In the Scriptures God is regarded as the dwelling-place of His people, of the holy and redeemed soul. This thought was ever before the Hebrew mind: God is the home of the soul. It is a great, an awful, an infinite thought.
I. "Of Benjamin he said." By a gifted and inspired second sight, the man whose eyes the Lord had opened beheld the arrangement of the tribes. Benjamin was one of the smallest of the tribes. It held its inland, and insulated, and secluded position, bounded by Dan, Judah, Ephraim, and Reuben. "He shall dwell between His shoulders." Some render this term "among His mountains." And, indeed, there the Temple was built on the territory of Benjamin and Judah. There they were together the weakest by the strongest of the tribes.
II. "Beloved." The title authenticates the blessing. It is a word of beautiful reciprocations; we look up and think of Him, and rejoice because we are "accepted in the Beloved," and we look upon the Church and see that it is the "elect of God, holy and beloved."
III. Safety. All things will serve Benjamin. Whatever happens, "the beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety." "In safety." Much of the world's position and place is only like a book of tragedies, bound in gold and crimson velvet all fair without, all black within, leaves of gold and lines of blood. The lots of some men are like those who live in houses paved with pearl and walled with diamonds, while all the roof lies open to the wind and storms. But "the beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety." They are remembered, and they are safe.
E. Paxton Hood, Dark Sayings on a Harp,p. 274.
Reference: Deuteronomy 33:12. Bagnall-Baker, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 121.