Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 132:15
I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.
15. I will abundantly bless &c.] Or, I will surely bless. The Divine blessing will rest upon people, priests (16), and rulers (17f.). Even the poor shall not want. Cp. Deu 15:4. Palestine was liable to famines, and in the early days of the Restoration the community had suffered severely from scarcity (Hag 1:6 ff.), but this was not God’s Will [83] .
[83] The word for provision ( ) means also prey, and was rendered literally by the LXX, ( a T); but in some MSS (e.g. AR) this was changed to widow(s) either through a scribe’s mistake, or because prey seemed unintelligible and widows might naturally be classed with the poor. Cp. Deu 14:29. Hence the Vulg. viduam, Douay, her widow.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
I will abundantly bless her provision – Margin, surely. Hebrew, Blessing I will bless, a strong affirmation, meaning that he would certainly do it; that he would do it in every way; that every needed blessing would be imparted. The word rendered provision is a cognate form of the word in Psa 78:25, translated meat: He sent them meat to the full. It properly refers to food for a journey, but it is applicable to any kind of food. The original idea is that of food obtained by hunting – as game, venison: Gen 25:28; Job 38:41. The meaning here is, that God would provide abundantly for their support.
I will satisfy her poor with bread – I will give them what they need. See the notes at Psa 37:25.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 132:15
I will abundantly bless her provision.
An abundant blessing promised to the Church upon her spiritual provision
I. The glorious speaker–God Himself.
1. The God for whom a habitation has been prepared in the Church. If you enjoy the blessing of God upon your provision, you will cheerfully contribute your mite for preparing Him a habitation.
2. The God who hath chosen Zion, and taken up His habitation in her. By this means He knows every circumstance relative to her and to every one of her members; lie is ready to hear all the requests of His people, and to grant them without loss of time.
3. The God from whom all her provision comes. As He knows what provision is suitable to every ones taste, and to every ones need, He knows what blessing is proper to make every ones provision effectual for affording him the promised satisfaction.
II. The party spoken of–Zion. The Church is spoken of in the feminine gender, chiefly to put us in mind of two things.
1. Of her weakness and helplessness, considered in herself.
2. Of that happy relation that subsists between Christ and her. So close and intimate is that mysterious relation, that it can be compared to no other earthly relation–so fitly as to that between husband and wife. He has betrothed her to Himself for ever. He nourishes and cherishes her as a loving husband the wife of his youth.
III. The benefit promised–a blessing. As soon as any person is brought into a state of union with Christ, and is blessed in Him,–being justified freely by the grace of God; not only is that person adjudged to happiness, but that sentence has an effect upon all that he meets with in the course of Providence. All the common benefits of life have a commission from God to be means, not merely of rendering his present life happy, as far as happiness is attainable here,–but likewise of preparing him for eternal happiness, and of conducting him to it. Yea, the trials, afflictions, and miseries of this life, are all under an appointment of God, to be conducive to the same end (2Co 4:17).
IV. The more immediate subject of this blessing–her provision. The-spiritual Israel have nothing of their own to support the life of their souls: and the wilderness, through which they pass, affords nothing fit for that purpose. They behoved, therefore, to perish, if their Heavenly Father did not give them the true bread from heaven, which is no other than the flesh and blood of His own eternal Son, which He gave for the life of the world.
V. The degree in which this blessing is bestowed–abundantly. (John Young, D. D.)
I will satisfy her poor with bread.—
The poor-laws of the Bible
Those who are not familiar with the Bible, especially with the Old Testament, might be disposed to smile at the statement, that if we could get the poor-laws of the Bible fairly administered, there would be an end to the miseries and complaints of the poor. God has from the beginning made the poor mans cause His own. His aim has been to stir men up to consideration and sympathy, by identifying the poor with Himself in His account with mankind. He that hath pity on the poor lendeth to the Lord. That is the principle; the claim of the poor on men is the claim of God. And throughout the Old Testament God announces and enforces His provision for the poor (Deu 15:7-11; Isa 58:6-8; Neh 8:10). The principle runs through the whole Book. Whatever men felt that they owed to God they were to pay to the poor. Would it be possible to place their claim on a surer and firmer foundation? And there is a tenderness in the tone of the Bible about the poor and helpless, which is unmatched, as far as I know, in any ancient literature; and it is one of the most sacred traditions which the elder dispensation handed down to the Christian Church. But there is nothing in the way in which the Bible deals with the question which gives countenance even for a moment to the notion that bread is the great necessity of man. Gods cure of disease is always radical; therefore the method is slow, deep, and, on the surface, long invisible. And herein Gods method differs essentially from the various panaceas for social wrong and misery which have been promulgated in various ages by the philosophers. Bread is precious to those who use life nobly. But he who should assure bread on a sufficient scale to all men, and make no provision for their spiritual culture, for their concord, brotherly love, energy, industry, and perseverance, would miss the deepest elements of human misery, would, in the end, nourish it fearfully, and would hasten, instead of retarding, the overthrow of society. God, in His method of dealing with the problem, considers the what then? He takes things in their true order, the heavenly order, the order of their necessity. He does not flood the world with plenty, and leave man to wrangle and wrestle over the partition of it. He would first cure the radical selfishness and wickedness out of which in the long run all absolute poverty springs. It is a mistake to use the term Christian Socialism, under the idea of commending the Gospel to those who favour Communistic views. The Gospel aims at an ideal which, as a dream, has haunted the imagination of every great world reformer who has ever pored over the dark problems of society, but it aims at it by a path which is all its own. It begins from within, and works outwards; it puts love in the heart, and then sends plenty. All true abundance springs out of love. There was a movement in the early Church which had, no doubt, a communistic aspect, and which some may connect with the essential spirit of Christianity, and regard as the only true form of life in the Christian society (Act 2:42-47). It seems to have been confined to the Church at Jerusalem, and there it was carried too far and lasted too long. We find from apostolic records that the Church at Jerusalem became rapidly the poorest and the most helpless of all the primitive Churches, and was compelled to throw herself on the charities of the Gentile Christian world (Rom 15:25-27), and this history is very important and instructive. It reveals the inevitable issue of a communistic administration of the temporal affairs of men. The rights of property were most carefully guarded in the early Churches, as we gather from all the apostolic epistles; while brotherly love and the most large and constant charity were enjoined on the most sacred grounds. There is nothing that God reiterates more earnestly than the poor mans claim. There is nothing that God sustains more mightily than the poor mans cause. There is nothing that God avenges more awfully than the poor mans wrong. Would God that I could see it, many a poor man cries; but, as far as I see, the masters that profess most are often the hardest; and those who say that they have most to do with God, and from whom we might hope to find what God can do to help us, are too frequently known as grinding the faces of the poor. Well, there is truth in this, alas l no doubt; but be very chary of attaching value to the criticism of employers by the employed; their judgment will be constantly narrow, selfish, and unjust. But ye masters, remember the higher judgment. Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord; ye, who say that ye know My name. Beware how you drag it through the mire of selfish and sensual lives, and put it before all men, and especially before the poor, to an open shame. We may all take the warning home. But ye poor, be just. Do not charge on God the wrongs and evils which He is doing His best by His own patient but radical method to cure. He hates the grinding of the face of the poor more entirely, I believe, than He hates any evil thing that is done under the sun. Be just. See how God is fighting your battle in all ages, and maintaining your cause against the oppressor. There is one method by which God is always maintaining the cause of the poor, which they are very slow to recognize and to honour, and that is against themselves, against their own idleness, improvidence, and lust. Mans folly and sin do not withhold, do not restrain, Gods mercy, or we had none of us been here. But while He pities, He educates and purifies. Side by side with the pity there is the hard, stern rule, that if a man will not work, neither shall he eat. Giving is the cheapest and easiest form of charity. To take poverty by the hand and lift it is harder work, and demands a resolution, the ultimate spring of which is on high. Self-help must be the message of our visitors and almoners. We must have done with the pampering method of the constant dole. Help the industrious and necessitous over a crisis that they may help themselves again. Stir up the energies of the indolent and dependent. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 15. I will abundantly bless her provision] There shall be an abundant provision of salvation made for mankind in the Christian Church. Our Lord’s multiplication of the loaves was a type and proof of it.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
I will plentifully provide for Jerusalem, and all that live in her or resort to her for worship; nor shall they seek my face in vain.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
I will abundantly bless her provision,…. The provision of Zion, the church of God, the word and ordinances, of which Christ is the sum and substance; the Gospel is milk for babes, and meat for strong men; the ordinances are a feast of fat things; Christ’s flesh is meat indeed, and his blood drink deed; the whole provision is spiritual, savoury, salutary, strengthening, satisfying, and nourishing, when the Lord blesses it; as he does to those who hunger and thirst after it, and feed upon it by faith; so that their souls grow thereby, and they become fat and flourishing; grace increases in them, and they are fruitful in every good work: and this the Lord promises to do “abundantly”, in a very large way and manner; or “certainly”, for it is, in the original text, y “in blessing I will bless”, that is, will surely bless, as this phrase is sometimes rendered. Arama observes that the second blessing is because of the greatness of it; and says, that their Rabbin’s understand it of the fertility of the land of Israel in the time to come, when there will be no poor in it; but all is to be understood spiritually of the church in Gospel times;
I will satisfy her poor with bread; Zion has her poor; persons may be poor and yet belong to Zion, belong to Zion and yet be poor; there are poor in all the churches of Christ: our Lord told his disciples that they had the poor, and might expect to have them always with them; and particular directions are given to take care of Zion’s poor under the Gospel dispensation, that they may not want bread in a literal sense: though by the “poor” are chiefly designed the Lord’s afflicted and distressed ones; or who in a spiritual sense are poor, and sensible of their spiritual poverty, and seek after the true riches; or are poor in spirit, to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs: these the Lord promises to satisfy, to fill them to the full with the bread of the Gospel, made of the finest of the wheat, of which there is enough and to spare in his house; and with Christ the bread of life, of which those that eat shall never die, but live for ever.
y “benedicendo benedicam”, V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, Musculus, Cocceius, Gejerus.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
15. Blessing I will bless, etc. God’s dwelling in the midst of the people was what constituted the great source of their blessedness; and now some of the proofs are mentioned which he would give of his fatherly regard, such as preparing and administering their ordinary food, relieving their wants, clothing their priests with salvation, and filling all his people with joy and gladness. This it was necessary should be added, for unless we have ocular demonstration of the divine goodness, we are not spiritual enough to rise upwards to the apprehension of it. We have a twofold demonstration of it in the matter of our daily food; first in the earth’s being enriched so as to furnish us with corn, and wine, and oil; and again in the earth’s produce being multiplied, through a secret power, so as to provide us with sufficient nourishment. There is here a promise that God would exert a special care over his own people to supply them with food, and that though they might not have a great abundance, yet the poor would be satisfied. We must not omit mentioning the remarkable and ludicrous mistake which the Papists have made upon this passage, and which shows the judicial stupidity they lie under to be such, that there is nothing so absurd they will not swallow. By confounding two letters into one, for victus they read vidus, and then conjectured that this must be a mutilation for viduas blessing I will bless her widows! Thus they made “ widows ” out of “food” an extraordinary blunder, which we would scarcely credit, were it not a fact that they sing the word out in their temples to this present day. (139) But God, who blesses the food of his own people, has infatuated their minds, and left them to confound everything in their absurd reveries and triflings. The inspired penman goes on to repeat what he had already said of other blessings, only the term salvation is used instead of righteousness, but in the same sense I already mentioned. Some understand it to have reference to purity of doctrine and holiness of life; but this seems a forced interpretation, and he means simply that they would be safe and happy under the divine protection.
(139) “ צידה, her provision. The word ציד signifies food which is taken in hunting, and then it is used to express food of any kind — provision generally. The Septuagint has θήραν, which denotes provision that has been hunted, and so obtained; but another reading of the Greek version τὴν χήραν αὐτὢς, which has been followed by the Vulgate, Arabic, and Ethiopic; the rendering of the Vulgate being viduam ejus This corrupt reading is noticed by Jerome.” Phillips.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
15. Provision Primarily, what is taken in hunting, as venison, but generally nourishment. The parallel clause has it bread. Temporal blessings are always included in all God’s covenants with man.
Abundantly bless Literally, Blessing I will bless; that is, I will surely bless.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 132:15 I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.
Ver. 15. I will abundantly bless her provision ] Her stock and her store; so that she shall not want necessaries, which yet she shall hunt for (that is, labour for), as the Hebrew word importeth; and know how she comes by; Viatico eius affatim benedicam (Trem.): therefore it is added,
I will satisfy her poor with bread
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
her: i.e. Zion’s.
poor = needy ones.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
abundantly: or, surely
bless her provision: Psa 147:14, Exo 23:25, Lev 26:4, Lev 26:5, Deu 28:2-5, Pro 3:9, Pro 3:10, Hag 1:6, Hag 1:9, Hag 2:16-19, Mal 2:2, Mat 14:19-21, Luk 1:53, 2Co 9:10, 2Co 9:11
I will satisfy: Psa 22:26, Psa 33:18, Psa 33:19, Psa 36:8, Psa 37:3, Psa 37:19, Deu 14:29, Isa 33:16, Jer 31:14, Mat 5:6, Mat 6:32, Mat 6:33, Mar 8:6-9
Reciprocal: Rth 1:6 – in giving Psa 72:7 – In his days Psa 107:9 – General Psa 145:16 – openest