The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 133:3
As the dew of Hermon.
The spirit of brotherhood like dew
I. Brotherly love is silent, not demonstrative. Nothing in nature is more silent than the dew. The rain rattles, the wind howls, and the ocean booms, but the dew descends serenely and unheard. Genuine love is never noisy. The deepest emotions are always the most silent; the shallowest the most tumultuous.
II. Brotherly love is vital, not mechanical How refreshing is the dew! It gives new life and verdure to all it touches. Brotherly love is independent of organizations, it is independent of all social mechanisms.
III. Brotherly love is Divine rather than human. Whence comes the dewy It descends from above. All true love comes from God, as all light from the sun. (David Thomas, D. D.)
Brotherly love
I. It is a sure bond of union. Hermon is in the north and Zion is in the south: morning by morning the sun, Nature’s great distiller, extracted moisture from the snow-peaked Harmon, and the clouds wafted southward shed their treasure on the hill of Zion. Thus the various parts of the land served one another in God’s natural order. So brotherly love with its mutual service binds the home, the city, the land. No system of unity can be otherwise founded if it is to be secure. Force directed by selfishness can never make a true bond.
II. It is God’s method of benediction. “For there the Lord commanded the blessing.” The psalmist recognizes in the periodical worship of Zion an occasion of this brotherly love, and speaks therefore of the love as God’s blessing vouchsafed there. And all such love has its source in God. Apart from Him we should not know its delights. It is the way He promotes our happiness by filling us with a desire to help one another. We are severally channels of God’s help.
III. It is heaven; begun. “Even life for evermore.” What can this phrase mean but that true love is immortal. Has not St. John taught us that to truly and purely love is to share the life of God? In so far as we love, then, we already have imparted to our life an undying element--we participate to that extent in the “pleasures that are for evermore.” (W. Hawkins.)
As the dew
1. As the dew comes down from the heaven above upon the earth beneath, so is brotherly unity, in its production and increase, the gift of the Divine spirit of love, the fountain of blessing to the whole Church.
2. As the dew descends silently and imperceptibly, till if covers the whole face of the ground, so is the affection of Christian brethren diffused amongst themselves by a quiet and gentle progress, till the plentiful appearance, and happy effects of it, are manifest to the world.
3. As the dew, consisting of many millions of drops, refreshes the fruits of the earth by their joint influence, so is the Church edified by the love of many; its prosperity and fertility depend upon the united love of all its members. (W. Jones, M. A.)
The dew of Hermon
The dew of Hermon and the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion, to which the psalmist referred--differs entirely from the ordinary dew of our country--and is a phenomenon peculiar to Palestine and the East. It is a soft mist that comes from the Mediterranean during the summer, when the heat is greatest, and the country is burnt up with the terrible sunshine. It is attracted by the inland heights, and condensed in copious moisture upon their sides, and creeps down upon the plains, reviving and refreshing every green thing. It comes first of all to Mount Hermon, and helps to keep up its unchanging robe of snow, and to fill its springs, and feed its cedars, and then it flows down and makes the corn to grow green in the valleys, and the vines to swell out their purple grapes in the vineyards, and the lilies to unfold their crimson radiance in the fields. And it is to this wonderful phenomenon that the psalmist compares the unify and harmony of those who dwell together as brethren. It is a most beautiful and expressive image. For just as Mount Hermon that is high above the plains and valleys of Palestine, benefits them by its clouds and rains and streams, imparts to them the blessings it receives from heaven, and thus becomes essential to their life and well-being; so these plains and valleys in turn have helped to elevate and maintain Hermon on his throne, and send up to it their evaporations and radiations to become the sources of its spotless snows, its billowy clouds, and its sparkling streams and cooling winds. They help it as much as if helps them. They are mutually dependent upon each other. The lowly plain does not envy the lofty mountain; nor does the lofty mountain look down in contempt upon the lowly plain. They are associated together in physical harmony. They are there in the close relation to each other appointed by Him who weighs the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance; and they could have no other position or shape or function. The one could not do or even be without the other. So would the psalmist have the inhabitants of the Holy Land to live. Let the religion of Ephraim be like the all-pervading fragrance of the holy oil of the temple in Judah; and let the religion of Judah be like the moisture that is borne from the snowcapped Hermon in Ephraim, and falls in refreshing drops upon the dry southern hills of Judah. The covenant people had lost the blessing through their division; they were weakened, and, in consequence, were carried away captive, and their land was made desolate. But now, if they become reunited and continue, in mutual harmony and brotherly kindness, to help and encourage each other ha She good work for which God had prepared and called them; if they observe together the same ordinances of religion, and preserve together the purity of their national faith, then God would remove the threat, and command upon them the blessing, even life for evermore. Their land would become once more a land flowing with milk and honey; and they themselves would be once more a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people zealous of good works. And so would it be with every family and Church and nation still that dwelt together in the unity and harmony of love. God would command there the blessing, even continuous and prosperous life. Especially in the Church would this goodness and pleasantness of brethren dwelling together in unity be felt. When will Churches recognize the fact that they are meant to provoke one another not to envy and jealousy but unto all good works? When will their members learn the great truth that God bestows the blessings of salvation upon individuals, not that these blessings may be confined to them, but that they may be diffused by them? But the earthly Hermon is only the type of the heavenly--the shadow of something grander and more enduring. There are everlasting hills to which we are to lift up our eyes, rocks higher than any in this world. From them come to us the dew of grace, and the river that flows from the throne of God and the Lamb; and God there indeed commands the blessing, even life for evermore. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
For there the Lord commanded the blessing.--
Commanded blessing
It is an allusion, possibly, to great persons, to a general, or an emperor: “Where the word of a king is, there is power.” The centurion said, “I say to one soldier, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh; to a third, Do this, and he doeth it.” So God commandeth one ordinance, “Go and build up such a saint,” and it goeth; He saith to another ordinance, “Come, and call home such a sinner,” and it doth it; God’s words and work go together. Men cannot enable others, or give them power to obey them; they may bid a lame man walk, or a blind man see; but they cannot enable them to walk or see: God with His Word giveth strength to do the thing commanded; as in the old, so in the new creation, “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalms 33:9). But there the Lord commands His blessing, “even life for evermore.” The stream of regeneration, or a spiritual life, which shall never cease, but still go forward and increase, till it swell to, and be swallowed up in the ocean of eternal life, “even life for evermore.” (G. Swinnock.)
Even life for evermore.--
Eternity
The thought of eternity is in us all--a presentiment and a consciousness; and that universal presentiment itself goes far to establish the reality of the unseen order of things to which it is directed. The great planet that moves on the outmost circle of our system was discovered because that next it wavered in its course in a fashion which was inexplicable, unless some unknown mass was attracting it from across millions of miles of darkling space. And there are “perturbations” in our spirits which cannot be understood, unless from them we may divine that far-off and unseen world, that has power from afar to sway in their orbits the little lives of mortal men. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Unending life
We, of this century, often smile over the foolish alchemists of long ago, forgetting that such is man’s love of existence that in all ages he has eagerly sought some true “elixir of life.” And whether that supposed but ever elusive boon be pure gold, as with the early alchemists, or “extract of mutton,” as Professor Kedzie calls the elixir of Dr. Brown-Sequard, the motive of search is the same. So, “though great the hope and slow to die,” no ancient nor modern alchemy can prolong existence, which hath for each of us been set beyond the point Divinely determined. How strange is it, then, that men are so slow to seek that One who is our life for evermore, who by His loving grace offereth life and immortality to all! (G. V. Reichel.).