Hymn Guide: How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place
“How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place” is a hymn of longing and spiritual ascent. It is a paraphrase of Psalm 84 and began in the ancient Hebrew practice of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, with a special appreciation of the Temple and its courts. Now, we pilgrims sing this hymn on our journey to the New Jerusalem.
The text was written anonymously for the Scottish Psalter of 1650, using Thomas Sternhold‘s common meter. Modern hymn writer Carl P. Daw Jr. revised the text and paired it with the tune BROTHER JAMES’ AIR. This tune is appropriately lovely and features arpeggios fitting to the theme of spiritual ascent. It feels like we are singing up Mount Zion and into the presence of God.
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Verse by Verse
We sing this psalm as an expression of our longing for the imminent presence of God.
Verse 1
How lovely is thy dwelling place
O Lord of hosts to me!
My thirsty soul desires and longs
Within thy courts to be
My very heart and flesh cry out
O living God for thee.
In the original meaning of Psalm 84, the “dwelling place” of God refers to the Temple in Jerusalem. And so this psalm would be sung, especially by those on pilgrimage to the Temple. But for Christians, it is Jesus himself who “took flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). That is why Jesus could speak of “the temple of his body” (John 2:21).
Therefore, as Christians singing this psalm, we also express our desire for Christ’s presence by his Holy Spirit. In fact, our longing is to be God’s dwelling place, our bodies serving as what Paul calls “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Crying out to God with heart and flesh, we invite God to fill us as we sing.
Verse 2
Beside thine altars, gracious Lord
The swallows find a nest
How happy they who dwell with thee
And praise thee without rest
And happy they whose hearts are set
Upon the pilgrim’s quest
Psalm 84 resembles Psalm 42 in multiple ways. Both are attributed to the Sons of Korah. Both reflect the theme of longing for God and use animal imagery to express that longing. Where Psalm 42 compares this longing to the thirst of the deer, Psalm 84 envisions this longing fulfilled in the peace of the birds that live in the temple.
Just as swallows build a nest to dwell in the Temple, so when we sing this psalm we make ourselves a home with God. We are reminded of Augustine’s prayer at the beginning of his Confessions, that the human heart is restless until it rests in God. To rest in God is to praise him without ceasing, trusting him in all our ways.
Verse 3
They who go through the desert vale
Will find it filled with springs
And they shall climb from height to height
Till Zion’s temple rings
With praise to thee, in glory throned
Lord God, great King of kings
The point of the psalm is not that we find rest in God automatically. On the contrary, the psalm assumes that we will go through the desert vale—that we will often feel ourselves empty of God. Yet the promise is that, through that desert and spiritual draught, we will ultimately find God’s living water.
As we find God faithful to his promises, we ascend again into his presence and his praise.
Verse 4
One day within thy courts excels
A thousand spent away
How happy they who keep thy laws
Nor from thy precepts stray
For thou shalt surely bless all those
Who live the words they pray.
The final verse offers a kind of transition back into the world, a coming down from the mountaintop experience. It both praises the excellence of worship and acknowledges that the spiritual high does not last forever in this life. Yet, as we depart the place of worship, we continue to keep God’s laws and precepts.
In a sense, the personal practice of the law is the way we take God’s holiness with us. Justified in Christ’s righteousness, we are sanctified by his Spirit as we learn to live the words we pray.
An Example of Modern Psalmody
Saint Paul twice instructs the church to sing “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3, Ephesians 5). Paul included this passage as instruction and encouragement, but if he could see the church’s musical culture today, he would be shocked. The fact is, we don’t regularly sing the psalms anymore.
In this context of the general abandonment of psalmody, “How lovely is thy dwelling place” is a good example of the effort to restore psalm singing to the church. Though the first version of this metrical psalm was published in the 1650 Scottish Psalter, the version featured here is the product of a contemporary priest and hymn-writer, Carl P. Daw Jr. His version bridged the stylistic gap between psalmody and hymnody, creating a text that was easily embraced and is now included in many hymnals.
As Anglicans, we have a particular mandate to lead the way in restoring psalmody. Our tradition includes psalm chanting from the monastic tradition and medieval period, as well as the metrical psalmody developed by Thomas Sternhold during the Reformation. We have abundant resources, both tunes and texts, to rediscover and recreate a corpus of psalmody for the coming generation. Taking Carl Daw and this text as an example, let us give ourselves to this important work!
On Video
The first version is sung a cappella with four voices from Trinity Upperville in Virginia. Note that this video was recorded during the COVID-19 lockdowns, lending special poignancy to the longing for the courts of the Lord. The second video is an instrumental meditation on BROTHER JAMES’ AIR, with a solo violin and string ensemble.
Photo by Joel Carillet from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva; digital editing by Jacob Davis.
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