Psalm 73
THIS Psalm, while presenting some difficulties in its detailed interpretation, is full of instructive meaning and value to the exercised believer, who is realizing in his measure the practical experiences of a man of God in the midst of the world's pervading evil.
It is the recital of one who has come forth from the sanctuary of God to declare the wisdom which he has learned there, and which can be acquired nowhere else, concerning the right ways of God, in the mystery of His long-suffering patience with the world and its iniquity.
The secret of God, in the knowledge of which faith finds a solution of the perplexing and distressful riddle of human affairs, is not to be unraveled by a study of facts, nor evolved from an extended experience of God's apparent dealings as the Governor of the world. He is, indeed, the Judge and Ruler of all. But although power is His alone, and He is the only and the righteous God, yet to the mind of one who judges the progress of events, and estimates the actual condition of human society by the light of Divine truth, nothing is more abidingly manifest than the apparent inversion of the known and eternal principles of Divine government which the world everywhere presents. "The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure." The present impunity of evil-doers, and the continual depression and frequent persecution of truth in the persons of its servants, have at all times served to exercise the faith and patience of God's saints.
The Psalm before us discloses some of the secret conflict of a heart thus exercised. But it has a very definite character of its own, besides its general application in principle to the circumstances of individual faith. This is indicated in the opening verse, which contains the proper subject of the Psalm. It is the celebration of the name of Jehovah as the God of faithful mercy to Israel—as the God moreover of judgment, requiring (and in the mystery of His own grace providing) truth and holiness in the hearts of His people. He is good to Israel, even to such as are clean of heart (verse 1).
The action of the Psalm commences with the second verse. It seems to describe prophetically the exercise of soul which the faithful remnant of Israel will know, and which in varying degrees has been always the experience of such in the time of national apostasy, when the day of man draws towards its fearful close, and the long-deferred hope of God's afflicted people seems more than ever to be mocked by the secure prosperity of the ungodly (verse 12). But the prisoners of hope have a sure stronghold in God. He becomes to such the "little sanctuary," wherein are found, not only security from the rage of the enemy, but also light and truth, whereby, in the clear discernment of the long-expected end, they may still endure, sustaining their souls in patience of hope until "His time arrive. It is found to be a good thing to draw nigh to God. He becomes known in the hour of natural despondency as the strength of the believer's heart, and quietness and assurance are the experienced results (verses 26-28).
Considering more closely its practical application, we find in verses 4-12 a solemn portraiture of the world as the enemy of God. Men corrupt themselves under His mercies. Nourishing their hearts as in a day of slaughter, they heap up treasure for the last days. The progress which man is enabled to make in the march of secular improvement and prosperity never fails to harden his heart against God. It is impossible to be rich in one's own esteem, and rich toward God at the same time. That which nature regards as wealth and increase, is poverty, and nakedness, and blindness, and wretchedness, in the, eyes of Christ. The love of money is opposed perpetually to the love of Jesus. It is called in Scripture a root of all evils, because of its incompatibility with the faith which alone produces fruits of righteousness by Jesus Christ, and because it is the most commanding and enduring of all human lusts. Characteristically the godly and the ungodly are frequently contrasted in Scripture as the poor and the rich; for faith never deems itself rich in its own temporal possessions, its wealth is God. Silver and gold may abound, but if so, they are held by the believer in trust for God. Nature values money in proportion to its estimate of the things which money can accomplish or procure; for wealth is man's omnipotence within the death-drawn circle of this present life. Hence the native aversion of the heart to God expands into increased boldness of expression, as the self discovered and self-wrought appliances of man's natural will become multiplied in his hands.
Men naturally act upon the principle of referring everything to themselves, denying meanwhile, or evading, God's testimony that they are themselves intrinsically corrupt. The endeavor to accommodate the word of Divine truth to the desires of the human will, and so to obtain a sanction, such as conscience needs, for ends and courses which are purely selfish, has often been the fond attempt of nature in a certain stage of religious apostasy. But this is not its final form. The goal of unbelief is atheism. Faith comes to God because it believes that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
Unbelief, never contemplating the rewards of blessedness as the gift of God, whose aspect towards His ruined creature is that of gracious promise, ceases to think of Him at all when the fruits of natural desire are found to be attainable by human means. The unrestrained license of the human will is always found to coincide with a complete denial of God. “They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth" (verses 8, 9). Such is the estimate which the Spirit of Christ forms of the character and conduct of the ungodly, who prosper in the world and increase in riches.
The effect upon the mind of a believer, of constantly witnessing the impunity of evil, is fretfulness, unless the soul is kept habitually stayed upon God. This feeling not infrequently generates, as its result, a disposition to conform, more or less, for ease and personal advantage' sake, to that which is, nevertheless, judged in the conscience as contrary to God. The abundance of evil causes love to wax cold even in a saint, while his heart is occupied with the evil, rather than with Him who is above it and in the midst of it, for the most sure deliverance of His elect. Hence the caution which warns us not to think it strange if fiery trial come. We are to let patience have her perfect work. But the end and finisher of that work is the Lord Himself. And so it is said: “Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the 'coming of the Lord.”
Change of time or circumstance is not the hope of faith, but the Lord Himself, who will be manifested in a little while as the only deliverer of His people, and as the rectifier of the confusions in the midst of which they are called to sojourn, and to suffer for a season, by the will of God.
We have an expression of this feeling of fretfulness in verses 13, 14. The eye affects the heart, naturally, for joy or grief. But the result of the heart's counsel concerning the sight of the eyes is ever profitless and vain. There is nothing there that is capable of affording relief and compensation to the afflicted spirit under the pressure of the evil day. Light is to be found in God alone. Where He is dealing with the soul this discovery is always attained, though often at the expense of much previous trial, as in the present case (verses 15-17). God alone can set crooked things straight, and will do so in His time. But the place where His purposes are learned, and where, therefore, the tried heart of the believer finds its rest and re-assurance, is the sanctuary. The Christian is often thus exercised.
It is only when all things are referred immediately to Christ, and are weighed with reference to the declared counsels of the Divine will, of which Jesus is the center and the object, that steadiness of soul can be maintained. Fixedness of heart, combined with diligence in service, is the result of clear and positive knowledge of the end to which all things are working in the sure purposes of God.
Verses 18-20 rehearse the solemn record of God's righteous judgment in the day of visitation. The foot of human pride will find the boasted ground of its confidence a slippery place, when the Lord arises to judge. When they shall say, peace and safety, then sudden and complete destruction comes.
On the practical value of the remaining verses I need not remark at length. With verses 25, 26, let the Christian reader compare Phil. 3:88Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, (Philippians 3:8); Gal. ii_ 20; and 2 Cor. 4:16-1816For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 17For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 18While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16‑18), for his exhortation and comfort. The entire passage, however, appears to have a prophetic meaning, like the rest of the Psalm.
The last verse, besides its present bearing on the believer, will receive a conspicuous fulfillment in the day when Israel shall have returned to Him from whom they have so deeply revolted. Nearness to God will be found then to be good. The Christian knows this, in whose heart there is a response to the Spirit's witness, that it is a good thing for the heart to be established with grace, not with meats. Israel will know the same truth when the veil is taken from their heart, and they know Him through whose precious blood alone the rebellious outcasts are brought nigh, with perfect and eternal acceptance, to the God of peace.
Psalm 74
A SOLEMN pleading of Jewish faith in the land of Immanuel, when, in the last hours of man's evil day, the overspreading of abominations shall have filled the breadth of the land, and the ensigns of Antichrist already are displayed upon the citadel of Zion. The people of God appeal from the cruelty and blasphemy of lawless wickedness to Him who had surnamed Himself from of old with the name of Israel. He had dwelt at Zion. He had purchased the people, and redeemed the land to be His own. The covenant of His promise remained in the hearts of the believing remnant of His servants, as the sure witness of these things. Thus His Name is made the sole ground of this appeal.
The last days of Gentile dominion, when, after having passed through the various stages and gradations of religious corruption, the open apostasy of the professing world under Antichrist, who is here (verse 22), as in Psa. 14, called the fool, will have brought the nations nigh to the God of judgment, is evidently the time of the final action of this Psalm. But it is restricted to Immanuel's land. For there it is that the enemies of the Lord attain the full measure of: their sin; and there that they will know the terrible certainty of His recorded judgments. The perfection of blasphemy must be reached in the land and in the city where the Lord was crucified. God will be dishonored, as He has often been before, in His sanctuary with a final provocation. The Man of Sin will set his seat there in the wisdom of his power, and will be proved a fool in the catastrophe of Divine judgment, which shall hurl him from his place of pride into the long-prepared pit of perdition.
It is the voice of jealousy that is heard in this Psalm. The foolish nation and the foolish man (verses 18, 22) are seen to prosper, to the utter desolation of the land and city which are specially distinguished by Jehovah's name.
All the synagogues of God are burned up (verse 8); for in that day there will be one whose will it is to take the place of God, and who will not brook that men's petitions shall be asked of any but himself. Darius is a type of this. But the antitypical king shall do according to his own will, and not at the counsel of others. He will exalt himself above every god, and speak marvelous things against the God of gods. But there is a remnant who will return to the mighty God of Jacob. Having been moved to jealousy by a foolish nation, they will remember Jehovah in their low estate. They will return, with confession mixed with faith, to the unchanging covenant of God.
Verse 18 is peculiarly striking. It expresses, in the mouth of Jewish faith, the very term of reproach with which the Spirit of God had prophetically despised the aggressive Gentiles in Deut. 32:2121They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. (Deuteronomy 32:21). This indicates a complete recognition on the part of the repentant people of their position as having been under the chastening hand of God, although in its distinctive tone this is not a penitential Psalm. They justify Him in His past dealings with themselves. It was He who had heaped mischief on them. They had been pierced through with His arrows. They are thus enabled to appeal to His name against the wrath of the enemy, who was magnifying himself against that name in thus oppressing the poor of His covenant. The enemy would fain serve himself of them for his own pleasure; but God had other thoughts. He had ordained the oppressors as a staff of correction to His own people, and established them that they might be the witnesses of His mighty Name when the power of His anger should be shown in their destruction.
It is a very beautiful as well as very solemn Psalm. The clear light of Divine deliverance is beheld in retrospect (verses 12-17), and faith, remembering the source of ancient mercies in the first covenant of promise, draws thence sustaining auguries of hope in the midst of the prevailing desolations. For the secret of God is known and treasured in the hearts of them that fear His name. He forsaketh not His saints, and will be jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. His sore displeasure will be upon the heathen, whose lawless lust of aggression had helped forward the affliction which should recoil with violence upon themselves.
Verse 11 clearly, I think, refers to Messiah the Deliverer -the hand of God which is to be taken from His bosom to smite with terror and a perpetual reproach the enemies of His name. In verse 16 there seems to be an allusion to the then state of the foolish nation, who are crowning their folly by the ascription of creative attributes and original divinity to the beast, whose dominion is by the energy of Satan. Faith, meanwhile, confesses God, the blessed and only Potentate, while tarrying until the promised deliverance be come.
The Psalm closes with a memorial of the fullness of atheistic blasphemy. The fool sits in the scorner's seat. God's enemies daily rise against Him. Their tumult increases continually. Yet God was of old the King and Savior of His people. He would work salvation for them according to His name (verse 12).
Psalm 75
THE opening verse of this remarkable Psalm seems to express the anticipative thanksgiving of those who lift up their heads in the midst of the stupendous events of the last times, because, in the manifest interference of the God of judgment, they perceive that their own redemption draweth nigh. It thus connects itself with the closing verses of the preceding Psalm, where solemn invocation was made of the God of judgment to arise and plead His own cause.
In the second verse the voice of Messiah is heard answering, as the Desire of all nations, to the groaning of the long-corrupted and afflicted earth—of the creature which travails in bondage until now—but especially of the persecuted sufferers for His name's sake—the elect, for whose sakes the days of that dread tribulation shall be shortened.
The meaning of the sublime language which follows (verse 3) is already understood by the believer who, through faith, has received into his soul the testimony of the Spirit, in whose heart the cross has been fully revealed in power.
But it expresses a truth which will have its manifest fulfillment when the promised time of shaking shall have come. It will be thus when Jesus, who, as Jehovah, shall shake all things—even things in heaven as well as things on earth—shall Himself be known as the quieter and conservator of the troubled earth, which shall presently break forth into singing because of the setting up of His throne of righteousness and peace. The government shall then be manifestly on His shoulder, whose ability to bear and to administer it is according to the power and wisdom of the living God. For He is God. Though 'manhood be the form of His appearance, and though in the truth of His person He be the once-rejected Son of David, yet is He "the mighty God." The God of the whole earth will He be called in that day.
The remainder of the Psalm reviews the testimony of the Spirit of Christ during the prolonged period of Divine long-suffering, while the cup of trembling remained in the hand of the Lord, and He had continued still to speak persuasively and with faithful warning, being slow to anger and of great kindness. But Jacob's God is the God to whom vengeance belongeth. He will avenge in due time both His people and His name—setting up the throne of His anointed, and abasing the proud scepter of the willful king. In the last two verses we seem to have again the voice of Messiah Himself. The characteristic features both of His priestly and regal administration are expressed. He will be a priest upon His throne in that bright and much-desired day.
Psalm 76
A SONG of exceeding beauty; to be taken up in commemoration of the mighty acts of Israel's God by the earthly people of His covenant, when again planted by His own right hand in the land from whence they shall no more remove. The full accomplishment of national blessing is declared (verse 1). The name of God is great in ISRAEL, as well as known in Judah. He is now received and boasted in by those whose fathers had thrust Him far from them, piercing the hand and the heart which had borne with them and fed them from of old. His tabernacle is now in Salem—no more a city of stirs, but the habitation of perpetual peace—the place of Shiloh's royal seat—of Him who is the lion of the tribe of Judah, and the shepherd, the stone of Israel. At His roar their enemies shall fade away, and melt out of their land; and under His kingly scepter of righteousness and peace His people shall dwell safely as the ransomed flock of His pasture-His beautiful flock, whose beauty and whose multitude are of Him who will be as the dew of increase, not less than the fountain of cleansing, to the people of His name.
The total destruction of the confederate enemies of Immanuel, and the locality of their defeat, are emphatically stated (verses 3-6). "There brake He," etc.
Verse 4 may be an apostrophe of Mount Zion, now owned and blessed as the dwelling-place of the great King—the chosen seat of the mighty One of Jacob—in contrast to the lawless reign of Gentile dominion, a power which had thought only of destruction and self-aggrandizement; whose head had sought to gather the whole earth in the insatiable breadth of his desire, ruling the nations in anger and glorying in an honor and a dignity which proceeded from himself.
The deliverance beheld in near view in the preceding Psalm is now the subject of triumphant celebration as an accomplished fact. In both Psalms it is the God of Jacob who is the subject of His people's praise. It is thus that He will be known, when—not for their sakes, but for His own name's sake (their name being bound in covenant to His)—He will rebuke the faces of the proud, and will found Zion as the abiding resting-place of His glory who is the Lord of all the earth.
Verses 7-9, which are descriptive of the source and effects of the judgments which are to shake terribly the earth, may be compared with Isa. 2 and 9:4. It is entirely an earthly Psalm. It is to save the meek of the earth that God arises in judgment. The concluding verses state summarily the crisis and its results. Princes and kings will fear before Him whose name is dreadful among the heathen in that day. The forces of the Gentiles will flow to the place of His footstool, in token of a homage which will then be rendered universally because of the apparent majesty of Christ. To Him whom the Church now confesses to be the only Lord, while Israel and the world refuse their worship to that name, will every knee bow and every tongue confess, in the day when His power is made known."
Psalm 77
THE exercised heart of a Christian, spiritually distressed, may well find comfort in this very beautiful Psalm, expressing as it does the experience of sore-tried yet triumphant faith. On the other hand, it has a very manifest prophetic reference to the vicissitudes and the eventual hope of Israel. The faith whose conflicts are recited, is specifically Jewish faith. It seems, in its ultimate intention, to express the struggling of their faith-sustained hope against the apparently hopeless affliction and distress into which Jehovah's suffering elect will be made to enter in the latter days. With everything visibly against them, and under the profoundest sense of national sin as the acknowledged cause of their suffering (verses 1-9), the remnant who tremble at the name of Jacob's God, will find in that name the sanctuary of their soul's defense (verses 10-12), and will raise undismayed the standard which has been given them to display in the day of battle, because of the truth of the everlasting covenant (verses 13-20). They will remember the days of old. Made strong out of weakness by a recollection of the pledged and unfailing mercies of the unchanging God of their fathers, they will await, in hopeful patience, the yet fuller and decisive manifestation of His power as the doer of wonders for His people, when the year of His redeemed shall come.
Let us now consider rather its practical bearing on the believer's personal experience.
In the earlier verses (2-9) we have the language of a soul humbled under the mighty hand of God, and there learning, with deep and thorough apprehension of its meaning, the bitter lesson of the creature's vanity and wretchedness as under sin. Yet the groundwork of this soul-exercise is faith: "I sought the Lord." But the process of self-judgment through which one who has wandered from the presence of God has to pass, as the necessary effect of a return thither, is such as to overshadow, and as it were to paralyze for a while, faith's proper action in the heart. There is an absence of all comfort in the present case, because God is remembered only as a witness, in holiness, of His creature's guilt and impotency. Sin is the absorbing subject which occupies the thoughts; and thus God, when remembered, instead of its light and confidence, becomes the disturber of the soul, because He is beheld through the medium of a burdened conscience. Power is indeed felt to belong to Him. But the sense of this does but complete the sufferer's prostration of heart. Thorough overwhelming of spirit is the natural result of searching and effectual self-judgment, when conducted under the eye of Divine holiness, and in ignorance or present forgetfulness of the living covenant of peace.
The experience recounted in this Psalm is that of one who had already known God, not only in power, but in grace. Hence there is a recurring of the troubled spirit in its distress to the works of old; the abiding tokens of that mercy, which has established its earlier acts as pledges of the assured fulfillment in due time of promises not yet received. The true nature of faith, and its wide distinction from all other means of Divine knowledge, are here most strikingly brought out. At verse 3 it is: “I remembered God, and was troubled."God, that is, when thought of by the self-judging spirit apart from the word of His grace, is not, and cannot be, the object of hopeful faith, but is the end of the conscience in fear. Nothing casts forth fear from the heart of a regenerate man but the realized enjoyment of grace; but grace can never be inferred from the inward experience of a heart that judges itself according to truth. The fountains of grace are in God; they flow to meet the sinner in the word of His grace. What the tried soul wants for its relief is “contained in Scripture." The buffeted Christian knows this well. It is only when the heart is diverted from self-dissection, to consider Him in whom the brightness of the Father's glory shines in loving mercy on us as the effect of His atoning work, that light and joy revisit the sin-burdened spirit of the self- condemned believer.
Thus we find it in the case before us. No sooner are the former works of God recalled to mind (verse 10, etc.) than faith, resuming its proper function in the soul, is enabled to re-discover, as it were, its true object in the God of promise and of hope. And so the spirit of the contrite one, which just now thought of God only to the completion of its own confusion, revives at the fresh remembrance of His ancient ways of truth and mercy, and finds heart and speech to trust Him and to speak His praise in talking of His wondrous works. All turns to peace and hope when God is remembered according to the demonstrated truth of His own righteous and triumphant grace.
This is a principle never to be lost sight of by the Christian. Real strength and comfort must have their springs in God Himself. It is the immediate reference of faith to the grace of God that alone establishes the heart. The cross, as the perpetual memorial of that grace, becomes thus the necessary stay of the exercised believer at every stage of His experience while in conflict with the powers of darkness. Christ is the living and ever-blessed exponent of the perfect way of Him who, while He judges as the Father according to every man's work, is eternally to the believer both the God of all grace and the God of peace. It is in looking to Jesus that faith finds its unfailing and triumphant reply to all that Satan can bring to bear as the accuser upon the sensitive conscience of a child of God, when brought, as in the present case, into the dust of self-abasement, because of some clearer and deeper perception which may have been acquired of the exceeding vileness and sinfulness of self.
It is the infirmity of a believer (verse 10) to be thinking of himself, and drawing false inferences (for all such inferences are necessarily erroneous), from what he sees or feels, as to the light in which he is beheld and estimated on the part of God. It is his strength, on the other hand, to remember the right hand of the Most High—to meditate upon the changeless truth and mercy of that God who has committed Himself in holiness to the believing sinner's sure salvation, by causing the Son of His love to suffer in our stead the dread reality of penal death.
Verses 11, 12 describe the renovating effect upon the tried spirit of turning thus from self to God. Meditation on His work, filling first the heart with joyful assurance and a full persuasion of conscious blessedness, constrains the lips to open in the utterance of His praise: “I will talk of thy doings.”
Verse 13 speaks practically to us all. “Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary."God's ways are in Christ. Whether they relate to the salvation in glory of the Church of His election, to the fulfillment of the promised mercy to Israel and the nations of the earth, or to His righteous severity in judgment upon human corruption, it is in Christ that He acts. It is with reference to the glory of Christ that all Jehovah's purposes will have, each in its appointed order of accomplishment, their eventual and perfected results. To have, therefore, a true knowledge of His way is the portion only of those who, in the spirit of their minds, “abide in Him."
On the magnificent close of this Psa. 1 do not dwell.
Its peculiar force and beauty, in connection with the general prophetic features already noted at the commencement of these remarks, are easily perceived. God is the redeemer of His people. Retrospective celebration is the natural beginning of true praise. God's acts of grace and power acquaint the believer with the manner of the God with whom he has to do, whose promise fills the future with the fair colors of a hope which maketh not ashamed. Praise thus justifies and strengthens trust in Him, who is the desired object of the heart's true worship. This is a principle paramount to any peculiarities of dispensation; although, in its practical exemplification, the latter have a mighty influence. Continual praise is the just employment of the “holy brethren," whose knowledge of God is in the gospel of His blessed Son.
Psalm 78
A SOLEMN memorial of Jehovah's praise, as the faithful deliverer, for His name's sake, of His ancient people. It forms thus a part of that “Law" which, in the latter day, shall be graven on the fleshy tables of believing Israel's heart.
This Psalm, which from its first utterance by the Spirit of Christ has remained a testimony against the national apostasy, will receive its full appreciation in the hearts of the saved remnant of the sifted and judgment-stricken people, who will stand in the lot of Divine mercy when the day of Jacob's trouble has its end. With unveiled hearts they will behold the glory of the Lord, and with purged lips will utter the memorial of His name, "showing to the generation to come the praises of Jehovah, and His strength and His wonderful works that He hath done" (verse 4).
As a testimony, it received in principle its fulfillment when Jesus, after having vainly spent His strength as the patient minister of the grace and power of the kingdom of God —enduring the last reproaches and the bitterest contradiction at the hands of the blinded and evil generation, whom He had visited as His own to bless—opened His mouth in the audience of the multitude to declare in parables the mysteries of that kingdom, from which Israel had already excluded themselves by their rejection of Him who was the Messenger of the covenant.
The sin of the "stubborn and rebellious generation” reached its height when they gave to Satan the glory of the work of God. But there is another generation to be born, whose natural lineage indeed will be derived from Abraham, but who, as true children of the covenant, will own another parentage in their participation of that new birth, without which none can either see or have entrance into the kingdom of God. Of them it is written, that their eyes shall see their teachers, and their ears shall hear that word of grace, for lack of which the truth-famished nation now lies fruitless and dishonored, as the withered vine-shoots which no man reaches forth his hand to gather.
It is by the restored nation that the force and meaning of this Psalm will be most perfectly appreciated. Beneath the shadow of the firm-set throne of the true David, the once foolish, but then wise-hearted, nation will, in the perfected unity both of natural and spiritual brotherhood, make mention of the marvelous ways of their covenant God. Jehovah will again inhabit Israel's praises in that day.
Its structure also deserves attention. There is, from verse 12, a recital in historic order of the principal events which happened to the nation, from their deliverance out of Egypt to the accession of David the king. The lesson which is enforced throughout, by the moral contrasts here exhibited, is the abounding and eventually triumphant grace of Israel's God. Jacob is his people, and Israel His inheritance (verse 71), though their provocations may have caused Him to abhor, with a yet deeper loathing than He felt for Shiloh, that den of thieves which passed with men for the true temple of Jehovah, when He came in person to visit the place and people of His name. Wrath has truly come upon the recusants of national mercy to the end. But there is an end. And that end is peace and glory—is Christ Immanuel must yet be honored in Immanuel's land. As in the days of old, the cry of the uncircumcised captors of the Ark of God went up to heaven at the grievousness of their intolerable stroke, and golden memorials of their plague remained, as a perpetual witness of their shame, so, with a yet more fatal, with an irremediable stroke, will Jehovah's arm descend in judgment on the marshaled army of the Man of Sin. With the coveted prize of their bold wickedness already in their grasp, there shall be pronounced against them an effective sentence of destruction.
From the long-forsaken city and temple of His name, Jehovah's voice shall declare a judgment of meet recompense against the adversaries of His truth. Jerusalem will, in that day, be a more grievous burden to her beleaguering foes than was the captured and dishonored Ark to the discomfited Philistines.
The ancient kindness, which added one deliverance to another, and made each fresh declension an occasion to yet richer mercy, stands thus as the recorded type of Israel's future hope, when, founded securely on the sure mercies of David, they shall rest, un-removed and unmolested, in their own appointed place.
Independently of its prophetic interest, this Psalm possesses for the Christian a high practical value, as a most instructive chapter of the word of grace. Warning, and comfort, and instruction alike abound in the moral lesson which is here presented. Its burden is the praise of God, called forth from the hearts of those who, having traced His ways through all the long and varied story of His dealings with His chosen, find that the aggregation of their failure has only served to draw out, and establish in an abiding supremacy, the dominion of His own almighty power, in the fullness of sovereign grace. The royalty of David's throne, which to the rejected nation is a type and promise of prospective blessing, is realized already to the Christian in a higher and far ampler sense through the exaltation of Jesus to the Father's throne. We who believe are come to mount Zion—to the perfected results, that is, of effectual and victorious grace. In spirit, the partaker of the heavenly calling finds in Jesus the consummation of all promise and all hope.
His varied sorrows, and the windings of his ways, while walking as a pilgrim here below, have for their end the deeper knowledge of the God of all grace, who is Himself the bringer of His many sons to glory.
Next to the knowledge of the grace of God, the truth of most difficult attainment to the Christian is a just estimate of the exceeding worthlessness of the flesh. Grace and sin are correlative things. A soul that is not taught profoundly in the self-abasing knowledge of personal unworthiness, cannot possibly possess a deep and solid understanding of the grace of God. But genuine holiness of walk is always conditional upon a true subjection of the heart to God; and grace alone effects this. It is because historical details, such as are found in this Psalm, bring out and present vividly to the conscience the characteristic qualities of man's nature at all times, that they are so precious to the man who seeks in the sure testimonies of God the faithful counselors of His pilgrimage. For it is far better to receive thus the gracious instruction of the Father of lights respecting what is in us, and so to find the solemn lesson sweetened by the pure communion of that love which already has translated us into the kingdom of His Son, than to have to confess with overwhelming shame, through our personal failures, the truth of those warnings which were uttered to preserve the feet of God's saints from the paths of the destroyer. Blessed, indeed, it is to remember, that if His people often walk as fools, He remains unchangeably “the only wise God our Savior." He will visit with correction the sons whom He receives. But in bringing Jesus from the dead, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, He has brought back in triumph, through the complete destruction of the wolf, the Shepherd whose glory is to preserve in faithfulness the flock for which He died in love.
What nature really is may be learned for our profit from the specimen afforded in the present Psalm of Ephraim's goodness and its effects. A thorough rottenness of heart is found in all their ways. They kept not the covenant of God. They saw and presently forgat His works. They were fed miraculously every day, yet constantly they tempted God through unbelief. They disbelieved both His salvation and His wonders. They kept not His testimonies. They limited the Holy One of Israel, who led them in the wilderness; while in the land of their inheritance they provoked the Most High with their high places, and moved Him to jealousy with their graven images. The root of all this evil is disclosed in verse 22: “They believed not God."And again (verse 37): “Their heart was not right with Him." It was an unregenerate nation that provoked God thus. No heart is right with Him that is not born of Him—that is not by faith established in His saving grace. Meanwhile, the Church receives her needed admonition through the Spirit's record of what happened to the faithless generation.
A practical remark suggests itself in connection with verse 42. The rallying point of faith in time of trial is the primary manifestation of grace. To an Israelite a remembrance of the deliverance from Egypt is the test of active faith. In like manner, to the tried believer now it is the CROSS that furnishes the outlet of deliverance from the misty darkness with which Satan sometimes is permitted to envelope our conscience, when the Lord has not been kept watchfully before our face.
Because Israel forgot that first deliverance, they went on frowardly in the way of evil. Because a Christian sometimes stops short of the cross in his spiritual conflicts, he fails to defeat the enemy and remains unfruitful and unhappy, until by some special intervention of the great Restorer he is again brought, in spirit, to that place where God first met him, and welcomed him in Jesus in the fullness of forgiveness and of peace. No intermediate experience, how truthful soever in its character, will meet his case. It is at the cross alone that we regain a thorough right-mindedness about ourselves as well as about God. If we would glorify Him, we must hold fast the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.
There is a diversity in the order and form of the national sin which is not unimportant in a practical point of view. The first generation believed not the works that they saw. Their descendants kept not the testimonies delivered to them. Even thus has it been in the external history of the Church. Before the apostles died, whose testimony placed the Church on its foundation, some of the eye-witnesses of miraculous power fell away. Now, it is for the faith once delivered to the saints that we have to contend, giving mindful heed to the words before spoken by the holy prophets, and to the commandments of the apostles of the Lord and Savior. We who live in this latter day inherit the sins as well as the hope of our fathers. In the progress of apostasy, alas the former have well nigh extinguished and destroyed the latter. The promise of the quick return of Jesus is generally disbelieved, and the faithful witness of the Holy Ghost is disregarded, in favor of plausible delusions. Meanwhile, to be building themselves up in their most holy faith, to be keeping themselves in the' love of God, to be praying in the Holy Ghost, and looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, is the blessed calling of those who look upon the power and coming of the Savior as something better than a fable cunningly devised.
Psalm 79
A STRONG appeal of the Spirit of Christ to the faithfulness of the God of Jacob, coupled with a full recognition of the national transgression which had kindled the fire of His jealousy in the midst of the palaces of Jerusalem. Sin is freely acknowledged by the faithful remnant, whose cry is so distinctly audible in the present Psalm. The direful circumstances, therefore, in the midst of which they find themselves, are fully 'understood. But the covenant name of Jehovah is held fast as the pledge of eventual mercy and deliverance. It is His inheritance that the heathen have defiled by their presence. The blood which has flowed like water round about Jerusalem is the blood of His saints. He might have a controversy with His people, to reprove them for their iniquities—judging them because they are His people—but sevenfold vengeance will descend upon the uncircumcised spoilers who help forward their affliction, spoiling securely for themselves, as if God had indeed forgotten the abiding memorial of His name.
In its general outline, this Psalm is applicable to more than one historical crisis. Its true fulfillment is reserved, I doubt not, for the times of the last Antichrist, when the idolatrous hosts of the Gentiles (worshipping then the beast and his image) will be suffered to lay their hands for the last time upon the dwelling-place of Jacob, when the predicted time of unmatched trouble shall have come. From that day of fear the remnant shall be saved by the effectual might of the Deliverer, who will stand up for the children of His people at that time.
The manner in which the hopeful confidence of faith is blended, in the utterance of the remnant, with deep personal confession and solemn intercession against the enemy, is strikingly characteristic of their true Jewish position as witnesses of the righteous God, the ruler of the nations of the earth. Jehovah's ways towards His people in the literal accomplishment of His ancient prophetic threatenings are fully justified; but the very acts of judgment which assert His terribleness in righteousness are used as an argument of confidence by the suppliant confessors of His name. They do not forget that He has spoken of a remainder of mercy and forgiveness, for them that shall accept His chastenings and turn again to Him. The question therefore is, "How long?" Deliverance eventually was a faithful promise. Thus Jehovah's name becomes a buckler to the remnant who remember and speak of Him aright, while their souls are stayed upon the ancient counsels of His truth. While, therefore, they are broken before God to the lowest pitch of contrition, they are able to invoke unhesitatingly the advent of the avenger who is to destroy their adversaries; for in afflicting His people they had exalted themselves against the Lord.
They had reproached Him, numbering to the slaughter sheep whom He had destined to lie down in quiet pastures, none making them afraid. But His counsel would prevail. His people and the sheep of His pasture should give Him thanks for ever: to all generations they should show His praise (verse 13).
Psalm 80
IN its general subject this most beautiful Psalm is connected with the one immediately preceding. There is in each the same earnest cry for deliverance addressed to Jehovah as the Shepherd of Israel. There are, however, some peculiar traits in the present Psalm which distinguish it widely from the former.
A deeper and more solemn tone pervades it. There is less of the agony of direct appeal, as from beneath the actual pressure of affliction, but it is the utterance of a more thorough and profound contrition of spirit. Such language gives expression to a state of feeling which has its place in hearts, not only keenly alive to the unparalleled vicissitudes of the national history, but deeply conscious also of their source, and which feel, therefore, the long hiding of Jehovah's face to be a deeper grief than the heavy strokes which have been dealt so ruthlessly against them by the hands of men.
There is a repetition of the cry of remembrance uttered in the foregoing Psalm: “How long?" But here it is not the duration of the enemy's power to afflict, that is the occasion of their hope's suspense, but the lingering of the Divine mercy towards themselves (verse 4). It is a sample of that sustained and unremitting prayer which the Spirit of Immanuel puts into the hearts of those who, as the elect of His nation, will surely be heard and answered by His appearing to their joy, although He bear long with them, seeming as if He heard them not.
One very marked feature of the present Psalm is the distinct and complete manner in which the need of personal regeneration is recognized. National salvation is the general burden of their desire. But the necessary means of this is felt to be their own conversion of heart to the Lord. Nor do they underrate the measure of their spiritual need. Their speech is as the cry of them that have no strength. The desire of their hearts can be effected only by the power of God. "Turn us again," etc.—"Quicken us, and we will call upon thy name," are utterances which strikingly express this feeling. As in the bemoaning of Ephraim, elsewhere recorded, there is here also a casting of themselves, in the confession of entire helplessness and personal unworthiness, -upon the grace and power of Him whose dwelling is upon the mercy-seat (verse 1).
They call upon the Shepherd of Israel to come and save them (verse 2). He had many a time sent Saviors in the day of their distress. But the partial help thus rendered, while it exemplified the faithful adherence of Jehovah to His covenant of mercy, yet, because it left undestroyed the root of the nation's bitterness, was ever followed by some new distress, which the very necessity of Divine holiness must cause them to experience by reason of the evil of their ways.
But now the presence of Jehovah Himself, in the chosen Man of His strength, is looked to by the remnant, whose hearts, made wise by strong contrition under the mighty hand of God, have learned effectually the lesson of self-renunciation, and look for life, as well as outward favor, from the Lord alone. The presence of Jesus, in the plenitude of grace and majesty, is the alone security against the relapse of the restored nation to their fathers' sin of unbelief (verses 17, 18).
All the desires expressed in this Psalm have been anticipated in the covenant of promise, and will be realized when the sure word of prophecy shall have had its blessed vindication in the appearing and glory of Jesus. As it is elsewhere said with reference to this: "The Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with thee."
In the preceding Psalm the wrongs of Jerusalem were the immediate subject. We have in this one an explicit and amplified mention of the entire nation. The subject of prayer being the restoration of Divine favor, the Spirit of supplication frames the desires of the trustful remnant according to the completeness of Divine counsel and promise. God had brought Israel out of Egypt. Sin had afterwards separated Ephraim from Judah. The divided house of Jacob had been severally minished and brought low, because of their separate provocations. But now that grace is invoked, upon the ground of covenant promise, to act for the healing of the ruin which their sin had wrought, it is national mercy that is contemplated. Jesus is the Shepherd, the stone of ISRAEL.
Verses 8-13 contain a touching recital of God's past dealings with the vine of His own planting. The prosperity of the nation is ascribed to Him who brought them out of Egypt. Their distress is likewise referred to the same hand: “Why hast thou broken down her hedges?" etc. This is a remarkable specimen of the bold urgency of faith's pleadings, when its true object is distinctly within view.
The mention of the vine suggests immediately a remembrance of Him whose name is THE BRANCH (verse 15). In wasting Israel, Jehovah had dishonored the title of Immanuel (for so it must needs seem to Jewish faith, until the light of Jesus' glory is revealed). Hence the expostulatory tone which comes from the same lips that had made before such large acknowledgment of helplessness and sin.
With respect to the imagery employed in this Psalm, it is familiar in Scripture. It is well for the Christian to remember, that it is as a ravenous wild beast that Gentile dominion is figured by the Holy Ghost during the judicial prostration of Israel. This applies to Christianized Gentilism (as distinguished from the living Church of God) with no less force than to the former idolatrous heathenism. Moreover, as Christ is the true Vine, so there is another plant, which, professing the same name, bears on its branches only fruits of provocation, which will fill the winepress of the wrath of God.
Psalm 81
THERE is a peculiar beauty in this Psalm. It is easy to perceive its moral connection with the last. The shining forth of the Deliverer in power awakens the glad song of triumph to the God of Jacob. The desolating judgment, under which the vineyard of the Lord of hosts had so long drooped and withered, has now passed by for ever. The frequent fasts, which marked the dreary days of mourning, have now been turned to joy and gladness and cheerful feasts, because of the return of Jehovah with mercies to the ancient habitation of His name. The summons to the feasts of the Lord's gladness is followed by a memorial of the ancient mercy which had framed for Israel a statute of perpetual remembrance, when He went forth as Jehovah's freedman from the strange country of his bondage. The Savior's praises are the occupation and the glory of His ransomed people (verses 4, 5).
As a counterpart to the intercessional pleading of the Spirit in the latter part of the foregoing Psalm (verses 8-13), we have now a review of the past history of Israel after the flesh, whose course had been a continual provocation to the Holy One from the time that He took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt. The Lord seems to make answer in these verses (6-16) to the complaint already uttered by His suffering people. The tone of commiserating sympathy in which the record of the nation's self-procured dishonor is here expressed is worthy of Him who, when He beheld the city which had ripened in its iniquity for a judgment which holiness needs must inflict, yet wept over it, because the covenant of her first espousals had been in faithfulness on His part, although she had so soon and so willingly gone far away from Him.
Restoring grace will have replaced the peeled and scattered nation in Immanuel's land before the present Psalm can have its full expression. When settled thus within their quiet resting-places, the festal mirth of their many days of gladness will be tempered by the sad but profitable retrospect of those earlier days of shame and sorrow which shall then have come to a perpetual end in their joyful fruition of the long deferred national hope.
On the practical application of this Psalm it is superfluous to dwell at length. It speaks hopefully, yet with needful warning, to the believer whose desire is to labor with a lawful striving to enter into the rest of God. Verse 10 is more especially rich as a perfect expression of the unvarying way of the God of all grace. He undertakes to fill out of His riches in glory, by Christ Jesus, the largest desires which His own blessed Spirit can create in the souls of His believing children. In temporal things as well as in things spiritual, He will establish the truth of this gracious saying to the heart of simple faith.
To be the un-upbraiding Giver of good things is the changeless character of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. To be the conscious receiver of His favor who, in Jesus and for His name's sake, bestows upon us all things richly to enjoy, is the opulent endowment which, even in this present life, attaches to the heirs of His salvation.
Verse 12 is pregnant with solemn warning to that profession, the standing of which is only by faith and in the goodness of God. When God gives up professing Christendom to walk in its own counsels, its decisive judgment is already nigh. As it respects the nation of Israel, the blessings here spoken of—once forfeited because conditional on their obedience—are reserved for their assured enjoyment in the day of promised restitution.
Psalm 82
WHILE the moral application of this Psalm is very wide, comprehending as it does human authority under every form as the responsible ordinance of God, its more immediate subject seems rather to be the shepherds and rulers of Israel. Thus regarded, it presents the solemn verdict of the Spirit of holiness upon the character and ways of those who, as God's immediate delegates, should have reflected the purity and truth of Him in whose name they sat as rulers among men.
The judges of Israel are in Scripture sometimes invested with the name of God, as a closer and more emphatic indication of the source of their authority as the guides and directors of His people. The word of God came unto them. They sat to administer justice in the name, and according to the declared mind, of Jehovah. The award which they pronounced was not their own but His.
This solemn trust was, however, soon betrayed. Instead of judgment flowing down as waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream, the land mourned because of the iniquity of its rulers. The shepherds, who should have tended the Lord's flock, thought only of feeding themselves. With force and with cruelty they ruled over the poor of Immanuel's land. The princes of the people, instead of exhibiting the Divine attributes of justice and mercy, had become rebellious and companions of thieves. Loving gifts and hating uprightness, they had polluted utterly Jehovah's holy name by their deeds of selfish wickedness. God's truth and love were found no longer in them, nor His fear before their eyes, although His name might still be used to sanction their unrighteous and oppressive acts. All Jewish prophecy abounds with the strong denunciations of the Spirit against the deep and thorough corruption of the visible sources (in profession at least) of purity and right.
The presence of the Son of God at Jerusalem was a moral fulfillment of this Psalm in its principle. Although He judged no man—having come not to judge but to save —yet, because He was the Light of Divine holiness, His presence made manifest the varied character of that dark evil in the midst of which He stood.
Speaking in faithfulness the words of God, He utters His solemn though unheeded verdict upon that which had, while wholly corrupt, exalted itself into the seat of judgment, and arrayed itself in the outward semblance of sanctity and truth.
The remarkable passages in which the Lord appeals to this Psalm in His controversy with the unbelieving Jews is full of interest. Jesus had just before announced Himself as Israel's true Shepherd in the audience of those who falsely claimed that place. The opposition with which the Pharisees received this declaration is met on the Lord's part by the more explicit assertion of His title, and of the proper glory of His person as the Son of God (verses 22-30). This statement of the perfect truth raises the enmity of His adversaries to its height (verse 31). They take up stones to stone Him. Then is it that Jesus, citing this Psalm to bring to their remembrance God's former ways, who put the sanction of His name on men, when they received an office which was meant to indicate His presence with His people, appeals to the works which He had wrought in proof of the reality of His claim. He justifies the good confession of His own true name and title by the irrefragable witness of those acts of grace and power which none could do save He whom the Father had sanctified and sent into the world. He thus presents Himself as the sole rightful bearer, as man, of the name and authority of God. He compares the delegation, both of title and authority (the former commending the latter), which was made to them of old, with the intrinsic truth of His own person, who was come indeed into the world as One sent, but who, in order to receive His mission, must first stand in such a relation to the sender as no man else could know.
“Say ye of Him whom the Father hath sent," etc. It was the true "child of the Most High" who came. Being come, He spike of Him who had sent Him, submitting to be the perfect servant of His will. It is thus that He arrays the Divine validity of His perfect righteousness against the pretensions of men who were blindly sinning against their own souls, while they disowned Him whom Jehovah had anointed as the leader and commander of His people.
The voice of the Spirit, pronouncing the total failure of man under his highest responsibilities and in his most favored position, calls here upon GOD to arise. The earth's foundations are out of course No hand but His can again restore them. This He will surely do in the promised day of restitution, when He shall have purged away the dross from the yet loved city of His name. Meanwhile the nations which are His inheritance, who is the God of the whole earth, are moved to and fro in the restless agitation of the sieve of vanity. Creation groans until He come, whose throne of earthly as well as heavenly rule is founded in righteousness and truth.
Psalm 83
THE entire corruption of the only system in the earth, to which God had formally attached the sanction of His name, is the evidence upon which, in the preceding Psalm, the earth's foundations are declared to be out of course.
In the Psalm before us there is a similar invocation of God. He is called on to arise. Its general subject is, however, materially different. The direct object of the Spirit's present desire is the manifestation in power of the name of JEHOVAH, as the Most High God over all the earth (verse 18). This is the leading characteristic of the Psalm, and one which gives it a peculiar interest and value.
In the existing dispensation, the testimony of the Holy Ghost in the Gospel is to the Father and the Son. The covenant title of God, to the believer in Jesus, is not Jehovah, but the Father: “To us there is one God, the Father," etc. Doubtless He who is the Father is Jehovah likewise. But it is certainly not under that specific name that He reveals Himself in Christ. The true worshippers are now sought and discovered by the FATHER.
"Jehovah" is peculiarly the covenant name of Israel's God. But the covenant by which He has bound Himself in promise to His nation contains within it the general administration of the earth's government in blessing and in power. It is mediately through the national blessing of Israel, that the Gentiles are to know and to adore the name and glory of the God of the whole earth.
Israel are God's earthly witnesses throughout all time. In their calamitous dispersions, as well as in their united happiness and national glory, the fortunes of that people attest Jehovah's righteousness and truth.
At present Israel lies broken on the stumbling-stone Jehovah is Himself the Rock of their offence. But there is a time at hand when He who loves the children for the fathers' sakes will prepare again to take her by the hand, whom for a little moment (for so will it then seem) He had forsaken in His wrath, because of her transgression.
Ere long there will again be witnesses of Jewish blood and Jewish hope in the city of Jerusalem. A hidden remnant yet remains to Israel, who will be remembered in due time. It is plain that the present Psalm relates to such. It is the voice of the Spirit of Christ making intercession for His earthly people against the ripened purposes of the ungodly, who are found united as one man for the attempted frustration of Jehovah's counsel.
God had long held His peace. The period of sufferance had been improved by man, at Satan's suggestion, to the furtherance of his own aggrandizement, independently of God. The arch sinner, when he appears, will bend his chief strength against the only-rival he has any cause to dread. For the very name of Israel is a denial of all his pretensions, whose power and dignity proceed from himself. Dominion and the general obedience of the nations have been claimed of old for Judah's royal tribe. The self-anointed ruler and god of the whole earth will strive, as did his predecessor and his type, to quench the light of Israel's hope The attempt to root out the name and obliterate all memory of Israel, and to enter on a permanent possession of Immanuel’s land, will be the culmination of the bold but infatuated treason of the Man of Sin.
A remarkable resemblance exists between the descriptive enumeration of Israel's foes in the present Psalm, and the record furnished in 2 Chron. 20 of the deliverance of the diminished kingdom of Judah in the reign of Jehoshaphat. That deliverance was, doubtless, a type of the yet greater and decisive victory of judgment which shall still God's enemies to stone-like silence at the unlooked-for revelation of His arm.
In Isa. 42:13, 1413The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies. 14I have long time holden my peace; I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry like a travailing woman; I will destroy and devour at once. (Isaiah 42:13‑14), we have a responsive promise to the opening verse of this Psalm. Yet I feel it to be very difficult to fix an exact time for the action here described. Expressions occur which have sometimes disposed me to see in it a reference to the attempt to dislodge Israel again subsequently to their having been re-established in the land. The historical allusions appear to favor this view. All the instances quoted from the book of Judges have a common character. It was the attempt, that is, of the heathen to dispute with Israel the possession of Jehovah's land, after He had brought them in and bestowed it on them as their own possession.
In the union of pure heathenism with the spurious offspring of the heirs of promise (Moab, Ammon), and the natural but rejected claimants of their title (Ishmael, Edom), we may discern a moral prefigurement, at least, of that fusion of national interests and distinctions, whether political or religious, which will blend apostate Christianity with creeds originally hostile to its own under the general dominion of the Man of Sin. But that the nations here expressed by name will become in an especial manner the subjects of Divine visitation in judgment, is clear from other prophecies of Scripture.
Psalm 84
IN its literal acceptation the tone of this delightful Psalm is manifestly Jewish. It contains language which might well express the longing desires of David while in exile, or of any captive Israelite whose heart might turn, with prayerful constancy of faith and hope, towards the well-remembered dwelling-place of Jacob's God.
If we regard it in its prophetic character, we may, without venturing to assign definitely its time and action, refer it generally to the confluence of Jacob's new-born offspring—then named anew the sons and daughters of Jehovah, to the holy place of His memorial. For the time is coming when "the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping; they shall go and seek Jehovah their God. They shall ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to Jehovah by a perpetual covenant, which shall not be forgotten." Viewed in this light, its remarkable language is full of interest as well as beauty. It is not, however, on account of its prophetic interest that the Christian will chiefly prize this Psalm. As a rich and varied expression of experimental faith, its practical value is not to be surpassed.
A momentary glance, with no attempt at detailed exposition, may be directed at some of its leading features.
It is in the concluding verse that the condition of soul is stated, out of which arise the utterances of hope and desire, which form the general contents of this Psalm. Its true subject may be said to be the blessedness of the man whose confidence is in God. The voice that is heard extolling the loveliness of Jehovah's tabernacles is not that of a stranger (verses 1, 2). The wishes here expressed proceed from one who, having tasted that the Lord is gracious, is faint with hopeful longing, until the fullness of his heart's desires be attained in the realized presence of the living God.
Verse 3 possesses a peculiar beauty and expressiveness. As its fundamental idea, we find a clear discernment of redemption (thine altars) as the divinely-settled basis of the creature's rest and blessing. The sparrow, true figure of uncared for and friendless desolation, is no longer on the housetop in its loneliness, but sheltered in His sanctuary, who cares for all His works. The swallow's oft-repeated wanderings have ended in the sacrificial rest of God.
In its more literal acceptation, this verse offers a very lovely picture of the full sabbatic blessing which the now groaning creation will enjoy, in the day when the earth and its fullness shall be manifestly established in the full results of the once-offered sacrifice of the Lamb. Its immediate moral application is to the heart of the believer, who has found his present rest in the bosom of the God of peace, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. "My King, and my God," is the confident appeal of faith to Him who is not ashamed to be so invoked by the willing pilgrims of His grace.
The Psalm divides itself into two parts. The former of these, which opened with the praises of Jehovah's tabernacles, concludes by celebrating the blessedness of the dwellers in His house (verse 4). They go no more out. Evermore praising, they thus express their delighted fruition of an endless joy. "Faith" and “hope" and "patience" find their end in consummated knowledge and unhindered love.
The verses which follow (5-7) contain the Spirit's benediction on God's pilgrim, while yet upon his way. They are full of richest meaning for those who have begun to run with patience the race set before them as the effect of their heavenly calling in Christ. The minding of heavenly things in a single-hearted love of Jesus, while it makes the present world no better than a vale of tears, yet turns the driest weariness of this life's toil and sorrow to gladness and refreshment, through the presence of the living Rock, which follows the true pilgrim through each passage of his way. The strength of the spiritual man is in God.
In his heart, instead of vain and anxious counsel, there is truthful expectation and desire. Under the burdens of the way his mind is bent upon the end of his high calling.
God blesses such. They taste His comfort richly by the way. Christians of weak faith and small devotedness are often made to water their footsteps through the wilderness with bitter and abundant tears. A strong and simple faith, because it leans on God at every step, finds often, to its grateful surprise not less than to its joy, that where it looked only for distress and danger, it has found rich and peculiar blessing. If in the slightest measure our expectations are from the world or from the flesh, we sow a future harvest of vanity and disappointment. If in the spirit of our minds we are passing through the world, as through the place of death and sin, in trustful contentment, though with keen desire for the rest of God, we shall find our pilgrim way both easily endurable and short.
To be "sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing," is the characteristic experience of the soul that, with a believing appreciation of their blessed meaning, can use the apostle's words, "To me to live is Christ;" and again, "The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." True godliness has promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come.
Verse 7 should be noticed. The Spirit of God having individualized in verse 5 the moral likeness of Jehovah's pilgrim, closes His description of the journey by a general assurance of unfailing attainment to all who are once fairly entered on the way which leads to God. That way is Christ. But to be in Christ is to be accepted of the Father. It is God who brings His many sons to glory.
Already it is announced to the believer that He is come to mount Zion. By faith and in spirit we are there. As to our fare while yet upon the way, our happiness is dependent on our practical obedience. All appear before God; not one sheep straying to perdition from the watchful eye and faithful hand of the great Shepherd, who is of power to preserve His own.
Jacob's God is the God of perfect grace-of a truthful mercy, which, reckoning nothing on the worthiness of its object, flows ha its full stream of unqualified blessedness over every obstacle which human perverseness or any other evil can oppose to it; and fills its destined vessel to the fullness of a measure which has been prescribed by perfect love. The junction in the present verse of the two titles, “Lord God of Hosts," and “God of Jacob," is an emphasis of peculiar blessing to the child of truth. It is the just union of Divine grace and power to usward in the person of Jesus that opens to the believer an access of confidence in prayer to God. By that better hope we now draw nigh.
Verse 9 reveals to faith the abiding pledge and security of all its blessings and its hopes. The Father loveth the Son. God, looking upon Jesus in the fullness of an entire delight, becomes to the believing children of His grace the Shield of their perpetual defense. They are His own—to shelter and to keep them in the strong affection of Almighty love. In the Beloved they have been accepted, and with Him their life is hidden safe in God.
The residue of this very precious Psalm is in a kindred strain of blessing and of power. God and His joys are magnified and extolled.
A day of spiritual enjoyment is more to the believer than many years of natural vicissitude. It is the strong and pure aspiration of faith in God. The meanest place in His abode of blessedness is better than the chiefest tents of wickedness. Egypt's treasures are as dross, when weighed in faith's balance with the unsearchable riches of Christ, though now reproach and trial must accompany the true confession of that name.
God is a Sun and Shield (verse 11). But the plenary enjoyment of His countenance can only be tasted by the single-eyed believer. From them that walk uprightly He withholds no good. Unreserved and obedient dependence upon God brings the believer immediately under the open hand of the Father of mercies. The remembrance of His first great gift excludes the idea, from the heart of simple faith, of any possible reservation of the blessings of His goodness in His dealings with the children of His love. The Spirit who now sheds abroad that love in our hearts, enabling us to know in Christ the true God and eternal life, moves still the lips of faith to say, "O Lord God of Hosts, blessed is the man who rests with confidence in thee."
Psalm 85
THIS Psalm appears to stand in a very distinct relation to Psa. 80 The prayer of the Spirit in the latter Psalm finds here its response of thanksgiving, because of the apparent nearness of the long-desired salvation, for which Jacob waits (verse 9).
Like the Psalm just mentioned, it is distinguished by a clear recognition of regenerative power in grace, as the essential preliminary to the national blessing (verses 4-6).
In the immediate anticipation of complete deliverance and entire oblivion of the former transgression, there is a fervent inquiry, and joyful discernment of the root and stability of all their blessing in Jehovah Himself, their righteousness. The union of mercy and truth and righteousness, in the person of Jesus as He will then be known, when, after the day of Jacob's trouble, He shines forth as the Sun of righteousness with healing in His wings, is the chief theme of this sweet and touching, though solemn, strain.
With respect to the time of this Psalm, it seems to belong to the season of expectant suspense, which the Scripture elsewhere indicates as intervening between the revelation of the Lord in judgment and the perfect settlement of the delivered remnant of the nation in the land of their inheritance.
Verses 4-8 are deeply interesting as an expression of the moral effects of grace upon the contrite hearts of the long-afflicted, but now remembered, people. The transition of feeling, from solemn awe at the manifested power of the God of judgment, to the tranquil confidence of assured rest in Him as the God of their mercy,—speaking peace in righteousness to His people,—is well worthy of note.
Christian faith, which stands already on the Rock of Jacob's hope, will find in this Psalm abundant nourishment and comfort; more especially verse 8 is pregnant with impressive warning to the true child of God, as well as to that which only lives in name; but it is most clearly and completely Jewish in its proper intention. Jehovah has been favorable to His land. He has brought back the captivity of Jacob (verse 1). In verse 9 the land is again mentioned; but it is now described as "our land." The restored people will know it as their own, according to the sure tenure of accomplished mercy, in the bond of the better covenant. Glory will dwell in that land; for there will the name and presence of Immanuel be found, when the glory of His royal majesty shall shine in Zion before the faces of His ancient people. The glory which in olden time appeared for a season, but presently withdrew, hiding itself from the view of a sinful nation, will abide perpetually in its undimmed brightness upon the chosen heritage and people of Jehovah's love. Truth will spring out of the earth. For Christ will be known in that day as “the Branch of the Lord, beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth, excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel." Instead of the mutterings of perverseness which came from those who filled the ears of Israel's Holy One with protestations of self-righteousness, while they erred alway in their hearts, until they crowned their error by the murder of the living Truth, there shall be found pure speech upon the lips of the forgiven people whose honorable fame, as" the nation that keepeth the truth," will in the coming day spread widely among men.
Righteousness will look down from heaven; for it is from thence that the perfect beauty of Divine righteousness will shine in its pre-eminent display.
Things heavenly as well as earthly will be joined in one bond of blessing beneath the apparent and confessed supremacy of Jesus; while, in full participation of His glory and His joy, will be revealed the married Church for which He gave Himself, that He might win it for His own peculiar delight. The Church, as the chosen vessel of omnipotent good-pleasure, is the masterpiece of Divine grace and wisdom; the firstfruits and chief trophy of a righteousness which, amid the derision of an unbelieving world, she discerns and confesses, through the Spirit, in the risen and ascended Christ.
Physical blessings will abound in all their rich variety of kind. With an overflowing increase God will bless His land (verse 12). Heaven's windows will be opened on the favored place of His inheritance: “It shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith Jehovah, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel.
The closing verse declares the principle of the public administration of Messiah's kingdom: " Righteousness shall go before Him, and shall direct His footsteps in the way.
He is King of righteousness. He will thus reign, walking before God and man in the excellency of His own perfection, and swaying the scepter of upright dominion to the far-extended bounds of His appointed realm.
Psalm 86
A PRAYER of David. Of one, therefore, after God's own heart. While the distinct Jewish character of this very beautiful Psalm is maintained throughout, it abounds in expressions which adjust themselves to the experience of all who are spiritual, and who, therefore, are conversant with a species of affliction and inward conflict to which the natural man remains entirely a stranger.
It is a prayer of faith, founded on a clear and deep knowledge of the character of God. He is discerned in the nearness of His covenant grace and power. But the occasion of this supplication is the deeply felt personal necessity of Jehovah's sore-tried but confiding suppliant. It is the language of one who had acquired a right knowledge both of himself and of his circumstances. Resting unfeigned upon the God of his salvation, he yet feels searchingly the pressure on his spirit of much conscious delinquency. Meanwhile, both dangers and adversaries, against which the immediate power of God in deliverance can alone avail, are seen in their impending nearness by-the soul that is seeking thus its succor from on high.
The aspirations after holiness which are found in this Psalm, coupled with its earnest invocation of mercy from the God with whom there is forgiveness, render it peculiarly applicable to those whose daily access is to a throne of needed grace. Christians know that while their standing is the blameless perfection of the Lord their righteousness, they are in many things offenders still. Nor do we ever fully prove the preciousness of Jesus as our portion, except as we are drawn to Him by that Spirit which reveals to us a nakedness and poverty within ourselves, which His blessed fullness can alone redress.
There is a consciousness of personal sanctification through faith (verse 2) associated with an acutely sensitive perception of intrinsic worthlessness, such as only finds relief in the remembrance of unaltered grace (verse 5), which, to the exercised spirit of one really growing in the knowledge of God, will address itself with an especial acceptance.
Verse 11 expresses a chief desire in the soul of every advancing saint. It is a faithful reflection of the feeling of one who, with strong and earnest spiritual yearnings, is keenly alive to the infinite distractions, both within him and without, which practically baffle his best aims. To be quick of understanding in the fear of the Lord, is to be as He was, who, having Himself borne our sins in His own body on the tree, has left us, in His pure unsullied path of earthly obedience, an example for His people's imitation. That this desire will be in the hearts of the godly Jewish remnant, while other men are wondering after the Beast, I do not doubt. But the application of this verse is as wide as the existence of spiritual life.
The power of God as the Deliverer, by means of the resurrection, of the oppressed victims of sin and Satan, is hopefully contemplated in verse 13. Faith claims this as the ground and reason of the praise which it addresses to Jehovah as the God of salvation. In a double sense the Christian tastes the marrow of this verse. Already united to Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, he stands in the power of a faith which sets him above every ill which may assail him while a sojourner on earth. The riches of Divine mercy become thus the lasting theme of the believer's worship. But as he goes his way of pilgrimage from day to day, and learns with deeper and more wise experience the nature of the conflict in which he is engaged, and the manner of the mercy to which he owes his constant preservation; when, too, in true self-judgment, he reviews his way, and seeks to estimate the measure of that patience and that still restoring grace which, through the ever-saving intercession of the great High Priest, has met the countless failings and shortcomings of his soul, the magnitude of God's abundant mercy becomes, to the really growing Christian, a more familiar and intelligible thought. In a worthier appreciation of its rich and exhaustless fullness, it is to him a welcome and unceasing topic of believing praise.
I do not think that any specific time or action can be assigned with certainty to this Psalm in its prophetic character. Nor should I class it distinctly as a Messianic Psalm, although much of its language is applicable to the gracious bearer of His people's grief. It seems rather to express the cry of the afflicted sufferers of antichristian violence, who, as the mourning confessors of the national iniquity, are led by the Spirit of grace to make earnest and importunate appeal to the God of their deliverance.
In verse 9 there is an anticipative assertion of the surely coming triumph of the blessed and only Potentate. All nations shall be gathered beneath His manifested scepter. They will confess His name to be alone worthy of their homage, and His works to be without compare (verse 8). The closing verses (14-17) are more strongly marked by proper Jewish coloring than the general language of the Psalm.
Psalm 87
THAT the earthly Zion is the subject of this remarkable Psalm is quite plain. The true time of its fulfillment as a prophecy will, I doubt not, be after the complete settlement of restored Israel in their land, and the adoption of Egypt and Assyria into the fellowship of covenanted blessing with the people of the Lord's inheritance. Jehovah will have founded Zion. It is this that appears to give their peculiar emphasis to the opening words of the Psalm. His foundations are upon the holy mountain. Human counsel had settled the foundations of other cities. Tyre and Babel had risen through the wisdom and the might of man. But God had chosen Him a place for His own name in the earth, even as He had formed a people for His own peculiar praise.
It is the pre-eminence of Zion, the royal seat of the true David, that is here asserted by the Spirit of prophecy. The dwellings of Jacob are noticed as again inhabited (verse 2); but Jehovah's eye and heart are on Jerusalem.
He loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. It is the city of God (verse 3). The city also of the great King. Glorious things are spoken of her. God, who had spoken them, will be the sure fulfiller of His word. She shell be the light and joy of the whole earth.
Verses 4, 5, which are of difficult interpretation, appear to contrast the faded glories of unblessed human greatness with the supremacy (then willingly acknowledged by the nations) and fruitfulness of the city of Immanuel’s praise. Rabab and Tyre had passed away. As for Zion, the Highest Himself shall establish her.
I cannot speak with confidence of verse 6. It is susceptible of more than one explanation, but I know of none that satisfies my own mind.
In the last verse we seem to have the response poured forth unfeignedly, as from the very heart of the joyous city. Her rich fruition of Jehovah's goodness brings forth the glad and grateful recognition expressed in the concluding words. "All my springs are in thee" will be the cordial utterance of the people, whose praise shall in that day be with understanding. The melody of viols, once hateful, as an ornament of deep and unabashed hypocrisy, shall be pleasant in Jehovah's ears, when Israel's heart is truly turned to Him.
But while Judah's praise is silent till the veil be taken from the nation's heart, God's children may utter in His ears an acceptable melody of thanksgiving, in the blessed consciousness that in Jesus they have found the ever-living and exhaustless springs of joy. God's fullness flows for the refreshment of our weary souls through Him.
Psalm 88
A PROFOUND and peculiar view is opened to us here of the personal experience of Jesus as divinely appointed to the baptism of suffering and death. Resembling in its general character Psalm 38, it differs from it in one important feature. Men and their ways are but little noticed in the present Psalm. It is not an appeal of the righteous Servant, revealing His cause to Jehovah, while undergoing in gracious patience the contradiction of sinners against Himself, that is here presented by the Spirit, but rather the deep utterance of His soul who, though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He suffered. It thus expresses the same experience as the former Psalm, but presents it under another aspect. Jehovah, the God of His salvation (verse 1), is here regarded as the immediate dispenser of that sorrow which stirred and penetrated the very depths of the grief-laden heart of Jesus.
The Son of God accepted willingly the cup which the Father gave to Him, with a full perception of its bitterness. The unsullied purity of His conscience as a Man was united in Him with the intrinsic holiness of the Divine nature, in its amazement and unparalleled distress at being made to know subjectively the wrathful effects of Jehovah's judgment upon sin, which, while He knew it not, He bore, by the grace of God, in death for us.
The Father can alone know thoroughly the mind of the Spirit of Jesus in this and similar Psalms. Always in one sense alone,—none being found capable, even among the chosen disciples whom He called His friends, either of appreciating worthily the glory of His person, or of requiting a love the manner and quality of which they could not yet perceive,—there were seasons, doubtless, when the anticipative shadow of the cross cast with peculiar distinctness the cold darkness of his God's desertion, and of ignominious death, upon the tried spirit of the patient Son of man. The present Psalm is a striking expression of Nis experience at such seasons. In verse 5 we find what really constituted the bitterness of death to Jesus. It was the prospect of separation from the Father: "Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, and whom thou rememberest no mom" etc.
Nothing expresses the fullness of His blameless sorrow more completely or more touchingly than the latter clause of verse 8: “I am shut up, and I cannot come forth."The actual pressure which bore upon the soul of Jesus was enhanced far beyond our thought by the consciousness of his own entire love to them for whose sakes He thus suffered, and whose faces He saw hidden from Him in the hour of His chief distress. With a heart supremely capable of receiving as well as of conferring love, He must be alone; the hand of God dividing Him from every charity of man:" Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me," etc.; "Lover and friend hast thou put far from me," etc. (verses 8, 18). While His enemies were about Him as a flood, He was without a solitary comforter. The desertion of His friends was a portion of the cup which was prepared for Him, in the mystery of that wisdom which consulted thus eternal pre-eminence in glory for the Lamb, who should alone accomplish all the work of God.
But He had stretched out His hands to One who both heard and was able to deliver. In verse 10 we have an expression of His hope breaking, as it were, faintly through the dark and all but impenetrable cloud of sorrow and distress-"Shall the dead arise and praise thee?" etc. Such enquiries have their sure reply in the very nature of Him who is the God, not of the dead, but of the living, and whom His self-devoted Son addresses as the God of His salvation.
It is a wonderful Psalm; very full of sweet and heart-filling blessing to the soul that has learned in some measure the true value and meaning of the cross of Christ; very needful likewise for the effectual deepening in our hearts of the right understanding both of sin and grace. The clear and holy brightness of that Light which God is, pervades this profoundly mournful yet confiding strain. That we might be rendered capable of fellowship with that Light, that it might enter and dwell within our hearts, the Savior of our souls thus felt and spake in spirit, as the bearer of our burden. Because the world is what it is, Jesus thus suffered to redeem us out of it, and bring us to the Father. We learn from such Psalms to judge correctly of the world, in its still unaltered character of contrariety to God. May we be enabled wisely to meditate these things. If we are not feeding on our Passover, with a believing discernment of what we are redeemed from now, as well as of our prospective hope, we are incapable of conscious fellowship with the Father and the Son.
Psalm 89
A PSALM peculiar in its structure, but of singular and richly-varied beauty and power. It is essentially a Messianic Psalm, and in its prophetic character is of far-extended range.
It may be regarded as a reflection of the desires of the Spirit of Christ in the heart of some true Israelite to whom, in the midst of apostate darkness, the secret of the Lord has been disclosed. Out of such a heart, divinely taught the stability of covenanted promise, while keenly sensible of the dispensational severity of God in His dealings with His people, there comes forth the inspired utterance of a song. Its pure key-note is mercy. But as it rehearses in its flow the actual vicissitudes of David's crown, it wanders, in alternate strains of triumph and of woe, until it finds its sweet close of ascriptive blessing to His name, whose changeless truth and goodness are the nation's un-decaying hope (verse 52).
The theme of the Spirit in this song is stated in its opening verse. It is of the mercy and faithfulness of Jehovah that perpetual mention shall be made. While the general tenor of the Psalm is earthly, yet because the sure mercies of David form its leading topic, the heavens, above which Jehovah's glory has been set in the Person of His risen and ascended Christ, are coupled with the earth in the celebration of His praise. For the elective mercy, which is the basis of Israel's promised blessing, is secured in Him whom the Church already worships and glories in as her exalted Head: "Jesus Christ, of the seed of David," is at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. Faithfulness and mercy are built up and established in Him who is Himself the covenant of His people's endless peace.
Verses 3, 4 are a brief summary of the Davidical covenant of promise, which is afterwards stated with an amplified specification of detail (verses 19-37).
At verse 5 there commences an anticipative strain of rest and triumph, which extends to verse 18. This part of the Psalm is full of especial interest. Verses 5-7 extol the faithfulness of Jehovah, according to the perfection of His worship, as it is and will be presented in the heavenly places. His faithfulness will be celebrated there in long enduring strains by those who are to be presented faultless before the throne of God, because of His ability in faithfulness to save.
For He it is who brings the heirs of His salvation safely to His rest, despite the opposition of the adversary and the strong reluctance of the flesh. Our feeble and failing steps are guided to His holy habitation, through the faithfulness of One who will not deny Himself as our Captain of salvation.
But it is Jehovah's character, as the God of Israel's covenant, that is mainly dwelt on in this song. Accordingly in the verses which follow, the recital of His mighty acts, and the praise of His glorious power, are delivered in a connection purely national (verses 8-10). It was in remembrance of His promise to Abram that He had broken Rahab in pieces. The same faithfulness would, in due time, break finally the rod of pride, when he of whom Pharaoh was a figure, as the willful opposer of Jehovah's power, should set himself in. haughty guise and with a multitudinous array, against the name and heritage of God. Because of the might of His power, and under the favor of His sure mercy, who is Possessor both of earth and heaven (verse 11), the mountains of Israel should again rejoice in His name (verse 12). The founding of the earth and the planting of the heavens are celebrated in connection with the manifesting of Jehovah in the reigning glory of His Christ.
In verses 15-18 we have a description of the blessedness of the people who know the joyful sound. This note of gladness is the gracious announcement on Jehovah's part of His appropriation of His people. Prophetically, this comprises with restored Israel, both Egypt and Assyria. Israel will indeed be the center of the blessing" a blessing in the midst of the land." The obvious and very precious application of these verses to the calling and portion of the Church as the now "circumcision," I need not stay to point 'out. The language of verse 18 is important. The marginal translation is decidedly to be preferred: "For our shield is of the Lord, and our King is of the Holy One of Israel" It distinguishes, according to the accuracy of the Spirit of truth, between the invisible God and the apparent (though equally Divine) delegate and holder of His name and power.
Verses 19-37 are full of Messianic promise, and as such they fall richly into the lap of the Church as a part of her inheritance in Christ. The passage cannot now be examined in detail.
Let not, however, the weak-hearted believer fail to notice, for his comfort, not only that the immutability of the counsel of salvation is secured for him eternally, in the changeless character of God, but that a specific article of the covenant of blessing is the gracious chastening, by the Father of spirits, of every son whom He thus brings nigh in Jesus to Himself. God modifies His dealings with His children according to the exigencies of their practical condition, as they are estimated unerringly in His perfect judgment of their ways. He chastens whom He loves. He has engaged to bless us; and, in very faithfulness, He exercises such a manner of discipline as He sees to be conducive to our more abundant joy in Him. He will make us thus to be partakers experimentally of that holiness by which He has already sanctified us in His Son.
The object prominently before the mind of the Spirit in these verses is Christ, as the “One chosen out of the people." The security of Israel's covenant was in Jehovah, who was not a man that He should lie. He had spoken, making mention in His speech of marvelous things. He would not call back His words, but, in due time, would fulfill them to their utmost tittle. This time of joyful accomplishment might seem to linger, and the visitations of the God of judgment might, in the meanwhile, lie heavily upon the stricken people, yet would the fruit of national promise ripen in its appointed season. In verse 27 there is applied to Messiah the title of “First-born." This expression is not found in either of the two passages in which the Davidical covenant had been previously declared.
Its occurrence in the present Psalm, in which the apparent frustration of the promise is deplored, and resurrection power is looked to as the condition of its eventual realization, is a characteristic trait. With the latter words of this verse compare the prophecy of Balaam in Num. 24:77He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag, and his kingdom shall be exalted. (Numbers 24:7).
From verse 38 we seem to listen to the immediate pleading of the Spirit of Immanuel The desolation of His land and the profaning of His crown are declared, not with reference to the national sin, which had broken down the wall of their security, but in reproachful contrast to the recorded promise of the covenant. The word had gone out of Jehovah's lips; but the fact was in pointed contradiction to the promise. How long should this be? (verse 46.) In what follows (verses 47, 48), the fundamental condition of Israel's blessedness is found to be an acknowledgment of the total un-profitableness of the flesh. Resurrection is the basis upon which the sure mercies of David rest availably for faith. This is rather implied than directly stated in the present Psalm.
Verse 50 may possibly be intended as a strong expression of the suffering faith and patience of the sorely afflicted remnant, who, as prisoners of hope, will await, with hearts firm fixed upon the sure word of that Spirit of prophecy which is the testimony of Jesus, the fulfillment of the promise of the Lord. But, from the strong intercessory tone of verses 49-51, we ought, perhaps, rather to ascribe them to Immanuel Himself.
With the closing doxology we may compare, for the sake of their moral resemblance, the apostle's equally abrupt outbreak of thanksgiving in Rom. 7:2525I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. (Romans 7:25). In both passages the same elements are found; the proved and entire impotency of the creature, throwing itself in each case upon the strong and faithful bosom of almighty grace, as it reveals itself to the believer, whether Jewish or Christian, in the covenanted Name.