The Life of David: As Reflected in His Psalms
by Alexander Maclaren · English · Gutenberg #21872 · 327,291 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Life of David: As Reflected in His Psalms
Author: Alexander Maclaren
Release date: June 19, 2007 [eBook #21872]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF DAVID: AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS ***
Produced by Colin Bell, Thomas Strong and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
{Transcriber's Note: Obvious typos, printing errors and mis-spellings
have been corrected, but spellings have not been modernized. Footnotes
follow immediately the paragraph in which they are noted. In Chapter
XV, eighth paragraph, second last line, "His" changed to "his" in the
sentence "Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes waking" to agree
with the author's obvious reference to David rather than to God.}
=The Household Library of Exposition.=
THE LIFE OF DAVID
AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS.
THE
LIFE OF DAVID
AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS.
BY
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.
_NINTH EDITION._
=London:=
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MCMIII
_Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London_
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION, 1
II. EARLY DAYS, 14
III. EARLY DAYS--_continued_, 31
IV. THE EXILE, 49
V. THE EXILE--_continued_, 70
VI. THE EXILE--_continued_, 86
VII. THE EXILE--_continued_, 110
VIII. THE EXILE--_continued_, 130
IX. THE KING, 144
X. THE KING--_continued_, 157
XI. THE KING--_continued_, 174
XII. THE KING--_continued_, 185
XIII. THE TEARS OF THE PENITENT, 205
XIV. CHASTISEMENTS, 232
XV. THE SONGS OF THE FUGITIVE, 245
INDEX, 262
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 263
BIBLE CLASS EXPOSITIONS, 264
THE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF EXPOSITION, 265
I.--INTRODUCTION.
Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the life of David is its
romantic variety of circumstances. What a many-coloured career that was
which began amidst the pastoral solitudes of Bethlehem, and ended in the
chamber where the dying ears heard the blare of the trumpets that
announced the accession of Bathsheba's son! He passes through the most
sharply contrasted conditions, and from each gathers some fresh fitness
for his great work of giving voice and form to all the phases of devout
feeling. The early shepherd life deeply influenced his character, and
has left its traces on many a line of his psalms.
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills;
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills."
And then, in strange contrast with the meditative quiet and lowly duties
of these first years, came the crowded vicissitudes of the tempestuous
course through which he reached his throne--court minstrel, companion
and friend of a king, idol of the people, champion of the armies of
God--and in his sudden elevation keeping the gracious sweetness of his
lowlier, and perhaps happier days. The scene changes with startling
suddenness to the desert. He is "hunted like a partridge upon the
mountains," a fugitive and half a freebooter, taking service at foreign
courts, and lurking on the frontiers with a band of outlaws recruited
from the "dangerous classes" of Israel. Like Dante and many more, he has
to learn the weariness of the exile's lot--how hard his fare, how
homeless his heart, how cold the courtesies of aliens, how unslumbering
the suspicions which watch the refugee who fights on the side of his
"natural enemies." One more swift transition and he is on the throne,
for long years victorious, prosperous, and beloved.
"Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place
The wisdom which adversity had bred,"
till suddenly he is plunged into the mire, and falsifies all his past,
and ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heart
and the prosperity of his kingdom. Thenceforward trouble is never far
away; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness of
his great fault, as well as by hatred and rebellion and murder in his
family, and discontent and alienation in his kingdom.
None of the great men of Scripture pass through a course of so many
changes; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of them
were so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, by
such heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. Like his
great Son and Lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be "in all
points tempted like as we are," that his words may be fitted for the
solace and strength of the whole world. Poets "learn in suffering what
they teach in song." These quick transitions of fortune, and this wide
experience, are the many-coloured threads from which the rich web of his
psalms is woven.
And while the life is singularly varied, the character is also
singularly full and versatile. In this respect, too, he is most unlike
the other leading figures of Old Testament history. Contrast him, for
example, with the stern majesty of Moses, austere and simple as the
tables of stone; or with the unvarying tone in the gaunt strength of
Elijah. These and the other mighty men in Israel are like the ruder
instruments of music--the trumpet of Sinai, with its one prolonged note.
David is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of
God murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of
triumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies of
all devout emotions.
The man had his faults--grave enough. Let it be remembered that no one
has judged them more rigorously than himself. The critics who have
delighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; and
their indictment has been little more than the quotation of his own
confession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by
the delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of
occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile
and war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times
break from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affection
became, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an unworthy
son.
But when all this is admitted, there remains a wonderfully rich, lovable
character. He is the very ideal of a minstrel hero, such as the legends
of the East especially love to paint. The shepherd's staff or sling, the
sword, the sceptre, and the lyre are equally familiar to his hands. That
union of the soldier and the poet gives the life a peculiar charm, and
is very strikingly brought out in that chapter of the book of Samuel (2
Sam. xxiii.) which begins, "These be the last words of David," and after
giving the swan-song of him whom it calls "the sweet psalmist of
Israel," passes immediately to the other side of the dual character,
with, "These be the names of the mighty men whom David had."
Thus, on the one side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all its
capacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulous
mobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-like
wonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, its
simplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings "after worlds half
realized," its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. He was made to
be the inspired poet of the religious affections.
And, on the other side, we see the greatest qualities of a military
leader of the antique type, in which personal daring and a strong arm
count for more than strategic skill. He dashes at Goliath with an
enthusiasm of youthful courage and faith. While still in the earliest
bloom of his manhood, at the head of his wild band of outlaws, he shows
himself sagacious, full of resource, prudent in counsel, and swift as
lightning in act; frank and generous, bold and gentle, cheery in defeat,
calm in peril, patient in privations and ready to share them with his
men, modest and self-restrained in victory, chivalrous to his foes, ever
watchful, ever hopeful--a born leader and king of men.
The basis of all was a profound, joyous trust in his Shepherd God, an
ardour of personal love to Him, such as had never before been expressed,
if it had ever found place, in Israel. That trust "opened his mouth to
show forth" God's praise, and strengthened his "fingers to fight." He
has told us himself what was his habitual temper, and how it was
sustained: "I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my
right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my
glory rejoiceth." (Psa. xvi. 8, 9.)
Thus endowed, he moved among men with that irresistible fascination
which only the greatest exercise. From the day when he stole like a
sunbeam into the darkened chamber where Saul wrestled with the evil
spirit, he bows all hearts that come under his spell. The women of
Israel chant his name with song and timbrel, the daughter of Saul
confesses her love unasked, the noble soul of Jonathan cleaves to him,
the rude outlaws in his little army peril their lives to gratify his
longing for a draught from the well where he had watered his father's
flocks; the priests let him take the consecrated bread, and trust him
with Goliath's sword, from behind the altar; his lofty courtesy wins the
heart of Abigail; the very king of the Philistines tells him that he is
"good in his sight as an angel of God;" the unhappy Saul's last word to
him is a blessing; six hundred men of Gath forsake home and country to
follow his fortunes when he returns from exile; and even in the dark
close of his reign, though sin and self-indulgence, and neglect of his
kingly duties, had weakened his subjects' loyalty, his flight before
Absalom is brightened by instances of passionate devotion which no
common character could have evoked; and even then his people are ready
to die for him, and in their affectionate pride call him "the light of
Israel." It was a prophetic instinct which made Jesse call his youngest
boy by a name apparently before unused--David, "Beloved."
The Spirit of God, acting through these great natural gifts, and using
this diversified experience of life, originated in him a new form of
inspiration. The Law was the revelation of the mind, and, in some
measure, of the heart, of God to man. The Psalm is the echo of the law,
the return current set in motion by the outflow of the Divine will, the
response of the heart of man to the manifested God. There had, indeed,
been traces of hymns before David. There were the burst of triumph which
the daughters of Israel sang, with timbrel and dance, over Pharaoh and
his host; the prayer of Moses the man of God (Psa. xc.), so archaic in
its tone, bearing in every line the impress of the weary wilderness and
the law of death; the song of the dying lawgiver (Deut. xxxii.); the
passionate pæan of Deborah; and some few briefer fragments. But,
practically, the Psalm began with David; and though many hands struck
the harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, he
remains emphatically "the sweet psalmist of Israel."
The psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a marked
similarity of manner. Their characteristics have been well summed up as
"creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form and
movement, antique but lucid style;"[A] to which may be added the
intensity of their devotion, the passion of Divine love that glows in
them all. They correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life as
given in the historical books. The early shepherd days, the manifold
sorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, the
triumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikingly
in the latter, all reappear in the psalms. The illusions, indeed, are
for the most part general rather than special, as is natural. His words
are thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials of
other lives. But it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the
allusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them with
any precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutually
illustrative. Much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed,
and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that
score have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process
sufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness
of many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as
throwing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made in
some degree in this volume.
[A] Delitzsch, Kommentar, u. d. Psalter II. 376.
It will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the Davidic
psalms in general. Can we tell which are David's? The Psalter, as is
generally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from some
idea that it corresponded with the Pentateuch. These five books are
marked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. The first
portion consists of Psa. i.-xli.; the second of Psa. xlii.-lxxii; the
third of Psa. lxxiii.-lxxxix; the fourth of Psa. xc.-cvi.; and the fifth
of Psa. cvii.-cl. The psalms attributed to David are unequally
distributed through these five books. There are seventy-three in all,
and they run thus:--In the first book there are thirty-seven; so that
if we regard psalms i. and ii. as a kind of double introduction, a
frontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the first
book proper only two which are not regarded as David's. The second book
has a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. The
third book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen,
eight of which (cxxxviii.-cxlv.) occur almost at the close. The
intention is obvious--to throw the Davidic psalms as much as possible
together in the first two books. And the inference is not unnatural that
these may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwards
added the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms of
David, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at the
end, so as to round off the whole.
Be that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of the
Psalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' names
are at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided the
order of the collection in the grouping not only of Davidic psalms, but
also of those attributed to the sons of Korah (xlii.-xlix.) and to Asaph
(lxxiii.-lxxxiii.)
The question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotly
debated. The balance of modern opinion is decidedly against their
genuineness. As in greater matters, so here "the higher criticism" comes
to the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, and
on very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective of
these ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. The extreme
form of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of Ewald, who
has devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with all
his equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and has
come to the conclusion that we have but eleven of David's psalms,--which
is surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method which
has attained it.
These editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by such
considerations as these: The Septuagint translators found them, and did
not understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explain
them; the Book of Chronicles throws no light upon them; they are very
rare in the two last books of the Psalter (Delitzsch, ii. 393). In some
cases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there is
nothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which they
are appended; while very frequently they throw a flood of light upon
these, and all but prove their trustworthiness by their appropriateness.
They are not authoritative, but they merit respectful consideration,
and, as Dr. Perowne puts it in his valuable work on the Psalms, stand on
a par with the subscriptions to the Epistles in the New Testament.
Regarding them thus, and yet examining the psalms to which they are
prefixed, there seem to be about forty-five which we may attribute with
some confidence to David, and with these we shall be concerned in this
book.
II.--EARLY DAYS
The life of David is naturally divided into epochs, of which we may
avail ourselves for the more ready arrangement of our material. These
are--his early years up to his escape from the court of Saul, his exile,
the prosperous beginning of his reign, his sin and penitence, his flight
before Absalom's rebellion, and the darkened end.
We have but faint incidental traces of his life up to his anointing by
Samuel, with which the narrative in the historical books opens. But
perhaps the fact that the story begins with that consecration to office,
is of more value than the missing biography of his childhood could have
been. It teaches us the point of view from which Scripture regards its
greatest names--as nothing, except in so far as they are God's
instruments. Hence its carelessness, notwithstanding that so much of it
is history, of all that merely illustrates the personal character of
its heroes. Hence, too, the clearness with which, notwithstanding that
indifference, the living men are set before us--the image cut with half
a dozen strokes of the chisel.
We do not know the age of David when Samuel appeared in the little
village with the horn of sacred oil in his hand. The only approximation
to it is furnished by the fact, that he was thirty at the beginning of
his reign. (2 Sam. v. 4.) If we take into account that his exile must
have lasted for a very considerable period (one portion of it, his
second flight to the Philistines, was sixteen months, 1 Sam. xxvii.
7),--that the previous residence at the court of Saul must have been
long enough to give time for his gradual rise to popularity, and
thereafter for the gradual development of the king's insane
hatred,--that further back still there was an indefinite period, between
the fight with Goliath, and the first visit as a minstrel-physician to
the palace, which was spent at Bethlehem, and that that visit itself
cannot have been very brief, since in its course he became very dear and
familiar to Saul,--it will not seem that all these events could be
crowded into less than some twelve or fifteen years, or that he could
have been more than a lad of some sixteen years of age when Samuel's
hand smoothed the sacred oil on his clustering curls.
How life had gone with him till then, we can easily gather from the
narrative of Scripture. His father's household seems to have been one in
which modest frugality ruled. There is no trace of Jesse having
servants; his youngest child does menial work; the present which he
sends to his king when David goes to court was simple, and such as a man
in humble life would give--an ass load of bread, one skin of wine, and
one kid--his flocks were small--"a few sheep." It would appear as if
prosperity had not smiled on the family since the days of Jesse's
grandfather, Boaz, that "mighty man of wealth." David's place in the
household does not seem to have been a happy one. His father scarcely
reckoned him amongst his sons, and answers Samuel's question, if the
seven burly husbandmen whom he has seen are all his children, with a
trace of contempt as he remembers that there is another, "and, behold,
he keepeth the sheep." Of his mother we hear but once, and that
incidentally, for a moment, long after. His brothers had no love for
him, and do not appear to have shared either his heart or his fortunes.
The boy evidently had the usual fate of souls like his, to grow up in
uncongenial circumstances, little understood and less sympathised with
by the common-place people round them, and thrown back therefore all the
more decisively upon themselves. The process sours and spoils some, but
it is the making of more--and where, as in this case, the nature is
thrown back upon God, and not on its own morbid operation, strength
comes from repression, and sweetness from endurance. He may have
received some instruction in one of Samuel's schools for the prophets,
but we are left in entire ignorance of what outward helps to unfold
itself were given to his budding life.
Whatever others he had, no doubt those which are emphasized in the Bible
story were the chief, namely, his occupation and the many gifts which it
brought to him. The limbs, "like hinds' feet," the sinewy arms which
"broke a bow of steel," the precision with which he used the sling, the
agility which "leaped over a rampart," the health that glowed in his
"ruddy" face, were the least of his obligations to the breezy uplands,
where he kept his father's sheep. His early life taught him courage,
when he "smote the lion" and laid hold by his ugly muzzle of the bear
that "rose against him," rearing itself upright for the fatal hug.
Solitude and familiarity with nature helped to nurture the poetical side
of his character, and to strengthen that meditative habit which blends
so strangely with his impetuous activity, and which for the most part
kept tumults and toils from invading his central soul. They threw him
back on God who peopled the solitude and spoke in all nature. Besides
this, he acquired in the sheepcote lessons which he practised on the
throne, that rule means service, and that the shepherd of men holds his
office in order that he may protect and guide. And in the lowly
associations of his humble home, he learned the life of the people,
their simple joys, their unconspicuous toils, their unnoticed sorrows--a
priceless piece of knowledge both for the poet and for the king.
A breach in all the tranquil habits of this modest life was made by
Samuel's astonishing errand. The story is told with wonderful
picturesqueness and dramatic force. The minute account of the successive
rejections of his brothers, Samuel's question and Jesse's answer, and
then the pause of idle waiting till the messenger goes and returns,
heighten the expectation with which we look for his appearance. And then
what a sweet young face is lovingly painted for us! "He was ruddy, and
withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to" (1 Sam. xvi.
12)--of fair complexion, with golden hair, which is rare among these
swarthy, black-locked easterns, with lovely eyes (for that is the
meaning of the words which the English Bible renders "of a beautiful
countenance"), large and liquid as become a poet. So he stood before the
old prophet, and with swelling heart and reverent awe received the holy
chrism. In silence, as it would seem, Samuel anointed him. Whether the
secret of his high destiny was imparted to him then, or left to be
disclosed in future years, is not told. But at all events, whether with
full understanding of what was before him or no, he must have been
conscious of a call that would carry him far away from the pastures and
olive yards of the little hamlet and of a new Spirit stirring in him
from that day forward.
This sudden change in all the outlook of his life must have given new
materials for thought when he went back to his humble task.
Responsibility, or the prospect of it, makes lads into men very quickly.
Graver meditations, humbler consciousness of weakness, a firmer trust in
God who had laid the burden upon him, would do in days the work of
years. And the necessity for bidding back the visions of the future in
order to do faithfully the obscure duties of the present, would add
self-control and patience, not usually the graces of youth. How swiftly
he matured is singularly shown in the next recorded incident--his
summons to the court of Saul, by the character of him drawn by the
courtier who recommends him to the king. He speaks of David in words
more suitable to a man of established renown than to a stripling. He is
minstrel and warrior, "cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man,"
and "skilled in speech (already eloquent), and fair in form, and the
Lord is with him." (1 Sam. xvi. 18.) So quickly had the new
circumstances and the energy of the Spirit of God, like tropical
sunshine, ripened his soul.
That first visit to the court was but an episode in his life, however
helpful to his growth it may have been. It would give him the knowledge
of new scenes, widen his experience, and prepare him for the future. But
it cannot have been of very long duration. Possibly his harp lost its
power over Saul's gloomy spirit, when he had become familiar with its
notes. For whatever reason, he returned to his father's house, and
gladly exchanged the favour at court, which might have seemed to a
merely ambitious man the first step towards fulfilling the prophecy of
Samuel's anointing, for the freedom of the pastoral solitudes about
Bethlehem. There he remained, living to outward seeming as in the quiet
days before these two great earthquakes in his life, but with deeper
thoughts and new power, with broader experience, and a wider horizon,
until the hour when he was finally wrenched from his seclusion, and
flung into the whirlpool of his public career.
There are none of David's psalms which can be with any certainty
referred to this first period of his life; but it has left deep traces
on many of them. The allusions to natural scenery and the frequent
references to varying aspects of the shepherd's life are specimens of
these. One characteristic of the poetic temperament is the faithful
remembrance and cherishing of early days. How fondly he recalled them is
shown in that most pathetic incident of his longing, as a weary exile,
for one draught of water from the well at Bethlehem--where in the dear
old times he had so often led his flocks.
But though we cannot say confidently that we have any psalms prior to
his first exile, there are several which, whatever their date may be,
are echoes of his thoughts in these first days. This is especially the
case in regard to the group which describe varying aspects of
nature--viz., Psalms xix., viii., xxix. They are unlike his later psalms
in the almost entire absence of personal references, or of any trace of
pressing cares, or of signs of a varied experience of human life. In
their self-forgetful contemplation of nature, in their silence about
sorrow, in their tranquil beauty, they resemble the youthful works of
many a poet whose later verse throbs with quivering consciousness of
life's agonies, or wrestles strongly with life's problems. They may not
unnaturally be regarded as the outpouring of a young heart at leisure
from itself, and from pain, far from men and very near God. The fresh
mountain air of Bethlehem blows through them, and the dew of life's
quiet morning is on them. The early experience supplied their materials,
whatever was the date of their composition; and in them we can see what
his inward life was in these budding years. The gaze of child-like
wonder and awe upon the blazing brightness of the noonday, and on the
mighty heaven with all its stars, the deep voice with which all creation
spoke of God, the great thoughts of the dignity of man (thoughts ever
welcome to lofty youthful souls), the gleaming of an inward light
brighter than all suns, the consciousness of mysteries of weakness which
may become miracles of sin in one's own heart, the assurance of close
relation to God as His anointed and His servant, the cry for help and
guidance--all this is what we should expect David to have thought and
felt as he wandered among the hills, alone with God; and this is what
these psalms give us.
Common to them all is the peculiar manner of looking upon nature, so
uniform in David's psalms, so unlike more modern descriptive poetry. He
can smite out a picture in a phrase, but he does not care to paint
landscapes. He feels the deep analogies between man and his
dwelling-place, but he does not care to lend to nature a shadowy life,
the reflection of our own. Creation is to him neither a subject for
poetical description, nor for scientific examination. It is nothing but
the garment of God, the apocalypse of the heavenly. And common to them
all is also the swift transition from the outward facts which reveal
God, to the spiritual world, where His presence is, if it were possible,
yet more needful, and His operations yet mightier. And common to them
all is a certain rush of full thought and joyous power, which is again a
characteristic of youthful work, and is unlike the elegiac tenderness
and pathos of David's later hymns.
The nineteenth Psalm paints for us the glory of the heavens by day, as
the eighth by night. The former gathers up the impressions of many a
fresh morning when the solitary shepherd-boy watched the sun rising over
the mountains of Moab, which close the eastern view from the hills above
Bethlehem. The sacred silence of dawn, the deeper hush of night, have
voice for his ear. "No speech! and no words! unheard is their voice."
But yet, "in all the earth goeth forth their line,[B] and in the end of
the habitable world their sayings." The heavens and the firmament, the
linked chorus of day and night, are heralds of God's glory, with silent
speech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. And as he looks, there
leaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northern
lands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom from the
bridal chamber, like some athlete impatient for the course. How the joy
of morning and its new vigour throb in the words! And then he watches
the strong runner climbing the heavens till the fierce heat beats down
into the deep cleft of the Jordan, and all the treeless southern hills,
as they slope towards the desert, lie bare and blazing beneath the
beams.
[B] Their boundary, _i.e._, their territory, or the region through which
their witness extends. Others render "their chord," or sound (LXX.
Ewald, etc.)
The sudden transition from the revelation of God in nature to His voice
in the law, has seemed to many critics unaccountable, except on the
supposition that this psalm is made up of two fragments, put together by
a later compiler; and some of them have even gone so far as to maintain
that "the feeling which saw God revealed in the law did not arise till
the time of Josiah."[C] But such a hypothesis is not required to explain
either the sudden transition or the difference in style and rhythm
between the two parts of the psalm, which unquestionably exists. The
turn from the outer world to the better light of God's word, is most
natural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the difference
of style and measure gives emphasis to the contrast. There is also an
obvious connection between the two parts, inasmuch as the law is
described by epithets, which in part hint at its being a brighter sun,
enlightening the eyes.
[C] "Psalms chronologically arranged"--following Ewald.
The Word which declares the will of the Lord is better than the heavens
which tell His glory. The abundance of synonyms for that word show how
familiar to his thoughts it was. To him it is "the law," "the
testimonies" by which God witnesses of Himself and of man: "the
statutes," the fixed settled ordinances; that which teaches "the fear of
God," the "judgments" or utterances of His mind on human conduct. They
are "perfect, firm, right, clean, pure,"--like that spotless
sun--"eternal, true." "They quicken, make wise, enlighten," even as the
light of the lower world. His heart prizes them "more than gold," of
which in his simple life he knew so little; more than "the honey," which
he had often seen dropping from "the comb" in the pastures of the
wilderness.
And then the twofold contemplation rises into the loftier region of
prayer. He feels that there are dark depths in his soul, gloomier pits
than any into which the noontide sun shines. He speaks as one who is
conscious of dormant evils, which life has not yet evolved, and his
prayer is more directed towards the future than the past, and is thus
very unlike the tone of the later psalms, that wail out penitence and
plead for pardon. "Errors," or weaknesses,--"faults" unknown to
himself,--"high-handed sins,"[D]--such is the climax of the evils from
which he prays for deliverance. He knows himself "Thy servant" (2 Sam.
vii. 5, 8; Psa. lxxviii. 70)--an epithet which may refer to his
consecration to God's work by Samuel's anointing. He needs not only a
God who sets His glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is made
known, but one who will touch his spirit,--not merely a Maker, but a
pardoning God; and his faith reaches its highest point as his song
closes with the sacred name of the covenant Jehovah, repeated for the
seventh time, and invoked in one final aspiration of a trustful heart,
as "my Rock, and my Redeemer."
[D] The form of the word would make "reckless men" a more natural
translation; but probably the context requires a third, more aggravated
sort of sin.
The eighth psalm is a companion picture, a night-piece, which, like the
former, speaks of many an hour of lonely brooding below the heavens,
whether its composition fall within this early period or no. The
prophetic and doctrinal value of the psalms is not our main subject in
the present volume, so that we have to touch but very lightly on this
grand hymn. What does it show us of the singer? We see him, like other
shepherds on the same hills, long after "keeping watch over his flocks
by night," and overwhelmed by all the magnificence of an eastern sky,
with its lambent lights. So bright, so changeless, so far,--how great
they are, how small the boy that gazes up so wistfully. Are they gods,
as all but his own nation believed? No,--"the work of Thy fingers,"
"which Thou hast ordained." The consciousness of God as their Maker
delivers from the temptation of confounding bigness with greatness, and
wakes into new energy that awful sense of personality which towers above
all the stars. He is a babe and suckling--is that a trace of the early
composition of the psalm?--still he knows that out of his lips, already
beginning to break into song, and out of the lips of his fellows, God
perfects praise. There speaks the sweet singer of Israel, prizing as the
greatest of God's gifts his growing faculty, and counting his God-given
words as nobler than the voice of "night unto night." God's fingers made
these, but God's own breath is in him. God ordained them, but God visits
him. The description of man's dignity and dominion indicates how
familiar David was with the story in Genesis. It may perhaps also,
besides all the large prophetic truths which it contains, have some
special reference to his own earlier experience. It is at least worth
noting that he speaks of the dignity of man as kingly, like that which
was dawning on himself, and that the picture has no shadows either of
sorrow or of sin,--a fact which may point to his younger days, when
lofty thoughts of the greatness of the soul are ever natural and when in
his case the afflictions and crimes that make their presence felt in
all his later works had not fallen upon him. Perhaps, too, it may not be
altogether fanciful to suppose that we may see the shepherd-boy
surrounded by his flocks, and the wild creatures that prowled about the
fold, and the birds asleep in their coverts beneath the moonlight, in
his enumeration of the subjects of his first and happiest kingdom, where
he ruled far away from men and sorrow, seeing God everywhere, and
learning to perfect praise from his youthful lips.
III.--EARLY DAYS--_CONTINUED_.
In addition to the psalms already considered, which are devoted to the
devout contemplation of nature, and stand in close connection with
David's early days, there still remains one universally admitted to be
his. The twenty-ninth psalm, like both the preceding, has to do with the
glory of God as revealed in the heavens, and with earth only as the
recipient of skyey influences; but while these breathed the profoundest
tranquillity, as they watched the silent splendour of the sun, and the
peace of moonlight shed upon a sleeping world, this is all tumult and
noise. It is a highly elaborate and vivid picture of a thunderstorm,
such as must often have broken over the shepherd-psalmist as he crouched
under some shelf of limestone, and gathered his trembling charge about
him. Its very structure reproduces in sound an echo of the rolling peals
reverberating among the hills.
There is first an invocation, in the highest strain of devout poetry,
calling upon the "sons of God," the angels who dwell above the lower
sky, and who see from above the slow gathering of the storm-clouds, to
ascribe to Jehovah the glory of His name--His character as set forth in
the tempest. They are to cast themselves before Him "in holy attire," as
priests of the heavenly sanctuary. Their silent and expectant worship is
like the brooding stillness before the storm. We feel the waiting hush
in heaven and earth.
Then the tempest breaks. It crashes and leaps through the short
sentences, each like the clap of the near thunder.
_a._ The voice of Jehovah (is) on the waters.
The God of glory thunders.
_Jehovah (is) on many waters._
The voice of Jehovah in strength!
The voice of Jehovah in majesty!
_b._ The voice of Jehovah rending the cedars!
_And Jehovah rends the cedars of Lebanon_,
And makes them leap like a calf;
Lebanon and Sirion like a young buffalo
The voice of Jehovah hewing flashes of fire!
_c._ The voice of Jehovah shakes the desert,
_Jehovah shakes the Kadesh desert_.
The voice of Jehovah makes the hinds writhe
And scathes the woods--and in His temple--
--All in it (are) saying, "Glory."
Seven times the roar shakes the world. The voice of the seven thunders
is the voice of Jehovah. In the short clauses, with their uniform
structure, the pause between, and the recurrence of the same initial
words, we hear the successive peals, the silence that parts them, and
the monotony of their unvaried sound. Thrice we have the reverberation
rolling through the sky or among the hills, imitated by clauses which
repeat previous ones, as indicated by the italics, and one forked flame
blazes out in the brief, lightning-like sentence, "The voice of Jehovah
(is) hewing flashes of fire," which wonderfully gives the impression of
their streaming fiercely forth, as if cloven from some solid block of
fire, their swift course, and their instantaneous extinction.
The range and effects of the storm, too, are vividly painted. It is
first "on the waters," which may possibly mean the Mediterranean, but
more probably, "the waters that are above the firmament," and so depicts
the clouds as gathering high in air. Then it comes down with a crash on
the northern mountains, splintering the gnarled cedars, and making
Lebanon rock with all its woods--leaping across the deep valley of
Coelo-Syria, and smiting Hermon (for which Sirion is a Sidonian name),
the crest of the Anti Lebanon, till it reels. Onward it sweeps--or
rather, perhaps, it is all around the psalmist; and even while he hears
the voice rolling from the furthest north, the extreme south echoes the
roar. The awful voice shakes[E] the wilderness, as it booms across its
level surface. As far south as Kadesh (probably Petra) the tremor
spreads, and away in the forests of Edom the wild creatures in their
terror slip their calves, and the oaks are scathed and stripped of their
leafy honours. And all the while, like a mighty diapason sounding on
through the tumult, the voice of the sons of God in the heavenly temple
is heard proclaiming "Glory!"
[E] Delitzsch would render "whirls in circles"--a picturesque allusion
to the sand pillars which accompany storms in the desert.
The psalm closes with lofty words of confidence, built on the story of
the past, as well as on the contemplation of the present. "Jehovah sat
throned for (_i.e._, to send on earth) the flood" which once drowned
the world of old. "Jehovah will sit throned, a King for ever." That
ancient judgment spoke of His power over all the forces of nature, in
their most terrible form. So now and for ever, all are His servants, and
effect His purposes. Then, as the tempest rolls away, spent and
transient, the sunshine streams out anew from the softened blue over a
freshened world, and every raindrop on the leaves twinkles into diamond
light, and the end of the psalm is like the after brightness; and the
tranquil low voice of its last words is like the songs of the birds
again as the departing storm growls low and faint on the horizon. "The
Lord will bless His people with peace."
Thus, then, nature spoke to this young heart. The silence was vocal; the
darkness, bright; the tumult, order--and all was the revelation of a
present God. It is told of one of our great writers that, when a child,
he was found lying on a hill-side during a thunderstorm, and at each
flash clapping his hands and shouting, unconscious of danger, and
stirred to ecstasy. David, too, felt all the poetic elevation, and
natural awe, in the presence of the crashing storm; but he felt
something more. To him the thunder was not a power to tremble before,
not a mere subject for poetic contemplation. Still less was it
something, the like of which could be rubbed out of glass and silk, and
which he had done with when he knew its laws. No increase of knowledge
touching the laws of physical phenomena in the least affects the point
of view which these Nature-psalms take. David said, "God makes and moves
all things." We may be able to complete the sentence by a clause which
tells something of the methods of His operation. But that is only a
parenthesis after all, and the old truth remains widened, not overthrown
by it. The psalmist knew that all being and action had their origin in
God. He saw the last links of the chain, and knew that it was rivetted
to the throne of God, though the intermediate links were unseen; and
even the fact that there were any was not present to his mind. We know
something of these; but the first and the last of the series to him, are
the first and the last to us also. To us as to him, the silent splendour
of noonday speaks of God, and the nightly heavens pour the soft radiance
of His "excellent name over all the earth." The tempest is His voice,
and the wildest commotions in nature and among men break in obedient
waves around His pillared throne.
"Well roars the storm to those who hear
A deeper voice across the storm!"
There still remains one other psalm which may be used as illustrating
the early life of David. The Twenty-third psalm is coloured throughout
by the remembrances of his youthful occupation, even if its actual
composition is of a later date. Some critics, indeed, think that the
mention in the last verse of "the house of the Lord" compels the
supposition of an origin subsequent to the building of the Temple; but
the phrase in question need not have anything to do with tabernacle or
temple, and is most naturally accounted for by the preceding image of
God as the Host who feasts His servants at His table. There are no other
notes of time in the psalm, unless, with some commentators, we see an
allusion in that image of the furnished table to the seasonable
hospitality of the Gileadite chieftains during David's flight before
Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29)--a reference which appears prosaic and
flat. The absence of traces of distress and sorrow--so constantly
present in the later songs--may be urged with some force in favour of
the early date; and if we follow one of the most valuable commentators
(Hupfeld) in translating all the verbs as futures, and so make the whole
a hymn of hope, we seem almost obliged to suppose that we have here the
utterance of a youthful spirit, which ventured to look forward, because
it first looked upward. In any case, the psalm is a transcript of
thoughts that had been born and cherished in many a meditative hour
among the lonely hills of Bethlehem. It is the echo of the shepherd
life. We see in it the incessant care, the love to his helpless charge,
which was expressed in and deepened by all his toil for them. He had to
think for their simplicity, to fight for their defencelessness, to find
their pasture, to guard them while they lay amid the fresh grass;
sometimes to use his staff in order to force their heedlessness with
loving violence past tempting perils; sometimes to guide them through
gloomy gorges, where they huddled close at his heels; sometimes to smite
the lion and the bear that prowled about the fold--but all was for their
good and meant their comfort. And thus he has learned, in preparation
for his own kingdom, the inmost meaning of pre-eminence among men--and,
more precious lesson still, thus he has learned the very heart of God.
Long before, Jacob had spoken of Him as the "Shepherd of Israel;" but it
was reserved for David to bring that sweet and wonderful name into
closer relations with the single soul; and, with that peculiar
enthusiasm of personal reliance, and recognition of God's love to the
individual which stamps all his psalms, to say "The Lord is my
Shepherd." These dumb companions of his, in their docility to his
guidance, and absolute trust in his care, had taught him the secret of
peace in helplessness, of patience in ignorance. The green strips of
meadow-land where the clear waters brought life, the wearied flocks
sheltered from the mid-day heat, the quiet course of the little stream,
the refreshment of the sheep by rest and pasture, the smooth paths which
he tried to choose for them, the rocky defiles through which they had to
pass, the rod in his hand that guided, and chastised, and defended, and
was never lifted in anger,--all these, the familiar sights of his youth,
pass before us as we read; and to us too, in our widely different social
state, have become the undying emblems of the highest care and the
wisest love. The psalm witnesses how close to the youthful heart the
consciousness of God must have been, which could thus transform and
glorify the little things which were so familiar. We can feel, in a kind
of lazy play of sentiment, the fitness of the shepherd's life to suggest
thoughts of God--because it is not our life. But it needs both a
meditative habit and a devout heart to feel that the trivialities of our
own daily tasks speak to us of Him. The heavens touch the earth on the
horizon of our vision, but it always seems furthest to the sky from the
spot where we stand. To the psalmist, however,--as in higher ways to his
Son and Lord,--all things around him were full of God; and as the
majesties of nature, so the trivialities of man's works--shepherds and
fishermen--were solemn with deep meanings and shadows of the heavenly.
With such lofty thoughts he fed his youth.
The psalm, too, breathes the very spirit of sunny confidence and of
perfect rest in God. We have referred to the absence of traces of
sorrow, and to the predominant tone of hopefulness, as possibly
favouring the supposition of an early origin. But it matters little
whether they were young eyes which looked so courageously into the
unknown future, or whether we have here the more solemn and weighty
hopes of age, which can have few hopes at all, unless they be rooted in
God. The spirit expressed in the psalm is so thoroughly David's, that in
his younger days, before it was worn with responsibilities and sorrows,
it must have been especially strong. We may therefore fairly take the
tone of this song of the Shepherd God as expressing the characteristic
of his godliness in the happy early years. In his solitude he was glad.
One happy thought fills the spirit; one simple emotion thrills the
chords of his harp. No doubts, or griefs, or remorse throw their shadows
upon him. He is conscious of dependence, but he is above want and fear.
He does not ask, he has--he possesses God, and is at rest in Him. He is
satisfied with that fruition which blesseth all who hunger for God, and
is the highest form of communion with Him. As the present has no
longings, the future has no terrors. All the horizon is clear, all the
winds are still, the ocean at rest, "and birds of peace sit brooding on
the charmed wave." If there be foes, God holds them back. If there lie
far off among the hills any valley of darkness, its black portals cast
no gloom over him, and will not when he enters. God is his Shepherd,
and, by another image, God is his Host. The life which in one aspect, by
reason of its continual change, and occupation with outward things, may
be compared to the journeyings of a flock, is in another aspect, by
reason of its inward union with the stability of God, like sitting ever
at the table which His hand has spread as for a royal banquet, where the
oil of gladness glistens on every head, and the full cup of Divine
pleasure is in every hand. For all the outward and pilgrimage aspect,
the psalmist knows that only Goodness and Mercy--these two white-robed
messengers of God--will follow his steps, however long may be the term
of the days of his yet young life; for all the inward, he is sure that,
in calm, unbroken fellowship, he will dwell in the house of God, and
that when the twin angels who fed and guided him all his young life long
have finished their charge, and the days of his journeyings are ended,
there stretches beyond a still closer union with his heavenly Friend,
which will be perfected in His true house "for ever." We look in vain
for another example, even in David's psalms, of such perfect, restful
trust in God. These clear notes are perhaps the purest utterance ever
given of "the peace of God which passeth all understanding."
Such were the thoughts and hopes of the lad who kept his father's sheep
at Bethlehem. He lived a life of lofty thoughts and lowly duties. He
heard the voice of God amidst the silence of the hills, and the earliest
notes of his harp echoed the deep tones. He learned courage as well as
tenderness from his daily tasks, and patience from the contrast between
them and the high vocation which Samuel's mysterious anointing had
opened before him. If we remember how disturbing an influence the
consciousness of it might have wrought in a soul less filled with God,
we may perhaps accept as probably correct the superscription which
refers one sweet, simple psalm to him, and may venture to suppose that
it expresses the contentment, undazzled by visions of coming greatness,
that calmed his heart. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes
lofty; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too
high for me. Surely I have smoothed and quieted my soul: like a weanling
on his mother's (breast), like a weanling is my soul within me." (Psa.
cxxxi.) So lying in God's arms, and content to be folded in His embrace,
without seeking anything beyond, he is tranquil in his lowly lot.
It does not fall within our province to follow the course of the
familiar narrative through the picturesque events that led him to fame
and position at court. The double character of minstrel and warrior, to
which we have already referred, is remarkably brought out in his double
introduction to Saul, once as soothing the king's gloomy spirit with the
harmonies of his shepherd's harp, once as bringing down the boasting
giant of Gath with his shepherd's sling. On the first occasion his
residence in the palace seems to have been ended by Saul's temporary
recovery. He returns to Bethlehem for an indefinite time, and then
leaves it and all its peaceful tasks for ever. The dramatic story of the
duel with Goliath needs no second telling. His arrival at the very
crisis of the war, the eager courage with which he leaves his baggage in
the hands of the guard and runs down the valley to the ranks of the
army, the busy hum of talk among the Israelites, the rankling jealousy
of his brother that curdles into bitter jeers, the modest courage with
which he offers himself as champion, the youthful enthusiasm of brave
trust in "the Lord, that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and
out of the paw of the bear;" the wonderfully vivid picture of the young
hero with his shepherd staff in one hand, his sling in the other, and
the rude wallet by his side, which had carried his simple meal, and now
held the smooth stone from the brook that ran between the armies in the
bottom of the little valley--the blustering braggadocio of the big
champion, the boy's devout confidence in "the name of the Lord of
hosts;" the swift brevity of the narrative of the actual fight, which in
its hurrying clauses seems to reproduce the light-footed eagerness of
the young champion, or the rapid whizz of the stone ere it crashed into
the thick forehead; the prostrate bulk of the dead giant prone upon the
earth, and the conqueror, slight and agile, hewing off the huge head
with Goliath's own useless sword;--all these incidents, so full of
character, so antique in manner, so weighty with lessons of the
impotence of strength that is merely material, and the power of a living
enthusiasm of faith in God, may, for our present purposes, be passed
with a mere glance. One observation may, however, be allowed. After the
victory, Saul is represented as not knowing who David was, and as
sending Abner to find out where he comes from. Abner, too, professes
entire ignorance; and when David appears before the king, "with the head
of the Philistine in his hand," he is asked, "Whose son art thou, young
man?" It has been thought that here we have an irreconcilable
contradiction with previous narratives, according to which there was
close intimacy between him and the king, who "loved him greatly," and
gave him an office of trust about his person. Suppositions of
"dislocation of the narrative," the careless adoption by the compiler of
two separate legends, and the like, have been freely indulged in. But it
may at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seeming
discrepancy, that when Saul had passed out of his moody madness it is
not wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred in
his paroxysm. It is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon that
a man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during his
mental aberration. And as for Abner's profession of ignorance, an
incipient jealousy of this stripling hero may naturally have made the
"captain of the host" willing to keep the king as ignorant as he could
concerning a probable formidable rival. There is no need to suppose he
was really ignorant, but only that it suited him to say that he was.
With this earliest deed of heroism the peaceful private days are closed,
and a new epoch of court favour and growing popularity begins. The
impression which the whole story leaves upon one is well summed up in a
psalm which the Septuagint adds to the Psalter. It is not found in the
Hebrew, and has no pretension to be David's work; but, as a _résumé_ of
the salient points of his early life, it may fitly end our
considerations of this first epoch.
"This is the autograph psalm of David, and beyond the number (_i.e._, of
the psalms in the Psalter), when he fought the single fight with
Goliath:--
"(1.) I was little among my brethren, and the youngest in the house of
my father: I kept the flock of my father. (2.) My hands made a pipe, my
fingers tuned a psaltery. (3.) And who shall tell it to my Lord? He is
the Lord, He shall hear me. (4.) He sent His angel (messenger), and
took me from the flocks of my father, and anointed me with the oil of
His anointing. (5.) But my brethren were fair and large, and in them the
Lord took not pleasure. (6.) I went out to meet the Philistine, and he
cursed me by his idols. (7.) But I, drawing his sword, beheaded him, and
took away reproach from the children of Israel."
IV.--THE EXILE.
David's first years at the court of Saul in Gibeah do not appear to have
produced any psalms which still survive.
"The sweetest songs are those
Which tell of saddest thought."
It was natural, then, that a period full of novelty and of prosperous
activity, very unlike the quiet days at Bethlehem, should rather
accumulate materials for future use than be fruitful in actual
production. The old life shut to behind him for ever, like some
enchanted door in a hill-side, and an unexplored land lay beckoning
before. The new was widening his experience, but it had to be mastered,
to be assimilated by meditation before it became vocal.
The bare facts of this section are familiar and soon told. There is
first a period in which he is trusted by Saul, who sets him in high
command, with the approbation not only of the people, but even of the
official classes. But a new dynasty resting on military pre-eminence
cannot afford to let a successful soldier stand on the steps of the
throne; and the shrill chant of the women out of all the cities of
Israel, which even in Saul's hearing answered the praises of his prowess
with a louder acclaim for David's victories, startled the king for the
first time with a revelation of the national feeling. His unslumbering
suspicion "eyed David from that day." Rage and terror threw him again
into the gripe of his evil spirit, and in his paroxysm he flings his
heavy spear, the symbol of his royalty, at the lithe harper, with fierce
vows of murder. The failure of his attempt to kill David seems to have
aggravated his dread of him as bearing a charm which won all hearts and
averted all dangers. A second stage is marked not only by Saul's growing
fear, but by David's new position. He is removed from court, and put in
a subordinate command, which only extends his popularity, and brings him
into more immediate contact with the mass of the people. "All Israel and
Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them." Then
follows the offer of Saul's elder daughter in marriage, in the hope that
by playing upon his gratitude and his religious feeling, he might be
urged to some piece of rash bravery that would end him without scandal.
Some new caprice of Saul's, however, leads him to insult David by
breaking his pledge at the last moment, and giving the promised bride to
another. Jonathan's heart was not the only one in Saul's household that
yielded to his spell. The younger Michal had been cherishing his image
in secret, and now tells her love. Her father returns to his original
purpose, with the strange mixture of tenacity and capricious
changefulness that marks his character, and again attempts, by demanding
a grotesquely savage dowry, to secure David's destruction. But that
scheme, too, fails; and he becomes a member of the royal house.
This third stage is marked by Saul's deepening panic hatred, which has
now become a fixed idea. All his attempts have only strengthened David's
position, and he looks on his irresistible advance with a nameless awe.
He calls, with a madman's folly, on Jonathan and on all his servants to
kill him; and then, when his son appeals to him, his old better nature
comes over him, and with a great oath he vows that David shall not be
slain. For a short time David returns to Gibeah, and resumes his former
relations with Saul, but a new victory over the Philistines rouses the
slumbering jealousy. Again the "evil spirit" is upon him, and the great
javelin is flung with blind fury, and sticks quivering in the wall. It
is night, and David flies to his house. A stealthy band of assassins
from the palace surround the house with orders to prevent all egress,
and, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynical
shamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. Michal,
who, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proud
godlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest parts
of her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in these
early days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened by
love, the crouching murderers, and with rapid promptitude urges
immediate flight. Her hands let him down from the window--the house
being probably on the wall. Her ready wit dresses up one of those
mysterious teraphim (which appear to have had some connection with
idolatry or magic, and which are strange pieces of furniture for
David's house), and lays it in the bed to deceive the messengers, and so
gain a little more time before pursuit began. "So David fled and
escaped, and came to Samuel to Ramah," and thus ended his life at court.
Glancing over this narrative, one or two points come prominently forth.
The worth of these events to David must have lain chiefly in the
abundant additions made to his experience of life, which ripened his
nature, and developed new powers. The meditative life of the sheepfold
is followed by the crowded court and camp. Strenuous work, familiarity
with men, constant vicissitude, take the place of placid thought, of
calm seclusion, of tranquil days that knew no changes but the
alternation of sun and stars, storm and brightness, green pastures and
dusty paths. He learned the real world, with its hate and effort, its
hollow fame and its whispering calumnies. Many illusions no doubt faded,
but the light that had shone in his solitude still burned before him for
his guide, and a deeper trust in his Shepherd God was rooted in his soul
by all the shocks of varying fortune. The passage from the visions of
youth and the solitary resolves of early and uninterrupted piety to the
naked realities of a wicked world, and the stern self-control of manly
godliness, is ever painful and perilous. Thank God! it may be made clear
gain, as it was by this young hero psalmist.
David's calm indifference to outward circumstances affecting himself, is
very strikingly expressed in his conduct. Partly from his poetic
temperament, partly from his sweet natural unselfishness, and chiefly
from his living trust in God, he accepts whatever happens with
equanimity, and makes no effort to alter it. He originates nothing.
Prosperity comes unsought, and dangers unfeared. He does not ask for
Jonathan's love, or the people's favour, or the women's songs, or Saul's
daughter. If Saul gives him command he takes it, and does his work. If
Saul flings his javelin at him, he simply springs aside and lets it
whizz past. If his high position is taken from him, he is quite content
with a lower. If a royal alliance is offered, he accepts it; if it is
withdrawn, he is not ruffled; if renewed, he is still willing. If a busy
web of intrigue is woven round him, he takes no notice. If
reconciliation is proposed, he cheerfully goes back to the palace. If
his life is threatened he goes home. He will not stir to escape but for
the urgency of his wife. So well had he already begun to learn the
worthlessness of life's trifles. So thoroughly does he practice his own
precept, "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers;" "rest in the Lord,
and wait patiently for Him." (Psa. xxxvii. 1, 7.)
This section gives also a remarkable impression of the irresistible
growth of his popularity and influence. The silent energy of the Divine
purpose presses his fortunes onward with a motion slow and inevitable as
that of a glacier. The steadfast flow circles unchecked round, or rises
victorious over all hindrances. Efforts to ruin, to degrade, to
kill--one and all fail. Terror and hate, suspicion and jealousy, only
bring him nearer the goal. A clause which comes in thrice in the course
of one chapter, expresses this fated advance. In the first stage of his
court life, we read, "David prospered" (1 Sam. xviii. 5, margin), and
again with increased emphasis it is told as the result of the efforts to
crush him, that, "He prospered in all his ways, and the Lord was with
him" (verse 14), and yet again, in spite of Saul's having "become his
enemy continually," he "prospered more than all the servants of Saul"
(verse 30). He moves onward as stars in their courses move, obeying the
equable impulse of the calm and conquering will of God.
The familiar Scripture antithesis, which naturally finds its clearest
utterance in the words of the last inspired writer--namely, the eternal
opposition of Light and Darkness, Love and Hate, Life and Death, is
brought into sharpest relief by the juxtaposition and contrast of David
and Saul. This is the key to the story. The two men are not more unlike
in person than in spirit. We think of the one with his ruddy beauty and
changeful eyes, and lithe slight form, and of the other gaunt and black,
his giant strength weakened, and his "goodly" face scarred with the
lightnings of his passions--and as they look so they are. The one full
of joyous energy, the other devoured by gloom; the one going in and out
among the people and winning universal love, the other sitting moody and
self-absorbed behind his palace walls; the one bringing sweet clear
tones of trustful praise from his harp, the other shaking his huge spear
in his madness; the one ready for action and prosperous in it all, the
other paralyzed, shrinking from all work, and leaving the conduct of
the war to the servant whom he feared; the one conscious of the Divine
presence making him strong and calm, the other writhing in the gripe of
his evil spirit, and either foaming in fury, or stiffened into torpor;
the one steadily growing in power and favour with God and man, the other
sinking in deeper mire, and wrapped about with thickening mists as he
moves to his doom. The tragic pathos of these two lives in their fateful
antagonism is the embodiment of that awful alternative of life and
death, blessing and cursing, which it was the very aim of Judaism to
stamp ineffaceably on the conscience.
David's flight begins a period to which a large number of his psalms are
referred. We may call them "The Songs of the Outlaw." The titles in the
psalter connect several with specific events during his persecution by
Saul, and besides these, there are others which have marked
characteristics in common, and may therefore be regarded as belonging to
the same time. The bulk of the former class are found in the second book
of the psalter (Ps. xlii.-lxxii.), which has been arranged with some
care. There are first eight Korahite psalms, and one of Asaph's; then a
group of fifteen Davidic (li.-lxv.), followed by two anonymous; then
three more of David's (lxviii.-lxx.), followed by one anonymous and the
well-known prayer "for Solomon." Now it is worth notice that the group
of fifteen psalms ascribed to David is as nearly as possible divided in
halves, eight having inscriptions which give a specific date of
composition, and seven having no such detail. There has also been some
attempt at arranging the psalms of these two classes alternately, but
that has not been accurately carried out. These facts show that the
titles are at all events as old as the compilation of the second book of
the psalter, and were regarded as accurate then. Several points about
the complete book of psalms as we have it, seem to indicate that these
two first books were an older nucleus, which was in existence long prior
to the present collection--and if so, the date of the titles must be
carried back a very long way indeed, and with a proportionate increase
of authority.
Of the eight psalms in the second book having titles with specific
dates, five (Ps. lii., liv., lvi., lvii., lix.) are assigned to the
period of the Sauline persecution, and, as it would appear, with
accuracy. There is a general similarity of tone in them all, as well as
considerable parallelisms of expression, favourite phrases and
metaphors, which are favourable to the hypothesis of a nearly
cotemporaneous date. They are all in what, to use a phrase from another
art, we may call David's earlier manner. For instance, in all the
psalmist is surrounded by enemies. They would "swallow him up" (lvi. 1,
2; lvii. 3). They "oppress" him (liv. 3; lvi. 1). One of their weapons
is calumny, which seems from the frequent references to have much moved
the psalmist. Their tongues are razors (lii. 2), or swords (lvii. 4;
lix. 7; lxiv. 3). They seem to him like crouching beasts ready to spring
upon harmless prey (lvi. 6; lvii. 6; lix. 3); they are "lions" (lvii.
4), dogs (lix. 6, 14). He is conscious of nothing which he has done to
provoke this storm of hatred (lix. 3; lxiv. 4.) The "strength" of God is
his hope (liv. 1; lix. 9, 17). He is sure that retribution will fall
upon the enemies (lii. 5; liv. 5; lvi. 7; lvii. 6; lix. 8-15; lxiv. 7,
8). He vows and knows that psalms of deliverance will yet succeed these
plaintive cries (lii. 9; liv. 7; lvi. 12; lvii. 7-11; lix. 16, 17).
We also find a considerable number of psalms in the first book of the
psalter which present the same features, and may therefore probably be
classed with these as belonging to the time of his exile. Such for
instance are the seventh and thirty-fourth, which have both inscriptions
referring them to this period, with others which we shall have to
consider presently. The imagery of the preceding group reappears in
them. His enemies are lions (vii. 2; xvii. 12; xxii. 13; xxxv. 17); dogs
(xxii. 16); bulls (xxii. 12). Pitfalls and snares are in his path (vii.
15; xxxi. 4; xxxv. 7). He passionately protests his innocence, and the
kindliness of his heart to his wanton foes (vii. 3-5; xvii. 3, 4); whom
he has helped and sorrowed over in their sickness (xxxv. 13, 14)--a
reference, perhaps, to his solacing Saul in his paroxysms with the music
of his harp. He dwells on retribution with vehemence (vii. 11-16; xi.
5-7; xxxi. 23; xxxv. 8), and on his own deliverance with confidence.
These general characteristics accurately correspond with the
circumstances of David during the years of his wanderings. The scenery
and life of the desert colours the metaphors which describe his enemies
as wild beasts; himself as a poor hunted creature amongst pits and
snares; or as a timid bird flying to the safe crags, and God as his
Rock. Their strong assertions of innocence accord with the historical
indications of Saul's gratuitous hatred, and appear to distinguish the
psalms of this period from those of Absalom's revolt, in which the
remembrance of his great sin was too deep to permit of any such claims.
In like manner the prophecies of the enemies' destruction are too
triumphant to suit that later time of exile, when the father's heart
yearned with misplaced tenderness over his worthless son, and nearly
broke with unkingly sorrow for the rebel's death. Their confidence in
God, too, has in it a ring of joyousness in peril which corresponds with
the buoyant faith that went with him through all the desperate
adventures and hairbreadth escapes of the Sauline persecution. If then
we may, with some confidence, read these psalms in connection with that
period, what a noble portraiture of a brave, devout soul looks out upon
us from them. We see him in the first flush of his manhood--somewhere
about five-and-twenty years old--fronting perils of which he is fully
conscious, with calm strength and an enthusiasm of trust that lifts his
spirit above them all, into a region of fellowship with God which no
tumult can invade, and which no remembrance of black transgression
troubled and stained. His harp is his solace in his wanderings; and
while plaintive notes are flung from its strings, as is needful for the
deepest harmonies of praise here, every wailing tone melts into clear
ringing notes of glad affiance in the "God of his mercy."
Distinct references to the specific events of his wanderings are,
undoubtedly, rare in them, though even these are more obvious than has
been sometimes carelessly assumed. Their infrequency and comparative
vagueness has been alleged against the accuracy of the inscriptions
which allocate certain psalms to particular occasions. But in so far as
it is true that these allusions are rare and inexact, the fact is surely
rather in favour of than against the correctness of the titles. For if
these are not suggested by obvious references in the psalms to which
they are affixed, by what can they have been suggested but by a
tradition considerably older than the compilation of the psalter?
Besides, the analogy of all other poetry would lead us to expect
precisely what we find in these psalms--general and not detailed
allusions to the writer's circumstances. The poetic imagination does not
reproduce the bald prosaic facts which have set it in motion, but the
echo of them broken up and etherealised. It broods over them till life
stirs, and the winged creature bursts from them to sing and soar.
If we accept the title as accurate, the fifty-ninth psalm is the first
of these Songs of the Outlaw. It refers to the time "when Saul sent, and
they watched the house to kill him." Those critics who reject this date,
which they do on very weak grounds, lose themselves in a chaos of
assumptions as to the occasion of the psalm. The Chaldean invasion, the
assaults in the time of Nehemiah, and the era of the Maccabees, are
alleged with equal confidence and equal groundlessness. "We believe that
it is most advisable to adhere to the title, and most scientific to
ignore these hypotheses built on nothing." (Delitzsch.)
It is a devotional and poetic commentary on the story in Samuel. There
we get the bare facts of the assassins prowling by night round David's
house; of Michal's warning; of her ready-witted trick to gain time, and
of his hasty flight to Samuel at Ramah. In the narrative David is, as
usual at this period, passive and silent; but when we turn to the psalm,
we learn the tone of his mind as the peril bursts upon him, and all the
vulgar craft and fear fades from before his lofty enthusiasm of faith.
The psalm begins abruptly with a passionate cry for help, which is
repeated four times, thus bringing most vividly before us the extremity
of the danger and the persistency of the suppliant's trust. The peculiar
tenderness and closeness of his relation to his heavenly Friend, which
is so characteristic of David's psalms, and which they were almost the
first to express, breathes through the name by which he invokes help,
"my God." The enemies are painted in words which accurately correspond
with the history, and which by their variety reveal how formidable they
were to the psalmist. They "lie in wait (literally weave plots) for my
life." They are "workers of iniquity," "men of blood," insolent or
violent ("mighty" in English version). He asserts his innocence, as ever
in these Sauline psalms, and appeals to God in confirmation, "not for my
transgressions, nor for my sins, O Lord." He sees these eager tools of
royal malice hurrying to their congenial work: "they run and prepare
themselves." And then, rising high above all encompassing evils, he
grasps at the throne of God in a cry, which gains additional force when
we remember that the would-be murderers compassed his house in the
night. "Awake to meet me, and behold;" as if he had said, "In the
darkness do Thou see; at midnight sleep not Thou." The prayer is
continued in words which heap together with unwonted abundance the
Divine names, in each of which lie an appeal to God and a pillar of
faith. As Jehovah, the self-existent Fountain of timeless Being; as the
God of Hosts, the Commander of all the embattled powers of the universe,
whether they be spiritual or material; as the GOD of Israel, who calls
that people His, and has become theirs--he stirs up the strength of God
to "awake to visit all the heathen,"--a prayer which has been supposed
to compel the reference of the whole psalm to the assaults of Gentile
nations, but which may be taken as an anticipation on David's lips of
the truth that, "They are not all Israel which are of Israel." After a
terrible petition--"Be not merciful to any secret plotters of
evil"--there is a pause (Selah) to be filled, as it would appear, by
some chords on the harp, or the blare of the trumpets, thus giving time
to dwell on the previous petitions.
But still the thought of the foe haunts him, and he falls again to the
lower level of painting their assembling round his house, and their
whispers as they take their stand. It would appear that the watch had
been kept up for more than one night. How he flings his growing scorn of
them into the sarcastic words, "They return at evening; they growl like
a dog, and compass the city" (or "go their rounds in the city"). One
sees them stealing through the darkness, like the troops of vicious curs
that infest Eastern cities, and hears their smothered threatenings as
they crouch in the shadow of the unlighted streets. Then growing bolder,
as the night deepens and sleep falls on the silent houses: "Behold they
pour out with their mouth, swords (are) in their lips, for 'who hears'?"
In magnificent contrast with these skulking murderers fancying
themselves unseen and unheard, David's faith rends the heaven, and, with
a daring image which is copied in a much later psalm (ii. 4), shows God
gazing on them with Divine scorn which breaks in laughter and mockery. A
brief verse, which recurs at the end of the psalm, closes the first
portion of the psalm with a calm expression of untroubled trust, in
beautiful contrast with the peril and tumult of soul, out of which it
rises steadfast and ethereal, like a rainbow spanning a cataract. A
slight error appears to have crept into the Hebrew text, which can be
easily corrected from the parallel verse at the end, and then the quiet
confident words are--
"My strength! upon Thee will I wait,
For God is my fortress!"
The second portion is an intensification of the first; pouring out a
terrible prayer for exemplary retribution on his enemies; asking that no
speedy destruction may befall them, but that God would first of all
"make them reel" by the blow of His might; would then fling them
prostrate; would make their pride and fierce words a net to snare them;
and then, at last, would bring them to nothing in the hot flames of His
wrath--that the world may know that He is king. The picture of the
prowling dogs recurs with deepened scorn and firmer confidence that
they will hunt for their prey in vain.
"And they return at evening; they growl like a dog,
And compass the city.
They--they prowl about for food
If (or, since) they are not satisfied, they spend the night (in the
search.)"
There is almost a smile on his face as he thinks of their hunting about
for him, like hungry hounds snuffing for their meal in the kennels, and
growling now in disappointment--while he is safe beyond their reach. And
the psalm ends with a glad burst of confidence, and a vow of praise very
characteristic on his lips--
"But I--I will sing Thy power,
And shout aloud, in the morning, Thy mercy,
For Thou hast been a fortress for me.
And a refuge in the day of my trouble.
My strength! unto Thee will I harp,
For God is my fortress--the God of my mercy."
Thrice he repeats the vow of praise. His harp was his companion in his
flight, and even in the midst of peril the poet's nature appears which
regards all life as materials for song, and the devout spirit appears
which regards all trial as occasions for praise. He has calmed his own
spirit, as he had done Saul's, by his song, and by prayer has swung
himself clear above fightings and fears. The refrain, which occurs twice
in the psalm, witnesses to the growth of his faith even while he sings.
At first he could only say in patient expectance, "My strength! I will
wait upon thee, for God is my fortress." But at the end his mood is
higher, his soul has caught fire as it revolves, and his last words are
a triumphant amplification of his earlier trust: "My strength! unto thee
will I sing with the harp--for God is my fortress--the God of my
mercy."
V.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
"So David fled, and escaped and came to Samuel to Ramah, and told him
all that Saul had done unto him. And he and Samuel went and dwelt in
Naioth" (1 Sam. xix. 18)--or, as the word probably means, in the
collection of students' dwellings, inhabited by the sons of the
prophets, where possibly there may have been some kind of right of
sanctuary. Driven thence by Saul's following him, and having had one
last sorrowful hour of Jonathan's companionship--the last but one on
earth--he fled to Nob, whither the ark had been carried after the
destruction of Shiloh. The story of his flight had not reached the
solitary little town among the hills, and he is received with the honour
due to the king's son-in-law. He pleads urgent secret business for Saul
as a reason for his appearance with a slender retinue, and unarmed; and
the priest, after some feeble scruples, supplies the handful of hungry
fugitives with the shewbread. But David's quick eye caught a swarthy
face peering at him from some enclosure of the simple forest sanctuary,
and as he recognised Doeg the Edomite, Saul's savage herdsman, a cold
foreboding of evil crept over his heart, and made him demand arms from
the peaceful priest. The lonely tabernacle was guarded by its own
sanctity, and no weapons were there, except one trophy which was of good
omen to David--Goliath's sword. He eagerly accepts the matchless weapon
which his hand had clutched on that day of danger and deliverance, and
thus armed, lest Doeg should try to bar his flight, he hurries from the
pursuit which he knew that the Edomite's malignant tongue would soon
bring after him. The tragical end of the unsuspecting priest's kindness
brings out the furious irrational suspicion and cruelty of Saul. He
rages at his servants as leagued with David in words which have a most
dreary sound of utter loneliness sighing through all their fierce folly:
"All of you have conspired against me; there is none of you that is
sorry for me" (1 Sam. xxii. 8.) Doeg is forward to curry favour by
telling his tale, and so tells it as to suppress the priest's ignorance
of David's flight, and to represent him as aiding and comforting the
rebel knowingly. Then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit,
and the whole priestly population of Nob are summoned before him, loaded
with bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, and
his guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiers
shrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild blood
of Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doeg
crowns his baseness by slaying--with the help of his herdsmen, no
doubt--"on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear an ephod,"
and utterly extirpating every living thing from the defenceless little
city.
One psalm, the fifty-second, is referred by its inscription to this
period, but the correspondence between the history and the tone of the
psalm is doubtful. It is a vehement rebuke and a prophecy of destruction
directed against an enemy, whose hostility was expressed in "devouring
words." The portrait does not apply very accurately to the Doeg of the
historical books, inasmuch as it describes the psalmist's enemy as "a
mighty man,"--or rather as "a hero," and as trusting "in the abundance
of his riches,"--and makes the point of the reproach against him that
he is a confirmed liar. But the dastardly deed of blood may be covertly
alluded to in the bitterly sarcastic "hero"--as if he had said, "O brave
warrior, who dost display thy prowess in murdering unarmed priests and
women?" And Doeg's story to Saul was a lie in so far as it gave the
impression of the priests' complicity with David, and thereby caused
their deaths on a false charge. The other features of the description
are not contrary to the narrative, and most of them are in obvious
harmony with it. The psalm, then, may be taken as showing how deeply
David's soul was stirred by the tragedy. He pours out broken words of
hot and righteous indignation:
"Destructions doth thy tongue devise,
Like a razor whetted--O thou worker of deceit."
* * * * *
"Thou lovest all words that devour:[F] O thou deceitful tongue!"
[F] Literally, "words of swallowing up."
He prophesies the destruction of the cruel liar, and the exultation of
the righteous when he falls, in words which do indeed belong to the old
covenant of retribution, and yet convey an eternal truth which modern
sentimentalism finds very shocking, but which is witnessed over and
over again in the relief that fills the heart of nations and of
individuals when evil men fade: "When the wicked perish, there is
shouting"--
"Also God shall smite thee down for ever,
Will draw thee out,[G] and carry thee away from the tent,
And root thee out of the land of the living;
And the righteous shall see and fear,
And over him shall they laugh."
In confident security he opposes his own happy fellowship with God to
this dark tragedy of retribution:
"But I--(I am) like a green olive tree in the house of God."
[G] The full force of the word is, "will pluck out as a glowing ember
from a hearth" (Delitzsch).
The enemy was to be "rooted out;" the psalmist is to flourish by
derivation of life and vigour from God. If Robinson's conjecture that
Nob was on the Mount of Olives were correct (which is very doubtful),
the allusion here would gain appropriateness. As the olives grew all
round the humble forest sanctuary, and were in some sort hallowed by the
shrine which they encompassed, so the soul grows and is safe in loving
fellowship with God. Be that as it may, the words express the outlaw's
serene confidence that he is safe beneath the sheltering mercy of God,
and re-echo the hopes of his earlier psalm, "I will dwell in the house
of the Lord for ever." The stormy indignation of the earlier verses
passes away into calm peace and patient waiting in praise and trust:
"I will praise Thee for ever, for Thou hast done (it),
And wait on Thy name in the presence of Thy beloved, for it is good."
Hunted from Nob, David with a small company struck across the country in
a southwesterly direction, keeping to the safety of the tangled
mountains, till, from the western side of the hills of Judah, he looked
down upon the broad green plain of Philistia. Behind him was a mad
tyrant, in front the uncircumcised enemies of his country and his God.
His condition was desperate, and he had recourse to desperate measures.
That nearest Philistine city, some ten miles off, on which he looked
down from his height, was Gath; the glen where he had killed its
champion was close beside him,--every foot of ground was familiar by
many a foray and many a fight. It was a dangerous resource to trust
himself in Gath, with Goliath's sword dangling in his belt. But he may
have hoped that he was not known by person, or may have thought that
Saul's famous commander would be a welcome guest, as a banished man, at
the Philistine court. So he made the plunge, and took refuge in
Goliath's city. Discovery soon came, and in the most ominous form. It
was an ugly sign that the servants of Achish should be quoting the words
of the chant of victory which extolled him as the slayer of their
countryman. Vengeance for his death was but too likely to come next. The
doubts of his identity seem to have lasted for some little time, and to
have been at first privately communicated to the king. They somehow
reached David, and awoke his watchful attention, as well as his fear.
The depth of his alarm and his ready resource are shown by his degrading
trick of assumed madness--certainly the least heroic action of his life.
What a picture of a furious madman is the description of his conduct
when Achish's servants came to arrest him. He "twisted himself about in
their hands" in the feigned contortions of possession; he drummed on the
leaves of the gate,[H] and "let his spittle run down into his beard."
(1 Sam. xxi. 13.) Israelitish quickness gets the better of Philistine
stupidity, as it had been used to do from Sampson's time onwards, and
the dull-witted king falls into the trap, and laughs away the suspicions
with a clumsy joke at his servants' expense about more madmen being the
last thing he was short of. A hasty flight from Philistine territory
ended this episode.
[H] The Septuagint appears to have followed a different reading here
from that of our present Hebrew text, and the change adds a very
picturesque clause to the description. A madman would be more likely to
hammer than to "scrabble" on the great double-leaved gate.
The fifty-sixth psalm, which is referred by its title to this period,
seems at first sight to be in strange contrast with the impressions
drawn from the narrative, but on a closer examination is found to
confirm the correctness of the reference by its contents. The terrified
fugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot in
the hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enough
to hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. The
psalm is far in advance of the conduct--is it so unusual a circumstance
as to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith and
submission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? Instead of taking
the contrast between the words and the acts as a proof that this psalm
is wrongly ascribed to the period in question, let us rather be thankful
for another instance that imperfect faith may be genuine, and that if we
cannot rise to the height of unwavering fortitude, God accepts a
tremulous trust fighting against mortal terror, and grasping with a
feeble hand the word of God, and the memory of all his past
deliverances. It is precisely this conflict of faith and fear which the
psalm sets before us. It falls into three portions, the first and second
of which are closed by a kind of refrain (vers. 4, 10, 11)--a structure
which is characteristic of several of these Sauline persecution psalms
(_e.g._, lvii. 5, 11; lix. 9, 17). The first part of each of these two
portions is a vivid description of his danger, from which he rises to
the faith expressed in the closing words. The repetition of the same
thoughts in both is not to be regarded as a cold artifice of
composition, but as the true expression of the current of his thoughts.
He sees his enemies about him, ready to swallow him up--"there be many
fighting against me disdainfully"[I] (ver. 2). Whilst the terror creeps
round his heart ("he was sore afraid," 1 Sam. xxi. 12), he rouses
himself to trust, as he says, in words which express most emphatically
the co-existence of the two, and carry a precious lesson of the reality
of even an interrupted faith, streaked with many a black line of doubt
and dread.
[I] Literally, "loftily." Can there be any allusion to the giant stature
of Goliath's relations in Gath? We hear of four men "born to the giant
in Gath," who were killed in David's wars. (2 Sam. xxi. 22.)
"(In) the day (that) I am afraid--I trust on Thee."
And then he breaks into the utterance of praise and confidence--to which
he has climbed by the ladder of prayer.
"In God I praise His word,
In God I trust, I do not fear:--
What shall flesh do to me?"
How profoundly these words set forth the object of his trust, as being
not merely the promise of God--which in David's case may be the specific
promise conveyed by his designation to the throne--but the God who
promises, the inmost nature of that confidence as being a living union
with God, the power of it as grappling with his dread, and enabling him
now to say, "I do _not_ fear."
But again he falls from this height; another surge of fear breaks over
him, and almost washes him from his rock. His foes, with ceaseless
malice, arrest his words; they skulk in ambush, they dog his heels, they
long for his life. The crowded clauses portray the extremity of the
peril and the singer's agitation. His soul is still heaving with the
ground swell of the storm, though the blasts come more fitfully, and are
dying into calm. He is not so afraid but that he can turn to God; he
turns to Him because he is afraid, like the disciples in later days, who
had so much of terror that they must awake their Master, but so much of
trust that His awaking was enough. He pleads with God, as in former
psalms, against his enemies, in words which go far beyond the occasion,
and connect his own deliverance with the judgments of God over the whole
earth. He plaintively recalls his homelessness and his sorrows in words
which exhibit the characteristic blending of hope and pain, and which
are beautifully in accordance with the date assigned to the psalm. "My
wanderings dost Thou, even Thou, number." He is not alone in these
weary flights from Gibeah to Ramah, from Ramah to Nob, from Nob to Gath,
from Gath he knows not whither. One friend goes with him through them
all. And as the water-skin was a necessary part of a traveller's
equipment, the mention of his wanderings suggests the bold and tender
metaphor of the next clause, "Put my tears in Thy bottle,"--a prayer for
that very remembrance of his sorrows, in the existence of which he
immediately declares his confidence--"Are they not in Thy book?" The
true office of faithful communion with God is to ask for, and to
appropriate, the blessings which in the very act become ours. He knows
that his cry will scatter his foes, for God is for him. And thus once
again he has risen to the height of confidence where for a moment his
feet have been already planted, and again--but this time with even
fuller emphasis, expressed by an amplification which introduces for the
only time in the psalm the mighty covenant name--he breaks into his
triumphant strain--
"In God I praise the Word;
In JEHOVAH I praise the Word:
In God I trust, I do not fear:--
What shall man do to me?"
And from this mood of trustful expectation he does not again decline.
Prayer has brought its chiefest blessing--the peace that passeth
understanding. The foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusively
by faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praise
for deliverance, as if it had been already achieved--
"Thou hast delivered my life from death,
(Hast Thou) not (delivered) my feet from falling,
That I may walk before God in the light of the living?"
He already reckons himself safe; his question is not an expression of
doubt, but of assurance; and he sees the purpose of all God's dealings
with him to be that the activities of life may all be conducted in the
happy consciousness of _His_ eye who is at once Guardian and Judge of
His children. How far above his fears and lies has this hero and saint
risen by the power of supplication and the music of his psalm!
David naturally fled into Israelitish territory from Gath. The exact
locality of the cave Adullam, where we next find him, is doubtful; but
several strong reasons occur for rejecting the monkish tradition which
places it away to the east, in one of the wild wadies which run down
from Bethlehem to the Dead Sea. We should expect it to be much more
accessible by a hasty march from Gath. Obviously it would be convenient
for him to hang about the frontier of Philistia and Israel, that he
might quickly cross the line from one to the other, as dangers appeared.
Further, the city of Adullam is frequently mentioned, and always in
connections which fix its site as on the margin of the great plain of
Philistia, and not far from Gath. (2 Chron. xi. 7, etc.) There is no
reason to suppose that the cave of Adullam was in a totally different
district from the city. The hills of Dan and Judah, which break sharply
down into the plain within a few miles of Gath, are full of "extensive
excavations," and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold,
where he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look down
over the vast sweep of the rich Philistine country. Gath lay at his
feet, close by was the valley where he had killed Goliath, the scenes of
Samson's exploits were all about him. Thither fled to him his whole
family, from fear, no doubt, of Saul's revenge falling on them; and
there he gathers his band of four hundred desperate men, whom poverty
and misery, and probably the king's growing tyranny, drove to flight.
They were wild, rough soldiers, according to the picturesque
description, "whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as
swift as the roes upon the mountains." They were not freebooters, but
seem to have acted as a kind of frontier-guard against southern Bedouins
and western Philistines for the sheep-farmers of the border whom Saul's
government was too weak to protect. In this desultory warfare, and in
eluding the pursuit of Saul, against whom it is to be observed David
never employed any weapon but flight, several years were passed. The
effect of such life on his spiritual nature was to deepen his
unconditional dependence on God; by the alternations of heat and cold,
fear and hope, danger and safety, to temper his soul and make it
flexible, tough and bright as steel. It evolved the qualities of a
leader of men; teaching him command and forbearance, promptitude and
patience, valour and gentleness. It won for him a name as the defender
of the nation, as Nabal's servant said of him and his men, "They were a
wall unto us, both by night and by day" (1 Sam. xxv. 16). And it
gathered round him a force of men devoted to him by the enthusiastic
attachment bred from long years of common dangers, and the hearty
friendships of many a march by day, and nightly encampment round the
glimmering watchfires, beneath the lucid stars.
VI.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
We have one psalm which the title connects with the beginning of David's
stay at Adullam,--the thirty-fourth. The supposition that it dates from
that period throws great force into many parts of it, and gives a unity
to what is else apparently fragmentary and disconnected. Unlike those
already considered, which were pure soliloquies, this is full of
exhortation and counsel, as would naturally be the case if it were
written when friends and followers began to gather to his standard. It
reads like a long sigh of relief at escape from a danger just past; its
burden is to tell of God's deliverance, and to urge to trust in Him. How
perfectly this tone corresponds to the circumstances immediately after
his escape from Gath to Adullam need not be more than pointed out. The
dangers which he had dreaded and the cry to God which he had sent forth
are still present to his mind, and echo through his song, like a
subtly-touched chord of sadness, which appears for a moment, and is
drowned in the waves of some triumphant music.
"I sought the Lord, and He heard me,
And from all my alarms He delivered me.
* * * * *
This afflicted (man) cried, and Jehovah heard,
And from all his troubles He saved him."
And the "local colouring" of the psalm corresponds too with the
circumstances of Adullam. How appropriate, for instance, does the form
in which the Divine protection is proclaimed become, when we think of
the little band bivouacking among the cliffs, "The angel of the Lord
encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." Like his
great ancestor, he is met in his desert flight by heavenly guards, "and
he calls the name of that place Mahanaim" (that is, "two camps"), as
discerning gathered round his own feeble company the ethereal weapons of
an encircling host of the warriors of God, through whose impenetrable
ranks his foes must pierce before they can reach him. From Samson's time
we read of lions in this district (Judges xiv. 8, 9), and we may
recognise another image as suggested by their growls heard among the
ravines, and their gaunt forms prowling near the cave. "The young lions
do lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want
any good" (ver. 10).
And then he passes to earnest instructions and exhortations, which
derive appositeness from regarding them as a proclamation to his men of
the principles on which his camp is to be governed. "Come, ye children,
hearken unto me." He regards himself as charged with guiding them to
godliness: "I will teach you the fear of the Lord." With some
remembrance, perhaps, of his deception at Gath, he warns them to "keep"
their "tongues from evil" and their "lips from speaking guile." They are
not to be in love with warfare, but, even with their swords in their
hands, are to "seek peace, and pursue it." On these exhortations follow
joyous assurances of God's watchful eye fixed upon the righteous, and
His ear open to their cry; of deliverance for his suppliants, whatsoever
hardship and trouble they may have to wade through; of a guardianship
which "keepeth all the bones" of the righteous, so that neither the
blows of the foe nor the perils of the crags should break them,--all
crowned with the contrast ever present to David's mind, and having a
personal reference to his enemies and to himself:
"Evil shall slay the wicked,
And the haters of the righteous shall suffer penalty.
Jehovah redeems the life of His servants,
And no penalty shall any suffer who trust in Him."
Such were the counsels and teachings of the young leader to his little
band,--noble "general orders" from a commander at the beginning of a
campaign!
We venture to refer the twenty-seventh psalm also to this period. It is
generally supposed, indeed, by those commentators who admit its Davidic
authorship, to belong to the time of Absalom's rebellion. The main
reason for throwing it so late is the reference in ver. 4 to dwelling in
the house of the Lord and inquiring in His temple.[J] This is supposed
to require a date subsequent to David's bringing up of the ark to
Jerusalem, and placing it in a temporary sanctuary. But whilst longing
for the sanctuary is no doubt characteristic of the psalms of the later
wanderings, it is by no means necessary to suppose that in the present
case that desire, which David represents as the longing of his life, was
a desire for mere bodily presence in a material temple. Indeed, the very
language seems to forbid such an interpretation. Surely the desire for
an abode in the house of the Lord--which was his one wish, which he
longed to have continuous throughout all the days of his life, which was
to surround him with a privacy of protection in trouble, and to be as
the munitions of rocks about him--was something else than a morbid
desire for an impossible seclusion in the tabernacle,--a desire fitter
for some sickly mediæval monarch who buried his foolish head and faint
heart in a monastery than for God's Anointed. We have seen an earlier
germ of the same desire in the twenty-third psalm, the words of which
are referred to here; and the interpretation of the one is the
interpretation of the other. The psalmist breathes his longing for the
Divine fellowship, which shall be at once vision, and guidance, and
hidden life in distress, and stability, and victory, and shall break
into music of perpetual praise.
[J] "The fourth verse in its present form _must_ have been written after
the temple was built."--"The Psalms chronologically arranged," p.
68--following Ewald, in whose imperious criticism that same naked "must
have been," works wonders.
If, then, we are not obliged by the words in question to adopt the
later date, there is much in the psalm which strikingly corresponds with
the earlier, and throws beautiful illustration on the psalmist's mood at
this period. One such allusion we venture to suppose in the words (ver.
2),
"When the wicked came against me to devour my flesh,
My enemies and my foes,--they stumbled and fell;"
which have been usually taken as a mere general expression, without any
allusion to a specific event. But there was one incident in David's life
which had been forced upon his remembrance by his recent peril at
Gath--his duel with Goliath, which exactly meets the very peculiar
language here. The psalm employs the same word as the narrative, which
tells how the Philistine "arose, and came, and drew near to David." The
braggart boast, "I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and the
beasts of the fields," is echoed in the singular phrase of the psalm;
and the emphatic, rapid picture, "they stumbled and fell," is at once a
reminiscence of the hour when the stone crashed through the thick
forehead, "and he fell upon his face to the earth;" and also a reference
to an earlier triumph in Israel's history, celebrated with fierce
exultation in the wild chant whom rolls the words like a sweet morsel
under the tongue, as it tells of Sisera--
"Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay;
Between her feet he bowed, he fell;
Where he bowed, there he fell down dead."
Another autobiographical reference in the psalm has been disputed on
insufficient grounds:
"For my father and my mother forsake me,
And Jehovah takes me up." (Ver. 10.)
It is, at all events, a remarkable coincidence that the only mention of
his parents after the earliest chapters of his life falls in precisely
with this period of the history, and is such as might have suggested
these words. We read (1 Sam. xxii. 3, 4) that he once ventured all the
way from Adullam to Moab to beg an asylum from Saul's indiscriminate
fury for his father and mother, who were no doubt too old to share his
perils, as the rest of his family did. Having prepared a kindly welcome
for them, perhaps on the strength of the blood of Ruth the Moabitess in
Jesse's veins, he returned to Bethlehem, brought the old couple away,
and guarded them safely to their refuge. It is surely most natural to
suppose that the psalm is the lyrical echo of that event, and most
pathetic to conceive of the psalmist as thinking of the happy home at
Bethlehem now deserted, his brothers lurking with him among the rocks,
and his parents exiles in heathen lands. Tears fill his eyes, but he
lifts them to a Father that is never parted from him, and feels that he
is no more orphaned nor homeless.
The psalm is remarkable for the abrupt transition of feeling which
cleaves it into two parts; one (vers. 1-6) full of jubilant hope and
enthusiastic faith, the other (vers. 7-14) a lowly cry for help. There
is no need to suppose, with some critics, that we have here two
independent hymns bound together in error. He must have little knowledge
of the fluctuations of the devout life who is surprised to find so swift
a passage from confidence to conscious weakness. Whilst the usual order
in the psalms, as the usual order in good men's experience, is that
prayer for deliverance precedes praise and triumph, true communion with
God is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on God,
and realizing the mysteries of beauty in His secret place, ere it drops
to earth. The lark sings as it descends from the "privacy of glorious
light" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more
plaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps a
nobler effect of faith to begin with God and hymn the victory as if
already won, than to begin with trouble and to call for deliverance. But
with whichever we commence, the prayer of earth must include both; and
so long as we are weak, and God our strength, its elements must be
"supplication and thanksgiving." The prayer of our psalm bends round
again to its beginning, and after the plaintive cry for help breaks once
more into confidence (vers. 13, 14). The psalmist shudders as he thinks
what ruin would have befallen him if he had not trusted in God, and
leaves the unfinished sentence,--as a man looking down into some fearful
gulf starts back and covers his eyes, before he has well seen the bottom
of the abyss.
"If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living!"
Then rejoicing to remember how even by his feeble trust he has been
saved, he stirs up himself to a firmer faith, in words which are
themselves an exercise of faith, as well as an incitement to it:
"Wait on Jehovah!
Courage! and let thy heart be strong!
Yea! wait on Jehovah!"
Here is the true highest type of a troubled soul's fellowship with God,
when the black fear and consciousness of weakness is inclosed in a
golden ring of happy trust. Let the name of our God be first upon our
lips, and the call to our wayward hearts to wait on Him be last, and
then we may between think of our loneliness, and feebleness, and foes,
and fears, without losing our hold of our Father's hand.
David in his rocky eyrie was joyful, because he began with God. It was a
man in real peril who said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom
shall I fear?" It was at a critical pause in his fortunes, when he knew
not yet whether Saul's malice was implacable, that he said, "Though war
should rise against me, in this will I be confident." It was in
thankfulness for the safe hiding-place among the dark caverns of the
hills that he celebrated the dwelling of the soul in God with words
coloured by his circumstances, "In the secret of His tabernacle shall
He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock." It was with Philistia at
his feet before and Saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphant
confidence was sure that "Now shall mine head be lifted up above mine
enemies round about me." It was in weakness, not expelled even by such
joyous faith, that he plaintively besought God's mercy, and laid before
His mercy-seat as the mightiest plea His own inviting words, "Seek ye My
face," and His servant's humble response, "Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
Together, these made it impossible that that Face, the beams of which
are light and salvation, should be averted. God's past comes to his lips
as a plea for a present consistent with it and with His own mighty name.
"Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my
salvation." His loneliness, his ignorance of his road, and the enemies
who watch him, and, like a later Saul, "breathe out cruelty" (see Acts
ix. 1), become to him in his believing petitions, not grounds of fear,
but arguments with God; and having thus mastered all that was
distressful in his lot, by making it all the basis of his cry for help,
he rises again to hope, and stirs up himself to lay hold on God, to be
strong and bold, because his expectation is from Him. A noble picture of
a steadfast soul; steadfast not because of absence of fears and reasons
for fear, but because of presence of God and faith in Him.
Having abandoned Adullam, by the advice of the prophet Gad, who from
this time appears to have been a companion till the end of his reign (2
Sam. xxiv. 11), and who subsequently became his biographer (1 Chron.
xxix. 29), he took refuge, as outlaws have ever been wont to do, in the
woods. In his forest retreat, somewhere among the now treeless hills of
Judah, he heard of a plundering raid made by the Philistines on one of
the unhappy border towns. The marauders had broken in upon the mirth of
the threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year's
harvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral
foes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as
he was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirred
to action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little band
bursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recaptures
the cattle which like moss troopers they were driving homewards from
the ruined farmsteads, and routs them with great slaughter. But the
cowardly townspeople of Keilah had less gratitude than fear; and the
king's banished son-in-law was too dangerous a guest, even though he was
of their own tribe, and had delivered them from the enemy. Saul, who had
not stirred from his moody seclusion to beat back invasion, summoned a
hasty muster, in the hope of catching David in the little city, like a
fox in his earth: and the cowardly citizens meditated saving their homes
by surrendering their champion. David and his six hundred saved
themselves by a rapid flight, and, as it would appear, by breaking up
into detachments. "They went whithersoever they could go" (1 Sam. xxiii.
13); whilst David, with some handful, made his way to the inhospitable
wilderness which stretches from the hills of Judah to the shores of the
Dead Sea, and skulked there in "lurking places" among the crags and
tangled underwood. With fierce perseverance "Saul sought him every day,
but God delivered him not into his hand." One breath of love, fragrant
and strength-giving, was wafted to his fainting heart, when Jonathan
found his way where Saul could not come, and the two friends met once
more. In the woodland solitudes they plighted their faith again, and the
beautiful unselfishness of Jonathan is wonderfully set forth in his
words, "Thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee;"
while an awful glimpse is given into that mystery of a godless will
consciously resisting the inevitable, when there is added, "and that
also Saul, my father, knoweth." In such resistance the king's son has no
part, for it is pointedly noticed that he returned to his house.
Treachery, and that from the men of his own tribe, again dogs David's
steps. The people of Ziph, a small place on the edge of the southern
desert, betray his haunt to Saul. The king receives the intelligence
with a burst of thanks, in which furious jealousy and perverted
religion, and a sense of utter loneliness and misery, and a strange
self-pity, are mingled most pathetically and terribly: "Blessed be ye of
the Lord, for ye have compassion on me!" He sends them away to mark down
his prey; and when they have tracked him to his lair, he follows with
his force and posts them round the hill where David and his handful
lurk. The little band try to escape, but they are surrounded and
apparently lost. At the very moment when the trap is just going to
close, a sudden messenger, "fiery red with haste," rushes into Saul's
army with news of a formidable invasion: "Haste thee and come; for the
Philistines have spread themselves upon the land!" So the eager hand,
ready to smite and crush, is plucked back; and the hour of deepest
distress is the hour of deliverance.
At some period in this lowest ebb of David's fortunes, we have one short
psalm, very simple and sad (liv.) It bears the title, "When the Ziphims
came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?" and may
probably be referred to the former of the two betrayals by the men of
Ziph. The very extremity of peril has made the psalmist still and quiet.
The sore need has shortened his prayer. He is too sure that God hears to
use many words; for it is distrust, not faith, which makes us besiege
His throne with much speaking. He is confident as ever; but one feels
that there is a certain self-restraint and air of depression over the
brief petitions, which indicate the depth of his distress and the
uneasiness of protracted anxiety. Two notes only sound from his harp:
one a plaintive cry for help; the other, thanksgiving for deliverance as
already achieved. The two are bound together by the recurrence in each
of "the name" of GOD, which is at once the source of his salvation and
the theme of his praise. We have only to read the lowly petitions to
feel that they speak of a spirit somewhat weighed down by danger, and
relaxed from the loftier mood of triumphant trust.
(1) O God, by Thy name save me,
And in Thy strength do judgment for me
(2) O God, hear my prayer,
Give ear to the words of my mouth.
(3) For strangers are risen against me,
And tyrants seek my life.
They set not God before them.
The enemies are called "strangers;" but, as we have seen in the first of
these songs of the exile, it is not necessary, therefore, to suppose
that they were not Israelites. The Ziphites were men of Judah like
himself; and there is bitter emphasis as well as a gleam of insight into
the spiritual character of the true Israel in calling them foreigners.
The other name, oppressors, or violent men, or, as we have rendered it,
tyrants, corresponds too accurately with the character of Saul in his
later years, to leave much doubt that it is pointed at him. If so, the
softening of the harsh description by the use of the plural is in
beautiful accordance with the forgiving leniency which runs through all
David's conduct to him. Hard words about Saul himself do not occur in
the psalms. His counsellors, his spies, the liars who calumniated David
to him, and for their own ends played upon his suspicious nature,--the
tools who took care that the cruel designs suggested by themselves
should be carried out, kindle David's wrath, but it scarcely ever lights
on the unhappy monarch whom he loved with all-enduring charity while he
lived, and mourned with magnificent eulogy when he died. The allusion is
made all the more probable, because of the verbal correspondence with
the narrative which records that "Saul was come out to seek his life" (1
Sam. xxiii. 15.)
A chord or two from the harp permits the mind to dwell on the thought of
the foes, and prepares for the second part of this psalm. In it
thanksgiving and confidence flow from the petitions of the former
portion. But the praise is not so jubilant, nor the trust so
victorious, as we have seen them. "The peace of God" has come in answer
to prayer, but it is somewhat subdued:
"Behold, God is my helper;
The Lord is the supporter of my life."
The foes sought his life, but, as the historical book gives the
antithesis, "Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into
his hand." The rendering of the English version, "The Lord is with them
that uphold my soul," is literally accurate, but does not convey the
meaning of the Hebrew idiom. God is not regarded as one among many
helpers, but as alone the supporter or upholder of his life. Believing
that, the psalmist, of course, believes as a consequence that his
enemies will be smitten with evil for their evil. The prophetic lip of
faith calls things that are not as though they were. In the midst of his
dangers he looks forward to songs of deliverance and glad sacrifices of
praise; and the psalm closes with words that approach the more fervid
utterances we have already heard, as if his song had raised his own
spirit above its fears:
(6) With willinghood will I sacrifice unto Thee.
I will praise Thy name for it is good.
(7) For from all distress it has delivered me.
And on my enemies will mine eye see (my desire)
The name--the revealed character of God--was the storehouse of all the
saving energies to which he appealed in verse 1. It is the theme of his
praise when the deliverance shall have come. It is almost regarded here
as equivalent to the Divine personality--it is good, _it_ has delivered
him. Thus, we may say that this brief psalm gives us as the single
thought of a devout soul in trouble, the name of the Lord, and teaches
by its simple pathos how the contemplation of God as He has made Himself
known, should underlie every cry for help and crown every thanksgiving;
whilst it may assure us that whosoever seeks for the salvation of that
mighty name may, even in the midst of trouble, rejoice as in an
accomplished deliverance. And all such thoughts should be held with a
faith at least as firm as the ancient psalmist's, by us to whom the
"name" of the Lord is "declared" by Him who is the full revelation of
God, and the storehouse of all blessings and help to his "brethren."
(Heb. ii. 12.)
A little plain of some mile or so in breadth slopes gently down towards
the Dead Sea about the centre of its western shore. It is girdled round
by savage cliffs, which, on the northern side, jut out in a bold
headland to the water's edge. At either extremity is a stream flowing
down a deep glen choked with luxurious vegetation; great fig-trees,
canes, and maiden-hair ferns covering the rocks. High up on the hills
forming its western boundary a fountain sparkles into light, and falls
to the flat below in long slender threads. Some grey weathered stones
mark the site of a city that was old when Abraham wandered in the land.
Traces of the palm forests which, as its name indicates, were cleared
for its site (Hazezon Tamar, The palm-tree clearing) have been found,
encrusted with limestone, in the warm, damp gullies, and ruined terraces
for vineyards can be traced on the bare hill-sides. But the fertility of
David's time is gone, and the precious streams nourish only a jungle
haunted by leopard and ibex. This is the fountain and plain of Engedi
(the fount of the wild goat), a spot which wants but industry and care
to make it a little paradise. Here David fled from the neighbouring
wilderness, attracted no doubt by the safety of the deep gorges and
rugged hills, as well as by the abundance of water in the fountain and
the streams. The picturesque and touching episode of his meeting with
Saul has made the place for ever memorable. There are many excavations
in the rocks about the fountain, which may have been the cave--black as
night to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare of
sunlight upon limestone, but holding a glimmering twilight to one
looking outwards with eyes accustomed to the gloom--in the innermost
recesses of which David lay hid while Saul tarried in its mouth. The
narrative gives a graphic picture of the hurried colloquy among the
little band, when summary revenge was thus unexpectedly put within their
grasp. The fierce retainers whispered their suggestion that it would be
"tempting providence" to let such an opportunity escape; but the nobler
nature of David knows no personal animosity, and in these earliest days
is flecked by no cruelty nor lust of blood. He cannot, however, resist
the temptation of showing his power and almost parading his forbearance
by stealing through the darkness and cutting away the end of Saul's long
robe. It was little compared with what he could as easily have
done--smite him to the heart as he crouched there defenceless. But it
was a coarse practical jest, conveying a rude insult, and the quickly
returning nobleness of his nature made him ashamed of it, as soon as he
had clambered back with his trophy. He felt that the sanctity of Saul's
office as the anointed of the Lord should have saved him from the gibe.
The king goes his way all unawares, and, as it would seem, had not
regained his men, when David, leaving his band (very much out of temper
no doubt at his foolish nicety), yields to a gush of ancient friendship
and calls loudly after him, risking discovery and capture in his
generous emotion. The pathetic conversation which ensued is eminently
characteristic of both men, so tragically connected and born to work woe
to one another. David's remonstrance (1 Sam. xxiv. 9-15) is full of
nobleness, of wounded affection surviving still, of conscious rectitude,
of solemn devout appeal to the judgment of God. He has no words of
reproach for Saul, no weak upbraidings, no sullen anger, no repaying
hate with hate. He almost pleads with the unhappy king, and yet there is
nothing undignified or feeble in his tone. The whole is full of
correspondences, often of verbal identity, with the psalms which we
assign to this period. The calumnies which he so often complains of in
these are the subject of his first words to Saul, whom he regards as
having had his heart poisoned by lies: "Wherefore hearest thou men's
words, saying, Behold! David seeketh thy hurt." He asserts absolute
innocence of anything that warranted the king's hostility, just as he
does so decisively in the psalms. "There is neither evil nor
transgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee." As in
them he so often compares himself to some wild creature pursued like the
goats in the cliffs of Engedi, so he tells Saul, "Thou huntest my life
to take it." And his appeal from earth's slanders, and misconceptions,
and cruelties, to the perfect tribunal of God, is couched in language,
every clause of which may be found in his psalms. "The Lord, therefore,
be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause,
and deliver me out of thy hand."
The unhappy Saul again breaks into a passion of tears. With that sudden
flashing out into vehement emotion so characteristic of him, and so
significant of his enfeebled self-control, he recognises David's
generous forbearance and its contrast to his own conduct. For a moment,
at all events, he sees, as by a lightning flash, the mad hopelessness of
the black road he is treading in resisting the decree that has made his
rival king--and he binds him by an oath to spare his house when he sits
on the throne. The picture moves awful thoughts and gentle pity for the
poor scathed soul writhing in its hopelessness and dwelling in a great
solitude of fear, but out of which stray gleams of ancient nobleness
still break;--and so the doomed man goes back to his gloomy seclusion at
Gibeah, and David to the free life of the mountains and the wilderness.
VII.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
There are many echoes of this period of Engedi in the Psalms. Perhaps
the most distinctly audible of these are to be found in the seventh
psalm, which is all but universally recognised as David's, even Ewald
concurring in the general consent. It is an irregular ode--for such is
the meaning of Shiggaion in the title, and by its broken rhythms and
abrupt transitions testifies to the emotion of its author. The occasion
of it is said to be "the words of Cush the Benjamite." As this is a
peculiar name for an Israelite, it has been supposed to be an
allegorical designation for some historical person, expressive of his
character. We might render it "the negro." The Jewish commentators have
taken it to refer to Saul himself, but the bitter tone of the psalm, so
unlike David's lingering forbearance to the man whom he never ceased to
love, is against that supposition. Shimei the Benjamite, whose foul
tongue cursed him in rabid rage, as he fled before Absalom, has also
been thought of, but the points of correspondence with the earlier date
are too numerous to make that reference tenable. It seems better to
suppose that Cush "the black" was one of Saul's tribe, who had been
conspicuous among the calumniators of whom we have seen David
complaining to the king. And if so, there is no period in the Sauline
persecution into which the psalm will fit so naturally as the present.
Its main thoughts are precisely those which he poured out so
passionately in his eager appeal when he and Saul stood face to face on
the solitary hill side. They are couched in the higher strain of poetry
indeed, but that is the only difference; whilst there are several verbal
coincidences, and at least one reference to the story, which seem to fix
the date with considerable certainty.
In it we see the psalmist's soul surging with the ground swell of strong
emotion, which breaks into successive waves of varied feeling--first
(vers. 1, 2) terror blended with trust, the enemy pictured, as so
frequently in these early psalms, as a lion who tears the flesh and
breaks the bones of his prey--and the refuge in God described by a
graphic word very frequent also in the cotemporaneous psalms (xi. 1;
lvii. 1, etc.). Then with a quick turn comes the passionate protestation
of his innocence, in hurried words, broken by feeling, and indignantly
turning away from the slanders which he will not speak of more
definitely than calling them "this."
(3) Jehovah, my God! if I have done this--
If there be iniquity in my hands--
(4) If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me--
Yea, I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy--
(5) May the enemy pursue my soul and capture it,
And trample down to the earth my life,
And my glory in the dust may he lay!
How remarkably all this agrees with his words to Saul, "There is neither
evil nor transgression in my hand, ... yet thou huntest my soul to take
it" (1 Sam. xxiv. 11); and how forcible becomes the singular reiteration
in the narrative, of the phrase "my hand," which occurs six times in
four verses. The peculiarly abrupt introduction in ver. 4 of the clause,
"I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy," which completely
dislocates the grammatical structure, is best accounted for by
supposing that David's mind is still full of the temptation to stain
his hands with Saul's blood, and is vividly conscious of the effort
which he had had to make to overcome it. And the solemn invocation of
destruction which he dares to address to Jehovah his God includes the
familiar figure of himself as a fugitive before the hunters, which is
found in the words already quoted, and which here as there stands in
immediate connection with his assertion of clean hands.
Then follows, with another abrupt turn, a vehement cry to God to judge
his cause; his own individual case melts into the thought of a
world-wide judgment, which is painted with grand power with three or
four broad rapid strokes.
(6) Awake for me--Thou hast commanded judgment.
(7) Let the assembly of the nations stand round Thee,
And above it return Thou up on high.
(8) Jehovah will judge the nations.
Judge me, O Jehovah, according to my righteousness and mine
integrity in me!
Each smaller act of God's judgment is connected with the final
world-judgment, is a prophecy of it, is one in principle therewith; and
He, who at the last will be known as the universal Judge of all,
certainly cannot leave His servants' cause unredressed nor their cry
unheard till then. The psalmist is led by his own history to realize
more intensely that truth of a Divine manifestation for judicial
purposes to the whole world, and his prophetic lip paints its
solemnities as the surest pledge of his own deliverance. He sees the
gathered nations standing hushed before the Judge, and the Victor God at
the close of the solemn act ascending up on high where He was before,
above the heads of the mighty crowd (Psalm lxviii. 19). In the faith of
this vision, and because God will judge the nations, he invokes for
himself the anticipation of that final triumph of good over evil, and
asks to be dealt with according to his righteousness. Nothing but the
most hopeless determination to find difficulties could make a difficulty
of such words. David is not speaking of his whole character or life, but
of his conduct in one specific matter, namely, in his relation to Saul.
The righteous integrity which he calls God to vindicate is not general
sinlessness nor inward conformity with the law of God, but his
blamelessness in all his conduct to his gratuitous foe. His prayer that
God would judge him is distinctly equivalent to his often repeated cry
for deliverance, which should, as by a Divine arbitration, decide the
debate between Saul and him. The whole passage in the psalm, with all
its lyrical abruptness and lofty imagery, is the expression of the very
same thought which we find so prominent in his words to Saul, already
quoted, concerning God's judging between them and delivering David out
of Saul's hand. The parallel is instructive, not only as the prose
rendering of the poetry in the psalm, explaining it beyond the
possibility of misunderstanding, but also as strongly confirmatory of
the date which we have assigned to the latter. It is so improbable as to
be almost inconceivable that the abrupt disconnected themes of the psalm
should echo so precisely the _whole_ of the arguments used in the
remonstrance of the historical books, and should besides present verbal
resemblances and historical allusions to these, unless it be of the same
period, and therefore an inlet into the mind of the fugitive as he
lurked among the rugged cliffs by "the fountain of the wild goat."
In that aspect the remainder of the psalm is very striking and
significant. We have two main thoughts in it--that of God as punishing
evil in this life, and that of the self-destruction inherent in all sin;
and these are expressed with such extraordinary energy as to attest at
once the profound emotion of the psalmist, and his familiarity with such
ideas during his days of persecution. It is noticeable, too, that the
language is carefully divested of all personal reference; he has risen
to the contemplation of a great law of the Divine government, and at
that elevation the enemies whose calumnies and cruelties had driven him
to God fade into insignificance.
With what magnificent boldness he paints God the Judge arraying Himself
in His armour of destruction!
(11) God is a righteous Judge,
And a God (who is) angry every day.
(12) If he (_i.e._, the evil-doer) turn not, He whets His sword,
His bow He has bent, and made it ready.
(13) And for him He has prepared weapons of death,
His arrows He has made blazing darts.
Surely there is nothing grander in any poetry than this tremendous
image, smitten out with so few strokes of the chisel, and as true as it
is grand. The representation applies to the facts of life, of which as
directed by a present Providence, and not of any future retribution,
David is here thinking. Among these facts is chastisement falling upon
obstinate antagonism to God. Modern ways of thinking shrink from such
representations; but the whole history of the world teems with
confirmation of their truth--only what David calls the flaming arrows of
God, men call "the natural consequences of evil." The later revelation
of God in Christ brings into greater prominence the disciplinary
character of all punishment here, but bates no jot of the intensity with
which the earlier revelation grasped the truth of God as a righteous
Judge in eternal opposition to, and aversion from, evil.
With that solemn picture flaming before his inward eye, the
prophet-psalmist turns to gaze on the evil-doer who has to bear the
brunt of these weapons of light. Summoning us to look with him by a
"Behold!" he tells his fate in an image of frequent occurrence in the
psalms of this period, and very natural in the lips of a man wandering
in the desert among wild creatures, and stumbling sometimes into the
traps dug for them: "He has dug a hole and hollowed it out, and he falls
into the pitfall he is making." The crumbling soil in which he digs
makes his footing on the edge more precarious with every spadeful that
he throws out, and at last, while he is hard at work, in he tumbles. It
is the conviction spoken in the proverbs of all nations, expressed here
by David in a figure drawn from life--the conviction that all sin digs
its own grave and is self-destructive. The psalm does not proclaim the
yet deeper truth that this automatic action, by which sin sets in motion
its own punishment, has a disciplinary purpose, so that the arrows of
God wound for healing, and His armour is really girded on for, even
while it seems to be against, the sufferer. But it would not be
difficult to show that that truth underlies the whole Old Testament
doctrine of retribution, and is obvious in many of David's psalms. In
the present one the deliverance of the hunted prey is contemplated as
the end of the baffled trapper's fall into his own snare, and beyond
that the psalmist's thoughts do not travel. His own safety, the
certainty that his appeal to God's judgment will not be in vain, fill
his mind; and without following the fate of his enemy further, he closes
this song of tumultuous and varied emotion with calm confidence and a
vow of thanksgiving for a deliverance which is already as good as
accomplished:
(17) I will give thanks to Jehovah according to His righteousness,
And I will sing the name of Jehovah, Most High.
We have still another psalm (lvii.) which is perhaps best referred to
this period. According to the title, it belongs to the time when David
"fled from Saul in the cave." This may, of course, apply to either
Adullam or Engedi, and there is nothing decisive to be alleged for
either; yet one or two resemblances to psalm vii. incline the balance to
the latter period.
These resemblances are the designation of his enemies as lions (vii. 2;
lvii. 4); the image of their falling into their own trap (vii. 15; lvii.
6); the use of the phrase "my honour" or "glory" for "my soul" (vii. 5;
lvii. 8--the same word in the original); the name of God as "Most High"
(vii. 17; lvii. 2), an expression which only occurs twice besides in the
Davidic psalms (ix. 2; xxi. 7); the parallelism in sense between the
petition which forms the centre and the close of the one, "Be Thou
exalted, O God, above the heavens" (lvii. 5, 11), and that which is the
most emphatic desire of the other, "Arise, O Lord, awake, ... lift up
Thyself for me" (vii. 6). Another correspondence, not preserved in our
English version, is the employment in both of a rare poetical word,
which originally means "to complete," and so comes naturally to have the
secondary significations of "to perfect" and "to put an end to." The
word in question only occurs five times in the Old Testament, and always
in psalms. Four of these are in hymns ascribed to David, of which two
are (lvii. 2), "The God that _performeth_ all things for me," and (vii.
9), "Let the wickedness of the wicked _come to an end_." The use of the
same peculiar word in two such dissimilar connections seems to show that
it was, as we say, "running in his head" at the time, and is, perhaps, a
stronger presumption of the cotemporaneousness of both psalms than its
employment in both with the same application would have been.
Characteristic of these early psalms is the occurrence of a refrain
(compare lvi. and lix.) which in the present instance closes both of
the portions of which the hymn consists. The former of these (1-5)
breathes prayerful trust, from which it passes to describe the
encompassing dangers; the second reverses this order, and beginning with
the dangers and distress, rises to ringing gladness and triumph, as
though the victory were already won. The psalmist's confident cleaving
of soul to God is expressed (ver. 1) by an image that may be connected
with his circumstances at Engedi: "In Thee has my soul taken refuge."
The English version is correct as regards the sense, though it
obliterates the beautiful metaphor by its rendering "trusteth." The
literal meaning of the verb is "to flee to a refuge," and its employment
here may be due to the poetical play of the imagination, which likens
his secure retreat among the everlasting hills to the safe hiding-place
which his spirit found in God his habitation. A similar analogy appears
in the earliest use of the expression, which may have been floating in
the psalmist's memory, and which occurs in the ancient song of Moses
(Deut. xxxii.). The scenery of the forty years' wanderings remarkably
colours that ode, and explains the frequent recurrence in it of the name
of God as "the Rock." We have false gods, too, spoken of in it, as,
"Their rock in whom they took refuge," where the metaphor appears in its
completeness (ver. 37). Our psalm goes on with words which contain a
further allusion to another part of the same venerable hymn, "And in the
shadow of Thy wings will I take refuge," which remind us of the grand
image in it of God's care over Israel, as of the eagle bearing her
eaglets on her mighty pinions (ver. 11), and point onwards to the still
more wonderful saying in which all that was terrible and stern in the
older figure is softened into tenderness, and instead of the fierce
affection of the mother eagle, the hen gathering her chickens under her
wings becomes the type of the brooding love and more than maternal
solicitude of God in Christ. Nor can we forget that the only other
instance of the figure before David's psalms is in the exquisite idyl
which tells of the sweet heroism of David's ancestress, Ruth, on whose
gentle and homeless head was pronounced the benediction, "A full reward
be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come
to trust" (Ruth ii. 12). We may perhaps also see in this clause an
extension of the simile which unquestionably lies in the verb, and may
think of the strong "sides of the cave," arching above the fugitive like
a gigantic pair of wings beneath which he nestles warm and dry, while
the short-lived storm roars among the rocks--a type of that broad pinion
which is his true defence till threatening evils be overpast. In the
past he has sheltered his soul in God, but no past act of faith can
avail for present distresses. It must be perpetually renewed. The past
deliverances should make the present confidence more easy; and the true
use of all earlier exercises of trust is to prepare for the resolve that
we will still rely on the help we have so often proved. "I have trusted
in Thee" should ever be followed by "And in the shadow of Thy wings will
I trust."
The psalmist goes on to fulfil his resolve. He takes refuge by prayer in
God, whose absolute elevation above all creatures and circumstances is
the ground of his hope, whose faithful might will accomplish its design,
and complete His servant's lot. "I will call to God Most High; to God
who perfects (His purpose) for me." And then assured hope gleams upon
his soul, and though the storm-clouds hang low and black as ever, they
are touched with light. "He will send from heaven and save me." But even
while this happy certainty dawns upon him, the contending fears, which
ever lurk hard by faith, reassert their power, and burst in, breaking
the flow of the sentence, which by its harsh construction indicates the
sudden irruption of disturbing thoughts. "He that would swallow me up
reproaches (me)." With this two-worded cry of pain--prolonged by the
very unusual occurrence, in the middle of a verse, of the "Selah," which
is probably a musical direction for the accompaniment--a billow of
terror breaks over his soul; but its force is soon spent, and the hope,
above which for a moment it had rolled, rises from the broken spray like
some pillared light round which the surges dash in vain. "God shall send
forth His mercy and His truth"--those two white-robed messengers who
draw nigh to all who call on Him. Then follows in broken words, the true
rendering of which is matter of considerable doubt, a renewed picture of
his danger:
(4) (With) my soul--among lions will I lie down.
Devourers are the sons of men;
Their teeth a spear and arrows,
And their tongue a sharp sword
The psalmist seems to have broken off the construction, and instead of
finishing the sentence as he began it, to have substituted the first
person for the third, which ought to have followed "my soul." This
fragmentary construction expresses agitation of spirit. It may be a
question whether the "lions" in the first clause are to be regarded as a
description of his enemies, who are next spoken of without metaphor as
sons of men who devour (or who "breathe out fire"), and whose words are
cutting and wounding as spear and sword. The analogy of the other psalms
of this period favours such an understanding of the words. But, on the
other hand, the reference preferred by Delitzsch and others gives great
beauty. According to that interpretation, the fugitive among the savage
cliffs prepares himself for his nightly slumbers in calm confidence, and
lays himself down there in the cave, while the wild beasts, whose haunt
it may have been, prowl without, feeling himself safer among them than
among the more ferocious "sons of men," whose hatred has a sharper tooth
than even theirs. And then this portion of the psalm closes with the
refrain, "Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let Thy glory be
above all the earth." A prayer that God would show forth His power, and
exalt His name by delivering His servant. What lofty conviction that his
cause was God's cause, that the Divine honour was concerned in his
safety, that he was a chosen instrument to make known God's praise over
all the world!--and what self-forgetfulness in that, even whilst he
prays for his own deliverance, he thinks of it rather as the magnifying
of God, than as it affects himself personally!
The second part continues the closing strain of the former, and
describes the plots of his foes in the familiar metaphor of the pit,
into which they fall themselves. The contemplation of this divine
Nemesis on evil-doers leads up to the grand burst of thanksgiving with
which the psalm closes--
(7) Fixed is my heart, O God! fixed my heart!
I will sing and strike the harp.[K]
(8) Awake, my glory! awake psaltery and harp![L]
I will awake the dawn.
[K] Properly, "sing with a musical accompaniment."
[L] Two kinds of stringed instrument, the difference between which is
very obscure.
If the former part may be regarded as the evening song of confidence,
this is the morning hymn of thankfulness. He lay down in peace among
lions; he awakes to praise. He calls upon his soul to shake off slumber;
he invokes the chords of his harp to arouse from its chamber the
sleeping dawn. Like a mightier than himself, he will rise a great while
before day, and the clear notes of the rude lyre, his companion in all
his wanderings, will summon the morning to add its silent speech to His
praise. But a still loftier thought inspires him. This hunted solitary
not only knows that his deliverance is certain, but he has already the
consciousness of a world-wide vocation, and anticipates that the story
of his sorrow and his trust, with the music of his psalms, belong to the
world, and will flow over the barriers of his own generation and of his
own land into the whole earth--
(9) I will praise Thee among the peoples, O Lord,
I will strike the harp to Thee among the nations.
(10) For great unto the heavens is Thy mercy,
And to the clouds Thy truth.
These two mighty messengers of God, whose coming he was sure of (ver.
3), will show themselves in his deliverance, boundless and filling all
the creation. They shall be the theme of his world-wide praise. And
then with the repetition of the refrain the psalm comes round again to
supplication, and dies into silent waiting before God till He shall be
pleased to answer. Thus triumphant were the hopes of the lonely fugitive
skulking in the wilderness; such bright visions peopled the waste
places, and made the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.
The cxlii. is also, according to the title, one of the cave-psalms. But
considerable doubt attaches to the whole group of so-called Davidic
compositions in the last book of the psalter (p. 138-144), from their
place, and from the fact that there are just seven of them, as well as
in some cases from their style and character. They are more probably
later hymns in David's manner. The one in question corresponds in tone
with the psalms which we have been considering. It breathes the same
profound consciousness of desolation and loneliness: "My spirit is
darkened within me;" "Refuge fails me, no man cares for my soul." It
glows with the same ardour of personal trust in and love to God which
spring from his very loneliness and helplessness: "I cry unto Thee, O
Jehovah! I say Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the
living." It triumphs with the same confidence, and with the same
conviction that his deliverance concerns all the righteous: "They shall
_crown themselves in me_, for Thou hast dealt bountifully with me;" for
such would appear to be the true meaning of the word rendered in our
version "compass me about;" the idea being that the mercy of God to the
psalmist would become a source of festal gladness to all His servants,
who would bind the story of God's bounty to him upon their brows like a
coronal for a banquet.
VIII.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
As our purpose in this volume is not a complete biography, it will not
be necessary to dwell on the subsequent portions of the exile, inasmuch
as there is little reference to these in the psalms. We must pass over
even that exquisite episode of Abigail, whose graceful presence and
"most subtle flow of silver-paced counsel" soothed David's ruffled
spirit, and led him captive at once as in a silken leash. The glimpse of
old-world ways in the story, the rough mirth of the shearers, the hint
of the kind of black mail by which David's little force was provided,
the snarling humour and garrulous crustiness of Nabal, David's fierce
blaze of hot wrath, the tribute of the shepherds to the kindliness and
honour of the outlaws, the rustic procession, with the gracious lady
last of all, the stately courtesy of the meeting, her calm wise
words--not flattery, yet full of predictions of prosperity most pleasant
to hear from such lips; not rebuke, yet setting in the strongest light
how unworthy of God's anointed personal vengeance was; not servile, but
yet recognising in delicate touches his absolute power over her; not
abject, and yet full of supplication,--the quick response of David's
frank nature and susceptible heart, which sweeps away all his wrath; the
budding germ of love, which makes him break into benedictions on her and
her wisdom, and thankfulness that he had been kept back from "hurting
_thee_," and the dramatic close in their happy union,--all make up one
of the most charming of the many wonderful idyls of Scripture, all
fragrant with the breath of love, and fresh with undying youth. The
story lives--alas! how much longer do words endure than the poor earthly
affections which they record!
After a second betrayal by the men of Ziph, and a second meeting with
Saul--their last--in which the doomed man parts from him with blessing
and predictions of victory on his unwilling lips, David seems to have
been driven to desperation by his endless skulking in dens and caves,
and to have seen no hope of continuing much longer to maintain himself
on the frontier and to elude Saul's vigilance. Possibly others than
Nabal grudged to pay him for the volunteer police which he kept up on
behalf of the pastoral districts exposed to the wild desert tribes. At
all events he once more made a plunge into Philistine territory, and
offers himself and his men to the service of the King of Gath. On the
offer being accepted, the little town of Ziklag was allotted to them,
and became their home for a year and four months.
To this period of comparative security one psalm has been supposed to
belong--the xxxi., which, in tone and in certain expressions,
corresponds very well with the circumstances. There are many
similarities in it with the others of the same period which we have
already considered--such, for instance, as the figure of God his rock
(ver. 3), the net which his enemies have laid for him (ver. 4), the
allusions to their calumnies and slanders (vers. 13, 18), his safe
concealment in God (ver. 20: compare xxvii. 5; lvii. 1; xvii. 8, etc.),
and the close verbal resemblance of ver. 24 with the closing words of
psalm xxvii. The reference, however, which has been taken as pointing to
David's position in Ziklag is that contained in the somewhat remarkable
words (ver. 21): "Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me His
marvellous loving-kindness in a strong city." Of course, the expression
may be purely a graphic figure for the walls and defences of the Divine
protection, as, indeed, it is usually understood to be. But the general
idea of the encompassing shelter of God has just been set forth in the
magnificent imagery of the previous verse as the tabernacle, the secret
of His presence in which He hides and guards His servants. And the
further language of the phrase in question, introduced as it is by a
rapturous burst of blessing and praise, seems so emphatic and peculiar
as to make not unnatural the supposition of a historical basis in some
event which had recently happened to the psalmist.
No period of the life will so well correspond to such a requirement as
the sixteen months of his stay in Ziklag, during which he was completely
free from fear of Saul, and stood high in favour with the King of Gath,
in whose territory he had found a refuge. We may well believe that to
the hunted exile, so long accustomed to a life of constant alarms and
hurried flight, the quiet of a settled home was very sweet, and that
behind the rude fortifications of the little town in the southern
wilderness there seemed security, which made a wonderful contrast to
their defenceless lairs and lurking-places among the rocks. Their eyes
would lose their watchful restlessness, and it would be possible to lay
aside their weapons, to gather their households about them, and, though
they were in a foreign land, still to feel something of the bliss of
peaceful habitudes and tranquil use and wont healing their broken lives.
No wonder, then, that such thankful praise should break from the
leader's lips! No wonder that he should regard this abode in a fortified
city as the result of a miracle of Divine mercy! He describes the
tremulous despondency which had preceded this marvel of loving-kindness
in language which at once recalls the wave of hopelessness which swept
across his soul after his final interview with Saul, and which led to
his flight into Philistine territory, "And David said in his heart, I
shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul" (1 Sam. xxvii. 1). How
completely this corresponds with the psalm, allowance being made for the
difference between poetry and prose, when he describes the thoughts
which had shaded his soul just before the happy peace of the strong
city--"I said in my haste,[M] I am cut off from before Thine eyes;
nevertheless Thou heardest the voice of my supplication" (ver. 22). And
rising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience to
the great truths concerning God's care of His children, the discovery of
which was to him even more precious than his personal safety, he breaks
forth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of his
consciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole household
of God--
(23) O love Jehovah, all ye beloved of Him!
The faithful doth Jehovah preserve,
And plentifully repayeth the proud-doer.
(24) Courage! and let your heart be strong,
All ye that wait for Jehovah!
[M] Confusion (Perowne), distrust (Delitzsch), anguish (Ewald),
trepidation (Calvin). The word literally means to sway backwards and
forwards, and hence to be agitated by any emotion, principally by fear;
and then, perhaps, to flee in terror.
The glow of personal attachment to Jehovah which kindles in the trustful
words is eminently characteristic. It anticipates the final teaching of
the New Testament in bringing all the relations between God and the
devout soul down to the one bond of love. "We love Him because He first
loved us," says John. And David has the same discernment that the basis
of all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of God, and that the
only response which that seeking love requires is the awaking of the
echo of its own Divine voice in our hearts. Love begets love; love seeks
love; love rests in love. Our faith _corresponds_ to His faithfulness,
our obedience to His command, our reverence to His majesty; but our love
_resembles_ His, from which it draws its life. So the one exhortation is
"love the Lord," and the ground of it lies in that name--"His
beloved"--those to whom He shows His loving-kindness (ver. 21).
The closing words remind us of the last verse of psalm xxvii. They are
distinctly quoted from it, with the variation that there the heartening
to courage was addressed to his own soul, and here to "all who wait on
the Lord." The resemblance confirms the reference of both psalms to the
same epoch, while the difference suits the change in his circumstances
from a period of comparative danger, such as his stay at Adullam, to one
of greater security, like his residence in Ziklag. The same persons who
were called to love the Lord because they were participant of His
loving-kindness, are now called to courage and manly firmness of soul
because their hope is fixed on Jehovah. The progress of thought is
significant and obvious. Love to God, resting on consciousness of His
love to us, is the true armour. "There is no fear in love." The heart
filled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters,
while the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grinding
collision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry sea
of life. Love, too, is the condition of hope. The patience and
expectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the
sweetness of the former. Of these fair sisters, Love is the elder as the
greater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which Hope
forges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experience
supplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance;
and she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, and
clear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. To
love the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. So
had the psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous years
of exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on
his lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external
security, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. Not
in vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to his
feet from their stormy waves. Not in vain will ours be to us, if we
learn the lesson which he here would divide with all those "that wait on
the Lord."
Our limits prevent the further examination of the remaining psalms of
this period. It is the less necessary, inasmuch as those which have been
already considered fairly represent the whole. The xi., xiii., xvii.,
xxii., xxv., and lxiv. may, with varying probability, be considered as
belonging to the Sauline persecution. To this list some critics would
add the xl. and lxix., but on very uncertain grounds. But if we exclude
them, the others have a strong family likeness, not only with each
other, but with those which have been presented to the reader. The
imagery of the wilderness, which has become so familiar to us,
continually reappears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares,
the hunted psalmist like a timid bird among the hills; the protestation
of innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked,
the confidence that their own devices will come down on their heads, the
intense yearning of soul after God--are all repeated in these psalms.
Single metaphors and peculiar phrases which we have already met with
recur--as, for instance, "the shadow of Thy wings" (xvii. 8, lvii. 1),
and the singular phrase rendered in our version, "show Thy marvellous
loving-kindness" (xvii. 7, xxxi. 21), which is found only here. In one
of these psalms (xxxv. 13) there seems to be a reference to his earliest
days at the court, and to the depth of loving sympathy with Saul's
darkened spirit, which he learned to cherish, as he stood before him to
soothe him with the ordered harmonies of harp and voice. The words are
so definite that they appear to refer to some historic occasion:
And as for me--in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth,
With fasting I humbled my soul,
And my prayer into my own bosom returned.
So truly did he feel for him who is now his foe. The outward marks of
mourning became the natural expression of his feelings. Such is plainly
the meaning of the two former clauses, as well as of the following
verse. As the whole is a description of the outward signs of grief, it
seems better to understand the last of these three clauses as a picture
of the bent head sunk on the bosom even while he prayed,[N] than to
break the connection by referring it either to the requital of hate for
his sympathy,[O] or to the purity of his prayer, which was such that he
could desire nothing more for himself.[P] He goes on with the
enumeration of the signs of sorrow: "As if (he had been) a friend, a
brother to me, I went,"--walking slowly, like a man absorbed in sorrow:
"as one who laments a mother, in mourning garments I bowed
down,"--walking with a weary, heavy stoop, like one crushed by a
mother's death, with the garb of woe. Thus faithfully had he loved, and
truly wept for the noble ruined soul which, blinded by passion and
poisoned by lies, had turned to be his enemy. And that same love clung
by him to the last, as it ever does with great and good men, who learn
of God to suffer long and be kind, to bear all things, and hope all
things.
[N] So Ewald and Delitzsch.
[O] Hupfeld.
[P] Perowne.
Of these psalms the xxii. is remarkable. In it David's personal
experience seems to afford only the starting-point for a purely
Messianic prophecy, which embraces many particulars that far transcend
anything recorded of his sorrows. The impossibility of finding
occurrences in his life corresponding to such traits as tortured limbs
and burning thirst, pierced hands and parted garments, has driven some
critics to the hypothesis that we have here a psalm of the exile
describing either actual sufferings inflicted on some unknown confessor
in Babylon, or in figurative language the calamities of Israel there.
But the Davidic origin is confirmed by many obvious points of
resemblance with the psalms which are indisputably his, and especially
with those of the Sauline period, while the difficulty of finding
historical facts answering to the emphatic language is evaded, not met,
by either assuming that such facts existed in some life which has left
no trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which sound
wonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. Of course, if we
believe that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighter
than the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. But, unless we
have a foregone conclusion of that sort to blind us, we shall see in
this psalm a clear example of the prophecy of a suffering Messiah. In
most of the other psalms where David speaks of his sorrows we have only
a typical foreshadowing of Christ. But in this, and in such others as
lxix. and cix. (if these are David's), we have type changing into
prophecy, and the person of the psalmist fading away before the image
which, by occasion of his own griefs, rose vast, and solemn, and distant
before his prophet gaze,--the image of One who should be perfectly all
which he was in partial measure, the anointed of God, the utterer of His
name to His brethren, the King of Israel,--and whose path to His
dominion should be thickly strewn with solitary sorrow, and reproach,
and agony, to whose far more exceeding weight of woe all his affliction
was light as a feather, and transitory as a moment. And when the
psalmist had learned that lesson, besides all the others of trust and
patience which his wanderings taught him, his schooling was nearly over,
he was almost ready for a new discipline; and the slowly-evolving
revelation of God's purposes, which by his sorrows had unfolded more
distinctly than before "the sufferings of the Messiah," was ripening for
the unveiling, in his Kinghood, of "the glory that should follow."
IX.--THE KING.
We have now to turn and see the sudden change of fortune which lifted
the exile to a throne. The heavy cloud which had brooded so long over
the doomed king broke in lightning crash on the disastrous field of
Gilboa. Where is there a sadder and more solemn story of the fate of a
soul which makes shipwreck "of faith and of a good conscience," than
that awful page which tells how, godless, wretched, mad with despair and
measureless pride, he flung himself on his bloody sword, and died a
suicide's death, with sons and armour-bearer and all his men, a ghastly
court of corpses, laid round him? He had once been brave, modest, and
kind, full of noble purposes and generous affections--and he ended so.
Into what doleful regions of hate and darkness may self-will drag a
soul, when once the reins fall loose from a slackened hand! And what a
pathetic beam of struggling light gleams through heavy clouds, in the
grateful exploit of the men of Jabesh, who remembered how he had once
saved them, while yet he could care and dare for his kingdom, and
perilled their lives to bear the poor headless corpse to its rude
resting-place!
The news is received by the fugitive at Ziklag in striking and
characteristic fashion. He first flames out in fierce wrath upon the
lying Amalekite, who had hurried with the tidings and sought favour by
falsely representing that he had killed the king on the field. A short
shrift and a bloody end were his. And then the wrath melts into
mourning. Forgetting the mad hatred and wild struggles of that poor
soul, and his own wrongs, remembering only the friendship and nobleness
of his earlier days, he casts over the mangled corpses of Saul and
Jonathan the mantle of his sweet elegy, and bathes them with the healing
waters of his unstinted praise and undying love. Not till these two
offices of justice and affection had been performed, does he remember
himself and the change in his own position which had been effected. He
had never thought of Saul as standing between him and the kingdom; the
first feeling on his death was not, as it would have been with a less
devout and less generous heart, a flush of gladness at the thought of
the empty throne, but a sharp pang of pain from the sense of an empty
heart. And even when he begins to look forward to his own new course,
there is that same remarkable passiveness which we have observed
already. His first step is to "inquire of the Lord, saying, Shall I go
up to any of the cities of Judah?" (2 Sam. ii. 1). He will do nothing in
this crisis of his fortunes, when all which had been so long a hope
seemed to be rapidly becoming a fact, until his Shepherd shall lead him.
Rapid and impetuous as he was by nature, schooled to swift decisions,
followed by still swifter action, knowing that a blow struck at once,
while all was chaos and despair at home, might set him on the throne, he
holds nature and policy and the impatience of his people in check to
hear what God will say. So fully did he fulfil the vow of his early
psalm, "My strength! upon thee will I wait" (lix. 9).
We can fancy the glad march to the ancient Hebron, where the great
fathers of the nation lay in their rock-hewn tombs. Even before the
death of Saul, David's strength had been rapidly increasing, by a
constant stream of fugitives from the confusion and misery into which
the kingdom had fallen. Even Benjamin, Saul's own tribe, sent him some
of its famous archers--a sinister omen of the king's waning fortunes;
the hardy half-independent men of Manasseh and Gad, from the pastoral
uplands on the east of Jordan, "whose faces," according to the vivid
description of the chronicler (1 Chron. xii. 8), "were like the faces of
lions, and were as swift as roes upon the mountains," sought his
standard; and from his own kinsmen of Judah recruits "day by day came to
David to help him, until it was a great host like the host of God." With
such forces, it would have been child's play to have subdued any
scattered troops of the former dynasty which might still have been in a
condition to keep the field. But he made no attempt of the sort; and
even when he came to Hebron he took no measures to advance any claims to
the crown. The language of the history seems rather to imply a
disbanding of his army, or at least their settling down to domestic life
in the villages round Hebron, without a thought of winning the kingdom
by arms. And his elevation to the partial monarchy which he at first
possessed was the spontaneous act of "the men of Judah," who come to him
and anoint him king over Judah.
The limits of his territory are substantially those of the kingdom over
which his descendants ruled after Jeroboam's revolt, thus indicating the
existence of a natural "line of cleavage" between north and south. The
geographical position of Benjamin finally attached it to the latter
monarchy; but for the present, the wish to retain the supremacy which it
had had while the king was one of the tribe, made it the nucleus of a
feeble and lingering opposition to David, headed by Saul's cousin Abner,
and rallying round his incompetent son Ishbosheth.[Q] The chronology of
this period is obscure. David reigned in Hebron seven years and a half,
and as Ishbosheth's phantom sovereignty only occupied two of these
years, and those evidently the last, it would appear almost as if the
Philistines had held the country, with the exception of Judah, in such
force that no rival cared to claim the dangerous dignity, and that five
years passed before the invaders were so far cleared out as to leave
leisure for civil war.
[Q] The Canaanitish worship of Baal seems to have lingered in Saul's
family. One of his grand-uncles was named Baal (1 Chron. ix. 36); his
son was really called Eshbaal (Fire of Baal), which was contemptuously
converted into Ishbosheth (Man of Shame). So also Mephibosheth was
properly Meribbaal (Fighter for Baal).
The summary narrative of these seven years presents the still youthful
king in a very lovable light. The same temper which had marked his first
acts after Saul's death is strikingly brought out (2 Sam. ii.-iv.) He
seems to have left the conduct of the war altogether to Joab, as if he
shrank from striking a single blow for his own advancement. When he does
interfere, it is on the side of peace, to curb and chastise ferocious
vengeance and dastardly assassination. The incidents recorded all go to
make up a picture of rare generosity, of patient waiting for God to
fulfil His purposes, of longing that the miserable strife between the
tribes of God's inheritance should end. He sends grateful messages to
Jabesh-Gilead; he will not begin the conflict with the insurgents. The
only actual fight recorded is provoked by Abner, and managed with
unwonted mildness by Joab. The list of his children born in Hebron is
inserted in the very heart of the story of the insurrection, a token of
the quiet domestic life of peaceful joys and cares which he lived while
the storm was raging without. Eagerly, and without suspicion, he
welcomes Abner's advances towards reconciliation. He falls for a moment
to the level of his times, and yields to a strong temptation, in making
the restoration of his long-lost wife Michal the condition of further
negotiations--a demand which was strictly just, no doubt, but for which
little more can be said. The generosity of his nature and the ideal
purity of his love, which that incident shadows, shine out again in his
indignation at Joab's murder of Abner, though he was too meek to avenge
it. There is no more beautiful picture in his life than that of his
following the bier where lay the bloody corpse of the man who had been
his enemy ever since he had known him, and sealing the reconciliation
which Death ever makes in noble souls, by the pathetic dirge he chanted
over Abner's grave. We have a glimpse of his people's unbounded
confidence in him, given incidentally when we are told that his sorrow
pleased them, "as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people." We
have a glimpse of the feebleness of his new monarchy as against the
fierce soldier who had done so much to make it, in his acknowledgment
that he was yet weak, being but recently anointed king, and that these
vehement sons of Zeruiah were too strong for him; and we have a
remarkable trace of connection with the psalms, in the closing words
with which he invokes on Joab the vengeance which he as yet felt himself
unable to execute: "The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to
his wickedness."
The only other incident recorded of his reign in Hebron is his execution
of summary justice upon the murderers of the poor puppet-king
Ishbosheth, upon whose death, following so closely that of Abner, the
whole resistance to David's power collapses. There had never been any
real popular opposition. His enemies are emphatically named as "the
house of Saul," and we find Abner himself admitting that "the elders of
Israel" wanted David as king (2 Sam. iii. 17), so that when he was gone,
it is two Benjamites who give the _coup-de-grâce_ to Ishbosheth, and end
the whole shadowy rival power. Immediately the rulers of all the tribes
come up to Hebron, with the tender of the crown. They offer it on the
triple grounds of kinship, of his military service even in Saul's reign,
and of the Divine promise of the throne. A solemn pact was made, and
David was anointed in Hebron, a king by Divine right, but also a
constitutional monarch chosen by popular election, and limited in his
powers.
The first result of his new strength is the capture of the old
hill-fortress of the Jebusites, the city of Melchizedek, which had
frowned down upon Israel unsubdued till now, and whose inhabitants
trusted so absolutely in its natural strength that their answer to the
demand for surrender was the jeer, "Thou wilt not come hither, but the
blind and lame will drive thee away." This time David does not leave the
war to others. For the first time for seven years we read, "_The king_
and his men went to Jerusalem." Established there as his capital, he
reigns for some ten years with unbroken prosperity over a loyal and
loving people, with this for the summary of the whole period, "David
went on and grew great, and the Lord God of Hosts was with him" (2 Sam.
v. 10). These years are marked by three principal events--the bringing
up of the ark to the city of David, the promise by Nathan of the
perpetual dominion of his house, and the unbroken flow of victories over
the surrounding nations. These are the salient points of the narrative
in the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. v.-viii.), and are all abundantly
illustrated by the psalms. We shall have next then to consider "The
Songs of the King."
How did the fugitive bear his sudden change of fortune? What were his
thoughts when at last the dignity which he had ever expected and never
sought was his? The answer is ready to our hand in that grand psalm (Ps.
xviii.) which he "spake in the day that the Lord delivered him from all
his enemies, and from the hand of Saul." The language of this
superscription seems to connect the psalm with the period of internal
and external repose which preceded and prompted David's "purpose to
build an house for the Lord" (2 Sam. vii.) The same thankfulness which
glows so brightly in the psalm stimulated that desire, and the emphatic
reference to the mercy promised by God to "his seed for evermore," which
closes the hymn, points perhaps to the definite promise of the
perpetuity of the kingdom to his descendants, which was God's answer to
the same desire. But whether the psalm belongs to the years of the
partial sovereignty at Hebron, or to those of the complete dominion at
Jerusalem, it cannot be later than the second of these two dates; and
whatever may have been the time of its composition, the feelings which
it expresses are those of the first freshness of thankful praise when he
was firmly settled in the kingdom. Some critics would throw it onwards
to the very close of his life. But this has little in its favour beyond
the fact that the author of the Book of Samuel has placed his version of
the psalm among the records of David's last days. There is, however,
nothing to show that that position is due to chronological
considerations. The victories over heathen nations which are supposed to
be referred to in the psalm, and are relied on by the advocates of later
date, really point to the earlier, which was the time of his most
brilliant conquests. And the marked assertions of his own purity, as
well as the triumphant tone of the whole, neither of which
characteristics corresponds to the sad and shaded years after his great
fall, point in the same direction. On the whole, then, we may fairly
take this psalm as belonging to the bright beginning of the monarchy,
and as showing us how well the king remembered the vows which the exile
had mingled with his tears.
It is one long outpouring of rapturous thankfulness and triumphant
adoration, which streams from a full heart in buoyant waves of song.
Nowhere else, even in the psalms--and if not there, certainly nowhere
else--is there such a continuous tide of unmingled praise, such
magnificence of imagery, such passion of love to the delivering God,
such joyous energy of conquering trust. It throbs throughout with the
life blood of devotion. The strong flame, white with its very ardour,
quivers with its own intensity as it steadily rises heavenward. All the
terrors, and pains, and dangers of the weary years--the black fuel for
the ruddy glow--melt into warmth too great for smoke, too equable to
blaze. The plaintive notes that had so often wailed from his harp, sad
as if the night wind had been wandering among its chords, have all led
up to this rushing burst of full-toned gladness. The very blessedness of
heaven is anticipated, when sorrows gone by are understood and seen in
their connection with the joy to which they have led, and are felt to
be the theme for deepest thankfulness. Thank God that, for the
consolation of the whole world, we have this hymn of praise from the
same lips which said, "My life is spent with grief, and my years with
sighing." "We have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very
pitiful and of tender mercy." The tremulous minors of trustful sorrow
shall swell into rapturous praise; and he who, compassed with foes,
cries upon God, will, here or yonder, sing this song "unto the Lord, in
the day that the Lord delivers him from the hand of all his enemies."
X.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.
In our last chapter we have seen that the key-note of "The Songs of the
King" may be said to be struck in Psalm xviii. Its complete analysis
would carry us far beyond our limits. We can but glance at some of the
more prominent points of the psalm.
The first clause strikes the key-note. "I love Thee, O Jehovah, my
strength." That personal attachment to God, which is so characteristic
of David's religion, can no longer be pent up in silence, but gushes
forth like some imprisoned stream, broad and full even from its
well-head. The common word for "love" is too weak for him, and he bends
to his use another, never elsewhere employed to express man's emotions
towards God, the intensity of which is but feebly expressed by some such
periphrasis as, "From my heart do I love Thee." The same exalted feeling
is wonderfully set forth by the loving accumulation of Divine names
which follow, as if he would heap together in one great pile all the
rich experiences of that God, unnamed after all names, which he had
garnered up in his distresses and deliverances. They tell so much as the
poor vehicle of words can tell, what his Shepherd in the heavens had
been to him. They are the treasures which he has brought back from his
exile; and they most pathetically point to the songs of that time. He
had called on God by these names when it was hard to believe in their
reality, and now he repeats them all in his glad hour of fruition, for
token that they who in their extremity trust in the name of the Lord
will one day have the truth of faith transformed into truth of
experience. "Jehovah, my rock and my fortress," reminds us of his cry in
Ziklag, "Thou art my rock and my fortress" (xxxi. 3), and of the "hold"
(the same word) of Adullam in which he had lain secure. "My deliverer"
echoes many a sigh in the past, now changed into music of praise. "My
rock" (a different word from that in a preceding clause), "in whom I
take refuge," recalls the prayer, "Be Thou my rock of strength" (xxxi.
2), and his former effort of confidence, when, in the midst of
calamities, he said, "My soul takes refuge in Thee" (lvii. 1.) "My
shield" carries us back to the ancient promise, fresh after so many
centuries, and fulfilled anew in every age, "Fear not, Abram, I am thy
shield," and to his own trustful words at a time when trust was
difficult, "My shield is upon God" (vii. 10). "My high tower," the last
of this glowing series, links on to the hope breathed in the first song
of his exile, "God is my defence" (the same expression); "Thou hast been
my defence in the day of trouble" (lix. 9, 16). And then he sums up his
whole past in one general sentence, which tells his habitual resource in
his troubles, and the blessed help which he has ever found, "I call on
Jehovah, who is worthy to be praised;[R] and from my enemies am I saved"
(verse 3).
[R] The old English word "the worshipful" comes near the form and
meaning of the phrase.
No comment can heighten, and no translation can adequately represent,
while none can altogether destroy the unapproachable magnificence of the
description which follows, of the majestic coming forth of God in answer
to his cry. It stands at the very highest point, even when compared with
the other sublime passages of a like kind in Scripture. How
pathetically he paints his sore need in metaphors which again bring to
mind the songs of the outlaw:--
The snares of death compassed me,
And floods of destruction made me afraid;
The snares of Sheol surrounded me,
The toils of death surprised me.
As he so often likened himself to some wild creature in the nets, so
here Death, the hunter, has cast his fatal cords about him, and they are
ready suddenly to close on the unsuspecting prey. Or, varying the image,
he is sinking in black waters, which are designated by a difficult
phrase (literally, "streams of Belial," or worthlessness), which is most
probably rendered as above (so Ewald, Hupfeld). In this dire extremity
one thing alone is left him. He is snared, but he has his voice free to
cry with, and a God to cry to. He is all but sinking, but he can still
shriek (so one of the words might be rendered) "like some strong swimmer
in his agony." And it is enough. That one loud call for help rises, like
some slender pillar of incense-smoke, straight into the palace temple of
God--and, as he says, with a meaning which our version obscures, "My cry
before Him came into His ears." The prayer that springs from a living
consciousness of being in God's presence, even when nearest to
perishing, is the prayer that He hears. The cry is a poor, thin,
solitary voice, unheard on earth, though shrill enough to rise to
heaven; the answer shakes creation. One man in his extremity can put in
motion all the magnificence of God. Overwhelming is the contrast between
the cause and the effect. And marvellous as the greatness, so also is
the swiftness of the answer. A moment suffices--and then! Even whilst he
cries, the rocking earth and the quivering foundations of the hills are
conscious that the Lord comes from afar for his help. The majestic
self-revelation of God as the deliverer has for its occasion the
psalmist's cry of distress, and for its issue, "He drew me out of many
waters." All the splendour flames out because a poor man prays, and all
the upheaval of earth and the artillery of heaven has simply this for
its end, that a poor man may be delivered. The paradox of prayer never
found a more bold expression than in this triumphant utterance, of the
insignificant occasion for, and the equally insignificant result sought
by, the exercise of the energy of Omnipotence.
The Divine deliverance is set forth under the familiar image of the
coming of God in a tempest. Before it bursts, and simultaneous with the
prayer, the "earth rocks and quivers," the sunless "pillars of the hills
reel and rock to and fro," as if conscious of the gathering wrath which
begins to flame far off in the highest heavens. There has been no
forth-putting yet of the Divine power. It is but accumulating its fiery
energy, and already the solid framework of the world trembles,
anticipating the coming crash. The firmest things shake, the loftiest
bow before His wrath. "There went up smoke out of his nostrils, and fire
out of his mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it." This kindling
anger, expressed by these tremendous metaphors, is conceived of as the
preparation in "His temple" for the earthly manifestation of delivering
vengeance. It is like some distant thunder-cloud which grows on the
horizon into ominous blackness, and seems to be filling its
ashen-coloured depths with store of lightnings. Then the piled-up terror
begins to move, and, drawing nearer, pours out an avalanche of gloom
seamed with fire. First the storm-cloud descends, hanging lower and
lower in the sky. And whose foot is that which is planted upon its heavy
mass, thick and frowning enough to be the veil of God?
"He bowed the heavens, and came down,
And blackness of cloud was under His feet."
Then the sudden rush of wind which heralds the lightning breaks the
awful silence:--
And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly,
Yea, He swept along upon the wings of the wind.
The cherubs bear, as in a chariot, the throned God, and the swift
pinions of the storm bear the cherubs. But He that sits upon the throne,
above material forces and the highest creatures, is unseen. The
psalmist's imagination stops at its base, nor dares to gaze into that
light above; and the silence is more impressive than all words. Instead
of pagan attempts at a likeness of God, we have next painted, with equal
descriptive accuracy, poetic force, and theological truth, the pitchy
blackness which hides Him. In the gloom of its depths He makes His
"secret place" His "tent." It is "darkness of waters," that is, darkness
from which streams out the thunder-rain; it is "thick clouds of the
skies;" or perhaps the expression should be rendered, "heavy masses of
clouds." Then comes the crash of the tempest. The brightness that lies
closer around Him, and lives in the heart of the blackness, flames
forth, parting the thick clouds--and through the awful rent hail and
coals of fire are flung down on the trembling earth. The grand
description may be rendered in two ways: either that adopted in our
version, "At the brightness that was before Him His thick clouds
passed--hailstones and coals of fire;" or, "Through His thick clouds
there passed hailstones and coals of fire." The former of these is the
more dramatic; the broken construction expresses more vividly the fierce
suddenness of the lightning blaze and of the down-rush of the hail, and
is confirmed by the repetition of the same words in the same
construction in the next verse. That verse describes another burst of
the tempest--the deep roll of the thunder along the skies is the voice
of Jehovah, and again the lightning tears through the clouds, and the
hail streams down. With what profound truth all this destructive power
is represented as coming from the brightness of God--that "glory" which
in its own nature is light, but in its contact with finite and sinful
creatures must needs become darkness, rent asunder by lightning! What
lessons as to the root and the essential nature of all punitive acts of
God cluster round such words! and how calm and blessed the faith which
can pierce even the thickest mass "that veileth Love!"--to see the light
at the centre, even though the circumference be brooding thunder-clouds
torn by sudden fires. Then comes the purpose of all this apocalypse of
Divine magnificence. The fiery arrows scatter the psalmist's enemies.
The waters in which he had well nigh drowned are dried up before the hot
breath of His anger. "That dread voice" speaks "which shrinks their
streams." And amid the blaze of tempest, the rocking earth, and the
failing floods, His arm is thrust forth from above, and draws His
servant from many waters. As one in later times, "he was afraid, and
beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me; and immediately He
stretched forth His hand and caught him."
A calmer tone follows, as the psalmist recounts without metaphor his
deliverance, and reiterates the same assertion of his innocence which
we have already found so frequently in the previous psalms (vers.
17-24). Rising from his personal experience to the broad and lofty
thoughts of God which that experience had taught him, as it does all who
prize life chiefly as a means of knowing Him, he proclaims the solemn
truth, that in the exercise of a righteous retribution, and by the very
necessity of our moral nature, God appears to man what man is to God:
loving to the loving, upright to the upright, pure to the pure, and
froward to the froward. Our thoughts of God are shaped by our moral
character; the capacity of perceiving depends on sympathy. "Unless the
eye were light, how could it see the sun?" The self-revelation of God in
His providence, of which only the psalm speaks, is modified according to
our moral character, being full of love to those who love, being harsh
and antagonistic to those who set themselves in opposition to it. There
is a higher law of grace, whereby the sinfulness of man but draws forth
the tenderness of a father's pardoning pity; and the brightest
revelation of His love is made to froward prodigals. But that is not in
the psalmist's view here, nor does it interfere with the law of
retribution in its own sphere.
The purely personal tone is again resumed, and continued unbroken to the
close. In the former portion David was passive, except for the voice of
prayer, and God's arm alone was his deliverance. In the latter half he
is active, the conquering king, whose arm is strengthened for victory by
God. This difference may possibly suggest the reference of the former
half to the Sauline persecution, when, as we have seen, the exile ever
shrunk from avenging himself; and of the latter to the early years of
his monarchy, which, as we shall see, were characterized by much
successful military activity; and if so, the date of the psalm would
most naturally be taken to be the close of his victorious campaigns,
when "the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about" (2
Sam. vii. 1). Be that as it may, the latter portion of the psalm shows
us the soldier king tracing all his past victories to God alone, and
building upon them the confidence of a world-wide dominion. The point at
which memory passes into hope is difficult to determine, and great
variety of opinion prevails on the matter among commentators. It is
perhaps best to follow many of the older versions, and the valuable
exposition of Hupfeld, in regarding the whole section from ver. 37 of
our translation as the expression of the trust which past experience had
wrought. We shall then have two periods in the second half of the
psalm--the past victories won by God's help (vers. 31-36), the coming
triumphs of which these are the pledge (vers. 37-end).
In the former there shine out not only David's habitual consciousness of
dependence on and aid from God, but also a very striking picture of his
physical qualifications for a military leader. He is girded with bodily
strength, swift and sure of foot like a deer, able to scale the crags
where his foes fortified themselves like the wild antelopes he had so
often seen bounding among the dizzy ledges of the cliffs in the
wilderness; his hands are trained for war, and his sinewy arms can bend
the great bow of brass. But these capacities are gifts, and not they,
but their Giver, have made him victorious. Looking back upon all his
past, this is its summing up:--
"Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation,
And Thy right hand hath holden me up,
And Thy lowliness hath made me great."
God's strength, God's buckler, God's supporting hand, God's
condescension, by which He bows down to look upon and help the feeble,
with the humble showing Himself humble--these have been his weapons, and
from these has come his victory.
And because of these, he looks forward to a future like the past, but
more glorious still, thereby teaching us how the unchanging faithfulness
of our God should encourage us to take all the blessings which we have
received as but the earnest of what is yet to come. He sees himself
pursuing his enemies, and smiting them to the ground. The fierce light
of battle blazes through the rapid sentences which paint the panic
flight, and the swift pursuit, the vain shrieks to man and God for
succour, and the utter annihilation of the foe:--
(42) "And I will pound them like dust before the wind,
Like street-filth will I empty them out."
Then he gives utterance to the consciousness that his kingdom is
destined to extend far beyond the limits of Israel, in words which, like
so many of the prophecies, may be translated in the present tense, but
are obviously future in signification--the prophet placing himself in
imagination in the midst of the time of which he speaks:--
(43) "Thou deliverest me from the strivings of the people (_i.e._,
Israel),
Thou makest me head of the heathen;
People whom I knew not serve me.
(44) At the hearing of the ear they obey me.
The sons of the stranger feign obedience to me.
(45) The sons of the stranger fade away,
They come trembling from their hiding-places."
The rebellion which weakened his early reign is subdued, and beyond the
bounds of his own people his dominion spreads. Strange tribes submit to
the very sound of his name, and crouch before him in extorted and
pretended submission. The words are literally "lie unto me," descriptive
of the profuse professions of loyalty characteristic of conquered
orientals. Their power withers before him like a gathered flower before
a hot wind, and the fugitives creep trembling out of their holes where
they have hid themselves.
Again he recurs to the one thought which flows like a river of light
through all the psalm--that all his help is in God. The names which he
lovingly heaped together at the beginning are in part echoed in the
close. "The Lord liveth, and blessed is my rock, and the God of my
salvation is exalted." His deliverances have taught him to know a living
God, swift to hear, active to help, in whom he lives, who has magnified
His own name in that He has saved His servant. And as that blessed
conviction is the sum of all his experience, so one glad vow expresses
all his resolves, and thrills with the expectation which he had
cherished even in his lonely exile, that the music of his psalm would
one day echo through all the world. With lofty consciousness of his new
dignity, and with lowly sense that it is God's gift, he emphatically
names himself _His_ king, _His_ anointed, taking, as it were, his crown
from his brows and laying it on the altar. With prophetic eye he looks
onward, and sees the throne to which he had been led by a series of
miracles enduring for ever, and the mercy of God sustaining the dominion
of his house through all generations:--
(49) "Therefore will I give thanks to Thee among the nations, O
Jehovah,
And to Thy name will I strike the harp:
(50) Who maketh great the deliverances of His king
And executeth mercy for His anointed,
For David and his seed for evermore."
And what were his purposes for the future? Here is his answer, in a
psalm which has been with considerable appropriateness regarded as a
kind of manifesto of the principles which he intended should
characterize his reign (Psa. ci.): "I will walk within my house with a
perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes." For
himself, he begins his reign with noble self-restraint, not meaning to
make it a region of indulgence, but feeling that there is a law above
his will, of which he is only the servant, and knowing that if his
people and his public life are to be what they should be, his own
personal and domestic life must be pure. As for his court and his
ministers, he will make a clean sweep of the vermin who swarm and sting
and buzz about a throne. The froward, the wicked, privy slanderers,
proud hearts, crafty plotters, liars, and evil-doers he will not
suffer--but "mine eyes shall be upon the faithful in the land; he that
walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me." He is fired with ambition,
such as has brightened the beginning of many a reign which has darkened
to cruelty and crime, to make his kingdom some faint image of God's, and
to bring the actual Israel into conformity with its ancient Magna
Charta, "Ye shall be to me a holy nation." And so, not knowing perhaps
how hard a task he planned, and little dreaming of his own sore fall, he
grasps the sword, resolved to use it for the terror of evil-doers, and
vows, "I will early destroy all the wicked in the land, that I may cut
off all wicked doers from the city of the Lord." Such was his
"proclamation against vice and immorality" on his accession to his
throne.
XI.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.
The years thus well begun are, in the historical books, characterized
mainly by three events, namely, the bringing up of the ark to the newly
won city of David, Nathan's prophecy of the perpetual dominion of his
house, and his victories over the surrounding nations. These three
hinges of the narrative are all abundantly illustrated in the psalms.
As to the first, we have relics of the joyful ceremonial connected with
it in two psalms, the fifteenth and twenty-fourth, which are singularly
alike not only in substance but in manner, both being thrown into a
highly dramatic form by question and answer. This peculiarity, as we
shall see, is one of the links of connection which unite them with the
history as given in the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. vi.). From that record we
learn that David's first thought after he was firmly seated as king over
all Israel, was the enthronement in his recently-captured city of the
long-forgotten ark. That venerable symbol of the presence of the true
King had passed through many vicissitudes since the days when it had
been carried round the walls of Jericho. Superstitiously borne into
battle, as if it were a mere magic palladium, by men whose hearts were
not right with God, the presence which they had invoked became their
ruin, and Israel was shattered, and "the ark of God taken," on the fatal
field of Aphek. It had been carried in triumph through Philistine
cities, and sent back in dismay. It had been welcomed with
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