Devotional Short Note to Psalm 134: One of the most important parts of any Psalm is to carefully weigh the word Zion and what it really means. In this Psalm the Lord will bless out of Zion (134:3a). Zion is where the Lord is, “He that made heaven and earth”. Judaism thinks it is Jerusalem the Old City near the Temple Mount. However, careful considerations need to be made.

Look at the logic of the psalm. The servants all should bless the Lord (134:1b). Where are these servants? “That [Phoenician relative pronoun] stand in the house of the Lord. The blessings ones are in the Lord’s house. However, the Lord is going to bless “from Zion” so that Zion is not the Lord’s House mentioned here. If they are standing in Zion which is according to Judaism under the umbrella of Zion then why should the blessing come “from Zion”? If Zion is the Lord’s House then the preposition is superfluous. Zion is even superfluous since that is where the servants are all standing. What is the reality check here? Zion is heavenly Zion and not earthly Zion. God’s dwelling place in heaven is Zion. That is where the Sanctuary in Heaven is and that is from where the blessing would come.

The time this happens is in the night “in the night” (134:1c). Calvin translated “nightly” and Edwards read it as “every night”. Plumer (1872) translated it “by night”. In Luke 2:37 it is said about Anna the prophetess that she “departed not from the temple, but served God with fasting and praying night and day”. Devotion different than ordination, knows no gender. Middle Age Rabbi Kimchi says that holy men in the middle of the night rose and went to the temple to pray. Ellen White says that “When we permit our communion with God to be broken, our defense is departed from us”.

“Lift up your hands [there is no ‘to’ in the original] holy one [gadosh, vowels are inventions in later centuries and minor guides not major standards for meaning]” (134:2a). Judaism wants to make the process “to” in the direction of the Holy of Holies but there is no preposition “to” here? For this reason it may mean a person if one should change the vowels but not the consonants. It is permissible in conservative interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures to change the vowels but not the consonants. Why? Originally until long after the time of Jesus, all the Hebrew texts were only written with consonants as one can still see in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was also the position of William F. Albright. Plumer translated it as “with holiness” but again, there is no preposition.

Who is the “holy one”? Oesterley suggested that it is the High Priest in the sanctuary. It is not a bad idea since it is a single person here that is to lift up the hands and bless the Lord (134:2a-b). There are two groups of persons involved here: many servants that is blessing the Lord without raising the hands and the holy one [high priest presumably] who lift his hands to bless the Lord.

When this happens from Zion will come the blessing from the Lord. When we worship God in earthly houses of the Lord then the blessing of Jesus comes to us from the heavenly Sanctuary where heavenly Zion is. Scott said that “If our hearts were filled with the love of God, as his holy law commands, our mouths would be filled with his praises: and though our frail bodies would need rest, yet our souls would never be weary of his pleasant service”.