Unless the Lord Build the House: Solomon's Temple and the Labourers of the Harvest
Old Testament: Psalms 126:1-2
Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it. It is vain for you to rise before light, rise ye after you have sitten, you that eat the bread of sorrow. When he shall give sleep to his beloved,
Old Testament, also: 3 Kings 6:14
So Solomon built the house and finished it.
New Testament: Matthew 9:37-38; 1 Corinthians 3:7, 9
Then he saith to his disciples, The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest. ... Therefore, neither he that planteth is any thing, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. ... For we are God's coadjutors: you are God's husbandry; you are God's building.
The connection
David gathered gold and cedar for a house of God, but he was told, "thou canst not build a house to my name"; his son would: "He shall build a house to my name, and he shall be a son to me" (1 Paralipomenon 22:8, 10). "So Solomon built the house and finished it" (3 Kings 6:14). Yet the psalm that bears Solomon's name sets all that labour aside: "Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it" (Psalms 126:1). The house the Lord builds is His Church, and He calls its workmen Himself: "The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest" (Matthew 9:37-38). St Paul joins the field and the house in one breath: "neither he that planteth is any thing, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase ... you are God's husbandry; you are God's building" (1 Corinthians 3:7, 9). St Augustine reads the psalm so. Solomon "was the figure of this Peace maker, when he built the temple", lest anyone think "he who built the house unto God was the true Solomon": "The Lord Jesus Christ buildeth His own house. Many toil in building: but, except He build, 'their labour is but lost that build it.' Who are they who toil in building it? All who preach the word of God in the Church, the ministers of God's mysteries." And he adds, "We, therefore, speak without, He buildeth within." The Catechism names the Church God's building, with Christ its corner stone (CCC 756).
Moral sense
The workman is not nothing. "Every man shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour" (1 Corinthians 3:8), and God keeps faith with His labourers: the hire kept back from the reapers "crieth", and the cry "hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth" (James 5:4). But sin pays a wage of its own, and life comes as a gift: "the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting" (Romans 6:23). Even the labourer's reward is grace crowning its own work: St Paul laboured more than any, "yet not I, but the grace of God with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10). So plant, water and pray for labourers, and then let the growth be His. "It is vain for you to rise before light" (Psalms 126:2): the anxious toil of a man building his own house is lost labour. He builds while His beloved sleep.
Anagogical sense
St Augustine hears in "When he shall give sleep to his beloved" the sleep of the Cross: "while the Lord slept on the Cross, His side was transfixed with a spear, and the Sacraments flowed forth, whence the Church was born." The house rises from that sleep, and it is finished only at the end, when the labourers "rest from their labours; for their works follow them" (Apocalypse 14:13), in the city "whose builder and maker is God" (Hebrews 11:10).
The Fathers
St Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 127 (Douay 126): "for that Solomon was the figure of this Peace maker, when he built the temple; that thou mayest not think he who built the house unto God was the true Solomon, Scripture showing unto thee another Solomon, thus commences this Psalm: 'Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it.' The Lord, therefore, buildeth the house, the Lord Jesus Christ buildeth His own house. Many toil in building: but, except He build, 'their labour is but lost that build it.' Who are they who toil in building it? All who preach the word of God in the Church, the ministers of God's mysteries." And on the second verse: "while the Lord slept on the Cross, His side was transfixed with a spear, and the Sacraments flowed forth, whence the Church was born."
Warrant
Patristic. St Augustine, expounding this psalm, calls Solomon's building of the Temple a figure of Christ, who builds His own house through those who preach, and reads the sleep given to the beloved as the Cross (Expositions on the Psalms, Psalm 127 in Schaff's numbering, 126 in the Douay). The New Testament does not cite the psalm, so the grade rests on him. Checked in the languages: the Hebrew title gives the psalm to Solomon, as the Vulgate does, and its opening, yivneh bayit, build a house, is the very phrase of Nathan's promise that David's son shall build a house to my name (2 Kings 7:13). In the Greek, the Septuagint's oikodomeo and kopiao, to build and to labour, are the roots St Paul uses at 1 Corinthians 3:8-9, kopos and oikodome. The lead was Dunk's, from Matthew 9:37-38 and Psalm 127:1 read beside James 5 and Romans 6:23.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 756.
The verses
Psalms 126:1 · Psalms 126:2 · 3 Kings 6:14 · Matthew 9:37 · Matthew 9:38 · 1 Corinthians 3:7 · 1 Corinthians 3:9
