Psalms 127:2
For thou shalt eat the labours of thy hands: blessed art thou, and it shall be well with thee.
Open Psalms 127:2 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Labores manuum tuarum quia manducabis : beatus es, et bene tibi erit.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- τοὺς καρποὺς τῶν πόνων σου φάγεσαι, μακάριος εἶ καὶ καλῶς σοι ἔσται.
- Hebrew (WLC) shown from Psalms 128:2
- יְגִ֣יעַ כַּ֭פֶּיךָ כִּ֣י תֹאכֵ֑ל אַ֝שְׁרֶ֗יךָ וְט֣וֹב לָֽךְ
Haydock's commentary
Hands. The idle are not entitled to blessings, which God will bestow on the industrious who fear him, preserving them from evils, Leviticus xxvi. 16., and Deuteronomy xxviii. 30. (Calmet) (2 Corinthians iii. 10.)
Some have explained karpon, "fruits:" though it here means hands. (Berthier)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Augustine Expositions on the Book of Psalms, Psalm CXXVIII
3. “Thou shalt eat the labours of thy fruits” ( ver. 2 ). And ye, O thou, ye many who are One, “Thou shalt eat of the labours of thy fruits.” He seemeth to speak perversely to those who understand not: for he should have said, thou shalt eat the fruit of thy labours. For many eat the fruit of their labours. They labour in the vineyard; they eat not the toil itself; but what ariseth from their labour they eat. They labour about trees that bear fruit: who would eat labours? But the fruit of these labours, the produce of these trees; it is this that delighteth the husbandman. What meaneth, “Thou shalt eat the labours of thy fruits”? At present we have toils: the fruits will come afterwards. …
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Marcella
With the second phrase he deals at greater length. After showing that Hilary of Poitiers’s view (viz. that the persons meant are the apostles, who were told to shake the dust off their feet, Matt. x. 14 ) is untenable and would require “shakers off” to be substituted for “shaken off,” Jerome reverts to the Hebrew as before and declares that the true rendering is that of Symmachus and Theodotion, viz. “children of youth.” He points out that the LXX. (by whom the Latin translators had been misled) fall into the same mistake at Neh. iv. 16 . Finally he corrects a slip of Hilary as to Ps. cxxviii. 2 , where, through a misunderstanding of the LXX., the latter had substituted “the labors of thy fruits” for “the labors of thy hands.” He speaks throughout with high respect of Hilary, and says that it was not the bishop’s fault that he was ignorant of Hebrew. …