Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 144:15

Happy is that people, etc. We have in the text happiness with an echo, or ingemination; "happy" and "happy." From this ingemination arise the parts of the text; the same which are the parts both of the greater world and the less. As the heaven and earth in the one, and the body and soul in the other; so are the passages of this Scripture in the two veins of happiness. We may range them as Isaac does the two parts of his blessing (Ge 27:28); the vein of civil happiness, in "the fatness of the earth"; and the vein of Divine happiness, in "the fatness of heaven." Or (if you will have it out of the gospel), here's Martha's portion in the "many things" of the body; and Mary's better part in the unum necessarium of the soul. To give it yet more concisely, here's the path of prosperity in outward comforts, "Happy is that people that is in such a case"; and the path of piety in comforts spiritual: Yea, happy is that people, whose God is the LORD. In the handling of the first, without any further subdivision, I will only show what it is the Psalmist treats of; and that shall be by way of gradation, in these three particulars. It is De Felicitate; De Felicitate Populi; De Hac Felicitate Populi: of happiness; of the people's happiness; of the people's happiness, as in such a case. Happiness is the general, and the first: a noble argument, and worthy of an inspired pen, especially the Psalmist's. Of all other there can be none better to speak of popular happiness than such a king; nor of celestial, than such a prophet. Yet I mean not to discourse of it in the full latitude, but only as it hath a peculiar posture in this psalm, very various and different from the order of other psalms. In this psalm it is reserved to the end, as the close of the foregoing meditations. In other psalms it is set in the front, or first place of all; as in Ps 32:1-11, in Ps 112:1-10, in Ps 119:1-176, and in the Ps 128:1-6. Again, in this the Psalmist ends with our happiness and begins with God's. "Blessed be the LORD my strength." In Ps 41:1-13, contrary, he makes his exordium from man's; "Blessed is he that considereth the poor"; his conclusion with God's; "Blessed be the Lend God of Israel." I therefore observe these variations, because they are helpful to the understanding both of the essence and splendour of true happiness. To the knowledge of the essence they help, because they demonstrate how our own happiness is enfolded in the glory of God, and subordinate unto it. As we cannot begin with beatus unless we end with benedictus: so we must begin with benedictus that we may end with beatus. The reason is this, —because the glory of God is as well the consummation as the introduction to a Christian's happiness. Therefore as in the other psalm he begins below and ends upwards; so in this, having begun from above with that which is principal, "Blessed be the LORD"; he fixes his second thoughts upon the subordinate, "Blessed, or happy, are the people." He could not proceed in a better order: he first looks up to God's kingdom, then reflects upon his own, as not meaning to take blessedness before he had given it. —Richard Holdsworth.