The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 1
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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 1
Author: Alexander Maclaren
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE PSALMS, VOL. 1 ***
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
SIR W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Editor of "The Expositor," etc._
THE PSALMS
BY
A. MACLAREN, D.D.
_VOLUME 1._
PSALMS I.--XXXVIII.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
FIRST SERIES.
Colossians.
By the Rev. A. MACLAREN, D.D., D.Lit.
St. Mark.
By the Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
Genesis.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
1 Samuel.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
2 Samuel.
By the same Author.
Hebrews.
By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.
SECOND SERIES.
Galatians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A., D.D.
The Pastoral Epistles.
By the Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
By Prin. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. I.
The Book of Revelation.
By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
1 Corinthians.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
The Epistles of St. John.
By the Most Rev. the Archbishop of Armagh.
THIRD SERIES.
Judges and Ruth.
By the Rev. R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
Jeremiah.
By the Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
By Prin. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Vol. II.
St. Matthew.
By the Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
Exodus.
By the Right Rev. the Bishop of Derry.
St. Luke.
By the Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
FOURTH SERIES.
Ecclesiastes.
By the Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
St. James and St. Jude.
By the Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Proverbs.
By the Rev. R. F. HORTON, D.D.
Leviticus.
By the Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
FIFTH SERIES.
The Psalms.
By the Rev. A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
1 and 2 Thessalonians.
By Prof. JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
The Book of Job.
By the Rev. R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
Ephesians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A., D.D.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
SIXTH SERIES.
1 Kings.
By the Very Rev. F. W. FARRAR, F.R.S.
Philippians.
By Principal RAINY, D.D.
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Joshua.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
The Psalms.
By the Rev. A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
The Epistles of St. Peter.
By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
SEVENTH SERIES.
2 Kings.
By the Very Rev. F. W. FARRAR. F.R.S.
Romans.
By the Right Rev. H. C. G. MOULE, D.D.
The Books of Chronicles.
By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, D.D., D.Lit.
2 Corinthians.
By Prof. JAMES DENNEY, D.D.
Numbers.
By the Rev. R. A. WATSON, M.A., D.D.
The Psalms.
By the Rev. A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
EIGHTH SERIES.
Daniel.
By the Very Rev. F. W. FARRAR, F.R.S.
The Book of Jeremiah.
By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, D.D., D.Lit.
Deuteronomy.
By Prof. ANDREW HARPER, B.D.
The Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Ezekiel.
By Prof. JOHN SKINNER, M.A.
The Books of the Twelve Prophets.
By Prin. G. A. SMITH, D.D. Two Vols.
THE PSALMS
BY
A. MACLAREN, D.D.
_VOLUME 1._
PSALMS I.--XXXVIII.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
PREFACE.
A volume which appears in "The Expositor's Bible" should obviously,
first of all, be expository. I have tried to conform to that
requirement, and have therefore found it necessary to leave questions
of date and authorship all but untouched. They could not be adequately
discussed in conjunction with Exposition. I venture to think that the
deepest and most precious elements in the Psalms are very slightly
affected by the answers to these questions, and that expository
treatment of the bulk of the Psalter may be separated from critical,
without condemning the former to incompleteness. If I have erred in
thus restricting the scope of this volume, I have done so after due
consideration; and am not without hope that the restriction may
commend itself to some readers.
A. McL.
MANCHESTER, _Dec._ 1892.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PSALM I. 1
" II. 11
" III. 23
" IV. 30
" V. 37
" VI. 49
" VII. 57
" VIII. 68
" IX. 77
" X. 89
" XI. 101
" XII. 109
" XIII. 117
" XIV. 123
" XV. 132
" XVI. 140
" XVII. 150
" XVIII. 163
" XIX. 186
" XX. 195
" XXI. 201
" XXII. 208
" XXIII. 226
" XXIV. 233
" XXV. 240
" XXVI. 251
" XXVII. 258
" XXVIII. 268
" XXIX. 273
" XXX. 280
" XXXI. 289
" XXXII. 302
" XXXIII. 311
" XXXIV. 320
" XXXV. 332
" XXXVI. 344
" XXXVII. 356
" XXXVIII. 375
PSALM I.
1 Happy the man who has not walked in the counsel of the wicked,
And has not stood in the way of sinners,
And in the session of scorners has not sat.
2 But in the law of Jehovah [is] his delight,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
3 And he is like a tree planted by the runnels of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season,
And whose leafage does not fade,
And all which he does he prosperously accomplishes.
4 Not so are the wicked,
But like chaff which the wind drives away.
5 Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
6 For Jehovah knows the righteous,
And the way of the wicked shall perish.
The Psalter may be regarded as the heart's echo to the speech of God,
the manifold music of its wind-swept strings as God's breath sweeps
across them. Law and Prophecy are the two main elements of that speech,
and the first two psalms, as a double prelude to the book, answer to
these, the former setting forth the blessedness of loving and keeping
the law, and the latter celebrating the enthronement of Messiah. Jewish
tradition says that they were originally one, and a well-attested
reading of Acts xiii. 33 quotes "Thou art my Son" as part of "the first
Psalm." The diversity of subject makes original unity improbable, but
possibly our present first Psalm was prefixed, unnumbered.
Its theme, the blessedness of keeping the law, is enforced by the
juxtaposition of two sharply contrasted pictures, one in bright light,
another in deep shadow, and each heightening the other. Ebal and
Gerizim face one another.
The character and fate of the lover of the law are sketched in vv.
1-3, and that of the "wicked" in vv. 4-6.
"How abundantly is that word Blessed multiplied in the Book of Psalms!
The book seems to be made out of that word, and the foundation raised
upon that word, for it is the first word of the book. But in all the
book there is not one Woe" (Donne).
It is usually taken as an exclamation, but may equally well be a
simple affirmation, and declares a universal truth even more strongly,
if so regarded. The characteristics which thus bring blessedness are
first described negatively, and that order is significant. As long as
there is so much evil in the world, and society is what it is,
godliness must be largely negative, and its possessors "a people whose
laws are different from all people that be on earth." Live fish swim
against the stream; dead ones go with it.
The tender graces of the devout soul will not flourish unless there be
a wall of close-knit and unparticipating opposition round them, to
keep off nipping blasts. The negative clauses present a climax,
notwithstanding the unquestionable correctness of one of the grounds
on which that has been denied--namely, the practical equivalence of
"wicked" and "sinner."
Increasing closeness and permanence of association are obvious in the
progress from _walking_ to _standing_ and from standing to _sitting_.
Increasing boldness in evil is marked by the progress from _counsel_
to _way_, or course of life, and thence to _scoffing_. Evil purposes
come out in deeds, and deeds are formularised at last in bitter
speech. Some men scoff because they have already sinned. The tongue is
blackened and made sore by poison in the system. Therefore goodness
will avoid the smallest conformity with evil, as knowing that if the
hem of the dress or the tips of the hair be caught in the cruel
wheels, the whole body will be drawn in. But these negative
characteristics are valuable mainly for their efficacy in contributing
to the positive, as the wall round a young plantation is there for the
sake of what grows behind it. On the other hand, these positive
characteristics, and eminently that chief one of a higher love, are
the only basis for useful abstinence. Mere conventional, negative
virtue is of little power or worth unless it flow from a strong set of
the soul in another direction.
"So did not I" is good and noble when we can go on to say, as Nehemiah
did, "because of the fear of God." The true way of floating rubbish
out is to pour water in. Delight in the law will deliver from delight
in the counsel of the wicked. As the negative, so the positive begins
with the inward man. The main thing about all men is the direction of
their "delight." Where do tastes run? what pleases them most? and
where are they most at ease? Deeds will follow the current of desires,
and be right if the hidden man of the heart be right. To the psalmist,
that law was revealed by Pentateuch and prophets; but the delight in
it, in which he recognises the germ of godliness, is the coincidence
of will and inclination with the declared will of God, however
declared. In effect, he reduces perfection to the same elements as the
other psalmist who sang, "I delight to do Thy will, yea, Thy law is
within my heart." The secret of blessedness is self-renunciation,--
"A love to lose my will in His,
And by that loss be free."
Thoughts which are sweet will be familiar.
The command to Joshua is the instinct of the devout man. In the
distractions and activities of the busy day the law beloved will be
with him, illuminating his path and shaping his acts. In hours of rest
it will solace weariness and renew strength. That habit of patient,
protracted brooding on the revelation of God's will needs to be
cultivated. Men live meanly because they live so fast. Religion lacks
depth and volume because it is not fed by hidden springs.
The good man's character being thus all condensed into one trait, the
psalm next gathers his blessedness up in one image. The tree is an
eloquent figure to Orientals, who knew water as the one requisite to
turn desert into garden. Such a life as has been sketched will be
rooted and steadfast. "Planted" is expressed by a word which suggests
fixity. The good man's life is deeply anchored, and so rides out
storms. It goes down through superficial fleeting things to that
Eternal Will, and so stands unmoved and upright when winds howl.
Scotch firs lift massive, corrugated boles, and thrust out wide,
gnarled branches clothed in steadfast green, and look as if they could
face any tempest, but their roots run laterally among the surface
gravel, and therefore they go down before blasts which feeble
saplings, that strike theirs vertically, meet unharmed.
Such a life is fed and refreshed. The law of the Lord is at once soil
and stream. In the one aspect fastening a life to it gives stability;
in the other, freshening and means of growth. Truly loved, that Will
becomes, in its manifold expressions, as the divided irrigation
channels through which a great river is brought to the roots of each
plant. If men do not find it life-giving as rivers of water in a dry
place, it is because they do not delight in it. Opposed, it is
burdensome and harsh; accepted, this sweet image tells what it
becomes--the true good, the only thing that really nourishes and
reinvigorates. The disciples came back to Jesus, whom they had left
too wearied and faint to go with them to the city, and found Him fresh
and strong. Their wonder was answered by, "My meat is to do the will
of Him that sent me."
Such a life is vigorous and productive. It would be artificial
straining to assign definite meanings to "fruit" and "leaf." All that
belongs to vigorous vitality and beauty is included. These come
naturally when the preceding condition is fulfilled. This stage of the
psalm is the appropriate place for deeds to come into view. By loving
fellowship with God and delight in His law the man is made capable of
good. His virtues are growths, the outcome of life. The psalm
anticipates Christ's teaching of the good tree bringing forth good
fruit, and also tells how His precept of making the tree good is to be
obeyed--namely, by transplanting it from the soil of self-will to that
of delight in the law. How that transplanting is to be effected it
does not tell. "But now being made free from sin, and become servants
of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness," and the fruit of the Spirit
in "whatsoever things are lovely and of good report" hangs in clusters
on the life that has been shifted from the realm of darkness and
rooted in Christ. The relation is more intimate still. "I am the vine,
ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same
beareth much fruit."
Such a life will be prosperous. The figure is abandoned here. The
meaning is not affected whether we translate "whatsoever he doeth
shall prosper," or "whatsoever ... he shall cause to succeed." That is
not unconditionally true now, nor was it then, if referred to what the
world calls prospering, as many a sad and questioning strain in the
Psalter proves. He whose life is rooted in God will have his full
share of foiled plans and abortive hopes, and will often see the fruit
nipped by frost or blown green from the boughs, but still the promise
is true in its inmost meaning. For what is prosperity? Does the
psalmist merely mean to preach the more vulgar form of the doctrine
that religion makes the best of both worlds? or are his hopes to be
harmonised with experience, by giving a deeper meaning to
"prosperity"? They to whom the will of God is delight can never be
hurt by evil, for all that meets them expresses and serves that will,
and the fellow-servants of the King do not wound one another. If a
life be rooted in God and a heart delight in His law, that life will
be prosperous and that heart will be at rest.
The second half of the psalm gives the dark contrast of the fruitless,
rootless life (vv. 4-6). The Hebrew flashes the whole dread antithesis
on the view at once by its first word, "Not so," a universal negative,
which reverses every part of the preceding picture. "Wicked" is
preferable to "ungodly," as the designation of the subjects. Whether
we take the root idea of the word to be "restless," as most of the
older and many modern commentators do, or "crooked" (Hupfeld), or
"loose, flaccid" (Delitzsch), it is the opposite of "righteous," and
therefore means one who lives not by the law of God, but by his own
will. The psalmist has no need to describe him further nor to
enumerate his deeds. The fundamental trait of his character is enough.
Two classes only, then, are recognised here. If a man has not God's
uttered will for his governor, he goes into the category of "wicked."
That sounds harsh doctrine, and not corresponding to the innumerable
gradations of character actually seen. But it does correspond to
facts, if they are grasped in their roots of motive and principle. If
God be not the supreme delight, and His law sovereign, some other
object is men's delight and aim, and that departure from God taints a
life, however fair it may be. It is a plain deduction from our
relations to God that lives lived irrespective of Him are sinful,
whatever be their complexion otherwise.
The remainder of the psalm has three thoughts--the real nullity of such
lives, their consequent disappearance in "the judgment," and the ground
of both the blessedness of the one type of character and the vanishing
of the other in the diverse attitude of God to each. Nothing could more
vividly suggest the essential nothingness of the "wicked" than the
contrast of the leafy beauty of the fruit-laden tree and the chaff,
rootless, fruitless, lifeless, light, and therefore the sport of every
puff of wind that blows across the elevated and open threshing floor.
Such is indeed a true picture of every life not rooted in God and
drawing fertility from Him. It is rootless; for what hold-fast is there
but in Him? or where shall the heart twine its tendrils if not round
God's stable throne? or what basis do fleeting objects supply for him
who builds elsewhere than on the enduring Rock? It is fruitless; for
what is fruit? There may be much activity and many results satisfying to
part of man's nature and admired by others. One fruit there will be, in
character elaborated. But if we ask what ought to be the products of a
life, man and God being what they are in themselves and to each other,
we shall not wonder if every result of godless energy is regarded by
"those clear eyes and perfect judgment" of heaven as barrenness. In the
light of these higher demands, achievements hymned by the world's
acclamations seem infinitely small, and many a man, rich in the apparent
results of a busy and prosperous life, will find to his dismayed
astonishment that he has nothing to show but unfruitful works of
darkness. Chaff is fruitless because lifeless.
Its disappearance in the winnowing wind is the consequence and
manifestation of its essential nullity. "Therefore" draws the
conclusion of necessary transiency. Just as the winnower throws up his
shovel full into the breeze, and the chaff goes fluttering out of the
floor because it is light, while the wheat falls on the heap because
it is solid, so the wind of judgment will one day blow and deal with
each man according to his nature. It will separate them, whirling away
the one, and not the other. "One shall be taken and the other left."
When does this sifting take effect? The psalmist does not date it.
There is a continually operative law of retribution, and there are
crises of individual or national life, when the accumulated
consequences of evil deeds fall on the doers. But the definite article
prefixed to "judgment" seems to suggest some special "day" of
separation. It is noteworthy and perhaps illuminative that John the
Baptist uses the same figures of the tree and the chaff in his picture
of the Messianic judgments, and that epoch may have been in the
psalmist's mind. Whatever the date, this he is sure of--that the wind
will rise some time, and that, when it does, the wicked will be blown
out of sight. When the judgment comes, the "congregation of the
righteous"--that is, the true Israel within Israel, or, to speak in
Christian language, the true invisible Church--will be freed from
admixture of outward adherents, whose lives give the lie to their
profession. Men shall be associated according to spiritual affinity,
and "being let go," will "go to their own company" and "place,"
wherever that may be.
The ground of these diverse fates is the different attitude of God to
each life. Each clause of the last verse really involves two ideas,
but the pregnant brevity of style states only half of the antithesis
in each, suppressing the second member in the first clause and the
first member in the second clause, and so making the contrast the more
striking by emphasising the cause of an unspoken consequence in the
former, and the opposite consequence of an unspoken cause in the
latter. "The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous [therefore it shall
last]. The Lord knoweth not the way of the wicked [therefore it shall
perish]." The way which the Lord knows abides. "Know" is, of course,
here used in its full sense of loving knowledge, care, and approval,
as in "He knoweth my path" and the like sayings. The direction of the
good man's life is watched, guarded, approved, and blessed by God.
Therefore it will not fail to reach its goal. They who walk patiently
in the paths which He has prepared will find them paths of peace, and
will not tread them unaccompanied, nor ever see them diverging from
the straight road to home and rest. "Commit thy way unto the Lord,"
and let His way be thine, and He shall make thy way prosperous.
The way or course of life which God does not know perishes. A path
perishes when, like some dim forest track, it dies out, leaving the
traveller bewildered amid impenetrable forests, or when, like some
treacherous Alpine track among rotten rocks, it crumbles beneath the
tread. Every course of life but that of the man who delights in and
keeps the law of the Lord comes to a fatal end, and leads to the brink
of a precipice, over which the impetus of descent carries the
reluctant foot. "The path of the just is as the shining light, which
shineth more and more till the noontide of the day. The way of the
wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble."
PSALM II.
1 Why do the nations muster with tumult,
And the peoples meditate vanity?
2 The kings of the earth take up their posts,
And the chieftains sit in counsel together
Against Jehovah and against His Anointed.
3 "Let us wrench off their bands,
And let us fling off from us their cords."
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
The Lord mocks at them.
5 Then He speaks to them in His anger-wrath,
And in His wrath-heat puts them in panic.
6 ... "And yet I, I have set my King
Upon Zion, my holy mountain."
7 I will tell of a decree:
Jehovah said unto me, My son art thou;
I have begotten thee this day.
8 Ask from me and I will give thee the nations as thine inheritance,
And as thy possession the ends of the earth.
9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron,
Like a potter's vessel shalt thou shatter them.
10 And now, O kings, be wise;
Let yourselves be warned, O judges of the earth.
11 Serve Jehovah in fear,
And rejoice in trembling.
12 Kiss the Son (?), lest He be angry, and ye perish in [your] way;
For easily may His wrath kindle.
Blessed are all who take refuge in Him!
Various unsatisfactory conjectures as to a historical basis for this
magnificent lyric have been made, but none succeeds in specifying
events which fit with the situation painted in it. The banded enemies
are rebels, and the revolt is widespread; for the "kings of the earth"
is a very comprehensive, if we may not even say a universal,
expression. If taken in connection with the "uttermost parts of the
earth" (ver. 8), which are the King's rightful dominion, it implies a
sweep of authority and a breadth of opposition quite beyond any
recorded facts. Authorship and date must be left undetermined. The
psalm is anonymous, like Psalm i., and is thereby marked off from the
psalms which follow in Book I., and with one exception are ascribed to
David. Whether these two preludes to the Psalter were set in their
present place on the completion of the whole book, or were prefixed to
the smaller "Davidic" collection, cannot be settled. The date of
composition may have been much earlier than that of either the smaller
or the larger collection.
The true basis of the psalm is not some petty revolt of subject
tribes, even if such could be adduced, but Nathan's prophecy in 2 Sam.
vii., which sets forth the dignity and dominion of the King of Israel
as God's son and representative. The poet-prophet of our psalm may
have lived after many monarchs had borne the title, but failed to
realise the ideal there outlined, and the imperfect shadows may have
helped to lift his thoughts to the reality. His grand poem may be
called an idealising of the monarch of Israel, but it is an idealising
which expected realisation. The psalm is prophecy as well as poetry;
and whether it had contemporaneous persons and events as a
starting-point or not, its theme is a real person, fully possessing
the prerogatives and wielding the dominion which Nathan had declared
to be God's gift to the King of Israel.
The psalm falls into four strophes of three verses each, in the first
three of which the reader is made spectator and auditor of vividly
painted scenes, while in the last the psalmist exhorts the rebels to
return to allegiance.
In the first strophe (vv. 1-3) the conspiracy of banded rebels is set
before us with extraordinary force. The singer does not delay to tell
what he sees, but breaks into a question of astonished indignation as to
what _can_ be the cause of it all. Then, in a series of swift clauses,
of which the vivid movement cannot be preserved in a translation, he
lets us see what had so moved him. The masses of the "nations" are
hurrying tumultuously to the mustering-place; the "peoples" are
meditating revolt, which is smitingly stigmatised in anticipation as
"vanity." But it is no mere uprising of the common herd; "the kings of
the earth" take their stand as in battle-array, and the men of mark and
influence lay their heads together, pressing close to one another on the
divan as they plot. All classes and orders are united in revolt, and
hurry and eagerness mark their action and throb in the words. The rule
against which the revolt is directed is that of "Jehovah and His
Anointed." That is one rule, not two,--the dominion of Jehovah exercised
through the Messiah. The psalmist had grasped firmly the conception that
God's visible rule is wielded by Messiah, so that rebellion against one
is rebellion against both. Their "bands" are the same. Pure monotheist
as the psalmist was, he had the thought of a king so closely associated
with Jehovah, that he could name them in one breath as, in some sense,
sharers of the same throne and struck at by the same revolt. The
foundation of such a conception was given in the designation of the
Davidic monarch as God's vicegerent and representative, but its full
justification is the relation of the historic Christ to the Father whose
throne He shares in glory.
That eloquent "why" may include both the ideas of "for what reason?" and
"to what purpose?" Opposition to that King, whether by communities or
individuals, is unreasonable. Every rising of a human will against the
rule which it is blessedness to accept is absurd, and hopelessly
incapable of justification. The question, so understood, is unanswerable
by the rebels or by any one else. The one mystery of mysteries is that a
finite will should be able to lift itself against the Infinite Will, and
be willing to use its power. In the other aspect, the question, like
that pregnant "vanity," implies the failure of all rebellion. Plot and
strive, conspire and muster, as men may, all is vanity and striving of
wind. It is destined to break down from the beginning. It is as hopeless
as if the stars were to combine to abolish gravitation. That dominion
does not depend on man's acceptance of it, and he can no more throw it
off by opposition than he can fling a somersault into space and so get
away from earth. When we can vote ourselves out of submission to
physical law, we may plot or fight ourselves out of subjection to the
reign of Jehovah and of His Anointed.
All the self-will in the world does not alter the fact that the
authority of Christ is sovereign over human wills. We cannot get away
from it; but we can either lovingly embrace it, and then it is our
life, or we can set ourselves against it, like an obstinate ox
planting its feet and standing stock-still, and then the goad is
driven deep and draws blood.
The metaphor of bands and cords is taken from the fastenings of the
yoke on a draught bullock. One can scarcely miss the lovely contrast
of this truculent exhortation to rebellion with the gracious summons
"Take my yoke upon you and learn of me." The "bands" are already on
our necks in a very real sense, for we are all under Christ's
authority, and opposition is rebellion, not the effort to prevent a
yoke being imposed, but to shake off one already laid on. But yet the
consent of our own wills is called for, and thereby we take the yoke,
which is a stay rather than a fetter, and bear the burden which bears
up those who bear it.
Psalm i. set side by side in sharp contrast the godly and the godless.
Here a still more striking transition is made in the second strophe
(vv. 4-6), which changes the scene to heaven. The lower half of the
picture is all eager motion and strained effort; the upper is full of
Divine calm. Hot with hatred, flushed with defiant self-confidence and
busy with plots, the rebels hurry together like swarming ants on their
hillock. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh." That
representation of the seated God contrasts grandly with the stir on
earth. He needs not to rise from His throned tranquillity, but regards
undisturbed the disturbances of earth. The thought embodied is like
that expressed in the Egyptian statues of gods carved out of the side
of a mountain, "moulded in colossal calm," with their mighty hands
laid in their laps and their wide-opened eyes gazing down on the
little ways of the men creeping about their feet.
And what shall we say of that daring and awful image of the laughter
of God? The attribution of such action to Him is so bold that no
danger of misunderstanding it is possible. It sends us at once to look
for its translation, which probably lies in the thought of the
essential ludicrousness of opposition, which is discerned in heaven to
be so utterly groundless and hopeless as to be absurd. "When He came
nigh and beheld the city, He wept over it." The two pictures are not
incapable of being reconciled. The Christ who wept over sinners is the
fullest revelation of the heart of God, and the laughter of the psalm
is consistent with the tears of Jesus as He stood on Olivet, and
looked across the glen to the Temple glittering in the morning sun.
God's laughter passes into the utterance of His wrath at the time
determined by Him. The silence is broken by His voice, and the
motionless form flashes into action. One movement is enough to "vex"
the enemies and fling them into panic, as a flock of birds put to
flight by the lifting of an arm. There is a point, known to God alone,
when He perceives that the fulness of time has come, and the
opposition must be ended. By long-drawn-out, gentle patience He has
sought to win to obedience (though that side of His dealings is not
presented in this psalm), but the moment arrives when in world-wide
catastrophes or crushing blows on individuals sleeping retribution
wakes at the right moment, determined by considerations inappreciable
by us: "Then does He speak in His wrath."
The last verse of this strophe is parallel with the last of the
preceding, being, like it, the dramatically introduced speech of the
actor in the previous verses. The revolters' mutual encouragement is
directly answered by the sovereign word of God, which discloses the
reason for the futility of their attempts. The "I" of ver. 6 is
emphatic. On one side is that majestic "I have set my King"; on the
other a world of rebels. They may put their shoulders to the throne
of the Anointed to overthrow it; but what of that? God's hand holds it
firm, whatever forces press on it. All enmity of banded or of single
wills breaks against and is dashed by it into ineffectual spray.
Another speaker is next heard, the Anointed King, who, in the third
strophe (vv. 7-9), bears witness to Himself and claims universal
dominion as His by a Divine decree. "Thou art my son; to-day have I
begotten thee." So runs the first part of the decree. The allusion to
Nathan's words to David is clear. In them the prophet spoke of the
succession of David's descendants, the king as a collective person, so
to speak. The psalmist, knowing how incompletely any or all of these
had fulfilled the words which were the patent of their kingship,
repeats them in confident faith as certain to be accomplished in the
Messiah-king, who fills the future for him with a great light of hope.
He knew not the historic person in whom the word has to be fulfilled,
but it is difficult to resist the conclusion that he had before him
the prospect of a king living as a man, the heir of the promises. Now,
this idea of sonship, as belonging to the monarch, is much better
illustrated by the fact that Israel, the nation, was so named, than by
the boasts of Gentile dynasties to be sons of Zeus or Ra. The
relationship is moral and spiritual, involving Divine care and love
and appointment to office, and demanding human obedience and use of
dignity for God. It is to be observed that in our psalm the day of the
King's self-attestation is the day of His being "begotten." The point
of time referred to is not the beginning of personal existence, but of
investiture with royalty. With accurate insight, then, into the
meaning of the words, the New Testament takes them as fulfilled in
the Resurrection (Acts xiii. 33; Rom. i. 4). In it, as the first step
in the process which was completed in the Ascension, the manhood of
Jesus was lifted above the limitations and weaknesses of earth, and
began to rise to the throne. The day of His resurrection was, as it
were, the day of the birth of His humanity into royal glory.
Built upon this exaltation to royalty and sonship follows the promise
of universal dominion. Surely the expectation of "the uttermost parts
of the earth for a possession" bursts the bonds of the tiny Jewish
kingdom! The wildest national pride could scarcely have dreamed that
the narrow strip of seaboard, whose inhabitants never entered on any
wide schemes of conquest, should expand into a universal monarchy,
stretching even farther than the giant empires on either side. If such
were the psalmist's expectations, they were never even approximately
fulfilled; but the reference of the glowing words to Messiah's kingdom
is in accordance with the current of prophetic hopes, and need cause
no hesitation to those who believe in prophecy at all.
Universal dominion is God's gift to Messiah. Even while putting His
foot on the step of the throne, Jesus said, "All power is _given_ unto
me." This dominion is founded not on His essential divinity, but on
His suffering and sacrifice. His rule is the rule of God in Him, for
He is the highest form of the Divine self-revelation, and whoso
trusts, loves, and obeys Christ, trusts, loves, and obeys God in Him.
The psalmist did not know in how much more profound a sense than he
attached to his words they were true. They had an intelligible, great,
and true meaning for him. They have a greater for us.
The Divine voice foretells victory over opposition and destruction to
opposers. The sceptre is of iron, though the hand that holds it once
grasped the reed. The word rendered "break" may also be translated,
with a different set of vowels, "shepherd," and is so rendered by the
LXX. (which Rev. ii. 27, etc., follows) and by some other versions.
But, in view of the parallelism of the next clause, "break" is to be
preferred. The truth of Christ's destructive energy is too often
forgotten, and, when remembered, is too often thrown forward into
another world. The history of this world ever since the Resurrection
has been but a record of conquered antagonism to Him. The stone cut
out without hands has dashed against the images of clay and silver and
gold and broken them all. The Gospel of Christ is the great solvent of
institutions not based upon itself. Its work is
"To cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould."
Destructive work has still to be done, and its most terrible energy is
to be displayed in the future, when all opposition shall be withered
into nothingness by the brightness of His presence. There are two
kinds of breaking: a merciful one, when His love shatters our pride
and breaks into penitence the earthen vessels of our hearts; and a
terrible one, when the weight of His sceptre crushes, and His hand
casts down in shivers "vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction."
We have listened to three voices, and now, in vv. 10-12, the poet
speaks in solemn exhortation: "Be wise now, ye kings." The "now" is
argumentative, not temporal. It means "since things are so." The kings
addressed are the rebel monarchs whose power seems so puny measured
against that of "my King." But not only these are addressed, but all
possessors of power and influence. Open-eyed consideration of the
facts is true wisdom. The maddest thing a man can do is to shut his
eyes to them and steel his heart against their instruction. This
pleading invitation to calm reflection is the purpose of all the
preceding. To draw rebels to loyalty, which is life, is the meaning of
all appeals to terror. God and His prophet desire that the conviction
of the futility of rebellion with a poor "ten thousand" against "the
king of twenty thousands" should lead to "sending an embassage" to sue
for peace. The facts are before men, that they may be warned and wise.
The exhortation which follows in vv. 11, 12 points to the conduct which
will be dictated by wise reception of instruction. So far as regards
ver. 11 there is little difficulty. The exhortation to "serve Jehovah
with fear and rejoice with trembling" points to obedience founded on awe
of God's majesty,--the fear which love does not cast out, but perfect;
and to the gladness which blends with reverence, but is not darkened by
it. To love and cleave to God, to feel the silent awe of His greatness
and holiness giving dignity and solemnity to our gladness, and from this
inmost heaven of contemplation to come down to a life of practical
obedience--this is God's command and man's blessedness.
The close connection between Jehovah and Messiah in the preceding
sections, in each of which the dominion of the latter is treated as that
of the former and rebellion as against both at once, renders it
extremely improbable that there should be no reference to the King in
this closing hortatory strophe. The view-point of the psalm, if
consistently retained throughout, requires something equivalent to the
exhortation to "kiss the Son" in token of fealty, to follow, "serve
Jehovah." But the rendering "Son" is impossible. The word so translated
is _Bar_, which is the Aramaic for _son_, but is not found in that sense
in the Old Testament except in the Aramaic of Ezra and Daniel and in
Prov. xxxi. 2, a chapter which has in other respects a distinct Aramaic
tinge. No good reason appears for the supposition that the singer here
went out of his way to employ a foreign word instead of the usual _Ben_.
But it is probably impossible to make any good and certain rendering of
the existing text. The LXX. and Targum agree in rendering, "Take hold of
instruction," which probably implies another reading of Hebrew text.
None of the various proposed translations--_e.g._, _Worship purely,
Worship the chosen One_--are without objection; and, on the whole, the
supposition of textual corruption seems best. The conjectural
emendations of Grätz, _Hold fast by warning_, or reproof; Cheyne's
alternative ones, _Seek ye His face_ ("Book of Psalms," adopted from
Brüll) or _Put on [again] His bonds_ ("Orig. of Psalt.," p. 351, adopted
from Lagarde), and Hupfeld's (in his translation) _Cleave to Him_,
obliterate the reference to the King, which seems needful in this
section, as has been pointed out, and depart from the well-established
meaning of the verb--namely, "kiss." These two considerations seem to
require that a noun referring to Messiah, and grammatically object of
the verb, should stand in the place occupied by _Son_. The Messianic
reference of the psalm remains undimmed by the uncertainty of the
meaning of this clause.
The transition from the representative of Jehovah to Jehovah Himself,
which takes place in the next clause, is in accordance with the close
union between them which has marked the whole psalm. It is henceforth
Jehovah only who appears till the close. But the anger which is
destructive, and which may easily flash out like flames from a furnace
mouth, is excited by opposition to Messiah's kingdom, and the
exclusive mention of Jehovah in these closing clauses makes the
picture of the anger the more terrible.
But since the disclosure of the danger of perishing "in [or as to] the
way" or course of rebellious conduct is part of an exhortation, the
purpose of which is that the threatened flash of wrath may never need
to shoot forth, the psalmist will not close without setting forth the
blessed alternative. The sweet benediction of the close bends round to
the opening words of the companion psalm of prelude, and thus
identifies the man who delights in the law of Jehovah with him who
submits to the kingdom of God's Anointed. The expression "put their
trust" literally means to take refuge in. The act of trust cannot be
more beautifully or forcibly described than as the flight of the soul
to God. They who take shelter in God need fear no kindling anger. They
who yield to the King are they who take refuge in Jehovah; and such
never know aught of His kingdom but its blessings, nor experience any
flame of His wrath, but only the happy glow of His love.
PSALM III.
1 Jehovah, how many are my oppressors!
Many are rising against me.
2 Many are saying to my soul,
There is no salvation for him in God. Selah.
3 And yet Thou, Jehovah, art a shield round me;
My glory, and the lifter up of my head.
4 With my voice to Jehovah I cry aloud,
And He answers me from His holy mountain. Selah.
5 I laid myself down and slept;
I awaked; for Jehovah upholds me.
6 I am not afraid of ten thousands of people,
Who round about have set themselves against me.
7 Arise, Jehovah; save me, my God:
For Thou hast smitten all my enemies [on] the cheek-bone;
The teeth of the wicked Thou hast broken.
8 To Jehovah belongs salvation:
Upon Thy people be Thy blessing. Selah.
Another pair of psalms follows the two of the Introduction. They are
closely connected linguistically, structurally, and in subject. The one
is a morning, the other an evening hymn, and possibly they are placed at
the beginning of the earliest psalter for that reason. Ewald and Hitzig
accept the Davidic authorship, though the latter shifts the period in
David's life at which they were composed to the mutiny of his men at
Ziklag (1 Sam. xxx.). Cheyne thinks that "you will find no situation
which corresponds to these psalms," though you "search the story of
David's life from end to end." He takes the whole of the Psalms from
iii. to xvii., excepting viii., xv., xvi., as a group, "the heart
utterances of the Church amidst some bitter persecution"--namely, "the
period when faithful Israelites were so sorely oppressed both by
traitors in their midst and by Persian tyrants" ("Orig. of Psalt.," pp.
226, 227). But correspondences of the two psalms with David's situation
will strike many readers as being at least as close as that which is
sought to be established with the "spiritual kernel of the nation during
the Persian domination," and the absence of more specific reference is
surely not unnatural in devout song, however strange it would be in
prosaic narrative. We do not look for mention of the actual facts which
wring the poet's soul and were peculiar to him, but are content with his
expression of his religious emotions, which are common to all devout
souls. Who expects Cowper to describe his aberrations of intellect in
the "Olney Hymns"? But who cannot trace the connection of his pathetic
strains with his sad lot? If ever a seeming reference to facts is
pointed out in a so-called Davidic psalm, it is brushed aside as
"prosaic," but the absence of such is, notwithstanding, urged as an
argument against the authorship. Surely that is inconsistent.
This psalm falls into four strophes, three of which are marked by Selah.
In the first (vv. 1, 2) the psalmist recounts his enemies. If we regard
this as a morning psalm, it is touchingly true to experience that the
first waking thought should be the renewed inrush of the trouble which
sleep had for a time dammed back. His enemies are many, and they taunt
him as forsaken of God. Surely it is a strong thing to say that there is
no correspondence here with David's situation during Absalom's revolt.
It was no partial conspiracy, but practically the nation had risen
against him, "ut totidem fere haberet hostes quot subditos" (Calvin).
Shimei's foul tongue spoke the general mind: "The Lord hath delivered
the kingdom into the hand of Absalom" (2 Sam. xvi. 8). There had been
sin enough in the king's recent past to give colour to the
interpretation of his present calamity as the sign of his being
forsaken of God. The conviction that such was the fact would swell the
rebel ranks. The multitude has delight in helping to drown a sinking
man who has been prosperous. The taunt went deep, for the Hebrew has
"to my soul," as if the cruel scoff cut like a knife to the very
centre of his personality, and wounded all the more because it gave
utterance to his own fears. "The Lord hath bidden him," said David
about Shimei's curses. But the psalmist is finding refuge from fears
and foes even in telling how many there are, since he begins his
complaint with "Jehovah." Without that word the exclamations of this
first strophe are the voice of cowardice or despair. With it they are
calmed into the appeal of trust.
The Selah which parts the first from the second strophe is probably a
direction for an instrumental interlude while the singer pauses.
The second strophe (vv. 3, 4) is the utterance of faith, based on
experience, laying hold of Jehovah as defence. By an effort of will
the psalmist rises from the contemplation of surrounding enemies to
that of the encircling Jehovah. In the thickest of danger and dread
there is a power of choice left a man as to what shall be the object
of thought, whether the stormy sea or the outstretched hand of the
Christ. This harassed man flings himself out of the coil of troubles
round about him and looks up to God. He sees in Him precisely what he
needs most at the moment, for in that infinite nature is fulness
corresponding to all emptiness of ours. "A shield around me," as He
had promised to be to Abraham in his peril; "my glory," at a time when
calumny and shame were wrapping him about and his kingdom seemed gone;
"the lifter up of my head," sunk as it is both in sadness and
calamity, since Jehovah can both cheer his spirit and restore his
dignity. And how comes this sudden burst of confidence to lighten the
complaining soul? Ver. 4 tells. Experience has taught him that as
often as he cries to Jehovah he is heard. The tenses in ver. 4 express
a habitual act and a constant result. Not once or twice, but as his
wont, he prays, and Jehovah answers. The normal relation between him
and Jehovah is that of frank communion; and since it has long been so
and is so now, even the pressure of present disaster does not make
faith falter. It is hard to begin to trust when in the grip of
calamity, but feet accustomed to the road to God can find it in the
dark. There may be an allusion to David's absence from sanctuary and
ark in ver. 4. The expectation of being answered "from His holy hill"
gains in pathetic force when the lovely scene of submissive sacrifice
in which he sent back the Ark is recalled (2 Sam. xv. 25). Though he
be far from the place of prayer, and feeling the pain of absence, the
singer's faith is not so tied to form as to falter in the assurance
that his prayer is heard. Jehovah is shield, glory, and strengthener
to the man who cries to Him, and it is by means of such crying that
the heart wins the certitude that He is all these. Again the
instruments sound and the singer pauses.
The third strophe (vv. 5, 6) beautifully expresses the tranquil
courage which comes from trust. Since sleeping and safe waking again
in ordinary circumstances is no such striking proof of Divine help
that one in the psalmist's situation would be induced to think
especially of it and to found his confidence on it, the view is to be
taken that the psalmist in ver. 5 is contemplating the experience
which he has just made in his present situation. "Surrounded by
enemies, he was quite safe under God's protection and exposed to no
peril even in the night" (Riehm, in Hupfeld _in loc._). Surely
correspondence with David's circumstances may be traced here. His
little band had no fortress in Mahanaim, and Ahithophel's counsel to
attack them by night was so natural that the possibility must have
been present to the king. But another night had come and gone in
safety, disturbed by no shout of an enemy. The nocturnal danger had
passed, and day was again brightening.
They were safe because the Keeper of Israel had kept them. It is
difficult to fit this verse into the theory that here the persecuted
Israelitish Church is speaking, but it suits the situation pointed to
in the superscription. To lie down and sleep in such circumstances was
itself an act of faith, and a sign of the quiet heart which faith
gives. Like Christ on the hard wooden "pillow" during the storm, or
like Peter sleeping an infant's sleep the night before his purposed
execution, this man can shut his eyes and quiet himself to slumber,
though "ten thousands have set themselves against him." They ring him
round, but cannot reach him through his shield. Ver. 6 rises to bold
defiance, the result of the experience in ver. 5. How different the
tone of reference to the swarms of the enemy here and in ver. 1! There
the psalmist was counting them and cowering before them; here their
very number is an element in his triumphant confidence. Courage comes
from thinking of the one Divine Ally, before whom myriads of enemies
are nothing. One man with God to back him is always in the majority.
Such courage, based on such experience and faith, is most modest and
reasonable, but it is not won without an effort of will, which refuses
to fear, and fixes a trustful gaze not on peril, but on the protector.
"I will not be afraid" speaks of resolve and of temptations to fear,
which it repels, and from "the nettle danger plucks the flower"
_trust_ and the fruit _safety_. Selah does not follow here. The tone
of the strophe is that of lowly confidence, which is less congruous
with an instrumental interlude than are the more agitated preceding
strophes. The last strophe, too, is closely connected with the third,
since faith bracing itself against fear glides naturally into prayer.
The final strophe (vv. 7, 8) gives the culmination of faith in prayer.
"Arise, Jehovah," is quoted from the ancient invocation (Num. x. 35),
and expresses in strongly anthropomorphic form the desire for some
interposition of Divine power. Fearlessness is not so complete that
the psalmist is beyond the need of praying. He is courageous because
he knows that God will help, but he knows, too, that God's help
depends on his prayer. The courage which does not pray is foolish, and
will break down into panic; that which fears enough to cry "Arise,
Jehovah," will be vindicated by victory. This prayer is built on
experience, as the preceding confidence was. The enemies are now,
according to a very frequent figure in the Psalter, compared to wild
beasts. Smiting on the cheek is usually a symbol of insult, but here
is better taken in close connection with the following "breaking the
teeth." By a daring image Jehovah is represented as dealing the beasts
of prey, who prowl round the psalmist with open mouth, the buffets
which shatter their jaws and dislodge their teeth, thus making them
powerless to harm him. So it has been in the past, and that past is a
plea that so it will be now. God will be but doing as He has done, if
now He "arise." If He is to be true to Himself, and not to stultify
His past deliverances, He must save his suppliant now. Such is the
logic of faith, which is only valid on the supposition that God's
resources and purpose are inexhaustible and unchangeable. The whole
ends with confident anticipation of an answer. "Salvation belongeth
unto Jehovah." The full spiritual meaning of that salvation was not
yet developed. Literally, the word means "breadth," and so, by a
metaphor common to many languages, deliverance as an act, and
well-being or prosperity as a state. Deliverance from his enemies is
the psalmist's main idea in the word here. It "belongs to Jehovah,"
since its bestowal is His act. Thus the psalmist's last utterance of
trust traverses the scoff which wounded him so much (ver. 2), but in a
form which beautifully combines affiance and humility, since it
triumphantly asserts that salvation is in God's power, and silently
implies that what is thus God's "to will and do" shall certainly be
His suppliant's to enjoy.
Intensely personal as the psalm is, it is the prayer of a king; and
rebels as the bulk of the people are ("ten thousands of the people"),
they are still God's. Therefore all are included in the scope of his
pitying prayer. In other psalms evil is invoked on evil-doers, but
here hate is met by love, and the self-absorption of sorrow
counteracted by wide sympathy. It is a lower exemplification of the
same spirit which breathed from the lips of the greater King the
prayer, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
PSALM IV.
1 When I cry answer me, O God of my righteousness; Thou hast in
straits made space for me:
Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.
2 Sons of men! how long shall my glory be mocked, [in that] ye love
vanity,
[And] seek after a lie? Selah.
3 But know that Jehovah has set apart as His own him whom He
favours:
Jehovah hears when I cry to Him.
4 Stand in awe, and sin not:
Speak in your hearts on your beds, and be silent. Selah.
5 Sacrifice sacrifices of righteousness,
And trust on Jehovah.
6 Many are saying, Who will let us see good?
Lift Thou upon us the light of Thy face, O Jehovah.
7 Thou hast given gladness in my heart,
More than in the time of their corn and their wine [when] they
abound.
8 In peace will I lie down and at once sleep:
For Thou, Jehovah, in [my] loneliness, makest me dwell in safety.
Psalms iii. and iv. are a pair. They are similar in expression (_my
glory, there be many which say, I laid me down and slept_), in the
psalmist's situation, and in structure (as indicated by the _Selahs_).
But they need not be cotemporaneous, nor need the superscription of
Psalm iii. be extended to Psalm iv. Their tone is different, the
fourth having little reference to the personal danger so acutely felt
in Psalm iii., and being mainly a gentle, earnest remonstrance with
antagonists, seeking to win them to a better mind. The strophical
division into four parts of two verses each, as marked by the Selahs,
is imperfectly carried out, as in Psalm iii., and does not correspond
with the logical division--a phenomenon which occurs not infrequently
in the Psalter, as in all poetry, where the surging thought or emotion
overleaps its bounds. Dividing according to the form, we have four
strophes, of which the first two are marked by Selah; dividing by the
flow of thought, we have three parts of unequal length--prayer (ver.
1), remonstrance (vv. 2-5), communion and prayer (vv. 6-8).
The cry for an answer by deed is based on the name and on the past
acts of God. Grammatically, it would be possible and regular to render
"my God of righteousness," _i.e._, "my righteous God"; but the pronoun
is best attached to "righteousness" only, as the consideration that
God is righteous is less relevant than that He is the source of the
psalmist's righteousness. Since He is so, He may be expected to
vindicate it by answering prayer by deliverance. He who feels that all
good in himself comes from God may be quite sure that, sooner or
later, and by some means or other, God will witness to His own work.
To the psalmist nothing was so incredible as that God should not take
care of what He had planted, or let the springing crop be trodden down
or rooted up. The Old Testament takes prosperity as the Divine
attestation of righteousness; and though they who worship the Man of
Sorrows have new light thrown on the meaning of that conception, the
substance of it remains true for ever. The compellation "God of my
righteousness" is still mighty with God. The second ground of the
prayer is laid in the past deeds of God. Whether the clause "Thou hast
in straits made space for me" be taken relatively or not, it appeals
to former deliverances as reasons for man's prayer and for God's act.
In many languages trouble and deliverance are symbolised by narrowness
and breadth. Compression is oppression. Closely hemmed in by crowds or
by frowning rocks, freedom of movement is impossible and breathing is
difficult. But out in the open, one expatiates, and a clear horizon
means an ample sky.
The strophe division keeps together the prayer and the beginning of
the remonstrance to opponents, and does so in order to emphasise the
eloquent, sharp juxtaposition of God and the "sons of men." The phrase
is usually employed to mean persons of position, but here the contrast
between the varying height of men's molehills is not so much in view
as that between them all and the loftiness of God. The lips which by
prayer have been purged and cured of quivering can speak to foes
without being much abashed by their dignity or their hatred. But the
very slight reference to the psalmist's own share in the hostility of
these "sons of men" is noticeable. It is their false relation to God
which is prominent throughout the remonstrance; and that being so, "my
glory," in ver. 2, is probably to be taken, as in iii. 3, as a
designation of God. It is usually understood to mean either personal
or official dignity, but the suggested interpretation is more in
keeping with the tone of the psalm. The enemies were really flouting
God and turning that great name in which the singer gloried into a
jest. They were not therefore idolaters, but practical heathen in
Israel, and their "vanity" and "lies" were their schemes doomed to
fail and their blasphemies. These two verses bring most vividly into
view the contrast between the psalmist clinging to his helping God and
the knot of opponents hatching their plans which are sure to fail.
The Selah indicates a pause in the song, as if to underscore the
question "How long?" and let it soak into the hearts of the foes, and
then, in vv. 3 and 4, the remonstrating voice presses on them the
great truth which has sprung anew in the singer's soul in answer to
his prayer, and beseeches them to let it stay their course and still
their tumult. By "the godly" is meant, of course the psalmist. He is
sure that he belongs to God and is set apart, so that no real evil can
touch him; but does he build this confidence on his own character or
on Jehovah's grace? The answer depends on the meaning of the pregnant
word rendered "godly," which here occurs for the first time in the
Psalter. So far as its form is concerned, it may be either active, one
who shows _chesed_ (lovingkindness or favour), or passive, one to whom
it is shown. But the usage in the Psalter seems to decide in favour of
the passive meaning, which is also more in accordance with the general
biblical view, which traces all man's hopes and blessings, not to his
attitude to God, but to God's to him, and regards man's love to God as
a derivative, "Amati amamus, amantes amplius meremur amari" (Bern).
Out of His own deep heart of love Jehovah has poured His
lovingkindness on the psalmist, as he thrillingly feels, and He will
take care that His treasure is not lost; therefore this conviction,
which has flamed up anew since the moment before when he prayed,
brings with it the assurance that He "hears when I cry," as he had
just asked Him to do. The slight emendation, adopted by Cheyne from
Grätz and others, is tempting, but unnecessary. He would read, with a
small change which would bring this verse into parallelism with xxxi.
22, "See how passing great lovingkindness Jehovah hath shown me"; but
the present text is preferable, inasmuch as what we should expect to
be urged upon the enemies is not outward facts, but some truth of
faith neglected by them. On such a truth the singer rests his own
confidence; such a truth he lays, like a cold hand, on the hot brows
of the plotters, and bids them pause and ponder. Believed, it would
fill them with awe, and set in a lurid light the sinfulness of their
assault on him. Clearly the rendering "Be ye angry" instead of "Stand
in awe" gives a less worthy meaning, and mars the picture of the
progressive conversion of the enemy into a devout worshipper, of which
the first stage is the recognition of the truth in ver. 3; the second
is the awestruck dropping of the weapons, and the third is the silent
reflection in the calm and solitude of night. The psalm being an
evening song, the reference to "your bed" is the more natural; but
"speak in your hearts"--what? The new fact which you have learned from
my lips. Say it quietly to yourselves then, when forgotten truths
blaze on the waking eye, like phosphorescent writing in the dark, and
the nobler self makes its voice heard. "Speak ... and be silent," says
the psalmist, for such meditation will end the busy plots against him,
and in a wider application "that dread voice," heard in the awed
spirit, "shrinks the streams" of passion and earthly desires, which
otherwise brawl and roar there. Another strain of the "stringed
instruments" makes that silence, as it were, audible, and then the
remonstrance goes on once more.
It rises higher now, exhorting to positive godliness, and that in the
two forms of offering "sacrifices of righteousness," which here simply
means those which are prescribed or which are offered with right
dispositions, and of trusting in Jehovah--the two aspects of true
religion, which outwardly is worship and inwardly is trust. The poet
who could meet hate with no weapon but these earnest pleadings had
learned a better lesson than "the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
the love of love," and anticipated "bless them which curse you." The
teacher who thus outlined the stages of the way back to God as
recognition of His relation to the godly, solitary meditation thereon,
forsaking of sin and hushing of the Spirit thereby, and finally
worship and trust, knew the discipline for rebellious souls.
Ver. 6 seems at first sight to belong more closely to what follows
than to what precedes, and is taken by those who hold the Davidic
authorship as addressed to his followers beginning to despond. But it
may be the continuance of the address to the enemies, carrying on the
exhortation to trust. The sudden appearance of the plural "us"
suggests that the psalmist associates himself with the persons whom he
has been addressing, and, while he glances at the vain cries of the
"many," would make himself the mouthpiece of the nascent faith which
he hopes may follow his beseechings. The cry of _the many_ would, in
that case, have a general reference to the universal desire for
"good," and would pathetically echo the hopelessness which must needs
mingle with it, so long as the heart does not know who is the only
good. The passionate weariness of the question, holding a negation in
itself, is wonderfully contrasted with the calm prayer. The eyes fail
for want of seeing the yearned-for blessing; but if Jehovah lifts the
light of His face upon us, as He will certainly do in answer to
prayer, "in His light we shall see light." Every good, however
various, is sphered in Him. All colours are smelted into the perfect
white and glory of His face.
There is no Selah after ver. 6, but, as in iii. 6, one is due, though
omitted.
Vv. 7 and 8 are separated from ver. 6 by their purely personal
reference. The psalmist returns to the tone of his prayer in ver. 1,
only that petition has given place, as it should do, to possession and
confident thankfulness. The many ask, Who?; he prays, "Lord." They have
vague desires after God; he knows what he needs and wants. Therefore in
the brightness of that Face shining on him his heart is glad. The mirth
of harvest and vintage is exuberant, but it is poor beside the deep,
still blessedness which trickles round the heart that craves most the
light of Jehovah's countenance. That craving is joy and the fruition is
bliss. The psalmist here touches the bottom, the foundation fact on
which every life that is not vanity must be based, and which verifies
itself in every life that is so based. Strange and tragic that men
should forget it and love vanity which mocks them, and, though won,
still leaves them looking wearily round the horizon for any glimmer of
good! The glad heart possessing Jehovah can, on the other hand, lay
itself down in peace and sleep, though foes stand round. The last words
of the psalm flow restfully like a lullaby. The expression of confidence
gains much if "alone" be taken as referring to the psalmist. Solitary as
he is, ringed round by hostility as he may be, Jehovah's presence makes
him safe, and being thus safe, he is secure and confidant. So he shuts
his eyes in peace, though he may be lying in the open, beneath the
stars, without defences or sentries. The Face brings light in darkness,
gladness in want, enlargement in straits, safety in peril, and any and
every good that any and every man needs.
PSALM V.
1 Give ear to my words, Jehovah;
Consider my meditation.
2 Listen to the voice of my crying, my King and my God,
For to Thee do I make supplication.
3 Jehovah, in the morning Thou shalt hear my voice;
In the morning will I order my [prayer] to Thee and keep watch.
4 For not a God delighting in wickedness art Thou;
Evil cannot sojourn with Thee.
5 Fools cannot stand before Thine eyes;
Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.
6 Thou destroyest the speakers of falsehood;
The man of blood and deceit Jehovah loathes.
7 But I, in the multitude of Thy loving-kindness I dare come into
Thy house;
I dare fall prostrate before Thy holy temple in Thy fear.
8 Jehovah, lead me in Thy righteousness, because of them that are
spies on me;
Make Thy way level before me.
9 For in his mouth is nothing trustworthy;
Their inward part is destruction;
An open grave is their throat;
Their tongue they smooth.
10 Hold them guilty, Jehovah: let them fall by their own schemes;
In the multitude of their transgressions strike them down, for
they have rebelled against Thee.
11 Then shall all those who take refuge in Thee be glad;
For ever shall they shout for joy, since Thou dost shelter them;
And they that love Thy name shall exult in Thee.
12 For Thou dost bless the righteous;
Jehovah, as with a shield, with favour dost Thou compass him
about.
The reference to the temple in ver. 7 is not conclusive against the
Davidic authorship of this psalm, since the same word is applied in 1
Sam. i. 9 and iii. 3 to the house of God in Shiloh. It means a
palace, and may well be used for any structure, even if a hair tent,
in which God dwelt. No doubt it is oftenest used for the Solomonic
temple, but it does not necessarily refer to it. Its use here, then,
cannot be urged as fatal to the correctness of the superscription. At
the same time, it does create a certain presumption against it. But
there is nothing in the psalm to determine its date, and its worth is
quite independent of its authorship. The psalmist is surrounded by
foes, and seeks access to God. These are constant features of the
religious life, and their expression here fits as closely to the
present time as to any past.
The psalm falls into two main parts: vv. 1-7 and 8-12. The former
division deals with the inner side of the devout life, its access to
God, to whom sinful men cannot approach, the latter with the outward
side, the conduct, "the way" in which the psalmist seeks to be led, and
in which sinful men come to ruin because they will not walk. Naturally
the inward comes first, for communion with God in the secret place of
the Most High must precede all walking in His way and all blessed
experience of His protection, with the joy that springs from it. These
two halves of the psalm are arranged in inverted parallelism, the first
verse of the second part (ver. 8) corresponding to the last verse of the
first (ver. 7) and being, like it, purely personal; vv. 9 and 10
corresponding similarly to vv. 4-6 and, like them, painting the
character and fate of evil-doers; and, finally, vv. 11, 12, answering to
vv. 1-3 and representing the blessedness of the devout soul, as in the
one case led and protected by God and therefore glad, and in the other
abiding in His presence. The whole is a prayerful meditation on the
inexhaustible theme of the contrasted blessedness of the righteous and
misery of the sinner as shown in the two great halves of life: the
inward of communion and the outward of action.
In the first part (vv. 1-7) the central thought is that of access to
God's presence, as the desire and purpose of the psalmist (1-3), as
barred to evil-doers (4-6), and as permitted to, and embraced as his
chief blessing by, the singer (7). The petition to be heard in vv. 1
and 2 passes into confidence that he is heard in ver. 3. There is no
shade of sadness nor trace of struggle with doubt in this prayer,
which is all sunny and fresh, like the morning sky, through which it
ascends to God. "Consider [or Understand] my meditation"--the
brooding, silent thought is spread before God, who knows unspoken
desires, and "understands thoughts afar off." The contrast between
"understanding the meditation" and "hearkening to the voice of my cry"
is scarcely unintentional, and gives vividness to the picture of the
musing psalmist, in whom, as he muses, the fire burns, and he speaks
with his tongue, in a "cry" as loud as the silence from which it
issued had been deep. Meditations that do not pass into cries and
cries which are not preceded by meditations are alike imperfect. The
invocation "my King" is full of meaning if the singer be David, who
thus recognises the delegated character of his own royalty; but
whoever wrote the psalm, that expression equally witnesses to his firm
grasp of the true theocratic idea.
Noteworthy is the intensely personal tone of the invocation in both
its clauses, as in the whole of these first verses, in every clause of
which "my" or "I" occurs. The poet is alone with God and seeking to
clasp still closer the guiding hand, to draw still nearer to the
sweet and awful presence where is rest. The invocation holds a plea in
itself. He who says, "My King and my God," urges the relation, brought
about by God's love and accepted by man's faith, as a ground for the
hearing of his petition. And so prayer passes into swift assurance;
and with a new turn in thought, marked by the repetition of the name
"Jehovah" (ver. 3), he speaks his confidence and his resolve. "In the
morning" is best taken literally, whether we suppose the psalm to have
been composed for a morning song or no. Apparently the compilers of
the first Psalter placed it next to Psalm iv., which they regarded as
an evening hymn, for this reason. "I will lay me down and sleep" is
beautifully followed by "In the morning shalt Thou hear my voice." The
order of clauses in ver. 3 is significant in its apparent breach of
strict sequence, by which God's hearing is made to precede the
psalmist's praying. It is the order dictated by confidence, and it is
the order in which the thoughts rise in the trustful heart. He who is
sure that God will hear will therefore address himself to speak. First
comes the confidence, and then the resolve. There are prayers wrung
from men by sore need, and in which doubt causes faltering, but the
happier, serener experience is like that of this singer. He resolves
to "order" his prayer, using there the word employed for the priest's
work in preparing the materials for the morning sacrifice. Thus he
compares his prayer to it, and stands at the same level as the writer
of Psalm iv., with whose command to "offer the sacrifices of
righteousness" this thought again presents a parallel.
A psalmist who has grasped the idea that the true sacrifice is prayer is
not likely to have missed the cognate thought that the "house of the
Lord," of which he will presently speak, is something other than any
material shrine. But to offer the sacrifice is not all which he rejoices
to resolve. He will "keep watch," as Habakkuk said that he would do, on
his watch-tower; and that can only mean that he will be on the outlook
for the answer to his prayer, or, if we may retain the allusion to
sacrifice, for the downward flash of the Divine fire, which tells his
prayer's acceptance. Many a prayer is offered, and no eyes afterwards
turned to heaven to watch for the answer, and perhaps some answers sent
are like water spilled on the ground, for want of such observance.
The confidence and resolve ground themselves on God's holiness,
through which the necessary condition of approach to Him comes to be
purity--a conviction which finds expression in all religions, but is
nowhere so vividly conceived or construed as demanding such stainless
inward whiteness as in the Psalter. The "for" of ver. 4 would
naturally have heralded a statement of the psalmist's grounds for
expecting that he would be welcomed in his approach, but the turn of
thought, which postpones that, and first regards God's holiness as
shutting out the impure, is profoundly significant. "Thou art not a
God that hath pleasure in wickedness" means more than the simple "Thou
hast not pleasure" would do; it argues from the character of God, and
glances at some of the foul deities whose nostrils snuff up sensual
impurity as acceptable sacrifice. The one idea of absolute contrariety
between God and evil is put in a rich variety of shapes in vv. 4-6,
which first deal with it negatively in three clauses (_not a God_;
_not dwell_; _not stand in Thy sight_) and then positively in other
three (_hatest_; _shalt destroy_; _abhorreth_). "Evil shall not
sojourn with Thee." The verb is to be taken in its full meaning of
sojourning as a guest-friend, who has the right to hospitality and
defence. It thus constitutes the antithesis to ver. 7. Clearly the
sojourning does not mean access to the temple, but abiding with God.
The barriers are of the same nature as the communion which they
hinder, and something far deeper is meant than outward access to any
visible shrine. No one sojourned in the temple. In like manner, the
"standing in Thy sight" is a figure drawn from courts, reminding us of
"my King" in ver. 2 and suggesting the impossibility of evil or its
doers approaching the Divine throne.
But there is more than a negative side to the relation between God and
evil, which the psalm goes on to paint in sombre colours, for God not
only does not delight in sin, but hates it with a hatred like the
physical loathing of some disgusting thing, and will gather all His
alienation into one fatal lightning bolt. Such thoughts do not exhaust
the truth as to the Divine relation to sin. They did not exhaust the
psalmist's knowledge of that relation, and still less do they exhaust
ours, but they are parts of the truth to-day as much as then, and
nothing in Christ's revelation has antiquated them.
The psalmist's vocabulary is full of synonyms for sin, which witness to
the profound consciousness of it which law and ritual had evoked in
devout hearts. First, he speaks of it in the abstract, as "wickedness"
and "evil." Then he passes to individuals, of whom he singles out two
pairs, the first a more comprehensive and the second a more specific
designation. The former pair are "the foolish" and "workers of
iniquity." The word for "foolish" is usually translated by the moderns
"arrogant," but the parallelism with the general expression "workers of
iniquity" rather favours a less special meaning, such as Hupfeld's
"fools" or the LXX.'s "transgressors." Only in the last pair are special
forms of evil mentioned, and the two selected are significant of the
psalmist's own experience. _Liars_ and _men of blood and craft_ are his
instances of the sort of sinners most abominable to God. That
specification surely witnesses to his own sufferings from such.
In ver. 7 the psalmist comes back to the personal reference,
contrasting his own access to God with the separation of evil-doers
from His presence. But he does not assert that he has the right of
entrance because he is pure. Very strikingly he finds the ground of
his right of entry to the palace in God's "multitude of mercy," not in
his own innocence. Answering to "in Thy righteousness" is "in Thy
fear." The one phrase expresses God's disposition to man which makes
access possible, the other man's disposition to God which makes
worship acceptable. "In the multitude of Thy mercy" and "in Thy fear,"
taken together, set forth the conditions of approach. Having regard to
ver. 4, it seems impossible to restrict the meaning of "Thy house" to
the material sanctuary. It is rather a symbol of communion,
protection, and friendship. Does the meaning pass into the narrower
sense of outward worship in the material "temple" in the second
clause? It may be fairly taken as doing so (Hupfeld). But it may be
maintained that the whole verse refers to the spiritual realities of
prayer and fellowship, and not at all to the externalities of worship,
which are used as symbols, just as in ver. 3 prayer is symbolised by
the morning sacrifice. But probably it is better to suppose that the
psalmist's faith, though not tied to form, was fed by form, and that
symbol and reality, the outward and the inward worship, the access to
the temple and the approach of the silent soul to God, are fused in
his psalm as they tended to be in his experience. Thus the first part
of the psalm ends with the psalmist prostrate (for so the word for
"worship" means) before the palace sanctuary of his King and God. It
has thus far taught the conditions of approach to God, and given a
concrete embodiment of them in the progress of the singer's thoughts
from petition to assurance and from resolve to accomplishment.
The second part may be taken as his prayer when in the temple, whether
that be the outward sanctuary or no. It is likewise a further carrying
out of the contrast of the condition of the wicked and of the lovers
of God, expressed in terms applying to outward life rather than to
worship. It falls into three parts: the personal prayer for guidance
in life, the contemplation of evil-doers, and the vehement prayer for
their destruction, corresponding to vv. 4-6, and the contrasted prayer
for the righteous, among whom he implies his own inclusion.
The whole of the devout man's desires for himself are summed up in
that prayer for guidance. All which the soul needs is included in
these two: access to God in the depths of still prostration before His
throne as the all-sufficient good for the inner life; guidance, as by
a shepherd, on a plain path, chosen not by self-will but by God, for
the outward. He who has received the former in any degree will in the
same measure have the latter. To dwell in God's house is to desire His
guidance as the chief good. "In Thy righteousness" is capable of two
meanings: it may either designate the path by which the psalmist
desired to be led, or the Divine attribute to which he appealed. The
latter meaning, which is substantially equivalent to "because Thou art
righteous," is made more probable by the other instances in the psalm
of a similar use of "in" (_in the multitude of Thy mercy_; _in Thy
fear_; _in the multitude of their transgressions_). His righteousness
is manifested in leading those who seek for His guidance (compare
Psalm xxv. 8; xxxi. 1, etc.). Then comes the only trace in the psalm
of the presence of enemies, because of whom the singer prays for
guidance. It is not so much that he fears falling into their hands as
that he dreads lest, if left to himself, he may take some step which
will give them occasion for malicious joy in his fall or his calamity.
Wherever a man is earnestly God-fearing, many eyes watch him, and
gleam with base delight if they see him stumble. The psalmist, whether
David or another, had that cross to carry, like every thorough-going
adherent of the religious ideal (or of any lofty ideal, for that
matter); and his prayer shows how heavy it was, since thoughts of it
mingled with even his longings for righteousness. "Plain" does not
mean _obvious_, but _level_, and may possibly include both freedom
from stumbling-blocks ("Lead us not into temptation") and from
calamities, but the prevalent tone of the psalm points rather to the
former. He who knows his own weaknesses may legitimately shrink from
snares and occasions to fall, even though, knowing the wisdom of his
Guide and the help that waits on his steps, he may "count it all joy"
when he encounters them.
The picture of the evil-doers in ver. 9 is introduced, as in ver. 4,
with a "for." The sinners here are evidently the _enemies_ of the
previous verse. Their sins are those of speech; and the force of the
rapid clauses of the picture betrays how recently and sorely the
psalmist had smarted from lies, flatteries, slanders, and all the rest
of the weapons of smooth and bitter tongues. He complains that there
is no faithfulness or steadfastness in "his mouth"--a distributive
singular, which immediately passes into the plural--nothing there that
a man can rely on, but all treacherous. "Their inward part is
destruction." The other rendering, "engulfing ruin" or "a yawning
gulf," is picturesque; but _destruction_ is more commonly the meaning
of the word and yields a vigorous sense here. They plot inwardly the
ruin of the men whom they flatter. The figure is bold. Down to this
pit of destruction is a way like an open sepulchre, the throat
expanded in the act of speech; and the falsely smoothed tongue is like
a slippery approach to the descent (so Jennings and Lowe). Such
figures strike Western minds as violent, but are natural to the East.
The shuddering sense of the deadly power of words is a marked
characteristic of the Psalter. Nothing stirs psalmists to deeper
indignation than "God's great gift of speech abused," and this
generation would be all the better for relearning the lesson.
The psalmist is "in the sanctuary," and there "understands their end,"
and breaks into prayer which is also prophecy. The vindication of such
prayers for the destruction of evil-doers is that they are not the
expressions of personal enmity ("They have rebelled against Thee"),
and that they correspond to one side of the Divine character and acts,
which was prominent in the Old Testament epoch of revelation, and is
not superseded by the New. But they do belong to that lower level; and
to hesitate to admit their imperfection from the Christian point of
view is to neglect the plain teaching of our Lord, who built His law
of the kingdom on the declared relative imperfection of the ethics of
the Old. Terrible indeed are the prayers here. _Hold them
guilty_--that is, probably, treat them as such by punishing; _let them
fall_; _thrust them out_--from Thy presence, if they have ventured
thither, or out into the darkness of death. Let us be thankful that we
dare not pray such prayers, but let us not forget that for the
psalmist not to have prayed them would have indicated, not that he had
anticipated the tenderness of the Gospel, but that he had failed to
learn the lesson of the law and was basely tolerant of baseness.
But we come into the sunshine again at the close, and hear the
contrasted prayer, which thrills with gladness and hope. "When the
wicked perish there is shouting." The servants of God, relieved from
the incubus and beholding the fall of evil, lift up their praises. The
order in which the designations of these servants occur is very
noteworthy. It is surely not accidental that we have them first
described as "those that trust in Thee," then as "all them that love
Thy name," and finally as "the righteous." What is this sequence but
an anticipation of the evangelical order? The root of all is trust,
then love, then righteousness. Love follows trust. "We have known and
believed the love which God hath to us." Righteousness follows trust
and love, inasmuch as by faith the new life enters the heart and
inasmuch as love supplies the great motive for keeping the
commandments. So root, stem, and flower are here, wrapped up, as it
were, in a seed, which unfolds into full growth in the New Testament.
The literal meaning of the word rendered "put their trust" is "flee as
to a refuge," and that beautifully expresses the very essence of the
act of faith; while the same metaphor is carried on in "defendest,"
which literally means _coverest_. The fugitive who shelters in God is
covered by the shadow of His wing. Faith, love, and righteousness are
the conditions of the purest joy. Trust is joy; love is joy; obedience
to a loved law is joy. And round him who thus, in his deepest self,
dwells in God's house and in his daily life walks, with these angels
for his companions, on God's path, which by choice he has made his
own, there is ever cast the broad buckler of God's favour. He is safe
from all evil on whom God looks with love, and he on whom God so looks
is he whose heart dwells in God's house and whose feet "travel on
life's common way in cheerful godliness."
PSALM VI.
1 Jehovah, not in Thine anger do Thou correct me,
And not in Thy hot wrath do Thou chastise me.
2 Be gracious to me, Jehovah, for I am withered away;
Heal me, Jehovah, for my bones are dismayed:
3 And my soul is sorely dismayed;
And Thou, Jehovah--how long?
4 Return, Jehovah, deliver my soul;
Save me for the sake of Thy loving-kindness.
5 For in death there is no remembrance of Thee;
In Sheol who gives thee thanks?
6 I am wearied out with my groaning;
Every night I make my bed swim;
With my tears I melt away my couch.
7 My eye is wasted with trouble;
It is aged because of all my oppressors.
8 Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity,
For Jehovah has heard the voice of my weeping.
9 Jehovah has heard my supplication;
Jehovah will accept my prayer.
10 Ashamed and sore dismayed shall be all my enemies;
They shall turn back, shall be ashamed in a moment.
The theme and progress of thought in this psalm are very common,
especially in those attributed to David. A soul compassed by enemies,
whose hate has all but sapped the life out of it, "catches at God's
skirts and prays," and thence wins confidence which anticipates
deliverance and victory. There are numerous variations of this
_leitmotif_, and each of the psalms which embody it has its own beauty,
its own discords resolved into its own harmonies. The representation of
the trouble of spirit as producing wasting of the body is also frequent,
and is apparently not to be taken as metaphor, though not to be pressed,
as if the psalmist were at once struck with the two calamities of
hostility and disease, but the latter is simply the result of the
former, and will disappear with it. It is needless to look for a
historical occasion of the psalm, but to an ear that knows the tones of
sorrow, or to a heart that has itself uttered them, the supposition that
in these pathetic cries we hear only a representative Israelite
bewailing the national ruin sounds singularly artificial. If ever the
throb of personal anguish found tears and a voice, it does so in this
psalm. Whoever wrote it wrote with his blood. There are in it no obvious
references to events in the recorded life of David, and hence the
ascription of it to him must rest on something else than the
interpretation of the psalm. The very absence of such allusions is a
fact to be dealt with by those who deny the accuracy of the attribution
of authorship. But, however that question may be settled, the worth of
this little plaintive cry depends on quite other considerations than the
discovery of the name of the singer or the nature of his sorrow. It is a
transcript of a perennial experience, a guide for a road which all feet
have to travel. Its stream runs turbid and broken at first, but calms
and clears as it flows. It has four curves or windings, which can
scarcely be called strophes without making too artificial a framework
for such a simple and spontaneous gush of feeling. Still the transitions
are clear enough.
In vv. 1-3 we have a cluster of sharp, short cries to God for help,
which all mean the same thing. In each of these the great name of
Jehovah is repeated, and in each the plea urged is simply the sore
need of the suppliant. These are no "vain repetitions," which are
pressed out of a soul by the grip of the rack; and it is not "taking
the name of the Lord in vain" when four times in three short verses
the passionate cry for help is winged with it as the arrow with its
feather. Two thoughts fill the psalmist's consciousness, or rather one
thought--the Lord--and one feeling--his pains. In ver. 1 the Hebrew
makes "in Thine anger" and "in Thine hot wrath" emphatic by setting
these two phrases between the negative and the verb: "Not in Thine
anger rebuke me; not in Thy heat chasten me." He is willing to submit
to both rebuke and chastisement; but he shrinks appalled from that
form of either which tends to destruction, not to betterment. There
are chastisements in tenderness, which express God's love, and there
are others which manifest His alienation and wrath. This psalmist did
not think that all Divine retribution was intended for reformation. To
him there was such a thing as wrath which slew. Jeremiah has the same
distinction (x. 24), and the parallel has been made an argument for
the later date of the psalm. Cheyne and others assume that Jeremiah is
the original, but that is simple conjecture, and the prophet's
conspicuous fondness for quotations from older authors makes the
supposition more probable that the psalm is the earlier. Resignation
and shrinking blend in that cry, in which a heart conscious of evil
confesses as well as implores, recognises the justice and yet
deprecates the utmost severity of the blow. He who asks, "Not in Thine
anger rebuke me," thereby submits to _loving_ chastisement.
Then follow in vv. 2 and 3 three short petitions, which are as much
cries of pain as prayers, and as much prayers as cries of pain. In the
two former the prayer is put first, and its plea second; in the last
the order is reversed, and so the whole is, as it were, enclosed in a
circlet of prayer. Two words make the petition in each clause, "Have
mercy on me, Jehovah" (tastelessly corrected by Grätz into "Revive
me"), and "Heal me, Jehovah." The third petition is daring and
pregnant in its incompleteness. In that emphatic "And Thou, Jehovah,"
the psalmist looks up, with almost reproach in his gaze, to the
infinite Personality which seems so unaccountably passive. The hours
that bring pain are leaden-footed, and their moments each seem an
eternity. The most patient sufferer may cry, "How long?" and God will
not mistake the voice of pain for that of impatience. This threefold
prayer, with its triple invocation, has a triple plea, which is all
substantially one. His misery fills the psalmist's soul, and he
believes that God will feel for him. He does not at first appeal to
God's revealed character, except in so far as the plaintive
reiteration of the Divine name carries such an appeal, but he spreads
out his own wretchedness, and he who does that has faith in God's
pity. "I am withered away," like a faded flower. "My bones are
vexed";--the physical effects of his calamity, "bones" being put for
the whole body, and regarded as the seat of sensibility, as is
frequently the usage. "Vexed" is too weak a rendering. The idea is
that of the utmost consternation. Not only the body, but the soul,
partakes in the dismay. The "soul" is even more shaken than the
"bones"; that is to say, mental agitation rather than physical disease
(and the latter as the result of the former) troubles the psalmist. We
can scarcely fail to remember the added sanctity which these
plaintive words have received, since they were used by the Prince of
sufferers when all but in sight of the cross.
The next turn of thought includes vv. 4, 5, and is remarkable for the
new pleas on which it rests the triple prayer, "Return; deliver;
save." God is His own motive, and His self-revelation in act must
always be self-consistent. Therefore the plea is presented, "for Thy
loving-kindness' sake." It beseeches Him to be what He is, and to show
Himself as still being what He had always been. The second plea is
striking both in its view of the condition of the dead and in its use
of that view as an argument with God. Like many other psalmists, the
writer thinks of Sheol as the common gathering-place of the departed,
a dim region where they live a poor shadowy life, inactive, joyless,
and all but godless, inasmuch as praise, service, and fellowship with
Him have ceased.
That view is equally compatible with the belief in a resurrection and
the denial of it, for it assumes continued individual consciousness.
It is the prevailing tone in the Psalter and in Job and Ecclesiastes.
But in some psalms, which embody the highest rapture of inward and
mystical devotion, the sense of present union with God bears up the
psalmist into the sunlight of the assurance that against such a union
death can have no power, and we see the hope of immortality in the
very act of dawning on the devout soul. May we not say that the
subjective experience of the reality of communion with God now is
still the path by which the certainty of its perpetuity in a future
life is reached? The objective proof in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ is verified by this experience. The psalmists had not the
former, but, having the latter, they attained to at all events
occasional confidence in a blessed life beyond. But the tone of such
triumphant glimpses as xvi. 10, xvii. 15, xlix. 15, lxxiii. 24, is of
a higher mood than that of this and other psalms, which probably
represent the usual view of devout Hebrews.
The fact, as it appeared to those at the then stage of revelation,
that remembrance and praise of God were impossible in Sheol, is urged
as a plea. That implies the psalmist's belief that God cared for men's
praise--a thought which may be so put as to make Him an almighty
Selfishness, but which in its true aspect is the direct inference from
the faith that He is infinite Love. It is the same sweet thought of
Him which Browning has when he makes God say, "I miss my little human
praise." God's joy in men's praise is joy in men's love and in their
recognition of His love.
The third turn of feeling is in vv. 6 and 7. The sense of his own
pains which, in the two previous parts of the psalm, had been
contending with the thought of God, masters the psalmist in these
dreary verses, in which the absence of the name of God is noteworthy
as expressive of his absorption in brooding over his misery. The
vehemence of the manifestations of sorrow and the frankness of the
record of these manifestations in the song are characteristic of the
emotional, demonstrative Eastern temperament, and strike our more
reticent dispositions as excessive. But however expressed in
unfamiliar terms, the emotion which wails in these sad verses is only
too familiar to men of all temperaments. All sad hearts are tempted to
shut out God and to look only at their griefs. There is a strange
pleasure in turning round the knife in the wound and recounting the
tokens of misery. This man feels some ease in telling how he had
exhausted his strength with groaning and worn away the sleepless
night with weeping. Night is ever the nurse of heavy thought, and
stings burn again then. The hyperbolical expressions that he had set
his bed afloat with his tears and "melted" it (as the word means) are
matched by the other hyperboles which follow, describing the effect of
this unmeasured weeping on his eyes. He had wept them away, and they
were bleared and dim like those of an old man. The cause of this
passion of weeping is next expressed, in plain words, which connect
this turn of the thought with the next verses, and seem to explain the
previously mentioned physical pains as either metaphorical or
consequent on the hostility of "mine adversaries."
But even while thus his spirit is bitterly burying itself in his
sorrows the sudden certainty of the answer to his prayer flashes on
him. "Sometimes a light surprises," as Cowper, who too well knew what
it was to be worn with groaning, has sung. That swift conviction
witnesses its origin in a Divine inspiration by its very suddenness.
Nothing has changed in circumstances, but everything has changed in
aspect. Wonder and exultation throb in the threefold assurance that
the prayer is heard. In the two former clauses the "hearing" is
regarded as a present act; in the latter the "receiving" is looked for
in the future. The process, which is usually treated as one simple
act, is here analysed. "God has heard; therefore God will
receive"--_i.e._, answer--"my weeping prayer." Whence came that
confidence but from the breath of God on the troubled spirit? "The
peace of God" is ever the reward of submissive prayer. In this
confidence a man can front the close-knit ring of enemies, of whatever
sort they be, and bid them back. Their triumphant dismissal is a
vivid way of expressing the certainty of their departure, with their
murderous hate unslaked and baulked. "Mine enemies" are "workers of
iniquity." That is a daring assumption, made still more remarkable by
the previous confession that the psalmist's sorrow was God's rebuke
and chastening. But a man has the right to believe that his cause is
God's in the measure in which he makes God's cause his. In the
confidence of prayer heard, the psalmist can see "things that are not
as though they were," and, though no change has passed on the
beleaguering hosts, triumphs in their sure rout and retreat. Very
significantly does he predict in ver. 10 the same fate for them which
he had bewailed as his own. The "dismay" which had afflicted his soul
shall pass to them ("sore vexed"). Since God "returns" (ver. 4), the
enemy will have to "return" in baffled abandonment of their plans, and
be "ashamed" at the failure of their cruel hopes. And all this will
come as suddenly as the glad conviction had started up in the troubled
heart of the singer. His outward life shall be as swiftly rescued as
his inward has been. One gleam of God's presence in his soul had lit
its darkness, and turned tears into sparkling homes of the rainbow;
one flash of that same presence in his outward life shall scatter all
his foes with like swiftness.
PSALM VII.
1 Jehovah, my God, in Thee I take refuge;
Save me from all my pursuers, and deliver me,
2 Lest like a lion he tear my soul, breaking it while there is no
deliverer.
3 Jehovah, my God, if I have done this,
If there is iniquity in my hands,
4 If I have repaid evil to him who was at peace with me--
Nay, I have delivered him that was my enemy causelessly--
5 May the enemy chase my soul and overtake it, and trample my life
to the ground!
And may he lay my honour in the dust! Selah.
6 Arise, Jehovah, in Thine anger;
Lift up Thyself against the ragings of my adversaries,
And awake for me: judgment Thou hast appointed.
7 And let a gathering of peoples stand round Thee,
And above it sit Thou on high.
8 Jehovah will judge the peoples;
Do me right, Jehovah, according to my righteousness and according
to my innocence [that is] upon me.
9 Let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and establish Thou the
righteous,
For a Trier of hearts and reins is God the righteous.
10 My shield is upon God,
The Saviour of the upright-hearted.
11 God is a righteous Judge,
And a God who is angry every day.
12 If [a man] turn not, He will sharpen His sword;
His bow He has bent, and made it ready.
13 And at him He has aimed deadly weapons;
His arrows He will kindle into flaming darts.
14 See! he is in labour with wickedness;
Yea, he is pregnant with mischief, and gives birth to a lie.
15 A pit has he sunk, and dug it out;
And he will fall into the hole he is making.
16 His mischief shall come back on his own head,
And upon his own skull shall his violence come down.
17 I will thank Jehovah according to His righteousness,
And sing with the harp to the name of Jehovah most high.
This is the only psalm with the title "Shiggaion." The word occurs
only here and in Hab. iii. 1, where it stands in the plural, and with
the preposition "upon," as if it designated instruments. The meaning
is unknown, and commentators, who do not like to say so, have much ado
to find one. The root is a verb, "to wander," and the explanation is
common that the word describes the disconnected character of the
psalm, which is full of swiftly succeeding emotions rather than of
sequent thoughts. But there is no such exceptional discontinuity as to
explain the title. It may refer to the character of the musical
accompaniment rather than to that of the words. The authorities are
all at sea, the LXX. shirking the difficulty by rendering "psalm,"
others giving "error" or "ignorance," with allusion to David's
repentance after cutting off Saul's skirt or to Saul's repentance of
his persecuting David. The later Jewish writers quoted by Neubauer
("Studia Biblic.," ii. 36, _sq._) guess at most various meanings, such
as "love and pleasure," "occupation with music," "affliction,"
"humility," while others, again, explain it as the name of a musical
instrument. Clearly the antiquity of the title is proved by this
unintelligibility. If we turn to the other part of it, we find further
evidence of age and of independence. Who was "Cush, a Benjamite"? He
is not mentioned elsewhere. The author of the title, then, had access
to some sources for David's life other than the Biblical records; and,
as Hupfeld acknowledges, we have here evidence of ancient ascription
of authorship which "has more weight than most of the others." Cush
has been supposed to be Shimei or Saul himself, and to have been so
called because of his swarthy complexion (Cush meaning an African) or
as a jest, because of his personal beauty. Cheyne, following Krochmal,
would correct into "because of [Mordecai] the son of Kish, a
Benjamite," and finds in this entirely conjectural and violent
emendation an "attestation that the psalm was very early regarded as a
work of the Persian age" ("Orig. of Psalt.," p. 229). But there is
really no reason of weight for denying the Davidic authorship, as
Ewald, Hitzig, Hupfeld, and Riehm allow; and there is much in 1 Sam.
xxiv.-xxvi. correspondent with the situation and emotions of the
psalmist here, such as, _e.g._, the protestations of innocence, the
calumnies launched at him, and the call on God to judge. The tone of
the psalm is high and courageous, in remarkable contrast to the
depression of spirit in the former psalm, up out of which the singer
had to pray himself. Here, on the contrary, he fronts the enemy,
lion-like though he be, without a quiver. It is the courage of
innocence and of trust. Psalm vi. wailed like some soft flute; Psalm
vii. peals like the trumpet of judgment, and there is triumph in the
note. The whole may be divided into three parts, of which the close of
the first is marked by the Selah at the end of ver. 5; and the second
includes vv. 6-10. Thus we have the appeal of innocence for help (vv.
1-5), the cry for more than help--namely, definite judgment (vv.
6-10)--and the vision of judgment (vv. 11-17).
The first section has two main thoughts: the cry for help and the
protestation of innocence. It is in accordance with the bold
triumphant tone of the psalm that its first words are a profession of
faith in Jehovah. It is well to look _to_ God before looking _at_
dangers and foes. He who begins with trust can go on to think of the
fiercest antagonism without dismay. Many of the psalms ascribed to
David begin thus, but it is no mere stereotyped formula. Each
represents a new act of faith, in the presence of a new danger. The
word for "put trust" here is very illuminative and graphic, meaning
properly the act of fleeing to a refuge. It is sometimes blended with
the image of a sheltering rock, sometimes with the still tenderer one
of a mother-bird, as when Ruth "came to trust under the wings of
Jehovah," and in many other places. The very essence of the act of
faith is better expressed by that metaphor than by much subtle
exposition. Its blessedness as bringing security and warm shelter and
tenderness more than maternal is wrapped up in the sweet and
instructive figure. The many enemies are, as it were, embodied in one,
on whom the psalmist concentrates his thoughts as the most formidable
and fierce. The metaphor of the lion is common in the psalms
attributed to David, and is, at all events, natural in the mouth of a
shepherd king, who had taken a lion by the beard. He is quite aware of
his peril, if God does not help him, but he is so sure of his safety,
since he trusts, that he can contemplate the enemy's power unmoved,
like a man standing within arm's length of the lion's open jaws, but
with a strong grating between. This is the blessing of true faith, not
the oblivion of dangers, but the calm fronting of them because our
refuge is in God.
Indignant repelling of slander follows the first burst of triumphant
trust (vv. 3-5). Apparently "the words of Cush" were calumnies
poisoning Saul's suspicious nature, such as David refers to in 1 Sam.
xxiv. 9: "Wherefore hearkenest thou to men's words, saying, Behold,
David seeketh thy hurt?" The emphatic and enigmatic _This_ in ver. 3
is unintelligible, unless it refers to some slander freshly coined,
the base malice of which stirs its object into flashing anger and
vehement self-vindication. The special point of the falsehood is plain
from the repudiation. He had been charged with attempting to injure
one who was at peace with him. That is exactly what "men's words"
charged on David, "saying, Behold, David seeketh thy hurt" (1 Samuel,
as above). "If there be iniquity in my hands" is very like "See that
there is neither evil nor transgression in mine hand, and I have not
sinned against thee"; "Thou huntest after my soul to take it" (1
Samuel) is also like our ver. 1: "them that pursue me," and ver. 5:
"let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it." The specific form of
this protestation of innocence finds no explanation in the now
favourite view of the sufferer in the psalm as being the righteous
nation. The clause which is usually treated as a parenthesis in ver.
4, and translated, as in the R.V., "I have delivered him that without
cause was mine adversary," is needlessly taken by Delitzsch and others
as a continuation of the hypothetical clauses, and rendered, with a
change in the meaning of the verb, "And if I have despoiled him,"
etc.; but it is better taken as above and referred to the incident in
the cave when David spared Saul's life. What meaning would that clause
have with the national reference? The metaphor of a wild beast in
chase of its prey colours the vehement declaration in ver. 5 of
readiness to suffer if guilty. We see the swift pursuit, the victim
overtaken and trampled to death. There may also be an echo of the
Song of Miriam (Exod. xv. 9): "The enemy said, I will pursue; I will
overtake." To "lay my glory in the dust" is equivalent to "bring down
my soul to the dust of death." Man's glory is his "soul." Thus, nobly
throbbing with conscious innocence and fronting unmerited hate, the
rush of words stops, to let the musical accompaniment blare on, for a
while, as if defiant and confident.
The second section of the psalm (vv. 6-10) is a cry for the coming of
the Divine Judge. The previous prayer was content with deliverance,
but this takes a bolder flight, and asks for the manifestation of the
punitive activity of God on the enemies, who, as usually, are
identified with "evil-doers." The grand metaphors in "Arise," "Lift up
Thyself," "Awake," mean substantially the same thing. The long periods
during which evil works and flaunts with impunity are the times when
God sits as if passive and, in a figure still more daring, as if
asleep. When His destructive power flashed into act, and some
long-tolerated iniquity was smitten at a blow, the Hebrew singers saw
therein God springing to His feet or awaking to judgment. Such long
stretches of patient permission of evil and of swift punishment are
repeated through the ages, and individual lives have them in
miniature. The great judgments of nations and the small ones of single
men embody the same principles, just as the tiniest crystal has the
same angles and lines of cleavage as the greatest of its kind. So this
psalmist has penetrated to a true discernment of the relations of the
small and the great, when he links his own vindication by the judicial
act of God with the pomp and splendour of a world-wide judgment, and
bases his prayer for the former on the Divine purpose to effect the
latter. The sequence, "The Lord ministereth judgment to the
peoples"--therefore--"judge me, O Lord," does not imply that the "me"
is the nation, but simply indicates as the ground of the individual
hope of a vindicating judgment the Divine fact, of which history had
given him ample proof and faith gave him still fuller evidence, that
God, though He sometimes seemed to sleep, did indeed judge the
nations. The prerogative of the poet, and still more, the instinct of
the inspired spirit, is to see the law of the greatest exemplified in
the small and to bring every triviality of personal life into contact
with God and His government. The somewhat harsh construction of the
last clause of ver. 6 begins the transition from the prayer for the
smaller to the assurance of the greater judgment which is its basis,
and similarly the first clause of ver. 8 closes the picture of that
wider act, and the next clause returns to the prayer. This picture,
thus embedded in the heart of the supplication, is majestic in its few
broad strokes. First comes the appointment of judgment, then the
assembling of the "peoples," which here may, perhaps, have the
narrower meaning of the "tribes," since "congregation" is the word
used for them in their national assembly, and would scarcely be
employed for the collection of Gentile nations. But whether the
concourse be all Israel or all nations, they are gathered in silent
expectance as in a great judgment-hall. Then enters the Judge. If we
retain the usual reading and rendering of ver. 7 _b_, the act of
judgment is passed over in silence, and the poet beholds God, the
judgment finished, soaring above the awe-struck multitudes, in
triumphant return to the repose of His heavenly throne. But the slight
emendation of the text, needed to yield the meaning "Sit Thou above
it," is worthy of consideration. In either case, the picture closes
with the repeated assurance of the Divine judgment of the peoples, and
(ver. 8) the prayer begins again. The emphatic assertion of innocence
must be taken in connection with the slanders already repudiated. The
matter in hand is the evils charged on the psalmist, for which he was
being chased as if by lions, the judgment craved is the chastisement
of his persecutors, and the innocence professed is simply the
innocence which they calumniated. The words have no bearing at all on
the psalmist's general relation to the Divine law, nor is there any
need to have recourse to the hypothesis that the speaker is the
"righteous nation." It is much more difficult to vindicate a member of
that remnant from the charge of overestimating the extent and quality
of even the righteous nation's obedience, if he meant to allege, as
that interpretation would make him do, that the nation was pure in
life and heart, than it is to vindicate the single psalmist vehemently
protesting his innocence of the charges for which he was hunted.
Cheyne confesses (Commentary _in loc._) that the "psalmist's view may
seem too rose-coloured," which is another way of acknowledging that
the interpretation of the protestation as the voice of the nation is
at variance with the facts of its condition.
The accents require ver. 9 _a_ to be rendered "Let wickedness make an
end of the wicked," but that introduces an irrelevant thought of the
suicidal nature of evil. It may be significant that the psalmist's
prayer is not for the destruction of the wicked, but of their
wickedness. Such annihilation of evil is the great end of God's
judgment, and its consequence will be the establishment of the
righteous. Again the prayer strengthens itself by the thought of God
as righteous and as trying the hearts and reins (the seat of feeling).
In the presence of rampant and all but triumphant evil, a man needs to
feed hopes of its overthrow that would else seem vainest dreams, by
gazing on the righteousness and searching power of God. Very
beautifully does the order of the words in ver. 9 suggest the kindred
of the good man with God by closing each division of the verse with
"righteous." A righteous man has a claim on a righteous God. Most
naturally then the prayer ends with the calm confidence of ver. 10:
"My shield is upon God." He Himself bears the defence of the psalmist.
This confidence he has won by his prayer, and in it he ceases to be a
suppliant and becomes a seer.
The last section (ver. 11 to end) is a vision of the judgment prayed
for, and may be supposed to be addressed to the enemy. If so, the
hunted man towers above them, and becomes a rebuker. The character of
God underlies the fact of judgment, as it had encouraged the prayer
for it. What he had said to himself when his hope drooped, he now, as
a prophet, peals out to men as making retribution sure: "God is a
righteous Judge, yea a God that hath indignation every day." The
absence of an object specified for the indignation makes its
inevitable flow wherever there is evil the more vividly certain. If He
is such, then of course follows the destruction of every one who
"turns not." Retribution is set forth with solemn vigour under four
figures. First, God is as an armed enemy sharpening His sword in
preparation for action, a work of time which in the Hebrew is
represented as in process, and bending His bow, which is the work of a
moment, and in the Hebrew is represented as a completed act. Another
second, and the arrow will whizz. Not only is the bow bent, but (ver.
11) the deadly arrows are aimed, and not only aimed, but continuously
fed with flame. The Hebrew puts "At him" (the wicked) emphatically at
the beginning of the verse, and uses the form of the verb which
implies completed action for the "aiming" and that which implies
incomplete for "making" the arrows burn. So the stern picture is drawn
of God as in the moment before the outburst of His punitive
energy--the sword sharpened, the bow bent, the arrows fitted, the
burning stuff being smeared on their tips. What will happen when all
this preparation blazes into action?
The next figure in ver. 14 insists on the automatic action of evil in
bringing punishment. It is the Old Testament version of "Sin when it
is finished bringeth forth death." The evil-doer is boldly represented
as "travailing with iniquity," and that metaphor is broken up into the
two parts "He hath conceived mischief" and "He hath brought forth
falsehood." The "falsehood," which is the thing actually produced, is
so called, not because it deceives others, but because it mocks its
producer with false hopes and never fulfils his purposes. This is but
the highly metaphorical way of saying that a sinner never does what he
means to do, but that the end of all his plans is disappointment. The
law of the universe condemns him to feed on ashes and to make and
trust in lies.
A third figure brings out more fully the idea implied in "falsehood,"
namely, the failure of evil to accomplish its doer's purpose. Crafty
attempts to trap others have an ugly habit of snaring their contriver.
The irony of fortune tumbles the hunter into the pitfall dug by him for
his prey. The fourth figure (ver. 16) represents the incidence of his
evil on the evil-doer as being certain as the fall of a stone thrown
straight up, which will infallibly come back in the line of its ascent.
Retribution is as sure as gravitation, especially if there is an Unseen
Hand above, which adds impetus and direction to the falling weight. All
these metaphors, dealing with the "natural" consequences of evil, are
adduced as guarantees of _God's_ judgment, whence it is clear both that
the psalmist is thinking not of some final future judgment, but of the
continuous one of daily providence, and that he made no sharp line of
demarcation between the supernatural and the natural. The qualities of
things and the play of natural events are God's working.
So the end of all is thanksgiving. A stern but not selfish nor
unworthy thankfulness follows judgment, with praise which is not
inconsistent with tears of pity, even as the act of judgment which
calls it forth is not inconsistent with Divine love. The vindication
of God's righteousness is worthily hymned by the choral thanksgivings
of all who love righteousness. By judgment Jehovah makes Himself known
as "most high," supreme over all creatures; and hence the music of
thanksgiving celebrates Him under that name. The title "Elyon" here
employed is regarded by Cheyne and others as a sign of late date, but
the use of it seems rather a matter of poetic style than of
chronology. Melchizedek, Balaam, and the king of Babylon (Isa. xiv.
14) use it; it occurs in Daniel, but, with these exceptions, is
confined to poetical passages, and cannot be made out to be a mark of
late date, except by assuming the point in question--namely, the late
date of the poetry, principally nineteen psalms, in which it occurs.
PSALM VIII.
1 Jehovah, our Lord,
How glorious is Thy name in all the earth!
Who hast set Thy glory upon the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of children and sucklings hast Thou founded a
strength,
Because of Thine adversaries,
To still the enemy and the revengeful.
3 When I gaze on Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
Moon and stars, which Thou hast established,
4 What is frail man, that Thou rememberest him,
And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
5 For Thou didst let him fall but little short of God,
And crownedst him with glory and honour.
6 Thou madest him ruler over the works of Thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet,
7 Sheep and oxen, all of them,
And likewise beasts of the field,
8 Fowl of the heavens and fishes of the sea,
Whatever traverses the paths of the seas.
9 Jehovah, our Lord, how glorious is Thy name in all the earth!
The exclamation which begins and ends this psalm, enclosing it as a
jewel in a setting, determines its theme as being neither the nightly
heaven, with all its stars, nor the dignity of man, but the name of the
Lord as proclaimed by both. The Biblical contemplation of nature and man
starts from and ends in God. The main thought of the psalm is the
superiority of the revelation in man's nature and place to that in the
vault of heaven. The very smallness of man makes the revelation of God
in His dealings with him great. In his insignificance is lodged a Divine
spark, and, lowly as is his head as he stands beneath the midnight sky
blazing with inaccessible lights, it is crowned with a halo which
reflects God's glory more brightly than does their lustre. That one idea
is the theme of both parts of the psalm. In the former (vv. 1, 2) it is
briefly stated; in the latter (vv. 3-8) it is wrought out in detail. The
movement of thought is by expansion rather than progress.
The name of the Lord is His character as made known. The psalmist
looks beyond Israel, the recipient of a fuller manifestation, and,
with adoring wonder, sees far-flashing through all the earth, as if
written in light, the splendour of that name. The universal revelation
in the depths of the sparkling heavens and the special one by which
Israel can say, "our Lord," are both recognised. The very abruptness
of the exclamation in ver. 1 tells that it is the end of long, silent
contemplation, which overflows at last in speech. The remainder of
ver. 1 and ver. 2 present the two forms of Divine manifestation which
it is the main purpose of the psalm to contrast, and which effect the
world-wide diffusion of the glory of the Name. These are the
apocalypse in the nightly heavens and the witness from the mouth of
babes and sucklings. As to the former, there is some difficulty in the
text as it stands; and there may be a question also as to the
connection with the preceding burst of praise. The word rendered "hast
set" is an imperative, which introduces an incongruous thought, since
the psalm proceeds on the conviction that God has already done what
such a reading would be asking Him to do. The simplest solution is to
suppose a textual corruption, and to make the slight change required
for the rendering of the A.V. and R.V. God's name is glorious in all
the earth, first, because He has set His glory upon the heavens, which
stretch their solemn magnificence above every land. It is His glory of
which theirs is the shimmering reflection, visible to every eye
upturned from "this dim spot which men call earth." May we attach
significance to the difference between "Thy name" and "Thy glory"?
Possibly there is a hint of the relative inferiority even of the
heavenly proclamation, inasmuch as, while it rays out "glory," the
lustre of power and infinitude, it is only on earth that that
revelation becomes the utterance of the Name, since here are hearts
and minds to interpret.
The relative at the beginning of the last clause of ver. 1 seems to
require that the initial exclamation should not be isolated, as it is
in the last verse; but, in any case, the two methods of revelation
must be taken in the closest connection, and brought into line as
parallel media of revelation.
Ver. 2 gives the second of these. The sudden drop from the glories of
the heavens to the babble and prattle of infancy and childhood is most
impressive, and gives extraordinary force to the paradox that the
latter's witness is more powerful to silence gainsayers than that of the
former. This conviction is expressed in a noble metaphor, which is
blurred by the rendering "strength." The word here rather means _a
strength_ in the old use of the term--that is, a stronghold or
fortress--and the image, somewhat more daring than colder Western taste
finds permissible, is that, out of such frail material as children's
speech, God builds a tower of strength, which, like some border castle,
will bridle and still the restless enemy. There seems no sufficient
reason for taking "children and sucklings" in any but its natural
meaning, however the reference to lowly believers may accord with the
spirit of the psalm. The children's voices are taken as a type of feeble
instruments, which are yet strong enough to silence the enemy.
Childhood, "with no language but a cry," is, if rightly regarded in its
source, its budding possibilities, its dependence, its growth, a more
potent witness to a more wondrous name than are all the stars. In like
manner, man is man's clearest revelation of God. The more lowly he is,
the more lofty his testimony. What are all His servants' words but the
babbling of children who "do not know half the deep things they speak"?
God's strongest fortress is built of weakest stones. The rendering of
the LXX., which is that used by our Lord in the Temple when He claimed
the children's shrill hosannas as perfected praise, is an explanation
rather than a translation, and as such is quite in the line of the
psalmist's meaning. To find in the "children and sucklings" a reference
either to the humble believers in Israel or to the nation as a whole,
and in the "enemy and the vengeful man" hostile nations, introduces
thoughts alien to the universality of the psalm, which deals with
humanity as a whole and with the great revelations wide as humanity. If
the two parts of the psalm are to be kept together, the theme of the
compendious first portion must be the same as that of the second,
namely, the glory of God as revealed by nature and man, but most chiefly
by the latter, notwithstanding and even by his comparative feebleness.
The second part (vv. 3-8) expands the theme of the first. The nightly
sky is more overwhelming than the bare blue vault of day. Light
conceals and darkness unveils the solemn glories. The silent depths,
the inaccessible splendours, spoke to this psalmist, as they do to all
sensitive souls, of man's relative insignificance, but they spoke also
of the God whose hand had fashioned them, and the thought of Him
carried with it the assurance of His care for so small a creature, and
therefore changed the aspect of his insignificance. To an ear deaf to
the witness of the heavens to their Maker, the only voice which sounds
from their crushing magnificence is one which counsels unmitigated
despair, insists on man's nothingness, and mocks his aspirations. If
we stop with "What is man?" the answer is, A fleeting nothing. The
magnitude, the duration, the multitudes of these awful suns and stars
dwarf him. Modern astronomy has so far increased the impression that
it has landed many minds in blank unbelief that God has visited so
small a speck as earth, and abundant ridicule has been poured on the
arrogance which dreams that such stupendous events, as the Christian
revelation asserts, have been transacted on earth for man. If we begin
with man, certainly his insignificance makes it supremely absurd to
suppose him thus distinguished; but if we begin at the other end, the
supposition takes a new appearance of probability. If there is a God,
and men are His creatures, it is supremely unlikely that He should not
have a care of them. Nothing can be more absurd than the supposition
of a dumb God, who has never spoken to such a being as man. The
psalmist gives full weight to man's smallness, his frailty, and his
lowly origin, for his exclamation, "What is man?" means, "How little
is he!" and he uses the words which connote frailty and mortality, and
emphasise the fact of birth as if in contrast with "the work of Thy
fingers"; but all these points only enhance the wonderfulness of what
is to the poet an axiom--that God has personal relations with His
creature. "Thou art mindful of him" refers to God's thought, "Thou
visitest him" to His acts of loving care; and both point to God's
universal beneficence, not to His special revelation. The bitter
parody in Job vii. 17, 18, takes the truth by the other handle, and
makes the personal relations those of a rigid inspector on the one
hand and a creature not worth being so strict with on the other.
Mindfulness is only watchfulness for slips, and visiting means penal
visitation. So the same fact may be the source of thankful wonder or
of almost blasphemous murmuring.
Vv. 5-8 draw out the consequences of God's loving regard, which has
made the insignificance of man the medium of a nobler manifestation of
the Divine name than streams from all the stars. There is no allusion
here to sin; and its absence has led to the assertion that this
psalmist knew nothing of a fall, and was not in harmony with the
prevalent Old Testament tone as to the condition of humanity. But
surely the contemplation of the ideal manhood, as it came from God's
hand, does not need to be darkened by the shadows of the actual. The
picture of man as God made him is the only theme which concerns the
psalmist; and he paints it with colours drawn from the Genesis
account, which tells of the fall as well as the creation of man.
The picture contains three elements: man is Deiform, crowned with glory
and honour, and lord of the creatures on earth. The rendering "than the
angels" in the A.V. comes from the LXX., but though defensible, is less
probable than the more lofty conception contained in "than God," which
is vindicated, not only by lexical considerations, but as embodying an
allusion to the original creation "in the image of God." What then is
the "little" which marks man's inferiority? It is mainly that the
spirit, which is God's image, is confined in and limited by flesh, and
subject to death. The distance from the apex of creation to the Creator
must ever be infinite; but man is so far above the non-sentient, though
mighty, stars and the creatures which share earth with him, by reason of
his being made in the Divine image--_i.e._, having consciousness, will,
and reason--that the distance is foreshortened. The gulf between man and
matter is greater than that between man and God. The moral separation
caused by sin is not in the psalmist's mind. Thus man is invested with
some reflection of God's glory, and wears this as a crown. He is king on
earth.
The enumeration of his subjects follows, in language reminding again
of the Genesis narrative. The catalogue begins with those nearest to
him, the long-tamed domestic animals, and of these the most submissive
(sheep) first; it then passes to the untamed animals, whose home is
"the field" or uncultivated land, and from them goes to the heights
and depths, where the free fowls of the air and fish of the sea and
all the mysterious monsters that may roam the hidden ways of that
unknown ocean dwell. The power of taming and disciplining some, the
right to use all, belong to man, but his subjects have their rights
and their king his limits of power and his duties.
Such then is man, as God meant him to be. Such a being is a more
glorious revelation of the Name than all stars and systems. Looked at in
regard to his duration, his years are a handbreadth before these shining
ancients of days that have seen his generations fret their little hour
and sink into silence; looked at in contrast with their magnitude and
numbers numberless, he is but an atom, and his dwelling-place a speck.
Science increases the knowledge of his insignificance, but perhaps not
the impression of it made on a quiet heart by the simple sight of the
heavens. But besides the merely scientific view, and the merely poetic,
and the grimly Agnostic, there is the other, the religious, and it is as
valid to-day as ever. To it the heavens are the work of God's finger,
and their glories are His, set there by Him. That being so, man's
littleness magnifies the name, because it enhances the condescending
love of God, which has greatened the littleness by such nearness of care
and such gifts of dignity. The reflection of His glory which blazes in
the heavens is less bright than that which gleams in the crown of glory
and honour on man's lowly yet lofty head. The "babe and suckling" of
creation has a mouth from which the strength of perfected praise issues
and makes a bulwark against all gainsayers.
The use made of this psalm in the Epistle to the Hebrews proceeds on
the understanding that it describes ideal humanity. Where, then, says
the writer of the epistle, shall we look for the realisation of that
ideal? Do not the grand words sound liker irony than truth? Is this
poor creature that crawls about the world, its slave, discrowned and
sure to die, the Man whom the psalmist saw? No. Then was the fair
vision a baseless fabric, and is there nothing to be looked for but a
dreary continuance of such abortions dragging out their futile being
through hopeless generations? No; the promise shall be fulfilled for
humanity, because it has been fulfilled in one Man: the Man Christ
Jesus. He is the realised ideal, and in Him is a life which will be
communicated to all who trust and obey Him, and they, too, will become
all that God meant man to be. The psalm was not intended as a
prophecy, but every clear vision of God's purpose is a prophecy, for
none of His purposes remain unfulfilled. It was not intended as a
picture of the Christ, but it is so; for He, and He alone, is the Man
who answers to that fair Divine Ideal, and He will make all His people
partakers of His royalty and perfect manhood.
So the psalm ends, as it began, with adoring wonder, and proclaims
this as the result of the twofold witness which it has so nobly set
forth: that God's name shines glorious through all the earth, and
every eye may see its lustre.
PSALM IX.
1 (א) I will thank Jehovah with my whole heart;
I will recount all Thy wonders.
2 I will be glad and exult in Thee;
I will sing Thy name, Most High,
3 (ב) Because mine enemies turn back;
They stumble and perish at Thy presence.
4 For Thou hast upheld my right and my suit;
Thou didst seat Thyself on Thy throne, judging righteously.
5 (ג) Thou hast rebuked the nations, Thou hast destroyed the wicked;
Thou hast blotted out their name for ever and aye.
6 The enemy--they are ended, [they are] desolations for ever,
And [their] cities hast Thou rooted out; perished is their memory.
7 (ה) They [are perished], but Jehovah shall sit throned for ever;
He hath prepared His throne for judgment.
8 And He--He shall judge the world in righteousness;
He shall deal judgment to the peoples in equity.
9 (ו) And Jehovah shall be a lofty stronghold for the crushed,
A lofty stronghold in times of extremity.
10 And they who know Thy name will put trust in Thee,
For Thou hast not forsaken them that seek Thee, Jehovah.
11 (ז) Sing with the harp to Jehovah, sitting throned in Zion;
Declare among the peoples His doings.
12 For He that makes inquisition for blood has remembered them;
He has not forgotten the cry of the humble.
13 (ח) Have mercy on me, Jehovah;
Look on my affliction from my haters,
Thou who liftest me up from the gates of death
14 To the end that I may recount all Thy praises.
In the gates of the daughter of Zion,
I will rejoice in Thy salvation.
15 (ט) The nations are sunk in the pit they made;
In the net which they spread their foot is caught.
16 Jehovah makes Himself known; judgment hath He done,
Snaring the wicked by the work of his own hands. Higgaion; Selah.
17 (י) The wicked shall return to Sheol,
All the nations who forget God
18 For not for ever shall the needy be forgotten,
Nor the expectation of the afflicted perish for aye.
19 (ק) Arise, Jehovah: let not man grow strong;
Let the nations be judged before Thy presence.
20 Appoint, Jehovah, terrors for them;
Let the nations come to know that they are men.
Psalms vii. and ix. are connected by the recurrence of the two thoughts
of God as the Judge of nations and the wicked falling into the pit which
he digged. Probably the original arrangement of the Psalter put these
two next each other, and Psalm viii. was inserted later.
Psalm ix. is imperfectly acrostic. It falls into strains of two verses
each, which are marked by sequence of thought as well as by the acrostic
arrangement. The first begins with Aleph, the second with Beth, and so
on, the second verse of each pair not being counted in the scheme. The
fourth letter is missing, and ver. 7, which should begin with it, begins
with the sixth. But a textual correction, which is desirable on other
grounds, makes the fifth letter (He) the initial of ver. 7, and then the
regular sequence is kept up till ver. 19, which should begin with the
soft K, but takes instead the guttural Q. What has become of the rest of
the alphabet? Part of it is found in Psalm x., where the first verse
begins with the L, which should follow the regular K for ver. 19. But
there is no more trace of acrostic structure in x. till ver. 12, which
resumes it with the Q which has already appeared out of place in ix.
19; and it goes on to the end of the alphabet, with only the
irregularity that the R strain (x. 14) has but one verse. Verses with
the missing letters would just about occupy the space of the
non-acrostic verses in Psalm x., and the suggestion is obvious that the
latter are part of some other psalm which has been substituted for the
original; but there are links of connection between the non-acrostic and
acrostic portions of Psalm x., which make that hypothesis difficult. The
resemblances between the two psalms as they stand are close, and the
dissimilarities not less obvious. The psalmist's enemies are different.
In the former they are foreign, in the latter domestic. Psalm ix. rings
with triumph; Psalm x. is in a minor key. The former celebrates a
judgment as accomplished which the latter almost despairingly longs to
see begun. On the whole, the two were most probably never formally one,
but are a closely connected pair.
There is nothing to discredit the Davidic authorship. The singer's
enemies are "nations," and the destruction of these foreign foes is
equivalent to "maintaining his cause." That would be language natural
in the mouth of a king, and there were foreign wars enough in David's
reign to supply appropriate occasions for such a song. The psalm falls
into two parts, vv. 1-12 and 13 to end, of which the second
substantially repeats the main thoughts of the first, but with a
significant difference. In the first part the sequence is praise and
its occasion (Aleph and Beth verses, 1-4), triumphant recounting of
accomplished judgment (Gimel verses, 5, 6), confident expectation of
future wider judgment (amended He and Vav pairs, vv. 7-10), and a
final call to praise (vii. 12). Thus set, as it were, in a circlet of
praise, are experience of past and consequent confidence of future
deliverance. The second part gives the same order, only, instead of
praise, it has prayer for its beginning and end, the two central
portions remaining the same as in part I. The Cheth pair (vv. 13, 14)
is prayer, the deliverance not being perfected, though some foes have
fallen; the past act of accomplished judgment is again celebrated in
the Teth pair (vv. 15, 16), followed, as before, by the triumphant
confidence of future complete crushing of enemies (Yod strain, vv. 17,
18); and all closes with prayer (Qoph pair, vv. 19, 20). Thus the same
thoughts are twice dwelt on; and the different use made of them is the
explanation of the repetition, which strikes a cursory reader as
needless. The diamond is turned a little in the hand, and a
differently tinted beam flashes from its facet.
In the first pair of verses, the song rushes out like some river
breaking through a dam and flashing as it hurries on its course. Each
short clause begins with Aleph; each makes the same fervid resolve.
Wholehearted praise is sincere, and all the singer's being is fused
into it. "All Thy marvellous works" include the great deliverances of
the past, with which a living sense of God's working associates those
of the present, as one in character and source. To-day is as full of
God to this man as the sacred yesterdays of national history, and his
deliverances as wonderful as those of old. But high above the joy in
God's work is the joy in Himself to which it leads, and "Thy name, O
thou Most High," is the ground of all pure delight and the theme of
all worthy praise.
The second stanza (Beth, vv. 3, 4) is best taken as giving the ground of
praise. Render in close connection with preceding "_because_ mine
enemies turn back; they stumble and perish at [or from] Thy presence."
God's face blazes out on the foe, and they turn and flee from the field,
but in their flight they stumble, and, like fugitives, once fallen can
rise no more. The underlying picture is of a battle-field and a
disastrous rout. It is God's coming into action that scatters the enemy,
as ver. 4 tells by its "for." When He took His seat on the throne (of
judgment rather than of royalty), they fled; and that act of assuming
judicial activity was the maintaining of the psalmist's cause.
The third pair of verses (Gimel, 5, 6) dwells on the grand picture of
judgment, and specifies for the first time the enemies as "the
nations" or "heathen," thus showing that the psalmist is not a private
individual, and probably implying that the whole psalm is a hymn of
victory, in which the heat of battle still glows, but which writes no
name on the trophy but that of God. The metaphor of a judgment-seat is
exchanged for a triumphant description of the destructions fallen on
the land of the enemy, in all which God alone is recognised as the
actor. "Thou hast rebuked"; and just as His creative word was
all-powerful, so His destructive word sweeps its objects into
nothingness. There is a grand and solemn sequence in that "Thou hast
rebuked; ... Thou hast destroyed." His breath has made; His breath can
unmake. In ver. 6 the rendering to be preferred is substantially that
of the R.V.: "The enemy are ended, [they are] ruins for ever, and
cities hast Thou rooted out; perished is their memory." To take
"enemy" as a vocative breaks the continuity of the address to God, and
brings in an irrelevant reference to the former conquests of the foe
("Thou hast destroyed cities") which is much more forcible if
regarded as descriptive of God's destruction of his cities. "Their
memory" refers to the enemy, not to the cities. Utter, perpetual ruin,
so complete that the very name is forgotten, has fallen on the foe.
In the fourth pair of verses a slight emendation of the text is
approved of by most critics. The last word of ver. 6 is the pronoun
"they," which, though possible in such a position, is awkward. If it
is transferred to the beginning of ver. 7, and it is further supposed
that "are perished" has dropped out, as might easily be the case, from
the verb having just occurred in the singular, a staking antithesis is
gained: "They perish, but Jehovah shall sit," etc. Further, the pair
of verses then begins with the fifth letter; and the only irregularity
in the acrostic arrangement till ver. 19 is the omission of the fourth
letter: Daleth. A very significant change in tenses takes place at
this point. Hitherto the verbs have been perfects, implying a finished
act; that is to say, hitherto the psalm has been dealing with facts of
recent but completed experience. Now the verbs change to imperfects or
futures, and continue so till ver. 12; that is to say, "experience
doth attain to something of prophetic strain," and passes into
confidence for the future. That confidence is cast in the mould
supplied by the deliverance on which it is founded. The smaller act of
judgment, which maintained the psalmist's cause, expands into a
world-wide judgment in righteousness, for which the preparations are
already made. "He hath prepared His throne for judgment" is the only
perfect in the series. This is the true point of view from which to
regard the less comprehensive acts of judgment thinly sown through
history, when God has arisen to smite some hoary iniquity or some
godless conqueror. Such acts are premonitions of the future, and every
"day of the Lord" is a miniature of that final _dies iræ_. The
psalmist probably was rather thinking of other acts of judgment which
would free him and his people from hostile nations, but his hope was
built on the great truth that all such acts are prophecies of others
like them, and it is a legitimate extension of the same principle to
view them all in relation to the last and greatest of the series.
The fifth pair (Vav stanza, vv. 9, 10) turns to the glad contemplation
of the purpose of all the pomp and terror of the judgment thus hoped
for. The Judge is seated on high, and His elevation makes a "lofty
stronghold" for the crushed or downtrodden.
The rare word rendered "extremity" in ver. 9 occurs only here and in
x. 1. It means a cutting off, _i.e._, of hope of deliverance. The
notion of distress intensified to despair is conveyed. God's judgments
show that even in such extremity He is an inexpugnable defence, like
some hill fortress, inaccessible to any foe. A further result of
judgment is the (growing) trust of devout souls (ver. 10). To "know
Thy name" is here equivalent to learning God's character as made known
by His acts, especially by the judgments anticipated. For such
knowledge some measure of devout trust is required, but further
knowledge deepens trust. The best teacher of faith is experience; and,
on the other hand, the condition of such experience is faith. The
action of knowledge and of trust is reciprocal. That trust is
reinforced by the renewed evidence, afforded by the judgments, that
Jehovah does not desert them that seek Him. To "seek Him" is to long
for Him, to look for His help in trouble, to turn with desire and
obedience to Him in daily life; and anything is possible rather than
that He should not disclose and give Himself to such search. Trust and
seeking, fruition and desire, the repose of the soul on God and its
longing after God, are inseparable. They are but varying aspects of
the one thing. When a finite spirit cleaves to the infinite God, there
must be longing as an element in all possession and possession as an
element in all longing; and both will be fed by contemplation of the
self-revealing acts which are the syllables of His name.
Section 6, the last of the first part (Zayin, vv. 11, 12), circles
round to section 1, and calls on all trusters and seekers to be a
chorus to the solo of praise therein. The ground of the praise is the
same past act which has been already set forth as that of the
psalmist's thanksgiving, as is shown by the recurrence here of perfect
tenses (_hath remembered_; _hath not forgotten_). The designation of
God as "dwelling" in Zion is perhaps better rendered, with allusion to
the same word in ver. 7, "sitteth." His seat had been there from the
time that the Ark was brought thither. That earthly throne was the
type of His heavenly seat, and from Zion He is conceived as executing
judgment. The world-wide destination of Israel's knowledge of God
inspires the call to "show forth His doings" to "the peoples." The
"nations" are not merely the objects of destructive wrath, but are to
be summoned to share in the blessing of knowing His mighty acts. The
psalmist may not have been able to harmonise these two points of view
as to Israel's relation to the Gentile world, but both thoughts
vibrate in his song. The designation of God as "making inquisition for
blood" thinks of Him as the Goel, or Avenger. To seek means here to
demand back as one who had entrusted property to another who had
destroyed it would do, thence to demand compensation or satisfaction,
and thus finally comes to mean to avenge or punish (so Hupfeld,
Delitzsch, etc.). "The poor" or "meek" (R.V. and margin) whose cry is
heard are the devout portion of the Jewish people, who are often
spoken of in the Psalms and elsewhere as a class.
The second part of the psalm begins with ver. 13. The prayer in that
verse is the only trace of trouble in the psalm. The rest is triumph and
exultation. This, at first sight discordant, note has sorely exercised
commentators; and the violent solution that the whole Cheth stanza (vv.
13, 14) should be regarded as "the cry of the meek," quoted by the
psalmist, and therefore be put in inverted commas (though adopted by
Delitzsch and Cheyne), is artificial and cold. If the view of the
structure of the psalm given above is adopted, there is little
difficulty in the connection. The victory has been completed over
certain enemies, but there remain others; and the time for praise
unmingled with petition has not yet come for the psalmist, as it never
comes for any of us in this life. Quatre Bras is won, but Waterloo has
to be fought to-morrow. The prayer takes account of the dangers still
threatening, but it only glances at these, and then once more turns to
look with hope on the accomplished deliverance. The thought of how God
had lifted the suppliant up from the very gates of death heartens him to
pray for all further mercy needed. Death is the lord of a gloomy
prison-house, the gates of which open inwards only and permit no egress.
On its very threshold the psalmist had stood. But God had lifted him
thence, and the remembrance wings his prayer. "The gates of the
daughter of Zion" are in sharp, happy contrast with the frowning portals
of death. A city's gates are the place of cheery life, stir, gossip,
business. Anything proclaimed there flies far. There the psalmist
resolves that he will tell his story of rescue, which he believes was
granted that it might be told. God's purpose in blessing men is that
they may open their lips to proclaim the blessings and so bring others
to share in them. God's end is the spread of His name, not for any good
to Him, but because to know it is life to us.
The Teth pair (vv. 15, 16) repeats the thoughts of the Gimel stanza (5,
6), recurring to the same significant perfects and dwelling on the new
thought that the destruction of the enemy was self-caused. As in Psalm
vii., the familiar figure of the pitfall catching the hunter expresses
the truth that all evil, and especially malice, recoils on its
contriver. A companion illustration is added of the fowler's (or
hunter's) foot being caught in his own snare. Ver. 16 presents the other
view of retribution, which was the only one in vv. 5, 6, namely that it
is a Divine act. It is God who executes judgment, and who "snareth the
wicked," though it be "the work of his own hands" which weaves the
snare. Both views are needed for the complete truth. This close of the
retrospect of deliverance which is the main motive of the psalm is
appropriately marked by the musical direction "Higgaion. Selah," which
calls for a strain of instrumental music to fill the pause of the song
and to mark the rapture of triumph in accomplished deliverance.
The Yod stanza (vv. 17, 18), like the He and Vav stanzas (vv. 7-10),
passes to confidence for the future. The correspondence is very close,
but the two verses of this stanza represent the four of the earlier
ones; thus ver. 17 answers to vv. 7 and 8, while ver. 18 is the
representative of vv. 9 and 10. In ver. 17 the "return to Sheol" is
equivalent to destruction. In one view, men who cease to be may be
regarded as going back to original nothingness, as in Psalm xc. 3.
Sheol is not here a place of punishment, but is the dreary dwelling of
the dead, from the gates of which the psalmist had been brought up.
Reduction to nothingness and yet a shadowy, dim life or death-in-life
will certainly be the end of the wicked. The psalmist's experience in
his past deliverance entitles him to generalise thus. To forget God is
the sure way to be forgotten. The reason for the certain destruction
of the nations who forget God and for the psalmist's assurance of it
is (ver. 18) the confidence he has that "the needy shall not always be
forgotten." That confidence corresponds precisely to vv. 9, 10, and
also looks back to the "hath remembered" and "not forgotten" of ver.
12. They who remember God are remembered by Him; and their being
remembered--_i.e._, by deliverance--necessitates the wicked's being
forgotten, and those who are forgotten by God perish. The second
clause of ver. 18 echoes the other solemn word of doom from vv. 3-6.
There the fate of the evil-doers was set forth as "perishing"; their
very memory was to "perish." But the "expectation of the poor shall
not perish." Apparently fragile and to the eye of sense unsubstantial
as a soap-bubble, the devout man's hope is more solid than the most
solid-seeming realities, and will outlast them all.
The final stanza (vv. 19, 20) does not take Kaph as it should do, but
Qoph. Hence some critics suspect that this pair of verses has been
added by another hand, but the continuity of sense is plain, and is
against this supposition. The psalmist was not so bound to his form
but that he could vary it, as here. The prayer of this concluding
stanza circles round to the prayer in ver. 13, as has been noticed,
and so completes the whole psalm symmetrically. The personal element
in ver. 13 has passed away; and the prayer is general, just as the
solo of praise in ver. 1 broadened into the call for a chorus of
voices in ver. 12. The scope of the prayer is the very judgment which
the previous stanza has contemplated as certain. The devout man's
desires are moulded on God's promises, and his prayers echo these.
"Let not mortal man grow strong," or rather "vaunt his strength." The
word for _man_ here connotes weakness. How ridiculous for him, being
such as he is, to swell and swagger as if strong, and how certain his
boasted strength is to shrivel like a leaf in the fire, if God should
come forth, roused to action by his boasting! Ver. 20 closes the
prayer with the cry that some awe-inspiring act of Divine justice may
be flashed before the "nations," in order to force the conviction of
their own weakness home to them. "Set terror for them," the word
_terror_ meaning not the emotion, but the object which produces it,
namely an act of judgment such as the whole psalm has had in view. Its
purpose is not destruction, but conviction, the wholesome
consciousness of weakness, out of which may spring the recognition of
their own folly and of God's strength to bless. So the two parts of
the psalm end with the thought that the "nations" may yet come to know
the name of God, the one calling upon those who have experienced His
deliverance to "declare among the peoples His doings," the other
praying God to teach by chastisement what nations who forget Him have
failed to learn from mercies.
PSALM X.
1 (ל) Why, Jehovah, dost Thou stand far off?
Why veilest [Thine eyes] in times of extremity?
2 Through the pride of the wicked the afflicted is burned away;
They are taken in the plots which these have devised.
3 For the wicked boasts of his soul's desire,
And the rapacious man renounces, contemns, Jehovah.
4 The wicked, by (lit., according to) the uplifting of his nostrils,
[says,] He will not inquire;
There is no God, is all his thought.
5 His ways are stable at all times;
High above [him] are Thy judgments, remote from before him;
His adversaries--he snorts at them.
6 He says in his heart, I shall not be moved;
To generation after generation, [I am he] who never falls into
adversity.
7 Of cursing his mouth is full, and deceits, and oppression;
Under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
8 He couches in the hiding-places of the villages;
In secret he slays the innocent;
His eyes watch the helpless.
9 He lies in wait in secret, like a lion in his lair;
He lies in wait to seize the afflicted;
He seizes the afflicted, dragging him in his net.
10 He crouches, he bows down,
And there falls into his strong [claws] the helpless.
11 He says in his heart, God forgets;
He hides His face, He will not ever see it.
12 (ק) Rise! Jehovah, God! lift up Thy hand!
Forget not the afflicted.
13 Wherefore does the wicked blaspheme God,
[And] say in his heart, Thou wilt not inquire?
14 (ר) Thou hast seen, for Thou, Thou dost behold mischief and
trouble, to take it into Thy hand;
To Thee the helpless leaves himself;
The orphan, Thou, Thou hast been his Helper.
15 (ש) Break the arm of the wicked;
As for the evil man, inquire for his wickedness [till] Thou find
none.
16 Jehovah is King for ever and aye;
The nations are perished out of the land.
17 (ת) The desire of the meek Thou hast heard, Jehovah;
Thou wilt prepare their heart, wilt make Thine ear attentive
18 To do judgment for the orphan and downtrodden;
Terrible no more shall the man of the earth be.
Psalms ix. and x. are alike in their imperfectly acrostic structure,
the occurrence of certain phrases--_e.g._, the very uncommon
expression for "times of trouble" (ix. 9; x. 1), "Arise, O Lord" (ix.
19; x. 12)--and the references to the nations' judgment. But the
differences are so great that the hypothesis of their original unity
is hard to accept. As already remarked, the enemies are different. The
tone of the one psalm is jubilant thanksgiving for victory won and
judgment effected; that of the other is passionate portraiture of a
rampant foe and cries for a judgment yet unmanifested. They are a
pair, though why the psalmist should have bound together two songs of
which the unlikenesses are at least as great as the likenesses it is
not easy to discover. The circumstances of his day may have brought
the cruelty of domestic robbers close upon the heels of foreign foes,
as is often the case, but that is mere conjecture.
The acrostic structure is continued into Psalm x., as if the last
stanza of ix. had begun with the regular Kaph instead of the cognate
Qoph; but it then disappears till ver. 12, from which point it
continues to the end of the psalm, with the anomaly that one of the
four stanzas has but one verse: the unusually long verse 14. These
four stanzas are allotted to the four last letters of the alphabet.
Six letters are thus omitted, to which twelve verses should belong.
The nine non-acrostic verses (3-11) are by some supposed to be
substituted for the missing twelve, but there are too many verbal
allusions to them in the subsequent part of the psalm to admit of
their being regarded as later than it. Why, then, the break in the
acrostic structure? It is noticeable that the (acrostic) psalm ix. is
wholly addressed to God, and that the parts of x. which are addressed
to Him are likewise acrostic, the section vv. 3-11 being the vivid
description of the "wicked," for deliverance from whom the psalmist
prays. The difference of theme may be the solution of the difference
of form, which was intended to mark off the prayer stanzas and to
suggest, by the very continuity of the alphabetical scheme and the
allowance made for the letters which do not appear, the calm flow of
devotion and persistency of prayer throughout the parenthesis of
oppression. The description of the "wicked" is as a black rock damming
the river, but it flows on beneath and emerges beyond.
The psalm falls into two parts after the introductory verse of
petition and remonstrance: vv. 3-11, the grim picture of the enemy of
the "poor"; and vv. 12-18, the cry for deliverance and judgment.
The first stanza (vv. 1, 2) gives in its passionate cry a general
picture of the situation, which is entirely different from that of
Psalm ix. The two opposite characters, whose relations occupy so much
of these early psalms, "the wicked" and "the poor," are, as usual,
hunter and hunted, and God is passive, as if far away, and hiding His
eyes. The voice of complaining but devout remonstrance is singularly
like the voice of arrogant godlessness (vv. 4-11), but the fact which
brings false security to the one moves the other to prayer. The
boldness and the submissiveness of devotion are both throbbing in that
"Why?" and beneath it lies the entreaty to break this apparent apathy.
Ver. 2 spreads the facts of the situation before God. "Through the
pride of the wicked the afflicted is burned," _i.e._, with anguish,
_pride_ being the fierce fire and _burning_ being a vigorous
expression for anguish, or possibly for destruction. The ambiguous
next clause may either have "the wicked" or "the poor" for its
subject. If the former (R. V.), it is a prayer that the retribution
which has been already spoken of in Psalm ix. may fall, but the
context rather suggests the other construction, carrying on the
description of the sufferings of the poor, with an easy change to the
plural, since the singular is a collective. This, then, being how
things stand, the natural flow of thought would be the continuance of
the prayer; but the reference to the enemy sets the psalmist on fire,
and he "burns" in another fashion, flaming out into a passionate
portraiture of the wicked, which is marked as an interruption to the
current of his song by the cessation of the acrostic arrangement.
The picture is drawn with extraordinary energy, and describes first
the character (vv. 3-6) and then the conduct of the wicked. The style
reflects the vehemence of the psalmist's abhorrence, being full of
gnarled phrases and harsh constructions. As with a merciless scalpel
the inner heart of the man is laid open. Observe the recurrence of
"saith," "thoughts," and "saith in his heart." But first comes a
feature of character which is open and palpable. He "boasts of his
soul's desire." What is especially flagrant in that? The usual
explanation is that he is not ashamed of his shameful lusts, but
glories in them, or that he boasts of succeeding in all that he
desires. But what will a good man do with his heart's desires? Ver. 7
tells us, namely breathe them to God; and therefore to boast of them
instead is the outward expression of godless self-confidence and
resolve to consult inclination and not God. The word rendered _boast_
has the two significations of _pray_ and _boast_, and the use of it
here, in the worse one, is parallel with the use of _bless_ or
_renounce_ in the next clause. The wicked is also "rapacious," for
"covetous" is too weak. He grasps all that he can reach by fair or
foul means. Such a man in effect and by his very selfish greed
"renounces, contemns God." He may be a worshipper; but his "blessing"
is like a parting salutation, dismissing Him to whom it is addressed.
There is no need to suppose that conscious apostacy is meant. Rather
the psalmist is laying bare the under-meaning of the earth-bound man's
life, and in effect anticipates Christ's "Ye cannot serve God and
mammon" and Paul's "covetousness which is idolatry."
The next trait of character is practical atheism and denial of Divine
retribution. The Hebrew is rough and elliptical, but the A.V. misses
its point, which the R.V. gives by the introduction of "saith." "The
pride of his countenance" is literally "the elevation of his nose."
Translate those upturned nostrils into words, and they mean that God
will not require (seek, in the sense of punish). But a God who does
not punish is a dim shape, through which the empty sky is seen, and
the denial (or forgetfulness) of God's retributive judgment is
equivalent to denying that there is a God at all.
Thus armed, the wicked is in fancied security. "His ways are
firm"--_i.e._, he prospers--and, in the very madness of arrogance, he
scoffs at God's judgments as too high up to be seen. His scoff is a
truth, for how can eyes glued to earth see the solemn lights that move
in the heavens? Purblind men say, We do not see them, and mean, They are
not; but all that their speech proves is their own blindness. Defiant of
God, he is truculent to men, and "snorts contempt at his enemies." "In
his heart he says, I shall not be moved." The same words express the
sane confidence of the devout soul and the foolish presumption of the
man of the earth; but the one says, "because He is at my right hand,"
and the other trusts in himself. "To all generations I shall not be in
adversity" (R.V.). The Hebrew is gnarled and obscure; and attempts to
amend the text have been made (compare Cheyne, Grätz _in loc._), but
needlessly. The confidence has become almost insane, and has lost sight
altogether of the brevity of life. "His inward thought is that he shall
continue for ever" (Psalm xlix.). "Pride stifles reason. The language of
the heart cannot be translated into spoken words without seeming
exaggeration" (Cheyne). He who can be so blind to facts as to find no
God may well carry his blindness a step further and wink hard enough to
see no death, or may live as if he did not.
Following the disclosure of the inner springs of life in the secret
thoughts comes, in vv. 7-10, the outcome of these in word and deed. When
the wicked "lets the rank tongue blossom into speech," the product is
affronts to God and maledictions, lies, mischiefs, for men. These stuff
the mouth full, and lie under the tongue as sweet morsels for the
perverted taste or as stored there, ready to be shot out. The deeds
match the words. The vivid picture of a prowling lion seems to begin in
ver. 8, though it is sometimes taken as the unmetaphorical description
of the wicked man's crime. The stealthy couching of the beast of prey,
hiding among the cover round the unwalled village or poorly sheltered
fold, the eyes gleaming out of the darkness and steadfastly fixed on the
victim with a baleful light in them, belong to the figure, which is
abruptly changed in one clause (ver. 9 _c_) into that of a hunter with
his net, and then is resumed and completed in ver. 10, where the R.V.
is, on the whole, to be preferred--"He croucheth; he boweth down"--as
resuming the figure at the point where it had been interrupted and
finishing it in the next clause, with the helpless victim fallen into
the grip of the strong claws. With great emphasis the picture is rounded
off (ver. 11) with the repetition of the secret thought of God's
forgetfulness, which underlies the cruel oppression.
This whole section indicates a lawless condition in which open violence,
robbery, and murder were common. In Hosea's vigorous language, "blood
touched blood," the splashes being so numerous that they met, and the
land was red with them. There is no reason to suppose that the picture
is ideal or exaggerated. Where in the turbulent annals of Israel it is
to be placed must remain uncertain; but that it is a transcript of
bitter experience is obvious, and the aspect which it presents should be
kept in view as a corrective of the tendency to idealise the moral
condition of Israel, which at no time was free from dark stains, and
which offered only too many epochs of disorganisation in which the dark
picture of the psalm could have been photographed from life.
The phrases for the victims in this section are noteworthy: "the
innocent"; "the helpless"; "the poor." Of these the first and last are
frequent, and the meaning obvious. There is a doubt whether the last
should be regarded as the designation of outward condition or of
disposition, _i.e._ whether "meek" or "poor" is the idea. There are two
cognate words in Hebrew, one of which means one who is bowed down,
_i.e._ by outward troubles, and the other one who bows himself down,
_i.e._ is meek. The margin of the Hebrew Bible is fond of correcting
these words when they occur in the text and substituting the one for the
other, but arbitrarily; and it is doubtful whether in actual usage there
is any real distinction between them. "Helpless" is a word only found in
this psalm (vv. 8, 10, 14), which has received various explanations, but
is probably derived from a root meaning _to be black_, and hence comes
to mean _miserable_, _hapless_, or the like. All the designations refer
to a class--namely, the devout minority, the true Israel within
Israel--and hence the plurals in vv. 10, 12, and 17.
The second part of the psalm (ver. 12 to end) is the prayer, forced
from the heart of the persecuted remnant, God's little flock in the
midst of wolves. No trace of individual reference appears in it, nor
any breath of passion or vengeance, such as is found in some of the
psalms of persecution; but it glows with indignation at the
blasphemies which are, for the moment, triumphant, and cries aloud to
God for a judicial act which shall shatter the dream that He does not
see and will not requite. That impious boast, far more than the
personal incidence of sufferings, moves the prayer. As regards its
form, the reappearance of the acrostic arrangement is significant, as
is the repetition of the prayer and letter of ix. 19, which binds the
two psalms together. The acrostic reappears with the direct address to
God. The seven verses of the prayer are divided by it into four
groups, one of which is abnormal as containing but one verse, the
unusual length of which, however, somewhat compensates for the
irregularity (ver. 14). The progress of thought in them follows the
logic of emotional prayer rather than of the understanding. First,
there are a vehement cry for God's intervention and a complaint of His
mysterious apparent apathy. The familiar figure for the Divine
flashing forth of judgment, "Arise, O Lord," is intensified by the
other cry that He would "lift His hand." A God who has risen from His
restful throne and raised His arm is ready to bring it down with a
shattering blow; but before it falls the psalmist spreads in God's
sight the lies of the scornful men. They had said (ver. 11) that He
forgot; the prayer pleads that He would not forget. Their confidence
was that He did not see nor would requite; the psalmist is bold to ask
the reason for the apparent facts which permit such a thought. The
deepest reverence will question God in a fashion which would be
daring, if it were not instinct with the assurance of the clearness of
His Divine knowledge of evil and of the worthiness of the reasons for
its impunity. "Wherefore doest Thou thus?" may be insolence or faith.
Next, the prayer centres itself on the facts of faith, which sense
does not grasp (ver. 14). The specific acts of oppression which force
out the psalmist's cry are certainly "seen" by God, for it is His very
nature to look on all such ("Thou" in ver. 14 is emphatic); and faith
argues from the character to the acts of God and from the general
relation of all sin towards Him to that which at present afflicts the
meek. But is God's gaze on the evil an idle look? No; He sees, and the
sight moves Him to act. Such is the force of "to take it into Thy
hand," which expresses the purpose and issue of the beholding. What He
sees He "takes in hand," as we say, with a similar colloquialism. If a
man believes these things about God, it will follow of course that he
will leave himself in God's hand, that uplifted hand which prayer has
moved. So ver. 14 is like a great picture in two compartments, as
Raphael's Transfiguration. Above is God, risen with lifted arm,
beholding and ready to strike; beneath is the helpless man, appealing
to God by the very act of "leaving" himself to Him. That absolute
reliance has an all-prevalent voice which reaches the Divine heart, as
surely as her child's wail the mother's; and wherever it is exercised
the truth of faith which the past has established becomes a truth of
experience freshly confirmed. The form of the sentence in the Hebrew
(the substantive verb with a participle, "Thou hast been helping")
gives prominence to the continuousness of the action: It has always
been Thy way, and it is so still. Of course "fatherless" here is
tantamount to the "hapless," or poor, of the rest of the psalm.
Then at last comes the cry for the descent of God's uplifted hand (vv.
15, 16). It is not invoked to destroy, but simply to "break the arm"
of, the wicked, _i.e._ to make him powerless for mischief, as a
swordsman with a shattered arm is. One blow from God's hand lames, and
the arm hangs useless. The impious denial of the Divine retribution
still affects the psalmist with horror; and he returns to it in the
second clause of ver. 15, in which he prays that God would "seek
out"--_i.e._, require and requite, so as to abolish and make utterly
non-existent--the wicked man's wickedness. The yearning of every heart
that beats in sympathy with and devotion to God, especially when it is
tortured by evil experienced or beheld flourishing unsmitten, is for
its annihilation. There is no prayer here for the destruction of the
doer; but the reduction to nothingness of his evil is the worthy
aspiration of all the good, and they who have no sympathy with such a
cry as this have either small experience of evil, or a feeble
realisation of its character.
The psalmist was heartened to pray his prayer, because "the nations
are perished out of His land." Does that point back to the great
instance of exterminating justice in the destruction of the
Canaanites? It may do so, but it is rather to be taken as referring to
the victories celebrated in the companion psalm. Note the recurrence
of the words "nations" and "perished," which are drawn from it. The
connection between the two psalms is thus witnessed, and the
deliverance from foreign enemies, which is the theme of Psalm ix., is
urged as a plea with God and taken as a ground of confidence by the
psalmist himself for the completion of the deliverance by making
domestic oppressors powerless. This lofty height of faith is preserved
in the closing stanza, in which the agitation of the first part and
the yearning of the second are calmed into serene assurance that the
_Ecclesia pressa_ has not cried nor ever can cry in vain. Into the
praying, trusting heart "the peace of God, which passeth
understanding," steals, and the answer is certified to faith long
before it is manifest to sense. To pray and immediately to feel the
thrilling consciousness, "Thou hast heard," is given to those who pray
in faith. The wicked makes a boast of his "desire"; the humble makes
a prayer of it, and so has it fulfilled. Desires which can be
translated into petitions will be converted into fruition. If the
heart is humble, that Divine breath will be breathed over and into it
which will prepare it to desire only what accords with God's will, and
the prepared heart will always find God's ear open. The cry of the
_hapless_, which has been put into their lips by God himself, is the
appointed prerequisite of the manifestations of Divine judgment which
will relieve the earth of the incubus of "the man of the earth."
"Shall not God avenge His own elect, though He bear long with them? I
tell you that He will avenge them speedily." The prayer of the humble,
like a whisper amid the avalanches, has power to start the swift,
white destruction on its downward path; and when once that gliding
mass has way on it, nothing which it smites can stand.
PSALM XI.
1 In Jehovah have I taken refuge;
How say ye to my soul,
Flee to the mountain as a bird?
2 For lo, the wicked bend the bow,
They make ready their arrow upon the string,
To shoot in the dark at those who are upright of heart.
3 For the foundations are being destroyed;
The righteous--what hath he achieved?
4 Jehovah in His holy palace, Jehovah, whose throne is in heaven--
His eyes behold, His eyelids try, the children of men.
5 Jehovah trieth the righteous,
But the wicked and lover of violence His soul hateth.
6 May He rain upon the wicked snares;
Fire and brimstone and a burning wind be the portion of their cup!
7 For Jehovah is righteous: righteous deeds He loveth;
The upright shall behold His face.
The correctness of the superscription is, in the present case,
defended by Ewald and Hitzig. Delitzsch refers the psalm to the eve of
Absalom's conspiracy, while other supporters of the Davidic authorship
prefer the Sauline persecution. The situation as described in the
psalm corresponds sufficiently well to either of these periods, in
both of which David was surrounded by stealthy hostility and
counselled by prudence to flight. But there are no definite marks of
date in the psalm itself; and all that is certain is its many
affinities with the other psalms of the group which Cheyne calls the
"persecution psalms," including iii.-vii., ix.-xiv., xvii. These
resemblances make a common authorship probable.
The structure of the psalm is simple and striking. There are two
vividly contrasted halves; the first gives the suggestions of timid
counsellors who see only along the low levels of earth, the second the
brave answer of faith which looks up into heaven.
In the first part (vv. 1-3) the psalmist begins with an utterance of
faith, which makes him recoil with wonder and aversion from the
cowardly, well-meant counsels of his friends. "In Jehovah have I taken
refuge"--a profession of faith which in Psalm vii. 1 was laid as the
basis of prayer for deliverance and is here the ground for steadfastly
remaining where he stands. The metaphor of flight to a stronghold,
which is in the word for trust, obviously colours the context, for
what can be more absurd than that he who has sought and found shelter
in God Himself should listen to the whisperings of his own heart or to
the advice of friends and hurry to some other hiding-place? "He that
believeth shall not make haste," and, even when the floods come, shall
not need to seek in wild hurry for an asylum above the rising waters.
Safe in God, the psalmist wonders why such counsel should be given,
and his question expresses its irrationality and his rejection of it.
But these timid voices spoke to his "soul," and the speakers are
undefined. Is he apostrophising his own lower nature? Have we here a
good man's dialogue with himself? Were there two voices in him: the
voice of sense, which spoke to the soul, and that of the soul, which
spoke authoritatively to sense? Calvin finds here the mention of
_spirituales luctas_; and whether there were actual counsellors of
flight or no, no doubt prudence and fear said to and in his soul,
"Flee." If we might venture to suppose that the double thought of the
oneness of the psalmist's personality and the manifoldness of his
faculties was in his mind, we should have an explanation of the
strange fluctuation between singulars and plurals in ver. 1 _b_.
"Flee" is plural, but is addressed to a singular subject: "my soul";
"your" is also plural, and "bird" singular. The Hebrew marginal
correction smooths away the first anomaly by reading the singular
imperative, but that leaves the anomaly in "your." The LXX. and other
old versions had apparently a slightly different text, which got rid
of that anomaly by reading (with the addition of one letter and a
change in the division of words), "Flee to the mountain as a bird";
and that is probably the best solution of the difficulty. One can
scarcely fail to recall the comparison of David to a partridge hunted
on the mountains. Cheyne finds in the plurals a proof that "it is the
Church within the Jewish nation of which the poet thinks." The timid
counsel is enforced by two considerations: the danger of remaining a
mark for the stealthy foe and the nobler thought of the hopelessness
of resistance, and therefore the quixotism of sacrificing one's self
in a prolongation of it.
The same figure employed in Psalm vii. 12 of God's judgments on the
wicked is here used of the wicked's artillery against the righteous.
The peril is imminent, for the bows are bent, and the arrows already
fitted to the string. In midnight darkness the assault will be made
(compare lxiv. 3, 4). The appeal to the instinct of self-preservation
is reinforced by the consideration (ver. 3) of the impotence of
efforts to check the general anarchy. The particle at the beginning of
the verse is best taken as in the same sense as at the beginning of
ver. 2, thus introducing a second co-ordinate reason for the counsel.
The translation of it as hypothetical or temporal (if or when) rather
weakens the urgency of ver. 3 as a motive for flight. The probably
exaggerated fears of the advisers, who are still speaking, are
expressed in two short, breathless sentences: "The foundations [of
society] are being torn down; the righteous--what has he achieved?" or
possibly, "What can he do?" In either case, the implication is, Why
wage a hopeless conflict any longer at the peril of life? All is lost;
the wise thing to do is to run. It is obvious that this description of
the dissolution of the foundations of the social order is either the
exaggeration of fear, or poetic generalisation from an individual case
(David's), or refers the psalm to some time of anarchy, when things
were much worse than even in the time of Saul or Absalom.
All these suggestions may well represent the voice of our own fears, the
whispers of sense and sloth, which ever dwell on and exaggerate the
perils in the road of duty, and bid us abandon resistance to prevailing
evils as useless and betake ourselves to the repose and security of some
tempting nest far away from strife. But such counsels are always base,
and though they be the result of "prudence," are short-sighted, and
leave out precisely the determining factor in the calculation. The enemy
may have fitted his arrows to the string, but there is another bow bent
which will be drawn before his (Psalm vii. 12). The foundations are not
being destroyed, however many and strong the arms that are trying to dig
them up. The righteous has done much, and can do more, though his work
seem wasted. Self-preservation is not a man's first duty; flight is his
last. Better and wiser and infinitely nobler to stand a mark for the
"slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and to stop at our post,
though we fall there, better infinitely to toil on, even when toil seems
vain, than cowardly to keep a whole skin at the cost of a wounded
conscience or despairingly to fling up work, because the ground is hard
and the growth of the seed imperceptible. Prudent advices, when the
prudence is only inspired by sense, are generally foolish; and the only
reasonable attitude is obstinate hopefulness and brave adherence to
duty.
So the psalm turns, in its second part, from these creeping counsels,
which see but half the field of vision, and that the lower, to soar
and gaze on the upper half. "God is in heaven; all's right with the
world," and with the good men who are trying to help to make it right.
The poet opposes to the picture drawn by fear the vision of the opened
heaven and the throned Jehovah. In ver. 4 the former part is not to be
taken as a separate affirmation: "The Lord is," etc., but "Jehovah" is
a nominative absolute, and the weight of the sentence falls on the
last clause. The "holy palace" in which Jehovah is beheld enthroned is
not on earth, as the parallelism of the clauses shows. To the eyes
that have seen that vision and before which it ever burns, all earthly
sorrows and dangers seem small. There is the true asylum of the hunted
soul; that is the mountain to which it is wise to flee. If the
faint-hearted had seen that sight, their timid counsels would have
caught a new tone. They are preposterous to him who does see it. For
not only does he behold Jehovah enthroned, but he sees Him
scrutinising all men's acts. We bring the eyelids close when minutely
examining any small thing. So God is by a bold figure represented as
doing, and the word for "beholds" has _to divide_ as its root idea,
and hence implies a keen discriminating gaze. As fire tries metal, so
He tries men. And the result of the trial is twofold, as is described
in the two clauses of ver. 5, which each require to be completed from
the other: "The Lord trieth the righteous (and finding him approved,
loveth), but the wicked" (He trieth, and finding him base metal), His
soul "hateth." In the former clause the process of trial is mentioned,
and its result omitted; in the latter the process is omitted, and the
result described. The strong anthropomorphism which attributes a
"soul" to God and "hatred" to His soul is not to be slurred over as
due to the imperfection of Hebrew ideas of the Divine nature. There is
necessarily in the Divine nature an aversion to evil and to the man
who has so completely given himself over to it as to "love" it. Such
perverted love can only have turned to it that side of the Divine
character which in gravity of disapprobation and recoil from evil
answers to what we call hate, but neither desires to harm nor is
perturbed by passion. The New Testament is as emphatic as the Old in
asserting the reality of "the wrath of God." But there are limitation
and imperfection in this psalm in that it does not transcend the point
of view which regards man's conduct as determining God's attitude.
Retribution, not forgiveness nor the possibility of changing the moral
bias of character, is its conception of the relations of man and God.
The Divine estimate, which in ver. 5 is the result of God's trial of
the two classes, is carried forward in vv. 6 and 7 to its twofold
issues. But the form of ver. 6 is that of a wish, not of a prediction;
and here again we encounter the tone which, after all allowances, must
be regarded as the result of the lower stage of revelation on which
the psalmist stood, even though personal revenge need not be ascribed
to him. In the terrible picture of the judgment poured down from the
open heavens into which the singer has been gazing, there is a
reproduction of the destruction of the cities of the plain, the fate
of which stands in the Old Testament as the specimen and prophecy of
all subsequent acts of judgment. But the rain from heaven is conceived
as consisting of "snares," which is a strangely incongruous idea. Such
mingled metaphors are less distasteful to Hebrew poets than to Western
critics; and the various expedients to smooth this one away, such as
altering the text and neglecting the accents and reading "coals of
fire," are unnecessary sacrifices to correctness of style. Delitzsch
thinks that the "snares" are "a whole discharge of lassoes," _i.e._
lightnings, the zigzag course of which may be compared to a "noose
thrown down from above"! The purpose of the snares is to hold fast the
victims so that they cannot escape the fiery rain--a terrible picture,
the very incongruity of figure heightening the grim effect. The
division of the verse according to the accents parts the snares from
the actual components of the fatal shower, and makes the second half
of the verse an independent clause, which is probably to be taken,
like the former clause, as a wish: "Fire and brimstone and a burning
wind [Zornhauch, Hupfeld] be the portion of their cup," again an
incongruity making the representation more dreadful. What a
draught--flaming brimstone and a hot blast as of the simoom! The
tremendous metaphor suggests awful reality.
But the double judgment of ver. 5 has a gentler side, and the reason for
the tempest of wrath is likewise that for the blessed hope of the
upright, as the "for" of ver. 7 teaches. "Jehovah is righteous." That
is the rock foundation for the indomitable faith of the Psalter in the
certain ultimate triumph of patient, afflicted righteousness. Because
God in His own character is so, He must love righteous acts--His own and
men's. The latter seems to be the meaning here, where the fate of men is
the subject in hand. The Divine "love" is here contrasted with both the
wicked man's "love" of "violence" and God's "hate" (ver. 5), and is the
foundation of the final confidence, "The upright shall behold His face."
The converse rendering, "His countenance doth behold the upright"
(A.V.), is grammatically permissible, but would be flat,
tautological--since ver. 4 has already said so--and inappropriate to the
close, where a statement as to the upright, antithetical to that as to
the wicked, is needed. God looks on the upright, as has been said; and
the upright shall gaze on Him, here and now in the communion of that
faith which is a better kind of sight and hereafter in the vision of
heaven, which the psalmist was on the verge of anticipating. That mutual
gaze is blessedness. They who, looking up, behold Jehovah are brave to
front all foes and to keep calm hearts in the midst of alarms. Hope
burns like a pillar of fire in them when it is gone out in others; and
to all the suggestions of their own timidity or of others they have the
answer, "In the Lord have I put my trust; how say ye to my soul, Flee?"
"Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen."
PSALM XII.
1 Save, Jehovah, for the godly ceases,
For the trusty have vanished from the sons of men.
2 They speak vanity every man with his neighbour;
[With] smooth lip and a heart and a heart do they speak.
3 May Jehovah cut off all smooth lips,
The tongue that speaks proud things,
4 That says, To our tongues we give strength: our lips are our own
(lit. with us);
Who is lord to us?
5 For the oppression of the afflicted, for the sighing of the needy,
Now I will arise, saith Jehovah; I will set him in the safety he
pants for.
6 The words of Jehovah are pure words,
Silver tried in a furnace [and flowing down] to the ground,
purified seven times.
7 Thou, Jehovah, shalt guard them;
Thou shalt preserve him from this generation for ever.
8 All around the wicked swagger,
When vileness is set on high among the sons of men.
One penalty of living near God is keen pain from low lives. The ears
that hear God's word cannot but be stunned and hurt by the babble of
empty speech. This psalm is profoundly melancholy, but without trace
of personal affliction. The psalmist is not sad for himself, but sick
of the clatter of godless tongues, in which he discerns the outcome of
godless lives. His plaint wakes echoes in hearts touched by the love
of God and the visions of man's true life. It passes through four
clearly marked stages, each consisting of two verses: despondent
contemplation of the flood of corrupt talk which seems to submerge all
(1, 2); a passionate prayer for Divine intervention, wrung from the
psalmist by the miserable spectacle (3, 4); the answer to that cry
from the voice of God, with the rapturous response of the psalmist to
it (5, 6); and the confidence built on the Divine word, which
rectifies the too despondent complaint at the beginning, but is still
shaded by the facts which stare him in the face (7, 8).
The cry for help (_Save_, LXX.) abruptly beginning the psalm tells of
the sharp pain from which it comes. The psalmist has been brooding
over the black outlook till his overcharged heart relieves itself in
this single-worded prayer. As he looks round he sees no exceptions to
the prevailing evil. Like Elijah, he thinks that he is left alone, and
love to God and men and reliableness and truth are vanished with their
representatives. No doubt in all such despondent thoughts about the
rarity of Christian charity and of transparent truthfulness there is
an element of exaggeration, which in the present case is, as we shall
see, corrected by the process of God-taught meditation. But the
clearer the insight into what society should be, the sadder the
estimate of what it is. Roseate pictures of it augur ill for the ideal
which their painters have. It is better to be too sensitive to evils
than to be contented with them. Unless the passionate conviction of
the psalmist has burned itself into us, we shall but languidly work to
set things right. Heroes and reformers have all begun with
"exaggerated estimates" of corruption. The judgment formed of the
moral state of this or of any generation depends on the clearness
with which we grasp as a standard the ideal realised in Jesus Christ
and on the closeness of our communion with God.
As in Psalm v., sins of speech are singled out, and of these "vanity"
and "smooth lips with a heart and a heart" are taken as typical. As in
Eph. iv. 25, the guilt of falsehood is deduced from the bond of
neighbourliness, which it rends. The sin, to which a "high
civilisation" is especially prone, of saying pleasant things without
meaning them, seems to this moralist as grave as to most men it seems
slight. Is the psalmist right or wrong in taking speech for an even
more clear index of corruption than deeds? What would he have said if
he had been among us, when the press has augmented the power of the
tongue, and floods of "vanity," not only in the form of actual lies,
but of inane trivialities and nothings of personal gossip, are poured
over the whole nation? Surely, if his canon is right, there is
something rotten in the state of this land; and the Babel around may
well make good men sad and wise men despondent.
Shall we venture to follow the psalmist in the second turn of his
thoughts (vv. 3, 4), where the verb at the beginning is best taken as
an optative and rendered, "May Jehovah cut off"? The deepest meaning
of his desire every true man will take for his own, namely the
cessation of the sin; but the more we live in the spirit of Jesus, the
more we shall cherish the hope that that may be accomplished by
winning the sinner. Better to have the tongue touched with a live coal
from the altar than cut out. In the one case there is only a mute, in
the other an instrument for God's praise. But the impatience of evil
and the certainty that God can subdue it, which make the very nerve
of the prayer, should belong to Christians yet more than to the
psalmist. A new phase of sinful speech appears as provoking judgment
even more than the former did. The combination of flattery and
boastfulness is not rare, discordant as they seem; but the special
description of the "proud things" spoken is that they are denials of
responsibility to God or man for the use of lips and tongue. Insolence
has gone far when it has formulated itself into definite statements.
Twenty men will act on the principle for one who will put it into
words. The conscious adoption and cynical avowal of it are a mark of
defiance of God. "To our tongues we give strength"--an obscure
expression which may be taken in various shades of meaning, _e.g._ as
= We have power over, or = Through, or as to, our tongues we are
strong, or = We will give effect to our words. Possibly it stands as
the foundation of the daring defiance in the last clause of the verse,
and asserts that the speaker is the author of his power of speech and
therefore responsible to none for its use. "Our lips are with us" may
be a further development of the same godless thought. "With us" is
usually taken to mean "our allies," or confederates, but signifies
rather "in our possession, to do as we will with them." "Who is lord
over us?" There speaks godless insolence shaking off dependence, and
asserting shamelessly licence of speech and life, unhindered by
obligations to God and His law.
With dramatic swiftness the scene changes in the next pair of verses
(5, 6). That deep voice, which silences all the loud bluster, as the
lion's roar hushes the midnight cries of lesser creatures, speaks in
the waiting soul of the psalmist. Like Hezekiah with Sennacherib's
letter, he spreads before the Lord the "words with which they reproach
Thee," and, like Hezekiah, he has immediate answer. The inward
assurance that God will arise is won by prayer at once, and changes
the whole aspect of the facts which as yet remain unchanged. The
situation does not seem so desperate when we know that God is moving.
Whatever delay may intervene before the actual Divine act, there is
none before the assurance of it calms the soul. Many wintry days may
have to be faced, but a breath of spring has been in the air, and hope
revives. The twofold reason which rouses the Divine activity is very
strikingly put first in ver. 5. Not merely the "oppression or spoiling
of the meek," but that conjoined with the "sighing of the needy,"
bring God into the field. Not affliction alone, but affliction which
impels to prayer, moves Him to "stir up His strength." "Now will I
arise." Th
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