The path of suffering trodden by the people of God on the way to their blessing.
In its strict interpretation this beautiful psalm refers to God’s earthly people who will reach their future millennial blessings through a path of suffering. Nevertheless, the principles of the psalm have a deeply instructive application to the Christian.
The three divisions of the psalm present, first, the house of God that awaits believers at the end of their journey (vv. 1-4); secondly, the path that leads to God’s house (vv. 5-7); thirdly, the prayer of the man who takes this journey in dependence upon the Lord (vv. 4, 5, 12).
(vv. 1-4) The psalm opens with an expression of delight in the house of God, and of the longing of the soul to reach the courts of the Lord, and the living God. It is realized that the One who finds a home for the worthless bird, and a rest for the restless bird, has most surely a home and a resting place for His people, secured to them through the altar, or the great sacrifice of which the altar speaks. The psalmist sees before him the blessedness of God’s house where God will dwell in the midst of the everlasting praises of His people.
(vv. 5-7) The verses that follow describe the blessedness of the one who is treading the path that leads to Zion. He may have to pass through trial, set forth by the valley of Baca―or “weeping” as the word signifies; but, even so, he will find that the “early rain covereth it with blessing” (JND). God uses the trials by the way for the blessing of His people. Thus they grow in grace, and increase in spiritual strength, until at last they appear before God in Zion.
(vv. 8-12) The prayer of the godly soul as he treads the path of trial. His confidence in looking to God, and his one plea, is that Christ—God’s Anointed—is ever before God. On the ground of all that Christ is, the soul can count upon God to be his sun and shield—the One who will supply his needs and protect from harm, who will give grace along the way and glory at the end.
Assured of “grace” and “glory” and every “good thing,” the soul may well conclude, “Blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee.”
Thus the psalm presents the blessedness of the man that dwells in God’s house (vs. 4); the blessedness of the man who is treading the path that leads to God’s house (vs. 5); and the blessedness of the man who trusts in the Lord while treading the path that ends in glory (vs. 12).