Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 133:3

As the dew of Hermon, etc. What we read in the 133rd Psalm of the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion", says Van de Velde in his "Travels" (Bd. 1. S. 97), "is now become quite clear to me. Here as I sat at the foot of Hermon, I understood how the water drops which rose from its forest mantled heights, and out of the highest ravines, which are filled the whole year round with snow, after the sun's rays have attenuated them add moistened the atmosphere with them, descend at evening time as a heavy dew upon the lower mountains which lie round about as its spurs. One ought to have seen Hermon with its white golden crown glistening aloft in the blue sky, in order to be able rightly to understand the figure. Nowhere in the whole country is so heavy a dew perceptible as in the districts near to Hermon. To this dew the poet likens brotherly love. This is "as the dew of Hermon": of such pristine freshness and thus refreshing, possessing such pristine power and thus quickening, thus born from above (Ps 110:3), and in fact like the dew of Hermon which comes down upon the mountains of Zion —a feature in the picture which is taken from the natural reality; for an abundant dew, when warm days have preceded, might very well be diverted to Jerusalem by the operation of the cold current of air sweeping down from the north over Hermon. We know, indeed, from our own experience how far off a cold air coming from the Alps is perceptible, and produces its effects. The figure of the poet is therefore as true to nature as it is beautiful. When brethren bound together in love also meet together in one place, and, in fact, when brethren of the north unite with brethren in the south in Jerusalem, the city which is the mother of all, at the great Feasts, it is as when the dew of Mount Hermon, which is covered with deep, almost eternal snow, descends upon the bare, unfruitful —and therefore longing for such quickening —mountains round about Zion. In Jerusalem must love and all that is good meet. —Franz Delitzsch.