Planted in the house of the LORD, They will flourish in the courts of our God. (2024)

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

(13) (See Note, Psalm 52:8, and Stanley’s Jewish Church, ii. 207.)

Psalm 92:13-14. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord — In his church, of which all righteous persons are real and living members: those whom God, by his gracious providence and Holy Spirit, hath planted and fixed there, and incorporated with his people; shall flourish in the courts of our God — Like the trees just mentioned, they shall retain their pleasant verdure, extend their cooling shade, refresh many by their sweet and nourishing fruit, or support and adorn them by their useful qualities, and increase continually in grace and goodness. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age — When their natural strength decays it shall be renewed: their last days shall be their best days, wherein, as they shall grow in grace, so they shall increase in comfort and blessedness. He seems to allude to the palm-trees above mentioned, which produce, indeed, little fruit till they be about thirty years of age, but after that time, while their juice continues, the older they become, are the more fruitful, and will bear each three or four hundred pounds of dates every year. “Happy the man whose goodness is always progressive, and whose virtues increase with his years; who loseth not, in multiplying of worldly cares, the holy fervours of his first love, but goeth on, burning and shining more and more, to the end of his days!” — Horne.

92:7-15 God sometimes grants prosperity to wicked men in displeasure; yet they flourish but for a moment. Let us seek for ourselves the salvation and grace of the gospel, that being daily anointed by the Holy Spirit, we may behold and share the Redeemer's glory. It is from his grace, by his word and Spirit, that believers receive all the virtue that keeps them alive, and makes them fruitful. Other trees, when old, leave off bearing, but in God's trees the strength of grace does not fail with the strength of nature. The last days of the saints are sometimes their best days, and their last work their best work: perseverance is sure evidence of sincerity. And may every sabbath, while it shows forth the Divine faithfulness, find our souls resting more and more upon the Lord our righteousness.

Those that be planted in the house of the Lord - As if plants were reared up in the house of God. The same image, under the idea of the olive tree, occurs in Psalm 52:8. See the notes at that verse. The passage here may refer particularly to those who have been trained up in connection with the church; young plants set out in the sanctuary, and cultivated until they have reached their growth.

Shall flourish in the courts of our God - That is, Having been planted there, they will grow there; they will send out their boughs there; they will produce fruit there. The "courts" of the house of God were properly the areas or open spaces around the tabernacle or the temple (see the notes at Matthew 21:12); but the word came also to denote the tabernacle or the temple itself, or to designate a place where God was worshipped. It has this meaning here. The passage affords an encouragement to parents to train up their children in attendance on the ordinances of public worship; and it shows the advantage of having been born in the church, and of having been trained up in it - an advantage which no one can fully appreciate. The passage may also be regarded as furnishing a proof of what will be the result of being thus "planted" and nurtured in connection with the church, inasmuch as trees carefully planted and cultivated are expected to produce more and better fruit than those which grow wild.

12-14. The vigorous growth, longevity, utility, fragrance, and beauty of these noble trees, set forth the life, character, and destiny of the pious;

Those that be planted; whom God by his gracious providence and Holy Spirit hath planted or fixed there. In the house of the Lord, i.e. in its courts, which are a part of the house, and oft come under that name in Scripture. And by this house he means the church of God, whereof all just persons are real and living members. The courts; which he mentions rather than the house, because he speaks not here of the priests, but of all just men, who were permitted to come no further than into the courts.

Those that be planted in the house of the Lord,.... Or being planted (e), that is, everyone of the righteous before mentioned; such are they that are planted out of the wilderness of the world, and into Christ, and are rooted in him, and are planted together in the likeness of his death and resurrection; have the graces of the Spirit of God implanted in them, have received the ingrafted word; and, in consequence of all this, are grafted into the olive tree, the church; or have a place and name there, better than that of sons and daughters, where they are as plants grown up in their youth; and which is here meant by "the house of the Lord", in allusion to the tabernacle, or temple, which had the figure of palm trees on the walls of it: so the Targum interprets it the temple, rendering it,

"his children shall be planted in the sanctuary of the Lord:''

and though it may seem strange that trees should be planted in an house, it should be remembered that the house of the Lord, or the church, is a garden, whose plants are an orchard of pomegranates, Sol 4:12, and such are not mere education plants, or such as are merely by outward profession, or only ministerially, planted, but are planted by the Lord himself; and so are choice and pleasant ones, by which God is glorified, and which shall never be plucked up: and these

shall flourish in the courts of our God; like trees in courtyards before houses; alluding to the courts in the tabernacle or temple, where the people worshipped: here the righteous flourish like palm trees, as in the preceding verse, being rooted in Christ, who is the righteous man's root, that yieldeth fruit, and from whom all his fruit is found; but this flourishing is not merely in the leaves of profession, but in the fruits of grace and righteousness, being watered with the dews of divine grace, and having the benefit of the word and ordinances; which are the waters of the sanctuary, that refresh and quicken the trees of righteousness that grow by it; see Ezekiel 47:1. This is referred to the times of the Messiah, and the resurrection, by the ancient Jews (f).

(e) "plantati", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius, &c. (f) Zohar in Leviticus 7. 1.

Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

13. Planted in the house of JehovahThey shall flourish in the courts of our God.It is possible that trees had grown in the Temple courts, as they grow at the present day in the Haram area, and that the prosperity and security of the righteous are compared to the luxuriant growth of the carefully tended trees in the sacred precincts. But the expression may be merely figurative. The land was ‘Jehovah’s house.’ Replanted there, Israel will evermore flourish under the care and guardianship of Jehovah. Cp. Psalm 52:8; Isaiah 61:3; Jeremiah 32:41.The addition in the P.B.V. ‘in the courts of the house of our God’ is from the Vulg.

Verse 13. - Those that be planted in the house of the Lord; rather, Planted (or, Being planted) in the house of the Lord, they. This does not refer to the "trees" of the preceding verse, but to the "righteous," who are viewed as passing their days almost continually in the temple courts, and so as (in a certain sense) "planted" there. The passage has no bearing on the question whether the temple courts were or were not planted with trees. Shall flourish in the courts of our God (comp. Psalm 84:2, 10). Psalm 92:13

The soil in which the righteous are planted or (if it is not rendered with the lxx πεφυτευμένοι, but with the other Greek versions μεταφυτευθέντες) into which they are transplanted, and where they take root, a planting of the Lord, for His praise, is His holy Temple, the centre of a family fellowship with God that is brought about from that point as its starting-point and is unlimited by time and space. There they stand as in sacred ground and air, which impart to them ever new powers of life; they put forth buds (הפריח as in Job 14:9) and preserve a verdant freshness and marrowy vitality (like the olive, 52:10, Judges 9:9) even into their old age (נוּב of a productive force for putting out shoots; vid., with reference to the root נב, Genesis, S. 635f.), cf. Isaiah 65:22 : like the duration of the trees is the duration of my people; they live long in unbroken strength, in order, in looking back upon a life rich in experiences of divine acts of righteousness and loving-kindness, to confirm the confession which Moses, in Deuteronomy 32:4, places at the head of his great song. There the expression is אין עול, here it is אין עלתה בּו. This ‛ôlātha, softened from ‛awlātha - So the Ker - with a transition from the aw, au into ô, is also found in Job 5:16 (cf. עלה equals עולה Psalm 58:3; Psalm 64:7; Isaiah 61:8), and is certainly original in this Psalm, which also has many other points of coincidence with the Book of Job (like Psalm 107, which, however, in Psalm 107:42 transposes עלתה into עולה).

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