John Calvin Commentary Psalms 92:12

"The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." — Psalms 92:12 (ASV)

The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree. He now passes to the consideration of another general truth: that though God may discipline His people with many trials, subject them to hardships, and cause them to experience privations, He will eventually show that He had not forgotten them. We need not be surprised that the Psalmist insists so explicitly and carefully on this point, as nothing is more difficult than for the saints of God to maintain hope of being raised up and delivered when they have been reduced almost to the state of the dead, and it does not appear how they can live.

Some think the cedar is mentioned for its fragrance, and the palm for the sweetness of its fruit; but this is too subtle a meaning to attach to the words. The meaning seems simply to be that though the righteous may appear for a time to be withered, or to have been cut down, they will again spring up with renewed vigor, and flourish as well and as beautifully in the Church of God as the stateliest trees on Lebanon.

The expression used—planted in the house of the Lord—gives the reason for their vigorous growth; nor does it mean that they merely have a place there (which can be said even of hypocrites), but that they are firmly fixed and deeply rooted in it, so that they are united to God.

The Psalmist speaks of the courts of the Lord, because only the priests were allowed to enter the holy place; the people worshipped in the court. By those who are planted in the Church he means those who are united to God in real and sincere attachment, and implies that their prosperity cannot be of a changeable and fluctuating nature, because it is not founded on anything in the world.

Indeed, we cannot doubt that whatever has its root and is founded in the sanctuary must continue to flourish and share in a life that is spiritual and everlasting. It is in this sense that he speaks of their still budding forth, and being fat, even in old age, when natural vitality is generally dried up.

This language means that they are exempt from the ordinary human lot and have a life that is removed from the common law of nature.

Thus, Jacob, speaking of the great renovation that should take place in the Church, mentions that at that happy period, one who was a hundred years old would be like a child. He means that although old age naturally leads to death, and someone who has lived a hundred years is on its very brink, yet in the kingdom of Christ, a man entering a new century would be considered as merely in his childhood, just starting life. This can only be true in the sense that after death we have another existence in heaven.