These are the last pair in the Songs of Ascents, closing the fifteen-psalm collection the way a benediction closes a service. Both are short, three verses each, and together they move from the pleasure of gathered worship to the moment of dismissal. One psalm praises unity among the pilgrims. The other sends the night-watch servants of the temple off with a blessing that returns, in its last line, to where the pilgrimage began.
Psalm 133 opens with unrestrained delight. 1"Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!" It pictures that unity twice. First it is oil poured on Aaron's head at his consecration, running down his beard and the collar of his robes, an abundance that keeps descending and reaches everything it touches. Second it is 3"the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion." Hermon, far to the north, was lush, and Jerusalem's hills were dry, so the picture carries abundance onto scarcity. The last line names the source. 3"There the LORD has commanded the blessing, life forevermore." Unity among God's people is a blessing he has decreed.
Psalm 134 has no named author and is the collection's closing benediction. It speaks to the servants of the LORD, 1"who stand by night in the house of the LORD," almost certainly Levites or priests on the temple's overnight watch, the least visible shift of temple service. The summons is simple. 2"Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the LORD!" No reason clause follows, and none is needed, because the reason is the whole pilgrimage that came before it. Fourteen psalms of departure, protection, arrival, deliverance, stability, labor, and rest end in a call to the workers on the shift no other pilgrim will see.
Then comes the priests' answer, a blessing spoken from Zion by the LORD who made heaven and earth. It is the same phrase that anchored Psalm 121's assurance for the road and Psalm 124's confession after deliverance from disaster. The entire collection, a whole journey of danger, arrival, affliction, and rest, ends by returning to its opening words. The God who kept the traveler at the start of the road is the one who pronounces the last blessing at the end of it.
Two practical things follow. Psalm 133 presents unity as commanded, decreed the way life itself is decreed. A fragile unity in a marriage, a church, or a family can be asked of God as something he has already committed to give, oil poured out and dew falling from farther away than makes sense. It is a gift to ask for, and warmth cannot be manufactured by trying harder.
And Psalm 134 speaks to people no pilgrim ever saw serving, the overnight shift in a building most of Jerusalem was asleep beside. That shift is given the closing psalm of the whole collection. Hidden, unglamorous service, work no one applauds and care no one else witnesses, is exactly what this psalm addresses and calls worth an entire song. The measure of that work was never who was watching.
Ask for a unity you have been trying to manufacture, and receive it as a gift. Then bless the LORD tonight for whatever hidden work is yours, seen by no one but him.
Prayer
Father, how good and pleasant it is when we dwell in unity. Where ours has felt like something to manufacture, teach us to ask you for it as a gift. Bless the hidden service that no one applauds or sees. As we come to the end of these psalms, thank you that you are the same God who met us at their beginning. Amen.