the sun · definite article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
smite
יַכֶּ֗כָּהya.Ke.kah
H5221
to strike (lightly or severely · verb, hiphil imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
day
יוֹמָ֗םyo.Mam
H3119
daily · adverb
moon
וְיָרֵ֥חַve.ya.Re.ach
H3394
the moon · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular absolute
night
בַּלָּֽיְלָהba.La.ye.lah
H3915
properly · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Revelation 7:16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.
Isaiah 49:10 They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the spr…
Psalms 91:5-10 Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Jonah 4:8 And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainte…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Psalms 121:1–end
This psalm teaches us,
I. To stay ourselves upon God as a God of power and a God all-sufficient for us. David did so and found the benefit of it. 1. We must not rely upon creatures, upon men and means, instruments and second causes, nor make flesh our arm: "Shall I lift up my eyes to the hills?" - so some read it. "Does my help come thence? Shall I depend upon the powers of the earth, upon the strength of the hills, upon princes and great men, who, like hills, fill the earth, and hold up their heads towards heaven? No; in vain is salvation hoped for from hills and mountains, Jer 3:23. I never expect help to come from them; my confidence is in God only." We must lift up our eyes above the hil…
The sun shall not smite thee by day,.... With its rays, which it shoots forth like darts, and which fly swiftly, and pierce and hurt: hence Apollo, the same with the sun, is represented with a bow and arrows (o); so the rays of the sun seem to be called in Habakkuk 2:11;
nor the moon by night; this clause should be supplied, as a learned man (p) observes, thus, "neither shall the moon cool thee by night"; for that has no warmth in it, and cannot smite with heat, as the sun does: for even, as he observes, its rays focused by a magnifying glass will not communicate the least degree of sensible heat to bodies objected thereunto; yet some say (q) the moon is not only moist, but heats bodies as…
Psalm 121:6-8
6. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. [65] 7. Jehovah shall keep thee from all evil; he will keep thy soul. 8. Jehovah will keep thy going out and thy coming in, henceforth and for ever.
6. The sun shall not smite thee by day. By these forms of expression the Psalmist magnifies the advantages which result to us from our having God present with us; and, by the figure synecdoche, under one particular, he declares in general that the faithful shall be safe from all adversities, defended as they are by Divine power. The language is metaphorical, the cold of night and the heat of day denoting all kind of inconveniences. The sense then is, that although God…
The Church Fathers
"May the Lord shield thee upon the hand of thy right hand" (ver. 6). I have said, and I believe ye have recognised it. For had ye not recognised it, and that from the Scriptures, ye would not signify your understanding of it by your voices. Since then ye have understood, brethren, consider what followeth; wherefore the Lord shieldeth thee "upon the hand of thy right hand," that is, in thy faith, wherein we have received "power to become the sons of God," and to be on His right hand: wherefore should God shield us? On account of offences. Whence come offences? Offences are to be feared from two quarters, for there are two precepts upon which the whole Law hangeth and the Prophets, the love of God and of our neighbour. The Church is loved for the sake of our neighbour, but God for the sake of God. Of God, is understood the sun figuratively: of the Church, is understood the moon figuratively. Whoever can err, so as to think otherwise of God than he ought, believing not the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost to be of one Substance, has been deceived by the cunning of heretics, chiefly of the Arians. If he hath believed anything less in the Son or in the Holy Spirit than in the Father, he hath suffered an offence in God; he is scorched by the sun. Whoever again believeth that the Church existeth in one province only, and not that she is diffused over the whole world, and whoso believeth them that say, "Lo here," and "Lo there, is Christ," as ye but now heard when the Gospel was being read; since He who gave so great a price, purchased the whole world: he is offended, so to speak, in his neighbour, and is burnt by the moon. Whoever therefore erreth in the very Substance of Truth, is burnt by the sun, and is burnt through the day; because he erreth in Wisdom itself ...God therefore hath made one sun, which riseth upon the good and the evil, that sun which the good and the evil see; but that Sun is another one, not created, not born, through whom all things were made; where is the intelligence of the Immutable Truth: of this the ungodly say, "the Sun rose not upon us." Whosoever erreth not in Wisdom itself, is not burnt by the sun. Whosoever erreth not in the Church, and in the Lord's Flesh, and in those things which were done for us in time, is not burnt by the moon. But every man although he believeth in Christ, erreth either in this or that respect, unless…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Moon — Heb. yareah, from its paleness (Ezra 6:15), and lebanah, the “white” (Cant. 6:10; Isa. 24:23), was appointed by the Creator to be with the sun “for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years”…
Poetry — Has been well defined as “the measured language of emotion.” Hebrew poetry deals almost exclusively with the great question of man’s relation to God. “Guilt, condemnation, punishment, pardon,…
Moon · Its inf — Its inf
Moon, The · Lunacy attributed to the influence of — Lunacy attributed to the influence of
Salvation · UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO — UNCLASSIFIED SCRIPTURES RELATING TO
Sun, The · The rays of: Frequently destructive to human life — The rays of: Frequently destructive to human life
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
That which holds good of "the Keeper of Israel" the poet applies believingly to himself, the individual among God's people, in Psa 121:5 after Gen 28:15. Jahve is his Keeper, He is his shade upon his right hand (היּמין as in Jdg 20:16; Sa2 20:9, and frequently; the construct state instead of an apposition, cf. e.g., Arab. jânbu 'l-grbı̂yi, the side of the western = the western side), which protecting him and keeping him fresh and cool, covers him from the sun's burning heat. על, as in Psa 109:6; Psa 110:5, with the idea of an overshadowing that screens and spreads itself out over anything (cf. Num 14:9). To the figure of the shadow is appended the consolation in Psa 121:6. הכּה of the sun s…
The Creator (121:2) is the guardian of Israel. • God stands beside Israel, supporting and caring for the godly (see 16:7-8). • Both the sun and the moon were regarded as deities in the ancient Near East, but the Creator limits their power. They, too, praise the Lord (148:3).
121:4 God watches over his own, even and especially when they face many troubles (12:5, 7; 69:29; 91:14; 146:9).
Spurgeon's Treasury of David on Psalms 121:6
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. None but the Lord could shelter us from these tremendous forces. These two great lights rule the day and the night, and under the lordship of both we shall labour or rest in equal safety. Doubtless there are dangers of the light and of the dark, but in both and from both we shall be preserved—literally from excessive heat and from baneful chills; mystically from any injurious effects which might follow from doctrine bright or dim; spiritually from the evils of prosperity and adversity; eternally from the strain of overpowering glory and from the pressure of terrible events…
