1 Preserve me, O God, for I take refuge in Thee2 I have said to Jehovah, Thou art my Lord;Good for me there is none besides Thee.3 As for the saints which are in the earth,They are the excellent, in whom is all my delight.4 Their griefs are many who change [Jehovah] for another.I will not pour out their drink offerings of blood,And will not take their names on my lips.5 Jehovah is my allotted portion and my cup;Thou art continually my lot.6 The measuring lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,And my inheritance is fair to me.7 I will bless Jehovah who has given me counsel;Yea, in the night seasons my reins instruct me.8 I set Jehovah before me continually,Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved.9 Therefore my heart rejoices, and my glory exults;Yea, my flesh dwells in safety.10 For Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol;Thou wilt not suffer Thy Beloved One to see the pit.11 Thou wilt make me know the path of life;Before Thy face is fulness of joys;Pleasures are in Thy right hand for evermore.
The progress of thought in this psalm is striking. The singer is first a bold confessor in the face of idolatry and apostasy (vv. 1-4). Then the inward sweetness of his faith fills his soul, as is ever the reward of brave avowal, and he buries himself, bee-like in the pure delights of communion with Jehovah (vv. 5-8). Finally, on the ground of such experience,he rises to the assurance that "its very sweetness yieldeth proof" that he and it are born for undying life (vv. 9-11). The conviction of immortality is then most vividly felt, when it results from the consciousness of a present full of God. The outpourings of a pure and wholesome mystic religion in the psalm are so entirely independent of the personality and environment of the singer that there is no need to encumber the study of it with questions of date. If we accept the opinion that the conception of resurrection was the result of intercourse with Persia, we shall have to give a post-exilic date to the psalm. But even if the general adoption of that belief was historically so motived, that does not forbid our believing that select souls, living in touch with God, rose to it long before. The peaks caught the glow while the valleys were filled with mists. The tone of the last section sounds liker that of a devout soul in the very act of grasping a wonderful new thought, which God was then and there revealing to him through his present experience, than of one who was simply repeating a theological truth become familiar to all.
The first turn of thought (vv. 1-4) is clear in its general purport. It is a profession of personal adherence to Jehovah and of attachment to His lovers, in the face of idol worship which had drawn away some. The brief cry for preservation at the beginning does not necessarily imply actual danger, but refers to the possible antagonism of the idol worshippers provoked by the psalmist's bold testimony. The two meanings of Martyr, a witness and a sufferer, are closely intertwined in fact. He needs to be preserved, and he has a claim to be so, for his profession of faith has brought the peril.
The remarkable expression in ver. 2bis best understood as unfolding the depth of what lies in saying, My God. It means the cleaving to Him of the whole nature as the all-comprehending supply of every desire and capacity. "Good for me is none besides Thee." This is the same high strain as in the cognate Psalm lxxiii. 25, where, as here, the joy of communion is seen in the very act of creating the confidence of immortality. The purest expression of the loftiest devotion lies in these few words. The soul that speaks thus to Jehovah turns next to Jehovah's friends and then to His foes. To the former it speaks, in ver. 3, of the gnarled obscurity of which the simplest clearing up is that adopted by the R.V. This requires a very small correction of the text, the omission of one letter, (Waw= and) before "excellent," and the transference to the second clause of "these," which the accents append clumsily to the first. If we regard the "to" at the beginning, as the R.V. does, as marking simply reference ("as for"), the verse is an independent sentence; but it is possible to regard the influence of "I have said" as still continuing, and in that case we should have what the psalmist said to the saints, following on what he said to Jehovah, which gives unity to the whole context, and is probably best. Cheyne would expunge the first clause as a gloss crept in from the margin; and that clears the sense, though the remedy is somewhat drastic, and a fine touch is lost, "I said to Thy loved ones,—these (and not the braggarts who strut as great men) are the truly excellent, in whom is all my delight." When temptations to forsake Jehovah are many, the true worshipper has to choose his company, and his devotion to his only God will lead to penetrating insight into theunreality of many shining reputations and the modest beauty of humble lives of godliness. Eyes which have been purged to see God, by seeing Him will see through much. Hearts that have learned to love Jehovah will be quick to discern kindred hearts, and, if they have found all good in Him, will surely find purest delight in them. The solitary confessor clasps the hands of his unknown fellows.
With dramatic abruptness he points to the unnamed recreants from Jehovah. "Their griefs are many—they exchange (Jehovah) for another." Apparently, then, there was some tendency in Israel to idolatry, which gives energy to the psalmist's vehement vow that he will not offer their libations of blood, nor take the abhorred names of the gods they pronounced into his lips. This state of things would suit but too much of Israel's history, during which temptations to idol worship were continually present, and the bloody libations would point to such abominations of human sacrifice as we know characterised the worship of Moloch and Chemosh. Cheyne sees in the reference to these a sign of the post-exilic date of the psalm; but was there any period after the exile in which there was danger of relapse to idolatry, and was not rather a rigid monotheism the great treasure which the exiles brought back? The trait seems rather to favour an earlier date.
In the second section (vv. 5-8) the devout soul suns itself in the light of God, and tells itself how rich it is. "The portion of mine inheritance" might mean an allotted share of either food or land, but ver. 6 favours the latter interpretation. "Cup" here is not so much an image for that which satisfies thirst, though that would be beautiful, as for that which is appointedfor one to experience. Such a use of the figure is familiar, and brings it into line with the other of inheritance, which is plainly the principal, as that of the cup is dropped in the following words. Every godly man has the same possession and the same prohibitions as the priests had. Like them he is landless, and instead of estates has Jehovah. They presented in mere outward fashion what is the very law of the devout life. Because God is the only true Good, the soul must have none other, and if it have forsaken all other by reason of the greater wealth of even partial possession of Him, it will be growingly rich in Him. He who has said unto the Lord, "Thou art my Lord," will with ever increasing decisiveness of choice and consciousness of sufficiency say, "The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance." The same figure is continued in ver. 5b. "My lot" is the same idea as "my portion," and the natural flow of thought would lead us to expect that Jehovah is both. That consideration combines with the very anomalous grammatical form of the word rendered "maintainest" to recommend the slight alteration adopted by Cheyne following Dyserinck and Bickell, by which "continually" is read for it. What God is rather than what He does is filling the psalmist's happy thoughts, and the depth of his blessedness already kindles that confidence in its perpetuity which shoots up to so bright a flame in the closing verses (cf. lxxiii.). The consciousness of perfect rest in perfect satisfaction of need and desires ever follows possession of God. So the calm rapture of ver. 6 is the true utterance of the heart acquainted with God, and of it alone. One possession only bears reflection. Whatever else a man has, if he has not Jehovah for his portion, some part of himself will stand stiffly out, dissentient and unsatisfied,and hinder him from saying "My inheritance is fair to me." That verdict of experience implies, as it stands in the Hebrew, subjective delight in the portion and not merely the objective worth of it. This is the peculiar pre-eminence of a God-filled life, that the Infinitely good is wholly Good to it, through all the extent of capacities and cravings. Who else can say the same? Blessed they whose delights are in God! He will ever delight them.
No wonder that the psalmist breaks into blessing; but it is deeply significant of the freedom from mere sentimental religion which characterises the highest flights of his devotion, that his special ground of blessing Jehovah is not inward peace of communion, but the wise guidance given thereby for daily difficulties. A God whose sweet sufficiency gives satisfaction for all desires and balm for every wound is much, but a God who by these very gifts makes duty plain, is more. The test of inward devotion is its bearing on common tasks. True wisdom is found in fellowship with God. Eyes which look on Him see many things more clearly. The "reins" are conceived of as the seat of the Divine voice. In Old Testament psychology they seem to stand for feelings rather than reason or conscience, and it is no mistake of the psalmist's when he thinks that through them God's counsel comes. He means much the same as we do when we say that devout instincts are of God. He will purify, ennoble and instruct even the lower propensities and emotions, so that they may be trusted to guide, when the heart is at rest in Him. "Prayer is better than sleep," says the Mohammedan call to devotion. "In the night seasons," says the psalmist, when things are more clearly seen in the dark thanby day, many a whisper from Jehovah steals into his ears.
The upshot of all is a firm resolve to make really his what is his. "I set Jehovah always before me"—since He is "always my lot." That effort of faith is the very life of devotion. We have any possession only while it is present to our thoughts. It is all one not to have a great estate and never to see it or think about it. True love is an intense desire for the presence of its object. God is only ours in reality when we are conscious of His nearness, and that is strange love of Him which is content to pass days without ever setting Him before itself. The effort of faith brings an ally and champion for faith, for "He is at my right hand," in so far as I set Him before me. "At my right hand,"—then I am at His left, and the left arm wears the shield, and the shield covers my head. Then He is close by my working hand, to direct its activity and to lay His own great hand on my feeble one, as the prophet did his on the wasted fingers of the sick king to give strength to draw the bow. The ally of faith secures the stability of faith. "I shall not be moved," either by the agitations of passions or by the shocks of fortune. A calm heart, which is not the same thing as a stagnant heart, is the heritage of him who has God at his side; and he who is fixed on that rock stands four-square to all the winds that blow. Foolhardy self-reliance says, I shall never be moved (x. 6), and the end of that boast is destruction. A good man, seduced by prosperity, may forget himself so far as to say it (xxx. 6), and the end of that has to be fatherly discipline, to bring him right. But to say "Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved" is but to claim the blessings belonging to the possessionof the only satisfying inheritance, even Jehovah Himself.
The heart that expands with such blessed consciousness of possessing God can chant its triumphant song even in front of the grave. So, in his closing strain the psalmist pours out his rapturous faith that his fellowship with God abolishes death. No worthy climax to the profound consciousness of communion already expressed, nor any satisfactory progress of thought justifying the "therefore" of ver. 9, can be made out with any explanation of the final verses, which eliminates the assurance of immortal life from them. The experiences of the devout life here are prophecies. These aspirations and enjoyments are to their possessor, not only authentic proofs "that God is and that He is the rewarder of the heart that seeks Him," but also witnesses of immortality not to be silenced. They "were not born for death," but, in their sweetness and incompleteness alike, point onwards to their own perpetuity and perfecting. If a man has been able to say and has said "My God," nothing will seem more impossible to him than that such a trifle as death should have power to choke his voice or still the outgoings of his heart towards, and its rest in, his God. Whatever may have been the current beliefs of the psalmist's time in regard to a future life, and whether his sunny confidence here abode with him in less blessed hours of less "high communion with the living God," or ebbed away, leaving him to the gloomier thoughts of other psalms, we need not try to determine. Here, at all events, we see his faith in the act of embracing the great thought, which may have been like the rising of a new sun in his sky—namely, the conviction that this his joy was joy for ever. A like depth of personalexperience of the sweetness of communion with God will always issue in like far-seeing assurance of its duration as unaffected by anything that touches only the physical husk of the true self. If we would be sure of immortal life, we must make the mortal a God-filled life.
The psalmist feels the glad certainty in all his complex nature, heart, soul, and flesh. All three have their portion in the joy which it brings. The foundation of the exultation of heart and soul and of the quiet rest of flesh is not so much the assurance that after death there will be life, and after the grave a resurrection, as the confidence that there will be no death at all. To "see the pit" is a synonym for experiencing death, and what is hoped for is exemption from it altogether, and a Divine hand leading him, as Enoch was led, along the high levels on a "path of life" which leads to God's right hand, without any grim descent to the dark valley below. Such an expectation may be called vain, but we must distinguish between the form and the substance of the psalmist's hope. Its essence was—unbroken and perfected communion with God, uninterrupted sense of possessing Him, and therein all delights and satisfactions. To secure these he dared to hope that for him death would be abolished. But he died, and assuredly he found that the unbroken communion for which he longed was persistent through death, and that in dying his hope that he should not die was fulfilled beyond his hope.
The correspondence between his effort of faith in ver. 8 and his final position in ver. 11 is striking. He who sets Jehovah continually before himself will, in due time, come where there are fulness of joys before God's face; and he who here, amid distractions and sorrows,has kept Jehovah at his right hand as his counsellor, defender and companion, will one day stand at Jehovah's right hand, and be satisfied for evermore with the uncloying and inexhaustible pleasures that there abide.
The singer, whose clear notes thus rang above the grave, died and saw corruption. But, as the apostolic use of this psalm as a prophecy of Christ's resurrection has taught us, the apparent contradiction of his triumphal chant by the fact of his death did not prove it to be a vain dream. If there ever should be a life of absolutely unbroken communion, that would be a life in which death would be abolished. Jesus Christ is God's "Beloved" as no other is. He has conquered death as no other has. The psalm sets forth the ideal relation of the perfectly devout man to death and the future, and that ideal is a reality in Him, from whom the blessed continuity, which the psalmist was sure must belong to fellowship so close as was his with God, flows to all who unite themselves with Him. He has trodden the path of life which He shows to us, and itislife, at every step, even when it dips into the darkness of what men call death, whence it rises into the light of the Face which it is joy to see, and close to the loving strong Hand which holds and gives pleasures for evermore.
1 Hear a righteous cause, Jehovah, attend to my cry;Give ear to my prayer from no lips of guile.2 From Thy face let my sentence go forth;Thine eyes behold rightly.3 Thou provest my heart, searchest it by night,Triest me by fire: Thou findest not [anything];Should I purpose evil, it shall not pass my mouth (?)4 As for (During) the doings of men, by the word of Thy lipsI have kept [me from] the paths of the violent man.5 My steps have held fast to Thy ways;My feet have not slipped.6 I, I call upon Thee, for Thou wilt answer me, O God;Incline Thine ear unto me: hear my speech.7 Magnify (Make wonderful) Thy loving-kindnesses, Thou who savest those who seek refugeFrom those who rise [against them?] by Thy right hand.8 Keep me as the pupil, the daughter of the eye;In the shadow of Thy wing hide me9 From the wicked, who lay me waste,My enemies at heart, [who] ring me round.10 Their heart they have shut up;With their mouth they speak in arrogance.11 In our steps, they already compass us about;Their eyes they fix, to lay [us] on the ground.12 He is like a lion who longs to rend,And a young lion crouching in coverts.13 Arise, Jehovah: meet his face: make him crouch;Deliver my soul from the wicked [with] Thy sword,14 From men [by] Thy hand, Jehovah, from men of the world,[Having] their portion in [this] life, and [with] Thy hidden treasure Thou fillest their belly;They are full of sons, and leave their overabundance to their children.15 I, I shall in righteousness behold Thy face;I shall be satisfied on awaking [with] Thy likeness.
The investigations as to authorship and date yield the usual conflicting results. Davidic, say one school; undoubtedly post-exilic, say another, without venturing on closer definition; late in the Persian period, says Cheyne. Perhaps we may content ourselves with the modest judgment of Baethgen in his last book ("Handcommentar," 1892, p. 45): "The date of composition cannot be decided by internal indications." The background is the familiar one of causeless foes round an innocent sufferer, who flings himself into God's arms for safety, and in prayer enters into peace and hope. He is, no doubt, a representative of theEcclesia pressa; but he is so just because his cry is intensely personal. The experience of one is the type for all, and a poet's prerogative is to cast his most thoroughly individual emotions into words that fit the universal heart. The psalm is called a "prayer," a title given to only four other psalms, none of which are in the First Book. It has three movements, marked by the repetition of the name of God, which does not appear elsewhere, except in the doubtful verse 14. These three are vv. 1-5, in which the cry for help is founded on a strong profession of innocence; vv. 6-12, in which it is based on a vivid description of the enemies; and vv. 13-15, in which it soars into the pure air of mystic devotion, and thence looks down on the transient prosperity of the foe and upwards, in a rapture of hope, to the face of God.
The petition proper, in vv. 1, 2, and its ground, are both strongly marked by conscious innocence, and therefore sound strange to our ears, trained as we have been by the New Testament to deeper insight into sin. This sufferer asks God to "hear righteousness,"i.e.his righteous cause. He pleads thebona fidesof his prayer, the fervour of which is marked by its designation as "mycry," the high-pitched note usually the expression of joy, but here of sore need and strong desire. Boldly he asks for his "sentence from Thy face," and the ground of that petition is that "Thine eyes behold rightly." Was there, then, no inner baseness that should have toned down such confidence? Was this prayer not much the same as the Pharisee's in Christ's parable? The answer is partly found in the considerations that the innocence professed is specially in regard to the occasions of the psalmist's present distress, and that the acquittal by deliverance which he asks is God's testimony that as to these he was slandered and clear. But, further, the strong professions of heart-cleanness and outward obedience which follow are not so much denials of any sin as avowals of sincere devotion and honest submission of life to God's law. They are "the answer of a good conscience towards God," expressed, indeed, more absolutely than befits Christian consciousness, but having nothing in common with Pharisaic self-complacency. The modern type of religion which recoils from such professions, and contents itself with always confessing sins which it has given up hope of overcoming, would be all the better for listening to the psalmist and aiming a little more vigorously and hopefully at being able to say, "I know nothing against myself." There is no danger in such a saying, if it be accompanied by "Yet am I not hereby justified" and by "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret faults."
The general drift of vv. 3-5 is clear, but the precise meaning and connection are extremely obscure. Probablythe text is faulty. It has been twisted in all sorts of ways, the Masoretic accents have been disregarded, the division of verses set aside, and still no proposed rendering of parts of vv. 3, 4, is wholly satisfactory. The psalmist deals with heart, lips, feet—that is, thoughts, words, and deeds—and declares the innocence of all. But difficulties begin when we look closer. The first question is as to the meaning and connection of the word rendered in the A.V. and R.V., "I am purposed." It may be a first person singular or an infinitive used as a noun or even a noun, meaning, in both the latter cases, substantially the same,i.e.my thinking or my thoughts. It is connected by the accents with what follows; but in that case the preceding verb "find" is left without an object, and hence many renderings attach the word to the preceding clause, and so get "Thou shalt find no [evil] thoughts in me." This division of the clauses leaves the words rendered, by A.V. and R.V., "My mouth shall not transgress," standing alone. There is no other instance of the verb standing by itself with that meaning, nor is "mouth" clearly the subject. It may as well be the object, and the clause be, "[It] shall not pass my mouth." If that is the meaning, we have to look to the preceding word as defining what it is that is thus to be kept unuttered, and so detach it from the verb "find," as the accents do. The knot has been untied in two ways: "My [evil] purpose shall not pass," etc., or, taking the word as a verb and regarding the clause as hypothetical, "Should I think evil, it shall not pass," etc.
Either of these renderings has the advantage of retaining the recognised meaning of the verb and of avoiding neglect of the accent. Such a rendering has beenobjected to as inconsistent with the previous clause, but the psalmist may be looking back to it, feeling that his partial self-knowledge makes it a bold statement, and thus far limiting it, thatifany evil thought is found in his heart, it is sternly repressed in silence.
Obscurity continues in ver. 4. The usual rendering, "As for [or, During] the works of men, by the word of Thy mouth I have kept me," etc., is against the accents, which make the principal division of the verse fall after "lips"; but no satisfactory sense results if the accentuation is followed unless we suppose a verb implied, such as,e.g.,stand fastor the like, so getting the profession of steadfastness in the words of God's lips, in face of men's self-willed doings. But this is precarious, and probably the ordinary way of cutting the knot by neglecting the accents is best. In any case the avowal of innocence passes here from thoughts and words to acts. The contrast of the psalmist's closed mouth and God's lips is significant, even if unintended. Only he who silences much that rises in his heart can hear God speaking. "I kept me from," is a very unusual meaning for the word employed, which generally signifies toguardorwatch, but here seems to meanto take heed so as to avoid. Possibly the prepositionfrom, denoted by a single letter, has fallen out before "paths." This negative avoidance precedes positive walking in God's ways, since the poet's position is amidst evil men. Goodness has to learn to say No to men, if it is ever to say Yes to God. The foot has to be forcibly plucked and vigilantly kept from foul ways before it can be planted firmly in "Thy paths." By holding fast to courses appointed by God stability is ensured. Thus the closing clause of this first part is ratheran acknowledgment of the happy result of devoted cleaving to God than an assertion of self-secured steadfastness. "My feet do not slip," not so much because they are strong as because the road is good, and the Guide's word and hand ready.
The second part repeats the prayer for help, but bases it on the double ground of God's character and acts and of the suppliant's desperate straits; and of these two the former comes first in the prayer, though the latter has impelled to the prayer. Faith may be helped to self-consciousness by the sense of danger, but when awakened it grasps God's hand first and then faces its foes. In this part of the psalm the petitions, the aspects of the Divine character and working, and the grim picture of dangers are all noteworthy. The petitions by their number and variety reveal the pressure of trouble, each new prick of fear or pain forcing a new cry and each cry recording a fresh act of faith tightening its grasp. The "I" in ver. 6 is emphatic, and may be taken as gathering up the psalmist's preceding declarations and humbly laying them before God as a plea: "I, who thus cleave to Thy ways, call upon Thee, and my prayer is that of faith, which is sure of answer." But that confidence does not make petition superfluous, but rather encourages it. The assurance that "Thou wilt answer" is the reason for the prayer, "Incline Thine ear." Naturally at such a moment the name of God springs to the psalmist's lips, but significantly it is not the name found in the other two parts of the psalm. There He is invoked as "Jehovah," here as "God." The variation is not merely rhetorical, but the name which connotes power is appropriate in a prayer for deliverance from peril so extreme. "Magnify [or make wonderful] Thy loving-kindnesses" is a petitioncontaining at once a glimpse of the psalmist's danger, for escape from which nothing short of a wonder of power will avail, and an appeal to God's delight in magnifying His name by the display of His mercy. The prayer sounds arrogant, as if the petitioner thought himself important enough to have miracles wrought for him; but it is really most humble, for the very wonder of the loving-kindness besought is that it should be exercised for such a one. God wins honour by saving a poor man who cries to Him; and it is with deep insight into the heart of God that this man presents himself as offering an occasion, in which God must delight, to flash the glory of His loving power before dull eyes. The petitions grow in boldness as they go on, and culminate in two which occur in similar contiguity in the great Song of Moses in Deut. xxxii.: "Keep me as the pupil of Thy eye." What closeness of union with God that lovely figure implies, and what sedulous guardianship it implores! "In the shadow of Thy wings hide me." What tenderness of fostering protection that ascribes to God, and what warmth and security it asks for man! The combination and order of these two petitions may teach us that, if we are to be "kept," we must be hidden; that if these frail lives of ours are to be dear to God as the apple of His eye, they must be passed nestling close by His side. Deep, secret communion with Him is the condition of His protection of us, as another psalm, using the same image, has it: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."
The aspects of the Divine character, which the psalmist employs to move God's heart and to encourage his own, are contained first in the name "God," and next in the reference to His habitual dealings withtrusting souls, in ver 7. From of old it has been His way to be the Saviour of such as take refuge in Him from their enemies, and His right hand has shielded them. That past is a prophecy which the psalmist grasps in faith. He has in view instances enough to warrant an induction absolutely certain. He knows the law of the Divine dealings, and is sure that anything may happen rather than that it shall fail. Was he wrong in thus characterising God? Much in his experience and in ours looks as if he were; but they who most truly understand what help or salvation truly is will most joyously dwell in the sunny clearness of this confidence, which will not be clouded for them, though their own and others' trust is not answered by what sense calls deliverance.
The eye which steadily looks on God can look calmly at dangers. It is with no failure of faith that the poet's thoughts turn to his enemies. Fears that have become prayers are already more than half conquered. The psalmist would move God to help, not himself to despair, by recounting his perils. The enemy "spoil" him or lay him waste, the word used for the ravages of invaders. They are "enemies in soul"—i.e., deadly—or perhaps "against [my] soul" or life. They are pitiless and proud, closing their hearts, which prosperity has made "fat" or arrogant, against the entrance of compassion, and indulging in gasconading boasts of their own power and contemptuous scoffs at his weakness. They ring him round, watching his steps. The text has a sudden change here from singular to plural, and back again to singular, reading "oursteps," and "They have compassedme," which the Hebrew margin alters to "us." The wavering between the singular and plural is accounted for bythe upholders of the Davidic authorship by a reference to him and his followers, and by the advocates of the theory that the speaker is the personified Israel by supposing that the mask falls for a moment, and the "me," which always means "us," gives place to the collective. Ver. 11bis ambiguous in consequence of the absence of an object to the second verb. To "set the eyes" is to watch fixedly and eagerly; and the purpose of the gaze is in the next clause stated by an infinitive with a preposition, not by a participle, as in the A.V. The verb is sometimes transitive and sometimes intransitive, but the former is the better meaning here, and the omitted object is most naturally "us" or "me." The sense, then, will be that the enemies eagerly watch for an opportunity to cast down the psalmist, so as to lay him low on the earth. The intransitive meaning "to bow down" is taken by some commentators. If that is adopted (as it is by Hupfeld and others), the reference is to "our steps" in the previous clause, and the sense of the whole is that eager eyes watch for these "bowing to the ground," that is stumbling. But such a rendering is harsh, since steps are always on the ground. Baethgen ("Handcommentar"), on the strength of Num. xxi. 22, the only place where the verb occurs with the same preposition as here, and which he takes as meaning "to turn aside to field or vineyard—i.e., to plunder them"—would translate, "They direct their eyes to burst into the land," and supposes the reference to be to some impending invasion. A similar variation in number to that in ver. 11 occurs in ver. 12, where the enemies are concentrated into one. The allusion is supposed to be to some one conspicuous leader—e.g., Saul—but probably the change is merely an illustration of thecarelessness as to such grammatical accuracy characteristic of emotional Hebrew poetry. The familiar metaphor of the lurking lion may have been led up to in the poet's imagination by the preceding picture of the steadfast gaze of the enemy, like the glare of the green eyeballs flashing from the covert of a jungle.
The third part (vv. 13-15) renews the cry for deliverance, and unites the points of view of the preceding parts in inverted order, describing first the enemies and then the psalmist, but with these significant differences, the fruits of his communion with God, that now the former are painted, not in their fierceness, but in their transitory attachments and low delights, and that the latter does not bemoan his own helplessness nor build on his own integrity, but feeds his soul on his confidence of the vision of God and the satisfaction which it will bring. The smoke clouds that rolled in the former parts have caught fire, and one clear shoot of flame aspires heavenward. He who makes his needs known to God gains for immediate answer "the peace of God, which passeth understanding," and can wait God's time for the rest. The crouching lion is still ready to spring; but the psalmist hides himself behind God, whom he asks to face the brute and make him grovel at his feet ("Make him bow down," the same word used for a lion couchant in Gen. xlix. 9 and Num. xxiv. 9). The rendering of ver. 13b, "the wicked, who is Thy sword," introduces an irrelevant thought; and it is better to regard the sword as God's weapon that slays the crouching wild beast. The excessive length of ver. 14 and the entirely pleonastic "from men (by) Thy hand, O Lord," suggest textual corruption. The thought runs more smoothly, thoughnot altogether clearly, if these words are omitted. There remains a penetrating characterisation of the enemy in the sensuous limitations and mistaken aims of his godless being, which may be satiated with low delights, but never satisfied, and has to leave them all at last. He is no longer dreaded, but pitied. His prayer has cleared the psalmist's eyes and lifted him high enough to see his foes as they are. They are "men of the world," belonging, by the set of their lives, to a transitory order of things—an anticipation of New Testament language about "the children of this world." "Their portion is in [this] life," while the psalmist's is God (xvi. 5). They have chosen to have their good things in their lifetime. Hopes, desires, aims, tastes, are all confined within the narrow bounds of time and sense, than which there can be no greater folly. Such limitation will often seem to succeed, for low aims are easily reached; and God sometimes lets men have their fill of the goods at which their perverted choice clutches. But even so the choice is madness and misery, for the man, gorged with worldly good, has yet to leave it, however unwilling to loosen his hold. He cannot use his goods; and it is no comfort to him, sent away naked into darkness of death, that his descendants revel in what was his.
How different the contrasted conditions of the hunted psalmist and his enemies look when the light of such thoughts streams on them! The helpless victim towers above his persecutors, for his desires go up to Him who abides and saturates with His blessed fulness the heart that aspires to Him. Terrors vanish; foes are forgotten; every other wish is swallowed up in one, which is a confidence as well as a desire. The psalmist neither grudges, nor is perplexed by, the prosperity ofthe wicked. The mysteries of men's earthly lot puzzle those who stand at a lower elevation; but they do not disturb the soul on these supreme heights of mystic devotion, where God is seen to be the only good, and the hungry heart is filled with Him. Assuredly the psalmist's closing expectation embodies the one contrast worth notice: that between the present gross and partial satisfactions of sense-bound lives and the calm, permanent, full delights of communion with God. But does he limit his hopes to such "hours of high communion with the living God" as may be ours, even while the foe rings us round and earth holds us down? Possibly so, but it is difficult to find a worthy meaning for "when I awake" unless it be from the sleep of death. Possibly, too, the allusion to the men of the world as "leaving their substance" makes the reference to a future beatific vision more likely. Death is to them the stripping off of their chosen portion; it is to him whose portion is God the fuller possession of all that he loves and desires. Cheyne ("Orig. of Psalt.," p. 407) regards the "awaking" as that from the "sleep" of the intermediate state by "the passing of the soul into a resurrection body." He is led to the recognition of the doctrine of the resurrection here by his theory of the late date of the psalm and the influence of Zoroastrianism on it. But it is not necessary to suppose an allusion to the resurrection. Rather the psalmist's confidence is the offspring of his profound consciousness of present communion, and we see here the very process by which a devout man, in the absence of a clear revelation of the future, reached up to a conclusion to which he was led by his experience of the inmost reality of friendship with God. The impotence of death on the relation of the devout soul to God is a postulate of faith, whetherformulated as an article of faith or not. Probably the psalmist had no clear conception of a future life; but certainly he had a distinct assurance of it, because he felt that the very "sweetness" of present fellowship with God "yielded proof that it was born for immortality."
1 Heartily do I love Thee, Jehovah, my strength!2 Jehovah, my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,My God, my rock in whom I take refuge,My shield and the horn of my salvation and my high tower!3 I call upon Him who is to be praised, Jehovah;And from mine enemies am I saved.4 The breakers of death ringed me round,And streams of destruction terrified me.5 The cords of Sheol encircled me;The snares of death fronted me.6 In my distress I called on Jehovah,And to my God I loudly cried;He heard my voice from His palace-temple,And my loud crying before Him entered His ears.7 Then the earth rocked and reeled,And the foundations of the mountains quiveredAnd rocked again, for He was wroth.8 Smoke went up in His nostrils,And fire from His mouth devoured;Brands came blazing from Him.9 And He bowed the heavens and came down,And cloud gloom [was] below His feet.10 And He rode upon the cherub and flew,And came swooping on the wings of the wind.11 He made darkness His covert, His tent round about Him,Darkness of waters and cloud masses of the skies.12 From the brightness before Him there passed through His cloud-massesHail and brands of fire.13 And Jehovah thundered in the heavens,And the Most High gave forth His voice.14 And He sent forth His arrows and scattered them,And lightnings many, and flung them into panic.15 And the beds of the waters were seen,And the foundations of the earth bared,At Thy rebuke, Jehovah,At the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.16 He stretched from on high: He took me;He drew me from many waters.17 He rescued me from my strong enemyAnd from my haters, because they were too mighty for me.18 They fell on me in the day of my calamity,But Jehovah became as a staff to me.19 And He brought me out into a wide place;He delivered me, because He delighted in me.20 Jehovah treated me according to my righteousness;According to the cleanness of my hands He returned [recompense] to me.21 For I kept the ways of Jehovah,And did not part myself by sin from my God.22 For all His judgments were before me,And His statutes did I not put away from me.23 And I was without fault with Him,And I kept myself from my iniquity.24 Therefore Jehovah returned [recompense] to me according to my righteousness,According to the cleanness of my hands before His eyes.25 With the gracious man Thou showest Thyself gracious;With the faultless man Thou showest Thyself faultless.26 With him who purifies himself Thou showest Thyself pure,And with the perverse Thou showest Thyself froward.27 For Thou savest humbled people,And eyes uplifted Thou dost bring low.28 For Thou lightest my lamp;Jehovah my God brightens my darkness.29 For by Thee I run down a troop,And through my God I spring over a rampart.30 As for God, His way is faultless;The word of Jehovah is tried (as by fire):A shield is He to all who take refuge in Him.31 For who is God but Jehovah,And who is a rock besides our God?32 [It is] God who girded me with strength,And made my way faultless;33 Who made my feet like hinds' [feet],And made me stand upon my high places;34 Who schooled my hands for war,So that my arms bend a bow of brass.35 And Thou didst give me the shield of Thy salvation,And Thy right hand upheld me,And Thy humility made me great.36 Thou didst broaden under me [a path for] my step,And my ankles did not give.37 I pursued my enemies, and overtook them;And I did not turn till I had consumed them.38 I shattered them, and they could not rise;They fell beneath my feet.39 And Thou girdedst me with might for battle;Thou didst bring my assailants to their knees under me.40 And my enemies Thou madest to turn their backs to me,And my haters—I annihilated them.41 They shrieked, and there was no helper,To Jehovah, and He answered them not.42 I pounded them like dust before the wind;Like street mud I emptied them out.43 Thou didst deliver me from the strifes of the people;Thou didst set me for a head of the nations;A people whom I knew not served me.44 At the hearing of the ear they made themselves obedient to me;The children of the foreigner came feigning to me.45 The children of the foreigner faded away,And came trembling from their strongholds.46 Jehovah lives, and blessed be my rock;And exalted be the God of my salvation,47 The God who gave me revengesAnd subdued peoples under me,48 My deliverer from my enemies:Yea, from my assailants Thou didst set me on high,From the man of violence didst Thou rescue me.49 Therefore will I give Thee thanks among the nations, Jehovah;And to Thy name will I sing praise.50 He magnifies salvations for His king,And works loving-kindness for His anointed,For David and for his seed for evermore.
The description of the theophany (vv. 7-19) and that of the psalmist's God-won victories (vv. 32-46) appear to refer to the same facts, transfigured in the former case by devout imagination and presented in the latter in their actual form. These two portions make the two central masses round which the psalm is built up. They are connected by a transitional section, of which the main theme is the power of character to determine God's aspect to a man as exemplified in the singer's experience; and they are preceded and followed by an introduction and a conclusion, throbbing with gratitude and love to Jehovah, the Deliverer.
The Davidic authorship of this psalm has been admitted even by critics who are slow to recognise it. Cheyne asks, as if sure of a negative answer, "What is there in it that suggests the history of David?" ("Orig. of the Psalter," p. 205). Baethgen, who "suspects" that a Davidic psalm has been "worked over" for use in public worship, may answer the question: "The following points speak for the Davidic authorship. The poet is a military commander and king, who wages successful wars, and subdues peoples whom he hitherto did not know. There is no Israelite king to whom the expressions in question in the psalm apply so closely as is the case with David." To these points may be added the allusions to earlier trials and perils, and the distinct correspondence, in a certain warmth and inwardness of personal relation to Jehovah, with the other psalms attributed to David, as well as the pregnant use of the wordto flee to a refuge, appliedto the soul's flight to God, which we find here (ver. 2) and in the psalms ascribed to him. If the clear notes of the psalm be the voice of personal experience, there is but one author possible—namely, David—and the glow and intensity of the whole make the personification theory singularly inadequate. It is much easier to believe that David used the word "temple" or "palace" for Jehovah's heavenly dwelling, than that the "I" of the psalm, with his clinging sense of possession in Jehovah, his vivid remembrance of sorrows, his protestations of integrity, his wonder at his own victories, and his triumphant praise, is not a man, but a frosty personification of the nation.
The preluding invocation in vv. 1-3 at once touches the high-water mark of Old Testament devotion, and is conspicuous among its noblest utterances. Nowhere else in Scripture is the form of the word employed which is here used for "love." It has special depth and tenderness. How far into the centre this man had penetrated, who could thus isolate and unite Jehovah and himself, and could feel that they two were alone and knit together by love! The true estimate of Jehovah's ways with a man will always lead to that resolve to love, based on the consciousness of God's love to him. Happy they who learn that lesson by retrospect; happier still if they gather it from their sorrows while these press! Love delights in addressing the beloved and heaping tender names on its object, each made more tender and blessed by that appropriating "my." It seems more accordant with the fervent tone of the psalm to regard the reiterated designations in ver. 2 as vocatives, than to take "Jehovah" and "God" as subjects and the other names as predicates. Rather the whole is one long,loving accumulation of dear names, a series of invocations, in which the restful heart murmurs to itself how rich it is and is never wearied of saying, "my delight and defence." As in Psalm xvii., the name of Jehovah occurs twice, and that of God once. Each of these is expanded, as it were, by the following epithets, and the expansion becomes more extended as it advances, beginning with one member in ver. 1, having three in ver. 2aand four in ver. 2b. Leaving out the Divine names proper, there are seven in ver. 2, separated into two groups by the name of God. It may be observed there is a general correspondence between the two sets, each beginning with "rock" (though the word is different in the two clauses), each having the metaphor of a fortress, and "shield and horn of salvation," roughly answering to "Deliverer." The first word forrockis more properlycragorcliff, thus suggesting inaccessibility, and the second arock mass, thus giving the notion of firmness or solidity. The shade of difference need not be pressed, but the general idea is that of safety, or by elevation above the enemy and by reason of the unchangeable strength of Jehovah. In that lofty eyrie, a man may look down on all the armies of earth, idly active on the plain. That great Rock towers unchangeable above fleeting things. The river at its base runs past, the woods nestling at its feet bud and shed their leaves, but it stands the same. David had many a time found shelter among the hills and caves of Judah and the South land, and it may not be fancy that sees reminiscences of these experiences in his song. The beautiful figure for trust embodied in the word in 2bbelongs to the metaphor of the rock. It is found with singular appropriateness in Psalm lvii., which the title ascribesto David "in the cave," the sides of which bent above him and sheltered him, like a great pair of wings, and possibly suggested the image, "In the shadow of Thy wings will I take refuge." The difference between "fortress" and "high tower" is slight, but the former gives more prominence to the idea of strength, and the latter to that of elevation, both concurring in the same thought as was expressed by "rock," but with the additional suggestion of Jehovah as the home of the soul. Safety, then, comes through communion. Abiding in God is seclusion from danger. "Deliverer" stands last in the first set, saying in plain words what the preceding had put in figures. "My shield and the horn of my salvation" come in the centre of the second set, in obedience to the law of variety in reiteration which the poet's artistic instincts impose. They shift the figure to that of a warrior in actual conflict. The others picture a fugitive from enemies, these a fighter. The shield is a defensive weapon; horns are offensive ones, and the combination suggests that in conflict we are safe by the interposition of God's covering power, and are armed by the same power for striking at the foe. That power ensures salvation, whether in the narrower or wider sense. Thus Jehovah is all the armour and all the refuge of His servant. To trust Him is to have His protection cast around and His power infused for conflict and victory. The end of all life's experience is to reveal Him in these characters, and they have rightly learned its lessons whose song of retrospect begins with "I will love Thee, Jehovah," and pours out at His feet all happy names expressive of His sufficiency and of the singer's rest in possessing Him. Ver. 3 is not a resolution for the future—"I will call; ... so shall I be saved"—but the summing upof experience in a great truth: "I call, ... and I am saved." It unfolds the meaning of the previous names of God, and strikes the key-note for the magnificent sequel.
The superb idealisation of past deliverances under the figure of a theophany is prepared for by a retrospect of dangers, which still palpitates with the memory of former fears. "A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things," and a joy's crown of joy is remembering past perils. No better description of David's early life could have been given than that contained in the two vivid figures of vv. 4 and 5. If we adopt the more congruous reading of the other recension of the psalm in 2 Sam. xxii., we have in both members of ver. 4 a parallel metaphor. Instead of "sorrows" or "cords" (both of which renderings are possible for the text of the psalm here), it reads "breakers," corresponding with "floods" in the second clause. "Destruction" is better thanungodly menas the rendering of the unusual word "Belial." Thus the psalmist pictures himself as standing on a diminishing bit of solid ground, round which a rising flood runs strong, breaking on its crumbling narrowness. Islanded thus, he is all but lost. With swift transition he casts the picture of his distress into another metaphor. Now he is a hunted creature, surrounded and confronted by cords and snares. Sheol and Death have marked him for their prey, and are drawing their nets round him. What is left for him? One thing only. He has a voice, and he has a God. In his despair one piercing cry breaks from him; and, wonder of wonders, that thin shoot of prayer rises right into the heavenly palace-temple and the ears of God. The repetition of "I called upon the Lord" connects this with ver. 3 as the experience on which the generalisation there is based.His extremity of peril had not paralysed the psalmist's grasp of God as still "my God," and his confidence is vindicated. There is an eloquent contrast between the insignificance of the cause and the stupendous grandeur of the effect: one poor man's shrill cry and a shaking earth and all the dread pomp attending an interposing God. A cupful of water poured into a hydraulic ram sets in motion power that lifts tons; the prayer of faith brings the dread magnificence of Jehovah into the field. The reading of 2 Samuel is preferable in the last clause of ver. 6, omitting the superfluous "before Him."
The phenomena of a thunderstorm are the substratum of the grand description of Jehovah's delivering self-manifestation. The garb is lofty poetry; but a definite fact lies beneath, namely some deliverance in which the psalmist saw Jehovah's coming in storm and lightning flash to destroy, and therefore to save. Faith sees more truly because more deeply than sense. What would have appeared to an ordinary looker-on as merely a remarkable escape was to its subject the manifestation of a present God. Which eye sees the "things that are,"—that which is cognisant only of a concatenation of events, or that which discerns a Person directing these? The cry of this hunted man has for first effect the kindling of the Divine "wrath," which is represented as flaming into action in the tremendous imagery of vv. 7 and 8. The description of the storm in which God comes to help the suppliant does not begin with these verses, as is commonly understood. The Divine power is not in motion yet, but is, as it were, gathering itself up for action. The complaining prayer is boldly treated as bringing to God's knowledge His servant's straits, and the knowledge as moving Him to wrath towards the enemies of one who takes shelter beneathHis wings. "What have I here that my"—servant is thus bestead? saith the Lord. The poet can venture to paint a picture with the pen, which the painter dare not attempt with the pencil. The anger of Jehovah is described in words of singular daring, as rising like smoke from His nostrils and pouring in fire from His lips, from which blazing brands issue. No wonder that the earth reels even to the roots of the mountains, as unable to endure that wrath! The frank anthropomorphism of the picture, of which the features are taken from the hard breathing of an angry man or animal (compare Job's crocodile in Job xli. 10-13), and the underlying conception are equally offensive to many; but as for the former, the more "gross" the humanising of the picture, the less likely is it to be mistaken for prose fact, and the more easy to apprehend as symbol: and as for the latter, the New Testament endorses the conception of the "wrath of God," and bids us take heed lest, if we cast it away, we maim His love. This same psalm hymns Jehovah's "gentleness"; and the more deeply His love is apprehended, the more surely will His wrath be discerned as its necessary accompaniment. The dark orb and its radiant sister move round a common centre.
Thus kindled, God's wrath flashes into action, as is wonderfully painted in that great storm piece in vv. 9-15. The stages of a violent thunder tempest are painted with unsurpassable force and brevity.
First we see the low clouds: far nearer the trembling earth than the hidden blue was, and seeming to press down with leaden weight, their boding blackness is above us; but