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 PSALMS
BY
ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.
VOLUME II.
PSALMS XXXIX.-LXXXIX.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
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;
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.
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
Does the psalm proceed to recount what its author
said when he broke silence? It may appear so at
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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" (
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.
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;
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 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
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
The suppliant and God have come closer together
in ver. 2, which should not be regarded as beginning
a new sentence. As in
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
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
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
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" (
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
The quotation of vv. 7, 8, in
"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
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
From ver. 13 onwards
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.
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 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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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
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
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
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
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
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 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
But the victory is not quite won, and therefore
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
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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:
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.
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
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.
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?
From such characteristics the psalmist draws an
inference—"therefore God hath blessed thee for ever";
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
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.).
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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 (
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
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,
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.
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.
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
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
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
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:
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 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
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
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
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
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 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
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,
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.
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
The same pregnant phrase occurs again with the
same emphasis in
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
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
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
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.
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.
The structure is clear and simple. There is, first, a magnificent description of God's coming to judgment and summoning heaven and earth to witness while He judges His people (vv. 1-6). The second part (vv. 7-15) proclaims the worthlessness of sacrifice; and the third (vv. 16-21) brands hypocrites who pollute God's statutes by taking them into their lips while their lives are foul. A closing strophe of two verses (22, 23) gathers up the double lesson of the whole.
The first part falls again into two, of three verses
each, of which the former describes the coming of the
judge, and the latter the opening of the judgment.
The psalm begins with a majestic heaping together of
the Divine names, as if a herald were proclaiming the
style and titles of a mighty king at the opening of a
solemn assize. No English equivalents are available,
and it is best to retain the Hebrew, only noting that
each name is separated from the others by the accents
in the original, and that to render either "the mighty
God" (A.V.) or "the God of gods" is not only against
that punctuation, but destroys the completeness symbolised
by the threefold designation. Hupfeld finds
the heaping together of names "frosty." Some ears
will rather hear in it a solemn reiteration like the boom
The earth from east to west is summoned, not to be
judged, but to witness God judging His people. The
peculiarity of this theophany is that God is not represented
as coming from afar or from above, but as letting
His light blaze out from Zion, where He sits enthroned.
As His presence made the city "the joy of the whole
earth" (
The opening of the court or preparation for the judgment
follows. That Divine voice speaks, summoning
heaven and earth to attend as spectators of the solemn
process. The universal significance of God's relation
to and dealings with Israel, and the vindication of His
righteousness by His inflexible justice dealt out to their
faults, are grandly taught in this making heaven and
earth assessors of that tribunal. The court having
But before the assize opens, the heavens, which had
been summoned to behold, declare beforehand His
righteousness, as manifested by the fact that He is
The second part (vv. 7-15) deals with one of the two
permanent tendencies which work for the corruption of
religion—namely, the reliance on external worship, and
neglect of the emotions of thankfulness and trust. God
appeals first to the relation into which He has entered
with the people, as giving Him the right to judge.
There may be a reference to the Mosaic formula, "I am
Jehovah, thy God," which is here converted, in accordance
with the usage of this book of the Psalter, into
"God (Elohim), thy God." The formula which was the
seal of laws when enacted is also the warrant for the
action of the Judge. He has no fault to find with
the external acts of worship. They are abundant
and "continually before Him." Surely this declaration
at the outset sets aside the notion that the psalmist
was launching a polemic against sacrifices per se. It
distinctly takes the ground that the habitual offering
of these was pleasing to the Judge. Their presentation
continually is not reproved, but approved. What
then is condemned? Surely it can be nothing but
sacrifice without the thanksgiving and prayer required
in vv. 14, 15. The irony of vv. 9-13 is directed
against the folly of believing that in sacrifice itself
God delighted; but the shafts are pointless as against
offerings which are embodied gratitude and trust. The
gross stupidity of supposing that man's gift makes the
offering to be God's more truly than before is laid
bare in the fine, sympathetic glance at the free, wild
life of forest, mountain, and plain, which is all God's
possession, and present to His upholding thought, and
by the side of which man's folds are very small affairs.
Vv. 12, 13, turn the stream of irony on another
absurdity involved in the superstition attacked—the
grossly material thought of God involved in it. What
good do bulls' flesh and goats' blood do to Him? But
if these are expressions of thankful love, they are
delightsome to Him. Therefore the section ends with
the declaration that the true sacrifice is thanksgiving
and the discharge of vows. Men honour God by
asking and taking, not by giving. They glorify Him
when, by calling on Him in trouble, they are delivered;
and then, by thankfulness and service, as well as by
the evidence which their experience gives that prayer
is not in vain, they again glorify Him. All sacrifices
are God's before they are offered, and do not become
any more His by being offered. He neither needs nor
can partake of material sustenance. But men's hearts
are not His without their glad surrender, in the same
The third part of the psalm is still sterner in tone. It strikes at the other great corruption of worship by hypocrites. As has been often remarked, it condemns breaches of the second table of the law, just as the former part may be regarded as dealing with transgressions of the first. The eighth, seventh, and ninth commandments are referred to in vv. 18, 19, as examples of the hypocrites' sins. The irreconcilable contradiction of their professions and conduct is vividly brought out in the juxtaposition of "declare My statutes" and "castest My words behind thee." They do two opposite things with the same words—at the same time proclaiming them with all lip-reverence, and scornfully flinging them behind their backs in their conduct. The word rendered in the A.V. "slanderest" is better taken as in margin of the R.V., "givest a thrust," meaning to use violence so as to harm or overthrow.
Hypocrisy finds encouragement in impunity. God's
silence is an emphatic way of expressing His patient
tolerance of evil unpunished. Such "long-suffering"
is meant to lead to repentance, and indicates God's
unwillingness to smite. But, as experience shows, it
is often abused, and "because sentence against an evil
work is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons of
men is throughly set in them to do evil." The gross
mind has gross conceptions of God. One nemesis of
hypocrisy is the dimming of the idea of the righteous
Judge. All sin darkens the image of God. When men
turn away from God's self-revelation, as they do by
transgression and most fatally by hypocrisy, they cannot
but make a God after their own image. Browning
The whole teaching of the psalm is gathered up in
the two closing verses. "Ye that forget God" includes
both the superstitious formalists and the hypocrites.
Reflection upon such truths as those of the psalm will
save them from else inevitable destruction. "This"
points on to ver. 23, which is a compendium of both
parts of the psalm. The true worship, which consists
in thankfulness and praise, is opposed in ver. 23 a to
mere externalisms of sacrifice, as being the right way
of glorifying God. The second clause presents a difficulty.
But it would seem that we must expect to find
in it a summing up of the warning of the third part
of the psalm similar to that of the second part in the
preceding clause. That consideration goes against the
rendering in the R.V. margin (adopted from Delitzsch):
"and prepares a way [by which] I may show," etc.
The ellipsis of the relative is also somewhat harsh.
The literal rendering of the ambiguous words is, "one
setting a way." Graetz, who is often wild in his
emendations, proposes a very slight one here—the
change of one letter, which would yield a good
1 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Thy loving-kindness:
According to the greatness of Thy compassions blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And from my sin make me clean.
3 For I, I know my transgressions:
And my sin is before me continually.
4 Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,
And done what is evil in Thine eyes:
That Thou mightest appear righteous when Thou speakest,
And clear when Thou judgest.
5 Behold, in iniquity was I born;
And in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts:
Therefore in the hidden part make me to know wisdom.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness;
That the bones Thou hast crushed may exult.
9 Hide Thy face from my sins, and all my iniquities blot out.
10 A clean heart create for me, O God;
And a steadfast spirit renew within me.
11 Cast me not out from Thy presence;
And Thy holy spirit take not from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation:
And with a willing spirit uphold me.
13 [Then] will I teach transgressors Thy ways;
14 Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation;
And my tongue shall joyfully sing Thy righteousness.
15 Lord, open my lips;
And my mouth shall declare Thy praise.
16 For Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it:
In burnt offering Thou hast no pleasure.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
A heart broken and crushed, O God, Thou wilt not despise.
18 Do good in Thy good pleasure to Zion:
O build the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then shalt Thou delight in sacrifices of righteousness, burnt offering and whole burnt offering:
Then shall they offer bullocks on Thine altar.
The personified nation is supposed by most modern authorities to be the speaker; and the date is sometimes taken to be the Restoration period, before the rebuilding of the walls by Nehemiah (Cheyne, "Orig. of Psalt.," 162); by others, the time of the Babylonish exile; and, as usual, by some, the Maccabean epoch. It puts a considerable strain upon the theory of personification to believe that these confessions of personal sin, and longing cries for a clean heart, which so many generations have felt to fit their most secret experiences, were not the wailings of a soul which had learned the burden of individuality, by consciousness of sin, and by realisation of the awful solitude of its relation to God. There are also expressions in the psalm which seem to clog the supposition that the speaker is the nation with great difficulties—e.g., the reference to birth in ver. 5, the prayer for inward truth in ver. 6, and for a clean heart in ver. 10. Baethgen acknowledges that the two latter only receive their full meaning when applied to an individual. He quotes Olshausen, a defender of the national reference, who really admits the force of the objection to it, raised on the ground of these expressions, while he seeks to parry it by saying that "it is not unnatural that the poet, speaking in the singular, should, although he writes for the congregation, bring in occasional expressions here and there which do not fit the community so well as they do each individual in it." The acknowledgment is valuable; the attempt to turn its edge may be left to the reader's judgment.
In vv. 1-9 the psalmist's cry is chiefly for pardon; in
The psalm begins with at once grasping the character of God as the sole ground of hope. That character has been revealed in an infinite number of acts of love. The very number of the psalmist's sins drove him to contemplate the yet greater number of God's mercies. For where but in an infinite placableness and loving-kindness could he find pardon? If the Davidic authorship is adopted, this psalm followed Nathan's assurance of forgiveness, and its petitions are the psalmist's efforts to lay hold of that assurance. The revelation of God's love precedes and causes true penitence. Our prayer for forgiveness is the appropriation of God's promise of forgiveness. The assurance of pardon does not lead to a light estimate of sin, but drives it home to the conscience.
The petitions of vv. 1, 2, teach us how the psalmist thought of sin. They are all substantially the same, and their repetition discloses the depth of longing in the suppliant. The language fluctuates between plural and singular nouns, designating the evil as "transgressions" and as "iniquity" and "sin." The psalmist regards it, first, as a multitude of separate acts, then as all gathered together into a grim unity. The single deeds of wrong-doing pass before him. But these have a common root; and we must not only recognise acts, but that alienation of heart from which they come—not only sin as it comes out in the life, but as it is coiled round our hearts. Sins are the manifestations of sin.
We note, too, how the psalmist realises his personal
responsibility. He reiterates "my"—"my transgressions,
my iniquity, my sin." He does not throw blame
The same eloquent synonyms for evil deeds which
are found in
Not less profound is that other name, which regards sin as "iniquity" or distortion. Then there is a straight line to which men's lives should run parallel. Our life's paths should be like these conquering Roman roads, turning aside for nothing, but going straight to their aim over mountain and ravine, stream or desert. But this man's passion had made for him a crooked path, where he found no end, "in wandering mazes lost." Sin is, further, missing an aim, the aim being either the Divine purpose for man, the true Ideal of manhood, or the satisfaction proposed by the sinner to himself as the result of his sin. In both senses every sin misses the mark.
These petitions show also how the psalmist thought
of forgiveness. As the words for sin give a threefold
view of it, so those for pardon set it forth in three
aspects. "Blot out";—that petition conceives of forgiveness
as being the erasure of a writing, perhaps of an
indictment. Our past is a blurred manuscript, full of
The petitions for cleansing are, in ver. 3, urged on
Ver. 4 sounds the depths in both its clauses. In
the first the psalmist shuts out all other aspects of his
guilt, and is absorbed in its solemnity as viewed in
relation to God. It is asked, How could David have
thought of his sin, which had in so many ways been
"against" others, as having been "against Thee, Thee
only"? As has been noted above, this confession has
been taken to demonstrate conclusively the impossibility
of the Davidic authorship. But surely it argues a
strange ignorance of the language of a penitent soul,
to suppose that such words as the psalmist's could be
spoken only in regard to sins which had no bearing
at all on other men. David's deed had been a crime
against Bathsheba, against Uriah, against his family
and his realm; but these were not its blackest characteristics.
Every crime against man is sin against God.
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these ... ye have done it unto Me" is the spirit of
the Decalogue as well as the language of Jesus. And it
is only when considered as having relation to God that
The second clause of ver. 4 opens the question
whether "in order that" is always used in the Old
Testament in its full meaning as expressing intention,
or sometimes in the looser signification of "so that,"
expressing result. Several passages usually referred
to on this point (e.g.,
Vv. 5, 6, are marked as closely related by the "Behold" at the beginning of each. The psalmist passes from penitent contemplation and confession of his acts of sin to acknowledge his sinful nature, derived from sinful parents. "Original sin" is theological terminology for the same facts which science gathers together under the name of "heredity." The psalmist is not responsible for later dogmatic developments of the idea, but he feels that he has to confess not only his acts but his nature. "A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit." The taint is transmitted. No fact is more plain than this, as all the more serious observers of human life and of their own characters have recognised. Only a superficial view of humanity or an inadequate conception of morality can jauntily say that "all children are born good." Theologians have exaggerated and elaborated, as is their wont, and so have made the thought repugnant; but the derived sinful bias of human nature is a fact, not a dogma, and those who know it and their own share of it best will be disposed to agree with Browning, in finding one great reason for believing in Biblical religion, that—
The psalmist is not, strictly speaking, either extenuating
or aggravating his sin by thus recognising his
evil nature. He does not think that sin is the less his,
We can scarcely miss the bearing of this verse on the question of whether the psalm is the confession of an individual penitent or that of the nation. It strongly favours the former view, though it does not make the latter absolutely impossible.
The discovery of inherent and inherited sinfulness
brings with it another discovery—that of the penetrating
depth of the requirements of God's law. He cannot be
satisfied with outside conformity in deed. The more
intensely conscience realises sin, the more solemnly
rises before it the Divine ideal of man in its inwardness
as well as in its sweep. Truth within—inward correspondence
with His will, and absolute sincerity of soul
are His desire. But I am "born in iniquity": a terrible
antithesis, and hopeless but for one hope, which dawns
over the suppliant like morning on a troubled sea.
If we cannot ask God to make us what He wishes us
to be, these two discoveries of our nature and of His
Meditation on the sin which was ever before the psalmist, passes into renewed prayers for pardon, which partly reiterate those already offered in vv. 1, 2. The petition in ver. 7 for purging with hyssop alludes to sprinkling of lepers and unclean persons, and indicates both a consciousness of great impurity and a clear perception of the symbolic meaning of ritual cleansings. "Wash me" repeats a former petition; but now the psalmist can venture to dwell more on the thought of future purity than he could do then. The approaching answer begins to make its brightness visible through the gloom, and it seems possible to the suppliant that even his stained nature shall glisten like sunlit snow. Nor does that expectation exhaust his confidence. He hopes for "joy and gladness." His bones have been crushed—i.e., his whole self has been, as it were, ground to powder by the weight of God's hand; but restoration is possible. A penitent heart is not too bold when it asks for joy. There is no real well-founded gladness without the consciousness of Divine forgiveness. The psalmist closes his petitions for pardon (ver. 9) with asking God to "hide His face from his sins," so that they be, as it were, no more existent for Him, and, by a repetition of the initial petition in ver. 1, for the blotting out of "all mine iniquities."
The second principal division begins with ver. 10,
and is a prayer for purity, followed by vows of glad service.
"A steadfast spirit" is needful in order to keep a
cleansed heart clean; and, on the other hand, when, by
cleanness of heart, a man is freed from the perturbations
The group of petitions in ver. 11 is negative. It
deprecates a possible tragic separation from God, and
that under two aspects. "Part me not from Thee;
part not Thyself from me." The former prayer, "Cast
me not out from Thy presence," is by some explained
according to the analogy of other instances of the
occurrence of the phrase, where it means expulsion
from the land of Israel; and is claimed, thus interpreted,
as a clear indication that the psalmist speaks in
the name of the nation. But however certainly the
expression is thus used elsewhere, it cannot, without
introducing an alien thought, be so interpreted in its
present connection, imbedded in petitions of the most
spiritual and individual character: much rather, the
psalmist is recoiling from what he knows only too well to
be the consequence of an unclean heart—separation from
God, whether in the sense of exclusion from the sanctuary,
or in the profounder sense, which is not too deep
for such a psalm, of conscious loss of the light of God's
face. He dreads being, Cain-like, shut out from that
presence which is life; and he knows that, unless his
The last member of the triad, in ver. 12, looks back
to former petitions, and asks for restoration of the "joy
of Thy salvation," which had lain like dew on this man
before he fell. In this connection the supplication for
joy follows on the other two, because the joy which it
desires is the result of their being granted. For what
is "Thy salvation" but the gift of a clean heart and a
steadfast spirit, the blessed consciousness of unbroken
closeness of communion with God, in which the suppliant
suns himself in the beams of God's face, and
receives an uninterrupted communication of His Spirit's
gifts? These are the sources of pure joy, lasting as
God Himself, and victorious over all occasions for
The last part of the psalm runs over with joyful
vows—first, of magnifying God's name (vv. 13-15),
and then of offering true sacrifices. A man who has
passed through such experiences as the psalmist's,
and has received the blessings for which he prayed,
cannot be silent. The instinct of hearts touched by
God's mercies is to speak of them to others. And no
man who can say "I will tell what He has done for
my soul" is without the most persuasive argument to
bring to bear on others. A piece of autobiography will
touch men who are unaffected by elaborate reasonings
and deaf to polished eloquence. The impulse and the
capacity to "teach transgressors Thy ways" are given
in the experience of sin and forgiveness; and if any
one has not the former, it is questionable whether he
has, in any real sense or large measure, received the
latter. The prayer for deliverance from blood-guiltiness
in ver. 14 breaks for a moment the flow of vows; but
only for a moment. It indicates how amid them the
psalmist preserved his sense of guilt, and how little he
Ver. 16 introduces the reason for the preceding vow
of grateful praise, as is shown by the initial "For."
The psalmist will bring the sacrifices of a grateful
heart making his lips musical, because he has learned
that these, and not ritual offerings, are acceptable.
The same depreciation of external sacrifices is strongly
expressed in
The psalmist's last words are immortal. "A heart broken and crushed, O God, Thou wilt not despise." But they derive still deeper beauty and pathos when it is observed that they are spoken after confession has been answered to his consciousness by pardon, and longing for purity by at least some bestowal of it. The "joy of Thy salvation," for which he had prayed, has begun to flow into his heart. The "bones" which had been "crushed" are beginning to reknit, and thrills of gladness to steal through his frame; but still he feels that with all these happy experiences contrite consciousness of his sin must mingle. It does not rob his joy of one rapture, but it keeps it from becoming careless. He goes safely who goes humbly. The more sure a man is that God has put away the iniquity of his sin, the more should he remember it; for the remembrance will vivify gratitude and bind close to Him without whom there can be no steadfastness of spirit nor purity of life. The clean heart must continue contrite, if it is not to cease to be clean.
The liturgical addition implies that Jerusalem is in ruins. It cannot be supposed without violence to come from David. It is not needed in order to form a completion to the psalm, which ends more impressively, and has an inner unity and coherence, if the deep words of ver. 17 are taken as its close.
1 Why boastest thou in wickedness, O tyrant?
God's loving-kindness lasts always.
2 Destructions does thy tongue devise;
Like a sharpened razor, thou framer of deceit!
3 Thou lovest evil rather than good;
A lie rather than speaking righteousness. Selah.
4 Thou lovest all words that swallow men up,
Thou deceitful tongue!
5 So God shall break thee down for ever,
Shall lay hold of thee and drag thee out of the tent,
And root thee out of the land of the living. Selah.
6 And the righteous shall see and fear,
And at him shall they laugh.
7 "See! the man that made not God his stronghold,
And trusted in the abundance of his wealth,
And felt strong in his evil desire."
8 But I am like a flourishing olive tree in the house of God:
I trust in the loving-kindness of God for ever and aye.
9 I will give Thee thanks for ever, for Thou hast done [this]:
And I will wait on Thy name before Thy favoured ones, for it is good.
The themes are familiar, and their treatment has nothing distinctive. The portrait of the oppressor does not strike one as a likeness either of the Edomite herdsman Doeg, with whose betrayal of David's asylum at Nob the superscription connects the psalm, or of Saul, to whom Hengstenberg, feeling the difficulty of seeing Doeg in it, refers it. Malicious lies and arrogant trust in riches were not the crimes that cried for vengeance in the bloody massacre at Nob. Cheyne would bring this group of "Davidic" psalms (lii.-lix.) down to the Persian period ("Orig. of Psalt.," 121-23). Olshausen, after Theodore of Mopsuestia (see Cheyne loc. cit.) to the Maccabean. But the grounds alleged are scarcely strong enough to carry more than the weight of a "may be"; and it is better to recognise that, if the superscription is thrown over, the psalm itself does not yield sufficiently characteristic marks to enable us to fix its date. It may be worth considering whether the very absence of any obvious correspondences with David's circumstances does not show that the superscription rested on a tradition earlier than itself, and not on an editor's discernment.
The abrupt question at the beginning reveals the
psalmist's long-pent indignation. He has been silently
brooding over the swollen arrogance and malicious lies
of the tyrant, till he can restrain himself no longer, and
The prominence given to sins of speech is peculiar.
We should have expected high-handed violence rather
than these. But the psalmist is tracking the deeds to
their source; and it is not so much the tyrant's words
as his love of a certain kind of words which is adduced
as proof of his wickedness. These words have two
characteristics in addition to boastfulness. They are
false and destructive. They are, according to the
forcible literal meaning in ver. 4, "words of swallowing."
They are, according to the literal meaning of
"destructions," in ver. 2, "yawning gulfs." Such
words lead to acts which make a tyrant. They flow
from perverted preference of evil to good. Thus the
deeds of oppression are followed up to their den and
birthplace. Part of the description of the "words"
corresponds to the fatal effect of Doeg's report; but
nothing in it answers to the other part—falsehood.
The psalmist's hot indignation speaks in the triple,
direct address to the tyrant, which comes in each case
like a lightning flash at the end of a clause (vv. 1, 2,
4). In the second of these the epithet "framing
deceit" does not refer to the "sharpened razor," but
to the tyrant. If referred to the former, it weakens
rather than strengthens the metaphor, by bringing in
the idea that the sharp blade misses its proper aim,
That description is resumed and summarised in ver. 4, which, by the Selahs, is closely bound to ver. 5, in order to enforce the necessary connection of sin and punishment, which is strongly underlined by the "also" or "so" at the beginning of the latter verse. The stern prophecy of destruction is based upon no outward signs of failure in the oppressor's might, but wholly on confidence in God's continual loving-kindness, which must needs assume attributes of justice when its objects are oppressed. A tone of triumph vibrates through the imagery of ver. 5, which is not in the same key as Christ has set for us.
It is easy for those who have never lived under grinding, godless tyranny to reprobate the exultation of the oppressed at the sweeping away of their oppressors; but if the critics had seen their brethren set up as torches to light Nero's gardens, perhaps they would have known some thrill of righteous joy when they heard that he was dead. Three strong metaphors describe the fall of this tyrant. He is broken down, as a building levelled with the ground. He is laid hold of, as a coal in the fire, with tongs (for so the word means), and dragged, as in that iron grip, out of the midst of his dwelling. He is uprooted like a tree with all its pride of leafage. Another blast of trumpets or clang of harps or clash of cymbals bids the listeners gaze on the spectacle of insolent strength laid prone, and withering as it lies.
The third movement of thought (vv. 6, 7) deals with
the effects of this retribution. It is a conspicuous
A swift turn of feeling carries the singer to rejoice
in the contrast of his own lot. No uprooting does he
fear. It may be questioned whether the words "in
the house of God" refer to the psalmist or to the olive
tree. Apparently there were trees in the Temple area
(
Italics show variations from text of
1 The fool says in his heart, There is no God.
They corrupt and make abominable their iniquity;
There is no one doing good.
2 God looketh down from heaven upon the sons of men,
To see if there is any having discernment seeking after God.
3 Each of them is turned aside; together they are become putrid;
There is no one doing good;
There is not even one.
4 Do the workers of iniquity not know
Who devour my people [as] they devour bread?
On God they do not call.
5 There they feared a [great] fear, where no fear was:
For God has scattered the bones of him that encamps against thee;
Thou hast put them to shame; for God has rejected them.
6 Oh that the salvations of Israel were come out of Zion!
When God brings back the captivity of His people,
May Jacob exult, may Israel be glad!
The first of these occurs in ver. 1. The forcible
rough construction "they corrupt, they make abominable,"
is smoothed down by the insertion of "and."
The most important changes are in ver. 5, which
stands for vv. 5 and 6 of
1 O God, by Thy name save me,
And by Thy might right me.
2 O God, hear my prayer;
Give ear to the words of my mouth.
3 For strangers are risen up against me,
And violent men seek my soul:
They set not God before them. Selah.
4 Behold, God is a helper for me:
The Lord is He that sustains my soul.
5 He will requite evil to the liers in wait for me:
In Thy troth destroy them.
6 Of [my own] free impulse will I sacrifice to Thee:
I will thank Thy name, for it is good.
7 For from all distress it has delivered me;
And my eye has seen [its desire] on my enemies.
The structure is simple, like the thought and expression. The psalm falls into two parts, divided by Selah,—of which the former is prayer, spreading before God the suppliant's straits; and the latter is confident assurance, blended with petition and vows of thanksgiving.
The order in which the psalmist's thoughts run in the first part (vv. 1-3) is noteworthy. He begins with appeal to God, and summons before his vision the characteristics in the Divine nature on which he builds his hope. Then he pleads for the acceptance of his prayer, and only when thus heartened does he recount his perils. That is a deeper faith which begins with what God is, and thence proceeds to look calmly at foes, than that which is driven to God in the second place, as a consequence of an alarmed gaze on dangers. In the latter case fear strikes out a spark of faith in the darkness; in the former, faith controls fear.
The name of God is His manifested nature or
character, the sum of all of Him which has been made
known by His word or work. In that rich manifoldness
of living powers and splendours this man finds
reserves of force, which will avail to save him from any
peril. That name is much more than a collection of
syllables. The expression is beginning to assume the
meaning which it has in post-Biblical Hebrew, where
it is used as a reverential euphemism for the ineffable
Jehovah. Especially to God's power does the singer
look with hopeful petitions, as in ver. 1 b. But the
"Strangers," in ver. 3, would most naturally mean
foreigners, but not necessarily so. The meaning would
naturally pass into that of enemies—men who, even
though of the psalmist's own blood, behave to him in a
hostile manner. The word, then, does not negative the
tradition in the superscription; though the men of Ziph
belonged to the tribe of Judah, they might still be called
"strangers." The verse recurs in
Prayer is, as so often in the Psalter, followed by
immediately deepened assurance of victory. The suppliant
rises from his knees, and points the enemies
round him to his one Helper. In ver. 4 b a literal
rendering would mislead. "The Lord is among the
upholders of my soul" seems to bring God down to
a level on which others stand. The psalmist does not
mean this, but that God gathers up in Himself, and
that supremely, the qualities belonging to the conception
of an upholder. It is, in form, an inclusion of God in a
certain class. It is, in meaning, the assertion that He
is the only true representative of the class. Commentators
quote Jephthah's plaintive words to his daughter
That petition is, like others in similar psalms, proper
to the spiritual level of the Old Testament, and not to
that of the New; and it is far more reverent, as well
as accurate, to recognise fully the distinction than to
try to slur it over. At the same time, it is not to be
forgotten that the same lofty consciousness of the
identity of his cause with God's, which we have already
had to notice, operating here in these wishes for the
enemies' destruction, gives another aspect to them than
that of mere outbursts of private vengeance. That
higher aspect is made prominent by the addition "in
Thy troth." God's faithfulness to His purposes and
promises was concerned in the destruction, because
these were pledged to the psalmist's protection. His
well-being was so intertwined with God's promises that
the Divine faithfulness demanded the sweeping away
of his foes. That is evidently not the language which
The closing verses of this simple, little psalm touch very familiar notes. The faith which has prayed has grown so sure of answer that it already begins to think of the thank-offerings. This is not like the superstitious vow, "I will give so-and-so if Jupiter"—or the Virgin—"will hear me." This praying man knows that he is heard, and is not so much vowing as joyfully anticipating his glad sacrifice. The same incipient personification of the name as in ver. 1 is very prominent in the closing strains. Thank-offerings—not merely statutory and obligatory, but brought by free, uncommanded impulse—are to be offered to "Thy name," because that name is good. Ver. 7 probably should be taken as going even further in the same direction of personification, for "Thy name" is probably to be taken as the subject of "hath delivered." The tenses of the verbs in ver. 7 are perfects. They contemplate the deliverance as already accomplished. Faith sees the future as present. This psalmist, surrounded by strangers seeking his life, can quietly stretch out a hand of faith, and bring near to himself the to-morrow when he will look back on scattered enemies and present, glad sacrifices! That power of drawing a brighter future into a dark present belongs not to those who build anticipations on wishes, but to those who found their forecasts on God's known purpose and character. The name is a firm foundation for hope. There is no other.
The closing words express confidence in the enemies'
defeat and destruction, with a tinge of feeling that is
not permissible to Christians. But the supplement,
1 Give ear, O God, to my prayer;
And hide not Thyself from my entreaty.
2 Attend unto me, and answer me:
I am distracted as I muse, and must groan;
3 For the voice of [my] enemy,
On account of the oppression of the wicked;
For they fling down iniquity upon me,
And in wrath they are hostile to me.
4 My heart writhes within me:
And terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me,
Horror wraps me round.
6 Then I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away, and [there] abide.
7 Lo, then would I migrate far away,
I would lodge in the wilderness. Selah.
8 I would hasten my escape
From stormy wind and tempest.
9 Swallow [them up], Lord; confuse their tongue:
For I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they go their rounds upon her walls:
And iniquity and mischief are in her midst.
11 Destructions are in her midst:
And from her open market-place depart not oppression and deceit.
12 For it is not an enemy that reviles me—that I could bear:
It is not my hater that magnifies himself against me—from him I could shelter myself:
13 But it is thou, a man my equal,
14 We who together used to make familiar intercourse sweet,
And walked to the house of God with the crowd.
15 Desolations [fall] on them!
May they go down alive to Sheol!
For wickednesses are in their dwelling, in their midst.
16 As for me, I will cry to God;
And Jehovah will save me.
17 Evening, and morning, and noon will I muse and groan:
And He will hear my voice.
18 He has redeemed my soul in peace, so that they come not near me
For in great numbers were they round me.
19 God will hear, and answer them—
Even He that sitteth throned from of old— Selah.
Them who have no changes
And who fear not God.
20 He has laid his hands on those who were at peace with him:
He has broken his covenant.
21 Smooth are the buttery words of his mouth,
But his heart is war:
Softer are his words than oil,
Yet are they drawn swords.
22 Cast upon Jehovah thy burden,
And He, He will hold thee up:
He will never let the righteous be moved.
23 But Thou, O God, shall bring them down to the depth of the pit:
Men of blood and deceit shall not attain half their days;
But as for me, I will trust in Thee.
The psalm may be regarded as divided into three
parts, in each of which a different phase of agitated
feeling predominates, but not exclusively. Strong
excitement does not marshal emotions or their expression
according to artistic proprieties of sequence, and
this psalm is all ablaze with it. That vehemence of
emotion sufficiently accounts for both the occasional
obscurities and the manifest want of strict accuracy in
the flow of thought, without the assumption of dislocation
of parts or piecing it with a fragment of
another psalm. When the heart is writhing within,
and tumultuous feelings are knocking at the door of
the lips, the words will be troubled and heaped together,
and dominant thoughts will repeat themselves in
defiance of logical continuity. But, still, complaint and
longing sound through the waning, yearning notes of
vv. 1-8; hot indignation and terrible imprecations in
the stormy central portion (vv. 9-15); and a calmer
The psalmist pictures his emotions in the first part,
with but one reference to their cause, and but one
verse of petition. He begins, indeed, with asking
that his prayer may be heard; and it is well when a
troubled heart can raise itself above the sea of troubles
to stretch a hand towards God. Such an effort of
faith already prophesies firm footing on the safe shore.
But very pathetic and true to the experience of many
a sorrowing heart is the psalmist's immediately subsequent
dilating on his griefs. There is a dumb sorrow,
and there is one which unpacks its heart in many
words and knows not when to stop. The psalmist is
distracted in his bitter brooding on his troubles. The
word means to move restlessly, and may either apply
to body or mind, perhaps to both; for Eastern demonstrativeness
is not paralysed, but stimulated to bodily
tokens, by sorrow. He can do nothing but groan or
moan. His heart "writhes" in him. Like an avalanche,
deadly terrors have fallen on him and crushed him.
Fear and trembling have pierced into his inner being,
and "horror" (a rare word, which the LXX. here
renders darkness) wraps him round or covers him,
as a cloak does. It is not so much the pressure of
present evil, as the shuddering anticipation of a heavier
storm about to burst, which is indicated by these
pathetic expressions. The cause of them is stated in
a single verse (3). "The voice of the enemy" rather
than his hand is mentioned first, since threats and
reproaches precede assaults; and it is budding, not full-blown,
enmity which is in view. In ver. 3 b "oppression"
is an imperfect parallelism with "voice," and the
Then, from out of all this plaintive description of the
psalmist's agitation and its causes, starts up that immortal
strain which answers to the deepest longings of the
soul, and has touched responsive chords in all whose
lives are not hopelessly outward and superficial—the
yearning for repose. It may be ignoble, or lofty and
pure; it may mean only cowardice or indolence; but
it is deepest in those who stand most unflinchingly at
their posts, and crush it down at the command of duty.
Unless a soul knows that yearning for a home in stillness,
"afar from the sphere of our sorrow," it will
remain a stranger to many high and noble things.
The psalmist was moved to utter this longing by his
painful consciousness of encompassing evils; but the
longing is more than a desire for exemption from these.
It is the cry of the homeless soul, which, like the dove
from the ark, finds no resting-place in a world full of
carrion, and would fain return whence it came. "O
God, Thou hast made us for Thyself, and we are
unquiet till we find rest in Thee." No obligation of
duty keeps migratory birds in a land where winter is
near. But men are better than birds, because they
have other things to think of than repose, and must
face, not flee, storms and hurricanes. It is better to
have wings "like birds of tempest-loving kind," and to
beat up against the wind, than to outfly it in retreat.
So the psalmist's wish was but a wish; and he, like the
The second part turns from subjective feelings to objective facts. A cry for help and a yearning for a safe solitude were natural results of the former; but when the psalmist's eye turns to his enemies, a flash of anger lights it, and, instead of the meek longings of the earlier verses, prayers for their destruction are vehemently poured out. The state of things in the city corresponds to what must have been the condition of Jerusalem during the incubation of Absalom's conspiracy, but is sufficiently general to fit any time of strained party feeling. The caldron simmers, ready to boil over. The familiar evils, of which so many psalms complain, are in full vigour. The psalmist enumerates them with a wealth of words which indicates their abundance. Violence, strife, iniquity, mischief, oppression, and deceit—a goodly company to patrol the streets and fill the open places of the city! Ver. 10 a is sometimes taken as carrying on the personification of Violence and Strife in ver. 9, by painting these as going their rounds on the walls, like sentries; but it is better to suppose that the actual foes are meant, and that they are keeping up a strict watch to prevent the psalmist's escape.
Several commentators consider that the burst of
As he thinks of all the sweetness of past intimacy,
turned to gall by such dastardly treachery, his anger
rises. The description of the city and of the one
enemy in whom all its wickedness is, as it were,
concentrated, is framed in a terrible circlet of prayers
The third part of the psalm returns to gentler tones
of devotion and trust. The great name of Jehovah
appears here significantly. To that ever-living One,
the Covenant God, will the psalmist cry, in assurance
of answer. "Evening, and morning, and noon" designate
the whole day by its three principal divisions, and
mean, in effect, continually. Happy are they who are
impelled to unintermitting prayer by the sight of unslumbering
enmity! Enemies may go their rounds
"day and night," but they will do little harm, if the
poor, hunted man, whom they watch so closely, lifts
Ver. 19 is full of difficulty, and most probably has
suffered some textual corruption. To "hear and
answer" is uniformly an expression for gracious hearing
and beneficent answering. Here it can only mean the
opposite, or must be used ironically. God will hear
the enemies' threats, and will requite them. Various
expedients have been suggested for removing the
difficulty. It has been proposed to read "me" for
"them," which would bring everything into order—only
that, then, the last clauses of the verse, which begin
with a relative ("who have no changes," etc.), would
Then follows another reference to the traitorous friend, which, by its very abruptness, declares how deep is the wound he has inflicted. The psalmist does not stand alone. He classes with himself those who remained faithful to him. The traitor has not yet thrown off his mask, though the psalmist has penetrated his still retained disguise. He comes with smooth words; but, in the vigorous language of ver. 21, "his heart is war." The fawning softness of words known to be false cuts into the heart, which had trusted and knows itself betrayed, more sharply than keen steel.
Ver. 22 has been singularly taken as the smooth
words which cut so deep; but surely that is a very
strained interpretation. Much rather does the psalmist
exhort himself and all who have the same bitterness
to taste, to commit themselves to Jehovah. What is
it which he exhorts us to cast on Him? The word
employed is used here only, and its meaning is therefore
questionable. The LXX. and others translate "care."
Others, relying on Talmudic usage, prefer "burden,"
which is appropriate to the following promise of being
held erect. Others (Hupfeld, etc.) would read "that
which He has given thee." The general sense is clear,
and the faith expressed in both exhortation and
The last verse sums up the diverse fates of the
"men of blood and deceit" and of the psalmist. The
terrible prayers of the middle portion of the psalm
have wrought the assurance of their fulfilment, just
as the cries of faith have brought the certainty of
theirs. So the two closing verses of the psalm turn
both parts of the earlier petitions into prophecies; and
over against the trustful, righteous psalmist, standing
erect and unmoved, there is set the picture of the
"man of blood and deceit," chased down the black
slopes to the depths of destruction by the same God
whose hand holds up the man that trusts in Him.
It is a dreadful contrast, and the spirit of the whole
psalm is gathered into it. The last clause of all makes
"I" emphatic. It expresses the final resolution which
springs in the singer's heart in view of that dread
picture of destruction and those assurances of support.
He recoils from the edge of the pit, and eagerly opens
his bosom for the promised blessing. Well for us
1 Be gracious to me, O God; for man would swallow me up:
All day the fighting oppresses me.
2 My liers-in-wait would swallow me up all the day:
For many proudly fight against me.
3 [In] the day [when] I fear,
I will trust in Thee.
4 In God do I praise His word:
In God do I trust, I will not fear;
What can flesh do to me?
5 All day they wrest my words;
All their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They gather together, they set spies,
They mark my steps,
Even as they have waited for my soul.
7 Shall there be escape for them because of iniquity?
In anger cast down the peoples, O God.
8 My wanderings hast Thou reckoned:
Put Thou my tears into Thy bottle;
Are they not in Thy reckoning?
9 Then shall my enemies turn back in the day [when] I call:
This I know, that God is for me (or mine).
10 In God will I praise the word:
In Jehovah will I praise the word.
11 In God have I trusted, I will not fear;
What can man do to me?
12 Upon me, O God, are Thy vows:
I will requite praises to Thee.
13 For Thou hast delivered my soul from death:
Hast Thou not delivered my feet from stumbling?
That I may walk before God in the light of the living.
The psalm is simple in structure. Like others ascribed to David during the Sauline period, it has a refrain, which divides it into two parts; but these are of substantially the same purport, with the difference that the second part enlarges the description of the enemies' assaults, and rises to confident anticipation of their defeat. In that confidence the singer adds a closing expression of thankfulness for the deliverance already realised in faith.
The first part begins with that significant contrast
which is the basis of all peaceful fronting of a hostile
world or any evil. On one side stands man, whose
very name here suggests feebleness, and on the other
is God. "Man" in ver. 1 is plainly a collective. The
psalmist masses the foes, whom he afterwards individualises
and knows only too well to be a multitude,
under that generic appellation, which brings out their
inherent frailty. Be they ever so many, still they all
belong to the same class, and an infinite number of
nothings only sums up into nothing. The Divine Unit
One brief verse, the brevity of which gives it emphasis,
tells of the singer's fears, and of how he
silences them by the dead lift of effort by which he
constrains himself to trust. It is a strangely shallow
view which finds a contradiction in this utterance,
which all hearts, that have ever won calmness in agitation
and security amid encompassing dangers by the
same means, know to correspond to their own experience.
If there is no fear, there is little trust. The two
do co-exist. The eye that takes in only visible facts
on the earthly level supplies the heart with abundant
reasons for fear. But it rests with ourselves whether
we shall yield to those, or whether, by lifting our eyes
higher and fixing the vision on the Unseen and on
Him who is invisible, we shall call such an ally to our
side as shall make fear and doubt impossible. We
have little power of directly controlling fear or any
other feeling, but we can determine the objects on
which we shall fix attention. If we choose to look at
"man," we shall be unreasonable if we do not fear; if
we choose to look at God, we shall be more unreasonable
if we do not trust. The one antagonist of fear is
The frequent use of the phrase "In the day when"
is noticeable. It occurs in each verse of the first part,
excepting the refrain. The antagonists are continually
at work, and the psalmist, on his part, strives to meet
their machinations and to subdue his own fears with
as continuous a faith. The phrase recurs in the second
part in a similar connection. Thus, then, the situation
as set forth in the first part has three elements,—the
busy malice of the foes; the effort of the psalmist, his
only weapon against them, to hold fast his confidence;
and the power and majesty of God, who will be
gracious when besought. The refrain gathers up
these three in a significantly different order. The
preceding verses arranged them thus—God, man, the
trusting singer. The refrain puts them thus—God,
the trusting singer, man. When the close union
between a soul and God is clearly seen and inwardly
felt, the importance of the enemies dwindles. When
faith is in the act of springing up, God, the refuge, and
man, the source of apprehension, stand over against
each other, and the suppliant, looking on both, draws
near to God. But when faith has fruited, the believing
soul is coupled so closely to the Divine Object of its
faith, that He and it are contemplated as joined in
blessed reciprocity of protection and trust, and enemies
are in an outer region, where they cannot disturb its
intercourse with its God. The order of thought in
the refrain is also striking. First, the singer praises
God's word. By God's gracious help he knows that
he will receive the fulfilment of God's promises (not
necessarily any special "word," such as the promise
of a throne to David). And then, on the experience of
The second part covers the same ground. Trust, like love, never finds it grievous to write the same things. There is delight, and there is strengthening for the temper of faith, in repeating the contemplation of the earthly facts which make it necessary, and the super-sensuous facts which make it blessed. A certain expansion of the various parts of the theme, as compared with the first portion of the psalm, is obvious. Again the phrase "all the day" occurs in reference to the unwearying hostility which dogs the singer. "They wrest my words" may be, as Cheyne prefers, "They torture me with words." That rendering would supply a standing feature of the class of psalms to which this belongs. The furtive assembling, the stealthy setting of spies who watch his steps (lit. heels, as ready to spring on him from behind), are no new things, but are in accordance with what has long been the enemies' practice.
Ver. 7 brings in a new element not found in the
first part—namely, the prayer for the destruction of
these unwearied watchers. Its first clause is obscure.
If the present text is adhered to, the rendering of
the clause as a question is best. A suggested textual
correction has been largely adopted by recent commentators,
which by a very slight alteration gives the
meaning "For their iniquity requite them." The
The tender words of ver. 8 need little elucidation.
They have brought comfort to many, and have helped
to dry many tears. How the psalmist presses close
to God, and how sure he is of His gentle care and
love! "Thou reckonest my wandering." The thought
is remarkable, both in its realisation of God's individualising
relation to the soul that trusts Him, and
as in some degree favouring the Davidic authorship.
The hunted fugitive feels that every step of his
weary interlacing tracks, as he stole from point to
point as danger dictated, was known to God. The
second clause of the verse is thought by prosaic commentators
to interrupt the sequence, because it interjects
a petition between two statements; but surely
nothing is more natural than such an "interruption."
What a lovely figure is that of God's treasuring up
His servants' tears in His "bottle," the skin in which
Not only in order to minister retribution to those who inflicted them, but also in order to give recompense of gladness to weepers, are these tears preserved by God; and the same idea is repeated by the other metaphor of ver. 8 c. God's book, or reckoning, contains the count of all the tears as well as wanderings of His servant. The certainty that it is so is expressed by the interrogative form of the clause.
The "then" of ver. 9 may be either temporal or
logical. It may mean "things being so," or "in
consequence of this," or it may mean "at the time
when," and may refer to the further specification of
period in the next clause. That same day which
has already been designated as that of the enemies'
panting after the psalmist's life, and wresting of his
words, and, on the other hand, as that of his fear,
is now the time of his prayer, and consequently
of their defeat and flight. The confidence which
struggled with fear in the closing words of the first
part, is now consolidated into certain knowledge that
God is on the singer's side, and in a very deep sense
belongs to him. This is the foundation of his hope
The psalmist's exuberant confidence overflows the
limits of his song, in a closing couple of verses which
are outside its scheme. So sure is he of deliverance,
that, as often in similar psalms, his thoughts are
busied in preparing his sacrifice of thanks before the
actual advent of the mercy for which it is to be offered.
Such swift-footed Gratitude is the daughter of very
vivid Faith. The ground of the thankoffering is deliverance
of "the soul," for which foes have "waited."
"Thou hast delivered" is a perfect tense expressing
confidence in the certainty of the as yet unrealised
exercise of God's power. The question of ver. 13 b, like
that of ver. 8 c (and perhaps that of ver. 7 a), is an
emphatic affirmation, and the verb to be supplied is not
"Wilt thou?" as the A.V. has it, but, as is plain from
the context, and from the quotation of this verse in
1 Be gracious to me, O God, be gracious to me;
For in Thee has my soul taken refuge:
And in the shadow of Thy wings will I take refuge,
Until the [tempest of] destructions is gone by.
2 I will cry to God Most High;
To God who accomplishes for me.
3 He will send from heaven, and save me;
[For] He that would swallow me up blasphemes. Selah.
God shall send His Loving-kindness and His Troth.
4 My soul is among lions;
I must lie down among those who breathe out fire—
Sons of men, whose teeth are spear and arrows,
Their tongue a sharp sword.
5 Exalt Thyself above the heavens, O God,
Above all the earth Thy glory.
6 A net have they prepared for my steps:
They have bowed down my soul:
They have digged before me a pit;
They have fallen into the midst of it. Selah.
7 Steadfast is my heart, O God, steadfast is my heart:
I will sing and harp.
8 Awake, my glory; awake, harp and lute:
I will wake the dawn.
9 I will give Thee thanks among the peoples, O Lord:
I will harp to Thee among the nations.
10 For great unto the heavens is Thy Loving-kindness,
And unto the clouds Thy Troth.
11 Exalt Thyself above the heavens, O God,
Above all the earth Thy glory.
There is no very sharp division of parts in the psalm.
A grand refrain separates it into two portions, in the
As in
The psalmist knows that a soul which trusts has a
right to God's gracious dealings, and he is not afraid to
urge his confidence as a plea with God. The boldness
of the plea is not less indicative of the depth and purity
of his religious experience than are the tender metaphors
in which it is expressed. What truer or richer
description of trust could be given than that which
likens it to the act of a fugitive betaking himself to
the shelter of some mountain fastness, impregnable and
inaccessible? What lovelier thought of the safe, warm
hiding-place which God affords was ever spoken than
that of "the shadow of Thy wings"? Very significant
is the recurrence of the same verb in two different
tenses in two successive clauses (1 b, c). The psalmist
heartens himself for present and future trust by
remembrance of past days, when he exercised it and
was not put to shame. That faith is blessed, and cannot
but be strong, which is nurtured by the remembrance
of past acts of rewarded faith, as the leaves of bygone
summers make rich mould for a new generation of
flowers. When kites are in the sky, young birds seek
Hidden in his shelter, the psalmist, in ver. 2, tells himself the grounds on which he may be sure that his cry to God will not be in vain. His name is "Most High," and His elevation is the pledge of His irresistible might. He is the "God" (the Strong) who accomplishes all for the psalmist which he needs, and His past manifestations in that character make His future interventions certain. Therefore the singer is sure of what will happen. Two bright angels—Loving-kindness and Troth or Faithfulness their names—will be despatched from heaven for the rescue of the man who has trusted. That is certain, because of what God is and has done. It is no less certain, because of what the psalmist is and has done; for a soul that gazes on God as its sole Helper, and has pressed, in its feebleness, close beneath these mighty pinions, cannot but bring down angel helpers, the executants of God's love.
The confidence expressed in ver. 2 is interrupted
by an abrupt glance at the enemy. "He that would
swallow me up blasphemes" is the most probable
The description of the psalmist's circumstances in
ver. 4 presents considerable difficulty. The division
of clauses, the force of the form of the verb rendered
I must lie down, and the meaning and construction of
the word rendered "those who breathe out fire," are all
questionable. If the accents are adhered to, the first
clause of the verse is "My soul is among lions." That is
by some—e.g., Delitzsch—regarded as literal description
of the psalmist's environment, but it is more natural to
suppose that he is applying a familiar metaphor to his
enemies. In v. 4 b the verb rendered above "I must
lie down" is in a form which has usually a cohortative or
optative force, and is by some supposed to have that
meaning here, and to express trust which is willing to
lie down even in a lion's den. It seems, however, here
to denote objective necessity rather than subjective
willingness. Hupfeld would read lies down (third
The psalmist's contemplation of his forlorn lair among
men worse than beasts of prey drives him back to
realise again his refuge in God. He, as it were,
wrenches his mind round to look at God rather than at
the enemies. Clear perception of peril and weakness
does its best work, when it drives to as clear recognition
of God's help, and wings faithful prayer. The psalmist,
in his noble refrain, has passed beyond the purely
personal aspect of the desired deliverance, and wishes
not only that he may be shielded from his foes, but
that God would, in that deliverance, manifest Himself
in His elevation above and power over all created
things. To conceive of his experience as thus contributing
to God's world-wide glory seems presumptuous;
but even apart from the consideration that the psalmist
was conscious of a world-wide mission, the lowliest
suppliant has a right to feel that his deliverance will
enhance the lustre of that Glory; and the lowlier he
feels himself, the more wonderful is its manifestations
in his well-being. But if there is a strange note in the
It has been proposed by Hupfeld to transpose vv. 5, 6,
on the ground that a recurrence to the description of
dangers is out of place after the refrain, and incongruous
with the tone of the second part of the psalm.
But do the psalmists observe such accuracy in the flow
of their emotions? and is it not natural for a highly
emotional lyric like this to allow some surge of feeling
to run over its barriers? The reference to the enemies
in ver. 6 is of a triumphant sort, which naturally prepares
for the burst of praise following, and worthily
follows even the lyrical elevation of the refrain. The
perfects seem at first sight to refer to past deliverances,
which the psalmist recalls in order to assure himself of
future ones. But this retrospective reference is not
necessary, and the whole description in ver. 6 is rather
to be taken as that of approaching retribution on the
foes, which is so certain to come that the singer celebrates
it as already as good as done. The familiar
figures of the net and pit, by both of which wild animals
are caught, and the as familiar picture of the hunter
trapped in his own pitfall, need no elucidation. There is
a grim irony of events, which often seems to delight in
showing "the engineer hoised with his own petard";
and whether that spectacle is forthcoming or not, the
automatic effects of wrongdoing always follow, and no
The psalmist has done with the enemies; they are
at the bottom of the pit. In full confidence of triumph
and deliverance, he breaks out into a grand burst of
praise. "My heart is fixed," or "steadfast." Twice
the psalmist repeats this, as he does other emphatic
thoughts, in this psalm (cp. vv. 2, 4, 8, 9). What
power can steady that fluttering, wayward, agitated
thing, a human heart? The way to keep light articles
fixed on deck, amidst rolling seas and howling winds, is
to lash them to something fixed; and the way to steady
a heart is to bind it to God. Built into the Rock, the
building partakes of the steadfastness of its foundation.
Knit to God, a heart is firm. The psalmist's was steadfast
because it had taken refuge in God; and so, even
before his rescue from his enemies came to pass, he
was emancipated from the fear of them, and could lift
this song of praise. He had said that he must lie down
among lions. But wherever his bed may be, he is sure
that he will rise from it; and however dark the night,
he is sure that a morning will come. In a bold and
The world-wide destination of his praise is clear to him. It is plain that such anticipations as those of ver. 9 surpass the ordinary poetic consciousness, and must be accounted for on some special ground. The favourite explanation at present is that the singer is Israel, conscious of its mission. The old explanation that the singer is a king, conscious of his inspiration and divinely given office, equally meets the case.
The psalmist had declared his trust that God would send out His angels of Loving-kindness and Troth. He ends his song with the conviction, which has become to him matter of experience, that these Divine "attributes" tower to heaven, and in their height symbolise their own infinitude. Nor is the other truth suggested by ver. 10 to be passed over, that the manifestation of these attributes on earth leads to their being more gloriously visible in heaven. These two angels, who come forth from on high to do God's errands for His poor, trusting servant, go back, their work done, and are hailed as victors by the celestial inhabitants. By God's manifestation of these attributes to a man, His glory is exalted above the heavens and all the earth. The same thought is more definitely expressed in Paul's declaration that "to the principalities and powers in heavenly places is known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God."
1 Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O ye gods?
In uprightness do ye judge the sons of men?
2 Yea, in heart ye work iniquity;
In the earth ye weigh out the violence of your hands.
3 The wicked are estranged from the womb:
Gone astray from birth are the speakers of lies.
4 Their poison is like the poison of a serpent,
Like the deaf adder that stops its ear,
5 That will not hearken to the voice of the charmers,
The skilled weaver of spells.
6 O God, break their teeth in their mouth:
The grinders of the young lions wrench out, Jehovah.
7 Let them melt like waters [that] run themselves [dry]:
[When] he shoots his arrows, let them be as if pointless.
8 [Let them be] as a slug that dissolves as it crawls:
As the premature birth of a woman, [that] has not seen the sun.
9 Before your pots feel the thorns,
Whether it be green or burning, He shall whirl it away.
10 The righteous shall rejoice that he has beheld [the] vengeance:
His footsteps shall he bathe in the blood of the wicked.
11 And men shall say, Surely there is fruit for the righteous:
Surely there is a God judging in the earth.
The abrupt question of ver. 1 speaks of long pent-up
indignation, excited by protracted experience of
injustice, and anticipates the necessary negative answer
which follows. The word rendered by the A.V. and
R.V. "in silence" or "dumb" can scarcely be twisted
into intelligibility, and the small alteration of reading
required for the rendering "gods" is recommended by
the similar expressions in the kindred
It is to be noted that the psalm says no more about
the sins of unjust authorities, but passes on to describe
the "wicked" generally. The transition may suggest
that under unjust rulers all wrongdoers find impunity,
and so multiply and worsen; or it may simply be that
these former are now merged in the class to which
they belong. The type of "wickedness" gibbeted is
the familiar one of malicious calumniators and persecutors.
From birth onwards they have continuously
been doers of evil. The psalmist is not laying down
theological propositions about heredity, but describing
the inveterate habit of sin which has become a second
nature, and makes amendment hopeless. The reference
to "lies" naturally suggests the image of the serpent's
poison. An envenomed tongue is worse than any
The general drift of the second part (vv. 6-9) is
to call down Divine retribution on these obstinate,
irreclaimable evil-doers. Figure is heaped on figure
in a fashion suggestive of intense emotion. The
transiency of insolent evil, the completeness of its
destruction, are the thoughts common to them all.
There are difficulties in translation, and, in ver. 9,
probable textual corruption; but these should not hide
the tremendous power of gloomy imagination, which
can lay hold of vulgar and in part loathsome things,
and, by sheer force of its own solemn insight, can free
them from all low or grotesque associations, and turn
them into awful symbols. The intense desire for the
sweeping away of evil-doers has met us in many
previous psalms, and it is needless to repeat former
observations on it. But it is nowhere expressed with
The prayer for destruction is caught up again in ver. 8, in two daring figures which tremble on the verge of lowering the key of the whole; but by escaping that peril, produce the contrary effect, and heighten it. A slug leaves a shining track of slime as it creeps, which exudes from its soft body, and thus it seems to disintegrate itself by its own motion. It is the same thought of the suicidal character of bad men's efforts which was expressed by the stream foaming itself away in the nullah. It is the eternal truth that opposition to God's will destroys itself by its own activity. The unfulfilled life of a premature birth, with eyes which never opened to the light for which they were made, and possibilities which never unfolded, and which is huddled away into a nameless grave, still more impressively symbolises futility and transiency.
In ver. 9 the figure has given much trouble to commentators.
Its broad meaning is, however, undoubted.
It is, as ver. 6 and ver. 7 b, symbolic of the Divine
intervention which wrecks wicked men's plans before
they are wrought out. The picture before the psalmist
seems to be that of a company of travellers round their
camp fire, preparing their meal. They heap brushwood
under the pot, and expect to satisfy their hunger;
The closing part (vv. 10, 11) breathes a stern spirit
of joy over the destruction of the wicked. That is a
terrible picture of the righteous bathing his feet in the
blood of the wicked (
The last issue of God's judgments contemplated by the psalm warrants the joy of the righteous; for in these there is a demonstration to the world that there is "fruit" to the righteous, and that notwithstanding all bewilderments from the sight of prosperous wickedness and oppressed righteousness "there is a God who judges in the earth." The word "judging" is here in the plural, corresponding with "God" (Elohim), which is also plural in form. Possibly the construction is to be explained on the ground that the words describe the thoughts of surrounding, polytheistic nations, who behold the exhibition of God's righteousness. But more probably the plural is here used for the sake of the contrast with the "gods" of ver. 1. Over these unworthy representatives of Divine justice sits the true judge, in the manifoldness of His attributes, exercising His righteous though slow-footed judgments.
1 Deliver me from my enemies, O my God:
Out of the reach of those who arise against me set me on high.
2 Deliver me from workers of iniquity,
And from men of blood save me.
3 For, see, they have lain in wait for my soul,
The violent gather together against me:
Not for transgression or sin of mine, Jehovah.
4 Without [my] fault they run and set themselves in array:
Awake to meet me, and behold.
5 And Thou, Jehovah, God of hosts, God of Israel,
Rouse Thyself to visit all the nations:
Be not gracious to wicked apostates. Selah.
6 They return at evening, they snarl like dogs, and prowl round the city.
7 See, they foam at the mouth;
Swords are in their lips:
For "Who hears?"
8 But Thou, Jehovah, shalt laugh at them;
Thou mockest at all the nations.
9 My Strength, for Thee will I watch:
For God is my high tower.
10 My God shall come to meet me with His loving-kindness:
God will let me look on my adversaries.
11 Slay them not, lest my people forget:
Make them wanderers by Thy power (army?), and cast them down,
O Lord our shield.
12 [Each] word of their lips is a sin of their mouth,
And they snare themselves in their pride,
13 End [them] in wrath, end [them], that they be no more:
And let them know that God is ruler in Jacob,
Unto the ends of the earth. Selah.
14 And they shall return at evening, they shall growl like dogs,
And prowl round the city.
15 They—they shall wander about for food,
If they are not gorged, then [so must] they pass the night.
16 And I will sing Thy strength,
And sound aloud Thy loving-kindness in the morning,
For Thou hast been a high tower for me,
And a refuge in the day of my straits.
17 My strength, to Thee will I harp,
For God is my high tower, the God of my loving-kindness.
The former half of the first part begins and ends with
petitions. Imbedded in these is a plaintive recounting
of the machinations of the adversaries, which are, as it
were, spread before God's eyes, accompanied with protestations
of innocence. The prayers, which enclose,
as in a circlet, this description of unprovoked hatred,
are varied, so that the former petitions are directed to
the singer's deliverance, while the latter invoke judgment
on his antagonists. The strong assertion of
innocence is, of course, to be limited to the psalmist's
conduct to his enemies. They attack him without
provocation. Obviously this feature corresponds to
the facts of Saul's hatred of David, and as obviously
it does not correspond to the facts of Israel's sufferings
from foreign enemies, which are supposed by the present
favourite interpretation to be the occasion of the psalm.
No devout singer could so misunderstand the reason of
the nation's disasters as to allege that they had fallen
upon innocent heads. Rather, when a psalmist bewailed
national calamities, he traced them to national
sins. "Anger went up against Israel, because they
believed not in God." The psalmist calls God to look
upon the doings of his enemies. Privy plots and open
assaults are both directed against him. The enemy
lie in wait for his life; but also, with fell eagerness,
The combination of the Divine names is remarkable
here, from the insertion of God (Elohim) between the
two parts of the standing name, Jehovah of hosts.
The anomaly is made still more anomalous by the
peculiar form of the word Elohim, which does not
undergo the modification to be expected in such a
construction. The same peculiarities occur in other
Elohistic psalms (lxxx. 4, 19, and lxxxiv. 8). The
The petition, grounded upon these names, is supposed
by modern commentators to prove that the psalmist's
enemies were heathens, which would, of course, destroy
the Davidic authorship, and make the singer a personification
of the nation. But against this is to be
observed the description of the enemies in the last
clause of ver. 5 as "apostates," which must refer to
Israelites. The free access to the "city," spoken of
in ver. 6, is also unfavourable to that supposition, as
is the prominence given to the words of the enemy.
Foreign foes would have had other swords than those
carried between their lips. The prayer that Jehovah
would arise to visit "all nations" is much more
naturally explained, as on the same principle as the
judgment of "the peoples" in
The comparison of the psalmist's enemies to dogs
occurs in another psalm ascribed to David (xxii. 16, 20).
They are like the masterless, gaunt, savage curs which
infest the streets of Eastern cities, hungrily hunting for
offal and ready to growl or snarl at every passer-by.
Though the dog is not a nocturnal animal, evening
would naturally be a time when these would specially
prowl round the city in search of food, if disappointed
during the day. The picture suggests the enemies'
eagerness, lawlessness, foulness, and persistency. If
the psalm is rightly dated in the superscription, it
finds most accurate realisation in the crafty, cruel
watchfulness of Saul's spies. The word rendered by
the A.V. and R.V. "make a noise" is "said usually of
the growling of the bear and the cooing of the dove"
(Delitzsch). It indicates a lower sound than barking,
and so expresses rage suppressed lest its object should
take alarm. The word rendered (A.V. and R.V.)
With startling suddenness, as if one quick touch
drew aside a curtain, the vision of God as He really
regards the enemies is flashed on them in ver. 8.
The strong antithesis expressed by the "And Thou,"
as in ver. 5, comes with overwhelming force. Below
is the crowd of greedy foes, obscene, cruel, and blasphemous;
above, throned in dread repose, which is not,
as they dream, carelessness or ignorance, is Jehovah,
mocking their fancied security. The tremendous
metaphor of the laughter of God is too boldly anthropomorphic
to be misunderstood. It sounds like the germ
of the solemn picture in
Ver. 9 is the refrain closing the first part. The
reading of the Hebrew text, "His strength," must be
given up, as unintelligible, and the slight alteration
required for reading "my" instead of "his" adopted,
as in the second instance of the refrain in ver. 17. The
further alteration of text, however, by which "I will
harp" would be read in ver. 9 instead of "I will
The first part of the second division, like the
corresponding portion of the fist division, is mainly
prayer, but with the significant difference that the
petitions now are directed, not to the psalmist's
deliverance, but to his enemies' punishment. For
himself, he is sure that his God will come to meet him
with His loving-kindness, and that, thus met and helped,
he will look on, secure, at their ruin. The Hebrew
margin proposes to read "The God of my loving-kindness
will meet me"—an incomplete sentence, which
does not tell with what God will meet him. But the
text needs only the change of one vowel point in order
to yield the perfectly appropriate reading, "my God
shall meet me with His loving-kindness," which is
distinctly to be preferred. It is singular that the
substitution of "my" for "his," which is needlessly
suggested by the Hebrew margin for ver. 10, is required
but not suggested for ver. 9. One is tempted to
wonder whether there has been a scribe's blunder
attaching the correction to the wrong verse. The
central portion of this part of the psalm is composed of
terrible wishes for the enemies' destruction. There is
nothing more awful in the imprecations of the Psalter
than that petition that the boon of a swift end to
their miseries may not be granted them. The dew of
pity for suffering is dried up by the fire of stern desire
for the exhibition of a signal instance of Divine judicial
righteousness. That desire lifts the prayer above the
The second part of this division (ver. 14) begins with
the same words as the corresponding part of the first
division (ver. 6), so that there is a kind of refrain here.
The futures in vv. 14, 15, may be either simple futures
or optatives. In the latter case the petitions of the
preceding verses would be continued here, and the
pregnant truth would result that continuance in sin is
the punishment of sin. But probably the imprecations
are better confined to the former part, as the Selah
draws a broad line of demarcation, and there would be
an incongruity in following the petition "End them"
with others which contemplated the continuance of the
enemies. If the verses are taken as simply predictive,
the point of the reintroduction of the figure of the
pack of dogs hunting for their prey lies in ver. 15.
There they are described as balked in their attempts,
and having to pass the night unsatisfied. Their prey
A clear strain of trust springs up, like a lark's morning song. The singer contrasts himself with his baffled foes. The "they" at the beginning of ver. 15 is emphatic in the Hebrew, and is matched with the emphatic "And I" which begins ver. 16. His "morning" is similarly set over against their "night." So petition, complaint, imprecation, all merge into a song of joy and trust, and the whole ends with the refrain significantly varied and enlarged. In its first form the psalmist said, "For Thee will I watch"; in its second he rises to "To Thee will I harp." Glad praise is ever the close of the vigils of a faithful, patient heart. The deliverance won by waiting and trust should be celebrated by praise. In the first form the refrain ran "God is my high tower," and the second part of the psalm began with "My God shall meet me with His loving-kindness." In its second form the refrain draws into itself these words which had followed it, and so modifies them that the loving-kindness which in them was contemplated as belonging to and brought by God is now joyfully clasped by the singer as his very own, by Divine gift and through his own acceptance. Blessed they who are led by occasion of foes and fears to take God's rich gifts, and can thankfully and humbly feel that His loving-kindness and all its results are theirs, because He Himself is theirs and they are His!
1 O God, Thou hast cast us off, hast broken us,
Hast been angry with us—restore us again.
2 Thou hast shaken the land, hast rent it—
Heal its breaches, for it trembles.
3 Thou hast made Thy people see hard things,
Thou hast given them to drink reeling as wine.
4 Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee,
[Only] that they may flee before the bow. Selah.
5 That Thy beloved ones may be delivered,
Save with Thy right hand, and answer us.
6 God has spoken in His holiness,—I will exult:
I will divide Shechem, and measure out the valley of Succoth.
7 Mine is Gilead, and mine Manasseh,
And Ephraim is the strength of my head,
Judah, my baton of command.
8 Moab is my wash basin,
Upon Edom will I throw my shoe,
Because of me, Philistia, shout aloud.
9 Who will bring me into the fenced city?
Who has guided me into Edom?
10 Hast not Thou, O God, cast us off?
And goest not out, O God, with our hosts.
11 Give us help from the oppressor
For vain is help of man.
12 In God we shall do prowess:
And He, He will tread down our oppressors.
It falls into three parts of four verses each, of which
the first (vv. 1-4) is complaint of defeat and prayer for
help; the second (vv. 5-8), a Divine Oracle assuring
The first part blends complaint and prayer in the first pair of verses, in each of which there is, first, a description of the desperate state of Israel, and then a cry for help. The nation is broken, as a wall is broken down, or as an army whose ordered ranks are shattered and scattered. Some crushing defeat is meant, which in ver. 2 is further described as an earthquake. The land trembles, and then gapes in hideous clefts, and houses become gaunt ruins. The state is disorganised as in consequence of defeat. It is an unpoetical mixture of fact and figure to see in the "rending" of the land allusion to the separation of the kingdoms, especially as that was not the result of defeat.
There is almost a tone of wonder in the designation of Israel as "Thy people," so sadly does the fate meted out to them contrast with their name. Stranger still and more anomalous is it, that, as ver. 3 b laments, God's own hand has commended such a chalice to their lips as should fill them with infatuation. The construction "wine of reeling" is grammatically impossible, and the best explanation of the phrase regards the nouns as in apposition—"wine which is reeling," or "reeling as wine." The meaning is that God not only sent the disaster which had shaken the nation like an earthquake, but had sent, too, the presumptuous self-confidence which had led to it.
Ver. 4 has received two opposite interpretations, being
taken by some as a prolongation of the tone of lament
over disaster, and by others as commemoration of God's
help. The latter meaning violently interrupts the
continuity of thought. "The only natural view is that
The second part (vv. 5-8) begins with a verse which Delitzsch and others regard as really connected, notwithstanding the Selah at the end ver. 4, with the preceding. But it is quite intelligible as independent, and is in its place as the introduction to the Divine Oracle which follows, and makes the kernel of the psalm. There is beautiful strength of confidence in the psalmist's regarding the beaten, scattered people as still God's "darlings." He appeals to Him to answer, in order that a result so accordant with God's heart as the deliverance of His beloved ones may be secured. And the prayer has no sooner passed his lips than he hears the thunderous response, "God has spoken in His holiness." That infinite elevation of His nature above creatures is the pledge of the fulfilment of His word.
The following verses contain the substance of the
Oracle; but it is too daring to suppose that they reproduce
its words; for "I will exult" can scarcely be
reverently put into the mouth of God. The substance
of the whole is a twofold promise—of a united Israel,
and a submissive heathendom. Shechem on the west
and Succoth on the east of Jordan, Gilead and
Manasseh on the east, and Ephraim and Judah on the
west, are the possession of the speaker, whether he is
king or representative of the nation. No trace of a
separation of the kingdoms is here. Ephraim, the
strongest tribe of the northern kingdom, is the "strength
of my head," the helmet, or perhaps with allusion to
the horns of an animal as symbols of offensive weapons.
Judah is the ruling tribe, the commander's baton, or
Their defeat is foretold in contemptuous images. The basin for washing the feet was "a vessel unto dishonour"; and, in Israel's great house, no higher function for his ancestral enemy, when conquered, would be found. The meaning of casting the shoe upon or over Edom is doubtful. It may be a symbol for taking possession of property, though that lacks confirmation; or Edom may be regarded as the household slave to whom the master's shoes are thrown when taken off; or, better, in accordance with the preceding reference to Moab, Edom may be regarded as part of the master's house or furniture. The one was the basin for his feet; the other, the corner where he kept his sandals.
If the text of ver. 8 c is correct, Philistia is addressed
with bitter sarcasm, and bidden to repeat her
ancient shouts of triumph over Israel now, if she can.
But the edition of these verses in
The third part (vv. 9-12) is taken by some commentators
to breathe the same spirit as the first part.
Cheyne, for instance, speaks of it as a "relapse into
despondency," whilst others more truly hear in it the
tones of rekindled trust. In ver. 9 there is a remarkable
change of tense from "Who will bring?" in the
first clause, to "Who has guided?" in the second.
This is best explained by the supposition that some
victory over Edom had preceded the psalm, which
is regarded by the singer as a guarantee of success
in his assault of "the fenced city," probably Petra.
1 Hear, O God, my shrill cry,
Attend to my prayer.
2 From the end of the earth I cry to Thee, when my heart is wrapped [in gloom]:
Lead me on to a rock that is too high for me to [reach]
3 For Thou hast been a place of refuge for me,
A tower of strength from the face of the foe.
4 Let me dwell a guest in Thy tent for ever,
Let me find refuge in the covert of Thy wings. Selah.
5 For Thou, O God, hast hearkened to my vows,
Thou hast given [me] the heritage of them that fear Thy name.
6 Days mayest Thou add to the days of the king,
May his years be as many generations.
7 May he sit before God for ever:
Give charge to loving-kindness and troth, that they guard him.
8 So will I harp to Thy name for aye,
That I may fulfil my vows day by day.
If the Selah is accepted as marking the end of the
first part of the psalm, its structure is symmetrical, so
far as it is then divided into two parts of four verses
each; but that division cuts off the prayer in ver. 4
from its ground in ver. 5. Selah frequently occurs in
the middle of a period, and is used to mark emphasis,
but not necessarily division. It is therefore better to
keep vv. 4 and 5 together, thus preserving their analogy
with vv. 2 and 3. The scheme of this little psalm
will then be an introductory verse, followed by two
parallel pairs of verses, each consisting of petition and
its grounding in past mercies (vv. 2, 3, and 4, 5), and
The fervour of the psalmist's supplication is strikingly expressed by his use in the first clause, of the word which is ordinarily employed for the shrill notes of rejoicing. It describes the quality of the sound as penetrating and emotional, not the nature of the emotion expressed by it. Joy is usually louder-tongued than sorrow; but this suppliant's need has risen so high that his cry is resonant. To himself he seems to be at "the end of the earth"; for he measures distance not as a map-maker, but as a worshipper. Love and longing are potent magnifiers of space. His heart "faints," or is "overwhelmed." The word means literally "covered," and perhaps the metaphor may be preserved by some such phrase as wrapped in gloom. He is, then, an exile, and therefore sunk in sadness. But while he had external separation from the sanctuary chiefly in view, his cry wakes an echo in all devout hearts. They who know most about the inner life of communion with God best know how long and dreary the smallest separation between Him and them seems, and how thick is the covering spread over the heart thereby.
The one desire of such a suppliant is for restoration
of interrupted access to God. The psalmist embodies
that yearning in its more outward form, but not
without penetrating to the inner reality in both the
parallel petitions which follow. In the first of these,
(ver. 2 b) the thought is fuller than the condensed
expression of it. "Lead me on" or in, says he, meaning,
Lead me to and set me on. His imagination sees
The second pair of verses, containing petition and
its ground in past experience (vv. 4, 5), brings out still
more clearly the psalmist's longing for the sanctuary.
The futures in ver. 4 may be taken either as simple
expressions of certainty, or, more probably, as precative,
as is suggested by the parallelism with the preceding pair.
The "tent" of God is the sanctuary, possibly so called
because at the date of the psalm "the ark of God
dwelt in curtains." The "hiding-place of Thy wings"
may then be an allusion to the Shechinah and outspread
pinions of the Cherubim. But the inner reality is more
The ground of this second petition is laid in God's
past listening to vows, and His having given the
psalmist "the heritage of those that fear Thy name."
That is most naturally explained as meaning primarily
the land of Israel, and as including therein all
other blessings needful for life there. While it is
capable of being otherwise understood, it is singularly
appropriate to the person of David during the period
of Absalom's rebellion, when victory was beginning to
declare itself for the king. If we suppose that he had
already won a battle (
Very naturally, then, follows the closing prayer in
vv. 6, 7. The purely individual character of the rest
of the psalm, which is resumed in the last verse, where
the singer, speaking in the first person, represents his
continual praise as the result of the answer to his
petitions for the king, makes these petitions hopelessly
irrelevant, unless the psalmist is the king and these
prayers are for himself. The transition to the third
person does not necessarily negative this interpretation,
which seems to be required by the context. The
prayer sounds hyperbolical, but has a parallel in
The final petition has, as has been noticed above,
parallels in
Thus guarded, the psalmist's prolonged life will be
1 Only upon God [waits] my soul [in] silence:
From Him is my salvation.
2 Only He is my rock and my salvation,
My high tower, I shall not be greatly moved.
3 How long will ye rush upon a man?
[How long] will ye all of you break him down,
Like a bulging wall, a tottering fence?
4 Only from his elevation do they consult to thrust him down, they delight in lies:
Each blesses with his mouth, and in their inner [part] they curse. Selah.
5 Only to God be silent, my soul,
For from Him is my expectation.
6 Only He is my rock and my salvation,
My high tower; I shall not be moved.
7 On God is my salvation and my glory,
The rock of my strength, my refuge, is in God.
8 Trust in him in every time, O people!
Pour out before Him your heart,
God is a refuge for us. Selah.
9 Only vanity are the sons of the lowly, a lie are the sons of the lofty,
In the scales they go up, they are [lighter] than vanity altogether.
10 Trust not in oppressions and in robbery become not vain,
When wealth grows, set not your heart thereon.
11 Once has God spoken, twice have I heard this,
That strength [belongs] to God.
12 And to Thee, O God, [belongs] loving-kindness,
For Thou, Thou renderest to a man according to his work.
The psalm is in three strophes of four verses each, the divisions being marked by Selah. The two former have a long refrain at the beginning, instead of, as usually, at the end. In the first the psalmist sets his quiet trust in contrast with the furious assaults of his foes; while, in the second, he stirs himself to renewed exercise of it, and exhorts others to share with him in the security of God as a place of refuge. In the third strophe the nothingness of man is set in strong contrast to the power and loving-kindness of God, and the dehortation from trust in material wealth urged as the negative side of the previous exhortation to trust in God.
The noble saying of ver. 1 a is hard to translate
without weakening. The initial word may have the
The psalmist's silence finds voice, which does not
break it, in saying over to himself what God is to him.
His accumulation of epithets reminds us of
The second strophe reiterates the refrain, with slight but significant variations, and substitutes for the address to and contemplation of the plotters a meditation on the psalmist's own security, and an invitation to others to share it. In ver. 5 the refrain is changed from a declaration of the psalmist's silent waiting to self-exhortation thereto. Cheyne would assimilate the two verses by making both verbs imperatives; but that change destroys the beautiful play of feeling, so true to experience, which passes from consciousness of one's attitude towards God to effort at preserving it. No emotions, however blessed, deep, and real, will last, unless perpetually renewed. Like carbon points in electric lights, they burn away as they burn, and the light dies, unless there is some impulse which presses a fresh surface forward to receive the fiery kiss that changes its blackness into radiance. The "expectation" in ver. 5 b is substantially equivalent to the "salvation" in ver. 1 b. It means not the emotion (which could not be said to be "from Him"), but the thing expected, just as "hope" is used for the res sperata. The change in expression from "salvation" to "expectation" makes prominent the psalmist's attitude. In his silence his wistful eyes look up, watching for the first far-off brightening which tells him that help is on its road from the throne. Salvation will not come unexpected, and expectation will not look for succours in vain.
There may be deep meaning in the slight omission
of "greatly" in the second refrain. Confidence has
grown. The first hope was that the waiting heart
The third strophe sets the emptiness of men in strong
contrast to the sufficiency of God. "Vanity" is
literally "a breath," and would better be so rendered
in ver. 9, but for the recurrence of the verb from the
same root in ver. 10, which requires the rendering "be
not vain." It is desirable to preserve identity of translation,
so as to retain the play of words. But by doing
so ver. 9 is somewhat weakened. The eyes that have
been looking on God are cleared to see the shadowy
nothingness of men of all degrees. The differences of
high and low dwindle when seen from that "high
tower," as lower lands appear flat when viewed from a
mountain top. They are but "breath," so fleeting,
unsubstantial are they. They are a "lie," in so far
as hopes directed to them are deceived and trust misplaced.
The singer is not cynically proclaiming man's
worthlessness, but asserting his insufficiency as the
object of man's trust. His point of view is different
from that of
The natural conclusion from ver. 9 follows in the exhortation of ver. 10, which completes the positive presentation of the true object of trust (ver. 8) by the warning against false refuges. The introduction of "oppression" and "robbery" is singular, for it can scarcely be supposed that the assailants of the psalmist are here addressed, and still less that his followers needed to be warned against these crimes. Cheyne, therefore, follows Graetz and others in reading "perverseness" for "oppression," and "crookedness" for "robbery"; but the alteration throws the clause out of harmony with the next clause. It may be that in ver. 10 a the psalmist has in view unjust gain and in b justly acquired wealth, and that thus his two dehortations cover the whole ground of material riches, as if he had said, "Whether rightly or wrongly won, they are wrongly used if they are trusted in." The folly and misery of such trust are vigorously set forth by that word "become vain." The curse of misplaced confidence is that it brings down a man to the level of what he trusts in, as the blessing of wisely placed trust is that it lifts him to that level. Trust in vanity is vain, and makes the truster "vanity." Wind is not a nourishing diet. It may inflate, or, as Paul says about knowledge, may "puff up," but not "build up." Men are assimilated to the objects of their trust; and if these are empty, "so is every one that trusteth in them."
So far the psalmist has spoken. But his silent waiting has been rewarded with a clear voice from heaven, confirming that of his faith. It is most natural to regard the double revelation received by the psalmist as repeated in the following proclamation of the two great aspects of the Divine nature—Power and Loving-kindness. The psalmist has learned that these two are not opposed nor separate, but blend harmoniously in God's nature, and are confluent in all His works. Power is softened and directed by Loving-kindness. Loving-kindness has as its instrument Omnipotence. The synthesis of these two is in the God whom men are invited to trust; and such trust can never be disappointed; for His Power and His Loving-kindness will co-operate to "render to a man according to his work." The last word of the psalm adds the conception of Righteousness to those of Power and Loving-kindness. But the psalmist seems to have in view mainly one direction in which that rendering "to a man according to his work" is active—namely, in answering the trust which turns away from human power which is weakness, and from human love which may change and must die, to anchor itself on the might and tenderness of God. Such "work of faith" will not be in vain; for these twin attributes of Power and Love are pledged to requite it with security and peace.
1 O God, my God art Thou, I seek Thee earnestly,
My soul thirsts for Thee, my flesh pines for Thee,
In a dry and weary land, without water.
2 So in the sanctuary have I gazed on Thee,
To see Thy power and Thy glory.
3 For Thy loving-kindness is better than life,
[Therefore] my lips shall praise Thee.
4 So will I bless Thee while I live,
In Thy name will I lift my hands.
5 As [with] fat and marrow shall my soul be satisfied,
And with lips that joyfully shout shall my mouth praise Thee,
6 When I remember Thee on my bed,
Through the watches [of the night] do I meditate on Thee.
7 For Thou hast been a help for me,
And in the shadow of Thy wings will I shout for joy.
8 My soul cleaves [to and presses] after Thee,
Me does Thy right hand uphold.
9 But these—for its destruction they seek my soul;
They shall go into the undermost parts of the earth.
10 They shall be given over to the power of the sword,
The portion of jackals shall they be.
11 But the king shall rejoice in God,
Every one that swears by Him shall glory,
For the mouth of them that speak a lie shall be stopped.
These characteristics converge on David. Cheyne has endeavoured to show that they fit the faithful Jews in the Maccabean period, and that the "king" in ver. 2 is "Jonathan or [better] Simon" ("Orig. of Psalt.," 99, and "Aids to Dev. Study of Crit.," 308 seqq.). But unless we are prepared to accept the dictum that "Pre-Jeremian such highly spiritual hymns obviously cannot be" (u.s.), the balance of probability will be heavily in favour of the Davidic origin.
The recurrence of the expression "My soul" in vv. 1, 5, 8, suggests the divisions into which the psalm falls. Following that clue, we recognise three parts, in each of which a separate phase of the experience of the soul in its communion with God is presented as realised in sequence by the psalmist. The soul longs and thirsts for God (vv. 1-4). The longing soul is satisfied in God (vv. 5-7). The satisfied soul cleaves to and presses after God (vv. 8-11). These stages melt into each other in the psalm as in experience, but are still discernible.
In the first strophe the psalmist gives expression
in immortal words to his longing after God. Like many
a sad singer before and after him, he finds in the dreary
scene around an image of yet drearier experiences
within. He sees his own mood reflected in the grey
monotony of the sterile desert, stretching waterless on
every side, and seamed with cracks, like mouths gaping
for the rain that does not come. He is weary and
thirsty; but a more agonising craving is in his spirit,
and wastes his flesh. As in the kindred
Ver. 2 is difficult principally because the reference of the initial "So" is doubtful. By some it is connected with the first clause of ver. 1: "So"—i.e., as my God—"have I seen Thee." Others suppose a comparison to be made between the longing just expressed and former ones, and the sense to be, "With the same eager desire as now I feel in the desert have I gazed in the sanctuary." This seems the better view. Hupfeld proposes to transpose the two clauses, as the A.V. has done in its rendering, and thus gets a smoother run of thought. The immediate object of the psalmist's desire is thus declared to be "to behold Thy power and glory," and the "So" is substantially equivalent to "According as." If we retain the textual order of the clauses, and understand the first as paralleling the psalmist's desert longing with that which he felt in the sanctuary, the second clause will state the aim of the ardent gaze—namely, to "behold Thy power and Thy glory." These attributes were peculiarly manifested amid the imposing sanctities where the light of the Shechinah, which was especially designated as "the Glory," shone above the ark.
The first clause of ver. 3 is closely connected with
the preceding, and gives the reason for some part of
the emotion there expressed, as the introductory "For"
The deep desires of this psalmist were occasioned by
his seclusion from outward forms of worship, which
were to him so intimately related to the inward reality,
that he felt farther away from God in the wilderness
than when he caught glimpses of His face, through the
power and glory which he saw visibly manifested in
the sanctuary. But in his isolation he learns to equate
his desert yearnings with his sanctuary contemplations,
and thus glides from longing to fruition. His devotion,
nourished by forms, is seen in the psalm in the very
act of passing on to independence of form; and so
springs break out for him in the desert. His passion
of yearning after God rebukes and shames our faint
desires. This man's soul was all on the stretch to
grasp and hold God. His very physical frame was
affected by his intense longing. If he did not long too
much, most men, even those who thirst after God most,
long terribly too little. Strong desire has a joy in its
very aching; feeble desire only makes men restless and
uncomfortable. Nothing can be more preposterous
than tepid aspirations after the greatest and only good.
The remaining clauses of ver. 3 and ver. 4 form a transition to the full consciousness of satisfaction which animates the psalmist in the second part. The resolve to praise, and the assurance that he will have occasion to praise, succeed his longing with startling swiftness. The "So" of ver. 4 seems to be equivalent to "Accordingly"—i.e., since Thy loving-kindness is such supreme good, and is mine because I have desired it. Continual praise and as continual invocation are the fitting employments of those who receive it, and by these alone can their possession of the loving-kindness bestowed be made permanent. If empty palms are not ever lifted towards God, His gifts will not descend. When these are received, they will fall like morning sunbeams on stony and dumb lips, which before were only parted to let out sighs, and will draw forth music of praise. There are longings which never are satisfied; but God lets no soul that thirsts for Him perish for lack of the water of life. Wisdom bids us fix our desires on that Sovereign Good, to long for which is ennobling and blessed, and to possess which is rest and the beginning of heaven.
Thus the psalmist passes imperceptibly to the second
strophe, in which the longing soul becomes the satisfied
soul. The emblem of a feast is naturally suggested
by the previous metaphor of thirst. The same conviction,
which urged the psalmist forward in his search
after God, now assures him of absolute satisfaction
in finding Him. Since God's loving-kindness is better
than life, the soul that possesses Him can have no
unappeased cravings, nor any yet hungry affections
When God is possessed, the soul is satisfied. So entire is the correspondence between wants and gift, that every concavity in us finds, as it were, a convexity to match it in Him. The influx of the great ocean of God fills every curve of the shore to the brim, and the flashing glory of that sunlit sea covers the sands, and brings life where stagnation reigned and rotted. So the satisfied soul lives to praise, as the psalm goes on to vow. Lips that drink such draughts of Loving-kindness will not be slow to tell its sweetness. If we have nothing to say about God's goodness, the probable cause is our want of experience of it.
That feast leaves no bitter taste. The remembrance
of it is all but as sweet as its enjoyment was. Thus,
in ver. 6, the psalmist recounts how, in the silent hours
of night, when many joys are seen to be hollow, and
conscience wakes to condemn coarse delights, he recalled
his blessednesses in God, and, like a ruminant animal,
tasted their sweetness a second time. The verse is
best regarded as an independent sentence. So blessed
was the thought of God, that, if once it rose in his
wakeful mind as he lay on his bed, he "meditated"
The third strophe (vv. 8-11) presents a stage in
the devout soul's experience which naturally follows
the two preceding. Ver. 8 has a beautifully pregnant
expression for the attitude of the satisfied soul. Literally
rendered, the words run, "cleaves after Thee," thus
uniting the ideas of close contact and eager pursuit.
Such union, however impossible in the region of lower
aims, is the very characteristic of communion with God,
in which fruition subsists along with longing, since
Another beautiful reciprocity is suggested by the very order of the words in the two clauses of ver. 8. The first ends with "Thee"; the second begins with "Me." The mutual relation of God and the soul is here set forth. He who "cleaves after God" is upheld in his pursuit by God's hand. And not in his pursuit only, but in all his life; for the condition of receiving sustaining help is desire for it, directed to God and verified by conduct. Whoever thus follows hard after God will feel his outstretched, seeking hand inclosed in a strong and loving palm, which will steady him against assaults and protect him in dangers. "No man is able to pluck them out of the Father's hand," if only they do not let it go. It may slip from slack fingers.
We descend from the heights of mystic communion
in the remainder of the psalm. But in the singer's
mind his enemies were God's enemies, and, as ver. 11
shows, were regarded as apostates from God in being
traitors to "the king." They did not "swear by
Him"—i.e., they did not acknowledge God as God.
Therefore, such being their character, the psalmist's
confidence that God's right hand upheld him necessarily
How can the "king's" rejoicing in God be the consequence of their slaughter, unless they are rebels? And what connection would the defeat of a rebellion have with the rest of the psalm, unless the singer were himself the king? "This one line devoted to the king is strange," says Cheyne. The strangeness is unaccounted for, but on the supposition that David is the king and singer. If so, it is most natural that his song should end with a note of triumph, and should anticipate the joy of his own heart and the "glorying" of his faithful followers, who had been true to God in being loyal to His anointed.
1 Hear, O God, my voice in my complaint,
From the fear of the enemy guard my life.
2 Hide me from the secret assembly of evil-doers,
From the noisy crowd of workers of iniquity:
3 Who whet, like a sword, their tongue,
[Who] aim [as] their arrow a bitter word,
4 To shoot in hiding-places [at] the upright:
Suddenly they shoot [at] him, and fear not.
5 They strengthen themselves [in] an evil plan,
They talk of laying snares,
They say, Who looks at them?
6 They scheme villainies,
We have perfected [say they] a scheme [well] schemed:
And the inward part of each, and [his] heart, is deep.
7 But God shoots [at] them [with] an arrow,
Suddenly come their wounds.
8 And they are made to stumble,
Their own tongue [comes] upon them,
All who look on them shake the head.
9 And all men fear,
And declare the act of God,
And understand His work.
10 The righteous shall rejoice in Jehovah, and take refuge in Him,
And all the upright in heart shall glory.
The division into pairs of verses is clear here. The burdened psalmist begins with a cry for help, passes on to dilate on the plots of his foes, turns swiftly from these to confidence in God, which brings future deliverance into present peril and sings of it as already accomplished, and ends with the assurance that his enemies' punishment will witness for God and gladden the upright.
In the first pair of verses complaint is sublimed into
prayer, and so becomes strengthening instead of
weakening. He who can cry "Hear, O God, guard,
hide" has already been able to hide in a safe refuge.
"The terror caused by the enemy" is already dissipated
when the trembling heart grasps at God; and
escape from facts which warrant terror will come in
good time. This man knows himself to be in danger
of his life. There are secret gatherings of his enemies,
and he can almost hear their loud voices as they plan
his ruin. What can he do, in such circumstances, but
fling himself on God? No thought of resistance has
he. He can but pray, but he can pray; and no man
is helpless who can look up. However high and closely
engirdling may be the walls that men or sorrows build
around us, there is always an opening in the dungeon
The next two pairs of verse (3-6) describe the machinations of the enemies in language for the most part familiar, but presenting some difficulties. The metaphors of a slanderous tongue as a sword and mischief-meaning words as arrows have occurred in several other psalms (e.g., lv. 21; lvii. 4; lix. 7). The reference may either be to calumnies or to murderous threats and plans. The latter is the more probable. Secret plots are laid, which are suddenly unmasked. From out of some covert of seeming friendship an unlooked-for arrow whizzes. The archers "shoot, and fear not." They are sure of remaining concealed, and fear neither man's detection of them nor God's.
The same ideas are enlarged on in the third verse-pair (5, 6) under a new metaphor. Instead of arrows flying in secret, we have now snares laid to catch unsuspecting prey. "They strengthen themselves [in] an evil plan" (lit. word) pictures mutual encouragement and fixed determination. They discuss the best way of entrapping the psalmist, and, as in the preceding verse, flatter themselves that their subtle schemes are too well buried to be observed, whether by their victim or by God. Ver. 6 tells without a figure the fact meant in both figures. "They scheme villainies," and plume themselves upon the cleverness of their unsuspected plots. The second clause of the verse is obscure. But the suppositions that in it the plotters speak as in the last clause of the preceding verse, and that "they say" or the like expression is omitted for the sake of dramatic effect, remove much of the difficulty. "We have schemed a well-schemed plan" is their complacent estimate.
God's retribution scatters their dreams of impunity, as the next pair of verses (7, 8) tells. The verbs are in the past tense, though the events described are still in the future; for the psalmist's faith reckons them to be as good as done. They were shooting at him. God will shoot at them. The archer becomes a target. "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." Punishment is moulded after the guise of sin. The allusion to ver. 4 is made more obvious by adopting a different division of ver. 7 from that directed by the accents, and beginning the second half with "Suddenly," as in ver. 4. Ver. 8 b is with difficulty made intelligible with the existing reading. Probably the best that can be done with it is to render it as above, though it must be acknowledged that "their tongue comes upon them" needs a good deal of explanation to be made to mean that the consequences of their sins of speech fall on them. The drift of the clause must be that retribution falls on the offending tongue; but there is probably some textual corruption now unremovable. Cheyne wisely falls back on asterisks. Whatever is the precise nature of the instance of lex talionis in the clause, it is hailed with gestures of scornful approval by all beholders. Many men approve the Divine punishments, who have no deep horror of the sins that are punished. There is something of a noble, if rough, sense of justice in most men, and something of an ignoble satisfaction in seeing the downfall of the powerful, and both sentiments set heads nodding approval of God's judgments.
The psalm closes with the familiar thought that
these judgments will move to wholesome awe and be
told from lip to lip, while they become to the righteous
occasion of joy, incitements to find refuge in God, and
1 To Thee silence is praise, O God, in Zion,
And to Thee shall the vow be paid.
2 O Thou hearer of prayer,
To Thee all flesh comes.
3 Deeds of iniquity have been too strong for me:
Our transgressions—Thou, Thou coverest them.
4 Blessed is he whom Thou choosest and bringest near,
That he may dwell in Thy courts:
We would be filled with the goodness of Thy house,
Thy holy temple.
5 By dread deeds in righteousness Thou dost answer us, O God of our salvation,
The confidence of all the ends of the earth and of the remotest sea:
6 Setting fast the mountains by His strength,
Being girded with might,
7 Stilling the roar of the seas, the roar of their billows,
And the tumult of the peoples.
8 So that the inhabitants of the ends [of the earth] become afraid at Thy signs:
The regions whence morning and evening come forth
Thou makest to shout for joy.
9 Thou hast visited the land and watered it,
Thou enrichest it abundantly [by] a river of God, full of water,
Thou preparest their corn when thus Thou preparest it:
10 Watering its furrows, levelling its ridges,
With showers Thou softenest it,
Its outgrowth Thou dost bless.
11 Thou hast crowned the year of Thy goodness,
12 The pastures of the wilderness drop,
And the heights gird themselves with leaping gladness.
13 The meadows are clothed with flocks,
And the valleys are covered with corn,
They shout for joy, they also sing.
The first strophe is wholly concerned with the glory
of God as answering prayer. It begins with enigmatical
words, which, if the existing text is adhered to, carry
a deep truth. There are two kinds of prayer—wordless
submission of will and spoken vows. The former is
truly praise. The same thought is found in
The strophe ends with an exclamation celebrating the blessedness of dwelling with God. That refers, no doubt, to Israel's prerogative of access to the Temple; but the inward and outward are blended, as in many places in the Psalter where dwelling in the house of the Lord is yearned for or rejoiced in. The universalism of the psalm does not forget the special place held by the nation whom God "has chosen and brought near." But the reality beneath the symbol is too familiar and sweet to this singer for him to suppose that mere outward access exhausts the possibilities of blessed communion. It is no violent forcing more into his words than they contain, if we read in them deeply spiritual truths. It is noteworthy that they follow the reference to forgiveness, and, when taken in conjunction therewith, may be called an itinerary of the road to God. First comes forgiveness by expiation, for such is the meaning of "covering," Then the cleansed soul has "access with confidence"; then approaching, it happily dwells a guest in the house, and is supplied with that which satisfies all desires. The guest's security in the house of his host, his right to protection, help, and food, are, as usual, implied in the imagery. The prerogative of his nation, which the psalmist had in mind, is itself imagery, and the reality which it shadowed is that close abiding in God which is possible by faith, love, communion of spirit, and obedience of life, and which, wherever realised, keeps a soul in a great calm, whatever tempests rave, and satisfies its truest needs and deepest longings, whatever famine may afflict the outward life. Forgiven men may dwell with God. They who do are blessed.
The second strophe (vv. 5-8) celebrates another
aspect of God's manifestation by deeds, which has, in
The light is focussed and set in a tower that it may shine out over sea and storm. The fire is gathered into a brasier that it may warm all the house. Some commentators take that strong expression "the trust of all the ends of the earth" as asserting that even the confidences of idolaters in their gods are at bottom trust in Jehovah and find their way to Him. But such a view of idolatry is foreign to the Old Testament, and is not needed to explain the psalmist's words. God is the only worthy object of trust, and remains so whether men do in fact trust Him or not. And one day, thinks the psalmist, God's patient manifestation of His grace to Israel will tell, and all men will come to know Him for what He is. "The remotest sea" is not translation, but paraphrase. The psalmist speaks in vague terms, as one who knew not what lay beyond the horizon of that little-traversed western ocean. Literally his words are "the sea of the remote [peoples]"; but a possible emendation has been suggested, reading instead of sea "regions" or "nations." The change is slight, and smooths an awkward expression, but destroys the antithesis of earth and sea, and makes the second clause a somewhat weak repetition of the first.
From the self-revelation of God in history the psalm passes to His mighty deeds in nature (vv. 6, 7 a), and from these it returns to His providential guidance of human affairs (ver. 7 b). The two specimens of Divine power celebrated in vv. 6, 7, are suggested by the closing words of ver. 5. "The ends of the earth" were, according to ancient cosmography, girdled by mountains; and God has set these fast. The dash of "the remotest seas" is hushed by Him. Two mighty things are selected to witness to the Mightier who made and manages them. The firm bulk of the mountains is firm because He is strong. The tossing waves are still because He bids them be silent. How transcendently great then is He, and how blind those who, seeing hill and ocean, do not see God! The mention of the sea, the standing emblem of unrest and rebellious power, suggests the "tumult of the peoples," on which similar repressive power is exercised. The great deeds of God, putting down tyranny and opposition to Israel, which is rebellion against Himself, strike terror, which is wholesome and is purified into reverence, into the distant lands; and so, from the place where the sun rises to the "sad-coloured end of evening" where it sinks in the west, i.e., through all the earth, there rings out a shout of joy. Such glowing anticipations of universal results from the deeds of God, especially for Israel, are the products of diseased national vanity, unless they are God-taught apprehension of the Divine purpose of Israel's history, which shall one day be fulfilled, when the knowledge of the yet more wondrous deeds which culminated in the Cross is spread to the ends of the earth and the remotest seas.
God reveals Himself not only in the sanctities of His
house, nor in His dread "signs" in nature and history,
The poet stands in the joyous time when all the beauty of summer flushes the earth, and the harvest is yet a hope, not a possibly disappointing reality. It is near enough to fill his song with exultation. It is far enough off to let him look on the whitened fields, and not on the bristly stubble. So he regards the "crown" as already set on a year of goodness. He sees God's chariot passing in triumph and blessing over the land, and leaving abundance wherever its wheel-tracks go. Out in the uncultivated prairie, where sweet grass unsown by man grows, is the flush of greenery, where, before the rain, was baked and gaping earth. The hills, that wear a girdle of forest trees half-way up towards their barren summits, wave their foliage, as if glad. The white fleeces of flocks are dotted over the vivid verdure of every meadow, and one cannot see the ground for the tall corn that stands waiting for the sickle, in each fertile plain. The psalmist hears a hymn of glad praise rising from all these happy and sunny things; and for its melody he hushes his own, that he and we may listen to
1 Shout joyfully to God, all the earth,
2 Harp [unto] the glory of His name,
Render glory [to Him by] His praise.
3 Say to God, How dread are Thy works!
For the greatness of Thy strength shall Thy enemies feign [submission] to Thee.
4 All the earth shall bow down to Thee, and harp to Thee,
They shall harp [to] Thy name. Selah.
5 Come, and behold the deeds of God;
He is dread in His doing towards the sons of men,
6 He turned the sea to dry land,
They went through the river on foot,
There let us rejoice in Him.
7 He rules by His might for ever;
His eyes watch the nations,
The rebellious—let them not exalt themselves. Selah.
8 Bless our God, ye peoples,
And let the voice of His praise be heard!
9 Who has set our soul in life,
And has not let our foot slip.
10 For Thou hast proved us, O God,
Thou hast refined us, as silver is refined.
11 Thou hast brought us into the fortress-dungeon,
Thou hast laid a heavy burden on our loins.
12 Thou hast caused men to ride over our head,
We have come into the fire and into the water,
But Thou broughtest us out into abundance.
13 I will go into Thy house with burnt offerings,
I will render to Thee my vows,
14 Which my lips uttered,
15 Burnt offerings of fatlings will I offer to Thee,
With the savour of rams,
I will offer bullocks with goats. Selah.
16 Come, hearken, and I will recount, all ye that fear God,
What He has done for my soul.
17 To Him did I cry with my mouth,
And a song extolling [Him] was [already] under my tongue.
18 If I had intended iniquity in my heart,
The Lord would not hear:
19 But surely God has heard,
He has attended to the voice of my prayer.
20 Blessed be God,
Who has not turned away my prayer, nor His loving-kindness from me.
The psalm has no superscription of date or author, and no clue in its language to the particular deliverance that called it forth. The usual variety of conjectures have been hazarded. The defeat of Sennacherib occurs to some; the return from Babylon to others; the Maccabean period to yet another school of critics. It belongs to a period when Israel's world-significance and mission were recognised (which Cheyne considers a post-exilic feature, "Orig. of Psalt.," 176), and when the sacrificial worship was in full force; but beyond these there are no clear data for period of composition.
It is divided into five strophes, three of which are
marked by Selah. That musical indication is wanting
at the close of the third strophe (ver. 12), which is
also the close of the first or choral part, and its absence
may be connected with the transition to a single voice.
A certain progress in thought is noticeable, as will
appear as we proceed. The first strophe calls upon
all the earth to praise God for His works. The special
deeds which fire the psalmist are not yet mentioned,
though they are present to his mind. The summons
of the world to praise passes over into prophecy that
it shall praise. The manifestation of God's character
by act will win homage. The great thought that God
has but to be truly known in order to be reverenced
The second strophe advances to a closer contemplation
of the deeds of God, which the nations are
summoned to behold. He is not only "dread" in His
doings towards mankind at large, but Israel's history
is radiant with the manifestation of His name, and
that past lives on, so that ancient experiences give the
measure and manner of to-day's working. The retrospect
embraces the two standing instances of God's
delivering help—the passage of the Red Sea and of
The third strophe comes still closer to the particular
deliverance underlying the psalm. Why should all
"peoples" be called upon to praise God for it? The
psalmist has learned that Israel's history is meant to
teach the world what God is, and how blessed it
is to dwell under His wing. No exclusiveness taints
The fourth strophe (vv. 13-15) begins the solo part. It clothes in a garb appropriate to a sacrificial system the thought expressed in more spiritual dress in the next strophe, that God's deliverance should evoke men's praise. The abundance and variety of sacrifices named, and the fact that "rams" were not used for the offerings of individuals, seem to suggest that the speaker is, in some sense, representing the nation, and it has been supposed that he may be the high priest. But this is merely conjecture, and the explanation may be that there is a certain ideal and poetical tone over the representation, which does not confine itself to scrupulous accuracy.
The last strophe (vv. 16-20) passes beyond sacrificial
symbols, and gives the purest utterance to the
emotions and resolves which ought to well up in
a devout soul on occasion of God's goodness. Not
only does the psalmist teach us how each individual
must take the general blessing for his very own—of
which act the faith which takes the world's Christ for
my Christ is the supreme example—but he teaches us
that the obligation laid on all recipients of God's mercy
is to tell it forth, and that the impulse is as certain to
follow real reception as the command is imperative.
Just as Israel received deliverances that the whole earth
might learn how strong and gracious was Israel's God,
we receive His blessings, and chiefly His highest gift of
life in Christ, not only that we may live, but that, living,
The psalmist tells his experience of God's answers to his prayer in a very striking fashion. Ver. 17 says that he cried to God; and while his uttered voice was supplication, the song extolling God for the deliverance asked was, as it were, lying under his tongue, ready to break forth,—so sure was he that his cry would be heard. That is a strong faith which prepares banners and music for the triumph before the battle is fought. It would be presumptuous folly, not faith, if it rested on anything less certain than God's power and will.
"I find David making a syllogism in mood and
figure.... 'If I regard iniquity in my heart, the
Lord will not hear me: but verily God hath heard
me; He hath attended to the voice of my prayer.'
Now, I expected that David would have concluded thus:
'Therefore I regard not wickedness in my heart. But
far otherwise he concludes: 'Blessed be God, who
hath not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from
me.' Thus David hath deceived but not wronged me.
I looked that he should have clapped the crown on
his own, and he puts it on God's head. I will learn
this excellent logic." So says Fuller ("Good Thoughts
in Bad Times," p. 34, Pickering's ed., 1841). No
doubt, however, the psalmist means to suggest, though
he does not state, that his prayer was sincere. There
is no self-complacent attribution of merit to his supplication,
in the profession that it was untainted by any
secret, sidelong looking towards evil; and Fuller is
right in emphasising the suppression of the statement.
But even the appearance of such is avoided by the jet
1 God be gracious to us, and bless us,
And cause His face to shine among us; Selah.
2 That Thy way may be known upon earth,
Thy salvation among all nations.
3 Let peoples give Thee thanks, O God,
Let peoples, all of them, give Thee thanks.
4 Let tribes rejoice and shout aloud,
For Thou wilt judge peoples in equity,
And tribes on the earth wilt Thou lead. Selah.
5 Let peoples give Thee thanks, O God,
Let peoples, all of them, give Thee thanks.
6 The earth has yielded her increase:
May God, [even] our God, bless us!
7 May God bless us,
And may all the ends of the earth fear Him!
The structure of the psalm has been variously conceived.
Clearly the Selahs do not guide as to divisions
in the flow of thought. But it may be noted that the
Another point of difficulty is the rendering of the
series of verbs in the psalm. Commentators are
unanimous in taking those of ver. 1 as expressions of
desire; but they bewilderingly diverge in their treatment
of the following ones. Details of the divergent
interpretations, or discussions of their reasons, cannot
be entered on here. It may be sufficient to say that
the adherence throughout to the optative rendering,
admitted by all in ver. 1, gives a consistent colouring
to the whole. It is arbitrary to vary the renderings in
so short a psalm. But, as is often the case, the aspirations
are so sure of their correspondence with the
Divine purpose that they tremble on the verge of being
prophecies, as, indeed, all wishes that go out along the
line of God's "way" are. Every deep, God-inspired
longing whispers to its utterer assurance that so it
shall be; and therefore such desires have ever in them
an element of fruition, and know nothing of the pain
The priestly blessing (
The central core of the psalm may either be taken as summons to the nations or as expression of desire for them. The depth of the longing or the stringency of the summons is wonderfully given by that fourfold repetition of the same words in vv. 3 and 5, with the emphatic "all of them" in the second clause of each. Not less significant is the use of three names for the aggregations of men—nations (ver. 2), peoples, and tribes. All are included, whatever bond knits them in communities, whatever their societies call themselves, however many they are. The very vagueness gives sublimity and universality. We can fill the vast outline drawn by these sweeping strokes; and wider knowledge should not be attended with narrowed desires, nor feebler confidence that the Light shall lighten every land. It is noticeable that in this central portion the deeds of God among the nations are set forth as the ground of their praise and joy in Him. Israel had the light of His face, and that would draw men to Him. But all peoples have the strength of His arm to be their defender, and the guidance of His hand by providences and in other ways unrecognised by them. The "judgments" here contemplated are, of course, not retribution for evil, but the aggregate of dealings by which God shows His sovereignty in all the earth. The psalmist does not believe that God's goodness has been confined to Israel, nor that the rest of the world has been left orphaned. He agrees with Paul, "That which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God manifested it to them."
The final strophe (vv. 6, 7) is substantially a repetition
of vv. 1, 2, with the addition that a past fact is
laid as the foundation of the desires or hopes of future
blessings. "The earth has yielded her increase."
1 Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered,
And let them who hate Him flee before Him.
2 As smoke is whirled, whirl [them] away:
As wax melts before fire,
May the wicked perish before God!
3 But may the righteous rejoice [and] exult before God,
And be mirthful in joy.
4 Sing to God, harp [to] His name:
Throw up a way for Him who rides through the deserts
[In] Jah is His name; and exult ye before Him;
5 The orphans' father and the widows' advocate,
God in His holy dwelling-place,
6 God, who makes the solitary to dwell in a home,
Who brings out the prisoners into prosperity:
Yet the rebellious inhabit a burnt-up land.
7 O God, at Thy going forth before Thy people,
At Thy marching through the wilderness; Selah.
8 The earth quaked, the heavens also dropped before God
Yonder Sinai [quaked] before God, the God of Israel.
9 With a gracious rain, O God, Thou didst besprinkle Thine inheritance;
And [when it was] faint, Thou didst refresh it.
10 Thine assembly dwelt herein:
Thou didst prepare in Thy goodness for the poor, O God.
11 The Lord gives the word:
The women telling the good tidings are a great army.
12 Kings of armies flee, they flee:
And the home-keeping [woman] divides the spoil.
13 Will ye lie among the sheep-pens?
[Ye shall be as] the wings of a dove that is covered with silver, (?)
And her pinions with yellow gold
14 When the Almighty scattered kings in it,
15 A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan,
A many-peaked mountain is the mountain of Bashan.
16 Why look ye with envy, O many-peaked mountains,
On the mountain which God has desired to dwell in?
Yea, God will abide in it for ever.
17 The chariots of God are myriads and myriads, thousands on thousands:
God is among them;
Sinai is in the sanctuary.
18 Thou hast ascended on high,
Thou hast led captive a band of captives,
Thou hast taken gifts among men,
Yea, even the rebellious shall dwell with Jah, God.
19 Blessed be the Lord!
Day by day He bears our burdens,
Even the God [who is] our salvation.
20 God is to us a God of deliverances,
And Jehovah the Lord has escape from death.
21 Yea, God will crush the head of His enemies,
The hairy skull of him that goes on in his guiltiness.
22 The Lord has said, From Bashan I will bring back,
I will bring back from the depths of the sea:
23 That thou mayest bathe thy foot in blood,
That the tongue of thy dogs may have its portion from the enemy.
24 They have seen Thy goings, O God,
The goings of my God, my King, into the sanctuary.
25 Before go singers, after [come] those who strike the strings,
In the midst of maidens beating timbrels.
26 "In the congregations bless ye God,
The Lord, [ye who spring] from the fountain of Israel."
27 There was little Benjamin their ruler, (?)
The princes of Judah, their shouting multitude,
The princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali.
28 Command, O God, Thy strength,
Show Thyself strong, O God, Thou that hast wrought for us.
29 From Thy temple above Jerusalem
Unto Thee shall kings bring presents.
30 Rebuke the beast of the reeds,
The herd of bulls, with the calves of the peoples;
Tread down those that have pleasure in silver; (?)
31 Great ones shall come from Egypt,
Cush shall quickly stretch out her hands to God.
32 Ye kingdoms of the earth, sing to God;
Harp [unto] the Lord; Selah.
33 To Him who rides on the heavens of heavens, [which are] of old;
Lo, He utters His voice, a voice of strength.
34 Ascribe to God strength,
Whose majesty is over Israel, and His strength in the clouds.
35 Dread [art Thou], O God, from Thy sanctuaries,
The God of Israel,
He gives strength and fulness of might to His people.
Blessed be God!
The Davidic authorship is set aside as impossible
by most recent commentators, and there is much in
the psalm which goes against it; but, on the other
hand, the Syro-Ammonite war (
The mention of only four tribes in ver. 27 is claimed as showing that the psalm was written when Judæa and Galilee were the only orthodox districts, and central Palestine was in the hands of the Samaritans. But could there be any talk of "princes of Zebulun and Naphtali" then? The exultant tone of the psalm makes its ascription to such a date as the age of the Ptolemies unlikely, when "Israel is too feeble, too depressed, to dream of self-defence; and, if God does not soon interpose, will be torn to pieces" (Cheyne, "Aids to the Devout Study," etc., 335).
To the present writer it does not appear that the understanding and enjoyment of this grand psalm depend so much on success in dating it as is supposed. It may be post-exilic. Whoever fused its reminiscences of ancient triumph into such a glowing outburst of exultant faith, his vision of the throned God and his conviction that ancient facts reveal eternal truths remain for all generations as an encouragement of trust and a prophecy of God's universal dominion.
The main division at ver. 18 parts the psalm into two equal halves, which are again easily subdivided into strophes.
The first strophe (vv. 1-6) may be regarded as
introductory to the chief theme of the first half—namely,
the triumphant march of the conquering God to His
sanctuary. It consists of invocation to Him to arise,
God "arises" when He displays by some signal act
His care for His people. That strong anthropomorphism
sets forth the plain truth that there come crises in
history, when causes, long silently working, suddenly
produce their world-shaking effects. God has seemed
to sit passive; but the heavens open, and all but blind
eyes can see Him, standing ready to smite that He may
The "deserts" are, in consonance with the immediately
following reminiscences, those of the Exodus.
Hupfeld and those who discover in the psalm the hopes
of the captives in Babylon, take them to be the waste
wilderness stretching between Babylon and Palestine.
But it is better to see in them simply a type drawn
from the past, of guidance through any needs or
miseries. Vv. 5, 6, draw out at length the blessed
significance of the name Jah, in order to hearten to
earnest desire and expectance of Him. They are best
taken as in apposition with "Him" in ver. 4. Well
may we exult before Him who is the orphans' father,
the widows' advocate. There may be significance in
the contrast between what He is "in His holy habitation"
and when He arises to ride through the deserts.
Even in the times when he seems to be far above,
dwelling in the separation of His unapproachable
holiness, He is still caring and acting for the sad and
helpless. But when He comes forth, it is to make the
With the second strophe (vv. 7-10) begins the historical retrospect, which is continued till, at the end of the fourth (ver. 18), God is enthroned in the sanctuary, there to dwell for ever. In the second strophe the wilderness life is described. The third (vv. 11-14) tells of the victories which won the land. The fourth triumphantly contrasts the glory of the mountain where God at last has come to dwell, with the loftier peaks across the Jordan on which no such lustre gleams.
Vv. 7, 8, are from Deborah's song, with slight
omissions and alterations, notably of "Jehovah" into
"God." The phrase "before" still rings in the psalmist's
ears, and he changes Deborah's words, in the first clause
of ver. 7, so as to give the picture of God marching
in front of His people, instead of, as the older song
represented Him, coming from the east, to meet them
marching from the west. The majestic theophany at
the giving of the Law is taken as the culmination of
His manifestations in the wilderness. Vv. 9, 10, are
The next strophe (vv. 11-14) is abrupt and disconnected,
as if echoing the hurry of battle and the tumult
of many voices on the field. The general drift is
unmistakable, but the meaning of part is the despair
of commentators. The whole scene of the conflict,
flight, and division of the spoil is flashed before us in
brief clauses, panting with excitement and blazing with
the glow of victory. "The Lord giveth the word."
That "word" may be the news which the women
immediately repeat. But it is far more vivid and truer
to the spirit of the psalm, which sees God as the only
actor in Israel's history, to regard it as the self-fulfilling
decree which scatters the enemy. This battle is the
Lord's. There is no description of conflict. But one
mighty word is hurled from heaven, like a thunder-clap
(the phrase resembles that employed so often, "the
Lord gave His voice," which frequently means thunder-peals),
Vv. 13, 14, are among the hardest in the Psalter.
The separate clauses offer no great difficulties, but the
connection is enigmatical indeed. "Will (lit. if) ye lie
among the sheepfolds?" comes from Deborah's song
(
Ver. 14 is even harder than the preceding. What
does "in it" refer to? Is the second clause metaphor,
requiring to be eked out with "It is like as when"?
If figure, what does it mean? One is inclined to say
with Baethgen, at the end of his comment on the words,
"After all this, I can only confess that I do not understand
the verse." Salmon was an inconsiderable hill
in Central Palestine, deriving its name (Shady), as is
probable, from forests on its sides. Many commentators
look to that characteristic for explanation of the riddle.
Snow on the dark hill would show very white. So after
the defeat the bleached bones of the slain, or, as others,
their glittering armour, would cover the land. Others
take the point of comparison to be the change from
trouble to joy which follows the foe's defeat, and is
likened to the change of the dark hillside to a gleaming
snow-field. Hupfeld still follows Herder in connecting
the verse with the reproach which he finds in
the former one, and seeing in the words "It snowed on
Salmon" the ground of the recreants' disinclination to
leave the sheepfolds—namely, that it was bad weather,
and that, if snow lay on Salmon in the south, it would
be worse in the north, where the campaign was going
on! He acknowledges that this explanation requires
"a good deal of acuteness to discover," and says that
the only alternative to accepting it, provisionally, at all
events, is to give up the hope of any solution. Cheyne
follows Bickell in supposing that part of the text has
dropped out, and proposes an additional clause at the
beginning of the verse and an expansion of the last
clause, arriving at this result: "[For full is our land of
The battle is over, and now the Conqueror enters
His palace-temple. The third strophe soars with its
theme, describing His triumphal entry thither and permanent
abiding there. The long years between the
conquest of Canaan and the establishment of the ark
on Zion dwindle to a span; for God's enthronement
there was in one view the purpose of the conquest,
which was incomplete till that was effected. There is no
need to suppose any reference in the mention of Bashan
to the victories over Og, its ancient king. The noble
figure needs no historic allusion to explain it. These
towering heights beyond Jordan had once in many places
been seats of idol worship. They are emblems of the
world's power. No light rests upon them, lofty though
they are, like that which glorifies the insignificant top
of Zion. They may well look enviously across the
Jordan to the hill which God has desired for His abode.
His triumphal procession is not composed of earthly
warriors, for none such had appeared in the battle.
He had conquered, not by employing human hands,
but by His own "bright-harnessed angels." They now
The "height" to which ver. 18 triumphantly proclaims
that God has gone up, can only be Zion. To take it as
meaning the heavenly sanctuary, as in
In such anticipations the psalm is Messianic, inasmuch
as these are only fulfilled in the dominion of Jesus.
Paul's quotation of this verse in
The rapturous emphasis with which this psalm celebrates God's entrance into His sanctuary is most appropriate to Davidic times.
The psalm reaches its climax in God's enthronement on Zion. Its subsequent strophes set forth the results thereof. The first of these, the fifth of the psalm (vv. 19-23), suddenly drops from strains of exultation to a plaintive note, and then again as suddenly breaks out into stern rejoicing over the ruin of the foe. There is wonderful depth of insight and tenderness in laying side by side the two thoughts of God, that He sits on high as conqueror, and that He daily bears our burdens, or perhaps bears us as a shepherd might his lambs.
Truly a Divine use for Divine might! To such
lowly offices of continual individualising care will the
Master of many legions stoop, reaching out from amid
their innumerable myriads to sustain a poor weak man
stumbling under a load too great for him. Israel had
been delivered by a high hand, but still was burdened.
The psalmist has been recalling the deeds of old, and
It is but for a moment, and what follows is startlingly different. Israel's escape from death is secured by the destruction of the enemy, and in it the psalmist has joy. He pictures the hand that sustained him and his fellows so tenderly, shattering the heads of the rebellious. These are described as long-haired, an emblem of strength and insolence which one is almost tempted to connect with Absalom; and the same idea of determined and flaunting sin is conveyed by the expression "goes on in his guiltinesses." There will be such rebels, even though the house of God is open for them to dwell in, and there can be but one end for such. If they do not submit, they will be crushed. The psalmist is as sure of that as of God's gentleness; and his two clauses do state the alternative that every man has to face—either to let God bear his burden or to be smitten by Him.
Vv. 22, 23, give a terrible picture of the end of the
rebels. The psalmist hears the voice of the Lord promising
to bring some unnamed fugitives from Bashan
and the depths of the sea in order that they may be
slain, and that he (or Israel) may bathe his foot in their
blood, and his dogs may lick it, as they did Ahab's.
Who are to be brought back? Some have thought that
the promise referred to Israel, but it is more natural to
apply it to the flying foe. There is no reference to
Bashan either as the kingdom of an ancient enemy
or as envying Zion (ver. 15). But the high land of
Bashan in the east and the depths of the sea to the
west are taken (cf.
The existing text is probably to be amended by the
change of one letter in the verb, so as to read "shall
wash" or bathe, as in
There is, no doubt, a legitimate Christian joy in the fall of opposition to Christ's kingdom, and the purest benevolence has sometimes a right to be glad when hoary oppressions are swept away and their victims set free; but such rejoicing is not after the Christian law unless it is mingled with pity, of which the psalm has no trace.
The next strophe (vv. 24-27) is by some regarded
as resuming the description of the procession, which
is supposed to have been interrupted by the preceding
A more important question is the reason for the selection of the four tribes named. The mention of Benjamin and Judah is natural; but why are Zebulun and Naphtali the only representatives of the other tribes? The defenders of a late date answer, as has been already noticed, Because in the late period when the psalm was written, Galilee and Judæa "formed the two orthodox provinces." The objection to this is that in the post-exilic period there were no distinct tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, and no princes to rule.
The mention of these tribes as sharing in the procession to the sanctuary on Zion would have been impossible during the period of the northern kingdom. If, then, these two periods are excluded, what is left but the Davidic? The fact seems to be that we have here another glance at Deborah's song, in which the daring valour of these two tribes is set in contrast with the sluggish cowardice of Reuben and the other northern ones. Those who had done their part in the wars of the Lord now go up in triumph to His house. That is the reward of God's faithful soldiers.
The next strophe (vv. 28-31) is the prayer of the
procession. It falls into two parts of two verses each,
of which the former verse is petition, and the latter
Ver. 30 c is extremely obscure. Baethgen roundly
says, "The meaning of the words can no longer be
ascertained, and in all probability they are corrupt."
The first word is a participle, which is variously taken
as meaning "casting oneself to the ground" (i.e., in
submission), and "trampling to the ground." It is
also variously referred to the nations and their leaders
spoken of in the previous verse, and to God. In the
former case it would describe their attitude of submission
in consequence of "rebuke"; in the latter, God's
subjugation of them. The slightest change would
make the word an imperative, thus bringing it into
line with "rebuke"; but, even without this, the reference
to God is apparently to be preferred. The
structure of the strophe which, in the first verse of
each pair, seems to put petitions and to confine its
descriptions of the resulting subjugation of the enemy
to the second verse in each case, favours the latter
interpretation. The next words are also disputed.
One rendering is, "with bars of silver"; another,
One verse then tells what the result of that will be. "Great ones" shall come from the land of the beast of the reeds, and Ethiopia shall make haste to stretch out tribute-bearing hands to God. The vision of a world subjugated and loving its subjugation is rising before the poet. That is the end of the ways of God with Israel. So deeply had this psalmist been led into comprehension of the Divine purpose; so clearly was he given to see the future, "and all the wonder that should be."
Therefore he breaks forth, in the last strophe, into
invocation to all the kingdoms of the earth to sing to
God. He had sung of His majesty as of old Jehovah
1 Save me, O God;
For the waters have come in even to [my] soul.
2 I am sunk in the mud of an abyss, without standing-ground
I am come into depths of waters, and a flood has overwhelmed me.
3 I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched,
My eyes fail whilst I wait for my God.
4 More than the hairs of my head are they who hate me without provocation.
Strong are my destroyers, my enemies wrongfully
What I did not rob, then I must restore.
5 O God, Thou, Thou knowest my folly,
And my guiltinesses are not hidden from Thee.
6 Let not those who wait for Thee be put to shame through me, Lord, Jehovah of hosts:
Let not those be confounded through me who seek Thee, O God of Israel.
7 For Thy sake have I borne reproach;
Confusion has covered my face.
8 I have become a stranger to my brothers,
And an alien to my mother's sons.
9 For zeal for Thine house has consumed me,
And the reproaches of those that reproach Thee have fallen upon me.
10 And I wept, in fasting my soul [wept];
And that became [matter of] reproaches to me.
11 Also I made sackcloth my clothing;
And I became to them a proverb.
12 They who sit at the gate talk of me,
And the songs of the quaffers of strong drink [are about me].
13 But as for me, my prayer is unto Thee, Jehovah, in a time of favour,
O God, in the greatness of Thy loving-kindness,
14 Deliver me from [the] mire, that I sink not,
Rescue me from those who hate me, and from depths of waters.
15 Let not the flood of waters overwhelm me,
And let not the abyss swallow me,
And let not [the] pit close her mouth over me.
16 Answer me, Jehovah; for Thy loving-kindness is good:
In the multitude of Thy compassions turn toward me.
17 And hide not Thy face from Thy servant,
For I am in straits; answer me speedily.
18 Draw near to my soul, redeem it,
Because of my enemies set me free.
19 Thou, Thou knowest my reproach, and my shame, and my confusion.
Before Thee are all my adversaries.
20 Reproach has broken my heart; and I am sick unto death,
And I looked for pitying, and there was none,
And for comforters, and found none.
21 But they gave me gall for my food,
And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
22 Let their table become before them a snare,
And to them in their peacefulness, [let it become] a trap.
23 Darkened be their eyes, that they see not,
And make their loins continually to quake.
24 Pour out upon them Thine indignation,
And let the glow of Thy wrath overtake them.
25 May their encampment be desolate!
In their tents may there be no dweller!
26 For him whom Thou, Thou hast smitten, they persecute,
And they tell of the pain of Thy wounded ones.
27 Add iniquity to their iniquity,
And let them not come into Thy righteousness.
28 Let them be blotted out of the book of the living,
And let them not be inscribed with the righteous.
29 But as for me, I am afflicted and pained,
Let Thy salvation, O God, set me on high.
30 I will praise the name of God in a song,
And I will magnify it with thanksgiving.
31 And it shall please Jehovah more than an ox,
A bullock horned and hoofed.
32 The afflicted see it; they shall rejoice,
33 For Jehovah listens to the needy,
And His captives He does not despise.
34 Let heaven and earth praise Him,
The seas, and all that moves in them.
35 For God will save Zion, and build the cities of Judah,
And they shall dwell there, and possess it.
36 And the seed of His servants shall inherit it,
And those who love His name shall abide therein.
It falls into two equal parts (vv. 1-18 and 19-36).
In the former part three turns of thought or feeling
may be traced: vv. 1-6 being mainly a cry for Divine
help, with plaintive spreading out of the psalmist's
extremity of need; vv. 7-12 basing the prayer on
the fact that his sufferings flow from his religion;
and vv. 13-18 being a stream of petitions for deliverance,
with continuous allusion to the description of
his trials in vv. 1-6. The second part (vv. 19-36)
begins with renewed description of the psalmist's
affliction (vv. 19-21), and thence passes to invocation
of God's justice on his foes (vv. 22-28), which takes
the place of the direct petitions for deliverance in the
The numerous citations of this psalm in the New Testament have led many commentators to maintain its directly Messianic character. But its confessions of sin and imprecations of vengeance are equally incompatible with that view. It is Messianic as typical rather than as prophetic, exhibiting a history, whether of king, prophet, righteous man, or personified nation, in which the same principles are at work as are manifest in their supreme energy and highest form in the Prince of righteous sufferers. But the correspondence of such a detail as giving gall and vinegar, with the history of Jesus, carries us beyond the region of types, and is a witness that God's Spirit shaped the utterances of the psalmist for a purpose unknown to himself, and worked in like manner on the rude soldiers, whose clumsy mockery and clumsy kindness fulfilled ancient words. There is surely something more here than coincidence or similarity between the experience of one righteous sufferer and another. If Jesus cried "I thirst" in order to bring about the "fulfilment" of one verse of our psalm, His doing so is of a piece with some other acts of His which were distinct claims to be the Messiah of prophecy; but His wish could not influence the soldiers to fulfil the psalm.
The first note is petition and spreading out of the
piteous story of the psalmist's need. The burdened
heart finds some ease in describing how heavy its
burden is, and the devout heart receives some foretaste
of longed-for help in the act of telling God how sorely
The same experience, in forms varying according to the spirit of the times, is realised still in all who have the mind of Christ in them. As long as the world is a world, it will have some contempt mingling with its constrained respect for goodness, some hostility, now expressed by light shafts of mockery and ridicule, now by heavier and more hurtful missiles, for Christ's true servants. The ancient "Woe" for those of whom "all men speak well" is in force to-day. The "hatred" is "without a cause," in so far as its cherishers have received no hurt, and its objects desire only their enemies' good; but its cause lies deep in the irreconcilable antagonism of life-principles and aims between those who follow Christ and those who do not.
The psalmist had to bear unjust charges, and to make restitution of what he had never taken. Causeless hatred justified itself by false accusations, and innocence had but to bear silently and to save life at the expense of being robbed in the name of justice.
He turns from enemies to God. But his profession
of innocence assumes a touching and unusual form.
He does not, as might be expected, say, "Thou knowest
my guiltlessness," but, "Thou knowest my foolishness."
A true heart, while conscious of innocence in regard
In vv. 7-12 the prayer for deliverance is urged on
the ground that the singer's sufferings are the result
of his devotion.
The last division of this first part (vv. 13-18) begins
by setting in strong contrast the psalmist's prayer and
the drunkard's song. He is sure that his cry will
be heard, and so he calls the present time "a time of
favour," and appeals, as often in the Psalter, to the
multitude of God's loving-kindnesses and the faithfulness
of His promise of salvation. Such a pleading
with God on the ground of His manifested character
is heard in vv. 13, 16, thus inclosing, as it were,
the prayer for deliverance in a wrapping of reminders
to God of His own name. The petitions here echo
the description of peril in the former part—mire and
watery depths—and add another kindred image in that
of the "pit shutting her mouth" over the suppliant.
He is plunged in a deep dungeon, well-shaped; and
if a stone is rolled on to its opening, his last gleam
The second part of the psalm (ver. 19 to end) has, like
the former, three main divisions. The first of these,
like vv. 1-6, is mainly a renewed spreading before God
of the psalmist's trouble (vv. 19-21). Rooted sorrows
are not plucked up by one effort. This recrudescence
of fear breaking in upon the newly won serenity of
faith is true to nature. On some parts of our coasts,
where a narrow outlet hinders the free run of the tide,
a second high water follows the first after an hour or
so; and often a similar bar to the flowing away of fears
brings them back in full rush after they had begun to
sink. The psalmist had appealed to God's knowledge
of His "foolishness" as indorsing his protestations of
innocence towards men. He now (ver. 19) appeals
to His knowledge of his distresses, as indorsing his
pitiful plaints. His soul is too deeply moved now to
use metaphors. He speaks no more of mire and flood,
but we hear the moan of a broken heart, and that wail
which sounds sad across the centuries and wakes echoes
in many solitary hearts. The psalmist's eyes had failed,
while he looked upwards for a God whose coming
seemed slow; but they had looked yet more wearily
and vainly for human pity and comforters, and found
But the immediately succeeding section warns us
against pushing the Messianic character of the psalm
too far, for these fearful imprecations cannot have any
analogies in Christ's words (vv. 22-28). The form of the
wish in "Let their table become a snare" is explained
by remembering that the Eastern table was often a
The climax of all these maledictions is that awful wish that the persecutors may be blotted out of the book of life or of the living. True, the high New Testament conception of that book, according to which it is the burgess-roll of the citizens of the New Jerusalem, the possessors of eternal life, does not plainly belong to it in Old Testament usage, in which it means apparently the register of those living on earth. But to blot names therefrom is not only to kill, but to exclude from the national community, and so from all the privileges of the people of God. The psalmist desires for his foes the accumulation of all the ills that flesh is heir to, the extirpation of their families, and their absolute exclusion from the company of the living and the righteous. It is impossible to bring such utterances into harmony with the teachings of Jesus, and the attempt to vindicate them ignores plain facts and does violence to plain words. Better far to let them stand as a monument of the earlier stage of God's progressive revelation, and discern clearly the advance which Christian ethics has made on them.
The psalm ends with glad anticipations of deliverance and vows of thanksgiving. The psalmist is sure that God's salvation will lift him high above his enemies, and as sure that then he will be as grateful as he is now earnest in prayer, and surest of all that his thankful voice will sound sweeter in God's ear than any sacrifice would smell in His nostrils. There is no contempt of sacrifices expressed in "horned and hoofed," but simply the idea of maturity which fits the animal to be offered.
The single voice of praise will be caught up, the
singer thinks, by a great chorus of those who would
have been struck dumb with confusion if his prayer
had not been answered (ver. 6), and who, in like
manner, are gladdened by seeing his deliverance. The
grace bestowed on one brings thanksgivings from
many, which redound to the glory of God. The
sudden transition in ver. 32 b to direct address to the
seekers after God, as if they stood beside the solitary
singer, gives vividness to the anticipation. The insertion
of "behold" is warranted, and tells what revives
the beholders' hearts. The seekers after God feel
the pulse of a quicker life throbbing, when they see
the wonders wrought through prayer. The singer's
thoughts go beyond his own deliverance to that of
Israel. "His captives" is most naturally understood
as referring to the exiled nation. And this wider manifestation
of God's restoring power will evoke praise
from a wider circle, even from heaven, earth, and sea.
The circumstances contemplated in vv. 33-36 are
evidently those of a captivity. God's people are in
bondage, the cities of Judah are in ruins, the inhabitants
scattered far from their homes. The only reason
for taking the closing verses as being a liturgical
Italics show variations from
1 O God, [be pleased] to deliver me,
Jehovah, hasten to my help.
2 Shamed and put to the blush be the seekers after my soul!
Turned back and dishonoured be they who delight in my calamity!
3 Let them turn back by reason of their shame who say, Oho! Oho!
4 Joyful and glad in Thee be all who seek Thee!
And "God be magnified" may they ever say who love Thy salvation!
5 But as for me, I am afflicted and needy;
O God, hasten to me:
My help and my deliverer art Thou;
Jehovah, delay not.
Other changes are of little moment. The principal
are in vv. 3 and 5. In the former the vehement wish
that the psalmist's mockers may be paralysed with shame
Hupfeld holds that this psalm is the original, and
1 In Thee, Jehovah, do I take refuge,
Let me not be put to shame for ever.
2 In Thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me,
Bend Thine ear and save me.
3 Be to me for a rock of habitation to go to continually:
Thou hast commanded to save me,
For my rock and my fortress art Thou.
4 My God, rescue me from the hand of the wicked,
From the fist of the evil-doer and the violent man.
5 For Thou [art] my hope,
O Lord Jehovah, [Thou art] my trust from my youth.
6 On Thee have I been stayed from the womb,
From my mother's bowels Thou hast been my protector:
Of Thee is my praise continually.
7 As a wonder am I become to many,
But Thou art my refuge—a strong one.
8 My mouth is filled with Thy praise,
All the day with Thine honour.
9 Cast me not away in the time of old age,
When my strength fails, forsake me not.
10 For mine enemies speak concerning me,
And the watchers of my soul consult together,
11 Saying, God has left him,
Chase and seize him; for there is no deliverer.
12 O God, be not far from me,
My God, haste to my help.
13 Ashamed, confounded, be the adversaries of my soul,
Covered with reproach and confusion be those who seek my hurt.
14 But as for me, continually will I hope,
And add to all Thy praise.
15 My mouth shall recount Thy righteousness,
All the day Thy salvation,
16 I will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord Jehovah,
I will celebrate Thy righteousness, [even] Thine only.
17 O God, Thou hast taught me from my youth,
And up till now I declare Thy wonders.
18 And even to old age and grey hairs,
O God, forsake me not,
Till I declare Thine arm to [the next] generation,
To all who shall come Thy power.
19 And Thy righteousness, O God, [reaches] to the height.
O Thou who hast done great things,
Who is like Thee?
20 Thou who hast made us see straits many and sore,
Thou wilt revive us again,
And from the abysses of the earth will bring us up again.
21 Thou wilt increase my greatness,
And wilt turn to comfort me.
22 Also I will thank Thee with the lyre, [even] Thy troth, my God,
I will harp unto Thee with the harp, Thou Holy One of Israel.
23 My lips shall sing aloud when I harp unto Thee,
And my soul, which Thou hast redeemed.
24 Also my tongue shall all the day muse on Thy righteousness,
For shamed, for put to the blush, are they that seek my hurt.
| 1 In Thee, Jehovah, do I take refuge; let me not be ashamed for ever: In Thy righteousness rescue me. 2 a Bend Thine ear to me; deliver me speedily. |
1 In Thee, Jehovah, do I take refuge: Let me not be put to shame for ever. 2 In Thy righteousness deliver me and rescue me: Bend Thine ear and save me. |
The two verbs, which in the former psalm are in separate clauses ("deliver" and "rescue"), are here brought together. "Speedily" is omitted, and "save" is substituted for "deliver," which has been drawn into the preceding clause. Obviously no difference of meaning is intended to be conveyed, and the changes look very like the inaccuracies of memoriter quotations. The next variation is as follows:—
| 2 b Be to me for a strong rock, for a house of defence to save me. 3 For my rock and my fortress art Thou. |
3 Be to me for a rock of habitation to go to continually: Thou hast commanded to save me; For my rock and my fortress art Thou. |
The difference between "a strong rock" and "rock
of habitation" is but one letter. That between "for
a house of defence" and "to go to continually: Thou
hast commanded" is extremely slight, as Baethgen has
well shown. Possibly both of these variations are due
to textual corruption, but more probably this psalmist
intentionally altered the words of an older psalm.
Most of the old versions have the existing text, but
the LXX. seems to have read the Hebrew here as in
Vv. 5, 6, are a similar variation of
The psalmist has been "a wonder" to many spectators, either in the sense that they have gazed astonished at God's goodness, or, as accords better with the adversative character of the next clause ("But Thou art my refuge"), that his sufferings have been unexampled. Both ideas may well be combined, for the life of every man, if rightly studied, is full of miracles both of mercy and judgment. If the psalm is the voice of an individual, the natural conclusion from such words is that his life was conspicuous; but it is obvious that the national reference is appropriate here.
On this thankful retrospect of life-long help and life-long trust the psalm builds a prayer for future protection from eager enemies, who think that the charmed life is vulnerable at last.
Vv. 9-13 rise to a height of emotion above the level of the rest of the psalm. On one hypothesis, we have in them the cry of an old man, whose strength diminishes as his dangers increase. Something undisclosed in his circumstances gave colour to the greedy hopes of his enemies. Often prosperous careers are overclouded at the end, and the piteous spectacle is seen of age overtaken by tempests which its feebleness cannot resist, and which are all the worse to face because of the calms preceding them. On the national hypothesis, the psalm is the prayer of Israel at a late stage of its history, from which it looks back to the miracles of old, and then to the ring of enemies rejoicing over its apparent weakness, and then upwards to the Eternal Helper.
Vv. 12, 13, are woven out of other psalms. 12 a, "Be
not far from me," is found in xxii. 11, 19; xxxv. 22;
xxxviii. 21, etc. "Haste to my help" is found in
xxxviii. 22; xl. 13 (lxx. 1). For ver. 13 compare
The second part goes over substantially the same ground, but with lighter heart. The confidence of deliverance is more vivid, and it, as well as the vow of praise following thereon, bulk larger. The singer has thinned away his anxieties by speaking them to God, and has by the same process solidified his faith. Aged eyes should see God, the helper, more clearly when earth begins to look grey and dim. The forward look of such finds little to stay it on this side of heaven. As there seems less and less to hope for here, there should be more and more there. Youth is the time for buoyant anticipation, according to the world's notions, but age may have far brighter lights ahead than youth had leisure to see. "I will hope always" becomes sublime from aged lips, which are so often shaped to say, "I have nothing left to hope for now."
This psalmist's words may well be a pattern for old men, who need fear no failure of buoyancy, nor any collapse of gladness, if they will fix their thoughts where this singer did his. Other subjects of thought and speech will pall and run dry; but he whose theme is God's righteousness and the salvation that flows from it will never lack materials for animating meditation and grateful praise. "I know not the numbers thereof." It is something to have fast hold of an inexhaustible subject. It will keep an old man young.
The psalmist recognises his task, which is also his
joy, to declare God's wondrous works, and prays for
God's help till he has discharged it. The consciousness
of a vocation to speak to later generations
inspires him, and assures him that he is immortal till
his work is done. His anticipations have been fulfilled
Ver. 20, with its sudden transition to the plural, may simply show that the singer passes out from individual contemplation to the consciousness of the multitude of fellow-sufferers and fellow-participants in God's mercy. Such transition is natural; for the most private passages of a good man's communion with God are swift to bring up the thought of others like-minded and similarly blessed. "Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising." Every solo swells into a chorus. Again the song returns to "my" and "me," the confidence of the single soul being reinvigorated by the thought of sharers in blessing.
So all ends with the certainty of, and the vow of praise for, deliverances already realised in faith, though not in fact. But the imitative character of the psalm is maintained even in this last triumphant vow; for ver. 24 a is almost identical with xxxv. 28; and b, as has been already pointed out, is copied from several other psalms. But imitative words are none the less sincere; and new thankfulness may be run into old moulds without detriment to its acceptableness to God and preciousness to men.
1 O God, give Thy judgments to the king,
And Thy righteousness to the king's son.
2 May he judge Thy people with righteousness,
And Thine afflicted with judgment!
3 May the mountains bring forth peace to the people,
And the hills, through righteousness!
4 May he judge the afflicted of the people,
Save the children of the needy,
And crush the oppressor!
5 May they fear Thee as long as the sun shines,
And as long as the moon shows her face, generation after generation!
6 May he come down like rain upon mown pasture,
Like showers—a heavy downpour on the earth!
7 May the righteous flourish in his days,
And abundance of peace, till there be no more a moon!
8 May he have dominion from sea to sea,
And from the River to the ends of the earth!
9 Before him shall the desert peoples bow;
And his enemies shall lick the dust.
10 The kings of Tarshish and the isles shall bring tribute:
The kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
11 And all kings shall fall down before him:
All nations shall serve him.
12 For he shall deliver the needy when he cries,
And the afflicted, and him who has no helper.
13 He shall spare the weak and needy,
And the souls of the needy shall he save.
14 From oppression and from violence he shall ransom their soul;
15 So that he lives and gives to him of the gold of Sheba,
And prays for him continually,
Blesses him all the day.
16 May there be abundance of corn in the earth on the top of the mountains!
May its fruit rustle like Lebanon!
And may [men] spring from the city like grass of the earth!
17 May his name last for ever!
May his name send forth shoots as long as the sun shines,
And may men bless themselves in him,
May all nations pronounce him blessed!
18 Blessed be Jehovah, God, the God of Israel,
Who only doeth wondrous works,
19 And blessed be His glorious name for ever,
And let the whole earth be filled with His glory!
Amen, and Amen.
20 The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.
The psalm is not properly a prediction, but a prayer. There is some divergence of opinion as to the proper rendering of the principal verbs,—some, as the A.V. and R.V. (text), taking them as uniformly futures, which is manifestly wrong; some taking them as expressions of wish throughout, which is also questionable; and others recognising pure futures intermingled with petitions, which seems best. The boundaries of the two are difficult to settle, just because the petitions are so confident that they are all but predictions, and the two melt into each other in the singer's mind. The flow of thought is simple. The psalmist's prayers are broadly massed. In vv. 1-4 he prays for the foundation of the king's reign in righteousness, which will bring peace; in vv. 5-7 for its perpetuity, and in vv. 8-11 for its universality; while in vv. 12-15 the ground of both these characteristics is laid in the king's becoming the champion of the oppressed. A final prayer for the increase of his people and the perpetuity and world-wide glory of his name concludes the psalm, to which are appended in vv. 18-20 a doxology, closing the Second Book of the Psalter.
The first petitions of the psalm all ask for one thing
for the king—namely, that he should give righteous
judgment. They reflect the antique conception of a
king as the fountain of justice, himself making and
administering law and giving decisions. Thrice in
these four verses does "righteousness" occur as the
foundation attribute of an ideal king. Caprice, self-interest,
and tyrannous injustice were rank in the
world's monarchies round the psalmist. Bitter experience
A special manifestation of judicial righteousness is
The perpetuity of the king's reign and of his subjects'
peace is the psalmists second aspiration (vv. 5-7).
The "Thee" of ver. 5 presents a difficulty, as it is
doubtful to whom it refers. Throughout the psalm the
king is spoken of, and never to; and if it is further
noticed that, in the preceding verses, God has been
directly addressed, and "Thy" used thrice in regard to
Him, it will appear more natural to take the reference
in ver. 5 to be to Him. The fear of God would be
diffused among the king's subjects, as a consequence
The psalmist turns for a moment from his prayer
for the perpetuity of the king's rule, to linger upon the
thought of its blessedness as set forth in the lovely
image of ver. 6. Rain upon mown grass is no blessing,
as every farmer knows; but what is meant is, not the
grass which has already been mown, but the naked
meadow from which it has been taken. It needs
drenching showers, in order to sprout again and produce
an aftermath. The poet's eye is caught by the
contrast between the bare look of the field immediately
after cutting and the rich growth that springs, as by
magic, from the yellow roots after a plentiful shower.
This king's gracious influences shall fall upon even
what seems dead, and charm forth hidden life that
will flush the plain with greenness. The psalmist
dwells on the picture, reiterating the comparison in
ver. 6 b, and using there an uncommon word, which
seems best rendered as meaning a heavy rainfall.
With such affluence of quickening powers will the
righteous king bless his people. The "Mirror for
Magistrates," which is held up in the lovely poem
in
With ver. 8 the singer takes a still loftier flight, and
prays for the universality of the king's dominion. In
that verse the form of the verb is that which expresses
desire, but in ver. 9 and following verses the verbs
may be rendered as simple futures. Confident prayers
insensibly melt into assurances of their own fulfilment.
As the psalmist pours out his petitions, they glide into
prophecies; for they are desires fashioned upon promises,
and bear, in their very earnestness, the pledge of their
realisation. As to the details of the form which the
expectation of universal dominion here takes, it need
only be noted that we have to do with a poet, not with
a geographer. We are not to treat the expressions
as if they were instructions to a boundary commission,
and to be laid down upon a map. "The sea" is probably
the Mediterranean; but what the other sea which
makes the opposite boundary may be is hard to say.
Commentators have thought of the Persian Gulf, or of
an imaginary ocean encircling the flat earth, according
to ancient ideas. But more probably the expression
is as indeterminate as the parallel one, "the ends of the
earth." In the first clause of the verse the psalmist
The triumphant swell of these anticipations passes
with wonderful pathos into gentler music, as if the
softer tones of flutes should follow trumpet blasts.
How tenderly and profoundly the psalm bases the
universality of the dominion on the pitying care and
delivering power of the King! The whole secret of
sway over men lies in that "For," which ushers in the
gracious picture of the beneficent and tender-hearted
Monarch. The world is so full of sorrow, and men are
so miserable and needy, that he who can stanch their
wounds, solace their griefs, and shelter their lives will
win their hearts and be crowned their king. Thrones
based on force are as if set on an iceberg which melts
away. There is no solid foundation for rule except
helpfulness. In the world and for a little while "they
that exercise authority are called benefactors"; but in
the long-run the terms of the sentence are inverted,
and they that are rightly called benefactors exercise
authority. The more earthly rulers approximate to this
ideal portrait, the more "broad-based upon their people's
will" and love will their thrones stand. If Israel's
kings had adhered to it, their throne would have
endured. But their failures point to Him in whom the
principle declared by the psalmist receives its most
tender illustration. The universal dominion of Jesus
Christ is based upon the fact that He "tasted death
for every man." In the Divine purpose, He has won
the right to rule men because He has died for them.
In historical realisation, He wins men's submission
The king is represented in ver. 14 as taking on
himself the office of Goel, or Kinsman-Redeemer, and
ransoming his subjects' lives from "deceit and violence."
That "their blood is precious in his eyes" is another
way of saying that they are too dear to him to be
suffered to perish. This king's treasure is the life of
his subjects. Therefore he will put forth his power
to preserve them and deliver them. The result of
such tender care and delivering love is set forth in
ver. 15, but in obscure language. The ambiguity arises
from the absence of expressed subjects for the four
verbs in the verse. Who is he who "lives"? Is the
same person the giver of the gold of Sheba, and to
whom is it given? Who prays, and for whom? And
who blesses, and whom does he bless? The plain
way of understanding the verse is to suppose that the
person spoken of in all the clauses is the same; and
then the question comes whether he is the king or the
ransomed man. Difficulties arise in carrying out either
reference through all the clauses; and hence attempts
have been made to vary the subject of the verbs.
Delitzsch, for instance, supposes that it is the ransomed
man who "lives," the king who gives to the ransomed
man gold, and the man who prays for and blesses the
king. But such an arbitrary shuttling about of the
reference of "he" and "him" is impossible. Other
attempts of a similar kind need not be noticed here.
The only satisfactory course is to take one person as
The last part of the psalm (vv. 16, 17) recurs to
petitions for the growth of the nation and the perpetual
flourishing of the king's name. The fertility of the
land and the increase of its people are the psalmist's
desires, which are also certainties, as expressed in
ver. 16. He sees in imagination the whole land
waving with abundant harvests, which reach even to
the tops of the mountains, and rustle in the summer
air, with a sound like the cedars of Lebanon, when they
move their layers of greenness to the breeze. The
word rendered above "abundance" is doubtful; but
there does not seem to be in the psalmist's mind the
contrast which he is often supposed to be expressing,
beautiful and true as it, is between the small beginnings
and the magnificent end of the kingdom on earth.
The mountains are here thought of as lofty and barren.
If waving harvests clothe their gaunt sides, how will
the vales laugh in plentiful crops! As the earth
yields her increase, so the people of the king shall be
multiplied, and from all his cities they shall spring
forth abundant as grass. That figure would bear
much expansion; for what could more beautifully set
forth rapidity of growth, close-knit community, multiplication
of units, and absorption of these in a lovely
whole, than the picture of a meadow clothed with its
grassy carpet? Such hopes had only partial fulfilment
in Israel. Nor have they had adequate fulfilment up
till now. But they lie on the horizon of the future,
and they shall one day be reached. Much that is dim
is treasured in them. There may be a renovated world,
from which the curse of barrenness has been banished.
But bright as are the poet's visions concerning the kingdom, his last gaze is fastened on its king, and he prays that his name may last for ever, and may send forth shoots as long as the sun shines in the sky. He probably meant no more than a prayer for the continual duration of the dynasty, and his conception of the name as sending forth shoots was probably that of its being perpetuated in descendants. But, as has been already noticed, the perpetuity, which he conceived of as belonging to a family and an office, really belongs to the One King, Jesus Christ, whose Name is above every name, and will blossom anew in fresh revelations of its infinite contents, not only while the sun shines, but when its fires are cold and its light quenched. The psalmist's last desire is that the ancient promise to the fathers may be fulfilled in the King, their descendant, in whom men shall bless themselves. So full of blessedness may He seem to all men, that they shall take Him for the very type of felicity, and desire to be even as He is! In men's relation to Christ the phrase assumes a deeper meaning still; and though that is not intended by the psalmist, and is not the exposition of his words, it still is true that in Christ all blessings for humanity are stored, and that therefore if men are to be truly blessed they must plunge themselves into Him, and in Him find all that they need for blessedness and nobility of life and character. If He is our supreme type of whatsoever things are fair and of good report, and if we have bowed ourselves to Him because He has delivered us from death, then we share in His life, and all His blessings are parted among us.
1 Surely God is good to Israel,
To those who are pure in heart;
2 But I—within a little of turning aside were my feet,
All but slipping were my steps.
3 For I was envious of the foolish,
When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
4 For they have no bonds [dragging them] to death,
And their body is lusty.
5 In the trouble belonging to frail mortals they have no part
And [in common] with men they are not smitten.
6 Therefore pride is their necklace;
Violence covers them as a robe.
7 Out of fat their eye flashes;
The imaginations of their heart overflow.
8 They mock and speak wickedly of oppression,
[As] from on high they speak.
9 They set in the heavens their mouth,
And their tongue stalks on the earth.
10 Therefore he turns his people thither,
And waters of abundance are drunk up by them.
11 And they say, How does God know?
And is there knowledge in the Most High?
12 Behold! these are wicked,
And, prosperous for ever, they have increased their wealth.
13 Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart,
And in innocency have washed my hands.
14 Yet have I been smitten all the day,
And my correction [came] every morning.
15 If I had said, I will speak thus,
16 When I gave thought in order to understand this,
It was too difficult in my eyes—
17 Until I went into the sanctuary of God,
And gave heed to their end.
18 Surely in slippery places Thou dost set them;
Thou castest them down to ruins.
19 How are they become a desolation in a moment,
Are ended, consumed with terrors!
20 Like a dream on awaking,
So Lord, on [Thy] arousing, Thou wilt despise their shadowy form.
21 For my heart was growing bitter,
And I was pricked [in] my reins.
22 And I, I was brutish and ignorant,
A [very] beast was I before Thee.
23 And yet I, I am continually with Thee;
Thou hast grasped [me] by my right hand
24 In Thy counsel Thou wilt guide me,
And afterwards to glory wilt "take" me.
25 Whom have I in heaven?
And, possessing Thee, I have no delight on earth.
26 [Though] my flesh and my heart fail,
The rock of my heart and my portion is God for ever.
27 For, behold, they that are far from Thee shall perish;
Thou hast destroyed every one that goes whoring from Thee.
28 But I, I—to draw near to God is good to me;
I have made in the Lord Jehovah my refuge,
That I may recount all Thy works.
The psalm falls into two divisions, in the first of which (vv. 1-14) the psalmist tells of his doubts, and, in the second (vv. 15-28), of his victory over them. The body of the psalm is divided into groups of four verses, and it has an introduction and conclusion of two verses each.
The introduction (vv. 1, 2) asserts, with an accent of
assurance, the conviction which the psalmist had all
but lost, and therefore had the more truly won. The
initial word "Surely" is an indication of his past
struggle, when the truth that God was good to Israel
had seemed so questionable. "This I have learned
by doubts; this I now hold as most sure; this I proclaim,
impugn it who list, and seem to contradict it
what may." The decisiveness of the psalmist's conviction
does not lead him to exaggeration. He does
not commit himself to the thesis that outward prosperity
attends Israel. That God is good to those who
truly bear that name is certain; but how He shows His
goodness, and who these are, the psalmist has, by his
struggles, learned to conceive of in a more spiritual
fashion than before. That goodness may be plainly
seen in sorrows, and it is only sealed to those who are
what the name of Israel imports—"pure in heart."
That such are blessed in possessing God, and that
neither are any other blessed, nor is there any other
The avowal of conquered doubts follows on this clear note of certitude. There is a tinge of shame in the emphatic "I" of ver. 2, and in the broken construction and the change of subject to "my feet" and "my steps." The psalmist looks back to that dreary time, and sees more clearly than he did, while he was caught in the toils of perplexity and doubt, how narrow had been his escape from casting away his confidence. He shudders as he remembers it; but he can do so now from the vantage-ground of tried and regained faith. How eloquently the order of thought in these two verses speaks of the complete triumph over doubt!
In the first quatrain of verses, the prosperity of the
godless, which had been the psalmist's stumbling-block,
is described. Two things are specified—physical
health, and exemption from calamity. The
former is the theme of ver. 4. Its first clause is
doubtful. The word rendered "bands" only occurs
here and in
The next group of verses (vv. 7-10) further describes
the unfeeling insolence begotten of unbroken prosperity,
and the crowd of hangers-on, admirers, and imitators
attendant on the successful wicked. "Out of fat
their eye flashes" gives a graphic picture of the fierce
glare of insolent eyes, set in well-fed faces. But
graphic as it is, it scarcely fits the context so well
as does a proposed amended reading, which by a very
small change in the word rendered "their eye" yields
the meaning "their iniquity," and takes "fat" as
equivalent to a fat, that is, an obstinate, self-confident,
or unfeeling heart. "From an unfeeling heart their
iniquity comes forth" makes a perfect parallel with
the second clause of the verse rightly rendered, "the
imaginations of their heart overflow"; and both clauses
paint the arrogant tempers and bearing of the worldlings.
Ver. 8 deals with the manifestation of these in speech.
Well-to-do wickedness delights in making suffering
goodness a butt for its coarse jeers. It does not need
much wit to do that. Clumsy jests are easy, and poverty
is fair game for vulgar wealth's ridicule. But there
is a dash of ferocity in such laughter, and such jests
The description of arrogant speech is carried on in ver. 9, which has been variously understood, as referring in a to blasphemy against God ("they set against the heavens their mouth"), and in b to slander against men; or, as in a, continuing the thought of ver. 8 b, and designating their words as spoken as if from heaven itself, and in b ascribing to their words sovereign power among men. But it is better to regard "heaven" and "earth" as the ordinary designation of the whole visible frame of things, and to take the verse as describing the self-sufficiency which gives its opinions and lays down the law about everything, and, on the other hand, the currency and influence which are accorded by the popular voice to the dicta of prosperous worldlings.
That thought prepares the way for the enigmatic
verse which follows. There are several obscure points
in it. First, the verb in the Hebrew text means turns
(transitive), which the Hebrew margin corrects into
returns (intransitive). With the former reading, "his
people" is the object of the verb, and the implied subject
is the prosperous wicked man, the change to the singular
"he" from the plural "they" of the preceding clauses
being not unusual in Hebrew. With the latter reading,
"his people" is the subject. The next question is to
whom the "people" are conceived as belonging. It is,
at first sight, natural to think of the frequent Scripture
The next group (vv. 11-14) begins with an utterance of unbelief or doubt, but it is difficult to reach certainty as to the speakers. It is very natural to refer the "they" to the last-mentioned persons—namely, the people who have been led to attach themselves to the prosperous sinners, and who, by the example of these, are led to question the reality of God's acquaintance with and moral government of human affairs. The question is, as often, in reality a denial. But "they" may have a more general sense, equivalent to our own colloquial use of it for an indefinite multitude. "They say"—that is, "the common opinion and rumour is." So here, the meaning may be, that the sight of such flushed and flourishing wickedness diffuses widespread and deep-going doubts of God's knowledge, and makes many infidels.
Ewald, Delitzsch, and others take all the verses of
this group as spoken by the followers of the ungodly;
Ver. 11 would then be a question anxiously raised by faith that was beginning to reel; ver. 12 would be a statement of the anomalous fact which staggered it; and vv. 13, 14, the complaint of the afflicted godly. The psalmist's repudiation of a share in such incipient scepticism would begin with ver. 15. There is much in favour of this view of the speakers, but against it is the psalmist's acknowledgment, in ver. 2, that his own confidence in God's moral government had been shaken, of which there is no further trace in the psalm, unless vv. 13, 14, express the conclusion which he had been tempted to draw, and which, as he proceeds to say, he had fought down. If these two verses are ascribed to him, ver. 12 is best regarded as a summary of the whole preceding part, and only ver. 11 as the utterance either of the prosperous sinner and his adherents (in which case it is a question which means denial), or as that of troubled faith (in which case it is a question that would fain be an affirmation, but has been forced unwillingly to regard the very pillars of the universe as trembling).
Vv. 15-18 tell how the psalmist strove with and
finally conquered his doubts, and saw enough of the
Silent brooding over his problem did not bring light,
as ver. 16 tells us. The more he thought over it, the
more insoluble did it seem to him. There are chambers
But faith finds a path where speculation discerns none.
The psalmist "went into the sanctuary (literally, sanctuaries)
of God," and there light streamed in on him,
in which he saw light. Not mere entrance into the
place of worship, but closer approach to the God who
dwelt there, cleared away the mists. Communion with
God solves many problems which thinking leaves unresolved.
The eye which has gazed on God is purged
for much vision besides. The disproportion between
the deserts and fortunes of good and bad men assumes
an altogether different aspect when contemplated in
the light of present communion with Him, which brings
a blessedness that makes earthly prosperity seem dross,
and earthly burdens seem feathers. Such communion,
in its seclusion from worldly agitations, enables a man
to take calmer, saner views of life, and in its enduring
blessedness reveals more clearly the transiency of the
creatural good which deceives men with the figment of
its permanence. The lesson which the psalmist learned
in the solemn stillness of the sanctuary was the end
of ungodly prosperity. That changes the aspect of the
envied position of the prosperous sinner, for his very
prosperity is seen to contribute to his downfall, as
well as to make that downfall more tragic by contrast.
His sure footing, exempt as he seemed from the
troubles and ills that flesh is heir to, was really on
a treacherous slope, like smooth sheets of rock on a
The theme of the end of the prosperous sinners is continued in the next group (vv. 19-22). In ver. 19 the psalmist seems as if standing an amazed spectator of the crash, which tumbles into chaos the solid-seeming fabric of their insolent prosperity. An exclamation breaks from his lips as he looks. And then destruction is foretold for all such, under the solemn and magnificent image of ver. 20. God has seemed to sleep, letting evil run its course; but He "rouses Himself"—that is, comes forth in judicial acts—and as a dreamer remembers his dream, which seemed so real, and smiles at its imaginary terrors or joys, so He will "despise" them, as no more solid nor lasting than phantasms of the night. The end contemplated by the psalmist is not necessarily death, but any sudden overthrow, of which there are many in the experience of the godless. Life is full of such awakings of God, both in regard to individuals and nations, which, if a man duly regards, he will find the problem of the psalm less insoluble than at first it appears. But if there are lives which, being without goodness, are also without chastisement, Death comes at last to such as God's awaking, and a very awful dissipating of earthly prosperity into a shadowy nothing.
The psalmist has no revelation here of future retribution.
His vindication of God's justice is not based
on that, but simply on the transiency of worldly
prosperity, and on its dangerous character. It is "a
slippery place," and it is sure to come to an end. It
is obvious that there are many other considerations
which have to be taken into account, in order to a
complete solution of the problem of the psalm. But
Vv. 21, 22, are generally taken as one sentence, and translated as by Delitzsch, "If my heart should grow bitter ... I should be brutish," etc.; or, as by Hupfeld, "When my heart grew bitter ... then I was as a beast," etc.; but they are better regarded as the psalmist's penitent explanation of his struggle. "Unbelieving thoughts had fermented in his mind, and a pang of passionate discontent had pierced his inmost being. But the higher self blames the lower self for such folly" (Cheyne, in loc.). His recognition that his doubts had their source, not in defect in God's providence, but in his own ignorance and hasty irritation, which took offence without cause, prepares him for the sweet, clear note of purely spiritual aspiration and fruition which follows in the next strophe.
He had all but lost his hold of God; but though
his feet had almost gone astray, his hand had been
grasped by God, and that strong hold had kept him
from utterly falling. The pledge of continual communion
with God is not our own vacillating, wayward
hearts, but God's gentle, strong clasp, which will not
let us go. Thus conscious of constant fellowship, and
feeling thrillingly God's touch in his inmost spirit, the
psalmist rises to a height of joyous assurance, far above
Such thoughts lift the psalmist to a height from
which earth's troubles show small, and as they
diminish, the perplexity arising from their distribution
diminishes in proportion. They fade away altogether,
when he feels how rich he is in possessing God. Surely
the very summit of devotional rapture is reached in
the immortal words which follow! Heaven without
A final pair of verses, answering to the introductory pair, gathers up the double truth, which the psalmist has learned to grasp more firmly by occasion of his doubts. To be absent from God is to perish. Distance from Him is separation from life. Drawing near to Him is the only good; and the psalmist has deliberately chosen it as his good, let worldly prosperity come or go as it list, or, rather, as God shall choose. By the effort of his own volition he has made God his refuge, and, safe in Him, he can bear the sorrows of the godly, and look unenvying on the fleeting prosperity of sinners, while, with insight drawn from communion, he can recount with faith and praise all God's works, and find in none of them a stumbling-block, nor fail to find in any of them material for a song of thankfulness.
1 Why, O God, hast Thou cast us off for ever?
[Why] smokes Thine anger against the flock of Thy pasture?
2 Remember Thy congregation [which] Thou didst acquire of old,
Didst redeem [to be] the tribe of Thine inheritance,
Mount Zion, on which Thou hast dwelt.
3 Lift up Thy steps to the everlasting ruins,
The enemy has marred everything in the sanctuary.
4 Thine adversaries roared in the midst of the place where Thou dost meet [us],
They set up their signs as signs.
5 They seem like one who heaves on high
Axes against a thicket of trees.
6 And now—its carved work altogether
With hatchet and hammers they break down.
7 They have set on fire Thy sanctuary,
[Rasing it] to the ground, they have profaned the dwelling-place of Thy name.
8 They have said in their heart, Let us crush them altogether.
They have burned all meeting-places of God in the land.
9 Our signs we see not,
There is no prophet any more,
And there is no one who knows how long.
10 How long, O God, shall the adversary reproach?
Shall the enemy despise Thy name for ever?
11 Why dost Thou draw back Thy hand, even Thy right hand?
From the midst of Thy bosom [pluck it and] consume [them].
12 Yet God is my king from of old,
Working salvations in the midst of the earth.
13 Thou, Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength,
14 Thou, Thou didst crush the heads of Leviathan,
That Thou mightest give him [to be] meat for a people—the desert beasts.
15 Thou, Thou didst cleave [a way for] fountain and torrent;
Thou, Thou didst dry up perennial streams.
16 Thine is day, Thine also is night,
Thou, Thou didst establish light and sun.
17 Thou, Thou didst set all the bounds of the earth;
Summer and winter, Thou, Thou didst form them.
18 Remember this—the enemy reviles Jehovah,
And a foolish people despises Thy name.
19 Give not up to the company of greed Thy turtle dove,
The company of Thine afflicted forget not for ever.
20 Look upon the covenant,
For the dark places of the land are full of habitations of violence.
21 Let not the oppressed turn back ashamed,
Let the afflicted and needy praise Thy name.
22 Rise, O God, plead Thine own cause,
Remember Thy reproach from the foolish all the day.
23 Forget not the voice of Thine adversaries,
The tumult of them which rise against Thee goes up continually.
The psalm begins with a complaining cry to God (vv. 1-3), which passes into a piteous detail of the nation's misery (vv. 4-9), whence it rises into petition (vv. 10, 11), stays trembling faith by gazing upon His past deeds of help and the wonders of His creative power (vv. 12-17), and closes with beseeching God to vindicate the honour of His own name by the deliverance of His people (vv. 18-23).
The main emphasis of the prayer in vv. 1-3 lies on the pleas which it presents, drawn from Israel's relation to God. The characteristic Asaphic name "Thy flock" stands in ver. 1, and appeals to the Shepherd, both on the ground of His tenderness and of His honour as involved in the security of the sheep. A similar appeal lies in the two words "acquire" and "redeem," in both of which the deliverance from Egypt is referred to,—the former expression suggesting the price at which the acquisition was made, as well as the obligations of ownership; and the latter, the office of the Goel, the Kinsman-Redeemer, on whom devolved the duty of obtaining satisfaction for blood. The double designations of Israel as "Thy congregation" and as "the tribe of Thine inheritance" probably point to the religious and civil aspects of the national life. The strongest plea is put last—namely, God's dwelling on Zion. For all these reasons, the psalmist asks and expects Him to come with swift footsteps to the desolations, which have endured so long that the impatience of despair blends with the cry for help, and calls them "everlasting," even while it prays that they may be built up again. The fact that the enemy of God and of His flock has marred everything in the sanctuary is enough, the psalmist thinks, to move God to action.
The same thought, that the nation's calamities are
really dishonouring to God, and therefore worthy of
His intervention, colours the whole of the description
of these in vv. 4-9. The invaders are "Thine adversaries."
It is "in the place where Thou didst meet us"
that their bestial noises, like those of lions over their
prey, echo. It is "Thy sanctuary" which they have
set on fire, "the dwelling-place of Thy name" which
they have profaned. It is "Thy meeting-places" which
The vivid description of devastation in these verses
presents some difficulties in detail, which call for brief
treatment. The "signs" in ver. 4 b may be taken as
military, such as banners or the like; but it is more in
accordance with the usage of the word to suppose them
to be religious emblems, or possibly idols, such as
Antiochus thrust upon the Jews. In vv. 5 and 6 a
change of tense represents the action described in them,
as if in progress at the moment before the singer's
eyes. "They seem" is literally "He is known" (or
makes himself known), which may refer to the invaders,
the change from plural to singular being frequent in
Hebrew; or it may be taken impersonally, = "It seems."
In either case it introduces a comparison between the
hacking and hewing by the spoilers in the Temple, and
the work of a woodman swinging on high his axe in
the forest. "And now" seems to indicate the next
step in the scene; which the psalmist picturesquely
conceives as passing before his horror-stricken sight.
The end of that ill-omened activity is that at last it
succeeds in shattering the carved work, which, in the
absence of statues, was the chief artistic glory of the
Temple. All is hewed down, as if it were no more
than so much growing timber. With ver. 7 the tenses
Vv. 10 and 11 are the kernel of the psalm, the
The psalmist's petition is next grounded on the
In ver. 15 another pregnant expression occurs, which is best filled out as above, the reference being to cleaving the rock for the flow of water, with which is contrasted in b the drying up of the Jordan. Thus the whole of the Exodus period is covered. It is noteworthy that the psalmist adduces only wonders wrought on waters, being possibly guided in his selection by the familiar poetic use of floods and seas as emblems of hostile power and unbridled insolence. From the wonders of history he passes to those of creation, and chiefly of that might by which times alternate and each constituent of the Kosmos has its appointed limits. Day and night, summer and winter, recur by God's continual operation. Is there to be no dawning for Israel's night of weeping, and no summer making glad the winter of its discontent? "Thou didst set all the bounds of the earth,"—wilt Thou not bid back this surging ocean which has transgressed its limits and filled the breadth of Thy land? All the lights in the sky, and chiefly the greatest of them, Thou didst establish,—surely Thou wilt end this eclipse in which Thy people grope.
Thus the psalmist lifts himself to the height of confident though humble prayer, with which the psalm closes, recurring to the opening tones. Its centre is, as we have seen, a double remonstrance—"How long?" and "Why?" The encircling circumference is earnest supplication, of which the keynote is "Remember" (vv. 2 and 18).
The gist of this closing prayer is the same appeal to God to defend His own honour, which we have found in the former verses. It is put in various forms here. Twice (vv. 18 and 22) God is besought to remember the reproach and contumely heaped on his name, and apparently warranted by His inaction. The claim of Israel for deliverance is based in ver. 19 upon its being "Thy turtle dove," which therefore cannot be abandoned without sullying Thy fame. The psalmist spreads the "covenant" before God, as reminding Him of His obligations under it. He asks that such deeds may be done as will give occasion to the afflicted and needy to "praise Thy name," which is being besmirched by their calamities. Finally, in wonderfully bold words, he calls on God to take up what is, after all, "His own" quarrel, and, if the cry of the afflicted does not move Him, to listen to the loud voices of those who blaspheme Him all the day. Reverent earnestness of supplication sometimes sounds like irreverence; but, "when the heart's deeps boil in earnest," God understands the meaning of what sounds strange, and recognises the profound trust in His faithfulness and love which underlies bold words.
The precise rendering of ver. 19 is very doubtful.
The word rendered above by "company" may mean
life or a living creature, or, collectively, a company of
such. It has been taken in all these meanings here,
and sometimes in one of them in the first clause, and
in another in the second, as most recently by Baethgen,
who renders "Abandon not to the beast" in a, and
"The life of thine afflicted" in b. But it must have
the same meaning in both clauses, and the form of the
word shows that it must be construed in both with
a following "of." If so, the rendering adopted above
1 We give thanks to Thee, O God, we give thanks;
And [that] Thy name is near, Thy wondrous works declare
2 "When I seize the set time,
I, I judge [in] equity.
3 Dissolved [in fear] are earth and its inhabitants:
I, I set firm its pillars. Selah.
4 I say to the fools, be not foolish:
And to the wicked, Lift not up the horn:
5 Lift not up your horn on high;
Speak not with stiff neck."
6 For not from east, nor from west,
And not from the wilderness is lifting up.
7 For God is judge:
This one He abases, and that one He lifts up.
8 For a cup is in the hands of Jehovah,
And it foams with wine; it is full of mixture,
And He pours out from it:
Yea, its dregs shall all the wicked of the earth gulp down and drink.
9 And as for me, I will declare [it] for ever,
I will harp to the God of Jacob.
10 And all the horns of the wicked will I cut off:
Exalted shall be the horns of the righteous.
The kernel of the psalm is a majestic Divine utterance, proclaiming God's judgment as at hand. The limits of that Divine word are doubtful, but it is best taken as occupying two pairs of verses (2-5). It is preceded by one verse of praise, and followed by three (6-8) of warning spoken by the psalmist, and by two (9, 10,) in which he again praises God the Judge, and stands forth as an instrument of His judicial acts.
In ver. 1, which is as a prelude to the great Voice from
heaven, we hear the nation giving thanks beforehand
for the judgment which is about to fall. The second
part of the verse is doubtful. It may be taken thus:
"And Thy name is near; they (i.e., men) declare Thy
wondrous works." So Delitzsch, who comments: The
Church "welcomes the future acts of God with fervent
thanks, and all they that belong to it declare beforehand
God's wondrous works." Several modern scholars,
among whom are Grätz, Baethgen, and Cheyne, adopt
a textual alteration which gives the reading, "They who
call upon Thy name declare," etc. But the rendering
of the A.V., which is also that of Hupfeld and Perowne,
gives a good meaning. All God's deeds in history
proclaim that He is ever at hand to help. His name
The Divine voice breaks in with majestic abruptness,
as in
Such a "set time" has arrived, as ver. 3 proceeds to
declare. Oppression and corruption have gone so far
that "the earth and its inhabitants" are as if "dissolved."
All things are rushing to ruin. The psalmist does not
distinguish between the physical and the moral here.
His figure is employed in reference to both orders,
which he regards as indissolubly connected. Possibly
he is echoing
The exact point where the Divine oracle passes into
the psalmist's own words is doubtful. Ver. 7 is evidently
his; and that verse is so closely connected
with ver. 6 that it is best to make the break at the
end of ver. 5, and to suppose that what follows is the
singer's application of the truths which he has heard.
Two renderings of ver. 6 b are possible, which, though
very different in English, turn on the minute difference
in the Hebrew of one vowel sign. The same letters
spell the Hebrew word meaning mountains and that
meaning lifting up. With one punctuation of the preceding
word "wilderness," we must translate "from the
wilderness of mountains"; with another, the two words
are less closely connected, and we must render, "from
the wilderness is lifting up." If the former rendering
is adopted, the verse is incomplete, and some phrase
And how does the prospect affect the psalmist? It moves him, first, to solemn praise—not only because God has proved Himself by these terrible things in righteousness to be the God of His people, but also because He has thereby manifested His own character as righteous and hating evil. It is no selfish nor cruel joy which stirs in devout hearts, when God comes forth in history and smites oppressing insolence. It is but a spurious benevolence which affects to recoil from the conception of a God who judges and, when needful, smites. This psalmist not only praised, but in his degree vowed to imitate.
The last verse is best understood as his declaration of his own purpose, though some commentators have proposed to transfer it to the earlier part of the psalm, regarding it as part of the Divine oracle. But it is in its right place where it stands. God's servants are His instruments in carrying out His judgments; and there is a very real sense in which all of them should seek to fight against dominant evil and to cripple the power of tyrannous godlessness.
1 Known in Judah is God,
In Israel is His name great.
2 And in Salem was His tent [pitched],
And His dwelling in Zion.
3 There He shivered the lightnings of the bow,
Shield and sword and battle. Selah.
4 Effulgent art Thou [and] glorious
From the mountains of prey [everlasting mountains?].
5 Spoiled are the stout of heart, they slumber [into] their sleep,
And none of the men of might have found their hands.
6 At Thy rebuke, O God of Jacob,
Both chariot and horse are sunk in deep sleep.
7 Thou! dread art Thou,
And who can stand before Thee, in the time of Thine anger?
8 From heaven didst Thou make judgment heard,
Earth feared and was stilled,
9 At the rising of God for judgment
To save all the afflicted of the earth. Selah.
10 For the wrath of man shall praise Thee,
[With] the residue of wraths Thou girdest Thyself.
11 Vow and pay to Jehovah your God,
Let all around Him bring presents to the Terrible One.
12 He cuts down the [lofty] spirit of princes,
A dread to the kings of the earth.
The emphatic words in the first strophe are those
which designate the scene of the Divine act. The glow
of humble pride, of wonder and thankfulness, is perceptible
in the fourfold reiteration—"in Judah, in Israel,
in Salem, in Zion"; all which names are gathered up
in the eloquent "There" of ver. 3. The true point
of view from which to regard God's acts is that they
are His Self-revelation. The reason why Israel is the
object of the acts which manifest His name is that there
He has chosen to dwell. And, since He dwells there,
the special act of judgment which the psalm celebrates
was there performed. "The lightnings of the bow"
picturesquely designate arrows, from their swift flight
and deadly impact. (Compare
The second strophe (vv. 4-6) comes closer to the
fact celebrated, and describes, with magnificent sweep,
brevity, and vividness, the death sleep of the enemy.
But, before it shows the silent corpses, it lifts one
exclamation of reverence to the God who has thus
manifested His power. The word rendered "Effulgent"
is doubtful, and by a slight transposition of letters
becomes, as in ver. 7 which begins the next strophe,
"dread." In ver. 4 b the rendering "more excellent
than," etc., yields a comparison which can scarcely be
called worthy. It is little to say of God that He is
more glorious than the enemies' "mountains of prey,"
Ver. 5 gives some support to the existing text, by its representation of the stout-hearted foe as "spoiled." They are robbed of their might, their weapons, and their life. How graphically the psalmist sets before the eyes of his readers the process of destruction from its beginning! He shows us the warriors falling asleep in the drowsiness of death. How feeble their "might" now! One vain struggle, as in the throes of death, and the hands which shot the "lightnings of the bow" against Zion are stiff for evermore. One word from the sovereign lips of the God of Jacob, and all the noise of the camp is hushed, and we look out upon a field of the dead, lying in awful stillness, dreamlessly sleeping their long slumber.
The third strophe passes from description of the destruction
of the enemy to paint its widespread results
The last strophe is mainly a summons to praise God
for His manifestation of delivering judgment. Ver. 10 is
obscure. The first clause is intelligible enough. Since
God magnifies His name by His treatment of opposing
men, who set themselves against Him, their very
foaming fury subserves His praise. That is a familiar
thought with all the Scripture writers who meditate on
God's dealings. But the second clause is hard. Whose
"wraths" are spoken of in it? God's or man's? The
change from the singular ("wrath of man") to plural
("wraths") in b makes it all but certain that God's
fulness of "wrath" is meant here. It is set over
against the finite and puny "wrath" of men, as an
ocean might be contrasted with a shallow pond. If so,
God's girding Himself with the residue of His own
wrath will mean that, after every such forth-putting of
it as the psalm has been hymning, there still remains
an unexhausted store ready to flame out if need
arise. It is a stern and terrible thought of God, but
it is solemnly true. His loving-kindness out-measures
Therefore men are summoned to vow and pay their vows; and while Israel is called to worship, the nations around, who have seen that field of the dead, are called to do homage and bring tribute to Him who, as it so solemnly shows, can cut off the breath of the highest, or can cut down their pride, as a grape-gatherer does the ripe cluster (for such is the allusion in the word "cuts down"). The last clause of the psalm, which stands somewhat disconnected from the preceding, gathers up the lessons of the tremendous event which inspired it, when it sets Him forth as to be feared by the kings of the earth.
1 [I would lift] my voice to God and cry;
[I would lift] my voice to God, that He may give ear to me.
2 In the day of my straits I sought the Lord:
My hand was stretched out in the night without ceasing;
My soul refused to be comforted.
3 [When] I remember God, I must sigh;
[When] I muse, my spirit is covered [with gloom]. Selah.
4 Thou hast held open the guards of my eyes:
I am buffeted, and cannot speak.
5 I considered the days of old,
The years of ancient times.
6 I would remember my song in the night:
In my heart I would muse,—and my spirit made anxious search.
7 Will the Lord cast off for ever?
And will He continue no more to be favourable?
8 Is His loving-kindness ended for ever?
Has His promise failed for all generations?
9 Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Or has He in anger drawn in His compassions? Selah.
10 Then I said, It is my sickness;
[But I will remember] the years of the right hand of the Most High.
11 I will celebrate the deeds of Jah;
For I will remember Thy wonders of old.
12 And I will meditate on all Thy work,
And will muse on Thy doings.
13 O God, in holiness is Thy way:
Who is a great God like God?
14 Thou, Thou art the God who doest wonders:
15 Thou hast redeemed with Thine arm Thy people,
The sons of Jacob and Joseph. Selah.
16 The waters saw Thee, O God;
The waters saw Thee, they writhed in pangs:
Yea, the abysses trembled.
17 The clouds were poured out [in] water;
The skies gave [forth] a voice:
Yea, Thine arrows went to and fro.
18 The voice of Thy thunder was in [Thy] chariot wheel;
Lightnings illumined the world:
The earth trembled and shook.
19 In the sea was Thy way,
And Thy paths in great waters,
And Thy footprints were not known.
20 Thou leadest Thy people like sheep,
By the hand of Moses and Aaron.
The psalm falls into two parts, in the former of which (vv. 1-9) deepest gloom wraps the singer's spirit, while in the latter (vv. 10-20) the clouds break. Each of these parts falls into three strophes, usually of three verses; but in the concluding strophe, consisting of five, Selah stands at the end of the first and third, and is not present at the end of the second, because it is more closely connected with the third than with the first. In like manner the first strophe of the second part (vv. 10-12) has no Selah, but the second has (vv. 13-15); the closing strophe (vv. 16-20) being thus parted off.
The psalmist's agitation colours his language, which
fluctuates in the first six verses between expressions of
resolve or desire (vv. 1, 3, 6) and simple statement of
fact (vv. 2, 4, 5). He has prayed long and earnestly,
and nothing has been laid in answer on his outstretched
palm. Therefore his cry has died down into a sigh.
He fain would lift his voice to God, but dark thoughts
make him dumb for supplication, and eloquent only in
self-pitying monologue. A man must have waded
through like depths to understand this pathetic bewilderment
of spirit. They who glide smoothly over a sunlit
surface of sea little know the terrors of sinking, with
choked lungs, into the abyss. A little experience will
go further than much learning in penetrating the
meaning of these moanings of lamed faith. They begin
with an elliptical phrase, which, in its fragmentary
character, reveals the psalmist's discomposure. "My
In the next strophe of three verses (vv. 4-6) the
The comparison of present national evils with former happiness naturally suggests such questions. Obviously, the casting off spoken of in ver. 7 is that of the nation, and hence its mention confirms the view that the psalmist is suffering under public calamities. All the questions mean substantially one thing—has God changed? They are not, as some questions are, the strongest mode of asserting their negative; nor are they, like others, a more than half assertion of their affirmative; but they are what they purport to be—the anxious interrogations of an afflicted man, who would fain be sure that God is the same as ever, but is staggered by the dismal contrast of Now and Then. He faces with trembling the terrible possibilities, and, however his language may seem to regard failure of resources or fickleness of purpose or limitations in long-suffering as conceivable in God, his doubts are better put into plain speech than lying diffused and darkening, like poisonous mists, in his heart. A thought, be it good or bad, can be dealt with when it is made articulate. Formulating vague conceptions is like cutting a channel in a bog for the water to run. One gets it together in manageable shape, and the soil is drained. So the end of the despondent half of the psalm is marked by the bringing to distinct speech of the suspicions which floated in the singer's mind and made him miserable. The Selah bids us dwell on the questions, so as to realise their gravity and prepare ourselves for their answer.
The second part begins in ver. 10 with an obscure
and much-commented-on verse, of which two explanations
are possible, depending mainly on the meanings
of the two words "sickness" and "years." The former
word may mean "my wounding" or "my sickness."
The latter is by many commentators taken to be an
infinitive verb, with the signification to be changed, and
by others to be a plural noun meaning "years,"
as in ver. 6. Neglecting some minor differences, we
may say that those who understand the word to mean
being changed explain the whole thus: "This is my
wound (misery, sorrow), that the right hand of the
Most High has changed." So the old versions, and
Hupfeld, Perowne, and Baethgen. But the use of the
word in ver. 6 for "years" creates a strong presumption
that its sense is the same here. As to the other
word, its force is best seen by reference to a closely
parallel passage in
The remainder of the psalm holds fast by that
thought of the great deeds of God in the past. It is
a signal example of how the same facts remembered
may depress or gladden, according to the point of view
from which they are regarded. We can elect whether
memory shall nourish despondency or gladness. Yet
the alternative is not altogether a matter of choice; for
the only people to whom "remembering happier things"
need not be "a sorrow's crown of sorrow" are those
who see God in the past, and so are sure that every joy
that was and is not shall yet again be, in more thrilling
and lasting form. If He shines out on us from the
east that we have left behind, His brightness will paint
the western sky towards which we travel. Beneath
confidence in the perpetuity of past blessings lies confidence
in the eternity of God. The "years of the
right hand of the Most High" answer all questions as
to His change of purpose or of disposition, and supply
the only firm foundation for calm assurance of the
The strophe in vv. 13-15 fixes on the one great
redeeming act of the Exodus as the pledge of future
deeds of a like kind, as need requires. The language
is deeply tinged with reminiscences of
The final strophe differs from the others in structure.
It contains five verses instead of three, and the verses
are (with the exception of the last) composed of three
clauses each instead of two. Some commentators have
supposed that vv. 16-19 are an addition to the original
psalm, and think that they do not cohere well with
the preceding. This view denies that there is any
allusion in the closing verses to the passage of the Red
Sea, and takes the whole as simply a description of a
The picture in the psalm is most striking. The
continuous short clauses crash and flash like the thunders
and lightnings. That energetic metaphor of the
waters writhing as if panic-struck is more violent than
Western taste approves, but its emotional vigour as a
rendering of the fact is unmistakable. "Thine arrows
went to and fro" is a very imperfect transcript of the
Hebrew, which suggests the swift zigzag of the fierce
flashes. In ver. 18 the last word offers some difficulty.
It literally means a wheel, and is apparently best rendered
as above, the thunder being poetically conceived of as
the sound of the rolling wheels of God's chariot. There
are several coincidences between vv. 16-19 of the psalm
The last verse returns to the two-claused structure
of the earlier part. It comes in lovely contrast with
the majestic and terrible picture preceding, like the
wonderful setting forth of the purpose of the other
theophany in
1 Give ear, my people, to my law,
Bow your ear to the sayings of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth in a parable,
I will utter riddles from the ancient days,
3 What we have heard and known
And our fathers have told us,
4 We will not hide from their sons,
Recounting to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah,
And His might and the wonders that He has done.
5 For He established a testimony in Jacob,
And appointed a law in Israel,
Which He commanded our fathers
To make known to their children;
6 In order that the generation to come might know,
The children who should be born,
[Who] should rise up and tell to their children,
7 That they might place their confidence in God,
And not forget the deeds of God,
But keep His commandments;
8 And not be as their fathers,
A stubborn and rebellious generation,
A generation that did not make its heart steadfast,
And whose spirit was not faithful towards God.
9 The children of Ephraim, bearing [and] drawing bows,
Turned back in the day of onset.
10 They kept not the covenant of God,
And in His law they refused to walk,
11 And they forgot His doings,
And the wonders which He had showed them.
12 Before their fathers He did marvels,
13 He cleft the sea and let them pass through,
And He reared up the waters like a heap of corn,
14 And He guided them in a cloud by day
And all night in a fiery light.
15 He cleft rocks in the wilderness,
And gave them drink abundantly, as [from] ocean depths.
16 And He brought forth streams from the cliff,
And made waters to flow down like rivers.
17 But they went on to sin yet more against Him,
To rebel against the Most High in the desert.
18 And they tempted God in their heart,
In asking meat after their desire.
19 And they spoke against God, they said,
"Is God able to spread a table in the wilderness?
20 Behold, He struck a rock, and waters gushed forth,
And torrents flowed out.
Is He able to give bread also?
Or will He prepare flesh for His people?"
21 Jehovah heard and was wroth,
And a fire was kindled in Jacob,
And wrath also went up against Israel.
22 For they did not believe in God,
And trusted not in His salvation.
23 And He commanded the clouds above,
And opened the doors of heaven,
24 And rained upon them manna to eat,
And gave them the corn of heaven.
25 Men did eat the bread of the Mighty Ones;
He sent them sustenance to the full.
26 He made the east wind go forth in the heavens,
And guided the south wind by His power;
27 And He rained flesh upon them like dust,
And winged fowls like the sand of the seas,
28 And let it fall in the midst of their camp,
Round about their habitations.
29 So they ate and were surfeited,
And their desires He brought to them.
30 They were not estranged from their desires
31 And the wrath of God rose against them,
And slew the fattest of them,
And struck down the young men of Israel.
32 For all this they sinned yet more,
And believed not in His wonders.
33 So He made their days to vanish like a breath,
And their years in suddenness.
34 When He slew them, then they inquired after Him,
And returned and sought God earnestly.
35 And they remembered that God was their rock,
And God Most High their redeemer.
36 And they flattered Him with their mouth,
And with their tongue they lied to Him,
37 And their heart was not steadfast with Him,
And they were not faithful to His covenant.
38 But He is compassionate, covers iniquity, and destroys not;
Yea, many a time He takes back His anger,
And rouses not all His wrath.
39 So He remembered that they were [but] flesh,
A wind that goes and comes not again.
40 How often did they provoke Him in the wilderness,
Did they grieve Him in the desert!
41 Yea, again and again they tempted God,
And the Holy One of Israel they vexed.
42 They remembered not His hand,
The day when He set them free from the adversary,
43 When He set forth His signs in Egypt,
And His wonders in the field of Zoan.
44 And He turned to blood their Nile streams,
And their streams they could not drink.
45 He sent amongst them flies that devoured them,
And frogs that destroyed them.
46 And He gave their increase to the caterpillar,
And their toil to the locust.
47 He killed their vines with hail,
And their sycamores with frost. [?]
48 And He gave their cattle up to the hail,
49 He sent against them the heat of His anger,
Wrath and indignation and trouble,
A mission of angels of evil.
50 He levelled a path for His anger,
He spared not their souls from death,
But delivered over their life to the pestilence.
51 And He smote all the first-born of Egypt,
The firstlings of [their] strength in the tents of Ham.
52 And He made His people go forth like sheep,
And guided them like a flock in the desert.
53 And He led them safely, that they did not fear,
And the sea covered their enemies.
54 And He brought them to His holy border,
This mountain, which His right hand had won.
55 And He drove out the nations before them,
And allotted them by line as an inheritance,
And made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.
56 But they tempted and provoked God Most High,
And His testimonies they did not keep.
57 And they turned back and were faithless like their fathers,
They were turned aside like a deceitful bow;
58 And they provoked Him to anger with their high places,
And with their graven images they moved Him to jealousy.
59 God heard and was wroth,
And loathed Israel exceedingly.
60 So that He rejected the habitation of Shiloh,
The tent [which] He had pitched among men.
61 And He gave His strength to captivity,
And His beauty into the hand of the adversary.
62 And He delivered His people to the sword,
And against His inheritance He was wroth.
63 Their young men the fire devoured,
And their maidens were not praised in the marriage-song.
64 Their priests fell by the sword,
And their widows made no lamentation.
65 Then the Lord awoke as one that had slept,
Like a warrior shouting because of wine.
66 And He beat His adversaries back,
67 And He loathed the tent of Joseph,
And the tribe of Ephraim He did not choose.
68 But He chose the tribe of Judah,
Mount Zion, which He loved.
69 And He built His sanctuary like [heavenly] heights,
Like the earth which He has founded for ever.
70 And He chose David His servant,
And took him from the sheepfolds;
71 From following the ewes that give suck, He brought him
To feed Jacob His people,
And Israel His inheritance.
72 So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart,
And with the skilfulness of his hands he guided them.
Like them, it treats the history of Israel, and
especially the Exodus and wilderness wanderings, for
purposes of edification, rebuke, and encouragement.
The past is held up as a mirror to the present generation.
It has been one long succession of miracles of
mercy met by equally continuous ingratitude, which
has ever been punished by national calamities. The
psalm departs singularly from chronological order. It
arranges its contents in two principal masses, each
introduced by the same formula (vv. 12, 43) referring
to "wonders in Egypt and the field of Zoan." But the
first mass has nothing to do with Egypt, but begins
with the passage of the Red Sea, and is wholly occupied
with the wilderness. The second group of wonders
begins in ver. 44 with the plagues of Egypt, touches
lightly on the wilderness history, and then passes to
the early history of Israel when settled in the land,
and finishes with the establishment of David on the
throne. It is difficult to account for this singular
bouleversement of the history. But the conjecture may
be hazarded that its reason lies in the better illustration
There are no regular strophes, but a tendency to run into paragraphs of four verses, with occasional irregularities.
Vv. 1-4 declare the singer's didactic purpose. He deeply feels the solidarity of the nation through all generations—how fathers and children are knit by mystic ties, and by possession of an eternal treasure, the mighty deeds of God, of which they are bound to pass on the record from age to age. The history of ancient days is "a parable" and a "riddle" or "dark saying," as containing examples of great principles, and lessons which need reflection to discern and draw out. From that point of view, the psalmist will sum up the past. He is not a chronicler, but a religious teacher. His purpose is edification, rebuke, encouragement, the deepening of godly fear and obedience. In a word, he means to give the spirit of the nation's history.
Vv. 5-8 base this purpose on God's declared will that the knowledge of His deeds for Israel might be handed down from fathers to sons. The obligations of parents for the religious training of their children, the true bond of family unity, the ancient order of things when oral tradition was the principal means of preserving national history, the peculiarity of this nation's annals, as celebrating no heroes and recording only the deeds of God by men, the contrast between the changing bearers of the story and the undying deeds which they had to tell, are all expressed in these verses, so pathetic in their gaze upon the linked series of short-lived men, so stern in their final declaration that Divine commandment and mercy had been in vain, and that, instead of a tradition of goodness, there had been a transmission of stubbornness and departure from God, repeating itself with tragic uniformity. The devout poet, who knows what God meant family life to be and to do, sadly recognises the grim contrast presented by its reality. But yet he will make one more attempt to break the flow of evil from father to son. Perhaps his contemporaries will listen and shake themselves clear of this entail of disobedience.
The reference to Ephraim in vv. 9-11 is not to be
taken as alluding to any cowardly retreat from actual
battle. Ver. 9 seems to be a purely figurative way
of expressing what is put without a metaphor in the
two following verses. Ephraim's revolt from God's
covenant was like the conduct of soldiers, well armed
and refusing to charge the foe. The better their
weapons, the greater the cowardice and ignominy
of the recreants. So the faithlessness of Ephraim
was made darker in criminality by its knowledge of
God and experience of His mercy. These should have
The historical details begin with ver. 12, but, as has
been noticed above, the psalmist seems to change his
intention of first narrating the wonders in Egypt, and
passes on to dilate on the wilderness history. "The
field of Zoan" is the territory of the famous Egyptian
city of Tzan, and seems equivalent to the Land of
Goshen. The wonders enumerated are the familiar
ones of the passage of the Red Sea, the guidance by
the pillar of cloud and fire, and the miraculous supply
of water from the rock. In vv. 15, 16, the poet brings
together the two instances of such supply, which were
separated from each other by the forty years of wandering,
the first having occurred at Horeb in the first year,
and the second at Kadesh in the last year. The two
words "rocks," in ver. 15, and "cliff," in ver. 16, are
The group of four verses (13-16) sets forth God's
mighty deeds; the next quartet of verses (17-20) tells
of Israel's requital. It is significant of the thoughts
which filled the singer's heart, that he begins the latter
group with declaring that, notwithstanding such tokens
of God's care, the people "went on to sin yet more,"
though he had specified no previous acts of sin. He
combines widely separated instances of their murmurings,
as he had combined distant instances of God's
miraculous supply of water. The complaints which
preceded the fall of the manna and the first supply of
quails (
In ver. 21 the allusion is to the "fire of the Lord,"
which, according to
Vv. 30-33 paint the swift punishment of the people's
unbelief, in language almost identical with
The next group of four verses describes the people's superficial and transient repentance, "When He slew them they sought Him"—i.e., when the fiery serpents were sent among them. But such seeking after God, which is properly not seeking Him at all, but only seeking to escape from evil, neither goes deep nor lasts long. Thus the end of it was only lip reverence, proved to be false by life, and soon ended. "Their heart was not steadfast." The pressure being removed, they returned to their habitual position, as all such penitents do.
From the midst of this sad narrative of faithlessness, springs up, like a fountain in a weary land, or a flower among half-cooled lava blocks, the lovely description of God's forbearance in vv. 38, 39. It must not be read as if it merely carried on the narrative, and was in continuation of the preceding clauses. The psalmist does not say "He was full of compassion," though that would be much, in the circumstances; but he is declaring God's eternal character. His compassions are unfailing. It is always His wont to cover sin and to spare. Therefore He exercised these gracious forbearances towards those obstinate transgressors. He was true to His own compassion in remembering their mortality and feebleness. What a melancholy sound, as of wind blowing among forgotten graves, has that summing up of human life as "a breath that goes and comes not again"!
With ver. 40 the second portion of the psalm may
be regarded as beginning. The first group of historical
details dealt first with God's mercies, and passed on
The psalmist traces Israel's sin to forgetfulness of God's mercy, and thus glides into a swift summing up of the plagues of Egypt, regarded as conducing to Israel's deliverance. They are not arranged chronologically, though the list begins with the first. Then follow three of those in which animals were the destroyers: namely, the fourth, that of flies; the second, that of frogs; and the eighth, that of locusts. Then comes the seventh, that of hail; and, according to some commentators, the fifth, that of the murrain, in ver. 49, followed by the tenth in ver. 51. But the grand, sombre imagery of ver. 49 is too majestic for such application. It rather sums up the whole series of plagues, likening them to an embassy (lit., a sending) of angels of evil. They are a grim company to come forth from His presence—Wrath, Indignation, and Trouble. The same power which sent them out on their errand prepared a way before them; and the crowning judgment, which, in the psalmist's view was also the crowning mercy, was the death of the first-born.
The next quartet of verses (vv. 52-55) passes lightly
The two last groups of verses paint God's great
mercy in delivering the nation from such misery. The
daring figure of His awaking as from sleep and dashing
upon Israel's foes, who are also His, with a shout like
1 O God, [the] heathen have come into Thine inheritance,
They have profaned Thy holy Temple,
They have made Jerusalem heaps of stones.
2 They have given the corpses of Thy servants [as] meat to the fowls of the heavens,
The flesh of Thy favoured Ones to the beasts of the earth.
3 They have poured out their blood like water round Jerusalem,
And there was none to bury [them].
4 We have become a reproach to our neighbours,
A scoff and a scorn to those round us.
5 How long, Jehovah, wilt Thou be angry for ever?
[How long] shall Thy jealousy burn like fire?
6 Pour out Thy wrath upon the heathen who know Thee not,
And upon [the] kingdoms which call not upon Thy name.
7 For they have eaten up Jacob,
And his pasture have they laid waste.
8 Remember not against us the iniquities of those before us,
Speedily let Thy compassions [come to] meet us,
For we are brought very low.
9 Help us, O God, for the sake of the glory of Thy name,
And deliver us, and cover over our sins for the sake of Thy name.
10 Why should the heathen say, Where is their God?
Let there be known among the heathen before our eyes
The revenging of the blood of Thy servants which is poured out.
11 Let there come before Thee the groaning of the captive,
According to the greatness of Thine arm preserve the sons of death.
12 And return to our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom
Their reproach [with] which they have reproached Thee, O Lord.
13 And we, we the people and the flock of Thy pasture,
Will thank Thee for ever;
To generation after generation will we recount Thy praise.
The same remarks which were made as to the date
of the former psalm apply in this case. Two arguments
have, however, been urged against the Maccabean date.
The first is that drawn from the occurrence of vv. 6, 7,
in
A second argument against the Maccabean date is
based upon the quotation of ver. 3 in
The strophical division is not perfectly clear, but it
is probably best to recognise three strophes of four
verses each, with an appended verse of conclusion.
The first spreads before God His peoples miseries.
The second and third are prayer for deliverance and
confession of sin; but they differ, in that the former
strophe dwells mainly upon the wished-for destruction
of the enemy, and the latter upon the rescue of Israel,
while a subordinate diversity is that ancestral sins are
confessed in the one, and those of the present generation
The first strophe vividly describes the ghastly sights
that wrung the psalmist's heart, and will, as he trusts,
move God's to pity and help. The same thought as
was expressed in
The second strophe passes to direct petition, which,
as it were, gives voice to the stiffened corpses strewing
the streets, and the righteous blood crying from the
ground. The psalmist goes straight to the cause of
calamity—the anger of God—and, in the close of the
The same double point of view is frequently taken by the prophets: for example, in Isaiah's magnificent prophecy against "the Assyrian" (x. 5 seq.), where the conqueror is first addressed as "the rod of Mine anger," and then his "punishment" is foretold, because, while executing God's purpose, he had been unconscious of his mission, and had been gratifying his ambition. These two convictions go very deep into "the philosophy of history." Though modified in their application to modern states and politics, they are true in substance still. The Goths who swept down on Rome, the Arabs who crushed a corrupt Christianity, the French who stormed across Europe, were God's scavengers, gathered vulture-like round carrion, but they were each responsible for their cruelty, and were punished "for the fruit of their stout hearts."
The closing verse of the strophe (ver. 8) is intimately
connected with the next, which we take as beginning
the third strophe: but this connection does not set
The last strophe (vv. 9-12) continues the strain
begun in ver. 8, but with significant deepening into
confession of the sins of the existing generation. The
psalmist knows that the present disaster is no case of
the fathers having eaten sour grapes and the children's
teeth being set on edge, but that he and his contemporaries
had repeated the fathers transgressions.
The ground of his plea for cleansing and deliverance
is the glory of God's name, which he emphatically puts
at the end of both clauses of ver. 9. He repeats the
same thought in another form in the question of ver. 10,
The final strophe dwells more on the sufferings of
the survivors than the earlier parts of the psalm do,
and in this respect contrasts with
The epilogue in ver. 13 has the image of a flock,
so frequent in the Asaph psalms, suggesting tender
thoughts of the shepherd's care and of his obligations.
1 Shepherd of Israel, give ear,
Thou who leddest Joseph like a flock,
Thou that sittest [throned upon] the cherubim, shine forth.
2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up Thy strength,
And come for salvation for us.
3 O God, restore us,
And cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.
4 Jehovah, God [of] Hosts,
How long wilt Thou be angry against the prayer of Thy people?
5 Thou hast made them eat tears [as] bread,
And hast given them to drink [of] tears in large measure.
6 Thou makest us a strife to our neighbours,
And our enemies mock to their hearts' content.
7 God [of] Hosts, restore us,
And cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.
8 A vine out of Egypt didst Thou transplant,
Thou didst drive out the nations and plant it.
9 Thou didst clear a place before it,
And it threw out its roots and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shadow,
And its branches [were like] the cedars of God.
11 It spread its boughs [even] unto the sea,
And to the River its shoots.
12 Why hast Thou broken down its fences,
So that all who pass on the way pluck from it?
13 The boar of the wood roots it up
And the beasts of the field feed on it.
14 God [of] Hosts, turn, we beseech Thee,
Look from heaven and see,
15 And protect what Thy right hand has planted,
And the son whom Thou madest strong for Thyself.
16 Burned with fire is it—cut down;
At the rebuke of Thy countenance they perish.
17 Let Thy hand be upon the man of Thy right hand,
Upon the son of man [whom] Thou madest strong for Thyself.
18 And we will not go back from Thee;
Revive us, and we will invoke Thy name.
19 Jehovah, God [of] Hosts, restore us,
And cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.
The triple refrain in vv. 3, 7, 19, divides the psalm into three unequal parts. The last of these is disproportionately long, and may be further broken up into three parts, of which the first (vv. 8-11) describes the luxuriant growth of Israel under the parable of a vine, the second (vv. 12-14) brings to view the bitter contrast of present ruin, and, with an imperfect echo of the refrain, melts into the petitioning tone of the third (vv. 15-19), which is all prayer.
In the first strophe "Shepherd of Israel" reminds us
of Jacob's blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, in which
he invoked "the God who shepherded me all my life
long" to "bless the lads," and of the title in
In reference to the mention of the tribes in ver. 2, we need only add to what has been already said, that the petitions of ver. 1, which look back to the wilderness marches, when the Ark led the van, naturally suggested the mention of the three tribes who were together reckoned as "the camp of Ephraim," and who, in the removal of the encampment, "set forth third"—that is, immediately in the rear of the tabernacle. The order of march explains not only the collocation here, but the use of the word "Before." Joseph and Benjamin were children of the same mother, and the schism which parted their descendants is, to the psalmist's faith, as transient as unnatural. Once again shall the old unity be seen, when the brothers' sons shall again dwell and fight side by side, and God shall again go forth before them for victory.
The prayer of the refrain, "turn us," is not to be
taken as for restoration from exile, which is negatived
by the whole tone of the psalm, nor as for spiritual
quickening, but simply asks for the return of the
glories of ancient days. The petition that God would
let His face shine upon the nation alludes to the priestly
benediction (
A piteous tale of suffering is wailed forth in the
second strophe. The peculiar accumulation of the
Divine names in vv. 4, 19, is found also in
The urgent question "How long?" is not petulant
impatience, but hope deferred, and, though sick at
heart, still cleaving to God and remonstrating for long-protracted
calamities. The bold imagery of ver. 4 b
cannot well be reproduced in translation. The rendering
"wilt Thou be angry?" is but a feeble reproduction
of the vigorous original, which runs "wilt Thou
smoke?" Other psalms (e.g., lxxiv. 1) speak of God's
anger as smoking, but here the figure is applied to
From ver. 8 onwards the parable of the vine as
representing Israel fills the singer's mind. As has
In ver. 12 the miserable contrast of present desolation
is spread before God, with the bold and yet submissive
question "Why?" The vineyard wall is thrown
down, and the vine lies exposed to every vagrant
passenger, and to every destructive creature. Swine
from the woods burrow at its roots, and "whatever
moves on the plain" (
Ver. 14 sounds like an imperfect echo of the refrain
significantly modified, so as to beseech that God would
"turn" Himself, even as He had been implored to
"turn" his people. The purpose of His turning is
that He may "look and see" the condition of the
desolated vineyard, and thence be moved to interfere
for its restoration. The verse may be regarded as
The last part (vv. 15-19) is prayer for God's help,
into which forces itself one verse (16), recurring to the
miseries of the nation. It bursts in like an outcrop
of lava, revealing underground disturbance and fires.
Surely that interruption is more pathetic and natural
than is the result obtained by the suggested transpositions.
The meaning of the word in ver. 15
rendered above "protect" is doubtful, and many commentators
would translate it as a noun, and regard it
as meaning "plant," or, as the A.V., "vineyard." The
verse would then depend on the preceding verb in
ver. 14, "visit." But this construction is opposed by
the copula (and) preceding, and it is best to render
"protect," with a slight change in the vocalisation.
There may be an allusion to Jacob's blessing in
ver. 15 b, for in it (
The apparent interruption of the petitions by ver. 16
is accounted for by the sharp pang that shot into the
psalmist's heart, when he recalled, in his immediately
preceding words, the past Divine acts, which seemed
so contradicted now. But the bitterness, though it
surges up, is overcome, and his petitions return to
their former strain in ver. 17, which pathetically takes
up, as it were, the broken thread, by repeating "right
The psalm closes with a vow of grateful adhesion to God as the result of His renewed mercy. They who have learned how bitter a thing it is to turn away from God, and how blessed when He turns again to them, and turns back their miseries and their sins, have good reason for not again departing from Him. But if they are wise to remember their own weakness, they will not only humbly vow future faithfulness, but earnestly implore continual help; since only the constant communication of a Divine quickening will open their lips to call upon God's name.
The refrain in its most expanded form closes the psalm. Growing intensity of desire and of realisation of the pleas and pledges hived in the name are expressed by its successive forms,—God; God of Hosts; Jehovah, God of Hosts. The faith that grasps all that is contained in that full-toned name already feels the light of God's face shining upon it, and is sure that its prayer for salvation is not in vain.
1 Shout for joy to God our strength,
Shout aloud to the God of Jacob.
2 Lift up the song, and sound the timbrel,
The pleasant lyre with the harp.
3 Blow the trumpet on the new moon,
On the full moon, for the day of our feast.
4 For this is a statute for Israel,
An ordinance of the God of Jacob.
5 For a testimony in Joseph He appointed it,
When He went forth over the land of Egypt.
—A language which I know not I hear.
6 I removed his shoulder from the burden,
His hands were freed from the basket.
7 In straits thou didst call and I delivered thee,
I answered thee in the secret place of thunder,
I proved thee at the waters of Meribah. Selah.
8 Hear, My people, and I will witness to thee;
O Israel, would that thou wouldest hearken to Me!
9 There shall be no strange god in thee,
And thou shalt not bow down to an alien god.
10 I, I am Jehovah thy God,
Who brought thee up from the land of Egypt.
Open wide thy mouth, and I will fill it.
11 But My people hearkened not to My voice,
And Israel did not yield to Me.
12 Then I let them go in the stubbornness of their heart,
That they might walk in their own counsels.
13 Would that My people would hearken to Me,
That Israel would walk in My ways!
14 Easily would I humble their enemies,
15 The haters of Jehovah would come feigning to Him,
But their time should endure for ever.
16 And He would feed thee with the fat of wheat,
And with honey from the rock would I satisfy thee.
Olshausen, followed by Cheyne, regards the psalm
as made up of two fragments (vv. 1-5 a, and 5 c-16).
Delitzsch suggests that the summons in ver. 1 is
addressed to the whole congregation; that in ver. 2
to the Levites, the appointed singers and musicians;
and that in ver. 3 to the priests who are intrusted
with blowing the Shophar, or horn (
The reason for it is given in vv. 4, 5 a. It—i.e., the
feast (not the musical accompaniments)—is appointed
by God. The psalmist employs designations for it,
which are usually applied to "the word of the Lord";
statute, ordinance, testimony, being all found in
So far the thoughts and language are limpid, but
ver. 5 c interrupts their clear flow. Who is the speaker
thus suddenly introduced? What is the "language"
(lit., lip) which he "knew not"? The explanation
implied by the A.V. and R.V., that the collective Israel
speaks, and that the reference is, as in
The Divine Voice begins with recapitulating the facts
which the feast was intended to commemorate—namely,
the act of emancipation from Egyptian bondage (ver. 6),
and the miracles of the wilderness sojourn (ver. 7).
The compulsory labour, from which God delivered the
people, is described by two terms, of which the former
(burden) is borrowed from Exodus, where it frequently
occurs (
That retrospect next becomes the foundation of a
Divine exhortation to the people, which is to be regarded
as spoken originally to Israel in the wilderness, as
ver. 11 shows. Perowne well designates these verses
(8-10) "a discourse within a discourse." They put
into words the meaning of the wilderness experience,
and sum up the laws spoken on Sinai, which they
in part repeat. The purpose of God's lavish benefits
was to bind Israel to Himself. "Hear, My people,"
reminds us of
In vv. 11, 12, the Divine Voice laments the failure of benefits and commandments and promises to win Israel to God. There is a world of baffled tenderness and almost wondering rebuke in the designation of the rebels as "My people." It would have been no cause of astonishment if other nations had not listened; but that the tribes bound by so many kindnesses should have been deaf is a sad marvel. Who should listen to "My voice" if "My people" do not? The penalty of not yielding to God is to be left unyielding. The worst punishment of sin is the prolongation and consequent intensifying of the sin. A heart that wilfully closes itself against God's pleadings brings on itself the nemesis, that it becomes incapable of opening, as a self-torturing Hindoo fakir may clench his fist so long, that at last his muscles lose their power, and it remains shut for his lifetime. The issue of such "stubbornness" is walking in their own counsels, the practical life being regulated entirely by self-originated and God-forgetting dictates of prudence or inclination. He who will not have the Divine Guide has to grope his way as well as he can. There is no worse fate for a man than to be allowed to do as he chooses. "The ditch," sooner or later, receives the man who lets his active powers, which are in themselves blind, be led by his understanding, which he has himself blinded by forbidding it to look to the One Light of Life.
In ver. 13 the Divine Voice turns to address the
joyous crowd of festal worshippers, exhorting them to
that obedience which is the true keeping of the feast,
and holding forth bright promises of the temporal
blessings which, in accordance with the fundamental
The blessings attached in the psalm to such conformity
with God's will are of an external kind, as was
to be expected at the Old Testament stage of revelation.
They are mainly two—victory and abundance.
But the precise application of ver. 15 b is doubtful.
Whose "time" is to "endure for ever"? There is
much to be said in favour of the translation "that so
their time might endure for ever," as Cheyne renders,
and for understanding it, as he does, as referring to
the enemies who yield themselves to God, in order
that they "might be a never-exhausted people." But
to bring in the purpose of the enemies submission
is somewhat irrelevant, and the clause is probably
best taken to promise length of days to Israel.
In ver. 16 the sudden change of persons in a is
singular, and, according to the existing vocalisation,
there is an equally sudden change of tenses, which
induces Delitzsch and others to take the verse as
recurring to historical retrospect. The change to
the third person is probably occasioned, as Hupfeld
1 God stands in the congregation of God,
In the midst of the gods He judges.
2 How long win ye judge injustice,
And accept the persons of wicked men? Selah.
3 Right the weak and the orphan,
Vindicate the afflicted and the poor.
4 Rescue the weak and needy,
From the hand of the wicked deliver [them].
5 They know not, they understand not,
In darkness they walk to and fro,
All the foundations of the earth totter.
6 I myself have said, Ye are gods,
And sons of the Most High are ye all.
7 Surely like men shall ye die,
And like one of the princes shall ye fall.
8 Arise, O God, judge the earth,
For Thou, Thou shall inherit all the nations.
The scene pictured in ver. 1 has been variously
interpreted. "The congregation of God" is most
naturally understood according to the parallel in
Our Lord's reference to ver. 6 in
The contents of the psalm need little remark. In
vv. 2-4 God speaks in stern upbraiding and command.
The abrupt pealing forth of the Divine Voice, without
any statement of who speaks, is extremely dramatic
and impressive. The judgment hall is filled with a
hushed crowd. No herald is needed to proclaim silence.
Strained expectance sits on every ear. Then the silence
is broken. These authoritative accents can come but
from one speaker. The crimes rebuked are those to
which rulers, in such a state of society as was in Israel,
are especially prone, and such as must have been well-nigh
universal at the time of the psalmist. They were
no imaginary evils against which these sharp arrows
were launched. These princes were like those gibbeted
For a moment the Divine Voice pauses. Will its
tones reach any consciences? No. There is no sign
of contrition among the judges, who are thus solemnly
being judged. Therefore God speaks again, as if
wondering, grieved, and indignant "at the blindness of
their hearts," as His Son was when His words met the
same reception from the same class. Ver. 5 might
almost be called a Divine lament over human impenitence,
ere the Voice swells into the fatal sentence.
One remembers Christ's tears, as He looked across the
valley to the city glittering in the morning sun. His
tears did not hinder His pronouncing its doom; nor
did His pronouncing its doom hinder His tears. These
judges were without knowledge. They walked in
darkness, because they walked in selfishness, and never
thought of God's judgment. Their gait was insolent,
as the form of the word "walk to and fro" implies.
And, since they who were set to be God's representatives
on earth, and to show some gleam of His justice
and compassion, were ministers of injustice and vicegerents
of evil, fostering what they should have crushed,
and crushing whom they should have fostered, the
foundations of society were shaken, and, unless these
were swept away, it would be dissolved into chaos.
Therefore the sentence must fall, as it does in vv. 6, 7.
1 O God, let there be no rest to Thee,
Be not dumb, and keep not still, O God.
2 For, behold, Thy enemies make a tumult,
And they who hate Thee lift up the head.
3 Against Thy people they make a crafty plot,
And consult together against Thy hidden ones.
4 They say, Come, and let us cut them off from [being] a nation,
And let the name of Israel be remembered no more.
5 For they consult together with one heart,
Against Thee they make a league:
6 The tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
Moab and the Hagarenes,
7 Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia with the dwellers in Tyre;
8 Asshur also has joined himself to them,
They have become an arm to the children of Lot. Selah.
9 Do Thou to them as [to] Midian,
As [to] Sisera, [to] Jabin at the brook Kishon,
10 [Who] were destroyed at Endor,
[Who] became manure for the land.
11 Make them, their nobles, like Oreb and like Zeeb,
And like Zebah and like Zalmunnah all their princes,
12 Who say, Let us take for a possession to ourselves
The habitations of God.
13 My God, make them like a whirl of dust,
Like stubble before the wind,
14 Like fire [that] burns [the] forest,
15 So pursue them with Thy storm,
And with Thy tempest strike them with panic.
16 Fill their face with dishonour,
That they may seek Thy name, Jehovah.
17 Let them be ashamed and panic-struck for ever,
And let them be abashed and perish;
18 And let them know that Thou, [even] Thy name, Jehovah, alone
Art the Most High over all the earth.
The psalm naturally falls into two parts, separated by Selah, of which the first (vv. 1-8) describes Israel's extremity, and the second (vv. 9-18) is its supplication.
The psalmist begins with earnest invocation of God's
help, beseeching Him to break His apparent inactivity
and silence. "Let there be no rest to Thee" is like
The conspiracy has for its aim nothing short of
blotting out the national existence and the very name
of Israel. It is therefore high-handed opposition to
God's counsel, and the confederacy is against Him.
The true antagonists are, not Israel and the world, but
God and the world. Calmness, courage, and confidence
spring in the heart with such thoughts. They who
The enumeration of the confederates in vv. 6-8
groups together peoples who probably were never
really united for any common end. Hatred is a very
potent cement, and the most discordant elements may
be fused together in the fire of a common animosity.
What a motley assemblage is here! What could bring
together in one company Ishmaelites and Tyrians,
Moab and Asshur? The first seven names in the list
of allies had their seats to the east and south-east of
Palestine. Edom, Moab, Ammon, and Amalek were
ancestral foes, the last of which had been destroyed
in the time of Hezekiah (
The confederacy is formidable, but the psalmist does
not enumerate its members merely in order to emphasise
The psalm rises to high poetic fervour and imaginative
beauty in the terrible petitions of vv. 13-16. The
word rendered "whirling dust" in ver. 13 is somewhat
doubtful. It literally means a rolling thing, but what
particular thing of the sort is difficult to determine.
The reference is perhaps to "spherical masses of dry
weeds which course over the plains." Thomson ("Land
and Book," 1870, p. 563) suggests the wild artichoke,
which, when ripe, forms a globe of about a foot in
diameter. "In autumn the branches become dry and
as light as a feather, the parent stem breaks off at the
ground, and the wind carries these vegetable globes
whithersoever it pleaseth. At the proper season thousands
of them come scudding over the plain, rolling,
leaping, bounding." So understood, the clause would
form a complete parallel with the next, which compares
the fleeing foe to stubble, not, of course, rooted, but
loose and whirled before the wind. The metaphor of
ver. 14 is highly poetic, likening the flight of the foe
to the swift rush of a forest fire, which licks up (for so
the word rendered scorches means) the woods on the
hillsides, and leaves a bare, blackened space. Still
more terrible is the petition in ver. 15, which asks
But there is a deeper desire in the psalmist's heart
than the enemies' destruction. He wishes that they
should be turned into God's friends, and he wishes for
their chastisement as the means to that end. "That
they may seek Thy face, Jehovah," is the sum of his
aspirations, as it is the inmost meaning of God's
punitive acts. The end of the judgment of the world,
which is continually going on by means of the history
of the world, is none other than what this psalmist
contemplated as the end of the defeat of that confederacy
of God's enemies—that rebels should seek His face,
not in enforced submission, but with true desire to
sun themselves in its light, and with heart-felt acknowledgment
of His Name as supreme through all the
earth. The thought of God as standing alone in His
majestic omnipotence, while a world is vainly arrayed
against Him, which we have traced in vv. 5-7, is
prominent in the close of the psalm. The language of
ver. 18 is somewhat broken, but its purport is plain,
and its thought is all the more impressive for the
irregularity of construction. God alone is the Most
High. He is revealed to men by His Name. It stands
alone, as He in His nature does. The highest good
of men is to know that that sovereign Name is unique
and high above all creatures, hostile or obedient.
Such knowledge is God's aim in punishment and
blessing. Its universal extension must be the deepest
wish of all who have for themselves learned how strong
1 How lovely are Thy dwellings,
Jehovah of Hosts!
2 My soul longs, yea, even languishes, for the courts of Jehovah,
My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
3 Yea, the sparrow has found a house,
And the swallow a nest for herself, where she lays her young,
Thine altars, Jehovah of Hosts.
My King and my God.
4 Blessed they that dwell in Thy house!
They will be still praising Thee, Selah.
5 Blessed the man whose strength is in Thee,
In whose heart are the ways!
6 [Who] passing through the valley of weeping make it a place of fountains,
Yea, the early rain covers it with blessings.
7 They go from strength to strength,
Each appears before God in Zion.
8 Jehovah, God of Hosts, hear my prayer,
Give ear, O God of Jacob. Selah.
9 [Thou], our shield, behold, O God,
And look upon the face of Thine anointed.
10 For better is a day in Thy courts than a thousand,
Rather would I lie on the threshold in the house of my God,
Than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
11 For Jehovah God is sun and shield,
Grace and glory Jehovah gives,
No good does He deny to them that walk in integrity.
12 Jehovah of hosts,
Blessed the man that trusts in Thee!
It is divided into three parts by the Selahs. The
last verse of the first part prepares the way for the
first of the second, by sounding the note of "Blessed
they," etc., which is prolonged in ver. 5, The last
verse of the second part (ver. 8) similarly prepares
for the first of the third (ver. 9) by beginning the
prayer which is prolonged there. In each part there
is a verse pronouncing blessing on Jehovah's worshippers,
and the variation in the designations of these
gives the key to the progress of thought in the psalm.
The man who thus interpreted his own psalm had
no unworthy conception of the relation between outward
nearness to the sanctuary, and inward communion
with the God who dwelt there. The psalmist's
yearning for the Temple was occasioned by his longing
for God. It was God's presence there which gave it
all its beauty. Because they were "Thy tabernacles,"
he felt them to be lovely and lovable, for the word
implies both. The abrupt exclamation beginning the
psalm is the breaking into speech of thought which
had long increased itself in silence. The intensity
of his desires is expressed very strikingly by two
words, of which the former (longs) literally means
grows pale, and the latter fails, or is consumed. His
whole being, body and spirit, is one cry for the living
God. The word rendered "cry out" is usually
employed for the shrill cry of joy, and that meaning
is by many retained here. But the cognate noun is
not infrequently employed for any loud or high-pitched
call, especially for fervent prayer (
Ver. 3 has been felt to present grammatical difficulties,
which need not detain us here. The easiest
explanation is that the happy, winged creatures who
have found resting-places are contrasted by the psalmist
with himself, seeking, homeless amid creation, for his
haven of repose. We have to complete the somewhat
fragmentary words with some supplement before
"Thine altars," such as "So would I find," or the like.
To suppose that he represents the swallows as actually
nesting on the altar is impossible, and, if the latter
clauses are taken to describe the places where the
birds housed and bred, there is nothing to suggest the
The first part closes with an exclamation which gathers into one all-expressive word the joy of communion with God. They who have it are "blessed," with something more sacred and lasting than happiness, with something deeper and more tranquil than joy, even with a calm delight, not altogether unlike the still, yet not stagnant, rest of supreme felicity which fills the life of the living and ever-blessed God. That thought is prolonged by the music.
The second strophe (vv. 5-8) is knit to the first,
Ver. 6 is highly imaginative and profoundly true. If a man has "the ways" in his heart, he will pass through "the valley of weeping," and turn it into a "place of fountains." His very tears will fill the wells. Sorrow borne as a help to pilgrimage changes into joy and refreshment. The remembrance of past grief nourishes the soul which is aspiring to God. God puts our tears into His bottle; we lose the benefit of them, and fail to discern their true intent, unless we gather them into a well, which may refresh us in many a weary hour thereafter. If we do, there will be another source of fertility, plentifully poured out upon our life's path. "The early rain covers it with blessings." Heaven-descended gifts will not be wanting, nor the smiling harvests which they quicken and mature. God meets the pilgrims' love and faith with gently falling influences, which bring forth rich fruit. Trials borne aright bring down fresh bestowments of power for fruitful service. Thus possessed of a charm which transforms grief, and recipients of strength from on high, the pilgrims are not tired by travel, as others are, but grow stronger day by day, and their progressive increase in vigour is a pledge that they will joyously reach their journey's end, and stand in the courts of the Lord's house. The seekers after God are superior to the law of decay. It may affect their physical powers, but they are borne up by an unfulfilled and certain hope, and reinvigorated by continual supplies from above; and therefore, though in their bodily frame they, like other men, faint and grow weary, they shall not utterly fail, but, waiting on Jehovah, "will renew their strength." The fabled fountain of perpetual youth rises at the foot of God's throne, and its waters flow to meet those who journey thither.
Such are the elements of the blessedness of those who seek God's presence; and with that great promise of certain finding of the good and the God whom they seek, the description and the strophe properly ends. But just as the first part prepared the way for the second, so the second does for the third, by breaking forth into prayer. No wonder that the thoughts which he has been dwelling on should move the singer to supplication that these blessednesses may be his. According to some, ver. 8 is the prayer of the pilgrim on arriving in the Temple, but it is best taken as the psalmist's own.
The final part begins with invocation. In ver. 9
"our shield" is in apposition to "God," not the object
to "behold." It anticipates the designation of God
in ver. 11. But why should the prayer for "Thine
anointed" break in upon the current of thought? Are
we to say that the psalmist "completes his work by
some rhythmical but ill-connected verses" (Cheyne)?
There is a satisfactory explanation of the apparently
irrelevant petition, if we accept the view that the psalm,
like its kindred
Such a choice is the only rational one. It is the
choice of supreme good, correspondent to man's deepest
needs, and lasting as his being. Therefore the psalmist
vindicates his preference, and encourages himself in it,
by the thoughts in ver. 11, which he introduces with
"For." Because God is what He is, and gives what
He gives, it is the highest wisdom to take Him for our
true good, and never to let Him go. He is "sun and
shield." This is the only place in which He is directly
called a sun, though the idea conveyed is common. He
is "the master light of all our seeing," the fountain of
But high as is the psalmist's flight of mystic devotion, he does not soar so far as to lose sight of plain morality, as mystics have often been apt to do. It is the man who walks in his integrity who may hope to receive these blessings. "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord"; and neither access to His house nor the blessings flowing from His presence can belong to him who is faithless to his own convictions of duty. The pilgrim paths are paths of righteousness. The psalmist's last word translates his metaphors of dwelling in and travelling towards the house of Jehovah into their simple meaning, "Blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee." That trust both seeks and finds God. There has never been but one way to His presence, and that is the way of trust. "I am the way.... No man cometh to the Father but by Me." So coming, we shall find, and then shall seek more eagerly and find more fully, and thus shall possess at once the joys of fruition and of desires always satisfied, never satiated, but continually renewed.
1 Thou hast become favourable, Jehovah, to Thy land,
Thou hast turned back the captivity of Jacob.
2 Thou hast taken away the iniquity of Thy people,
Thou hast covered all their sin.
3 Thou hast drawn in all Thy wrath,
Thou hast turned Thyself from the glow of Thine anger.
4 Turn us, O God of our salvation,
And cause Thine indignation towards us to cease.
5 For ever wilt Thou be angry with us?
Wilt Thou stretch out Thine anger to generation after generation?
6 Wilt Thou not revive us again,
That Thy people may rejoice in Thee?
7 Show us, Jehovah, Thy loving-kindness,
And give us Thy salvation.
8 I will hear what God, Jehovah, will speak,
For He will speak peace to His people and to His favoured [ones];
Only let them not turn again to folly.
9 Surely near to them who fear Him is His salvation,
That glory may dwell in our land.
10 Loving-kindness and Troth have met together,
Righteousness and Peace have kissed [each other],
11 Troth springs from the earth,
And Righteousness looks down from heaven.
12 Yea, Jehovah will give that which is good,
And our land will give her increase.
13 Righteousness shall go before Him,
And shall make His footsteps a way.
It falls into three parts, of increasing length,—the first, of three verses (vv. 1-3), recounts God's acts of mercy already received; the second, of four verses (vv. 4-7), is a plaintive prayer in view of still remaining national afflictions; and the third, of six verses, a glad report by the psalmist of the Divine promises which his waiting ear had heard, and which might well quicken the most faint-hearted into triumphant hope.
In the first strophe one great fact is presented in a
threefold aspect, and traced wholly to Jehovah. "Thou
hast turned back the captivity of Jacob." That expression
is sometimes used in a figurative sense for any
restoration of prosperity, but is here to be taken
literally. Now, as at first, the restored Israel, like
The psalmist knows that captivity had been chastisement,
the issue of national sin. Therefore he is sure
that restoration is the sign of forgiveness. His thoughts
are running in the same line as in
The abruptness of the transition from joyous thanksgiving to the sad minor of lamentation and supplication is striking, but most natural, if the psalmist was one of the band of returning exiles, surrounded by the ruins of a happier past, and appalled by the magnitude of the work before them, the slenderness of their resources, and the fierce hostility of their neighbours. The prayer of ver. 4, "Turn us," is best taken as using the word in the same sense as in ver. 1, where God is said to have "turned" the captivity of Jacob. What was there regarded as accomplished is here conceived of as still to be done. That is, the restoration was incomplete, as we know that it was, both in regard to the bulk of the nation, who still remained in exile, and in regard to the depressed condition of the small part of it which had gone back to Palestine. In like manner the petitions of ver. 5 look back to ver. 3, and pray that the anger which there had been spoken of as passed may indeed utterly cease. The partial restoration of the people implied, in the psalmist's view, a diminution rather than a cessation of God's punitive wrath, and he beseeches Him to complete that which He had begun.
The relation of the first to the second strophe is
not only that of contrast, but the prayers of the latter
are founded upon the facts of the former, which constitute
both grounds for the suppliant's hope of answer
and pleas with God. He cannot mean to deliver by
halves. The mercies received are incomplete; and His
work must be perfect. He cannot be partially reconciled,
nor have meant to bring His people back to
the land, and then leave them to misery. So the
The third strophe (vv. 8-13) brings solid hopes,
based upon Divine promises, to bear on present discouragements.
In ver. 8 the psalmist, like Habakkuk
(ii. 1), encourages himself to listen to what God will
speak. The word "I will hear" expresses resolve or
desire, and might be rendered Let me hear, or I would
The warning of ver. 8 c is thought by some to be out
of place, and an emendation has been suggested, which
requires little change in the Hebrew—namely, "to
those who have turned their hearts towards Him."
This reading is supported by the LXX.; but the
warning is perfectly appropriate, and carries a large
truth—that the condition of God's speaking of peace is
our firm adherence to Him. Once more the psalmist
uses his favourite word "turn." God had turned the
captivity; He had turned Himself from His anger;
the psalmist had prayed Him to turn or restore the
people, and to turn and revive them, and now He
warns against turning again to folly. There is always
danger of relapse in those who have experienced God's
After the introductory ver. 8, the substance of what Jehovah spoke to the psalmist is proclaimed in the singer's own words. The first assurance which the psalmist drew from the Divine word was that God's salvation, the whole fulness of His delivering grace both in regard to external and in inward evils, is ever near to them that fear Him. "Salvation" here is to be taken in its widest sense. It means, negatively, deliverance from all possible evils, outward and inward; and, positively, endowment with all possible good, both for body and spirit. With such fulness of complete blessings, they, and they only, who keep near to God, and refuse to turn aside to foolish confidences, shall be enriched. That is the inmost meaning of what God said to the psalmist; and it is said to all. And that salvation being thus possessed, it would be possible for "glory"—i.e., the manifest presence of God, as in the Shechinah—to tabernacle in the land. The condition of God's dwelling with men is their acceptance of His salvation. That purifies hearts to be temples.
The lovely personifications in vv. 10-13 have
passed into Christian poetry and art, but are not
clearly apprehended when they are taken to describe
the harmonious meeting and co-operation, in Christ's
The same idea is further presented in ver. 12, in
its most general form. God gives that which is good,
both outward and inward blessings, and, thus fructified
In ver. 13 the thought of the blending of heaven
and earth, or of Divine attributes as being the foundation
and parents of their human analogues, is still more
vividly expressed. Righteousness, which in ver. 10
was regarded as exercised by men, and in ver. 11 as
looking down from heaven, is now represented both
as a herald preceding God's royal progress, and as
following in His footsteps. The last clause is rendered
in different ways, which all have the same general sense.
Probably the rendering above is best: "Righteousness
shall make His footsteps a way"—that is, for men to
walk in. All God's workings among men, which are
poetically conceived as His way, have stamped on them
Righteousness. That strong angel goes before Him
to clear a path for Him, and trace the course which He
shall take. That is the imaginative expression of the
truth—that absolute, inflexible Righteousness guides all
the Divine acts. But the same Righteousness, which
precedes, also follows Him, and points His footsteps
as the way for us. The incongruity of this double
position of God's herald makes the force of the thought
greater. It is the poetical embodiment of the truth,
that the perfection of man's character and conduct lies
Our psalm needs the completion, which tells of that gospel in which "the Righteousness of God from faith is revealed for faith." In Jesus the "glory" has tabernacled among men. He has brought heaven and earth together. In Him God's Loving-kindness and Faithfulness have become denizens of earth, as never before. In Him heaven has emptied its choicest good on earth. Through Him our barrenness and weeds are changed into harvests of love, praise, and service. In Him the Righteousness of God is brought near; and, trusting in Him, each of us may tread in His footsteps, and have His Righteousness fulfilled in us "who walk, not after the flesh, but after the spirit."
1 Bow down Thine ear, Jehovah, answer me,
For I am afflicted and poor.
2 Keep my soul, for I am favoured [by Thee],
Save Thy servant, O Thou my God,
That trusts in Thee.
3 Be gracious to me, Lord,
For to Thee I cry all the day.
4 Rejoice the soul of Thy servant,
For to Thee, Lord, do I lift up my soul.
5 For Thou, Lord, art good and forgiving,
And plenteous in loving-kindness to all who call on Thee.
6 Give ear, Jehovah, to my prayer,
And take heed to the voice of my supplications.
7 In the day of my straits will I call [on] Thee,
For Thou wilt answer me.
8 There is none like Thee among the gods, O Lord,
And no [works] like Thy works.
9 All nations whom Thou hast made
Shall come and bow themselves before Thee,
And shall give glory to Thy Name,
10 For great art Thou and doest wonders,
Thou art God alone.
11 Teach me, Jehovah, Thy way,
I will walk in Thy troth,
Unite my heart to fear Thy Name.
12 I will thank Thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart,
And I will glorify Thy Name for ever.
13 For Thy loving-kindness is great towards me,
And Thou hast delivered my soul from Sheol beneath.
14 O God, the proud have risen against me,
And a crew of violent men have sought after my soul,
15 But Thou, Lord, art a God compassionate and gracious,
Long-suffering and plenteous in loving-kindness and troth.
16 Turn to me and be gracious to me,
Give Thy strength to Thy servant,
And save the son of Thy handmaid.
17 Work for me a sign for good,
That they who hate me may see and be ashamed,
For Thou, Jehovah, hast helped me and comforted me.
There is no fully developed strophical arrangement but there is a discernible flow of thought, and the psalm may be regarded as falling into three parts.
The first of these (vv. 1-5) is a series of petitions,
each supported by a plea. The petitions are the well-worn
ones which spring from universal need, and there
is a certain sequence in them. They begin with "Bow
down Thine ear," the first of a suppliant's desires, which,
as it were, clears the way for those which follow.
The pleas on which the petitions are grounded are
also beautifully wreathed together. First, the psalmist
asks to be heard because he is afflicted and poor (compare
But all the psalmist's other pleas are merged at last
in that one contained in ver. 5, where he gazes on the
revealed Name of God, and thinks of Him as He had
been described of old, and as this suppliant delights
to set to his seal that he has found Him to be—good
and placable, and rich in loving-kindness. God is His
own motive, and Faith can find nothing mightier to
urge with God, nor any surer answer to its own doubts
to urge with itself, than the unfolding of all that lies
in the Name of the Lord. These pleas, like the
petitions which they support, are largely echoes of
older words. "Afflicted and poor" comes, as just
noticed, from
Vv. 6-13 may be taken together, as the prayer proper, to which vv. 1-5 are introductory. In them there is, first, a repetition of the cry for help, and of the declaration of need (vv. 6, 7); then a joyful contemplation of God's unapproachable majesty and works, which insure the ultimate recognition of His Name by all nations (vv. 8-10); then a profoundly and tenderly spiritual prayer for guidance and consecration—wants more pressing still than outward deliverance (ver. 11); and, finally, as in so many psalms, anticipatory thanksgivings for deliverance yet future, but conceived of as present by vivid faith.
Echoes of earlier psalms sound through the whole;
but the general impression is not that of imitation, but
of genuine personal need and devotion. Ver. 7 is like
The thought of God's sovereign power carries the
psalmist beyond remembrance of his immediate outward
needs, and stirs higher desires in him. Hence spring
the beautiful and spiritual petitions of ver. 11, which
seek for clearer insight into God's will concerning the
psalmist's conduct, breathe aspirations after a "walk"
in that God-appointed way and in "Thy troth," and
culminate in one of the sweetest and deepest prayers
of the Psalter: "Unite my heart to fear Thy Name."
There, at least, the psalmist speaks words borrowed from
no other, but springing fresh from his heart's depths.
In the closing part (vv. 14-17), the psalmist describes
more precisely his danger. He is surrounded
by a rabble rout of proud and violent men, whose
enmity to him is, as in so many of the psalms of
persecuted singers, a proof of their forgetfulness of
God. Right against this rapid outline of his perils, he
sets the grand unfolding of the character of God in
ver. 15. It is still fuller than that in ver. 5, and, like
it, rests on
The psalm ends with prayer for present help. If
God is, as the psalmist has seen Him to be, "full of
compassion and gracious," it is no presumptuous petition
that the streams of these perfections should be
made to flow towards a needy suppliant. "Be gracious
to me" asks that the light, which pours through the
universe, may fall on one heart, which is surrounded
by earth-born darkness. As in the introductory verses,
so in the closing petitions, the psalmist grounds his
prayer principally on God's manifested character, and
secondarily on his own relation to God. Thus in ver. 16
he pleads that he is God's servant, and "the son of Thy
handmaid" (compare
1 His foundation on the holy mountains,
2 The gates of Zion Jehovah loves
More than all the dwellings of Jacob.
3 Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. Selah.
4 I will proclaim Rahab and Babylon as those who know Me:
"Behold Philistia and Tyre, with Cush;
This one was born there."
5 And of Zion it shall be said,
"Man after man was born in her,"
And He, the Most High, shall establish her.
6 Jehovah shall reckon when He writes down the peoples,
"This one was born there." Selah.
7 And singers and dancers [shall chant],
"All my fountains are in Thee."
The structure is simple. The psalm is divided by Selah into two strophes, to which a closing verse is appended. The first strophe bursts abruptly into rapturous praise of Zion, the beloved of God. The second predicts the gathering of all nations into her citizenship, and the closing verse apparently paints the exuberant joy of the festal crowds, who shall then throng her streets.
The abrupt beginning of the first strophe offends some commentators, who have tried to smooth ver. 1 into propriety and tameness, by suggesting possible preliminary clauses, which they suppose to have dropped out. But there is no canon which forbids a singer, with the rush of inspiration, either poetic or other, on him, to plunge into the heart of his theme. Ver. 1 may be construed, as in the A.V. and R.V. (text), as a complete sentence, but is then somewhat feeble. It is better to connect it with ver. 2, and to regard "His foundation upon the holy mountains" as parallel with "the gates of Zion," and as, like that phrase, dependent on the verb "loves." Hupfeld, indeed, proposes to transfer "Jehovah loves" from the beginning of ver. 2, where it now stands, to the end of ver. 1, supplying the verb mentally in the second clause. He thus gets a complete parallelism:—
But this is not necessary; for the verb may as well
There can be no doubt as to who is the speaker
in ver. 4. The abrupt introduction of a Divine Oracle
accords with a not infrequent usage in the Psalter,
which adds much to the solemnity of the words. If
we regard the "glorious things" mentioned in ver. 3
God's voice ceases, and in ver. 5 the psalmist takes
Three great truths had dawned on this psalmist,
though their full light was reserved for the Christian
era. He had been led to apprehend that the Jewish
Church would expand into a world-wide community.
If one thinks of the gulfs of hatred and incompatibility
which parted the peoples in his day, his clear utterance
of that great truth, the apprehension of which so far
transcended his time, and the realisation of which so
far transcends ours, will surely be seen to be due to
a Divine breath. The broadest New Testament expression
of Universalism does not surpass the psalmist's
confident certainty, "There is neither Greek nor Jew,
Ver. 7 is, on any interpretation, extremely obscure, because so abrupt and condensed. But probably the translation adopted above, though by no means free from difficulty or doubt, brings out the meaning which is most in accordance with the preceding. It may be supposed to flash vividly before the reader's imagination the picture of a triumphal procession of rejoicing citizens, singers as well as dancers, who chant, as they advance, a joyous chorus in praise of the city, in which they have found all fountains of joy and satisfaction welling up for their refreshment and delight.
1 Jehovah, God of my salvation,
By day, by night I cry before Thee.
2 Let my prayer come before Thy face,
Bow Thine ear to my shrill cry.
3 For sated with troubles is my soul,
And my life has drawn near to Sheol.
4 I am counted with those that have gone down to the pit,
I am become as a man without strength.
5 [I am] free among the dead,
Like the slain that lie in the grave,
Whom Thou rememberest no more,
But they are cut off from Thy hand.
6 Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit,
In dark places, in the deeps.
7 Upon me Thy wrath presses hard,
And [with] all Thy breakers Thou hast afflicted [me]. Selah
8 Thou hast put my familiar friends far from me,
Thou hast made me an abomination to them,
I am shut up so that I cannot come forth.
9 My eye wastes away because of affliction,
I have called on Thee daily, Jehovah,
I have spread out my palms to Thee,
10 For the dead canst Thou do wonders?
Or can the shades arise [and] praise Thee? Selah.
11 In the grave can Thy loving-kindness be told,
And Thy faithfulness in destruction?
12 Can Thy wonders be made known in darkness,
And Thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?
13 But I, I have cried unto Thee, Jehovah,
And in the morning my prayer comes to meet Thee.
14 Why, Jehovah, dost Thou cast off my soul,
15 Afflicted am I and at the point of death from [my] youth,
I have borne Thy terrors [till] I am distracted.
16 Over me have Thy [streams of] wrath passed,
Thy horrors have cut me off.
17 They have compassed me about like waters all the day.
They have come round me together.
18 Thou hast put far from me lover and friend,
My familiar friends are—darkness.
It is useless to inquire what was the psalmist's
affliction. His language seems to point to physical
disease, of long continuance and ever threatening a
fatal termination; but in all probability sickness is a
The central portion of the first division is occupied
with an expansion of the thought that the psalmist is
already as good as dead (vv. 3 b-6). The condition
of the dead is drawn with a powerful hand, and the
picture is full of solemn grandeur and hopelessness.
It is preceded in vv. 1, 2, by an invocation which has
many parallels in the psalms, but which here is peculiarly
striking. This saddest of them all has for its
first words the Name which ought to banish sadness.
He who can call on Jehovah as the God of his salvation
possesses a charm which has power to still
agitation, and to flush despair with some light of hope
as from an unrisen sun. But this poet feels no warmth
from the beams, and the mists surge up, if not to hide
the light, yet to obscure it. All the more admirable,
then, the persistence of his cry; and all the more
precious the lesson that Faith is not to let present
Ver. 1 b is obscure.
The changes are very slight and easy, and the effect of them is satisfactory. The meaning of the verse is obvious, whether the emendation is accepted or not. The gain from the proposed change is dearly purchased by the loss of that solitary expression of hope in the name of "God of my salvation," the one star which gleams for a moment through a rift in the blackness.
With "For" in ver. 3 the psalmist begins the dreary
description of his affliction, the desperate and all but
deodly character of which he spreads before God as
a reason for hearing his prayer. Despair sometimes
strikes men dumb, and sometimes makes them eloquent.
The sorrow which has a voice is less crushing than
Ver. 7 traces the psalmist's sorrows to God. It breathes not complaint but submission, or, at least, recognition of His hand; and they who, in the very paroxysm of their pains, can say, "It is the Lord," are not far from saying, "Let Him do what seemeth Him good," nor from the peace that comes from a compliant will. The recognition implies, too, consciousness of sin which has deserved the "wrath" of God, and in such consciousness lies the germ of blessing. Sensitive nerves may quiver, as they feel the dreadful weight with which that wrath presses down on them, as if to crush them; but if the man lies still, and lets the pressure do its work, it will not force out his life, but only his evil, as foul water is squeezed from cloth. Ver. 7 b is rendered by Delitzsch "All Thy billows Thou pressest down," which gives a vivid picture; but "billows" is scarcely the word to use for the downward rushing waters of a cataract, and the ordinary rendering, adopted above, requires only natural supplements.
Ver. 8 approaches nearer to a specification of the
psalmist's affliction. If taken literally, it points to
some loathsome disease, which had long clung to
and made even his friends shrink from companionship,
and thus had condemned him to isolation. All
these details suggest leprosy, which, if referred to
here, is most probably to be taken, as sickness is in
several psalms, as symbolic of affliction. The desertion
by friends is a common feature in the psalmists' complaints.
The seclusion as in a prison-house is, no
doubt, appropriate to the leper's condition, but may
If the recurring cry to Jehovah in ver. 9 is taken,
as we have suggested it should be, as marking a new
turn in the thoughts, the second part of the psalm will
include vv. 9-12. Vv. 10-12 are apparently the daily
prayer referred to in ver. 9. They appeal to God to
preserve the psalmist from the state of death, which
he has just depicted himself as having in effect
already entered, by the consideration which is urged
in other psalms as a reason for Divine intervention
(vi. 5, xxx. 9, etc.)—namely, that His power had no field
for its manifestation in the grave, and that He could
draw no revenue of praise from the pale lips that lay
silent there. The conception of the state of the dead
is even more dreary than that in vv. 4, 5. They are
"shades," which word conveys the idea of relaxed
feebleness. Their dwelling is Abaddon—i.e., "destruction,"—"darkness,"
"the land of forgetfulness" whose
inhabitants remember not, nor are remembered, either
by God or man. In that cheerless region, God had no
opportunity to show His wonders of delivering mercy,
for monotonous immobility was stamped upon it, and
The last part (vv. 13-18) is marked, like the two
preceding, by the repetition of the name of Jehovah,
and of the allusion to the psalmist's continual prayer.
It is remarkable, and perhaps significant, that the time
of prayer should here be "the morning," whereas in
ver. 1 it was, according to Delitzsch, the night, or,
according to the other rendering, day and night. The
psalmist had asked in ver. 2 that his prayer might
enter into God's presence; he now vows that it will
come to meet Him. Possibly some lightening of his
burden may be hinted at by the reference to the time
of his petition. Morning is the hour of hope, of new
vigour, of a fresh beginning, which may not be only a
prolongation of dreary yesterdays. But if there is any
such alleviation, it is only for a moment, and then the
cloud settles down still more heavily. But one thing
the psalmist has won by his cry. He now longs to
know the reason for his affliction. He is confident that
God is righteous when He afflicts, and, heavy as his
sorrow is, he has passed beyond mere complaint concerning
Such a cry is never offered in vain, even though
it should be followed, as it is here, by plaintive reiterations
of the sufferer's pains. These are now little more
than a summary of the first part. The same idea of
being in effect dead even while alive is repeated in
ver. 15, in which the psalmist wails that from youth
he had been but a dying man, so close to him had death
seemed, or so death-like had been his life. He has
borne God's terrors till he is distracted. The word
rendered "I am distracted" is only used here, and
consequently is obscure. Hupfeld and others deny
that it is a word at all (he calls it an "Unwort"), and
would read another which means to become torpid. The
existing text is defended by Delitzsch and others, who
take the word to mean to be weakened in mind or
1 The loving-kindnesses of Jehovah will I sing for ever,
To generation after generation will I make known Thy Faithfulness with my mouth.
2 For I said, For ever shall Loving-kindness be built up,
The heavens—in them wilt Thou establish Thy Faithfulness,
3 I have made a covenant with My chosen one,
I have sworn to David My servant;
4 For ever will I establish thy seed,
And build up thy throne to generation after generation. Selah.
5 And the heavens shall make known Thy wonders, Jehovah,
Thy Faithfulness also in the congregation of Thy holy ones.
6 For who in the skies can be set beside Jehovah,
[Or] likened to Jehovah, amongst the sons of the mighty ones?
7 A God very terrible in the council of the holy ones,
And dread above all round about Him.
8 Jehovah, God of Hosts, who like Thee is mighty, Jah?
And Thy Faithfulness [is] round Thee.
9 Thou, Thou rulest the insolence of the sea,
When its waves lift themselves on high, Thou, Thou stillest them.
10 Thou, Thou hast crushed Rahab as one that is slain,
By the arm of Thy strength Thou hast scattered Thine enemies.
11 Thine are the heavens, Thine also the earth,
The world and its fulness, Thou, Thou hast founded them.
12 North and south, Thou, Thou hast created them,
Tabor and Hermon shout for joy at Thy Name.
13 Thine is an arm with might,
14 Righteousness and Justice are the foundation of Thy throne,
Loving-kindness and Troth go to meet Thy face.
15 Blessed the people who know the festal shout!
Jehovah, in the light of Thy face they walk.
16 In Thy Name do they exult all the day,
And in Thy righteousness are they exalted.
17 For the glory of their strength art Thou,
And in Thy favour shall our horn be exalted.
18 For to Jehovah [belongs] our shield,
And to the Holy One of Israel our king.
19 Then Thou didst speak in vision to Thy favoured one and didst say,
I have laid help upon a hero,
I have exalted one chosen from the people,
20 I have found David My servant,
With My holy oil have I anointed him
21 With whom My hand shall be continually,
Mine arm shall also strengthen him,
22 No enemy shall steal upon him,
And no son of wickedness shall afflict him.
23 And I shatter his adversaries before him,
And them that hate him will I smite,
24 And My Faithfulness and My Loving-kindness [shall be] with him,
And in My name shall his horn be exalted.
25 And I will set his hand on the sea,
And his right hand on the rivers.
26 He, he shall call upon Me, My Father art Thou,
My God and the rock of my salvation.
27 Also I, I will give him [to be My] first-born,
Higher than the kings of the earth.
28 For ever will I keep for him My Loving-kindness,
And My covenant shall be inviolable towards him.
29 And I will make his seed [to last] for ever,
And his throne as the days of heaven.
30 If his sons forsake My law,
And walk not in My judgments,
31 If they profane My statutes,
32 Then will I visit their transgression with a rod,
And their iniquity with stripes.
33 But My Loving-kindness will I not break off from him,
And I will not be false to My Faithfulness.
34 I will not profane My covenant,
And that which has gone forth from My lips will I not change.
35 Once have I sworn by My holiness,
Verily I will not be false to David.
36 His seed shall be for ever,
And his throne as the sun before me,
37 As the moon shall he be established for ever,
And the witness in the sky is true. Selah.
38 But Thou, Thou hast cast off and rejected,
Thou hast been wroth with Thine anointed,
39 Thou hast abhorred the covenant of Thy servant,
Thou hast profaned his crown to the ground.
40 Thou hast broken down all his fences,
Thou hast made his strongholds a ruin.
41 All that pass on the way spoil him,
He is become a reproach to his neighbours.
42 Thou hast exalted the hand of his adversaries,
Thou hast made all his enemies rejoice.
43 Also Thou turnest the edge of his sword,
And hast not made him to stand in the battle.
44 Thou hast made an end of his lustre,
And cast his throne to the ground,
45 Thou hast shortened the days of his youth,
Thou hast wrapped shame upon him. Selah.
46 How long, Jehovah, wilt Thou hide Thyself for ever?
[How long] shall Thy wrath burn like fire?
47 Remember how short a time I [have to live],
For what vanity hast Thou created all the sons of men!
48 Who is the man who shall live and not see death,
[Who] shall deliver his soul from the hand of Sheol?
49 Where are Thy former loving-kindnesses, Jehovah,
Which Thou swarest to David in Thy faithfulness?
50 Remember, Lord, the reproach of Thy servants,
51 Wherewith Thine enemies have reproached Thee, Jehovah,
Wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of Thine anointed.
52 Blessed be Jehovah for evermore.
Amen and Amen.
The whole tone of the psalm suggests that it was written when the kingdom was toppling to ruin, or perhaps even after its fall. Delitzsch improbably supposes that the young king, whom loss and shame make an old man (ver. 45), is Rehoboam, and that the disasters which gave occasion to the psalm were those inflicted by the Egyptian king Shishak. Others see in that youthful prince Jehoiachin, who reigned for three months, and was then deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, and whom Jeremiah has bewailed (xxii. 24-29). But all such conjectures are precarious.
The structure of the psalm can scarcely be called strophical. There are three well-marked turns in the flow of thought,—first, the hymn to the Divine attributes (vv. 1-18); second, the expansion of the promise, which is the basis of the monarchy (vv. 19-37); and, finally, the lament and prayer, in view of present afflictions, that God would be true to His attributes and promises (vv. 38-51). For the most part the verses are grouped in pairs, which are occasionally lengthened into triplets.
The psalmist begins with announcing the theme of
his song—the Loving-kindness and Faithfulness of God.
Surrounded by disasters, which seem in violent contradiction
to God's promise to David, he falls back on
thoughts of the Mercy which gave it and the Faithfulness
which will surely accomplish it. The resolve
to celebrate these in such circumstances argues a faith
victorious over doubts, and putting forth energetic
efforts to maintain itself. This bird can sing in midwinter.
True, the song has other notes than joyous
ones, but they, too, extol God's Loving-kindness and
Faithfulness, even while they seem to question them.
The Divine promise, on which the Davidic throne
rests, is summed up in the abruptly introduced pair
of verses (3, 4). That promise is the second theme
of the psalm; and just as, in some great musical composition,
the overture sounds for the first time phrases
which are to be recurrent and elaborated in the sequel,
so, in the four first verses of the psalm, its ruling
thoughts are briefly put. Vv. 1, 2, stand first, but
are second in time to vv. 3, 4. God's oracle preceded
the singer's praise. The language of these two
verses echoes the original passage in
In vv. 6-18 the psalmist sets forth the Power and Faithfulness of God, which insure the fulfilment of His promises. He is the incomparably great and terrible God, who subdues the mightiest forces of nature and tames the proudest nations (vv. 9, 10), who is Maker and Lord of the world (vv. 11, 12), who rules with power, but also with righteousness, faithfulness, and grace (vv. 13, 14), and who, therefore, makes His people blessed and safe (vv. 15-18). Since God is such a God, His promise cannot remain unfulfilled. Power and willingness to execute it to the last tittle are witnessed by heaven and earth, by history and experience. Dark as the present may be, it would, therefore, be folly to doubt for a moment.
The psalmist begins his contemplations of the glory
of the Divine nature with figuring the very heavens as
vocal with His praise. Not only the object but the
givers of that praise are noteworthy. The heavens
are personified, as in
With ver. 9 the hymn descends to earth, and magnifies God's Power and Faithfulness as manifested there. The sea is, as always, the emblem of rebellious tumult. Its insolence is calmed by Him. And the proudest of the nations, such as Rahab ("Pride," a current name for Egypt), had cause to own His power, when He brought the waves of the sea over her hosts, thus in one act exemplifying His sovereign sway over both nature and nations. He is Maker, and therefore Lord, of heaven and earth. In all quarters of the world His creative hand is manifest, and His praise sounds. Tabor and Hermon may stand, as the parallelism requires, for west and east, though some suppose that they are simply named as conspicuous summits. They "shout for joy at Thy Name," an expression like that used in ver. 16, in reference to Israel. The poet thinks of the softly swelling Tabor with its verdure, and of the lofty Hermon with its snows, as sharing in that gladness, and praising Him to whom they owe their beauty and majesty. Creation vibrates with the same emotions which thrill the poet. The sum of all the preceding is gathered up in ver. 13, which magnifies the might of God's arm.
But more blessed still for the psalmist, in the midst
of national gloom, is the other thought of the moral
character of God's rule. His throne is broad-based
upon the sure foundation of righteousness and justice.
The pair of attributes always closely connected—namely,
Loving-kindness and Troth or Faithfulness—are
here, as frequently, personified. They "go to
meet Thy face"—that is, in order to present themselves
before Him. "The two genii of the history of redemption
Since God is such a God, His Israel is blessed,
whatever its present plight. So the psalmist closes
the first part of his song, with rapturous celebration
of the favoured nation's prerogatives. "The festal
shout" or "the trumpet-blast" is probably the music
at the festivals (
The second part (vv. 19-37) draws out in detail, and
at some points with heightened colouring, the fundamental
prophecy by Nathan. It falls into two parts, of
which the former (vv. 19-27) refers more especially to
the promises given to David, and the second (vv. 28-37)
to those relating to his descendants. In ver. 19
"vision" is quoted from
The next pair of verses (26, 27) deals with the
inward side of the relations of God and the king. On
David's part there will be child-like love, with all the
lowliness of trust and obedience which lies in the
recognition of God's fatherhood, and on God's part
there will be the acknowledgment of the relation, and
the adoption of the king as His "first-born," and therefore,
in a special sense, beloved and exalted. Israel is
called by the same name in other places, in reference
From ver. 28 onwards the psalmist turns to expand
the promises to David's line. His words are mainly a
poetical paraphrase of
The allusions to the ancient promise are completed
in vv. 36, 37, with the thought of the perpetual continuance
of the Davidic line and kingdom, expressed by the
familiar comparison of its duration to that of the sun
and moon. Ver. 37 b is best understood as above.
Some take the faithful witness to be the moon; others
the rainbow, and render, as in the A.V. and R.V., "and
as the faithful witness." But the designation of the
moon as a witness is unexampled and almost unintelligible.
It is better to take the clause as independent,
and to suppose that Jehovah is His own witness, and
that the psalmist here speaks in his own person, the
quotation of the promises being ended. Cheyne encloses
the clause in a parenthesis and compares
The third part begins with ver. 38, and consists of
two portions, in the first of which the psalmist complains
with extraordinary boldness of remonstrance,
The expostulation very nearly crosses the boundary
of reverent remonstrance, when it charges God with
having Himself "abhorred" or, according to another
rendering, "made void" His covenant, and cast the
king's crown to the ground. The devastation of the
kingdom is described, in vv. 40, 41, in language borrowed
from
Then follows prayer, which shows how consistent with
true reverence and humble dependence is the outspoken
vigour of the preceding remonstrance. The boldest
thoughts about the apparent contradiction of God's words
and deeds are not too bold, if spoken straight to Him,
and not muttered against Him, and if they lead the
speaker to prayer for the removal of the anomaly. In
ver. 46 there is a quotation from
The last three verses (vv. 49-51) urge yet another
plea—that of the dishonour accruing to God from the
continuance of Israel's disasters. A second "Remember"
Ver. 50 b is obscure. To "bear in the bosom"
usually implies tender care, but here can only mean
sympathetic participation. The psalmist again lets his
own personality appear for a moment, while he identifies
himself as a member of the nation with "Thy servants"
and "Thine anointed." The last words of the clause
are so obscure that there must apparently have been
textual corruption. If the existing text is retained, the
object of the verb I bear must be supplied from a, and
this clause will run, "I bear in my bosom the reproach
of all the many peoples." But the collocation of all
and many is harsh, and the position of many is
anomalous. An ingenious conjecture, adopted by
Cheyne from Böttcher and Bickell, and accepted by
Baethgen, reads for "all, many peoples," the shame of
the peoples, which gives a good meaning, and may be
received as at all events probable, and expressing the
intent of the psalmist. Insolent conquerors and their
armies triumph over the fallen Israel, and "reproach
the footsteps" of the dethroned king or royal line—i.e.,
they pursue him with their taunts, wherever he goes.
These reproaches cut deep into the singer's heart;
but they glance off from the earthly objects and strike
the majesty of Heaven. God's people cannot be
flouted without His honour being touched. Therefore
Ver. 52 is no part of the original psalm, but is the closing doxology of Book III.
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