking possession of the soul, and driving out every darkness and weakness. Rest not short of God. (A. A. Livermore.)
The religious sense
What is the secret of the enduring charm, the comforting and ennobling influence of the psalms? Is it not to be found, in part at least, in the frank revelation made by the psalmist of his own personal experience and aspiration? His prayers are not addressed to the congregation I In rapturous praise and in fervent prayer he pours out his soul unto God. So wide and varied is the range of his experience that alike in joy and sadness, in exultation or contrition, in victory or defeat, we find in his confession of sin, his jubilant gratitude, his martial ardour, his triumphant faith, the best statement of our own sin and failure, expectation and yearning. Thus to the very depths of our nature does he go down when, as in the text, he exclaims, My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
I. Man has a religious sense. It is customary to speak of the five senses; but modern physiologists affirm the popular enumeration to be defective. It does not take into account, we are told, the sensations of heat and cold, hunger and thirst, or the sensations of organic life. Neither does it recognize the muscular sense, whereby we measure and regulate our bodily activities. We hear also of an internal sense, or the minds knowledge of its own operations. Then, again, we occasionally hear of the aesthetic sense, whereby we have the perception or feeling of beauty. Philosophers, as Shaftesbury, have affirmed the existence also in man of a moral sense, meaning that moral distinctions are not due to reasoning processes, but are recognized by a kind of feeling, or an immediate and undefinable intuition. In like manner may it be affirmed that man has a religious sense. Just as we are constituted to taste and touch, to have a sense of the beautiful, and to have a sense of right and wrong, so are we constituted to feel after God. Wherever man is there religion is, said Max Muller, who also affirms, I maintain that religion, so far from being impossible, is inevitable if only we are left in possession of our senses. Just because you are a man, made by and for God, the religious element within you constrains you, in spite of yourself, to exclaim of all earthly pursuits and pleasures promising satisfaction and peace, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
II. The religious sense needs training. Whatever be the stage of moral and spiritual experience, the limits of development have not been reached. The religious sense can always be touched to finer issues. By neglect it pines and withers. Through disuse the facility of speech in a foreign tongue lessens and disappears, and how completely the mastery has been lost may not be known till on some sudden emergency, to our utter humiliation, we find the words will not come when we do call for them; and we who once could swiftly weave our thought into speech, now stand in dumb imbecility. It is too often forgotten that a similar retribution, but infinitely graver in its issues, awaits the man who neglects to maintain his religious nature in healthful efficiency. When we call to mind the sure operation of this law, need we wonder that, spiritually, men differ so greatly, and that while some are keenly sensitive to the softer whispers of Divine love, others need the loud thunders of Heavens artillery to rouse them to a consciousness of God? If the man of business give only the fragments of his time to the culture of his soul, what marvel that, whilst sagacious and successful in commerce, he should be weak, ignorant, and wayward in spiritual insight and service. If the student of Nature devote all his thought and energy to the investigation of her laws, what wonder that the penalty of excessive and exclusive study of physical science should be, as Darwin had to acknowledge with sorrow, the loss of relish for music, poetry, and the higher pursuits that refine and elevate life. If the intellect be trained and the affections neglected, what wonder that a Francis Bacon should show himself wisest, meanest of mankind, ready and eager to sell his glorious birthright for a mess of pottage. O the pity of it, that men should so zealously train the understanding and so persistently neglect the heart, should suffer the cobwebs to darken the window of the soul, and allow the holy fire to go out! Yet is there no part of our nature we can so ill afford to leave undisciplined. If religion meant pardon only, even then delay would be dangerous, but if it mean the training of the soul, the development of character after the pattern of Christ Jesus, the discipline of the religious sense to swift, accurate, and joyous activity, is it not of all follies the greatest to neglect or postpone the culture of the soul?
III. What is the method of training? The answer is not difficult. It is one advantage of the line of thought pursued that the reply can be so easy and natural. How do men proceed to train their other senses? How is it that the dyer discerns varieties of hue unapparent to the untrained eye? How does the artist appreciate distinctions of shade invisible to the ordinary vision? Though there may sometimes be original and native superiority, it still holds true that practice makes perfect. How shall the ear be trained to appreciate the subtle harmonies of music? Will it suffice to read treatises that describe the auditory and vocal organs? Will it be enough to study theories of musical composition? Will it not be needful to listen to music, to note the separate and combined effects, and ourselves to play and to sing if we are to possess executive skill and correct musical judgment? No one ever yet became a musical expert who did not use his ears! In like manner, it may be said, no man ever became an efficient public speaker by reading manuals of elocution, or treatises of rhetoric alone. There is needed intelligent and persevering practice for the attainment of the art to conceal art, and to speak with ease, clearness, and force. A man learns to swim not by perusing written instructions on natation, but by swimming. He learns to paint by painting. However useful theories of the various arts may be, in every sphere it is recognized that it is only by practice, wise and sedulous, the highest efficiency can be gained. It is that the simplicity of this has caused it to be overlooked when religious training is considered? How many appear to think that the mere reading of the Bible will discipline the nature! To study a chart is one thing, to navigate the vessel by its information quite another thing. To read the Bible is good, to act according to its directions is better. Exercise thyself unto godliness, was Pauls counsel to Timothy.
IV. Can we by innate strength of will accomplish this high work? For physical and mental training are not schools, colleges, teachers, and professors required? Can the irreligious man, by his own resolve alone, develop high religious sensibility? The uniform declarations of the Book of God concur with the humiliating testimony of personal consciousness, that it is not in man to direct his steps, to subdue his turbulent passions, to bring his motives and plans into harmony with the Divine will, to educate to unerring precision and robust energy his religious sense. Nor is there any need that he should attempt the impossible task. The heart cries out for the living God, and He delights to answer its cry. (A. Cowe, M. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 2. My soul longeth] It is a Levite that speaks, who ardently longs to regain his place in the temple, and his part in the sacred services.
My heart and my flesh] All the desires of my soul and body; every appetite and wish, both animal and spiritual, long for thy service.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Fainteth, or, is consumed, with grief for want of them, and with vehement desire to enjoy them, and with the deferring and disappointment of his hopes. See Pro 13:12.
For the courts; to enter into the outward court with the people, and to see what is done by the priests in the inner court, and to join with them in their religious exercises.
My heart and my flesh crieth out with a doleful cry, of which this word is used also Lam 2:19, which elsewhere and commonly signifies a joyful shout. The sense is, my soul and body are pained; or the passion of my heart maketh my tongue cry out.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
2. longethmost intensely(Gen 31:30; Psa 17:12).
faintethexhausted withdesire.
courtsas tabernacles(Ps 84:1) the wholebuilding.
crieth outliterally,”sings for joy”; but here, and La2:19, expresses an act of sorrow as the corresponding noun(Psa 17:1; Psa 61:2).
heart and . . . fleshasin Ps 63:1.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord,…. The courts of the tabernacle now at Gibeon, though the ark was in Zion, 2Ch 1:3 as the court of the priests, and the court of the Israelites, in which latter the people in common stood: after these David longed; he longed to enter into them, and stand in them, and worship God there; which soul longings and hearty desires were the fruits and evidences of true grace, of being born again; so newly born souls desire the sincere milk of the word, and the breasts of Gospel ordinances, as a newly born babe desires its mother’s milk and breast; and he even “fainted”, through disappointment, or length of time, being impatient of the returning season and opportunity of treading in them; see
Ps 42:1,
my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God; he only inwardly desired, and secretly fainted, but audibly cried out in his distress, and verbally expressed, great vehemence, his desire to enjoy the living God: it was not merely the courts, but God in them, that he wanted; even that God which has life in himself, with whom is the fountain of life; who gives life to others, natural, spiritual, and eternal, and in whose favour is life; yea, whose lovingkindness is better than life, and which was the thing longed and thirsted after: and these desires were the desires of the whole man, soul and body; not only he cried with his mouth and lips, signified by his flesh, but with his heart also, sincerely and heartily; his heart went along with his mouth.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
I have observed, that in the second verse a more than ordinary ardor of desire is expressed. The first verb, כספ, casaph, signifies vehemently to desire; but not contented with this word, David adds, that his soul fainteth after the courts of the Lord, which is equivalent to our pining away, when, under the influence of extreme mental emotion, we are in a manner transported out of ourselves. He speaks only of the courts of the tabernacle, because, not being a priest, it was not lawful for him to go beyond the outer court. None but the priests, as is well known, were permitted to enter into the inner sanctuary. In the close of the verse, he declares, that this longing extended itself even to his body, that is, it manifested itself in the utterance of the mouth, the languor of the eyes, and the action of the hands. The reason why he longed so intensely to have access to the tabernacle was, to enjoy the living God; not that he conceived of God as shut up in so narrow a place as was the tent of the ark, (458) but he was convinced of the need he had of steps, by which to rise up to heaven, and knew that the visible sanctuary served the purpose of a ladder, because, by it the minds of the godly were directed and conducted to the heavenly model. And assuredly, when we consider that the sluggishness of our flesh hinders us from elevating our minds to the height of the divine majesty, in vain would God call us to himself, did he not at the same time, on his part, come down to us; or, did he not at least, by the interposition of means, stretch out his hand to us, so to speak, in order to lift us up to himself.
(458) “ Comme estort le pavillon de l’Arche.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(2) Longeth.From root meaning to grow pale, expressing one effect of strong emotiongrows pale with longing. So the Latin poets used pallidus to express the effects of passionate love, and generally of any strong emotion:
Ambitione mala aut argenti pallet amore.
HOR., Sat. ii. 3, 78.
Or we may perhaps compare Shakespeares
Sicklied oer with the pale cast of thought.
For a similar fervid expression of desire for communion with God, comp. Psa. 63:1.
Fainteth.Or more properly, as LXX., faileth.
Courts.This, too, seems, like tabernacles above, to be used in a general poetical way, so that there is no need to think of the court of the priests as distinguished from that of the people.
The living God.Comp. Psa. 42:2, the only other place in the Psalms where God is so named.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. My soul longeth fainteth My desires for the courts of Jehovah are such, that my strength wastes away.
My heart and my flesh crieth out for God The psalmist’s desire for the “courts of the Lord” was a longing after God himself. The spiritual sense predominates.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 84:2-3. My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God. Yea, the sparrow, &c. Or, My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God: Psa 84:3. (Yea, as a sparrow, till she finds a house, and a swallow a nest for herself, where to lay her young) for thine altars, &c. See Nold. 873. Green observes, that from the longing to approach the courts of the Lord, expressed in the second verse, it is natural to think that such a comparison was intended as that of our Lord’s; The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. Thus perhaps the Psalmist: “The sparrow findeth herself a house, and the ring-dove a nest; but when shall I find access to, what I far prefer to a house of my ownthe House of God?” He then breaks out, Happy are they who dwell in thy house. Thus, or in nearly the same manner, the passage is understood by various expositors. Dr. Delaney, however, observes upon it thus: “The author of this psalm speaks of the altars of God in a manner that shews them to be then comparatively desolated. There were at this time two altars erected in the kingdom of Judea to the true God, but neither of them in the place of his own appointment; that at Hebron not attended by any appointed number of priests, which we know of, as was that of Gibeon, although but slenderly, and by a few: so little crowded, that the birds of the air might build unmolested in them. We hear only of one altar after the building of the temple: therefore this psalm was written before that period. The author of this psalm speaks of the tabernacles of God; there were two tabernacles now extant; we hear of no tabernacle after the building of the temple, therefore this psalm was written before that period. The author of this psalm wishes eagerly for the courts of the Lord: The tabernacle had but one court; therefore his wishes must be for the courts of the temple, which were many; and as the temple was not yet extant, these wishes could only mean the author’s eager desire to see that temple erected.” The following appears a just and easy exposition of the passage: “Even as the sparrow, i.e. with the same joy and delight as the sparrow findeth her house, and the swallow (or wild pigeon deror) her nest, where she shathah, hath laid her young; so should I find thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my king and my God.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psa 84:2 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
Ver. 2. My soul longeth ] As she did who said, Give me children or else I die. His soul once longed for the waters of the well of Bethlehem, but not so earnestly as now to draw waters with joy out of those wells of salvation.
My heart and my flesh
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
My soul longeth = I, even I myself, long. Hebrew. nephesh (App-13), for emphasis. courts. Corresponding with “altars” (Psa 84:3). See the Structure.
the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.
GOD. Hebrew El. App-4.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
soul: Psa 42:1, Psa 42:2, Psa 63:1, Psa 63:2, Psa 73:26, Psa 119:20, Psa 119:81, Psa 143:6, Son 2:4, Son 2:5, Son 5:8
heart: Job 23:3, Isa 26:9, Isa 64:1
Reciprocal: Gen 13:4 – Unto Gen 34:8 – The soul Exo 38:9 – the court Deu 5:26 – living Deu 12:20 – I will 2Sa 13:39 – longed Psa 26:8 – Lord Psa 84:10 – For Psa 122:1 – was glad Psa 122:9 – the house Psa 137:5 – I forget Son 8:6 – love Isa 26:8 – desire Isa 38:22 – What Isa 58:13 – call Jer 10:10 – the living Zep 3:18 – sorrowful Mat 5:6 – are 2Co 3:3 – the living Phi 3:12 – I follow 1Th 1:9 – the living 1Ti 3:15 – the living Heb 12:22 – of the
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
84:2 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the {b} courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
(b) For only the priests could enter the sanctuary and the rest of the people into the courts.