How he swore unto Jehovah, vowed unto the Mighty One of Jacob
This verse looks back on an oath David swore while he was still a hunted man. Two questions follow: what did he care about that much, and who is the God he calls the Mighty One of Jacob?
David did not make this vow from a throne. He made it while Saul hunted him. Ambition drives most conquerors; David's cry ran the other way:
The world's history has known other conquerors beside David. Ambition drove every one of them, either personal or national. Their cry has always been either, "A place for myself," or "A place for my nation." David stands quite alone. His cry was, "A place for the Lord." In the middle of his afflictions he swore a solemn oath: he would give himself no rest until he found that place.
A hunted man has obvious things to ask for. David asked for none of them:
The surprising thing is that David did not vow this: "If the good Lord will grant me a decent house to live in, where I can be free from this endless mistreatment from Saul and his men, if He will give me a decent little cottage and a comfortable bed to lie on, then I will serve Him devotedly the rest of my life" — anything for a peaceful and quiet life! … So David, while he is hunted over the mountains, does not think of himself at all: it is the ark of the covenant and the glory of his God. The ark had been lost; where it was, nobody seemed to care. God had lost His place among His people. It is far more important, said David — young man though he was — that God should have His place than that I should have my place.
The title David swears by has a history. It reaches back to old Jacob blessing his sons, and to Joseph in particular — the brother his family hated and attacked:
This may explain the title used twice here of Jehovah, "the mighty One of Jacob." Jacob himself first used it when he blessed his twelve sons before his death. He used it of Joseph. The archers had deeply grieved Joseph, shot at him and hated him, yet the hands of "the mighty One of Jacob" made his arms strong. God exalted him through rejection, as He has exalted the One that Joseph pictured — and will exalt Him yet, even in this world. So David had travelled back to the beginning. He shared God's purposes, and wanted to be the vessel who carried them out in the kingdom.
The desire that ate up David points on to Someone whose sorrows came from the same source:
The ark had been a stranger in the days of Saul. David's earliest desire was to restore it, and this Psalm shows that the desire consumed him. … So Jesus could say, "Zeal for your house will consume me." Two things drove all His energy and lay behind His many sorrows: to give God a dwelling among men, and to bring man back to God.
Vows made by weak people often collapse. This vow stands, because the One who made it is mighty:
But some vows are not made in haste by people too weak to keep them. They are made by One who is mighty, One on whom God has laid help. … So if Christ has gone up to His rest, it is because He has fulfilled His vow. He has found a place for Jacob's God, and in Zion God will rest for ever.
The psalm is a dialogue. David swears in the opening verses; God answers later in His own words:
In Psalm 132, in verse 5, David seeks a dwelling for God; in verse 13, God answers by choosing Zion. In verse 8, David says, "Arise, O LORD, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might." In verse 14, God answers, "This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it."
- Affliction. David swore this oath while he was hunted and homeless — the hardest place to think about anyone but yourself.
- A place for the Lord. Every other conqueror wanted a place for himself; David wanted God to have His place, and gave himself no rest until God had it.
- The Mighty One. The name he swears by reaches back to Jacob's blessing and to Joseph, the hated brother whom God made strong — rejection first, exaltation after.
- The greater David. The same desire consumed Christ: to give God a dwelling among men, and to bring man back to God. It explains His sorrows.
- Kept and answered. Christ has fulfilled the vow, and God answers David's search with His own choice: "This is my resting place forever."
I will not come into the tent of my house, I will not go up to the couch of my bed;
In this psalm David recalls a promise he made while Saul was hunting him. He would go without house and bed until the Lord had a home among His people. Two questions follow. What "place" did David mean? And why would a hunted man care more about God's rest than his own?
The vow's force lies in who made it and when. David was not yet a king with resources to spare.
Here is David, not yet the powerful and successful warrior-king. He is only the shepherd-lad. God had anointed him, yet Saul hunts and harries him, chasing him like a partridge on the mountains. In such circumstances you could easily understand him praying for a quiet life. He might have vowed almost anything, if only he could get a snug little house and a comfortable bed. There he could safely give sleep to his eyes and slumber to his eyelids.
The man David was running from wanted what ambitious people want. The two men mark out two ways to live.
Many a young man with a strong character makes vows once he is launched in life. He will do this or that to gain wealth or fame, and so secure a place for himself in the world. As a youth David made a vow, but it was to "find out a place for the LORD," and not a place for himself. In this he stood in sharpest contrast to the king before him. Samuel had seated Saul in the best place among the guests, after the Lord told him Saul was to be king. Saul clung to that best place, and fought bitterly for it. Saul's motto was "A place for myself." David's was, "A place for the Lord."
The psalm does not leave this "place" vague.
This place for the Lord that David swore to find was clearly connected with the ark. Verse 6 refers to it twice with the little word "it." Ephratah in that verse seems to stand for Bethlehem, and "the fields of the wood" for Kiriath-jearim. When he was only a boy at Ephratah, before he ever became famous, he heard of the ark and what it had been through. He realised that if God was to have His right place in Israel, the ark, which was His throne, must be brought back and formally set up again… David knew that in finding a place for the ark he was in effect finding a place for the Lord.
The ark was the chest that stood for God's throne among His people.
Why refuse your own bed over this? One writer traces the vow down to its root.
But a man's — that is, a saint's — rest lies only in the vow of this psalm. His rest, his heart's rest, could only be in the rest of God perfectly glorified. Here is the rest of the saint's heart: its desires are identified with God's. So it can have no rest until He has rest and is perfectly glorified. This is a vital principle, the effect of sharing the divine nature.
Commentators differ here. Some stay with David the man; others hear in the psalm the vow of Christ, kept by One strong enough to keep it.
But there are vows not taken rashly by those too weak to keep them. There is a vow taken by One who is mighty, on whom God has laid help… If Christ has gone up to His rest, it is because His vow is accomplished. He has found a place for the God of Jacob, and in Zion God will rest for ever.
The opposite spirit shows up in the people Haggai preached to. They had finished their own houses and left God's in ruins.
"Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your panelled houses, while this house lies in ruins?" This was a real challenge to their hearts. It raised an issue no cleverness could dodge… The secret was this: building and decorating their own houses stirred up no opposition. Only testimony for the Lord — in word, work, and life — stirs up the hostility of the world… They had chosen the path of selfish ease and self-interest, minding their own things and not the things of the Lord. They knew nothing of the spirit of the psalmist.
The same writer puts the positive side:
We must see that He has His rightful place in all our thoughts, our heart's affections, our service, our lives.
- Place — the question. Every life hunts for a place. Saul's motto was "A place for myself"; David's was "A place for the Lord."
- Place — the cost. A hunted fugitive gave up the house and bed he most wanted, so that God would not stay homeless among His own people.
- Place — the object. David was hunting a home for the ark, God's throne in Israel. To find a place for the ark was to find a place for the Lord.
- Place — the principle. A heart that shares God's nature can find no rest of its own until God has His rest and is fully glorified.
- Place — the test. Panelled houses beside a ruined house of God show the opposite spirit. Give Christ His place in your thoughts, affections, service and life, and you keep David's vow today.
I will not give sleep to mine eyes, slumber to mine eyelids,
David's words here are the middle of a vow: no sleep, no rest for himself until God had a settled dwelling in Israel. Why would a hunted man give up sleep over where God's ark was kept? And what happens to that vow when a greater Son of David takes it up?
This oath belongs to David's earliest years, not to his later success as king. One writer points out that only the psalm tells us so:
To find out "a place for the Lord" became the master passion of his life.
Sleep and a bed were exactly what David's circumstances made him long for. That is what gives the vow its edge:
But what would have been so natural for him was not at all what he did.
Others put the same contrast in terms of the two men in the story. Saul was hunting a place for himself; David was thinking about a chest of wood no one else missed.
It was Saul who was thinking of a place for himself, and as a result was bent upon destroying David. And David was all the while thinking about the Lord, consumed with desire because the ark of the testimony — which was the throne of the Lord in the midst of Israel — had gone into captivity to the land of the Philistines, and now that it had been returned by its panic-stricken captors, had gone into some obscure resting-place, no one seemed very much to care or know where. But somebody cared. David did.
The "it" of the next verse (ESV: "we heard of it in Ephrathah") points to the ark:
David knew that in finding a place for the ark he was in effect finding a place for the Lord.
The sleepless eyes are not mere effort. They are what happens when a person's desires line up with God's:
One writer reads the oath as belonging to Christ. On that reading the vow has already been paid, and the cost is the point:
Yes, if the mighty One of Jacob is to dwell in grace among men, Christ alone, at His own personal cost, must find Him a home. The psalm speaks of Israel, and of God's dwelling place on earth, but how fully it is true of the heavenly city! The Son has provided a resting place for the Father's heart, and it is the Father's voice that says, "This is My rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it."
The vow can be taken up now:
But we do well to remember that while we wait for Him there is a way in which we may give Him His place, for has He not said, "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them" (Matt. 18:20)... Having done that, we must take care that He has His rightful place in all our thoughts, our heart's affections, our service, our lives.
- The passion — finding a place for the Lord was the secret purpose that governed David's whole life. He formed it long before he had power to act on it.
- The price — he refused himself the house and bed he craved. God's throne mattered more than his own comfort.
- The place — the ark was God's throne in Israel; to find it a home was to give God His rightful place among His people.
- The rest — the sleepless eyes come from a heart so joined to God's desires that it can find no rest until He has rest.
- The reach — Christ pays the vow in full — at His own cost He found God a home. We share in it wherever we give Him His place among us and in our lives.
Until I find out a place for Jehovah, habitations for the Mighty One of Jacob. ...
David's words here are the middle of a vow: he will not settle into his own house or even sleep until God has a resting place among His people. The rest of the psalm shows whether God took up what David sought, and what He gave in return.
David made this vow in his hardest years, when safety and rest were what he had every reason to want:
Between David's first hearing of where the ark was and his finding it at last came the long, testing period of his afflictions under Saul, when he was in rejection, though he was the anointed king. Safety and rest were no doubt as attractive to David as they would be to us, yet they were set under a desire that overpowered them. That other affection held him so strongly that he put it into a solemn vow to the Lord, the mighty One of Jacob. He would set aside his own safety and comfort until he should "find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob" (verse 5). Then, having found a fitting place for the ark, he could say, "Arise, O LORD, into Your rest; You, and the ark of Your strength" (verse 8).
The title David chooses is not the obvious one. Jacob was the schemer of the family, and that is the point:
Jacob is so much like ourselves that our hearts keep echoing, "This might be myself!" The failures, the wilfulness, the scheming, the lack of faith, the turning to the world, are, sadly, paths only too well known to some of us. For this reason we rejoice. Our God so often speaks of Himself as "The God of Jacob", and so very rarely as "The God of Abraham"... In the Psalms we find "The God of Jacob" thirteen times, and "The God of Abraham" once. And remember that "Jacob" means "Cheater" or "Deceiver", while "Abraham" means "The Father of Many Nations."
The place David wanted was where the ark would stand, and to him the ark meant the Lord Himself. His son Solomon never valued it that way:
The ark was everything for David. For him it meant the Lord, the Mighty One of Jacob (Ps. 132:5), and worship belonged wherever the ark was. Solomon did not rise to the height of these blessings, and he did not enjoy the closeness of this relationship with God. He went no further than the ordinary religious level of his people.
The psalm is built as a dialogue. What David seeks in this verse, God settles later in His own words:
In Psalm 132 we see the same kind of change. In verse 5, David seeks a dwelling place for God; in verse 13, God answers by choosing Zion. In verse 8, David says, "Arise, O LORD, into Your rest; You, and the ark of Your strength." In verse 14, God answers, "This is My rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it."
Read the two halves side by side and the replies are not merely equal to the requests:
When God meets our thoughts, wants, and feelings, He is answering according to the measure of our need. There is something better: He lifts us up to Himself, and there He goes beyond all the desires of our hearts and minds. In Psalm 132 David asks for certain blessings, and God surpasses each desire: compare verse 8 with verse 13, verse 9 with verse 16, and verse 10 with verse 17.
Commentators read the psalm beyond David, to the One his life pictured:
This is written of Him, the true David, the man of affliction: He swore to the LORD and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob that He would not come into His house, nor go up to His bed, nor give sleep to His eyes, until He found a place for the LORD. If, then, Christ has gone up to His rest, it is because His vow is accomplished: He has found a place for Jacob's God, and in Zion God will rest for ever.
Few in Israel missed the ark while it was away. That contrast turns the verse into a question about our own affections:
How few souls in Israel seem to have grieved over the absence of the ark from the land! Yet it should have been — and to every devout Israelite it was — the most sacred and cherished object in the tabernacle... See with what affection David speaks or sings of this symbol of the Lord's presence among them... Oh, that the One the ark pointed to, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, might have the same place in our thoughts and affections.
- The desire. David gave up comfort and sleep until the Lord had a place. One affection overpowered every other.
- The title. He called on the Mighty One of Jacob. God names Himself after the deceiver far more often than after Abraham, and so after people like us.
- The centre. The ark was everything to David. Worship belonged where the ark was, and Solomon never reached that closeness.
- The answer. What David sought in verse 5, God granted in verse 13 by choosing Zion. He gives more than we ask.
- The fulfilment. Commentators see the vow completed in the true David, Christ. Our part is to give Him that same place in our affections.