The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 2
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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 2
Author: Alexander Maclaren
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
Release date: April 9, 2013 [eBook #42488]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE PSALMS, VOL. 2 ***
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
SIR W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Editor of "The Expositor," etc._
THE PSALMS
BY
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.
_VOLUME II._
PSALMS XXXIX.-LXXXIX.
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
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.
_VOLUME II._
PSALMS XXXIX.-LXXXIX.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
CONTENTS
PAGE
PSALM XXXIX. 1
" XL. 14
" XLI. 30
" XLII., XLIII. 41
" XLIV. 54
" XLV. 63
" XLVI. 79
" XLVII. 86
" XLVIII. 92
" XLIX. 100
" L. 115
" LI. 125
" LII. 142
" LIII. 148
" LIV. 151
" LV. 158
" LVI. 171
" LVII. 180
" LVIII. 189
" LIX. 198
" LX. 209
" LXI. 216
" LXII. 223
" LXIII. 232
" LXIV. 241
" LXV. 246
" LXVI. 255
" LXVII. 264
" LXVIII. 269
" LXIX. 293
" LXX. 306
" LXXI. 308
" LXXII. 315
" LXXIII. 333
" LXXIV. 348
" LXXV. 359
" LXXVI. 366
" LXXVII. 371
" LXXVIII. 382
" LXXIX. 396
" LXXX. 404
" LXXXI. 414
" LXXXII. 425
" LXXXIII. 431
" LXXXIV. 440
" LXXXV. 451
" LXXXVI. 461
" LXXXVII. 470
" LXXXVIII. 477
" LXXXIX. 487
PSALM XXXIX.
1 I said, I will guard my ways, that I sin not with my tongue;
I will put a muzzle on my mouth
So long as the wicked is before me.
2 I made myself dumb in still submission,
I kept silence joylessly,
And my sorrow was stirred.
3 My heart was hot within me;
While I mused the fire blazed up;
I spake with my tongue.
4 Make me, Jehovah, to know my end,
And the measure of my days, what it is;
Let me know how fleeting I am.
5 Behold, as handbreadths hast Thou made my days,
And my lifetime is as nothing before Thee;
Surely nothing but a breath is every man, stand he ever so firm.
Selah.
6 Surely every man goes about like a shadow;
Surely for a breath do they make [such a stir];
He heaps up [goods] and knows not who will gather them.
7 And now what wait I for, Lord?
My hope--to Thee it goes.
8 From all my transgressions deliver me;
Make me not a reproach of the fool.
9 I make myself dumb, I open not my mouth,
For Thou hast done [it].
10 Remove Thy stroke from me;
I am wasted by the assault of Thy hand.
11 When with rebukes for iniquity Thou correctest a man,
Like a moth Thou frayest away his gracefulness;
Surely every man is [but] a breath. Selah.
12 Hear my prayer, Jehovah, and give ear to my cry;
At my weeping be not silent:
For I am a guest with Thee,
And a sojourner like all my fathers.
13 Look away from me, that I may brighten up,
Before I go hence and be no more.
Protracted suffering, recognised as chastisement for sin, had wasted
the psalmist's strength. It had been borne for a while in silence,
but the rush of emotion had burst the floodgates. The psalm does not
repeat the words which forced themselves from the hot heart, but
preserves for us the calmer flow which followed. It falls into four
parts, the first three of which contain three verses each, and the
fourth is expanded into four, divided into two couples.
In the first part (vv. 1-3) the frustrated resolve of silence is
recorded. Its motive was fear of sinning in speech "while the wicked
is before me." That phrase is often explained as meaning that the
sight of the prosperity of the godless in contrast with his own
sorrows tempted the singer to break out into arraigning God's
providence, and that he schooled himself to look at their insolent
ease unmurmuringly. But the psalm has no other references to other
men's flourishing condition; and it is more in accordance with its
tone to suppose that his own pains, and not their pleasures, prompted
to the withheld words. The presence of "the wicked" imposed on his
devout heart silence as a duty. We do not complain of a friend's
conduct in the hearing of his enemies. God's servants have to watch
their speech about Him when godless ears are listening, lest hasty
words should give occasion for malicious glee or blasphemy. So, for
God's honour, the psalmist put restraint on himself. The word rendered
"bridle" in ver. 2 by the A.V. and R.V. is better taken as muzzle,
for a muzzle closes the lips, and a bridle does not. The resolution
thus energetically expressed was vigorously carried out: "I made
myself dumb in still submission; I kept silence." And what came of
it? "My sorrow was stirred." Grief suppressed is increased, as all
the world knows. The closing words of ver. 2 _b_ (lit. _apart from
good_) are obscure, and very variously understood, some regarding
them as an elliptical form of "from good and bad," and expressing
completeness of silence; others taking "the good" to mean "the law, or
the praise of God, or good-fortune, or such words as would serve to
protect the singer from slanders." "But the preposition here employed,
when it follows a verb meaning silence, does not introduce that
concerning which silence is kept, but a negative result of silence"
(Hupfeld). The meaning, then, is best given by some such paraphrase
as "joylessly" or "and I had no comfort" (R.V.). The hidden sorrow
gnawed beneath the cloak like a fire in a hollow tree; it burned
fiercely unseen, and ate its way at last into sight. Locked lips
make hearts hotter. Repression of utterance only feeds the fire, and
sooner or later the "muzzle" is torn off, and pent-up feeling breaks
into speech, often the wilder for the violence done to nature by the
attempt to deny it its way. The psalmist's motive was right, and in a
measure his silence was so; but his resolve did not at first go deep
enough. It is the heart, not the mouth, that has to be silenced. To
build a dam across a torrent without diminishing the sources that
supply its waters only increases weight and pressure, and ensures a
muddy flood when it bursts.
Does the psalm proceed to recount what its author said when he broke
silence? It may appear so at first sight. On the other hand, the calm
prayer which follows, beginning with ver. 4, is not of the character
of the wild and whirling words which were suppressed for fear of
sinning, nor does the fierce fire of which the psalm has been speaking
flame in it. It seems, therefore, more probable that those first
utterances, in which the overcharged heart relieved itself, and which
were tinged with complaint and impatience, are not preserved, and did
not deserve to be, and that the pathetic, meditative petitions of
the rest of the psalm succeeded them, as after the first rush of the
restrained torrent comes a stiller flow. Such a prayer might well have
been offered "while the wicked is before me," and might have been laid
to heart by them. Its thoughts are as a cool hand laid on the singer's
hot heart. They damp the fire burning in him. There is no surer remedy
for inordinate sensibility to outward sorrows than fixed convictions
of life's brevity and illusoriness; and these are the two thoughts
which the prayer casts into sweet, sad music.
It deals with commonplaces of thought, which poets and moralists
have been singing and preaching since the world began, in different
tones and with discordant applications, sometimes with fierce revolt
against the inevitable, sometimes with paralysing consciousness of
it, sometimes using these truths as arguments for base pleasures and
aims, sometimes toying with them as occasions for cheap sentiment and
artificial pathos, sometimes urging them as motives for strenuous
toil. But of all the voices which have ever sung or prophesied of
life's short span and shadowy activities, none is nobler, saner,
healthier, and calmer than this psalmist's. The stately words in
which he proclaimed the transiency of all earthly things are not
transient. They are "nothing but a breath," but they have outlasted
much that seemed solid, and their music will sound as long as man
is on his march through time. Our "days" have a "measure"; they
are a limited period, and the Measurer is God. But this fleeting
creature man has an obstinate fancy of his permanence, which is not
all bad indeed--since without it there would be little continuity of
purpose or concentration of effort--but may easily run to extremes
and hide the fact that there is an end. Therefore the prayer for
Divine illumination is needed, that we may not be ignorant of that
which we know well enough, if we would bethink ourselves. The solemn
convictions of ver. 5 are won by the petitions of ver. 4. He who asks
God to make him know his end has already gone far towards knowing
it. If he seeks to estimate the "measure" of his days, he will soon
come to the clear conviction that it is only the narrow space that
may be covered by one or two breadths of a hand. So do noisy years
shrink when heaven's chronology is applied to them. A lifetime looks
long, but set against God's eternal years, it shrivels to an all but
imperceptible point, having position, but not magnitude.
The thought of brevity naturally draws after it that of illusoriness.
Just because life is so frail does it assume the appearance of being
futile. Both ideas are blended in the metaphors of "a breath" and "a
shadow." There is a solemn earnestness in the threefold "surely,"
confirming each clause of the seer's insight into earth's hollowness.
How emphatically he puts it in the almost pleonastic language,
"Surely nothing but a breath is every man, stand he ever so firm."
The truth proclaimed is undeniably certain. It covers the whole
ground of earthly life, and it includes the most prosperous and
firmly established. "A breath" is the very emblem of transiency and
of unsubstantiality. Every solid body can be melted and made gaseous
vapour, if heat enough is applied. They who habitually bring human
life "before Thee" dissolve into vapour the solid-seeming illusions
which cheat others, and save their own lives from being but a breath
by clearly recognising that they are.
The Selah at the end of ver. 4 does not here seem to mark a logical
pause in thought nor to coincide with the strophe division, but
emphasises by some long-drawn, sad notes the teaching of the words.
The thought runs on unbroken, and ver. 6 is closely linked to ver.
5 by the repeated "surely" and "breath" as well as in subject. The
figure changes from breath to "shadow," literally "image," meaning not
a sculptured likeness, but an _eidolon_, or unsubstantial apparition.
"The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things";
and all the movements of men coming and going in the world are but
like a dance of shadows. As they are a breath, so are their aims.
All their hubbub and activity is but like the bustle of ants on
their hill--immense energy and toil, and nothing coming of it all.
If any doubt remained as to the correctness of this judgment of the
aimlessness of man's toil, one fact would confirm the psalmist's
sentence, viz., that the most successful man labours to amass, and has
to leave his piles for another whom he does not know, to gather into
his storehouses and to scatter by his prodigality. There may be an
allusion in the words to harvesting work. The sheaves are piled up,
but in whose barn are they to be housed? Surely, if the grower and
reaper is not the ultimate owner, his toil has been for a breath.
All this is no fantastic pessimism. Still less is it an account of
what life must be. If any man's is nothing but toiling for a breath,
and if he himself is nothing but a breath, it is his own fault. They
who are joined to God have "in their embers something that doth
live"; and if they labour for Him, they do _not_ labour for vanity,
nor do they leave their possessions when they die. The psalmist has
no reference to a future life, but the immediately following strophe
shows that, though he knew that his days were few, he knew, too,
that, if his hope were set on God he was freed from the curse of
illusoriness and grasped no shadow, but the Living Substance, who
would make his life blessedly real and pour into it substantial good.
The effect of such convictions of life's brevity and emptiness should
be to throw the heart back on God. In the third part of the psalm
(vv. 7-9) a higher strain sounds. The singer turns from his dreary
thoughts, which might so easily become bitter ones, to lay hold on
God. What should earth's vanity teach but God's sufficiency? It does
not need the light of a future life to be flashed upon this mean,
swiftly vanishing present in order to see it "apparelled in celestial
light." Without that transforming conception, it is still possible to
make it great and real by bringing it into conscious connection with
God; and if hope and effort are set on Him amid all the smallnesses
and perishablenesses of the outer world, hope will not chase a shadow,
nor effort toil for very vanity. The psalmist sought to calm his hot
heart by the contemplation of his end, but that is a poor remedy for
perturbation and grief unless it leads to actual contact with the one
enduring Substance. It did so with him, and therefore "grief grew
calm," just because "hope was" not "dead." To preach the vanity of all
earthly things to heavy hearts is but pouring vinegar on nitre, unless
it is accompanied with the great antidote to all sad and depreciating
views of life: the thought that in it men may reach their hands beyond
the time-film that enmeshes them and grasp the unchanging God. This
psalm has no reference to life beyond the grave; but it finds in
present communion by waiting and hope, emancipation from the curse
of fleeting triviality which haunts every life separated from Him,
like that which the Christian hope of immortality gives. God is the
significant figure which gives value to the row of ciphers of which
every life is without Him made up. Blessed are they who are driven by
earth's vanity and drawn by God's fulness of love and power to fling
themselves into His arms and nestle there! The strong recoil of the
devout soul from a world which it has profoundly felt to be shadowy,
and its great venture of faith, which is not a venture after all,
were never more nobly or simply expressed than in that quiet "And
now"--things being so--"what wait I for? My hope"--in contrast with
the false directions which other men's takes--"to Thee it turns."
The burden is still on the psalmist's shoulders. His sufferings are not
ended, though his trust has taken the poison out of them. Therefore
his renewed grasp of God leads at once to prayer for deliverance from
his "transgressions," in which cry may be included both sins and their
chastisement. "The fool" is the name of a class, not of an individual,
and, as always in Scripture, denotes moral and religious obliquity, not
intellectual feebleness. The expression is substantially equivalent
to "the wicked" of ver. 1, and a similar motive to that which there
induced the psalmist to be silent is here urged as a plea with God for
the sufferer's deliverance. Taunts launched at a good man suffering will
glance off him and appear to reach his God.
Ver. 9 pleads as a reason for God's deliverance the psalmist's silence
under what he recognised as God's chastisement. The question arises
whether this is the same silence as is referred to in vv. 1, 2, and
many authorities take that view. But that silence was broken by a rush
of words from a hot heart, and, if the account of the connection in the
psalm given above is correct, by a subsequent more placid meditation and
prayer. It would be irrelevant to recur to it here, especially as a plea
with God. But there are two kinds of silence under His chastisements:
one which may have for its motive regard to His honour, but is none
the less tinged with rebellious thoughts, and brings no good to the
sufferer, and another which is silence of heart and will, not of lips
only, and soothes sorrow which the other only aggravated, and puts out
the fire which the other fanned. Submission to God's hand discerned
behind all visible causes is the blessed silence. "To lie still, let Him
strike home, and bless the rod," is best. And when that is attained, the
uses of chastisement are accomplished; and we may venture to ask God to
burn the rod. The desire to be freed from its blow is not inconsistent
with such submission. This prayer does not break the silence, though
it may seem to do so, for this is the privilege of hearts that love
God: that they can breathe desires to Him without His holding them
unsubmissive to His supreme will.
The last part (vv. 10-13) is somewhat abnormally long, and falls into
two parts separated by "Selah," which musical note does not here
coincide with the greater divisions. The two pairs of verses are
both petitions for removal of sickness, either real or figurative.
Their pleading persistence presents substantially the same prayer
and supports it by the same considerations of man's transiency.
The Pattern of perfect resignation thrice "prayed, saying the
same words"; and His suffering followers may do the same, and yet
neither sin by impatience, nor weary the Judge by their continual
coming. The psalmist sees in his pains God's "stroke," and pleads
the effects already produced on him as a reason for cessation. He is
already "wasted by the assault of God's hand." One more buffet, and
he feels that he must die. It is bold for a sufferer to say to God,
"Hold! enough!" but all depends on the tone in which it is said. It
may be presumption, or it may be a child's free speech, not in the
least trenching on a Father's authority. The sufferer underrates his
capacity of endurance, and often thinks, "I can bear no straw more";
but yet he has to bear it. Yet the psalmist's cry rests upon a deep
truth: that God cannot mean to crush; therefore he goes on to a deeper
insight into the meaning of that "stroke." It is not the attack of an
enemy, but the "correction" of a friend.
If men regarded sorrows and sicknesses as rebukes for iniquity, they
would better understand why sinful life, separated from God, is so
fleeting. The characteristic ground tone of the Old Testament echoes
here, according to which "the wages of sin is death." The commonplace
of man's frailty receives a still more tragic colouring when thus
regarded as a consequence of his sin. The psalmist has learned it in
relation to his own sufferings, and, because he sees it so clearly,
he pleads that these may cease. He looks on his own wasted form; and
God's hand seems to him to have taken away all that made it or life
desirable and fair, as a moth would gnaw a garment. What a daring
figure to compare the mightiest with the feeblest, the Eternal with
the very type of evanescence!
The second subdivision of this part (vv. 12, 13) reiterates the
former with some difference of tone. There is a beautiful climax of
earnestness in the psalmist's appeal to God. His prayer swells into
crying, and that again melts into tears, which go straight to the
great Father's heart. Weeping eyes are never turned to heaven in vain;
the gates of mercy open wide when the hot drops touch them. But his
fervour of desire is not this suppliant's chief argument with God. His
meditation has won for him deeper insight into that transiency which
at first he had only laid like ice on his heart, to cool its feverish
heat. He sees now more clearly, by reason of his effort to turn away
his hope from earth and fix it on God, that his brief life has an
aspect in which its brevity is not only calming, but exalting, and
gives him a claim on God, whose guest he is while here, and with whom
he has guest-rights, whether his stay is longer or shorter. "The land
is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. xxv. 23).
That which was true in a special way of Israel's tenure of the soil is
true for the individual, and true for ever. All men are God's guests;
and if we betake ourselves behind the curtains of His tent, we have
rights of shelter and sustenance. All the bitterness of the thought
of the brevity of life is sucked out of it by such a confidence. If
a man dwells with God, his Host will care for the needs, and not be
indifferent to the tears, of His guest. The long generations which
have come and gone like shadows are not a melancholy procession out
of nothing through vanity into nothing again, nor "disquieted in
vain," if they are conceived as each in turn lodging for a little
while in that same ancestral home which the present generation
inhabits. It has seen many sons succeeding their fathers as its
tenants, but its stately strength grows not old, and its gates are
open to-day as they have been in all generations.
The closing prayer in ver. 13 has a strange sound. "Look away from
me" is surely a singular petition, and the effect of God's averting
His face is not less singular. The psalmist thinks that it will be
his regaining cheerfulness and brightness, for he uses a word which
means to clear up or to brighten, as the sky becomes blue again after
storm. The light of God's face makes men's faces bright. "They cried
unto God, and were lightened," not because He looked away from them,
but because He regarded them. But the intended paradox gives the more
emphatic expression to the thought that the psalmist's pains came from
God's angry look, and it is that which he asks may be turned from
him. That mere negative withdrawal, however, would have no cheering
power, and is not conceivable as unaccompanied by the turning to the
suppliant of God's loving regard. The devout psalmist had no notion of
a neutral God, nor could he ever be contented with simple cessation of
the tokens of Divine displeasure. The ever-outflowing Divine activity
must reach every man. It may come in one or other of the two forms of
favour or of displeasure, but come it will; and each man can determine
which side of that pillar of fire and cloud is turned to him. On one
side is the red glare of anger, on the other the white lustre of love.
If the one is turned from, the other is turned to us.
Not less remarkable is the prospect of going away into non-being which
the last words of the psalm present as a piteous reason for a little
gleam of brightness being vouchsafed in this span-long life. There is
no vision here of life beyond the grave; but, though there is not,
the singer "throws himself into the arms of God." He does not seek
to solve the problem of life by bringing the future in to redress
the balance of good and evil. To him the solution lies in present
communion with a present God, in whose house he is a guest now, and
whose face will make his life bright, however short it may be.
PSALM XL.
1 Waiting, I waited for Jehovah,
And He bent to me and heard my [loud] cry.
2 And lifted me from the pit of destruction,
From the mire of the bog,
And set my feet on a rock--
Established my steps,
3 And put in my mouth a new song,
Praise unto our God.
Many shall see and fear,
And trust in Jehovah.
4 Blessed is the man who has made Jehovah his trust,
And has not turned [away] to the proud and deserters to a lie.
5 In multitudes hast Thou wrought, Jehovah, my God;
Thy wonders and Thy purposes towards us--
There is none to be set beside Thee--
Should I declare them and speak them,
They surpass numbering.
6 Sacrifice and meal-offering Thou didst not delight in--
Ears hast Thou pierced for me--
Burnt-offering and sin-offering Thou didst not demand.
7 Then I said, Behold, I am come--
In the roll of the book it is prescribed to me--
8 To do Thy pleasure, my God, I delight,
And Thy law is within my inmost parts.
9 I proclaimed glad tidings of Thy righteousness in the great
congregation;
Behold, my lips I did not restrain,
Jehovah, Thou knowest.
10 Thy righteousness did I not hide within my heart;
Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation did I speak;
I concealed not Thy loving-kindness and Thy truth from the great
congregation.
11 Thou, Jehovah, wilt not restrain Thy compassions from me;
Thy loving-kindness and Thy troth will continually preserve me.
12 For evils beyond numbering have compassed me;
My iniquities have overtaken me, and I am not able to see:
They surpass the hairs of my head,
And my heart has forsaken me.
13 Be pleased, Jehovah, to deliver me;
Jehovah, hasten to my help.
14 Shamed and put to the blush together be the seekers after my soul
to carry it away!
Turned back and dishonoured be they who delight in my calamity!
15 Paralysed by reason of their shame
Be they who say to me, Oho! Oho!
16 Joyful and glad in Thee be all who seek Thee!
Jehovah be magnified, may they ever say who love Thy salvation!
17 But as for me, I am afflicted and needy;
The Lord purposes [good] for me:
My Help and my Deliverer art Thou;
My God, delay not.
The closing verses of this psalm reappear with slight changes as an
independent whole in Psalm lxx. The question arises whether that is a
fragment or this a conglomerate. Modern opinion inclines to the latter
alternative, and points in support to the obvious change of tone in the
second part. But that change does not coincide with the supposed line
of junction, since Psalm lxx. begins with our ver. 13, and the change
begins with ver. 12. Cheyne and others are therefore obliged to suppose
that ver. 12 is the work of a third poet or compiler, who effected a
junction thereby. The cumbrousness of the hypothesis of fusion is plain,
and its necessity is not apparent, for it is resorted to in order to
explain how a psalm which keeps so lofty a level of confidence at first
should drop to such keen consciousness of innumerable evils and such
faint-heartedness. But surely such resurrection of apparently dead
fears is not uncommon in devout, sensitive souls. They live beneath
April skies, not unbroken blue. However many the wonderful works which
God has done and however full of thankfulness the singer's heart, his
deliverance is not complete. The contrast in the two parts of the
psalm is true to facts and to the varying aspects of feeling and of
faith. Though the latter half gives greater prominence to encompassing
evils, they appear but for a moment; and the prayer for deliverance
which they force from the psalmist is as triumphant in faith as were
the thanksgivings of the former part. In both the ground tone is that
of victorious grasp of God's help, which in the one is regarded in
its mighty past acts, and in the other is implored and trusted in for
present and future needs. The change of tone is not such as to demand
the hypothesis of fusion. The unity is further supported by verbal links
between the parts: _e.g._, the innumerable evils of ver. 12 pathetically
correspond to the innumerable mercies of ver. 5, and the same word for
"surpass" occurs in both verses; "be pleased" in ver. 13 echoes "Thy
pleasure" (will, A.V.) in ver. 8; "cares" or _thinks_ (A.V.) in ver. 17
is the verb from which the noun rendered _purposes_ (thoughts, A.V.) in
ver. 5 is derived.
The attribution of the psalm to David rests solely on the
superscription. The contents have no discernible points of connection
with known circumstances in his or any other life. Jeremiah has been
thought of as the author, on the strength of giving a prosaic literal
meaning to the obviously poetical phrase "the pit of destruction"
(ver. 2). If it is to be taken literally, what is to be made of the
"rock" in the next clause? Baethgen and others see the return from
Babylon in the glowing metaphors of ver. 2, and, in accordance with
their conceptions of the evolution of spiritual religion, take the
subordination of sacrifice to obedience as a clear token of late date.
We may, however, recall 1 Sam. xv. 22, and venture to doubt whether
the alleged process of spiritualising has been so clearly established,
and its stages dated, as to afford a criterion of the age of a psalm.
In the first part, the current of thought starts from thankfulness
for individual deliverances (vv. 1-3); widens into contemplation of
the blessedness of trust and the riches of Divine mercies (vv. 4,
5); moved by these and taught what is acceptable to God, it rises
to self-consecration as a living sacrifice (vv. 6-8); and, finally,
pleads for experience of God's grace in all its forms on the ground of
past faithful stewardship in celebrating these (vv. 9-11). The second
part is one long-drawn cry for help, which admits of no such analysis,
though its notes are various.
The first outpouring of the song is one long sentence, of which the
clauses follow one another like sunlit ripples, and tell the whole
process of the psalmist's deliverance. It began with patient waiting;
it ended with a new song. The voice first raised in a cry, shrill
and yet submissive enough to be heard above, is at last tuned into
new forms of uttering the old praise. The two clauses of ver. 1 ("I"
and "He") set over against each other, as separated by the distance
between heaven and earth, the psalmist and his God. He does not begin
with his troubles, but with his faith. "Waiting, he waited" for
Jehovah; and wherever there is that attitude of tense and continuous
but submissive expectance, God's attitude will be that of bending to
meet it. The meek, upturned eye has power to draw His towards itself.
That is an axiom of the devout life confirmed by all experience, even
if the tokens of deliverance delay their coming. Such expectance,
however patient, is not inconsistent with loud crying, but rather
finds voice in it. Silent patience and impatient prayer, in too great
a hurry to let God take His own time, are equally imperfect. But the
cry, "Haste to my help" (ver. 13), and the final petition, "My God,
delay not," are consistent with true waiting.
The suppliant and God have come closer together in ver. 2, which
should not be regarded as beginning a new sentence. As in Psalm
xviii., prayer brings God down to help. His hand reaches to the man
prisoned in a pit or struggling in a swamp; he is dragged out, set on
a rock, and feels firm ground beneath his feet. Obviously the whole
representation is purely figurative, and it is hopelessly flat and
prosaic to refer it to Jeremiah's experience. The "many waters" of
Psalm xviii. are a parallel metaphor. The dangers that threatened the
psalmist are described as "a pit of destruction," as if they were a
dungeon into which whosoever was thrown would come out no more, or in
which, like a wild beast, he has been trapped. They are also likened
to a bog or quagmire, in which struggles only sink a man deeper.
But the edge of the bog touches rock, and there is firm footing and
unhindered walking there, if only some great lifting power can drag
the sinking man out. God's hand can, and does, because the lips,
almost choked with mire, could yet cry. The psalmist's extremity
of danger was probably much more desperate than is usual in such
conditions as ours, so that his cries seem too piercing for us to make
our own; but the terrors and conflicts of humanity are nearly constant
quantities, though the occasions calling them forth are widely
different. If we look deeper into life than its surface, we shall
learn that it is not violent "spiritualising" to make these utterances
the expression of redeeming grace, since in truth there is but one or
other of these two possibilities open for us. Either we flounder in a
bottomless bog, or we have our feet on the Rock.
God's deliverance gives occasion for fresh praise. The psalmist has to
add his voice to the great chorus, and this sense of being but one of a
multitude, who have been blessed alike and therefore should bless alike,
occasions the significant interchange in ver. 3 of "my" and "our," which
needs no theory of the speaker being the nation to explain it. It is
ever a joy to the heart swelling with the sense of God's mercies to
be aware of the many who share the mercies and gratitude. The cry for
deliverance is a solo; the song of praise is choral. The psalmist did
not need to be bidden to praise; a new song welled from his lips as by
inspiration. Silence was more impossible to his glad heart than even to
his sorrow. To shriek for help from the bottom of the pit and to be dumb
when lifted to the surface is a churl's part.
Though the song was new in this singer's mouth, as befitted a
recipient of deliverances fresh from heaven, the theme was old;
but each new voice individualises the commonplaces of religious
experience, and repeats them as fresh. And the result of one man's
convinced and jubilant voice, giving novelty to old truths because he
has verified them in new experiences, will be that "many shall see,"
as though they behold the deliverance of which they hear, "and shall
fear" Jehovah and trust themselves to Him. It was not the psalmist's
deliverance, but his song, that was to be the agent in this extension
of the fear of Jehovah. All great poets have felt that their words
would win audience and live. Thus, even apart from consciousness of
inspiration, this lofty anticipation of the effect of his words is
intelligible, without supposing that their meaning is that the signal
deliverance of the nation from captivity would spread among heathens
and draw them to Israel's faith.
The transition from purely personal experience to more general thoughts
is completed in vv. 4, 5. Just as the psalmist began with telling of
his own patient expectance and thence passed on to speak of God's
help, so in these two verses he sets forth the same sequence in terms
studiously cast into the most comprehensive form. Happy indeed are
they who can translate their own experience into these two truths for
all men: that trust is blessedness and that God's mercies are one long
sequence, made up of numberless constituent parts. To have these for
one's inmost convictions and to ring them out so clearly and melodiously
that many shall be drawn to listen, and then to verify them by their own
"seeing," is one reward of patient waiting for Jehovah. That trust must
be maintained by resolute resistance to temptations to its opposite.
Hence the negative aspect of trust is made prominent in ver. 4 _b_, in
which the verb should be rendered "turns not" instead of "respecteth
not," as in the A.V. and R.V. The same motion, looked at from opposite
sides, may be described in turning to and turning from. Forsaking other
confidences is part of the process of making God one's trust. But it is
significant that the antithesis is not completely carried out, for those
to whom the trustful heart does not turn are not here, as might have
been expected, rival objects of trust, but those who put their own trust
in false refuges. "The proud" are the class of arrogantly self-reliant
people who feel no need of anything but their own strength to lean on.
"Deserters to a lie" are those who fall away from Jehovah to put their
trust in any creature, since all refuges but Himself will fail. Idols
may be included in this thought of _a lie_, but it is unduly limited if
confined to them. Much rather it takes in all false grounds of security.
The antithesis fails in accuracy, for the sake of putting emphasis on
the prevalence of such mistaken trust, which makes it so much the harder
to keep aloof from the multitudes and stand alone in reliance on Jehovah.
Ver. 5 corresponds with ver. 4, in that it sets forth in similar
generality the great deeds with which God is wont to answer man's
trust. But the personality of the poet breaks very beautifully through
the impersonal utterances at two points: once when he names Jehovah as
"my God," thus claiming his separate share in the general mercies and
his special bond of connection with the Lover of all; and once when he
speaks of his own praises, thus recognising the obligation of individual
gratitude for general blessings. Each particle of finely comminuted
moisture in the rainbow has to flash back the broad sunbeam at its
own angle. God's "wonders and designs" are "realised Divine thoughts
and Divine thoughts which are gradually being realised" (Delitzsch).
These are wrought and being wrought in multitudes innumerable; and, as
the psalmist sees the bright, unbroken beams pouring forth from their
inexhaustible source, he breaks into an exclamation of adoring wonder
at the incomparable greatness of the ever-giving God. "There is none
to set beside Thee" is far loftier and more accordant with the tone
of the verse than the comparatively flat and incongruous remark that
God's mercies cannot be told to Him (A.V. and R.V.). A precisely similar
exclamation occurs in Psalm lxxi. 19, in which God's incomparable
greatness is deduced from the great things which He has done. Happy
the singer who has an inexhaustible theme! He is not silenced by the
consciousness of the inadequacy of his songs, but rather inspired to the
never-ending, ever-beginning, joyful task of uttering some new fragment
of that transcendent perfection. Innumerable wonders wrought should be
met by ever-new songs. If they cannot be counted, the more reason for
open-eyed observance of them as they come, and for a stream of praise as
unbroken as is their bright continuance.
If God's mercies thus baffle enumeration and beggar praise, the
question naturally rises, "What shall I render to the Lord for all
His benefits?" Therefore the next turn of thought shows the psalmist
as reaching the lofty spiritual conception that heartfelt delight in
God's will is the true response to God's wonders of love. He soars
far above external rites as well as servile obedience to unloved
authority, and proclaims the eternal and ultimate truth that what
God delights in is man's delight in His will. The great words which
rang the knell of Saul's kingship may well have sounded in his
successor's spirit. Whether they are the source of the language of
our psalm or not, they are remarkably similar. "To obey is better
than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (1 Sam. xv.
23), teaches precisely the same lesson as vv. 6-8 of this psalm.
The strong negation in ver. 6 does not deny the Divine institution
of the sacrificial law, but affirms that something much deeper than
external sacrifices is the real object of God's desire. The negation
is made emphatic by enumerating the chief kinds of sacrifice. Whether
they are bloody or bloodless, whether meant to express consecration
or to effect reconciliation, they are none of them the true
sacrifices of God. In ver. 6 the psalmist is entirely occupied with
God's declarations of His requirements; and he presents these in a
remarkable fashion, intercalating the clause, "Ears hast Thou pierced
for me," between the two parallel clauses in regard to sacrifice. Why
should the connection be thus broken? The fact that God has endowed
the psalmist with capacity to apprehend the Divine speech reveals
God's desire concerning him. Just because he has ears to hear, it
is clear that God wishes him to hear, and therefore that outward
acts of worship cannot be the acknowledgment of mercies in which God
delights. The central clause of the verse is embedded in the others,
because it deals with a Divine act which, pondered, will be seen to
establish their teaching. The whole puts in simple, concrete form a
wide principle, namely, that the possession of capacity for receiving
communications of God's will imposes the duty of loving reception and
obedience, and points to inward joyful acceptance of that will as the
purest kind of worship.
Vv. 7 and 8 are occupied with the response to God's requirements thus
manifested by His gift of capacity to hear His voice. "Then said I."
As soon as he had learned the meaning of his ears he found the right
use of his tongue. The thankful heart was moved to swift acceptance of
the known will of God. The clearest recognition of His requirements
may coexist with resistance to them, and needs the impulse of loving
contemplation of God's unnumbered wonders to vivify it into glad
service. "Behold, I am come," is the language of a servant entering
his master's presence in obedience to his call. In ver. 7 the second
clause interrupts just as in ver. 6. There the interruption spoke of
the organ of receiving Divine messages as to duty; here it speaks
of the messages themselves: "In the roll of the book is my duty
prescribed for me." The promise implied in giving ears is fulfilled
by giving a permanent written law. This man, having ears to hear, has
heard, and has not only heard, but welcomed into the inmost recesses
of his heart and will, the declared will of God. The word rendered
"delight" in ver. 8 is the same as is rendered "desire" in ver. 6
(A.V.); and that rendered by the A.V. and R.V. in ver. 8 "will" is
properly "good pleasure." Thus God's delight and man's coincide.
Thankful love assimilates the creature's will with the Divine, and
so changes tastes and impulses that desire and duty are fused into
one. The prescriptions of the book become the delight of the heart.
An inward voice directs. "Love, and do what Thou wilt"; for a will
determined by love cannot but choose to please its Beloved. Liberty
consists in freely willing and victoriously doing what we ought, and
such liberty belongs to hearts whose supreme delight is to please
the God whose numberless wonders have won their love and made their
thanksgivings poor. The law written in the heart was the ideal even
when a law was written on tables of stone. It was the prophetic
promise for the Messianic age. It is fulfilled in the Christian life
in the measure of its genuineness. Unless the heart delights in the
law, acts of obedience count for very little.
The quotation of vv. 7, 8, in Heb. x. 5-7, is mainly from the LXX.,
which has the remarkable rendering of ver. 6 _b_, "A body hast Thou
prepared for me." Probably this is meant as paraphrase rather than
as translation; and it does represent substantially the idea of the
original, since the body is the instrument for fulfilling, just as the
ear is the organ for apprehending, the uttered will of God. The value
of the psalm for the writer of Hebrews does not depend on that clause,
but on the whole representation which it gives of the ideal of the
perfectly righteous servant's true worship, as involving the setting
aside of sacrifice and the decisive pre-eminence of willing obedience.
That ideal is fulfilled in Jesus, and really pointed onwards to Him.
This use of the quotation does not imply the directly Messianic
character of the psalm.
"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and thus
the passage is easy from inward delight in God's will to public
declaration of His character. Every true lover of God is a witness of
His sweetness to the world. Since the psalmist had His law hidden in
the depths of his being, he could not "hide" His righteousness within
his heart, but must magnify it with his tongue. That is a feeble and
doubtful love which knows no necessity of utterance. To "love and be
silent" is sometimes imperative, but always burdensome; and a heart
happy in its love cannot choose but ripple out in music of speech.
The psalmist describes himself as a messenger of glad tidings, a true
evangelist. The multiplicity of names for the various aspects of God's
character and acts which he heaps together in these verses serves to
indicate their manifoldness, which he delighted to contemplate, and
his long, loving familiarity with them. He sets his treasure in all
lights, and views it from all points, as a man will turn a jewel in
his hand and get a fresh flash from every facet. "Righteousness," the
good news that the Ruler of all is inflexibly just, with a justice
which scrupulously meets all creatures' needs and becomes penal and
awful only to the rejecters of its tender aspect; "faithfulness,"
the inviolable adherence to every promise; "salvation," the actual
fulness of deliverance and well-being flowing from these attributes;
"loving-kindness" and "troth," often linked together as expressing at
once the warmth and the unchangeableness of the Divine heart--these
have been the psalmist's themes. Therefore they are his hope; and
he is sure that, as he has been their singer, they will be his
preservers. Ver. 11 is not prayer, but bold confidence. It echoes the
preceding verse, since "I did not restrain" (ver. 9) corresponds with
"Thou wilt not restrain," and "Thy loving-kindness and Thy troth" with
the mention of the same attributes in ver. 10. The psalmist is not so
much asserting his claims as giving voice to his faith. He does not
so much think that his utterance is deserving of remuneration as that
God's character makes impossible the supposition that he, who had so
loved and sung His great name in its manifold glories, should find
that name unavailing in his hour of need.
There is an undertone of such felt need even in the confidence of
ver. 11; and it becomes dominant from ver. 12 to the end, but not so
as to overpower the clear note of trust. The difference between the
two parts of the psalm is great, but is not to be exaggerated as if
it were contrariety. In the former part thanksgiving for deliverance
from dangers recently past predominates; in the latter, petition for
deliverance from dangers still threatening: but in both the psalmist
is exercising the same confidence; and if in the beginning he hymns
the praises of God who brought him out of the pit of destruction,
in the end he keeps firm hold of Him as His "Help and Deliverer."
Similarly, while in the first portion he celebrates the "purposes
which are to usward," in the latter he is certain that, needy as he
is, Jehovah has "purposes" of kindness to him. The change of tone is
not so complete as to negative the original unity, and surely it is
not difficult to imagine a situation in which both halves of the psalm
should be appropriate. Are there any deliverances in this perilous
and incomplete life so entire and permanent that they leave no room
for future perils? Must not prevision of coming dangers accompany
thankfulness for past escapes? Our Pharaohs are seldom drowned in
the Red Sea, and we do not often see their corpses stretched on the
sand. The change of tone, of which so much use is made as against
the original unity of the psalm, begins with ver. 12; but that
verse has a very strong and beautiful link of connection with the
previous part, in the description of besetting evils as innumerable.
Both words of ver. 5 are repeated, that for "surpass" or "are more
than" in ver. 12 _c_, that for "number" in _a_. The heart that has
felt how innumerable are God's thoughts and deeds of love is not
utterly reduced to despair, even while it beholds a sea of troubles
rolling its white-crested billows shoreward as far as the horizon.
The sky stretches beyond them, and the true numberlessness of God's
mercies outdoes the great yet really limited range of apparently
numberless sins or sorrows, the consequences of sin. "Mine iniquities
have overtaken me" like pursuing foes, and every calamity that held
him in its grip was a child of a sin of his. Such consciousness of
transgression is not inconsistent with "delight in the law of God
after the inward man," as Paul found out (Rom. vii. 22, 23), but it
sets aside the attempt to make this a directly Messianic psalm. "I am
not able to see." Such is the only possible rendering, for there is
no justification for translating the simple word by "look up." Either
the crowd of surrounding calamities prevent the psalmist from seeing
anything but themselves, or, more probably, the failure of vital power
accompanying his sorrow dims his vision (Psalm xxxviii. 10).
From ver. 13 onwards Psalm lxx. repeats this psalm, with unimportant
verbal differences. The first of these is the omission of "Be pleased"
in ver. 13, which binds this second part to the first, and points
back to "Thy pleasure" (ver. 8). The prayer for the confusion of
enemies closely resembles that in Psalm xxxv., ver. 14 being almost
identical with vv. 4 and 26 there, and ver. 15 recalling ver. 21 of
that psalm. The prayer that enemies may fail in their designs is
consistent with the most Christlike spirit, and nothing more is asked
by the psalmist, but the tinge of satisfaction with which he dwells
on their discomfiture, however natural, belongs to the less lofty
moral standard of his stage of revelation. He uses extraordinarily
forcible words to paint their bewilderment and mortification--may they
blush, turn pale, be driven back, be as if paralysed with shame at
their baffled malice! The prayer for the gladness of God's servants
and seekers is like Psalm xxxv. 27. It asks that fruition as complete
as the disappointment of the foes may be the lot of those whose
desires set towards God, and it is prophecy as well as prayer. Seekers
after God ever find Him, and are more joyful in possession than they
hoped to be while seeking. He alone never eludes search, nor ever
disappoints attainment. They who long for His salvation will receive
it; and their reception will fill their hearts so full of blessedness
that their lips will not be able to refrain from ever-new outbursts of
the old praise, "The Lord be magnified."
Very plaintively and touchingly does the low sigh of personal need
follow this triumphant intercession for the company of the saints.
Its triple elements blend in one believing aspiration, which is not
impatience, though it pleads for swift help. "I am afflicted and
needy"; there the psalmist turns his eye on his own sore necessity.
"Jehovah has purposes for me"; there he turns to God, and links his
final petitions with his earlier trust by the repetition of the word
by which he described (ver. 5) the many gracious designs of God.
"My God, delay not"; there he embraces both in one act of faithful
longing. His need calls for, and God's loving counsels ensure, swift
response. He who delights when an afflicted and poor man calls Him
"my God" will not be slack to vindicate His servant's confidence, and
magnify His own name. That appeal goes straight to the heart of God.
PSALM XLI.
1 Happy the man who considers the helpless;
In the day of calamity will Jehovah deliver him
2 Jehovah will preserve him and keep him alive,
--He shall be counted happy in the land,--
And do not Thou give him up to the wrath of his enemies.
3 Jehovah will sustain him on the bed of languishing;
All his lying down in his sickness Thou hast turned into health.
4 As for me, I said, Jehovah, be merciful to me,
Heal my soul, for I have sinned against Thee.
5 My enemies speak evil against me:
"When will he die, and his name perish?"
6 And if one [of them] comes to see [me], he speaks falsehood
(insincere sympathy);
His heart collects malice for itself;
He goes forth, he speaks it.
7 Together against me do all my haters whisper;
Against me they plan my hurt:
8 "A fatal thing is fixed upon him,
And he who has [now] lain down will rise no more."
9 Even the man of my peace, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread,
Has lifted his heel against me.
10 But Thou, Jehovah, be merciful to me and raise me up,
That I may requite them.
11 By this I know that Thou delightest in me,
Since my enemy triumphs not over me.
12 And as for me, in my integrity Thou upholdest me,
And settest me before Thy face for ever.
13 Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Israel,
From everlasting and to everlasting
Amen and Amen.
The central mass of this psalm describes the singer as suffering from
two evils: sickness and treacherous friends. This situation naturally
leads up to the prayer and confidence of the closing strophe (vv.
10-12). But its connection with the introductory verses (1-3) is less
plain. A statement of the blessings ensured to the compassionate
seems a singular introduction to the psalmist's pathetic exhibition
of his sorrows. Cheyne thinks that the opening verses were added by
the framer of the collection to adapt the poem to the use of the
Church of his own time, and that "the original opening must have been
different" ("Orig. of Psalt.," 246, _n._). It is to be observed,
however, that the two points of the psalmist's affliction are the
two from which escape is assured to the compassionate, who shall not
be "delivered to the desire of his enemies," and shall be supported
and healed in sickness. Probably, therefore, the general promises of
vv. 1-3 are silently applied by the psalmist to himself; and he is
comforting his own sorrow with the assurance which in his humility he
casts into impersonal form. He has been merciful, and believes, though
things look dark, that he will obtain mercy. There is probably also
an intentional contrast with the cruel exacerbation of his sufferings
by uncompassionate companions, which has rubbed salt into his wounds.
He has a double consciousness in these opening verses, inasmuch as he
partly thinks of himself as the compassionate man and partly as the
"weak" one who is compassionated.
The combination of sickness and treachery is remarkable, especially
if the former is taken literally, as the strongly marked details seem
to require. The sick man is visited by an insincere sympathiser, who
is all eyes to note symptoms of increasing weakness, and all tongue,
as soon as he gets out of the sick-room, to give the result, which is
to his malice the better the worse it is. Such a picture looks as if
drawn from life, and the sketch of the traitor friend seems to be a
portrait of a real person. The supporters of the post-exilic date and
national interpretation of the psalm have not succeeded in pointing out
who the false friends of Israel were, who seemed to condole with, and
really rejoiced over, its weakness, or who were the treacherous allies
who failed it. The theory of the Davidic origin has in its favour the
correspondence of Ahithophel's treason with the treachery of the trusted
friend in the psalm; and, while it must be admitted that there is no
mention of sickness in the narrative in 2 Samuel, the supposition that
trouble of conscience had brought illness gains some countenance from
Psalm xxxii., if it is Davidic, and would naturally explain David's
singular passiveness whilst Absalom was hatching his plot.
The psalm may be divided into four strophes, of which, however, the two
middle ones cohere very closely. Vv. 1-3 give the mercy requited to
the merciful; vv. 4-6, after a brief prayer and confession begin the
picture of the psalmist's sufferings, which is carried on through the
next strophe (vv. 7-9), with the difference that in the former the scene
is mainly the sick man's chamber, and in the latter the meeting-place
of the secret conspirators. Vv. 10-12 build on this picture of distress
a prayer for deliverance, and rise to serene confidence in its certain
answer. The closing doxology is not part of the psalm, but is appended
as the conclusion of the first book of the Psalter.
The principle that God's dealings with us correspond to our dealings
with men, as clouds are moulded after the curves of the mountains
which they touch, is no less characteristic of the New Testament
than of the Old. The merciful obtain mercy; God forgives those who
forgive their brethren. The absoluteness of statement in this psalm
is, of course, open to misunderstanding; but the singer had not such
a superficial view of his relations to God as to suppose that kindly
sympathy was the sole condition of Divine compassion. That virtue,
the absence of which added pangs to his pains, might well seem to a
sufferer writhing under the bitterness of its opposite the Divinest
of all excellencies, and worthiest of recompense. That its requital
should be mainly considered as consisting in temporal deliverance
and physical health is partly due to the characteristics of the Old
Testament promises of blessedness, and partly to the psalmist's
momentary needs. We have noted that these are reflected in the
blessings promised in vv. 1-3. The "happy" of ver. 1 is caught up in
the abruptly introduced "He shall be counted happy" of ver. 2, which
may carry tacit reference to the malicious slanders that aggravated
the psalmist's sufferings, and anticipates deliverance so perfect
that all who see him shall think him fortunate. The next clause rises
into direct address of Jehovah, and is shown by the form of the
negative in the Hebrew to be petition, not assertion, thus strongly
confirming the view that "me" lurks below "him" in this context. A
similar transition from the third to the second person occurs in ver.
3, as if the psalmist drew closer to his God. There is also a change
of tense in the verbs there: "Jehovah _will_ sustain"; "Thou _hast_
turned," the latter tense converting the general truth expressed in
the former clause into a fact of experience. The precise meaning of
this verse is questioned, some regarding both clauses as descriptive
of tender nursing, which sustains the drooping head and smoothes the
crumpled bedding, while others, noting that the word rendered "bed"
(A.V. and R.V.) in the second clause means properly "lying down," take
that clause as descriptive of turning sickness into convalescence. The
latter meaning gives a more appropriate ending to the strophe, as it
leaves the sick man healed, not tossing on a disordered bed, as the
other explanation does. Jehovah does not half cure.
The second and third strophes (vv. 4-9) are closely connected. In
them the psalmist recounts his sorrows and pains, but first breathes
a prayer for mercy, and bases it no longer on his mercifulness, but
on his sin. Only a shallow experience will find contradiction here to
either the former words, or to the later profession of "integrity"
(ver. 12). The petition for soul-healing does not prove that sickness
in the following verses is figurative, but results from the belief that
sorrow is the effect of sin, a view which belongs to the psalmist's
stage of revelation, and is not to be held by Christians in the same
absolute fashion. If the Davidic origin of the psalm is recognised,
the connection of the king's great sin with all his after-sorrows is
patent. However he had been merciful and compassionate in general, his
own verdict on the man in Nathan's parable was that he "showed no pity,"
and that sin bore bitter fruit in all his life. It was the parent of
all the sensual outrages in his own house; it underlay Ahithophel's
treachery; it had much to do in making his reign abhorred; it brought
the fuel which Absalom fired, and if our supposition is right as to the
origin of the sickness spoken of in this psalm, that sin and the remorse
that followed it gnawed at the roots of bodily health. So the psalmist,
if he is indeed the royal sinner, had need to pray for soul-healing
first, even though he was conscious of much compassion and hoped for
its recompense. While he speaks thus to Jehovah, his enemies speak
in a different tone. The "evil" which they utter is not calumny, but
malediction. Their hatred is impatient for his death. The time seems
long till they can hear of it. One of them comes on a hypocritical
visit of solicitude ("see" is used for visiting the sick in 2 Kings
viii. 29), and speaks lying condolence, while he greedily collects
encouraging symptoms that the disease is hopeless. Then he hurries
back to tell how much worse he had found the patient; and that ignoble
crew delight in the good news, and send it flying. This very special
detail goes strongly in favour of the view that we have in this whole
description a transcript of literal, personal experience. There were
plenty of concealed enemies round David in the early stages of Absalom's
conspiracy, who would look eagerly for signs of his approaching death,
which might save the need of open revolt and plunge the kingdom into
welcome confusion. The second strophe ends with the exit of the false
friend.
The third (vv. 7-9) carries him to the meeting-place of the plotters,
who eagerly receive and retail the good news that the sick man is
worse. They feed their ignoble hate by picturing further ill as laying
hold of him. Their wish is parent to their thought, which is confirmed
by the report of their emissary. "A thing of Belial is poured out on
him," or "is fastened upon him," say they. That unusual expression
may refer either to moral or physical evil. In the former sense it
would here mean the sufferer's sin, in the latter a fatal disease.
The connection makes the physical reference the more likely. This
incurable disease is conceived of as "poured out," or perhaps as
"molten on him," so that it cannot be separated from him. Therefore
he will never rise from his sick-bed. But even this murderous glee
is not the psalmist's sharpest pang. "The man of my peace," trusted,
honoured, admitted to the privileges, and therefore bound by the
obligations, of hospitality so sacred in the old world, has kicked
the prostrate sufferer, as the ass in the fable did the sick lion.
The treachery of Ahithophel at once occurs to mind. No doubt many
treacherous friends have wounded many trustful hearts, but the
correspondence of David's history with this detail is not to be got
rid of by the observation that treachery is common. Still less is it
sufficient to quote Obad. 7, where substantially the same language
is employed in reference to the enemies of Edom, as supporting the
national reference of the present passage. No one denies that false
allies may be described by such a figure, or that nations may be
personified; but is there any event in the post-exilic history which
shows Israel deceived and spurned by trusted allies? The Davidic
authorship and the personal reference of the psalm are separable. But
if the latter is adopted, it will be hard to find any circumstances
answering so fully to the details of the psalm as the Absalomic
rebellion and Ahithophel's treason. Our Lord's quotation of part of
ver. 9, with the significant omission of "in whom I trusted," does not
imply the Messianic character of the psalm, but is an instance of an
event and a saying which were not meant as prophetic, finding fuller
realisation in the life of the perfect type of suffering godliness
than in the original sufferer.
The last strophe (vv. 10-12) recurs to prayer, and soars to confidence
born of communion. A hand stretched out in need and trust soon comes
back filled with blessings. Therefore here the moment of true petition
is the moment of realised answer. The prayer traverses the malicious
hopes of enemies. They had said, "He will rise no more"; it prays,
"Raise me up." It touches a note which sounds discordant in the desire
"that I may requite them"; and it is far more truly reverential and
appreciative of the progress of revelation to recognise the relative
inferiority of the psalmist's wish to render _quid pro quo_ than to put
violence on his words, in order to harmonise them with Christian ethics,
or to slur over the distinction between the Law, of which the keynote
was retribution, and the Gospel, of which it is forgiveness.
But the last words of the psalm are sunny with the assurance of present
favour and with boundless hope. The man is still lying on his sick-bed,
ringed by whispering foes. There is no change without, but this change
has passed: that he has tightened his hold of God, and therefore can
feel that his enemies' whispers will never rise or swell into a shout
of victory over him. He can speak of the future deliverance as if
present; and he can look ahead over an indefinite stretch of sunlit
country, scarcely knowing whether the furthest point is earth or no. His
integrity is not sinless, nor does he plead it as a reason for Jehovah's
upholding, but hopes for it as the consequence of His sustaining hand.
He knows that he will have close approach to Jehovah; and though, no
doubt, "for ever" on his lips meant less than it does on ours, his
assurance of continuous communion with God reached, if not to actual,
clear consciousness of immortality, at all events to assurance of a
future so indefinitely extended, and so brightened by the sunlight
of God's face, that it wanted but little additional extension or
brightening to be the full assurance of life immortal.
BOOK II.
_PSALMS XLII.-LXXII._
PSALMS XLII., XLIII.
PSALM XLII.
1 Like a hind which pants after the water-brooks,
So pants, my soul after Thee, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been bread to me day and night,
While they say to me all the day, Where is thy God?
4 This would I remember, and pour out my soul in me,
How I went with the throng, led them in procession to the house of
God,
With shrill cries of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping
festival.
5 Why art thou bowed down, my soul, and moanest within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet give Him thanks,
[As] the help of my countenance and my God.
6 Within me is my soul bowed down;
Therefore let me remember Thee from the land of Jordan and of the
Hermons, from Mount Mizar.
7 Flood calls to flood at the voice of Thy cataracts;
All Thy breakers and rollers are gone over me.
8 [Yet] by day will Jehovah command His loving-kindness,
And in the night shall a song to Him be with me,
[Even] a prayer to the God of my life.
9 Let me say to God my Rock, Why hast Thou forgotten me?
Why must I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
10 As if they crushed my bones, my adversaries reproach me,
Whilst all the day they say to me, Where is thy God?
11 Why art thou bowed down, my soul, and why moanest thou within me?
Hope thou in God, for I shall yet give Him thanks
[As] the help of my countenance and my God.
PSALM XLIII.
1 Do me right, O God, and plead my plea against a loveless nation;
From the man of fraud and mischief rescue me.
2 For Thou art God my stronghold; why hast Thou cast me off?
Why must I wearily go mourning because of the oppression of the
enemy?
3 Send out Thy light and Thy troth; let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Thy holy hill and to Thy tabernacles,
4 That I may come in to the altar of God,
To God, the gladness of my joy,
And give Thee thanks with the harp, O God, my God.
5 Why art thou bowed down, my soul, and why moanest thou within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet give Him thanks,
[As] the help of my countenance and my God.
The second book of the Psalter is characterised by the use of the
Divine name "Elohim" instead of "Jehovah." It begins with a cluster
of seven psalms (reckoning Psalms xlii. and xliii. as one) of which
the superscription is most probably regarded as ascribing their
authorship to "the sons of Korach." These were Levites, and (according
to 1 Chron. ix. 19 _seq._) the office of keepers of the door of the
sanctuary had been hereditary in their family from the time of Moses.
Some of them were among the faithful adherents of David at Ziklag
(1 Chron. xii. 6), and in the new model of worship inaugurated by
him the Korachites were doorkeepers and musicians. They retained the
former office in the second Temple (Neh. xi. 19). The ascription of
authorship to a group is remarkable, and has led to the suggestion
that the superscription does not specify the authors, but the persons
for whose use the psalms in question were composed. The Hebrew would
bear either meaning; but if the latter is adopted, all these psalms
are anonymous. The same construction is found in Book I. in Psalms
xxv.-xxviii., xxxv., xxxvii., where it is obviously the designation
of authorship, and it is naturally taken to have the same force
in these Korachite psalms. It has been ingeniously conjectured by
Delitzsch that the Korachite Psalms originally formed a separate
collection entitled "Songs of the Sons of Korach," and that this
title afterwards passed over into the superscriptions when they were
incorporated in the Psalter. It may have been so, but the supposition
is unnecessary. It was not exactly literary fame which psalmists
hungered for. The actual author, as one of a band of kinsmen who
worked and sang together, would, not unnaturally, be content to sink
his individuality and let his song go forth as that of the band.
Clearly the superscriptions rested upon some tradition or knowledge,
else defective information would not have been acknowledged as it is
in this one; but some name would have been coined to fill the gap.
The two psalms (xlii., xliii.) are plainly one. The absence of a title
for the second, the identity of tone throughout, the recurrence of
several phrases, and especially of the refrain, put this beyond doubt.
The separation, however, is old, since it is found in the LXX. It is
useless to speculate on its origin.
There is much in the psalms which favours the hypothesis that the
author was a Korachite companion of David's in his flight before
Absalom; but the locality, described as that of the singer, does not
entirely correspond to that of the king's retreat, and the description
of the enemies is not easily capable of application in all points to
his foes. The house of God is still standing; the poet has been there
recently, and hopes soon to return and render praise. Therefore the
psalm must be pre-exilic; and while there is no certainty attainable
as to date, it may at least be said that the circumstances of the
singer present more points of contact with those of the supposed
Korachite follower of David's fortunes on the uplands across Jordan
than with those of any other of the imaginary persons to whom modern
criticism has assigned the poem. Whoever wrote it has given immortal
form to the longings of the soul after God. He has fixed for ever and
made melodious a sigh.
The psalm falls into three parts, each closing with the same
refrain. Longings and tears, remembrances of festal hours passed in
the sanctuary melt the singer's soul, while taunting enemies hiss
continual sarcasms at him as forsaken by his God. But his truer self
silences these lamentations, and cheers the feebler "soul" with clear
notes of trust and hope, blown in the refrain, like some trumpet-clang
rallying dispirited fugitives to the fight. The stimulus serves for
a moment; but once more courage fails, and once more, at yet greater
length and with yet sadder tones, plaints and longings are wailed
forth. Once more, too, the higher self repeats its half-rebuke,
half-encouragement. So ends the first of the psalms; but obviously it
is no real ending, for the victory over fear is not won, and longing
has not become blessed. So once more the wave of emotion rolls over
the psalmist, but with a new aspect which makes all the difference.
He prays now; he had only remembered and complained and said that he
would pray before. Therefore now he triumphs, and though he still is
keenly conscious of his enemies, they appear but for a moment, and,
though he still feels that he is far from the sanctuary, his heart
goes out in hopeful visions of the gladness of his return thither,
and he already tastes the rapture of the joy that will then flood
his heart. Therefore the refrain comes for a third time; and this
time the longing, trembling soul continues at the height to which the
better self has lifted it, and silently acknowledges that it need
not have been cast down. Thus the whole song is a picture of a soul
climbing, not without backward slips, from the depths to the heights,
or, in another aspect, of the transformation of longing into certainty
of fruition, which is itself fruition after a kind.
Perhaps the singer had seen, during his exile on the eastern side of
Jordan, some gentle creature, with open mouth and heaving flanks,
eagerly seeking in dry wadies for a drop of water to cool her
outstretched tongue; and the sight had struck on his heart as an
image of himself longing for the presence of God in the sanctuary. A
similar bit of local colour is generally recognised in ver. 7. Nature
reflects the poet's moods, and overmastering emotion sees its own
analogues everywhere. That lovely metaphor has touched the common
heart as few have done, and the solitary singer's plaint has fitted
all devout lips. Injustice is done it, if it is regarded merely as
the longing of a Levite for approach to the sanctuary. No doubt the
psalmist connected communion with God and presence in the Temple more
closely together than they should do who have heard the great charter,
"neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem"; but, however the two
things were coupled in his mind, they were sufficiently separate to
allow of approach by longing and prayer while distant in body, and the
true object of yearning was not access to the Temple, but communion
with the God of the Temple.
The "soul" is feminine in Hebrew, and is here compared to the female
deer, for "pants" is the feminine form of the verb, though its noun is
masculine. It is better therefore to translate "hind" than "hart."
The "soul" is the seat of emotions and desires. It "pants" and
"thirsts," is "cast down" and disquieted; it is "poured out"; it can
be bidden to "hope." Thus tremulous, timid, mobile, it is beautifully
compared to a hind. The true object of its longings is always God,
however little it knows for what it is thirsting. But they are happy
in their very yearnings who are conscious of the true direction of
these, and can say that it is God for whom they are athirst. All
unrest of longing, all fever of thirst, all outgoings of desire, are
feelers put out blindly, and are only stilled when they clasp Him. The
correspondence between man's needs and their true object is involved
in that name "the living God"; for a heart can rest only in one
all-sufficient Person, and must have a heart to throb against. Neither
abstractions nor dead things can still its cravings. That which does
must be living. But no finite being can still them; and after all
sweetnesses of human loves and helps of human strengths, the soul's
thirst remains unslaked, and the Person who is enough must be the
living God. The difference between the devout and the worldly man is
just that the one can only say, "My soul pants and thirsts," and the
other can add "after Thee, O God."
This man's longing was intensified by his unwilling exile from the
sanctuary, a special privation to a door-keeper of the Temple. His
situation and mood closely resemble those in another Korachite psalm
(lxxxiv.), in which, as here, the soul "faints for the courts of the
Lord," and as here the panting hind, so there the glancing swallows
flitting about the eaves are woven into the song. Unnamed foes taunt the
psalmist with the question, "Where is thy God?" There is no necessity
to conclude that these were heathens, though the taunt is usually put
into heathen lips (Psalms lxxix. 10; lii. 2) but it would be quite as
natural from co-religionists, flouting his fervour and personal grasp of
God and taking his sorrows as tokens of God's abandonment of him. That
is the world's way with the calamities of a devout man, whose humble
cry, "My God," it resents as presumption or hypocrisy.
But even these bitter sarcasms are less bitter than the remembrance
of "happier things," which is his "sorrow's crown of sorrow." Yet,
with the strange but universal love of summoning up remembrance of
departed joys, the psalmist finds a certain pleasure in the pain of
recalling how he, a Levite, led the festal march to the Temple, and in
listening in fancy again to the shrill cries of joy which broke from
the tumultuous crowd. The form of the verbs "remember" and "pour out"
in ver. 4 indicates set purpose.
The higher self arrests this flow of self-pity and lamentation. The
feminine soul has to give account of her moods to calmer judgment, and
to be lifted and steadied by the strong spirit. The preceding verses
have given ample reason why she has been dejected, but now she is
summoned to repeat them to a judicial ear. The insufficiency of the
circumstances described to warrant the vehement emotions expressed is
implied in the summons. Feeling has to vindicate its rationality or
to suppress itself, and its grounds have often only to be stated to
the better self, to be found altogether disproportioned to the storm
they have raised. It is a very elementary but necessary lesson for the
conduct of life that emotion of all sorts, sad or glad, religious or
other, needs rigid scrutiny and firm control, sometimes stimulating
and sometimes chilling. The true counterpoise to its excess lies in
directing it to God and in making Him the object of hope and patient
waiting. Emotion varies, but God is the same. The facts on which faith
feeds abide while faith fluctuates. The secret of calm is to dwell in
that inner chamber of the secret place of the Most High, which whoso
inhabits "heareth not the loud winds when they call," and is neither
dejected nor uplifted, neither disturbed by excessive joys nor torn by
anxieties.
Ver. 5 has the refrain in a form slightly different from that of the
other two instances of its occurrence (ver. 11 and xliii. 5). But
probably the text is faulty. The shifting of the initial word of ver.
6 to the end of ver. 5, and the substitution of _My_ for _His_, bring
the three refrains into line, and avoid the harsh expression "help of
His countenance." Since no reason for the variation is discernible,
and the proposed slight change of text improves construction and
restores uniformity, it is probably to be adopted. If it is, the
second part of the psalm is also conformed to the other two in regard
to its not beginning with the Divine name.
The break in the clouds is but momentary, and the grey wrack fills the
sky once more. The second part of the psalm takes up the question of
the refrain, and first reiterates with bitter emphasis that the soul
is bowed down, and then pours out once more the stream of reasons
for dejection. But the curb has not been applied quite in vain, for
throughout the succeeding verses there is a striking alternation
of despondency and hope. Streaks of brightness flash through the
gloom. Sorrow is shot with trust. This conflict of opposite emotions
is the characteristic of the second part of the psalm, while that
of the first part is an all but unrelieved predominance of gloom,
and that of the third an all but undisputed victory of sunshine.
Naturally this transition strophe is marked by the mingling of both.
In the former part, memory was the handmaid of sorrow, and came
involuntarily, and increased the singer's pain; but in this part he
makes an effort of will to remember, and in remembrance finds an
antidote to sorrow. To recall past joys adds stings to present grief,
but to remember God brings an anodyne for the smart. The psalmist
is far from the sanctuary, but distance does not hinder thought.
This man's faith was not so dependent on externals that it could not
come close to God while distant from His temple. It had been so far
strengthened by the encouragement of the refrain that the reflux
of sadness at once rouses it to action. "My soul is cast down; ...
_therefore_ let me remember Thee." With wise resolve he finds in
dejection a reason for nestling closer to God. In reference to the
description of the psalmist's locality, Cheyne beautifully says, "The
preposition 'from' is chosen (rather than 'in') with a subtle purpose.
It suggests that the psalmist's faith will bridge over the interval
between himself and the sanctuary: 'I can send my thoughts to Thee
from the distant frontier'" (_in loc._). The region intended seems
to be "the north-eastern corner of Palestine, near the lower slopes
of Hermon" (Cheyne, _u.s._). The plural "Hermons" is probably used
in reference to the group of crests. "Mizar" is probably the name of
a hill otherwise unknown, and specifies the singer's locality more
minutely, though not helpfully to us. Many ingenious attempts have
been made to explain the name either as symbolical or as a common
noun, and not a proper name, but these need not be dealt with here.
The locality thus designated is too far north for the scene of David's
retreat before Absalom, unless we give an unusual southward extension
to the names; and this makes a difficulty in the way of accepting the
hypothesis of the author's having been in his retinue.
The twofold emotions of ver. 6 recur in vv. 7, 8, where we have
first renewed despondency and then reaction into hope. The imagery
of floods lifting up their voices, and cataracts sounding as they
fall, and breaking waves rolling over the half-drowned psalmist has
been supposed to be suggested by the scenery in which he was; but the
rushing noise of Jordan in its rocky bed seems scarcely enough to
deserve being described as "flood calling to flood," and "breakers
and rollers" is an exaggeration if applied to any commotion possible
on such a stream. The imagery is so usual that it needs no assumption
of having been occasioned by the poet's locality. The psalmist paints
his calamities as storming on him in dismal continuity, each "flood"
seeming to summon its successor. They rush upon him, multitudinous
and close following; they pour down on him as with the thunder of
descending cataracts; they overwhelm him like the breakers and
rollers of an angry ocean. The bold metaphors are more striking when
contrasted with the opposite ones of the first part. The dry and
thirsty land there and the rush of waters here mean the same thing, so
flexible is nature in a poet's hands.
Then follows a gleam of hope, like a rainbow spanning the waterfall.
With the alternation of mood already noticed as characteristic,
the singer looks forward, even from the midst of overwhelming seas
of trouble, to a future day when God will give His angel, Mercy or
Loving-kindness, charge concerning him and draw him out of many
waters. That day of extrication will surely be followed by a night
of music and of thankful prayer (for supplication is not the only
element in prayer) to Him who by His deliverance has shown Himself
to be the "God of" the rescued man's "life." The epithet answers to
that of the former part, "the living God," from which it differs
by but one additional letter. He who has life in Himself is the
Giver and Rescuer of our lives, and to Him they are to be rendered
in thankful sacrifice. Once more the contending currents meet in
vv. 9 and 10, in the former of which confidence and hope utter
themselves in the resolve to appeal to God and in the name given to
Him as "my Rock"; while another surge of despondency breaks, in the
question in which the soul interrogates God, as the better self had
interrogated her, and contrasts almost reproachfully God's apparent
forgetfulness, manifested by His delay in deliverance, with her
remembrance of Him. It is not a question asked for enlightenment's
sake, but is an exclamation of impatience, if not of rebuke. Ver.
10 repeats the enemies' taunt, which is there represented as like
crushing blows which broke the bones. And then once more above this
conflict of emotion soars the clear note of the refrain, summoning to
self-command, calmness, and unfaltering hope.
But the victory is not quite won, and therefore Psalm xliii. follows.
It is sufficiently distinct in tone to explain its separation from
the preceding, inasmuch as it is prayer throughout, and the note
of joy is dominant, even while an undertone of sadness links it
with the previous parts. The unity is vouched by the considerations
already noticed, and by the incompleteness of Psalm xlii. without
such triumphant close and of Psalm xliii. without such despondent
beginning. The prayer of vv. 1, 2, blends the two elements, which
were at war in the second part; and for the moment the darker is
the more prominent. The situation is described as in the preceding
parts. The enemy is called a "loveless nation." The word rendered
"loveless" is compounded of the negative prefix and the word which is
usually found with the meaning of "one whom God favours," or visits
with loving-kindness. It has been much disputed whether its proper
signification is active (one who shows loving-kindness) or passive
(one who receives it). But, considering that loving-kindness is in the
Psalter mainly a Divine attribute, and that, when a human excellence,
it is regarded as derived from and being the echo of experienced
Divine mercy, it is best to take the passive meaning as the principal,
though sometimes, as unmistakably here, the active is more suitable.
These loveless people are not further defined, and may either have
been Israelites or aliens. Perhaps there was one "man" of special
mischief prominent among them, but it is not safe to treat that
expression as anything but a collective. Ver. 2 looks back to xlii.
9, the former clause in each verse being practically equivalent, and
the second in xliii. being a quotation of the second in ver. 9, with a
variation in the form of the verb to suggest more vividly the picture
of weary, slow, dragging gait, fit for a man clad in mourning garb.
But the gloomier mood has shot its last bolt. Grief which finds no
fresh words is beginning to dry up. The stage of mechanical repetition
of complaints is not far from that of cessation of them. So the higher
mood conquers at last, and breaks into a burst of joyous petition,
which passes swiftly into realisation of the future joys whose coming
shines thus far off. Hope and trust hold the field. The certainty of
return to the Temple overbears the pain of absence from it, and the
vivid realisation of the gladness of worshipping again at the altar
takes the place of the vivid remembrance of former festal approach
thither. It is the prerogative of faith to make pictures drawn by
memory pale beside those painted by hope. Light and Troth--_i.e._,
Loving-kindness and Faithfulness in fulfilling promises--are like
two angels, despatched from the presence-chamber of God, to guide
with gentleness the exile's steps. That is to say, because God is
mercy and faithfulness, the return of the psalmist to the home of
his heart is sure. God being what He is, no longing soul can ever
remain unsatisfied. The actual return to the Temple is desired because
thereby new praise will be occasioned. Not mere bodily presence there,
but that joyful outpouring of triumph and gladness, is the object of
the psalmist's longing. He began with yearning after the living God.
In his sorrow he could still think of Him at intervals as the help of
his countenance and call Him "my God." He ends with naming Him "the
gladness of my joy." Whoever begins as he did will finish where he
climbed. The refrain is repeated for a third time, and is followed by
no relapse into sadness. The effort of faith should be persistent,
even if old bitternesses begin again and "break the low beginnings of
content"; for, even if the wild waters burst through the dam once and
again, they do not utterly wash it away and there remains a foundation
on which it may be built up anew. Each swing of the gymnast lifts him
higher, until he is on a level with a firm platform on which he can
spring and stand secure. Faith may have a long struggle with fear,
but it will have the last word, and that word will be "the help of my
countenance and my God."
PSALM XLIV.
1 O God, with our ears we have heard,
Our fathers have told to us,
The work Thou didst work in their days,
In the days of yore.
2 Thou [with] Thy hand didst dispossess nations, and didst plant
_them_,
Didst afflict peoples and spread _them_ forth.
3 For not by their own sword did they possess the land,
And their own arm did not save them,
But Thy right hand and Thine arm, and the light of Thy face,
Because Thou hadst delight in them.
4 Thou Thyself art my King, O God;
Command salvations for Jacob.
5 Through Thee can we butt down our oppressors;
In Thy name can we trample those that rise against us.
6 For not in my own bow do I trust,
And my own sword does not save me.
7 But Thou hast saved us from our oppressors,
And our haters Thou hast put to shame.
8 In God have we made our boast all the day,
And Thy name will we thank for ever. Selah.
9 Yet Thou hast cast [us] off and shamed us,
And goest not forth with our hosts.
10 Thou makest us turn back from the oppressor,
And our haters plunder to their hearts' content.
11 Thou makest us like sheep for food,
And among the nations hast Thou scattered us.
12 Thou sellest Thy people at no profit,
And hast not increased [Thy wealth] by their price.
13 Thou makest us a reproach for our neighbours,
A mockery and derision to those around us.
14 Thou makest us a proverb among the nations,
A nodding of the head among the peoples.
15 All the day is my dishonour before me,
And the shame of my face has covered me,
16 Because of the voice of the rebuker and blasphemer,
Because of the face of the enemy and the revengeful.
17 All this is come upon us, and [yet] have we not forgotten Thee,
Nor been false to Thy covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
Nor our footsteps swerved from Thy way.
19 That Thou shouldest have crushed us in the place of jackals,
And covered us with thick darkness.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
And spread out our hands to a strange God,
21 Would not God search out this? for He knows the secrets of the
heart.
22 Nay, for Thy sake are we killed all the day;
We are reckoned as sheep for slaughter.
23 Awake; why sleepest Thou, Lord?
Arise; cast not off for ever.
24 Why hidest Thou Thy face,
Forgettest our affliction and oppression?
25 For bowed to the dust is our soul;
Our body cleaves to the earth.
26 Arise [for] a help for us,
And redeem us for Thy loving-kindness' sake.
Calvin says that the authorship of this psalm is uncertain, but
that it is abundantly clear that it was composed by any one rather
than David, and that its plaintive contents suit best the time when
the savage tyranny of Antiochus raged. No period corresponds to the
situation which makes the background of the psalm so completely as
the Maccabean, for only then could it be truly said that national
calamities fell because of the nation's rigid monotheism. Other epochs
have been thought of, so as to avoid the necessity of recognising
Maccabean psalms, but none of them can be said to meet the conditions
described in the psalm. The choice lies between accepting the
Maccabean date and giving up the attempt to fix one at all.
Objections to that late date based upon the history of the completion
of the canon take for granted more accurate and complete knowledge
of a very obscure subject than is possessed, and do not seem strong
enough to negative the indications arising from the very unique fact,
asserted in the psalm, that the nation was persecuted for its faith
and engaged in a religious war. The psalm falls into four parts: a
wistful look backwards to days already "old," when God fought for
them (vv. 1-8); a sad contrast in present oppression (vv. 9-16);
a profession of unfaltering national adherence to the covenant
notwithstanding all these ills (vv. 17-22); and a fervent cry to a God
who seems asleep to awake and rescue His martyred people (vv. 23-26).
The first part (vv. 1-8) recalls the fact that shone so brightly in
all the past, the continual exercise of Divine power giving victory to
their weakness, and builds thereon a prayer that the same law of His
providence might be fulfilled now. The bitter side of the retrospect
forces itself into consciousness in the next part, but here Memory is
the handmaid of Faith. The whole process of the Exodus and conquest of
Canaan is gathered up as one great "work" of God's hand. The former
inhabitants of the land were uprooted like old trees, to give room for
planting the "vine out of Egypt." Two stages in the settlement are
distinguished in ver. 2: first came the "planting" and next the growth;
for the phrase "didst spread them forth" carries on the metaphor of
the tree, and expresses the extension of its roots and branches. The
ascription of victory to God is made more emphatic by the negatives in
ver. 3, which take away all credit of it from the people's own weapons
or strength. The consciousness of our own impotence must accompany
adequate recognition of God's agency in our deliverances. The conceit
of our own power blinds our vision of His working hand. But what moved
His power? No merit of man's, but the infinite free grace of God's
heart. "The light of Thy face" is the symbol of God's loving regard,
and the deepest truth as to His acts of favour is that they are the
outcome of His own merciful nature. He is His own motive. "Thou hadst
delight in them" is the ultimate word, leading us into sacred abysses of
self-existent and self-originated Deity. The spirit, then, of Israel's
history is contained in these three thoughts: the positive assertion
of God's power as the reason for their victories; the confirmatory
negative, putting aside their own prowess; and the tracing of all God's
work for them solely to His unmerited grace.
On this grand generalisation of the meaning of past centuries a
prayer is built for their repetition in the prosaic present. The
psalmist did not think that God was nearer in some majestic past
than now. His unchangeableness had for consequence, as he thought,
continuous manifestation of Himself in the same character and relation
to His people. To-day is as full of God as any yesterday. Therefore
ver. 4 begins with an emphatic recognition of the constancy of the
Divine nature in that strong expression "Thou Thyself," and with an
individualising transition for a moment to the singular in "my King,"
in order to give most forcible utterance to the thought that He was
the same to each man of that generation as He had been to the fathers.
On that unchanging relation rests the prayer, "Command salvations for
(lit. _of_) Jacob," as if a multitude of several acts of deliverance
stood before God, as servants waiting to be sent on His errands. Just
as God (Elohim) takes the place of Jehovah in this second book of
the Psalter, so in it Jacob frequently stands for Israel. The prayer
is no sooner spoken than the confidence in its fulfilment lifts the
suppliant's heart buoyantly above present defeat, which will in the
next turn of thought insist on being felt. Such is the magic of every
act of true appeal to God. However dark the horizon, there is light if
a man looks straight up. Thus this psalmist breaks into anticipatory
pæans of victory. The vivid image of ver. 5 is taken from the
manner of fighting common to wild horned animals, buffaloes and the
like, who first prostrate their foe by their fierce charge and then
trample him. The individualising "my" reappears in ver. 6, where the
negation that had been true of the ancestors is made his own by the
descendant. Each man must, as his own act, appropriate the universal
relation of God to men and make God his God, and must also disown for
himself reliance on himself. So he will enter into participation in
God's victories. Remembrance of the victorious past and confidence
in a like victorious future blend in the closing burst of praise
and vow for its continuance, which vow takes for granted the future
continued manifestation of deliverances as occasions for uninterrupted
thanksgivings. Well might some long-drawn, triumphant notes from the
instruments prolong the impression of the jubilant words.
The song drops in the second part (vv. 9-16) from these clear heights
with lyric suddenness. The grim facts of defeat and consequent
exposure to mocking laughter from enemies force themselves into
sight, and seem utterly to contradict the preceding verses. But the
first part speaks with the voice of faith, and the second with that
of sense, and these two may sound in very close sequence or even
simultaneously. In ver. 9 the two verbs are united by the absence of
"us" with the first; and the difference of tense in the Hebrew brings
out the dependence of the second on the first, as effect and cause.
God's rejection is the reason for the nation's disgrace by defeat.
In the subsequent verses the thoughts of rejection and disgrace are
expanded, the former in ver. 9 _b_ to ver. 12, and the latter in vv.
13-16. The poet paints with few strokes the whole disastrous rout. We
see the fated band going out to battle, with no Pillar of Cloud or Ark
of the Covenant at their head. They have but their own weapons and
sinews to depend on--not, as of old, a Divine Captain. No description
of a fight under such conditions is needed, for it can have only one
issue; and so the next clause shows panic-struck flight. Whoever goes
into battle without God comes out of it without victory. Next follows
plundering, as was the savage wont of these times, and there is no
force to oppose the spoilers. The routed fugitives are defenceless and
unresisting as sheep, and their fate is to be devoured, or possibly
the expression "sheep for food" may be substantially equivalent to
"sheep for the slaughter" (ver. 22), and may refer to the usual
butchery of a defeated army. Some of them are slain and others carried
off as slaves. The precise rendering of ver. 12 _b_ is doubtful.
Calvin, and, among the moderns, Hitzig, Ewald, Delitzsch, Cheyne,
take it to mean "Thou didst not set their prices high." Others, such
as Hupfeld, Baethgen, etc., adhere to the rendering, "Thou didst not
increase [Thy wealth] by their price." The general sense is clear, and
as bold as clear. It is almost sarcasm, directed against the Divine
dealings: little has He gained by letting His flock be devoured and
scattered. Hupfeld attaches to the bitter saying a deep meaning:
namely, that the "sale" did not take place "for the sake of profit
or other external worldly ends, as is the case with men, but from
higher disciplinary grounds of the Divine government--namely, simply
as punishment for their sins, for their improvement." Rather it may
indicate the dishonour accruing to the God, according to the ideas
of the old world, when His votaries were defeated; or it may be the
bitter reflection, "We can be of little worth in our Shepherd's eyes
when He parts with us so easily." If there is any hint of tarnish
adhering to the name of God by His people's defeat, the passage to the
second main idea of this part is the easier.
Defeat brings dishonour. The nearer nations, such as Edomites,
Ammonites, and other ancestral foes, are ready with their gibes. The
more distant peoples make a proverb out of the tragedy, and nod their
heads in triumph and scorn. The cowering creature, in the middle of
this ring of mockers, is covered with shame as he hears the babel of
heartless jests at his expense, and steals a glance at the fierce
faces round him.
It is difficult to find historical facts corresponding with this
picture. Even if the feature of selling into captivity is treated
as metaphor, the rest of the picture needs some pressure to be made
to fit the conditions of the Maccabean struggle, to which alone the
subsequent avowals of faithfulness to God as the cause of calamity
answer. For there were no such periods of disgraceful defeat and utter
devastation when once that heroic revolt had begun. The third part of
the psalm is in full accord with the religious consciousness of that
Indian summer of national glories; but it must be acknowledged that
the state of things described in this second part does not fit quite
smoothly into the hypothesis of a Maccabean date.
The third part (vv. 17-22) brings closely together professions of
righteousness, which sound strangely in Christian ears, and complaints
of suffering, and closes with the assertion that these two are cause and
effect. The sufferers are a nation of martyrs, and know themselves to be
so. This tone is remarkable when the nation is the speaker; for though
we find individuals asserting innocence and complaining of undeserved
afflictions in many psalms, a declaration of national conformity with
the Law is in sharp contradiction both to history and to the uniform
tone of prophets. This psalmist asserts not only national freedom from
idolatry, but adherence in heart and act to the Covenant. No period
before the exile was clear of the taint of idol worship and yet darkened
by calamity. We have no record of any events before the persecutions
that roused the Maccabean struggle which answer to the martyr cry of
ver. 22: "For Thy sake we are killed all the day." It may, indeed, be
questioned what is the relation in time of the two facts spoken of in
vv. 17-19. Which comes first, the calamity or the steadfastness? Does
the psalmist mean, "We are afflicted, and yet we are in affliction
true to God," or "We were true to God, and yet are afflicted"?
Probably the latter, as in the remainder of this part. "The place of
jackals" is apparently the field of defeat referred to in the second
part, where obscene creatures would gather to feast on the plundered
corpses. The Christian consciousness cannot appropriate the psalmist's
asseverations of innocence, and the difference between them and it
should not be slurred over. But, on the other hand, his words should
not be exaggerated into charges of injustice against God, nor claims
of absolute sinlessness. He does feel that present national distresses
have not the same origin as past ones had had. There has been no such
falling away as to account for them. But he does not arraign God's
government. He knows why the miseries have come, and that he and his
fellows are martyrs. He does not fling that fact down as an accusation
of Providence, but as the foundation of a prayer and as a plea for God's
help. The words may sound daring; still they are not blasphemy, but
supplication.
The fourth part is importunate prayer. Its frank anthropomorphisms of a
sleeping God, forgetting His people, surely need little defence. Sleep
withdraws from knowledge of and action on the external world, and hence
is attributed to God, when He allows evils to run unchecked. He is said
to "awake," or, with another figure, to "arise," as if starting from His
throned calm, when by some great act of judgment He smites flourishing
evil into nothingness. Injustice is surely done to these cries of
the _Ecclesia pressa_ when they are supposed to be in opposition to
the other psalmist's word: "He that keepeth Israel slumbers not, nor
sleeps." Some commentators call these closing petitions commonplace; and
so they are. Extreme need and agony of supplication have other things to
think of than originality, and so long as sorrows are so commonplace and
like each other, the cries of the sorrowful will be very much alike. God
is pleased with well-worn prayers, which have fitted many lips, and is
not so fastidious as some critics.
PSALM XLV.
1 My heart seethes [with] goodly speech:
I speak my work (poem) to a king:
My tongue is the pen of a swift scribe.
2 Thou art fair beyond the sons of men;
Grace is poured on thy lips:
Therefore God has blessed thee for ever.
3 Gird thy sword on thy thigh, O hero,
Thy splendour and thy majesty.
4 [And [in] thy majesty] press forward, ride on,
For the help of truth, and meekness-righteousness:
And thy right hand shall teach thee awe-striking deeds.
5 Thine arrows are keen--
The peoples fall under thee--
Into the heart of the enemies of the king.
6 Thy throne, O God, is for ever and aye:
7 A sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.
Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest iniquity:
Therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee
With the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
8 Myrrh and aloes [and] cassia [are] all thy robes;
Out of palaces of ivory, stringed instruments make thee glad.
9 Kings' daughters are among thy favourites:
The consort stands at thy right hand in Ophir gold.
10 Hearken, O daughter, and behold, and incline thine ear;
And forget thy people, and thy father's house;
11 So shall the king desire thy beauty:
For he is thy lord; and bow thou down to him.
12 And the daughter of Tyre [shall come] with a gift;
The richest among the peoples shall seek thy favour.
13 All glorious is the king's daughter in the inner palace:
Of cloth of gold is her garment.
14 In embroidered robes is she led to the king:
Maidens behind her, her friends, are brought to thee.
15 They are brought with gladness and exultation:
They enter into the palace of the king.
16 Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children:
Thou wilt make them princes in all the earth.
17 I will commemorate thy name through generation after generation:
Therefore shall the peoples praise thee for ever and aye.
This is an epithalamion or ode on a king's marriage. The usual
bewildering variety of conjectures as to his identity meets us in
commentaries. The older opinion points to Solomon's marriage to an
Egyptian princess, to which it is objected that he was not a warrior
king, as the monarch of the psalm is. Hitzig regards "daughter of
Tyre," in ver. 12, as a vocative, and therefore looks for a king who
married a Tyrian woman. He is obliged to go to the northern kingdom
to find one, and pitches on Ahab, because Jezebel was the daughter
of "a king of the Zidonians," and Ahab had an "ivory house" (1 Kings
xxii. 39). It is hard to believe that that wedded pair of evil memory
are the originals of the lovely portraits in the psalm, or that a
psalmist would recognise the kingdom of Israel as divinely established
and to be eternally upheld. Besides, the construction of ver. 12, on
which this theory pivots, is doubtful, and the daughter of Tyre there
mentioned is more probably one of the bringers of gifts to the bride.
The attributes of the king and the promises for his descendants cannot
be extended, without incongruity, beyond the Davidic line. Hence
Delitzsch has selected Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, principally
because his wife, Athaliah, was of Tyrian descent, being Jezebel's
daughter, and partly because his father had been a trader, which
accounts for the allusions to gold of Ophir and ivory. These are
slender grounds of identification, to say nothing of the miserable
contrast which Jehoram's reign--a dreary record of apostasy and
defeat, culminating in a tragic death and a dishonoured grave (2
Chron. xxi.)--would present to the psalm. Some commentators have
thought of the marriage of a Persian king, mainly because the peculiar
word for _consort_ in ver. 9 is employed for Persian queens (Neh.
ii. 6), and also because the Tyrians were tributary to Persia, and
because the sons of the king are to be "called princes in all lands,"
which reminds us of Persian satraps. Ewald finally fixed on Jeroboam
II. of Israel. Cheyne ("Orig. of Psalt.") finds the king of the psalm
in Ptolemy Philadelphus, the inspirer, as was believed, of the LXX.
translation, whom Josephus and Philo extol. Its author puts this
identification only as "tentative." Notwithstanding his anticipatory
protest against making Philadelphus' moral character an objection, he
feels that it is an objection; for he urges that its darker shades had
not yet disclosed themselves, and confesses that "a haze of illusion
encompassed our poet," who "overrated this Ptolemy, from taking too
external a view of the Messianic promise, and being flattered by a
Hellenic king's partiality for his people" (_u.s._, 172). Philadelphus
afterwards married his sister. His hands were red with blood. Was a
Jewish psalmist likely to take "up the singing robes of a court poet"
(_u.s._) in honour of a Ptolemy, or to transfer the promises to the
Davidic line to, and to speak of God as the God of, a foreign king? Or
how, if he did, came his song to find and keep a place in the Psalter?
All these conjectures show the hopelessness of identifying the person
intended addressed in the psalm. It is said that a knowledge of the
historical allusions in the Psalter is indispensable to enjoying it.
They would often be helpful if they could be settled, but that is no
reason for elevating conjecture to the place of knowledge.
One reason for the failure of attempts at identification is that the
language is a world too wide for the best and greatest of Jewish
kings. Much in the psalm applies to a historical occasion, the
marriage of some monarch; but there is much that as obviously goes
beyond it. Either, then, the psalm is hyperbole, outstripping even
poetical licence, or there appear in it characteristics of the ideal
monarch whom the psalmist knew to be promised to Israel. Every king of
Judah by descent and office was a living prophecy. The singer sees the
Messiah shining, as it were, through the shadowy form of the earthly
king, whose limitations and defects, no less than his excellences and
glories, pointed onwards to a greater than Solomon, in whom the "sure
mercies" promised to David should be facts at last.
The psalm has two main divisions, prefaced by a prelude (ver. 1), and
followed by prediction of happy issue of the marriage and enduring and
wide dominion. The two main parts are respectively addressed to the
royal bridegroom (vv. 2-9) and to the bride (vv. 10-15).
The singer lays claim to at least _poetic_ inspiration. His heart
is seething or boiling over with goodly words, or perhaps with the
joyful matter which occasions his song--namely, the royal nuptials. He
dedicates his "work" (like the original meaning of "poem"--a thing made)
to "a king," the absence of the definite article suggesting that the
office is more prominent than the person. He sings to a king; therefore
his strains must be lofty. So full is his heart that the swift words
pour out as the stylus of a rapid writer races over the parchment. The
previous musing has been long, the fire has burned slowly; but at last
all is molten, and rushes out, fluent because fervent.
The picture of the king begins with two features on which the
old-world ideal of a monarch laid stress--personal beauty and gracious
speech. This monarch is fairer than the sons of men. The note of
superhuman excellence is struck at the outset; and though the surface
reference is only to physical beauty, that is conceived of as the
indication of a fair nature which moulds the fair form.
"For of the soul the body form doth take;
For soul is form, and doth the body make."
The highest truth of this opening word is realised only in Him of whom
it was also said, in apparent contradiction, but real harmony with it,
"His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than
the sons of men." The craving for "whatsoever things are lovely," like
all other desires, has for its object Jesus Christ. Another kingly
excellence is sweet courtesy of speech. Possibly, indeed, the "grace
poured on the lips" may mean the gracious smile which moulds their
curves, but more likely it refers to the kindly speech that so well
become a mouth that can command. The sweetest examples of such words
are poor beside "the gracious words that proceeded out of His mouth."
The psalmist's ideal is that of a gentle king. Where else than in the
King whose sceptre was a reed, not an iron rod, has it been fulfilled?
"Nor know we anything more fair
Than is the smile upon Thy face."
From such characteristics the psalmist draws an inference--"therefore
God hath blessed thee for ever"; for that "therefore" does not
introduce the result of the preceding excellences, but the cause of
them. The psalmist knows that God has blessed the king because he sees
these beauties. They are the visible signs and tokens of the Divine
benediction. In its reference to Christ, the thought expressed is that
His superhuman beauty is to all men the proof of a unique operation of
God. Abiding divinity is witnessed by perfect humanity.
The scene changes with startling suddenness to the fury of battle.
In a burst of lyric enthusiasm, forgetting for a moment nuptials and
wedding marches, the singer calls on the king to array himself for war
and to rush on the foe. Very striking is this combination of gentleness
and warrior strength--a union which has been often realised in heroic
figures, which is needful for the highest type of either, and which is
fulfilled in the Lamb of God, who is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The
king is to gird on his sword, and to array himself, as in glittering
armour, in his splendour and majesty, and, thus arrayed, to mount his
chariot, or, less probably, to bestride his war-horse, and hurl himself
on the yielding ranks of the enemy. "Press forward, drive (or _ride_)
on," crushing obstacles and forcing a path. But Israel's king could be
no vulgar conqueror, impelled by lust of dominion or "glory." His sword
is to be girt on for the help or "on behalf of truth, meekness, and
righteousness." These abstracts may be used for concretes--namely, the
possessors of the qualities named. But the limitation is not necessary.
The monarch's warfare is for the spread of these. The Hebrew binds
the two latter closely together by an anomalous construction, which
may be represented by connecting the two words with a hyphen. They
are regarded as a double star. Then follows a verse of hurry: "Thy
right hand shall teach thee awe-striking deeds." He has no allies.
The canvas has no room for soldiers. The picture is like the Assyrian
sculptures, in which the king stands erect and alone in his chariot, a
giant in comparison with the tiny figures beneath him. Like Rameses in
Pentaur's great battle-song, "he pierced the line of the foe; ... he
was all alone, no other with him." Then follow three abrupt clauses,
reflecting in their fragmentary character the stress of battle: "Thine
arrows are sharp--The peoples fall under thee--In the heart of the
enemies of the king." The bright arrow is on the string; it whizzes;
the plain is strewed with prostrate forms, the king's shaft in the
heart of each. It is no mere fanciful spiritualising which sees in this
picture an adumbration of the merciful warfare of Christ all through
the ages. We get to the kernel of the history of Israel when we regard
it as the preparation for Christ. We understand the _raison d'être_ of
its monarchy when we see in these poor shadows the types of the King
of men, who was to be all that they should have been and were not. The
world-wide conflict for truth and meekness and righteousness is His
conflict, and the help which is done on earth He doeth it all Himself.
The psalm waits for its completion still, and will wait until the day
when the marriage supper of the Lamb is preceded by the last battle and
crowning victory of Him who "in righteousness doth judge and make war."
All the older versions take "God," in ver. 6 _a_, as a vocative,
while most moderns seek another construction or text. "The sum of the
matter is that the only natural rendering of the received text is that
of the Versions, 'Thy throne, O God'" (Cheyne, _in loc._). Three
renderings have been proposed, all of which are harsh. "Thy throne
is the throne of God," etc., is Ewald's suggestion, revived from a
Jewish expositor, and adopted widely by many recent commentators,
and in the margin of the R.V. It is clumsy, and leaves it doubtful
whether the stress of the assertion lies on the Divine appointment
or on the eternal duration of the throne. "Thy God's throne is,"
etc., is very questionable grammatically, and extremely harsh. The
only other suggested rendering, "Thy throne is God," etc., may fairly
be pronounced impossible. If the vocative construction is retained,
are we shut up to Cheyne's further opinion, that "the only natural
interpretation [is] that of the Targum, 'Thy throne, O Jehovah'"?
If so, we shall be obliged to admit textual corruption; for a
reference to the eternal duration of Jehovah's dominion is quite
out of place here, where the parallelism of the next clause demands
some characteristic of the king's throne corresponding to that of
his sceptre, there stated. But in Exod. xxi. 6, xxii. 8, and Psalm
lxxxii. 6, the name God (Elohim) is applied to rulers and judges, on
the ground, as our Lord puts it, in John x. 35, that "unto them the
word of God came"--_i.e._, that they were theocratic officers. The
designation, therefore, of the king as Elohim is not contrary to the
Hebrew line of thought. It does not predicate divinity, but Divine
preparation for and appointment to office. The recurrence of Elohim
(God) in its full Divine signification in the next verse is felt by
many to be an insuperable objection to recognising the lower sense
here. But the emphatic "thy God," which is appended to the name in
ver. 7, seems expressly intended to distinguish between the uses of
the word in the two verses. August, then, as the title is, it proves
nothing as to the divinity of the person addressed. We recognise
the prophetic character of the psalm, and strongly believe that it
points onwards to Christ the King. But we cannot take the ascription
of the title "O God" as having reference to His Divine nature. Such
a thought lay far beyond the prophetic horizon. The Old Testament
usage, which is appealed to in order to justify the translation of
the word "God" as a vocative, must govern its meaning. The careful
distinction drawn by the expressions of ver. 7, between the lower and
higher senses of the name, forbid the attempt to find here a premature
and anomalous statement of deep truth, for which the ages were not
ripe. While we, who know the full truth, may permissibly apply the
psalmist's words as its expression, we must not forget that in so
doing we are going beyond their real meaning. The controversies waged
over the construction of this verse have sometimes been embittered
by the supposition that it was a buttress for the truth of Christ's
Divine nature. But that is a mistake. The psalm goes no further than
to declare that the king is divinely endowed and appointed. It does
outline a character fairer than the sons of men, which requires
indwelling Deity for its realisation in humanity. But it does not
speak the decisive word, which alone could solve the mystery of its
requirement, by proclaiming the fact of incarnation.
The perpetuity of the king's throne is guaranteed, not only by his
theocratic appointment by God, but by the righteousness of his rule.
His sceptre is not a rod of iron, but "a sceptre of uprightness."
He is righteous in character as well as in official acts. He "loves
righteousness," and therefore cannot but "hate iniquity." His broad
shield shelters all who love and seek after righteousness, and he
wars against evil wherever it shows itself. Therefore his throne
stands firm, and is the world's hope. A singer who had grasped the
truth that power divorced from justice could not endure was far in
advance of his time. The nations have not yet learned his lesson. The
vast robber-kingdoms which seemed to give the lie to his faith have
confirmed it by their evanescence.
The king's love of righteousness leads to his being "anointed with
the oil of gladness above his fellows." This anointing is not that of
a coronation, but that of a feast. His "fellows" may either be other
kings or his attendant companions at his marriage. The psalmist looks
as deep into individual life as he has just done into politics, and
ascribes to righteousness lofty powers in that region too. The heart
which loves it will be joyful, whatever befalls. Conformity to the
highest ideal known to a man, or, at all events, hearty love thereof,
leading to efforts after it, is the surest foundation for lasting and
deep joy. Since Christ is the fulfilment of the psalmist's picture,
and perfectly realised the perfection of manhood, the psalmist's words
here are most fully applicable to Him.
True, He was "a man of sorrows," but beneath His sorrow had abiding
and central joy, which He bequeathed to us, with the assurance that
to possess it would make our joy full. His pure manhood was ever in
touch with God, and lived in conscious righteousness, and therefore
there was ever light within, though there was darkness around. He, the
saddest, was likewise the gladdest of men, and "anointed with the oil
of joy above His fellows."
In ver. 8 the Psalm reaches its main theme--the marriage of the king.
The previous verses have painted his grace of person, his heroic deeds
in battle, and his righteous rule. Now he stands ready to pass into the
palace to meet his bride. His festival robes are so redolent of perfumes
that they seem to be composed of nothing but woven fragrance. There are
difficulties in the rendering of ver. 8 _a_, but that adopted above
is generally accepted as the most probable. The clause then describes
the burst of jubilant music which welcomed and rejoiced the king as he
approached the "palaces of ivory," where his bride waited his coming.
Ver. 9 carries the king into his harem. The inferior wives are
of royal blood, but nearest him and superior to these is the
queen-consort glittering with golden ornaments. This feature of
the psalmist's description can only have reference to the actual
historical occasion of the psalm, and warns against overlooking that
in seeking a prophetic reference to the Christ in every particular.
The second half of the psalm is an address to the bride and a
description of her beauty and state. The singer assumes a fatherly
tone, speaking to her as "daughter." She is a foreigner by birth,
and is called upon to give up all her former associations, with
whole-hearted consecration to her new duties. It is difficult to
imagine Jezebel or Athaliah as the recipient of these counsels, nor
does it seem to the present writer to add anything to the enjoyment
of the psalm that the person to whom they were addressed should be
identified. The exhortation to give up all for love's sake goes to
the heart of the sacred relation of husband and wife, and witnesses
to the lofty ideal of that relation which prevailed in Israel, even
though polygamy was not forbidden. The sweet necessity of wedded love
subordinates all other love, as a deeper well, when sunk, draws the
surface waters and shallower springs into itself.
"The rich, golden shaft
Hath killed the flock of all affections else
That live in her."
The king sung of in the psalm was a type of Christ. Every true
marriage is in the same fashion a type of the union of the soul with
Jesus, the lover of all, the bridegroom of humanity. So it is not
arbitrary spiritualising, but recognition of the nobleness of the
lower love and of its essential similarity with the highest, when the
counsel to this bride is regarded as shadowing the duties of the soul
wedded to Christ. If a heart is really influenced by love to Him,
that love will make self-surrender blessed. A child gladly drops toys
when it stretches out its little hand for better gifts. If we are
joined to Jesus, we shall not be unwilling to "count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge" of Him. Have the terms of
wedded life changed since this psalm was written? Have the terms of
Christian living altered since it was said, "Whosoever he be of you
that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple"? The
law still remains, "Daughter, forget thine own people and Thy father's
house." The exhortation is followed by a promise: "So shall the king
desire thy beauty." The application of these words to the relations
of Christ and His people carries with it a striking thought that He
is affected by the completeness of our self-surrender and dependence.
He pours love on the unworthy, but that is a different thing from
the love with which He responds to such abandonment of self and other
loves. Holy, noble living will bring a smile into His face and draw
Him nearer to us.
But whilst there is all this sweet commerce of love and giving, the
bride is reminded that the king is her lord, and is to be reverenced
as well as loved. There is here, no doubt, the influence of an archaic
mode of regarding marriage and the wife's position. But it still is
true that no woman finds all that her heart needs in her husband,
unless she can bring her reverence where she has brought her love;
and that love will not long remain if reverence departs. Nor is the
warning less needed in the higher region of the wedlock of the soul
with the Saviour. Some types of emotional religion have more to say
about love than about obedience. They are full of half-wholesome
apostrophes to a "dear Lord," and are apt to forget the last word in
the emphasis which they put on the first. The beggar-maid married to a
king was full of reverence as well as love; and the souls whom Jesus
stoops to love and wash and wed are never to forget to blend adoration
with approach and obedience with love.
A picture of the reflected honour and influence of the bride follows
in ver. 12. When she stands by the king's side, those around recognise
her dignity, and seek to secure her favour. Hupfeld, Hitzig, and
others take "daughter of Tyre" to be a vocative, addressed to the
bride, who is, according to their view, a Tyrian princess. But
there is a strong grammatical objection to that construction in the
copula ("and") prefixed to "daughter," which is never so prefixed
to a vocative unless preceded by another vocative. Delitzsch,
Baethgen, Perowne, and Cheyne agree in recognising the force of
that consideration, and the three former regard the phrase not as a
vocative, but as a nominative. It is a personification of the Tyrians
according to a familiar idiom. The clause is elliptical, and has to
be supplemented by supposing that the same verb, which appears in the
next clause in the plural, is to be supplied in thought, just as that
clause requires the supplement of "with a gift" from this one. There
appears to be some flaw in the text, as the clauses are unsymmetrical,
and possibly the punctuators have marked a hiatus by the sign (Pasek)
after the word "daughter of Tyre." To "seek thy favour" is literally
to "smooth thy face"--a graphic representation. In the highest region,
which we regard the psalm as adumbrating, the words have fulfilment.
The bride standing by her bridegroom, and showing her love and
devotion by self-abandonment and reverence, will be glorious in the
eyes of those around. They who manifestly live in loving communion
with their Lord will be recognised for what they are, and, though
sometimes hated therefor, will also be honoured. When the Church has
cast all but Christ out of its heart, it will conquer the world. "The
sons of them that afflicted thee shall come bending unto thee."
In vv. 13-15 the bride's apparel and nuptial procession are described.
She is "all glorious within,"--by which is not meant, as ordinarily
supposed, that she possesses an inner beauty of soul, but that the
poet conceives of her as standing in the inner chamber, where she
has been arrayed in her splendour. Krochmal, followed by Graetz
and Cheyne, changes the text so as to read _corals_, or, as Cheyne
renders, _pearls_ (Heb. _p'ninim_), for _within_ (_p'ninah_), and
thus preserves unity of subject in the verse by removing the local
designation. But the existing reading is intelligible. In ver. 14
the marriage procession is described. The words rendered "embroidered
robes" are by some taken to mean "tapestry of divers colours"
(Perowne), or richly woven carpets spread for the bride to walk on,
and by others (Hitzig, Riehm) gay-coloured cushions, to which she is
led in order to sit beside the bridegroom. But the word means apparel
elsewhere, and either of the other meanings introduces an irrelevant
detail of another kind into the picture. The analogy of other
Scripture metaphors leads at once to interpreting the bride's attire
as symbolic of the purity of character belonging to the Church. The
Apocalypse dresses "the Lamb's wife" in "fine linen, clean and white."
The psalm arrays her in garments gleaming with gold, which symbolise
splendour and glory, and in embroidered robes, which suggest the
patient use of the slow needle, and the variegated harmony of colour
attained at last. There is no marriage between Christ and the soul,
unless it is robed in the beauty of righteousness and manifold graces
of character. In other places we read that the bride "made _herself_
ready," and also that "to her was _granted_ that she should be arrayed
in fine linen, clean and white," in which sayings are set forth the
double sources of such a garment of the soul. It is a gift from above.
It is "put on" by continual effort, based on faith. The picture of the
home-coming of the bride follows. She is attended by her maidens, and
with them she passes into the palace amid joys and exultation. The
psalm stops at the threshold. It is not for the singer to draw back
the curtains and let in the day. "The door was shut." The presence of
virgin companions waiting on the bride no more interferes with the
application of the psalm to Christ and His Church than the similar
representation brings confusion into our Lord's parable of the Ten
Virgins. Parables and symbols are elastic, and often duplicate their
representations of the same thing; and such is the case here.
The closing verses are addressed, not to the bride, but to the king,
and can only in a very modified way and partially be supposed to pass
beyond the Jewish monarch and refer to the true King. Hopes that he
might be blessed with fortunate issue of the marriage were quite
in place in an epithalamion, and the delicacy of the light touch
with which this closing note is struck is noteworthy, especially in
contrast with the tone of many famous secular songs of similar import.
But much straining is needed to extract a spiritual sense from the
words. Perowne truly says that it is "wiser to acknowledge at once
the mixed character" of the psalm, and he quotes a sagacious saying
of Calvin's to the effect that it is not necessary that every detail
should be carefully fitted to Christ. The psalm had a historical
basis; and it has also a prophetic meaning, because the king of Israel
was himself a type, and Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of the ideal
never realised by its successive occupants. Both views of its nature
must be kept in view in its interpretation; and it need cause no
surprise if, at some points, the rind of prose fact is, so to speak,
thicker than at others, or if certain features absolutely refuse to
lend themselves to the spiritual interpretation.
PSALM XLVI.
1 God is a refuge and stronghold for us,
A help in troubles most readily to be found.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth do change,
And the mountains reel into the heart of the sea.
3 Let its waters roar and foam;
Let mountains shake at its pride. Selah.
[Jehovah of hosts is with us;
A high tower for us is Jacob's God.]
4 [There is] a river--its branches make glad the city of God
The sanctuary of the tabernacles of the Most High.
5 God is in her midst; she shall not be moved:
God shall help her at the morning dawn.
6 Nations roared, kingdoms were moved:
He gave forth His voice, the earth melts.
7 Jehovah of hosts is with us;
A high tower for us is Jacob's God. Selah.
8 Come, behold the deeds of Jehovah,
Who has made desolations in the earth.
9 Quelling wars to the end of the earth:
The bow He breaks, and hews the spear in splinters;
The chariots He burns in the fire.
10 "Desist, and know that I am God:
I will be exalted in the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."
11 Jehovah of hosts is with us;
A high tower for us is Jacob's God. Selah.
There are two events, one or other of which probably supplies the
historical basis of this and the two following psalms. One is
Jehoshaphat's deliverance from the combined forces of the bordering
nations (2 Chron. xx.). Delitzsch adopts this as the occasion of
the psalm. But the other more usually accepted reference to the
destruction of Sennacherib's army is more probable. Psalms xlvi. and
xlviii. have remarkable parallelisms with Isaiah. The noble contrast
of the quiet river which makes glad the city of God with a tossing,
earth-shaking sea resembles the prophet's threatening that the
effect of refusing the "waters of Shiloah which go softly" would be
inundation by the strong and mighty river, the Assyrian power. And the
emblem is expanded in the striking language of Isa. xxxiii. 21: "The
glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams;
wherein shall go no galley with oars." Encircled by the flashing
links of that broad moat, Jerusalem sits secure. Again, the central
thought of the refrain in the psalm, "The Lord of hosts is with us,"
is closely allied to the symbolic name which Isaiah gave as a pledge
of deliverance, "Immanuel, God with us."
The structure is simple. The three strophes into which the psalm
falls set forth substantially the same thought, that God's presence
is safety and peace, whatever storms may roar. This general theme
is exhibited in the first strophe (vv. 1-3) in reference to natural
convulsions; in the second (vv. 4-7) in reference to the rage of
hostile kingdoms; and in the third (vv. 8-11) men are summoned to
behold a recent example of God's delivering might, which establishes
the truth of the preceding utterances and has occasioned the psalm.
The grand refrain which closes the second and third strophes should
probably be restored at the end of ver. 3.
In the first strophe the psalmist paints chaos come again, by the
familiar figures of a changed earth, tottering mountains sinking in
the raging sea from which they rose at creation, and a wild ocean
with thunderous dash appalling the ear and yeasty foam terrifying
the eye, sweeping in triumphant insolence over all the fair earth.
It is prosaic to insist on an allegorical meaning for the picture.
It is rather a vivid sketch of utter confusion, dashed in with three
or four bold strokes, an impossible case supposed in order to bring
out the unshaken calm of those who have God for ark in such a deluge.
He is not only a sure refuge and stronghold, but one easy of access
when troubles come. There is little good in a fortress, however
impregnable, if it is so difficult to reach that a fugitive might be
slain a hundred times before he was safe in it. But this high tower,
which no foe can scale, can be climbed at a thought, and a wish lifts
us within its mighty walls. The psalmist speaks a deep truth, verified
in the spiritual life of all ages, when he celebrates the refuge of
the devout soul as "most readily to be found."
As the text stands, this strophe is a verse too short, and ver.
3 drags if connected with "will not we fear." The restoration of
the refrain removes the anomaly in the length of the strophe, and
enables us to detach ver. 3 from the preceding. Its sense is then
completed, if we regard it as the protasis of a sentence of which
the refrain is the apodosis, or if, with Cheyne and others, we take
ver. 3, "Let its waters roar," etc.--what of that? "Jehovah of hosts
is with us." If the strophe is thus completed, it conforms to the
other two, in each of which may be traced a division into two pairs
of verses. These two verse-pairs of the first strophe would then be
inverted parallelism,--the former putting security in God first, and
surrounding trouble second, the latter dealing with the same two
subjects, but in reversed sequence.
The second strophe brings a new picture to view with impressive
suddenness, which is even more vividly dramatic if the refrain is not
supplied. Right against the vision of confusion comes one of peace.
The abrupt introduction of "a river" as an isolated noun, which
dislocates grammatical structure, is almost an exclamation. "There
is a river" enfeebles the swing of the original. We might almost
translate, "Lo! a river!" Jerusalem was unique among historical cities
in that it had no great river. It had one tiny thread of water, of
which perhaps the psalmist is thinking. But whether there is here the
same contrast between Siloam's gentle flow and the surging waters of
hostile powers as Isaiah sets forth in the passage already referred
to (Isa. viii. 6), the meaning of this gladdening stream is the
ever-flowing communication of God Himself in His grace. The stream is
the fountain in flow. In the former strophe we hear the roar of the
troubled waters, and see the firm hills toppling into their depths.
Now we behold the gentle flow of the river, gliding through the city,
with music in its ripples and sunshine in its flash and refreshment
in its waters, parting into many arms and yet one in diversity, and
bringing life and gladness wherever it comes. Not with noise nor
tumult, but in silent communication, God's grace and peace refresh the
soul. Power is loud, but Omnipotence is silent. The roar of all the
billows is weak when compared with the quiet sliding onwards of that
still stream. It has its divisions. As in old days each man's bit of
garden was irrigated by a branch led from the stream, so in endless
diversity, corresponding to the infinite greatness of the source and
the innumerable variety of men's needs, God's grace comes. "All these
worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man
severally." The streams gladden the city of God with the gladness of
satisfied thirsts, with the gladness which comes from the contact of
the human spirit with Divine completeness. So supplied, the city may
laugh at besiegers. It has unfailing supplies within itself, and the
enemy may cut off all surface streams, but its "water shall be sure."
Substantially the same thought is next stated in plain words: "God is
in the midst of her." And therefore two things follow. One is unshaken
stability, and another is help at the right time--"at the turn of the
morning." "The Lord is in the midst of her"--that is a perennial fact.
"The Lord shall help her"--that is the "grace for seasonable help."
He, not we, determines when the night shall thin away its blackness
into morning twilight. But we may be sure that the presence which is
the pledge of stability and calm even in storm and darkness will flash
into energy of help at the moment when He wills. The same expression
is used to mark the time of His looking from the pillar of cloud and
troubling the Egyptians, and there may be an allusion to that standing
instance of His help here. "It is not for you to know the times and the
seasons"; but this we may know--that the Lord of all times will always
help at the right time; He will not come so quickly as to anticipate our
consciousness of need, nor delay so long as to let us be irrevocably
engulfed in the bog. "Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.
When He heard _therefore_ that he was sick, He abode two days still in
the same place where He was." Yet He came in time.
With what vigour the short, crashing clauses of ver. 6 describe the
wrath and turbulence of the nations, and the instantaneous dissolving
of their strength into weakness at a word from those awful lips!
The verse may be taken as hypothetical or as historical. In either
case we see the sequence of events as by a succession of lightning
flashes. The hurry of the style, marked by the omission of connecting
particles, reflects the swiftness of incident, like _Veni, vidi,
vici_. The utterance of God's will conquers all. At the sound of that
voice stillness and a pause of dread fall on the "roar" (same word as
in ver. 3) of the nations, like the hush in the woods when thunder
rolls. He speaks, and all meaner sounds cease. "The lion hath roared,
who shall not fear?" No material vehicle is needed. To every believer
in God there is an incomprehensible action of the Divine Will on
material things; and no explanations bridge the gulf recognised in the
psalmist's broken utterances, which declare sequence and not mode of
operation: "He uttered His voice, the earth melted."
Again the triumph of the refrain peals forth, with its musical
accompaniment prolonging the impression. In it the psalmist gives
voice, for himself and his fellows, to their making their own of the
general truths which the psalm has been declaring. The two names of
God set forth a twofold ground for confidence. "Jehovah of hosts" is
all the more emphatic here since the Second Book of the Psalter is
usually Elohistic. It proclaims God's eternal, self-existent Being,
and His covenant relation, as well as His absolute authority over the
ranked forces of the universe, personal or impersonal, spiritual or
material. The Lord of all these legions is with us. When we say "The
God of Jacob," we reach back into the past and lay hold of the Helper
of the men of old as ours. What He has been, He is; what He did, He
is doing still. The river is full to-day, though the van of the army
did long ago drink and were satisfied. The bright waters are still as
pellucid and abundant as then, and the last of the rear-guard will
find them the same.
The third strophe summons to contemplate with fixed attention the
"desolations" made by some great manifestation of God's delivering
power. It is presupposed that these are still visible. Broken bows,
splintered spears, half-charred chariots, strew the ground, and Israel
can go forth without fear and feast their eyes on these tokens of
what God has done for them. The language is naturally applied to the
relics of Sennacherib's annihilated force. In any case it points to a
recent act of God's, the glad surprise of which palpitates all through
the psalm. The field of history is littered with broken, abandoned
weapons, once flourished in hands long since turned to dust; and the
city and throne of God against which they were lifted remain unharmed.
The voice which melted the earth speaks at the close of the psalm;
not now with destructive energy, but in warning, through which tones
of tenderness can be caught. God desires that foes would cease their
vain strife before it proves fatal. "Desist" is here an elliptical
expression, of which the full form is "Let your hands drop"; or, as
we say, "Ground your weapons," and learn how vain is a contest with
Him who is God, and whose fixed purpose is that all nations shall
know and exalt Him. The prospect hinted at in the last words, of a
world submissive to its King, softens the terrors of His destructive
manifestations, reveals their inmost purpose, and opens to foes the
possibility of passing, not as conquerors, but as subjects, and
therefore fellow-citizens, through the gate into the city.
PSALM XLVII.
1 All ye peoples, clap [your] hands;
Shout to God with joyful cry.
2 For Jehovah is most High [and] dread,
A great King over all the earth.
3 He subdues peoples under us,
And nations under our feet,
4 He chooses for us our inheritance,
The pride of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.
5 God is gone up with a shout,
Jehovah with trumpet clang.
6 Sing with the harp to God, sing with the harp:
Sing with the harp to our King, sing with the harp.
7 For King of all the earth is God:
Sing with the harp a skilful song.
8 God has become King over the nations:
He has taken His seat on His holy throne.
9 The princes of the peoples gather themselves together
[As] a people of the God of Abraham:
For to God belong the shields of the earth;
Greatly has He exalted Himself.
The closing thought of Psalm xlvi. is nobly expanded in this jubilant
summons to all nations to praise Jehovah as their King. Both psalms have
a similar, and probably the same, historical basis: a Divine act so
recent that the tumult of triumph has not yet subsided, and the waves of
joy still run high. Only in Psalm xlvi. the effect of that God-wrought
deliverance is principally regarded as the security and peace of Israel,
and in this psalm as the drawing of the nations to obey Israel's King,
and so to join the chorus of Israel's praise. While the psalm has many
resemblances to the Songs of the King (Psalm xciii. _seqq._), it is
clearly in its right place here, as forming with the preceding and
succeeding psalms a trilogy, occasioned by one great manifestation of
God's care for the nation. No event is more appropriate than the usually
accepted destruction of Sennacherib's army. The psalm has little of
complexity in structure or thought. It is a gush of pure rapture. It
rises to prophetic foresight, and, by reason of a comparatively small
historical occasion, has a vision of the world-wide expansion of the
kingdom of God. It falls into two strophes of four verses each, with one
longer verse appended to the latter.
In the first strophe the nations are invited to welcome God as their
King, not only because of His Divine exaltation and world-wide
dominion, but also because of His deeds for "Jacob." The same
Divine act which in Psalm xlvi. is represented as quelling wars
and melting the earth, and in Psalm xlviii. as bringing dismay,
pain, and flight, is here contemplated as attracting the nations
to worship. The psalmist knows that destructive providences have
their gracious aspect, and that God's true victory over men is not
won when opposition is crushed and hearts made to quake, but when
recognition of His sway and joy in it swell the heart. The quick
clatter of clapping hands in sign of homage to the King (2 Kings xi.
12) blends with the shrill cries with which Easterns express joy, in
"a tumult of acclaim." Hupfeld thinks that to suppose the heathen
called upon to do homage because of the victory for Israel won over
them is entirely mistaken. But unless that victory is the reason for
the summons, the psalm offers none; and it is surely not difficult
to suppose that the exhibition of God's power leads to reflection
which issues in recognition of His sovereignty. Vv. 3, 4, seem to
state the grounds for the summons in ver. 1. The tenses in these
verses present a difficulty in the way of taking them for a historical
retrospect of the conquest and partition of Canaan, which but for
that objection would be the natural interpretation. It is possible
to take them as "a truth of experience inferred from what had just
been witnessed, the historical fact being expressed not in historical
form, but generalised and idealised" (Delitzsch, _in loc._). The
just accomplished deliverance repeated in essence the wonders of the
first entrance on possession of the land, and revealed the continuous
working of the same Divine hand, ever renewing the choice of Jacob's
inheritance, and ever scattering its enemies. "The pride of Jacob"
is a phrase in apposition with "our inheritance." The Holy Land was
the object of "pride" to "Jacob," not in an evil sense but in that he
boasted of it as a precious treasure intrusted to him by God. The root
fact of all God's ancient and continued blessings is that He "loved."
His own heart, not Jacob's deserts, prompted His mercies.
The second strophe is distinguished from the first by the increased
fervour of its calls to praise, by its still more exultant rush, and
by its omission of reference to Jacob. It is wholly concerned with the
peoples whom it invites to take up the song. As in the former strophe
the singer showed to the peoples God working in the world, here he bids
them look up and see Him ascending on high. "Now that He ascended,
what is it but that He also descended first?" The mighty deliverance
of which the triumph throbs through this trilogy of pæans of victory
was God's coming down. Now He has gone back to His throne and seated
Himself thereon, not as having ceased to work in the world--for He is
still King over it all--but as having completed a delivering work.
He does not withdraw when He goes up. He does not cease to work here
below when He sits throned in His palace-temple above. The "shout" and
"voice of a trumpet," which accompany that ascent, are borrowed from the
ordinary attendants on a triumphal procession. He soars as in a chariot
of praises,--from whose lips the psalm does not say, but probably it
intends Israel to be understood as the singer. To that choir the nations
are called to join their voices and harps, since God is their King too,
and not Jacob's only. The word rendered in the A.V. and R.V. (text)
"with understanding" is a noun, the name of a description of psalm,
which occurs in several psalm titles, and is best understood as "a
skilful song." Ver. 8 gathers up the reasons for the peoples' homage to
God. He has "become King" over them by His recent act, having manifested
and established His dominion; and He has now "sat down on His throne,"
as having accomplished His purpose, and as thence administering the
world's affairs.
A final verse, of double the length of the others, stands somewhat
apart from the preceding strophe both in rhythm and in thought. It
crowns the whole. The invitations to the nations are conceived of as
having been welcomed and obeyed. And there rises before the poet's
eye a fair picture of a great convocation, such as might wait before
a world-ruling monarch's throne on the day of his coronation. The
princes of the nations, like tributary kings, come flocking to do
homage, "as if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by."
The obliteration of distinction between Israel and the nations, by the
incorporation of the latter, so that "the peoples" become part of the
"people of the God of Abraham," floats before the singer's prophetic
eye, as the end of God's great manifestation of Himself. The two parts
of that double choir, which the preceding strophes summon to song,
coalesce at last, and in grand unison send up one full-throated,
universal melodious shout of praise. "The shields of the earth" are
best understood as a figurative expression for the princes just spoken
of, who now at last recognise to whom they belong. Thus God has
exalted Himself by His deeds; and the result of these deeds is that He
is greatly exalted by the praise of a world, in which Israel and the
"peoples" dwell as one beneath His sceptre and celebrate His name.
The psalmist looked far ahead. His immediate experience was as "a
little window through which he saw great matters." The prophecy of
the universal spread of God's kingdom and the inclusion in it of the
Gentiles is Messianic; and whether the singer knew that he spoke
of a fair hope which should not be a fact for weary centuries, or
anticipated wider and permanent results from that triumph which
inspired his song, he spake of the Christ, and his strains are true
prophecies of His dominion. There is no intentional reference in the
psalm to the Ascension; but the thoughts underlying its picture of
God's going up with a shout are the same which that Ascension sets
forth as facts,--the merciful coming down into humanity of the Divine
Helper; the completeness of His victory as attested by His return
thither where He was before; His session in heaven, not as idle nor
wearied, but as having done what He meant to do; His continuous
working as King in the world; and the widening recognition of His
authority by loving hearts. The psalmist summons us all to swell with
our voices that great chorus of praise which, like a sea, rolls and
breaks in music round His royal seat.
PSALM XLVIII.
1 Great is Jehovah, and much to be praised,
In the city of our God, His holy mountain.
2 Lovely in loftiness, a joy of all the earth,
Is Mount Zion, the recesses of the north, the city of the great
King.
3 God in her palaces
Has made Himself known as a high tower.
4 For, lo, the kings assembled themselves,
They marched onwards together.
5 They saw, then they were amazed;
They were terror-struck, they fled.
6 Trembling seized them there;
Pain, as [of] a woman in travail.
7 With an east wind
Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish.
8 According as we have heard, so have we seen
In the city of Jehovah of hosts, in the city of our God:
God will establish her for ever. Selah.
9 We have thought, O God, of Thy loving-kindness
In the midst of Thy Temple.
10 According to Thy name, O God,
So is Thy praise to the ends of the earth:
Thy right hand is full of righteousness.
11 Let Mount Zion rejoice,
Let the daughters of Judah exult,
Because of Thy judgments.
12 Compass Zion, and walk round her:
Reckon her towers.
13 Give heed to her bulwark,
Pass through her palaces;
That ye may tell it to the generation after.
14 That such is God, our God:
For ever and aye He will guide us.
Al-Muth.
The situation seems the same as in Psalm xlvi., with which this psalm
has many points of contact. In both we have the same triumph, the same
proud affection for the holy city and sanctuary, the same confidence
in God's dwelling there, the same vivid picturing of the mustering of
enemies and their rapid dispersion, the same swift movement of style
in describing that overthrow, the same thought of the diffusion of
God's praise in the world as its consequence, the same closing summons
to look upon the tokens of deliverance, with the difference that, in
the former psalm, these are the shattered weapons of the defeated foe,
and in this the unharmed battlements and palaces of the delivered
city. The emphatic word of the refrain in Psalm xlvi. also reappears
here in ver. 3. The psalm falls into three parts, of which the first
(vv. 1, 2) is introductory, celebrating the glory of Zion as the city
of God; the second (vv. 3-8) recounts in glowing words the deliverance
of Zion; and the third tells of the consequent praise and trust of the
inhabitants of Zion (vv. 9-14).
The general sense of the first part is plain, but ver. 2 is difficult.
"Mount Zion" is obviously subject, and "lovely in loftiness" and "joy
of all the earth" predicates; but the grammatical connection of the
two last clauses is obscure. Further, the meaning of "the sides of
the north" has not been satisfactorily ascertained. The supposition
that there is an allusion in the phrase to the mythological mountain
of the gods, with which Zion is compared, is surely most unnatural.
Would a Hebrew psalmist be likely to introduce such a parallel, even
in order to assert the superiority of Zion? Nor is the grammatical
objection to the supposition less serious. It requires a good deal
of stretching and inserting to twist the two words "the sides of
the north" into a comparison. It is more probable that the clause
is topographical, describing some part of the city, but what part
is far from clear. The accents make all the verse after "earth" the
subject of the two preceding predicates, and place a minor division
at "north," implying that "the sides of the north" is more closely
connected with "Mount Zion" than with the "city of the great King," or
than that last clause is.
Following these indications, Stier renders "Mount Zion [and] the
northern side (_i.e._, the lower city, on the north of Zion), which
together make the city," etc. Others see here "the Holy City regarded
from three points of view"--viz., "the Mount Zion" (the city of
David), "the sides of the north" (Mount Moriah and the Temple), "the
city of the great King" (Jerusalem proper). So Perowne and others.
Delitzsch takes Zion to be the Temple hill, and "the sides of the
north" to be in apposition. "The Temple hill or Zion, in the narrower
sense, actually formed the north-eastern corner of ancient Jerusalem,"
says he, and thus regards the subject of the whole sentence as really
twofold, not threefold, as appears at first--Zion on the north, which
is the palace-temple, and Jerusalem at its feet, which is "the city of
the great King." But it must be admitted that no interpretation runs
quite smoothly, though the summary ejection of the troublesome words
"the sides of the north" from the text is too violent a remedy.
But the main thought of this first part is independent of such minute
difficulties. It is that the one thing which made Zion-Jerusalem
glorious was God's presence in it. It was beautiful in its elevation;
it was safely isolated from invaders by precipitous ravines, inclosing
the angle of the plateau on which it stood. But it was because God
dwelt there and manifested Himself there that it was "a joy for all
the earth." The name by which even the earthly Zion is called is
"Jehovah-Shammah, The Lord is there." We are not forcing New Testament
ideas into Old Testament words when we see in the psalm an eternal
truth. An idea is one thing; the fact which more or less perfectly
embodies it is another. The idea of God's dwelling with men had its less
perfect embodiment in the presence of the Shechinah in the Temple, its
more perfect in the dwelling of God in the Church, and will have its
complete when the city "having the glory of God" shall appear, and He
will dwell with men and be their God. God in her, not anything of her
own, makes Zion lovely and gladdening. "Thy beauty was perfect through
My comeliness which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord."
The second part pictures Zion's deliverance with picturesque vigour
(vv. 3-8). Ver. 3 sums up the whole as the act of God, by which He has
made Himself known as that which the refrain of Psalm xlvi. declared
Him to be--a refuge, or, literally, a high tower. Then follows the
muster of the hosts. "The kings were assembled." That phrase need
not be called exaggeration, nor throw doubt on the reference to
Sennacherib's army, if we remember the policy of Eastern conquerors in
raising their armies from their conquests, and the boast which Isaiah
puts into the mouth of the Assyrian: "Are not my princes altogether
kings?" They advance against the city. "They saw,"--no need to say
what. Immediately they "were amazed." The sight of the city broke on
them from some hill-crest on their march. Basilisk-like, its beauty
was paralysing, and shot a nameless awe into their hearts. "They were
terror-struck; they fled." As in Psalm xlvi. 6, the clauses, piled up
without cement of connecting particles, convey an impression of hurry,
culminating in the rush of panic-struck fugitives. As has been often
noticed, they recall Cæsar's _Veni, vidi, vici_; but these kings came,
saw, _were_ conquered. No cause for the rout is named. No weapons were
drawn in the city. An unseen hand "smites once, and smites no more";
for once is enough. The process of deliverance is not told; for a
hymn of victory is not a chronicle. One image explains it all, and
signalises the Divine breath as the sole agent. "Thou breakest the
ships of Tarshish with an east wind" is not history, but metaphor. The
unwieldy, huge vessel, however strong for fight, is unfit for storms,
and, caught in a gale, rolls heavily in the trough of the sea, and is
driven on a lee shore and ground to pieces on its rocks. "God blew
upon them, and they were scattered," as the medal struck on the defeat
of the Armada had it. In the companion psalm God's uttered voice did
all. Here the breath of the tempest, which is the breath of His lips,
is the sole agent.
The past, of which the nation had heard from its fathers, lives again
in their own history; and that verification of traditional belief by
experience is to a devout soul the chief blessing of its deliverances.
There is rapture in the thought that "As we have heard, so have we
seen." The present ever seems commonplace. The sky is farthest from
earth right overhead, but touches the ground on the horizon behind
and before. Miracles were in the past; God will be manifestly in the
far-off future, but the present is apt to seem empty of Him. But if
we rightly mark His dealings with us, we shall learn that nothing in
His past has so passed that it is not present. As the companion psalm
says, "The God of Jacob is _our_ refuge," this exclaims, "As we have
heard, so have we seen."
But not only does the deliverance link the present with the past, but
it flings a steady light into the future. "God shall establish her for
ever." The city is truly "the eternal city," because God dwells in it.
The psalmist was thinking of the duration of the actual Jerusalem, the
imperfect embodiment of a great idea. But whatever may be its fate,
the heart of his confidence is no false vision; for God's city will
outlast the world. Like the "maiden fortresses," of which there is
one in almost every land, fondly believed never to have been taken by
enemies, that city is inexpugnable, and the confident answer to every
threatening assailant is, "The virgin, the daughter of Zion, hath
despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn; the daughter of Jerusalem
hath shaken her head at thee." "God will establish her for ever." The
pledges of that stability are the deliverances of the past and present.
The third part (vv. 9-14) deals with the praise and trust of the
inhabitants of Zion. Deliverance leads to thankful meditation on the
loving-kindness which it so signally displayed, and the ransomed
people first gather in the Temple, which was the scene of God's
manifestation of His grace, and therefore is the fitting place for
them to ponder it. The world-wide consequences of the great act of
loving-kindness almost shut out of sight for the moment its bearing
on the worshippers. It is a lofty height to which the song climbs,
when it regards national deliverance chiefly as an occasion for wider
diffusion of God's praise. His "name" is the manifestation of His
character in act. The psalmist is sure that wherever that character is
declared praise will follow, because he is sure that that character
is perfectly and purely good, and that God cannot act but in such
a way as to magnify Himself. That great sea will cast up nothing
but pearls. The words carry also a lesson for recipients of Divine
loving-kindness, teaching them that they misapprehend the purpose of
their blessings, if they confine these to their own well-being and
lose sight of the higher object--that men may learn to know and love
Him. But the deliverance not only produces grateful meditation and
widespread praise; it sets the mother city and her daughter villages
astir, like Miriam and her maidens, with timbrel and dance, and
ringing songs which celebrate "Thy judgments," terrible as they were.
That dead host was an awful sight, and hymns of praise seem heartless
for its dirge. But it is not savage glee nor fierce hatred which
underlies the psalmist's summons, and still less is it selfish joy.
"Thy judgments" are to be hymned when they smite some giant evil; and
when systems and their upholders that array themselves against God are
drowned in some Red Sea, it is fitting that on its banks should echo,
"Sing ye to Jehovah, for He hath triumphed gloriously."
The close of this part may be slightly separated from vv. 9-11. The
citizens who have been cooped up by the siege are bidden to come
forth, and, free from fear, to compass the city without, and pass
between its palaces within, and so see how untouched they are. The
towers and bulwark or rampart remain unharmed, with not a stone
smitten from its place. Within, the palaces stand without a trace
of damage to their beauty. Whatever perishes in any assaults, that
which is of God will abide; and, after all musterings of the enemy,
the uncaptured walls will rise in undiminished strength, and the
fair palaces which they guard glitter in untarnished splendour. And
this complete exemption from harm is to be told to the generation
following, that they may learn what a God this God is, and how safely
and well He will guide all generations.
The last word in the Hebrew text, which the A.V. and R.V. render
"even unto death," can scarcely have that meaning. Many attempts have
been made to find a signification appropriate to the close of such
a triumphal hymn as this, but the simplest and most probable course
is to regard the words as a musical note, which is either attached
abnormally to the close of the psalm, or has strayed hither from
the superscription of Psalm xlix. It is found in the superscription
of Psalm ix. ("Al-Muth") as a musical direction, and has in all
likelihood the same meaning here. If it is removed, the psalm ends
abruptly, but a slight transposition of words and change of the main
division of the verse remove that difficulty by bringing "for ever
and aye" from the first half. The change improves both halves, laying
the stress of the first exclusively on the thought that this God is
such a God (or, by another rendering, "is here," _i.e._, in the city),
without bringing in reference to the eternity of His protection, and
completing the second half worthily, with the thought of His eternal
guidance of the people among whom He dwells.
PSALM XLIX.
1 Hear this, all ye peoples;
Give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world:
2 Both low-born and high-born,
Rich and poor together.
3 My mouth shall speak wisdom;
And the meditation of my heart shall utter understanding
4 I will bend my ear to a parable:
I will open my riddle on the harp.
5 Why should I fear in the days of evil,
When the malice of my pursuers surrounds me,
6 [Even of] those who rely on their riches,
And boast of their wealth?
7 No man can at all redeem a brother;
He cannot give to God a ransom for him
8 (Yea, too costly is the redemption price of their soul,
And he must leave it alone for ever):
9 That he may continue living on for ever,
And may not see the pit.
10 Nay, he must see that the wise die
The fool and the brutish perish alike,
And leave to others their riches.
11 Their inward thought [is that] their houses [shall last] for ever,
Their dwellings to generation after generation;
They call their lands by their own names.
12 But man [being] in honour abides not:
He becomes like the beasts [that] are brought to silence.
13 This is the lot of them to whom presumptuous confidence belongs:
And after them men approve their sayings. Selah.
14 Like sheep they are folded in Sheol;
Death shepherds them:
And the upright shall rule over them in the morning;
And their form shall be wasted away by Sheol,
So that it is without a dwelling.
15 Surely God shall redeem my soul from the power of Sheol:
For He shall take me. Selah.
16 Fear not thou when a man becomes rich,
When the glory of his house increases:
17 For when he dies he will not take away any [of it];
His glory shall not go down after him.
18 Though in his lifetime he bless his soul
(And [men] praise thee when thou doest well for thyself)
19 He shall go to the generation of his fathers;
For evermore they see not light.
20 Man [who is] in honour, and has not understanding,
Becomes like the beasts that are brought to silence.
This psalm touches the high-water mark of Old Testament faith in
a future life; and in that respect, as well as in its application
of that faith to alleviate the mystery of present inequalities and
non-correspondence of desert with condition, is closely related to the
noble Psalm lxxiii., with which it has also several verbal identities.
Both have the same problem before them--to construct a theodicy,
or "to vindicate the ways of God to man"--and both solve it in the
same fashion. Both appear to refer to the story of Enoch in their
remarkable expression for ultimate reception into the Divine presence.
But whether the psalms are contemporaneous cannot be determined
from these data. Cheyne regards the treatment of the theme in Psalm
lxxiii. as "more skilful," and therefore presumably later than
Psalm xlix., which he would place "somewhat before the close of the
Persian period." This date rests on the assumption that the amount of
certitude as to a future life expressed in the psalm was not realised
in Israel till after the exile.
After a solemn summons to all the world to hear the psalmist's
utterance of what he has learned by Divine teaching (vv. 1-4), the
psalm is divided into two parts, each closed with a refrain. The
former of these (vv. 5-12) contrasts the arrogant security of the
prosperous godless with the end that awaits them; while the second
(vv. 13-20) contrasts the dreary lot of these victims of vain
self-confidence with the blessed reception after death into God's
own presence which the psalmist grasped as a certainty for himself,
and thereon bases an exhortation to possess souls in patience while
the godless prosper, and to be sure that their lofty structures will
topple into hideous ruin.
The psalmist's consciousness that he speaks by Divine inspiration,
and that his message imports all men, is grandly expressed in his
introductory summons. The very name which he gives to the world suggests
the latter thought; for it means--the world considered as fleeting.
Since we dwell in so transitory an abode, it becomes us to listen to
the deep truths of the psalm. These have a message for high and low,
for rich and poor. They are like a keen lancet to let out too great
fulness of blood from the former, and to teach moderation, lowliness,
and care for the Unseen. They are a calming draught for the latter,
soothing when perplexed or harmed by "the proud man's contumely."
But the psalmist calls for universal attention, not only because his
lessons fit all classes, but because they are in themselves "wisdom,"
and because he himself had first bent his ear to receive them before he
strung his lyre to utter them. The brother-psalmist, in Psalm lxxiii.,
presents himself as struggling with doubt and painfully groping his way
to his conclusion. This psalmist presents himself as a divinely inspired
teacher, who has received into purged and attentive ears; in many a
whisper from God, and as the result of many an hour of silent waiting,
the word which he would now proclaim on the housetops. The discipline
of the teacher of religious truth is the same at all times. There must
be the bent ear before there is the message which men will recognise as
important and true.
There is no parable in the ordinary sense in the psalm. The word seems
to have acquired the wider meaning of a weighty didactic utterance, as
in Psalm lxxviii. 2. The expression "Open my riddle" is ambiguous, and
is by some understood to mean the proposal and by others the solution
of the puzzle; but the phrase is more naturally understood of solving
than of setting a riddle, and if so, the disproportion between the
characters and fortunes of good and bad is the mystery or riddle, and
the psalm is its solution.
The main theme of the first part is the certainty of death, which makes
infinitely ludicrous the rich man's arrogance. It is one version of
"There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings."
Therefore how vain the boasting in wealth, when all its heaps cannot
buy a day of life! This familiar thought is not all the psalmist's
contribution to the solution of the mystery of life's unequal
partition of worldly good; but it prepares the way for it, and it
lays a foundation for his refusal to be afraid, however pressed by
insolent enemies. Very significantly he sets the conclusion, to which
observation of the transiency of human prosperity has led him, at the
beginning of his "parable." In the parallel psalm (lxxiii.) the singer
shows himself struggling from the depths of perplexity up to the sunny
heights of faith. But here the poet begins with the clear utterance
of trustful courage, and then vindicates it by the thought of the
impotence of wealth to avert death.
The hostility to himself of the self-confident rich boasters appears
only for a moment at first. It is described by a gnarled, energetic
phrase which has been diversely understood. But it seems clear that
the "iniquity" (A.V. and R.V.) spoken of in ver. 5 _b_ is not the
psalmist's sin, for a reference here to his guilt or to retribution
would be quite irrelevant; and if it were the consequences of his
own evil that dogged him at his heels, he had every reason to fear,
and confidence would be insolent defiance. But the word rendered in
the A.V. _heels_, which is retained in the R.V. with a change in
construction, may be a participial noun, derived from a verb meaning
to trip up or supplant; and this gives a natural coherence to the
whole verse, and connects it with the following one. "Pursuers" is a
weak equivalent for the literal "those who would supplant me," but
conveys the meaning, though in a somewhat enfeebled condition. Ver. 6
is a continuance of the description of the supplanters. They are "men
of this world," the same type of man as excites stern disapproval in
many psalms: as, for instance, in xvii. 14--a psalm which is closely
related to this, both in its portrait of the godless and its lofty
hope for the future. It is to be noted that they are not described
as vicious or God-denying or defying. They are simply absorbed in
the material, and believe that land and money are the real, solid
goods. They are the same men as Jesus meant when He said that it
was hard for those who trusted in riches to enter into the kingdom
of heaven. It has been thought that the existence of such a class
points to a late date for the psalm; but the reliance on riches
does not require large riches to rely on, and may flourish in full
perniciousness in very primitive social conditions. A small elevation
suffices to lift a man high enough above his fellows to make a weak
head giddy. Those to whom material possessions are the only good have
a natural enmity towards those who find their wealth in truth and
goodness. The poet, the thinker, and, most of all, the religious man,
are targets for more or less active "malice," or, at all events, are
recognised as belonging to another class, and regarded as singular and
"unpractical," if nothing worse. But the psalmist looks far enough
ahead to see the end of all the boasting, and points to the great
instance of the impotence of material good--its powerlessness to
prolong life. It would be more natural to find in ver. 7 the statement
that the rich man cannot prolong his own days than that he cannot do
so for a "brother." A very slight change in the text would make the
initial word of the verse ("brother") the particle of asseveration,
which occurs in ver. 15 (the direct antithesis of this verse), and is
characteristic of the parallel Psalm lxxiii. With that reading (Ewald,
Cheyne, Baethgen, etc.) other slight difficulties are smoothed; but
the present text is attested by the LXX. and other early versions,
and is capable of defence. It may be necessary to observe that there
is no reference here to any other "redemption" than that of the body
from physical death. There is a distinct intention to contrast the
man's limited power with God's, for ver. 15 points back to this verse,
and declares that God can do what man cannot. Ver. 8 must be taken as
a parenthesis, and the construction carried on from ver. 7 to ver.
9, which specifies the purpose of the ransom, if it were possible.
No man can secure for another continuous life or an escape from the
necessity of seeing the pit--_i.e._, going down to the depths of
death. It would cost more than all the rich man's store; wherefore
he--the would-be ransomer--must abandon the attempt for ever.
The "see" in ver. 10 is taken by many to have the same object as
the "see" in ver. 9. "Yea, he shall see it." (So Hupfeld, Hitzig,
Perowne, and others.) "The wise die" will then begin a new sentence.
But the repetition is feeble, and breaks up the structure of ver. 10
undesirably. The fact stares the rich man in the face that no difference
of position or of character affects the necessity of death. Down into
that insatiable maw of Sheol ("the ever-asking"?) beauty, wisdom,
wealth, folly, and animalism go alike, and it still gapes wide for fresh
food. But a strange hallucination in the teeth of all experience is
cherished in the "inward thought" of "the men of this world"--namely,
that their houses shall continue for ever. Like the godless man in Psalm
x., this rich man has reached a height of false security, which cannot
be put into words without exposing its absurdity, but which yet haunts
his inmost thoughts. The fond imagination of perpetuity is not driven
out by the plain facts of life and death. He acts on the presumption
of permanence; and he whose working hypothesis is that he is to abide
always as his permanent home in his sumptuous palace, is rightly set
down as believing in the incredible belief that the common lot will not
be his. A man's real belief is that which moulds his life, though he has
never formulated it in words. This "inward thought" either underlies
the rich godless man's career, or that career is inexplicable. There
is an emphatic contrast drawn between what he "sees" and what he, all
the while, hugs in his secret heart. That contrast is lost if the
emendation found in the LXX. and adopted by many modern commentators
is accepted, according to which, by the transposition of a letter, we
get "their grave" instead of "their inward [thought]." A reference to
the grave comes too early; and if the sense of ver. 11 _a_ is that
"their grave (or, the graves) are their houses for ever," there is no
parallelism between ver. 11 _a_ and _c_. The delusion of continuance is,
on the other hand, naturally connected with the proud attempt to make
their names immortal by impressing them on their estates. The language
of ver. 11 _c_ is somewhat ambiguous; but, on the whole, the rendering
"they call their lands by their own names" accords best with the context.
Then comes with a crash the stern refrain which pulverises all this
insanity of arrogance. The highest distinction among men gives no
exemption from the grim law which holds all corporeal life in its
gripe. The psalmist does not look, and probably did not see, beyond
the external fact of death. He knows nothing of a future for the men
whose portion is in this life. As we shall see in the second part of
the psalm, the confidence in immortality is for him a deduction from
the fact of communion with God here, and, apparently, his bent ear
had received no whisper as to any distinction between the godless man
and the beast in the regard to their deaths. They are alike "brought
to silence." The awful dumbness of the dead strikes on his heart and
imagination as most pathetic. "That skull had a tongue in it, and
could sing once," and now the pale lips are locked in eternal silence,
and some ears hunger in vain "for the sound of a voice that is still."
Hupfeld would transfer ver. 13, which begins the second part, so that
it should stand before the refrain, which would then have the Selah,
that now comes in peculiarly at the end of ver. 13. But there is nothing
unnatural in the first verse of the second part summing up the contents
of the first part; and such a summary is needed in order to bring out
the contrast between the godless folly and end of the rich men on the
one hand, and the hope of the psalmist on the other. The construction
of ver. 13 is disputed. The "way" may either mean conduct or fate, and
the word rendered in the A.V. and R.V. "folly" has also the meaning of
stupid security or self-confidence. It seems best to regard the sentence
as not pronouncing again that the conduct described in vv. 6-11 is
foolish, but that the end foretold in ver. 12 surely falls on such as
have that dogged insensibility to the facts of life which issues in such
presumptuous assurance. Many commentators would carry on the sentence
into ver. 13 _b_, and extend the "lot" to those who in after-generations
approve their sayings. But the paradoxical fact that notwithstanding
each generation's experience the delusion is obstinately maintained from
father to son yields a fuller meaning. In either case the notes of the
musical interlude fix attention on the thought, in order to make the
force of the following contrast greater. That contrast first deals with
the fate of godless men after death. The comparison with the "beasts"
in the refrain may have suggested the sombre grandeur of the metaphor
in ver. 14 _a_ and _b_: Sheol is as a great fold into which flocks are
driven. There Death rules as the shepherd of that dim realm. What a
contrast to the fold and the flock of the other Shepherd, who guides
His unterrified sheep through the "valley of the shadow of death"! The
waters of stillness beside which this sad shepherd makes his flock lie
down are doleful and sluggish. There is no cheerful activity for these,
nor any fair pastures, but they are penned in compelled inaction in that
dreadful fold.
So far the picture is comparatively clear, but with the next clause
difficulties begin. Does the "morning" mean only the end of the night
of trouble, the beginning in this life of the "upright's" deliverance,
or have we here an eschatological utterance? The whole of the rest of
the verse has to do with the unseen world, and to confine this clause
to the temporal triumph of the righteous over their dead oppressors
drags in an idea belonging to another sphere altogether. We venture to
regard the interpretation of these enigmatical words, which sees in
them a dim adumbration of a great morning which will yet stream its
light into the land of darkness, and in which not this or that upright
man but the class as a whole shall triumph, as the only one which
keeps the parts of the verse in unity. It is part of the "riddle" of
the psalmist, probably not perfectly explicable to himself. We cannot
say that there is here the clear teaching of a resurrection, but there
is the germ of it, whether distinctly apprehended by the singer or
not. The first glimpses of truth in all regions are vague, and the
gazer does not know that the star he sees is a sun. Not otherwise
did the great truths of the future life rise on inspired men of old.
This psalmist divined, or, more truly, heard in his bent ear, that
Good and its lovers should triumph beyond the grave, and that somehow
a morning would break for them. But he knew nothing of any such
for the godless dead. And the remainder of the verse expresses in
enigmatical brevity and obscurity the gloomy fate of those for whom
there was no such awakening as he hoped for himself. Very different
renderings have been given of the gnarled words. If we adhere to the
accents, the literal translation is, "Their form is [destined] for
the wasting of Sheol, from a dwelling-place for it," or "without its
dwelling-place"--an obscure saying, which is, however, intelligible
when rendered as above. It describes the wasting away of the whole
man, not merely his corporeal form, in Sheol, of which the corruption
of the body in the grave may stand as a terrible symbol, so that only
a thin shred of personality remains, which wanders homeless, unclothed
with any house either "of this tabernacle" or any other, and so found
drearily naked. Homeless desolation of bare being, from which all that
is fair or good has been gnawed away, is awfully expressed in the
words. Other renderings, neglecting the accents and amending the text,
bring out other meanings: such as "Their form is for corruption; Hades
[will be] its dwelling-place" (Jennings and Lowe); "Their form shall
waste away. Sheol shall be their castle for ever" (so Cheyne in "Book
of Psalms"; in "Orig. of Psalt." _frame_ is substituted for _form_,
and _palace_ for _castle_. Baethgen gives up the attempt to render the
text or to restore it, and takes to asterisks).
To this condition of dismal inactivity, as of sheep penned in a fold, of
loss of beauty, of wasting and homelessness, the psalmist opposes the
fate which he has risen to anticipate for himself. Ver. 15 is plainly
antithetical, not only to ver. 14, but to ver. 7. The "redemption" which
was impossible with men is possible with God. The emphatic particle of
asseveration and restriction at the beginning is, as we have remarked,
characteristic of the parallel Psalm lxiii. It here strengthens the
expression of confidence, and points to God as alone able to deliver
His servant from the "hand of Sheol." That deliverance is clearly not
escape from the universal lot, which the psalmist has just proclaimed so
impressively as affecting wise and foolish alike. But while he expects
that he, too, will have to submit to the strong hand that plucks all men
from their dwelling-places, he has won the assurance that sameness of
outward lot covers absolute difference in the conditions of those who
are subjected to it. The faith that he will be delivered from the power
of Sheol does not necessarily imply the specific kind of deliverance
involved in resurrection, and it may be a question whether that idea was
definitely before the singer's mind. But, without dogmatising on that
doubtful point, plainly his expectation was of a life beyond death, the
antithesis of the cheerless one just painted in such gloomy colours.
The very brevity of the second clause of the verse makes it the more
emphatic.
The same pregnant phrase occurs again with the same emphasis in Psalm
lxxiii. 24, "Thou shalt take me," and in both passages the psalmist is
obviously quoting from the narrative of Enoch's translation. "God took
him" (Gen. v. 24). He has fed his faith on that signal instance of the
end of a life of communion with God, and it has confirmed the hopes
which such a life cannot but kindle, so that he is ready to submit to
the common lot, bearing in his heart the assurance that, in experiencing
it, he will not be driven by that grim shepherd into his gloomy fold,
but lifted by God into His own presence. As in Psalms xvi. and xvii.,
we have here the certainty of immortality filling a devout soul as
the result of present experience of communion with God. These great
utterances as to the two contrasted conditions after death are, in one
aspect, the psalmist's "riddle," in so far as they are stated in "dark
and cloudy words," but, in another view, are the solution of the painful
enigma of the prosperity of the godless and the afflictions of the
righteous. Fittingly the Selah follows this solemn, great hope.
As the first part began with the psalmist's encouraging of himself to
put away fear, so the whole ends with the practical application of the
truths declared, in the exhortation to others not to be terrified nor
bewildered out of their faith by the insolent inflated prosperity of
the godless. The lofty height of wholesome mysticism reached in the
anticipation of personal immortality is not maintained in this closing
part. The ground of the exhortation is simply the truth proclaimed
in the first part, with additional emphasis on the thought of the
necessary parting from all wealth and pomp. "Shrouds have no pockets."
All the external is left behind, and much of the inward too--such as
habits, desires, ways of thinking, and acquirements which have been
directed to and bounded by the seen and temporal. What is not left
behind is character and desert. The man of this world is wrenched from
his possessions by death; but he who has made God his portion here
carries his portion with him, and does not enter on that other state
"in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory does he come
_To_ God who is his home."
Our Lord's parable of the foolish rich man has echoes of this psalm.
"Whose shall those things be?" reminds us of "He will not take
away any of it"; and "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up ... take
thine ease" is the best explanation of what the psalmist meant by
"blessing his soul." The godless rich man of the psalm is a selfish
and godless one. His condemnation lies not in his wealth, but in his
absorption in it and reliance upon it, and in his cherishing the
dream of perpetual enjoyment of it, or at least shunning the thought
of its loss. Therefore, "when he dies, he goes to the generation of
his fathers," who are conceived of as gathered in solemn assembly in
that dark realm. "Generation" here implies, as it often does, moral
similarity. It includes all the man's predecessors of like temper with
himself. A sad company sitting there in the dark! _Going to them_
is not identical with death nor with burial, but implies at least
some rudimentary notion of companionship according to character, in
that land of darkness. The _darkness_ is the privation of all which
deserves the name of light, whether it be joy or purity. Ver. 18
_b_ is by some taken to be the psalmist's address to the rich man,
and by others to be spoken to the disciple who had been bidden not
to fear. In either case it brings in the thought of the popular
applause which flatters success, and plays chorus to the prosperous
man's own self-congratulations. Like ver. 13 _b_, it gibbets the
servile admiration of such men, as indicating what the praisers would
fain themselves be, and as a disclosure of that base readiness to
worship the rising sun, which has for its other side contempt for the
unfortunate who should receive pity and help.
The refrain is slightly but significantly varied. Instead of "abides
not," it reads "and has not understanding." The alteration in the Hebrew
is very slight, the two verbs differing only by one letter, and the
similarity in sound is no doubt the reason for the selection of the
word. But the change brings out the limitations under which the first
form of the refrain is true, and guards the whole teaching of the psalm
from being taken to be launched at rich men as such. The illuminative
addition in this second form shows that it is the abuse of riches, when
they steal away that recognition of God and of man's mortality which
underlies the psalmist's conception of _understanding_, that is doomed
to destruction like the beasts that are put to silence. The two forms
of the refrain are, then, precisely parallel to our Lord's two sayings,
when He first declared that it was hard for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven, and then, in answer to His disciples' surprise, put
His dictum in the more definite form, "How hard is it for them that
trust in riches to enter into the kingdom!"
PSALM L.
1 El, Elohim, Jehovah has spoken, and called the earth
From the place of sunrise to its going down.
2 From Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God has shone.
3 Our God will come, and cannot be silent:
Fire devours before Him,
And round Him it is tempestuous exceedingly.
4 He calls to the heavens above,
And to the earth, that He may judge His people:
5 "Assemble to Me My favoured ones,
Who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice."
6 And the heavens declare His righteousness;
For God--the judge is He. Selah.
7 Hearken, My people, and I will speak;
O Israel, and I will witness against thee:
Elohim, thy God am I.
8 Not on [account of] thy sacrifices will I reprove thee;
Yea, thy burnt offerings are before me continually.
9 I will not take a bullock out of thy house,
Nor out of thy folds he-goats.
10 For Mine is every beast of the forest,
The cattle on the mountains in thousands.
11 I know every bird of the mountains,
And whatever moves on the field is before Me.
12 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee:
For Mine is the world and its fulness.
13 Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or the blood of he-goats shall I
drink?
14 Sacrifice to God thanksgiving;
And pay thy vows to the Most High:
15 And call on Me in the day of trouble.
I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.
16 But to the wicked [man] God saith,
What hast thou to do to tell My statutes,
And that thou takest My covenant into thy mouth?
17 And [all the while] thou hatest correction,
And flingest My words behind thee.
18 If thou seest a robber, thou art pleased with him;
And with adulterers is thy portion.
19 Thy mouth thou dost let loose for evil,
And thy tongue weaves deceit.
20 Thou sittest [and] speakest against thy brother;
At thine own mother's son thou aimest a thrust.
21 These things hast thou done, and I was silent;
Thou thoughtest that I was altogether like thyself:
I will reprove thee, and order [the proofs] before thine eyes.
22 Consider now this, ye that forget God,
Lest I tear you in pieces, and there be no deliverer:
23 He who offers thanksgiving as sacrifice glorifies Me;
And he who orders his way [aright]--I will show him the salvation
of God.
This is the first of the Asaph psalms, and is separated from the other
eleven (Psalms lxxiii.-lxxxiii.) for reasons that do not appear.
Probably they are no more recondite than the verbal resemblance
between the summons to all the earth at the beginning of Psalm xlix.
and the similar proclamation in the first verses of Psalm l. The
arrangement of the Psalter is often obviously determined by such
slight links. The group has certain features in common, of which some
appear here: _e.g._, the fondness for descriptions of theophanies;
the prominence given to God's judicial action; the preference for
the Divine names of El, Adonai (the Lord), Elyōn (Most High). Ot
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