Continuing with the Psalms of Ascent, we come to 128:

• All you who fear GOD, how blessed you are! how happily you walk on his smooth straight road! You worked hard and deserve all you’ve got coming. Enjoy the blessing! Revel in the goodness!
• Your wife will bear children as a vine bears grapes, your household lush as a vineyard, The children around your table as fresh and promising as young olive shoots. Stand in awe of God’s Yes. Oh, how he blesses the one who fears GOD!
• Enjoy the good life in Jerusalem every day of your life. And enjoy your grandchildren. Peace to Israel! (Psalm 128.1 – 6, MSG)

I said yesterday that both psalms 127 and 128 contain positive comments about the family. Here’s the promise from Psalm 128:

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. (Psalm 128.3, ESV)

Eugene Peterson’s take? Psalm 128 is about Happiness. He opens:

He continues:

Summarizing:

Blessing is the word that describes this happy state of affairs.

Jesus’ most famous sermon starts with the “beatitudes:” “Blessed are…” Eight of them. (Matthew 5.1 – 10)

Enjoying God and the good life presumes that we are walking the road he intended for us. Peterson concludes:

The psalms open with the same idea:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1.1, 2, ESV)