Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 24:5

He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.

5. the blessing ] R.V. rightly, a blessing.

righteousness ] ‘Righteousness’ is blessing in another aspect. Jehovah manifests Himself to the godly man, as ‘the God of his salvation’ (Psa 25:5; Psa 27:9); and this ‘salvation’ is the witness to and reward for his upright conduct. See 1Sa 26:23; Psa 18:20; Psa 18:24; Psa 58:11. In the light of N.T. revelation the words receive a deeper meaning. See Mat 5:6.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

He shall receive the blessing from the Lord – literally, He shall bear away a blessing from Yahweh. The blessing here referred to means His favor and friendship. He shall be recognized and treated as His. In other words, God bestows His favor on those who possess the character here referred to.

And righteousness from the God of his salvation – He shall be regarded and treated as righteous. Or, he shall obtain the divine approval as a righteous person. The idea of the psalmist would seem to be, not that he would obtain this as if it were a gift, but that he would obtain the divine approval of his character as righteous; he would be recognized and dealt with as a righteous man. He would come to God with clean hands and a pure heart Psa 24:4, and would be welcomed and treated as a friend of God. The wicked and the impure could not hope to obtain this; but he who was thus righteous would be treated according to his real character, and would meet with the assurances of the divine favor. It is as true now as it was in the days of the psalmist, that it is only the man who is in fact upright and holy that can obtain the evidences of the divine approval. God will not regard one who is living in wickedness as a righteous man, nor will he admit such a man to His favor here, or to His dwelling-place hereafter.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Psa 24:5

And righteousness from the God of his salvation.

Gods blessing of righteousness

The first glance at these words might suggest that they told us one of the rewards which the man who had fulfilled the preceding requirements received from God. But that would he but a poor thing to say; there would neither be gospel nor logic, as it seems to me, in it. For, according to that, all that was said here would simply be that, if a man would make himself righteous, God would then make him righteous; that if a man cleansed his heart, and got his hands pure and his soul fixed upon God and his lips truthful, then, after that, God would give him righteousness, which, by the hypothesis, he has already got. I do not think that is the meaning of the words, both because such a meaning would destroy the sequence of thought, and because a man cannot so make himself righteous at all. It is more natural to take these words as carrying on the description of the man who is fit to stand in the holy place, than as introducing the new thought of certain other blessings which the righteous man of the previous verse receives. So regarded, we have a deep thought here in answer to the unspoken doubt which must needs arise on hearing such conditions. One can well fancy the hearer replying, your statement of qualifications is only a round-about way of saying No one: how can I or anybody attain these requirements? If these be necessary, we may as well loiter in the flowery vales below as toil up only to see Alps on Alps arise, and the temple shining far above us, inaccessible after all. But if we rightly grasp the sequence of thought here, we have here the blessed truth that Gods impossible requirements are Gods great gifts. We may put that as the second great principle in these verses: the men who are pure receive purity as a gift from God. God will give righteousness. That means here outward and inner purity, or, in effect, the sum of the qualifications already insisted on. That is a grand thought, though it sounds strange to some men, that moral condition–a certain state of heart and mind–can be given to a man. Many people dismiss such a hope as an illusion, and smile at such a gospel as an impossibility. So it is for us. We can but try to bring motives and influences to bear on one another which may tend to shape character. But God can work on the springs of thought and will, and can put into our hearts purity and righteousness, however alien and remote they may be from our natural dispositions and from our past lives. Another great truth here is, that God can put into a mans heart someone germinal principle which shall develop and flower out into all graces and purities and beauties of character: all these things that make up the qualifications, they can all be given to a man in germ from Gods own hand. Still further, these words imply that righteousness, in the sense of purity and holiness, is salvation. He shall receive righteousness from the God of his salvation. David did not merely think of salvation as merely temporal deliverance, and we are not to think of mere deliverance from external punishment or some material hell as exhausting its meaning, but to understand that the main part of salvation is that God shall impart to us Himself, and fill our souls with His righteousness. But we have to remember that all this is made a great deal more plain to us in Jesus Christ. He comes and brings to us a righteousness by which we shall be made pure if we will only love Him and trust Him, and in our hearts there will bloom and grow the exotics of holy and virtuous character, and our lives will be fragrant with the precious fruits of holy and virtuous conduct. By the implanting within us of His own Spirit, by the new life kindred with His own, which we thence derive, of which righteousness is the very life breath–for, as Paul says, The renewed spirit is life because of righteousness–as well as by the mere ordinary means of bringing new and powerful motives to holiness, by the attraction of His own example, and by love which moulds to likeness, Christ gives us righteousness, and implants at least the germ of all purity. The last thought here is–the men who receive righteousness are the men who seek it from God. This is the generation of them that seek Him, that seek Thy face, and, as the last words ought to be rendered, this is Jacob, the true Israel. So then there is an answer to another unspoken question that might arise. The question might still remain–How am I to get this great gift? The Psalmist believed in a heart of love so deep and so Divine that there Was nothing more needed in order to get all the fulness of His righteousness and purity into our stained spirits, but simply to ask for it. To desire is to have, to seek is to possess, to wish is to be enriched with all this purity. And we know how, beyond the Psalmists anticipations and the prophets hopes, that great giving love of God has drawn near to man, in the unspeakable gift of His dear Son, in whom the most sinful amongst us has righteousness, and the weakest amongst us has strength. And we know how the one condition which is needed in order that there should pour down into our foul hearts the cleansing flood of His granted righteousness, is simply that we should be willing to accept, that we should desire to possess, and that we should turn to Christ and get from Him that which He gives. In this world things of little worth have to be toiled for. Nothing for nothing is the inexorable law in the worlds markets, but God sells without money and without price. Life and the air which sustains it are gifts. We have to work for smaller things. In the sweat of our brow we have to win the bread that perishes, but the bread of life the Son of Man will give unto us, and of it we have but to take and eat. Tis only heaven can be had for the asking, Tis only God that is given away. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Men have been asking all through the ages, Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? They have built for themselves Babels that their tops might reach heaven, but it has been all in vain. You have tried to climb. Your progress has been slow, like that of some crawling insect upon some smooth surface–an inch in advance with immense pains, and then a great slide backwards. But heaven bends down to us, and Christ puts down the palm of His hand, if I may say so, and bids us step on to it, and so bears us up on His hands. We shall not rise without our own efforts and many a hard struggle, but He will give us the power to struggle, and the certainty that we shall not set a stout heart to a steep hill in vain. So put away your hopelessness, and cease your painful toils. Say not in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven–the word is nigh thee,–even the word of promise that trusting to Christ, and filled with His strength, we shall mount up with wings as eagles. The conditions may seem hard and even impossible, amounting to a perpetual sentence of exclusion from the presence of God, and therefore from light and well-being. But be of good cheer. If you hunger and thirst after righteousness you shall be filled. Seek God in Christ, and then, though nothing that has not wings can reach the steep summit, you will have the wings of faith and love budding on your shoulders with which you may reach it, and be invested by your righteous Saviour with that fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints, arrayed in which you will be fit to pass into the secret place of the Most High, and to dwell for evermore in the blaze of that pure Light. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The gift of righteousness

Among the Mexican Catholics there used to be great anxiety to provide themselves with a priests cast-off robe to be buried in. These were begged or bought as the greatest of treasures; kept in sight or always at hand to remind them of approaching death. When their last hour drew near this robe was flung over their breasts and they died happy, their stiffening fingers grasping its folds. The robe of Christs righteousness is not provided for the dying hour merely, for the hasty investiture of the spirit when about to be ushered into the presence of the King.

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 5. He shall receive the blessing] Perhaps alluding to Obed-edom, at whose house the ark had been lodged, and on whom God had poured out especial blessings.

And righteousness] Mercy: every kind of necessary good. It is the mercy of God that crowns the obedience and fidelity of good men. For what made them good and faithful? God’s mercy. What crowns their fidelity? God’s mercy.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

The blessing, i.e. the blessings which God hath promised to his church and people, to wit, grace and glory, and all other good things, as they are summed up, Psa 84:11. He and he only shall be truly blessed. From the Lord; which is added significantly, by way of opposition to the blessings which men received, either from the priests or from other men, which were oftentimes given unto unworthy persons, and in that case were without any effect or benefit; whereas Gods blessings are given only to good men, and are always effectual for their good.

Righteousness, i.e. the blessed fruit or reward of his righteousness, as the work is oft put for the reward of it, as Lev 19:13; Job 7:2; Psa 109:20. Or, kindness or mercy, and those benefits which flow from it, which are oft called by the name of righteousness, as Jdg 5:11; 1Sa 12:7; Psa 48:10; 112:9.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

5. righteousnessthe rewardswhich God bestows on His people, or the grace to secure those rewardsas well as the result.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

He shall receive the blessing from the Lord,…. Or “who receives” l; the future for the present; and so is a continuation of the description of a person proper to enter and abide in the church of God, as Ps 24:6 seems to require; even one who has received every spiritual blessing in Christ in general, special grace out of his fulness; particularly the blessing of pardon, as also adoption, and a right to eternal life; though it may be that the following clause is explanative of this;

and righteousness from the God of his salvation; from Christ, who is God his Saviour, the author of salvation; and who has brought in an everlasting righteousness, which is in him, and is a gift of his grace, and is received from him by faith, and is a great blessing indeed; it secures from condemnation and death, and entitles to eternal life.

l “qui accipit”, Cocceius.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

5. He shall receive blessing. The more effectually to move the minds of the Israelites, David declares that nothing is more desirable than to be numbered among the flock of God, and to be members of the church. We must here consider that there is an implied contrast between true Israelites and those of them who were degenerate and bastards. The more license the wicked give themselves, the more presumptuous are they in pretending to the name of God, as if he were under obligation to them, because they are adorned with the same outward symbols or badges as true believers. Accordingly, the demonstrative pronoun this, in the following verse, is of great weight, for it expressly excludes all that bastard generation which gloried only in the mask of external ceremonies. And in this verse, when he speaks of blessing, he intimates that it is not those who boast of being the servants of God, while they have only the name, who shall be partakers of the promised blessing, but those only who answer to their calling with their whole heart, and without hypocrisy. It is, as we have already observed, a very powerful inducement to godliness and an upright life, when the faithful are assured that they do not lose their labor in following righteousness, since God has in reserve for them a blessing which cannot fail them. The word righteousness may be explained two ways. It either means all the benefits of God, by which he proves himself to be righteous and faithful towards his people in keeping his promises to them, or it denotes the fruit or reward of the believer’s righteousness. Indeed, David’s meaning is abundantly manifest. He intends to show on the one hand, that it is not to be expected that the fruit or reward of righteousness will be bestowed on those who unrighteously profane God’s sacred worship; and on the other hand, that it is impossible for God to disappoint his true worshippers; for it is his peculiar office to give evidence of his righteousness by doing them good.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(5) Righteousness.This is the real blessing that comes from God. That virtue is her own reward, is the moral statement of the truth. The highest religious statement must be looked for in Christs Beatitudes.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

5. Blessing Refers especially to 2Sa 6:11-12.

Righteousness “That moral perfection which is the restored and realized image of God.” Delitzsch. Mat 5:6

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments