Psalm 133 · a question people ask
"For brothers to live together in unity" (133:1). Does the psalm mean brothers in one family, or a whole people?
The psalm doesn't say. Its word, ach, covers both in other verses (tap brothers). It is brothers in one family in "If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son" (Deuteronomy 25:5), with the psalm's words for live and together (see If brothers dwell together). It is wider than that when Lot, "his brother’s son" (Genesis 12:5), is called Abram's brother: "When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive" (Genesis 14:14), where, in Hebrew, his relative is achiv, his brother. And it is the whole people in "but over your brothers the children of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness" (Leviticus 25:46). Another Song of Ascents speaks of "my brothers’ and companions’ sakes" in a psalm about Jerusalem (Psalm 122:8), and doesn't say who they are either. Below its title, the only person Psalm 133 names besides the LORD is Aaron, and these notes don't choose what it means by brothers.
The verses
“A Song of Ascents. By David. See how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity!”
“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.”
“Abram took Sarai his wife, Lot his brother’s son, all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they went to go into the land of Canaan. They entered into the land of Canaan.”
“When Abram heard that his relative was taken captive, he led out his three hundred eighteen trained men, born in his house, and pursued as far as Dan.”