Biblion Bible Commentary
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You Who Stand by Night
Psalms 134:1-3
1 A Song of Ascents. Look! Praise Yahweh, all you servants of Yahweh, who stand by night in Yahweh’s house! · WEB
The pilgrims go home and call up to the men left on the night shift, who bless them back.
Look! Praise Yahweh, all you servants of Yahweh, who stand by night in Yahweh's house! Psalms 134:1.
The last of the Songs of Ascents, and it is three verses long. The festival is over and the pilgrims are leaving, probably before dawn to travel in the cool — and on their way out they call to the men who are still on duty.
Those men are the temple watch, the priests and Levites who kept the lamps and guarded the courts through the night 1 Chronicles 9:33. Everyone else has gone home. They are the ones who do not get to travel to the festival because they are the reason there is a festival to travel to.
The psalm's whole first verse is addressed to them, and it is a thank-you in the form of an instruction: keep doing it, and keep praising while you do.
Lift up your hands in the sanctuary. Praise Yahweh! Psalms 134:2.
The posture of prayer used throughout the collection, asked for in the dark, in an empty building.
May Yahweh bless you from Zion, even he who made heaven and earth Psalms 134:3.
The reply. The number changes here — the first two verses address a group, and this one addresses one person at a time, which is what a blessing pronounced over departing pilgrims sounds like.
And the phrase who made heaven and earth has appeared three times in these fifteen psalms Psalms 121:2 Psalms 124:8, each time as the ground of help. It closes the collection of pilgrim songs the way it opened them.
The journey that began among people who hated peace, a long way north, ends here: a group of travelers in a doorway before sunrise, calling a blessing to the night watch, and being blessed back.
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