John Calvin Commentary Psalms 124:8

"Our help is in the name of Jehovah, Who made heaven and earth." — Psalms 124:8 (ASV)

Our help is in the name of Jehovah. David here extends to the state of the Church in all ages that which the faithful had already experienced. As I interpret the verse, he not only gives thanks to God for one benefit, but affirms that the Church cannot continue safe except to the extent that she is protected by the hand of God. His object is to animate the children of God with the assured hope that their life is in perfect safety under the divine guardianship. The contrast between the help of God and other resources in which the world vainly confides, as we have seen in (Psalms 20:7),

“Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God,”

is to be noticed, so that the faithful, purged from all false confidence, may turn exclusively to His aid and, depending upon it, may fearlessly despise whatever Satan and the world may plot against them. The name of God is nothing else than God Himself; yet it tacitly conveys a significant idea, implying that as He has disclosed His grace to us by His word, we have ready access to Him, so that in seeking Him we do not need to go to a distance or follow long circuitous paths.

Nor is it without cause that the Psalmist again honors God with the title of Creator. We know with what anxiety our minds are agitated until they have raised God's power to its appropriate eminence, so that—the whole world being subjected to it—His power alone may be preeminent; which cannot be the case unless we are persuaded that all things are subject to His will.

He did not show His power only once, for a moment, in the creation of the world and then withdraw it; rather, He continually demonstrates it in the government of the world. Moreover, although all people freely and loudly confess that God is the Creator of heaven and earth, so that even the most wicked are ashamed to withhold from Him the honor of this title, yet as soon as any terror presents itself to us, we are convicted of unbelief by placing hardly any value on the help He has to offer.