Verse 1
"How amiable are your tabernacles, O LORD of hosts"
Amiable — beloved, lovely; tabernacles — the dwelling places of God.
In one line: a lover's sigh at the sight of the house from afar.
Verse 2
"My soul longs, yea, even faints for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God"
Longs and faints — desire stretched to the edge of strength; my heart and my flesh — the whole person, body included.
In one line: a longing that fills soul and body alike.
Verse 3
"Yea, the sparrow has found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God"
The swallow — a small free bird; where she may lay her young — a safe place for her chicks, beside the altars themselves.
In one line: sweet envy of a bird that already lives with you.
Verse 4
"Blessed are they that dwell in your house: they will be still praising you. Selah"
Still praising — they go on praising without end; Selah — a word of pause and permanence from Temple song; this verse opens the Ashrei prayer.
In one line: a verse said three times every day — and here it is sung.
Verse 5
"Blessed is the man whose strength is in you; in whose heart are the ways of them"
The ways — the pilgrim roads to Jerusalem, carried inside the heart.
In one line: the second blessing — for the one whose road lives in his heart.
Verse 6
"Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also fills the pools"
Baca — a dry valley on the way to Jerusalem, its name close to the Hebrew word for weeping; make it a well — their very walking turns it into a spring, and the early rain fills its pools.
In one line: on the road to the house, even weeping becomes a spring.
The psalm opens with longing from afar and closes with a spring opened mid-road. Between them stand the two blessings — the one who dwells in the house and the one who carries the road in his heart — and both sing the same praise. This is the psalm's teaching: the road to the house is itself part of the house. Whoever holds its ways in his heart has already begun to dwell.