When Brothers Dwell Together
1 A Song of Ascents. By David. See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity! 2 It is like the precious oil on the head, that ran down on the beard, even Aaron’s beard, that came down on the edge of his robes, 3 like the dew of Hermon, that comes down on the hills of Zion; for there Yahweh gives the blessing, even life forever more.
Unity compared to oil running down a beard and to dew falling on the wrong mountain.
A Song of Ascents. By David. See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity!
Three verses, sung by pilgrims who had come from every part of the country and were now camped together in one city. The occasion is what makes the psalm concrete: for a few days in the year, tribes that spent the rest of it apart were living side by side.
It is like the precious oil on the head, that ran down on the beard, even Aaron’s beard, that came down on the edge of his robes,
The first comparison, and the verb is the point. It runs down, and the psalm follows it — head, beard, the edge of the robes. The oil is the anointing oil of the priesthood, poured on Aaron at his consecration Exodus 29:7 in a quantity that soaked his clothes.
It is a strange image for unity until the direction is noticed. The oil is poured on one head and ends up everywhere, and nobody applies it to the collar. What is described is something given at the top and arriving, by gravity, at the hem.
like the dew of Hermon, that comes down on the hills of Zion; for there Yahweh gives the blessing, even life forever more.
The second comparison does the same thing and adds a geographical impossibility. Mt Hermon is a hundred miles north of Jerusalem, snow-capped, and famous for the heaviness of its dew; Zion is dry limestone. Dew from Hermon does not fall on Zion.
That is the point. What the psalm asks for is not natural. Northern moisture arriving on a southern hill is a picture of the north and the south together, and of a fertility that has to be brought from somewhere else.
like the dew of Hermon, that comes down on the hills of Zion; for there Yahweh gives the blessing, even life forever more.
The blessing is located — there, where brothers are living together — and what is given is life, in a psalm that has spent two verses describing things running downhill.
settled What this mark means