It’s always fun to start things off with some encouragement!
Psalm 128 is a fun psalm that way; in fact, this entire psalm is super uplifting! It lays out the fate of the one who follows Yahweh closely…and it’s a good life! A healthy, happy wife, an abundance of well-off children. Happiness in the house, security for the future. That’s what I’m talking about!
But I want to focus for a moment on how this blessing and encouragement can also hold a cautionary message for us. Let’s focus on one particular line: “You will certainly eat the fruit of your hands.” In this context, it’s referring to the outcome for the one who fears Yahweh and walks on His roads; then it goes on to paint a vivid picture of how blessed this man, his household, and his future generations will be!
The principle of eating the fruit of your hands, however, does not apply just to the fruit of fearing and following Yahweh; we eat the fruit of our hands when we go astray, too. Some call this the “law of the harvest”—what you sow, you reap. So, if you sow obedience and following Yahweh, you’ll reap a harvest of blessing! But if you sow disobedience and loyalty to your own smarts and gain, you’ll harvest and eat that fruit, too.
So, it’s critical for our wellbeing, our spouse’s wellbeing, our children’s wellbeing that we fear Yahweh and walk on His roads—not our own roads, not the tempting roads of ill-gotten gain. Of course, we want peace, we want to be blessed, but those things don’t just errantly happen; they come by choosing the fear of God and obedience to Him!
Let this psalm stand as both encouragement and caution to us—a great, heartening reminder of what awaits us when we faithfully follow our creator; and a great, cautioning tale that if we choose to sow our seeds in a garden not rooted in Yahweh’s abundance, we will have to eat that fruit, too.
