“For I, the Lord, love justice;
    I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
In my faithfulness I will reward my people
    and make an everlasting covenant with them.
9 Their descendants will be known among the nations
    and their offspring among the peoples.
All who see them will acknowledge
    that they are a people the Lord has blessed.”

This is the part of chapter 61 where God speaks.

Note:

  • there are things God ‘loves’ and things He ‘hates’;
  • when the Lord ‘rewards’ His people, it is primarily about His ”faithfulness”, not theirs;
  • how these words have been fulfilled in the people of Israel, as they have been dispersed across the globe. It is evident that ”they are a people the LORD has blessed” , even in the violent opposition that has been stirred up against them. It is largely irrational, and makes no sense, apart from seeing it as demonic hatred against a people so deeply and historically related to God;
  • how these words are ultimately fulfilled in the church: ‘God will entail a blessing upon their posterity after them (v. 9): Their seed (the children of those persons themselves that are now the blessed of the Lord, or their successors in profession, the church’s seed) shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation, Ps 22 30. 1. They shall signalize themselves and make their neighbours to take notice of them: They shall be known among the Gentiles, shall distinguish themselves by the gravity, seriousness, humility, and cheerfulness of their conversation, especially by that brotherly love by which all men shall know them to be Christ’s disciples. And, they thus distinguishing themselves, God shall dignify them, by making them the blessings of their age and instruments of his glory, and by giving them remarkable tokens of his favour, which shall make them eminent and gain them respect from all about them. Let the children of godly parents love in such a manner that they may be known to be such, that all who observe them may see in them the fruits of a good education, and an answer to the prayers that were put up for them; and then they may expect that God will make them known, by the fulfilling of that promise to them, that the generation of the upright shall be blessed. 2. God shall have the glory of this, for every one shall attribute it to the blessing of God; all that see them shall see so much of the grace of God in them, and his favour towards them, that they shall acknowledge them to be the seed which the Lord has blessed and doth bless, for it includes both. See what it is to be blessed of God. Whatever good appears in any it must be taken notice of as the fruit of God’s blessing and he must be glorified in it.’ Matthew Henry.