Psalm 84:8

O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Benson Commentary

Psalm 84:8-9. O Lord God of hosts — Who canst easily remove and subdue those enemies who banish and keep me from the place of thy worship; hear my prayer — In restoring me to thy house and service; which is my chief desire, Psalm 84:2-3. Behold, O God our shield — Look graciously upon me, O thou that takest thy people under thy peculiar protection, pursuant to thy covenant with Abraham our father, and who hast hitherto been our defence against the most powerful enemies; and look upon the face of thine anointed — Upon me, who, though a vile sinner, am thine anointed king. Or, by God’s anointed, he may mean Christ, whose proper name is the Messiah, or, the anointed One. So the sense may be, Lord, I deserve not one kind look from thee, because, by my great wickedness, I have procured thy just displeasure and this banishment; but look upon thy Christ, whose coming and meritorious passion, though future to us, are present to thee, and for his sake look upon me.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

84:8-12 In all our addresses to God, we must desire that he would look on Christ, his Anointed One, and accept us for his sake: we must look to Him with faith, and then God will with favour look upon the face of the Anointed: we, without him, dare not show our faces. The psalmist pleads love to God's ordinances. Let us account one day in God's courts better than a thousand spent elsewhere; and deem the meanest place in his service preferable to the highest earthly preferment. We are here in darkness, but if God be our God, he will be to us a Sun, to enlighten and enliven us, to guide and direct us. We are here in danger, but he will be to us a Shield, to secure us from the fiery darts that fly thick about us. Through he has not promised to give riches and dignities, he has promised to give grace and glory to all that seek them in his appointed way. And what is grace, but heaven begun below, in the knowledge, love, and service of God? What is glory, but the completion of this happiness, in being made like to him, and in fully enjoying him for ever? Let it be our care to walk uprightly, and then let us trust God to give us every thing that is good for us. If we cannot go to the house of the Lord, we may go by faith to the Lord of the house; in him we shall be happy, and may be easy. That man is really happy, whatever his outward circumstances may be, who trusts in the Lord of hosts, the God of Jacob.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

O Lord God of hosts - See the notes at Psalm 84:1. God is appealed to here as a God of power; as a God who is able to accomplish all his purposes, and to impart every needed blessing.

Hear my prayer - A prayer of the psalmist that he might also have a place among the servants of God in their worship, Psalm 84:2. To this earnestness of prayer he is excited by the view which he had of the blessedness of those who went with songs up to Zion. His soul longs to be among them; from the sight of them his prayer is the more fervent that he may partake of their blessedness and joy.

Give ear, O God of Jacob - With whom Jacob wrestled in prayer, and prevailed. Genesis 32:24-30. On the phrase, "give ear," see the notes at Psalm 5:1.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

7. The figure of the pilgrim is carried out. As such daily refit their bodily strength till they reach Jerusalem, so the spiritual worshipper is daily supplied with spiritual strength by God's grace till he appears before God in heaven.

appeareth … God—the terms of the requisition for the attendance on the feasts (compare De 16:16),

Matthew Poole's Commentary

O Lord God of hosts, who canst easily remove and subdue those enemies of mine who banish and keep me from the place of thy worship,

hear my prayer, in restoring me to thy house and service; which is my chief desire, Psalm 84:2,3.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer,.... the redemption of the captives, says Kimchi; for the building of the house, the temple, according to Jarchi; but rather for the courts of God, an opportunity of attending them, and for the presence of God in them; see Psalm 84:2 in which he might hope to succeed, from the consideration of the Lord's being the God of hosts, or armies, in heaven and in earth; and so was able to do everything for him, and more for him than he could ask or think; his arm was not shortened, nor his ear heavy, Isaiah 59:1, and as this character is expressive of his power, the following is of his grace:

give ear, O God of Jacob; he being the covenant God of the people of Israel in general, and of David in particular; from whence he might comfortably conclude he would give ear to him, and it carries in it an argument why he should.

Selah. See Gill on Psalm 3:2.

Geneva Study Bible

O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer: give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

8. A prayer for favourable audience, uttered apparently by the Psalmist as the leader of the pilgrims on their arrival in the Temple.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 8. - O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. The prayer of ver. 9. Give ear, O God of Jacob (comp. Psalm 20:1; Psalm 46:7, 11; Psalm 75:9; Psalm 76:6; Psalm 81:1, 4, etc.). Psalm 84:8

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

This second half takes up the "blessed" of the distichic epode (epoodo's) of the first, and consequently joins member to member chain-like on to it. Many hindrances must be cleared away if the poet is to get back to Zion, his true home; but his longing carries the surety within itself of its fulfilment: blessed, yea in himself blessed, is the man, who has his strength (עוז only here plene) in God, so that, consequently, the strength of Him to whom all things are possible is mighty in his weakness. What is said in Psalm 84:6 is less adapted to be the object of the being called blessed than the result of that blessed relationship to God. What follows shows that the "high-roads" are not to be understood according to Isaiah 40:3., or any other passage, as an ethical, notional figure (Venema, Hengstenberg, Hitzig, and others), but according to Isaiah 33:8 (cf. Jeremiah 31:21), with Aben-Ezra, Vatablus, and the majority of expositors, of the roads leading towards Zion; not, however, as referring to the return from the Exile, but to the going up to a festival: the pilgrim-high-roads with their separate halting-places (stations) were constantly present to the mind of such persons. And though they may be driven never so far away from them, they will nevertheless reach the goal of their longing. The most gloomy present becomes bright to them: passing through even a terrible wilderness, they turn it (ישׁיתהו) into a place of springs, their joyous hope and the infinite beauty of the goal, which is worth any amount of toil and trouble, afford them enlivening comfort, refreshing strengthening in the midst of the arid steppe. עמק הבּכא does not signify the "Valley of weeping," as Hupfeld at last renders it (lxx κοιλάδα τοῦ κλαυθμῶνος), although Burckhardt found a [Arab.] wâdı̂ 'l-bk' (Valley of weeping) in the neighbourhood of Sinai. In Hebrew "weeping" is בּכי, בּכה, בּכוּת, not בּכא, Rnan, in the fourth chapter of his Vie de Jsus, understands the expression to mean the last station of those who journey from northern Palestine on this side of the Jordan towards Jerusalem, viz., Ain el-Haramı̂je, in a narrow and gloomy valley where a black stream of water flows out of the rocks in which graves are dug, so that consequently עמק הככא signifies Valley of tears or of trickling waters. But such trickling out of the rock is also called בּכי, Job 28:11, and not בּכא. This latter is the singular to בּכאים in 2 Samuel 5:24 (cf. נכאים, צבאים, Psalm 103:21), the name of a tree, and, according to the old Jewish lexicographers, of the mulberry-tree (Talmudic תּוּת, Arab. tût); but according to the designation, of a tree from which some kind of fluid flows, and such a tree is the Arab. baka'un, resembling the balsam-tree, which is very common in the arid valley of Mecca, and therefore might also have given its name to some arid valley of the Holy Land (vid., Winer's Realwrterbuch, s.v. Bacha), and, according to 2 Samuel 5:22-25, to one belonging, as it would appear, to the line of valley which leads from the coasts of the Philistines to Jerusalem. What is spoken of in passages like Isaiah 35:7; Isaiah 41:18, as being wrought by the omnipotence of God, who brings His people home to Zion, appears here as the result of the power of faith in those who, keeping the same end of their journeyings in view, pass through the unfruitful sterile valley. That other side, however, also does not remain unexpressed. Not only does their faith bring forth water out of the sand and rock of the desert, but God also on His part lovingly anticipates their love, and rewardingly anticipates their faithfulness: a gentle rain, like that which refreshes the sown fields in the autumn, descends from above and enwraps it (viz., the Valley of Baca) in a fulness of blessing (יעטּה, Hiphil with two accusatives, of which one is to be supplied: cf. on the figure, Psalm 65:14). The arid steppe becomes resplendent with a flowery festive garment (Isaiah 35:1.), not to outward appearance, but to them spiritually, in a manner none the less true and real. And whereas under ordinary circumstances the strength of the traveller diminishes in proportion as he has traversed more and more of his toilsome road, with them it is the very reverse; they go from strength to strength (cf. on the expression, Jeremiah 9:2; Jeremiah 12:2), i.e., they receive strength for strength (cf. on the subject-matter, Isaiah 40:31; John 1:16), and that an ever increasing strength, the nearer they come to the desired goal, which also they cannot fail to reach. The pilgrim-band (this is the subject to יראה), going on from strength to (אל) strength, at last reaches, attains to (אל instead of the אל־פּני used in other instances) Elohim in Zion. Having reached this final goal, the pilgrim-band pours forth its heart in the language of prayer such as we have in Psalm 84:9, and the music here strikes up and blends its sympathetic tones with this converse of the church with its God.

The poet, however, who in spirit accompanies them on their pilgrimage, is now all the more painfully conscious of being at the present time far removed from this goal, and in the next strophe prays for relief. He calls God מגנּנוּ (as in Psalm 59:12), for without His protection David's cause is lost. May He then behold (ראה, used just as absolutely as in 2 Chronicles 24:22, cf. Lamentations 3:50), and look upon the face of His anointed, which looks up to Him out of the depth of its reproach. The position of the words shows that מגנּנוּ is not to be regarded as the object to ראה, according to Psalm 89:19 (cf. Psalm 47:10) and in opposition to the accentuation, for why should it not then have been אלהים ראה מגננו? The confirmation (Psalm 84:11) puts the fact that we have before us a Psalm belonging to the time of David's persecution by Absalom beyond all doubt. Manifestly, when his king prevails, the poet will at the same time (cf. David's language, 2 Samuel 15:25) be restored to the sanctuary. A single day of his life in the courts of God is accounted by him as better than a thousand other days (מאלף with Olewejored and preceded by Rebia parvum). He would rather lie down on the threshold (concerning the significance of this הסתּופף in the mouth of a Korahite, vid., supra, p. 311) in the house of his God than dwell within in the tents of ungodliness (not "palaces," as one might have expected, if the house of God had at that time been a palace). For how worthless is the pleasure and concealment to be had there, when compared with the salvation and protection which Jahve Elohim affords to His saints! This is the only instance in which God is directly called a sun (שׁמשׁ) in the sacred writings (cf. Sir. 42:16). He is called a shield as protecting those who flee to Him and rendering them inaccessible to their foes, and a sun as the Being who dwells in an unapproachable light, which, going forth from Him in love towards men, is particularized as חן and כבוד, as the gentle and overpowering light of the grace and glory (χάρις and δόξα) of the Father of Lights. The highest good is self-communicative (communicativum sui). The God of salvation does not refuse any good thing to those who walk בּתמים (בּדרך תמים, Psalm 101:6; cf. on Psalm 15:2). Upon all receptive ones, i.e., all those who are desirous and capable of receiving His blessings, He freely bestows them out of the abundance of His good things. Strophe and anti-strophe are doubled in this second half of the song. The epode closely resembles that which follows the first half. And this closing ashrê is not followed by any Sela. The music is hushed. The song dies away with an iambic cadence into a waiting expectant stillness.