Psalm 24:4

The question rests on the verses before it: “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof” (Psalm 24:1–2). Because the whole world belongs to him as its Maker, he has every right to set the terms on which people come into his presence. The psalm ends with the gates being told to lift up their heads so that the King of glory may come in (Psalm 24:7–10). These four verses stand between the two and tell us who may go in to meet that King.

The psalm is headed “A Psalm of David”, and it was most likely sung as worshippers went up in procession to God’s house. It may first have belonged to the day David brought the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6), and it suited the pilgrim feasts of Passover, Weeks and Booths, when Israel went up to worship. The question and its answer read like words spoken at the entrance, teaching each worshipper what the LORD asks of those who come.

“The hill of the LORD” is Mount Zion in Jerusalem, where David brought the Ark and where Solomon later built the Temple. The Hebrew har means a mountain or a range of hills, and har Yᵉhôvâh marks this hill as the LORD’s own, the place he chose for his presence among his people and the centre of Israel’s worship. The verb for “ascend”, ‘âlâh, is the plain word for going up, and it is the usual word for going up to Jerusalem, to the Temple, and to offer sacrifices. The climb up the slopes of Jerusalem was real, and every step of it led toward the place where God met his people.

The second line asks the same question in different words, as Hebrew poetry often does, and carries it one step further, from the climb to standing before God in his house. “His holy place” is mâqôwm qôdesh. The word qôdesh means something set apart, consecrated and sacred, and it is used mostly of holy places and things, here of the sanctuary given over wholly to God. “Stand” is qûwm, the ordinary word for rising and standing. To stand in the holy place is to be there before the LORD, to worship and to serve.

Verse 4 answers the question with four marks of the person who may come near. The first two describe what he is, in his deeds and in his heart, and the last two describe what he has turned away from: empty things and false oaths.

Verse 5 tells what the one who comes this way receives. “Blessing” is Bᵉrâkâh, a word that also covers prosperity and a gift or present. It comes “from the LORD”, the covenant God of Israel, and it is his own favour given to those who come near to him. The law had promised blessing on those who heard the LORD’s voice and obeyed it (Deuteronomy 28:1–14), and here that blessing meets the worshipper at the door of God’s house.

He also receives “righteousness”, tsᵉdâqâh. The word covers moral uprightness, justice and a right standing, and it is used of God’s own faithfulness to his covenant. Here the psalm says it comes “from the God of his salvation”, so this righteousness is God’s gift, a right standing with him that he gives to the one who comes. Moses spoke of the righteousness of keeping God’s law: “it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments” (Deuteronomy 6:25). Isaiah pictures God himself pouring righteousness down from the skies, with salvation springing up beside it (Isaiah 45:8). Paul unfolds this gift fully when he writes of the righteousness of God that comes by faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:21–26) and of those who “receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness” (Romans 5:17). The psalm’s own word is “receive”.

“Salvation” is yeshaʻ, which means salvation, deliverance or help, the rescue God brings. To call him “the God of his salvation”, with ʼĕlôhîym for God, is to know him as the one who rescues and keeps this very person. Israel had known God as Saviour since he brought them through the Red Sea (Exodus 14), and the psalms say it again and again: “Salvation belongeth unto the LORD” (Psalm 3:8), and “In God is my salvation and my glory” (Psalm 62:7).

Verse 6 names the people the psalm has been describing. “Generation” is dôwr, which Strong’s calls “a revolution of time”. It means a generation or an age, and also a group of people who share a character, which is its sense here. This generation is a kind of people, marked out in every age by one thing: they seek God.

“Seek” is dârash and then bâqash, to seek or search out. The verse uses the thought twice, “them that seek him, that seek thy face”, and the second phrase shows what they are looking for. “Face” is pânîym, plural in form but always used as a singular, and its senses of front and presence grow out of the face itself. To seek God’s face is to long for his own presence and favour, to know him and be near him, beyond anything he gives. In Scripture, when God hides his face he withdraws his favour, and when he shows his face he blesses. David wrote, “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek” (Psalm 27:8). Hosea joins seeking and righteousness just as verses 5 and 6 do: “it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).

“O Jacob” names the people descended from Jacob, whose name God changed to Israel, the people he took into covenant. Those who seek God’s face in this way are the true Jacob. Seeking him is the mark of real belonging to his covenant family, and it sets them apart from those who carry the name without the heart. They are the same people Psalm 15 describes as dwelling on God’s holy hill.

“Selah” is a word found often in the Psalms, usually understood as a musical or liturgical mark calling for a pause or an interlude. Here it comes after the answer is complete, a moment to let the truth about who may come to God settle in before the gates are called to open for the King of glory.

People ask whether only sinless people can come to God, or whether this psalm teaches that we earn our way into his presence. The psalm sets out the holiness that God’s presence calls for, and it describes the character of the people who belong to him. In Israel the worshipper came through repentance, cleansing and the sacrifices God himself provided, above all on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). The standard was met by those who walked with God sincerely and turned from sin, and the provision for their failures came from him.

Verse 5 settles where the righteousness comes from: it is received “from the God of his salvation”. Clean hands and a pure heart are the life of someone God has already drawn to himself, the response that grows from his grace and keeps a person in fellowship with him. Our own effort still matters, because the righteousness is given to one who seeks God and strives to live uprightly. Paul holds the two together when he writes that we are saved by grace through faith, “not of works”, and are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:8–10). Our obedience is the evidence of grace at work in us. And when we ask who has ever had perfectly clean hands and a perfectly pure heart, the answer is one man alone.

Jesus is the one who fully answers the psalm’s question. He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). His hands healed and blessed, and of his Father he could say, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). In the wilderness he turned away every offer of worldly power and glory (Matthew 4:1–11), so his soul was lifted up to God alone. He swore no false oath, for he is truth itself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Jesus called his own body the temple (John 2:19–21), and when he died, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom” (Matthew 27:51), opening the way into God’s presence. Through him “we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). We have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19–22), and so we are told to “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Hebrews 10:22).

The righteousness of verse 5 comes to us in him. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God has made Christ our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30), and by his Spirit he is shaping us into the image of his Son (Romans 8:29), so that the clean hands and pure heart of this psalm grow in us too. After his resurrection Jesus was taken up into heaven (Acts 1:9–11). He is the King of glory for whom the everlasting doors are lifted up, and all who belong to him go in with him. Those who seek God’s face through him are “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16), the generation of verse 6.

We no longer climb a hill in Jerusalem to meet God, yet we come before him every time we pray and worship, and every day we live in his sight. The open door Christ has given us is a reason for reverence and joy. It is also the strength by which we pursue the holiness this psalm describes.

So these verses are a good place to stop and look at our own lives, as the worshippers did at the gate. Our hands are our dealings with others, and our hearts are what we want. It is worth asking what our souls are lifted up to, and whether our word can be trusted. The answers lead us to humility, because every good thing we have comes from the LORD, and to confidence, because the God who requires holiness is the God who gives righteousness and salvation. Above all, the psalm calls us to be among those who seek his face, desiring God himself more than anything he gives.