For thy loving-kindness is better than life my lips shall praise thee.
David wrote this psalm in the wilderness: dry land, no water, enemies close by, and no sanctuary. From there he says something surprising: God's steadfast love — "loving-kindness" in older translations — is worth more than life itself.
The verse does not start with praise. It starts with a reason.
Now the psalm shows the effects of having God as the soul's only portion. Verses 3 and 7 introduce them with the word "because." The first, then, is, "Because your loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise you." This is exceedingly beautiful. "Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." The Psalmist had "lost" his life here. There was no water, no springs of life in the dry and thirsty land he travelled through as a pilgrim. But he had found that God's loving-kindness — God known in grace — was better than life. This is what produced praise, praise that never stops.
Life does not last. God's loving-kindness does.
"Your power, Your glory" — power that supports, glory that lifts the heart — surely the wilderness blossoms like the rose! Praise flows to You, for Your loving kindness which is better than life. Life is so uncertain and so brief: His loving kindness is so sure, so enduring! This makes life worth living, even with its trials, causing the soul to bless God's Name.
Verse 2 speaks of seeing God in the sanctuary. One writer ties that sight to the love praised in verse 3.
"In the sanctuary" (v. 2) is where God's power and glory are truly seen. His greatness shows in creation, yet no one learns what it means by watching creation. You learn it in the secret of God's presence. But loving-kindness better than life (v. 3) tempers that power and glory in a wonderful way, and it moves the heart deeply to praise such a God.
This praise does not come from comfort. It comes from a place that supplies nothing.
So, in the sense of this loving kindness, in a dry and thirsty land his lips praised his God. This is very sweet. Note that it is perfect in its nature, because it is simply God. In the land the believer is in, there is nothing at all. God, his God, is his desire. His loving kindness is the refreshing of his soul. This is perfect divine life in someone who has the divine nature, but in the place of dependence. Only the soul born of God knows it. So it was with Christ.
If God's love is better than life, then even losing life does not end the praise.
"Your loving-kindness is better than life"; but it brings death upon one. No matter: "give thanks in all circumstances." What! in sorrow? Yes, to be sure, we have the key to the joy in having Himself... "My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food." What! in the desert? Yes, that is the very place, because God Himself is his portion.
It even changes how the wilderness looks.
There we see David under a heavy trial. The land is dry and thirsty, with no water. The people he meets here and there are enemies — some open, some traitors. Where is the refuge? "Your loving kindness is better than life; my lips shall praise You." And as he enjoys God's goodness, the wilderness drops out of sight. It is no longer scarcity and hardship. It is fat and rich food, and his strength is renewed.
This joy has a source that cannot change.
He recalls what he had once seen of the divine power and glory in the sanctuary... and he praises Him for a loving-kindness better than life itself. It is a joy that makes God supreme in the heart that holds it. There is no excess in this cup, and it never runs dry. This joy is found in the unchanging nature of God, and it will last because He lasts. So the heart can say, "So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands."
- Because — Praise here is an effect, not a mood. The word "because" makes God's love the cause and the praising lips the result.
- Better — Life is short and uncertain; His steadfast love is sure and lasting, so the scales tip one way only.
- Seen — You do not read this love off creation. You learn it in God's presence, where loving-kindness tempers power and glory.
- Nowhere — The dry land supplies nothing, which is exactly why the praise is pure: it rests on God alone.
- Unfailing — This joy rests on God's unchanging nature. It outlasts sorrow, the desert, and life itself — so the lips keep praising.
So will I bless thee while I live; I will lift up my hands in thy name.
David wrote this psalm in the wilderness of Judah, far from the sanctuary where he had seen God's power and glory. Verse 4 is his answer to that exile, and the word "so" ties his promise back to what he has just said.
The man making this promise has no sanctuary and no settled home. He is in the wilderness, and praise is what he has.
Psalm 63 is the longing of the soul, still cast out and far from the sanctuary. (So we can speak of heaven, for we have seen the power and glory there by faith.) But by faith in the loving-kindness itself, the soul has praise as its portion even in the wilderness, with rich food to feed on. It is a beautiful psalm in this respect, for it knows God. Praise is born in the soul this way, and for all times.
The "so" of verse 4 reaches back to verse 3. God's loving-kindness is better than life itself, and praise fed by that can run the whole length of a life.
He praises Him for loving-kindness better than life itself. That joy makes God supreme in the heart that holds it. This cup is never too much, and it never runs dry. The joy is found in the unchanging nature of God. It will last because He lasts. So the heart can say, "So I will bless You as long as I live; in Your name I will lift up my hands."
One writer contrasts this joy with a heart still looking for something to lift it.
In Psalm 63 the soul is in the state in which Psalm 42 ends. This is not an oppressed heart looking around for something to make it joyful. It is a heart rejoicing, because the spring is there. "So I will bless You as long as I live."
"I will bless" and "I will lift up" are both future. They belong to a chain of resolutions running through the psalm, and one writer traces the steps.
This desire is no passing whim of the moment, but the settled purpose of his will. So we note the steps by which he plans to reach it. (1) My lips will praise You, v. 3. (2) In Your name I will lift up my hands, v. 4. (3) My soul will be (or is) satisfied, and my mouth will praise You with joyful lips, v. 5. (4) I remember You … I meditate on You. You have been my help, vv. 6-7. (5) My soul follows hard after You: Your right hand upholds me, v. 8.
We are used to God blessing people. Here a man blesses God — and the word carries a definite sense.
To bless means to "speak good." God's speaking good about His people has enriched them beyond all of man's golden dreams… Our speaking good to God cannot and does not enrich Him. But it is a response to God the Father from His children. It answers to His love and gives Him His true place, and it always rises to Him as a sweet fragrance. Blessing that rises from His children in response to the Father's love is therefore something very close to worship.
Raised hands are an old posture of prayer. Here they are lifted in God's name, and one writer says what fills them.
Paul uses the phrase in 1 Timothy 2:8, "lifting holy hands." As we come into the presence of God, we know that we are speaking to Him. We know that He is listening to us. When we bless God we offer something to Him; our hands are filled with the excellence of Christ.
The same hands serve two purposes, and the second is not less welcome than the first.
The hands, so often lifted up in prayer toward God's house, are to be lifted up in praise. When they were raised in prayer the Lord answered; He will be no less mindful when they are lifted in praise.
- Cause. The "so" of verse 4 rests on verse 3: God's loving-kindness is better than life, and that is what sets the praise going.
- Constancy. The joy holds because God does not change. It "will last because He lasts," so the promise can cover a whole life.
- Choice. Blessing God here is a settled purpose of the will. It is one link in a chain that runs from lips, to hands, to a soul following hard after Him.
- Content. To bless God is to "speak good" of Him — a response that adds nothing to Him, yet rises to Him as worship.
- Conditions. David says all this in the wilderness. There praise, not relief, is his portion.
My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise [thee] with joyful lips.
David sang this line from the wilderness of Judah, a dry land with no water. Yet he speaks of rich food and of lips that never stop praising. Where does a man in a desert find a feast?
One writer traces how David's exile from the place where God dwelt among His people becomes a pattern for the believer.
The heading of the psalm gives its position. It is a psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. He was cast out from the privileges of Israel, and shut out from all access to God as He dwells among His people. In this way he became the picture and the voice of a later remnant, cast out of Jerusalem while wickedness holds power in the city. That makes his position match the Christian's all the more closely. He too is in the wilderness, and longs after God, as revealed in Christ, in the place where He dwells. Substitute heaven for Jerusalem, and the believer now can adopt the language of this psalm with a fuller and deeper meaning.
The same writer shows what happens when a soul admits it has nothing here.
How long it often takes us to learn that the scene we are passing through is a dry and thirsty land! But we must grasp the lesson, and God uses all His discipline to press it on us. Only then do we know in any measure what God is in Himself: that He alone, beyond all the blessings He gives, is the portion of our inheritance and of our cup. The more we surrender everything here, and accept death upon all that might attract and chain us, the more we discover what boundless resources we have in God Himself... But the moment the soul can write "no water" over this scene, it becomes free to enjoy God. If it can honestly say, "I have nothing here," God will step in at once and say, "Now I will be everything to you."
The ESV renders "marrow and fatness" as "fat and rich food." One commentator ties this fullness to David's thirst, and asks what such satisfaction would do to onlookers.
Thirst like the psalmist's is bound to be fully met. So he speaks of his soul again in verse 5: "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness." This means satisfaction of a very full and abundant kind. David was in a dry and thirsty land without water, yet he was enjoying marrow and fatness. In the same way, we are to be full of satisfaction in the middle of an empty and dissatisfied world. This is what God desires and purposes for us all. If Christians everywhere showed a deep and lasting satisfaction, we think the men of the world would be more deeply impressed by it than by all the gospel sermons ever preached.
So the satisfaction does not come from the wilderness itself.
It is not that we are to be satisfied with the circumstances themselves. There can be no rest, let alone satisfaction, in circumstances that are full of sin and sorrow and death. We are to be satisfied in them by keeping in touch with Him who is the Source of satisfaction, even while they surround us. Then we are so satisfied that praise fills us. In the Psalm, expressions of praise surround the words "My soul shall be satisfied."
The second half of the verse speaks of joyful lips. One writer compares that with the praise we bring when our hearts feel heavy.
Satisfied — in the desert? Yes, that is the very place, because God Himself is his portion. "My mouth will praise you with joyful lips." Now we often praise when we are not very joyful, and there is a certain pressure on the heart. It is right to praise at all times. But here the heart is so full of the blessing that the praise is pressed out of him.
Which comes first — the satisfaction or the song? One writer settles the order, and follows it into the night.
A worshipping, praiseful soul is always a satisfied soul; for it is only when it is satisfied that it overflows in praise. So the Psalmist repeats that he will keep on praising, even by night. Songs in the night, when everything else was still, should mark him, as well as praise by day.
- Place — David sings from a wilderness, shut out from everything he valued. The believer stands on the same ground.
- Emptiness — write "no water" over this world, and the soul goes free. Say "I have nothing here," and God says He will be everything.
- Fullness — "marrow and fatness" means full, abundant satisfaction. God wants His people so satisfied that the world notices.
- Source — the satisfaction is not in the circumstances but in Him. The desert is the very place, because God Himself is the portion.
- Overflow — praise is the proof, not the cause. A satisfied soul overflows, by night as well as by day.