John Calvin Commentary Psalms 147:2

"Jehovah doth build up Jerusalem; He gathereth together the outcasts of Israel." — Psalms 147:2 (ASV)

Praise you God, etc. Though the benefits he speaks of are such as God extends to all people indiscriminately, it is plain that he especially addresses God’s people, who alone behold his works in an enlightened manner, whereas stupidity and blindness of mind deprive others of their understanding. His subject is not confined to the common benefits of God, but the main thing that he celebrates is his mercy, as shown to his chosen people.

So that the Church may address itself to the praises of God with more alacrity, he states that this kind of exercise is good, delightful, and pleasant. By this, he indirectly criticizes a sin that is almost universal: becoming weary at the very mention of God, and considering it our highest pleasure to forget both God and ourselves, so that we may give way to unrestrained indulgence.

To teach people to take delight in this religious exercise, the Psalmist reminds them that praise is comely, or desirable. For the term נאוה, navah, may be rendered either way.

Jehovah building up, etc. He begins with the special mercy of God toward his Church and people, in choosing to adopt one nation out of all others, and selecting a fixed place where his name might be called upon. When he is here called the builder of Jerusalem, the allusion is not so much to the outward form and structure, as to the spiritual worship of God.

It is a common figure when speaking of the Church to describe it as a building or temple. The meaning is that the Church was not of human erection, but formed by the supernatural power of God. For it was not from any dignity of the place itself that Jerusalem became the only habitation of God in our world, nor did it achieve this honor by human counsel, industry, effort, or power, but because God was pleased to consecrate it to himself.

He indeed employed the labor and instrumentality of people in erecting his sanctuary there, but this should never detract from his grace, which alone distinguished the holy city from all others. In calling God the former and architect of the Church, his purpose is to make us aware that by his power it remains in a firm condition, or is restored when in ruins.

Therefore, he infers that it is within God's power and sovereign will to gather those who have been dispersed. Here the Psalmist seeks to comfort those miserable exiles who had been scattered in various places, with the hope of being gathered from their dispersion, as God had not adopted them without a definite purpose into one body.

As he had ordered his temple and altar to be erected at Jerusalem, and had fixed his seat there, the Psalmist encourages the Jews who were exiles from their native country to entertain good hope of a return, intimating that it was just as much God’s work to raise up his Church when ruined and fallen, as to found it at first.

Therefore, it was not the Psalmist’s direct purpose to celebrate the free mercy of God in the first institution of the Church, but to argue from its origin that God would not allow his Church to fall completely, having once founded it with the intention of preserving it forever; for he does not forsake the work of his own hands.

We ourselves should apply this comfort in the present time, when we see the Church on every side so miserably torn apart, leading us to hope that all the elect who have been joined to Christ’s body will be gathered into the unity of the faith, although now scattered like members torn from one another; and that the mutilated body of the Church, which is daily distressed, will be restored to its wholeness, for God will not allow his work to fail.

In the following verse, he insists upon the same truth, the figure suggesting that though the Church may suffer under and be oppressed by many diseases, God will quickly and easily heal it from all its wounds. Therefore, the same truth is evidently conveyed in a different form of expression—that the Church, though it may not always be in a flourishing condition, is always safe and secure, and that God will miraculously heal it, as if it were a diseased body.