This Psalm follows, I may say, in the train of the previous one; for at the close of that the suppliant had sought the destruction of the enemy, and here he speaks as being assured that God would be his strength, his shield, and his victory, in the battle. He, therefore, desires the day of conflict, anticipating victory. And beyond that, he anticipates its fruit and joy in the kingdom, all human prosperity, children and wealth and settled peace, and the common verdict of the whole world, that “happy is that people whose God is the Lord” (Deut. 33:29).
The suppliant (Christ, no doubt, in sympathy with the remnant) contemplates God as making Himself to him all that he can need or desire (Psa. 144:1-2); and immediately upon this he marvels that it should be so (Psa. 144:3). And this surprise is expressed in the same language as in Psalm 8, only there it is the sense of the divine greatness—here it is the sense of the human vanity that awakens this surprise that God should take such counsels of grace and glory about us.
In all this we again find Israel learning divine lessons about themselves, as we observed in the previous Psalm. They own that they are less than the least of all God’s mercies, wondering, as it were, that they should be His objects at all.
The spirit of Psalm 18 is much breathed here. And that is strikingly the language of the true David in the great Jewish deliverance of the latter day leading to the kingdom. (See also Psa. 144:5 and Isa. 64:1.) So here the suppliant knows that this desired deliverance will lead directly into the joy of the days of Messiah or the kingdom (Psa. 144:11-15). As the creation knows that her deliverance from present bondage to corruption will be into glorious liberty; and as the saints can and do sing, “Whom He justified, them He also glorified” (Rom. 8:21,30). For when the blessed God makes a way of escape for sinners or captives, in His love He will carry them into more than liberty.