Building, guarding, work, and children as gift

House, city, and labor are called vain if the LORD is not in them

Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.

Build and keep are ordinary work: family house, civic wall. Vain does not mean the work is wicked. It means anxious toil cannot secure what only God grants. Beloved sleep is gift, not laziness. The psalm is not anti-work, not anti-watch, and not a scolding of people whose nights are broken by poverty, infants, or illness.

Children are heritage and arrows, aimed at a gate, not at a scoreboard

Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.

Heritage and reward name children as gift, not as a project that proves the builders were righteous. Arrows and gate are an ancient household's legal and public strength: sons standing with a father in the place of dispute. The poetry belongs to that world. It is not a fertility command, not a shame-text for the childless, not a slight against daughters, and not a ban on adoption or a small household.