This Psalm still suits David in the same affliction. In it he seems at the beginning to have respect to Barzillai, who in the day of Absalom, Ahithophel, and Shimei, considered the afflicted David (2 Sam. 17:27,29). He then pleads against his enemies, and ends with an anticipation of his own deliverance and their confusion, to the praise of his God, the God of Israel.
But Jesus is surely here, as in the others. We could not, we dared not, we would not, however, see Him in Psalm 41:4; and this reminds me of what I have already observed on Psalm 27. The daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23) may be regarded as filling in measure the place of Barzillai, as Judas does that of Ahithophel, or the multitude that of Shimei. And they moved the Lord’s sympathy, as Barzillai did David’s. They gave him as it were a cup of cold water, and it got its reward. But Barzillai is a pattern of all who now in the day of His rejection own the righteous Jesus; to whom He says, “ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations.”
And blessed indeed is he who thus looks at the mystery of the preceding Psalm, and considers the poor and needy Jesus, and who by faith casts in his lot with Him. “Blessed is he,” as He says Himself, “whosoever is not offended in Me.” And yet the pride of life and the course of this apostate world make our following of “this poor man” no easy or pleasant thing.
NOTE—Here ends the first of the five books into which the Jews distribute the Psalms.
Psalms 42-49 constitute a little series or volume. They are all said to be “for the sons of Korah”—an intimation of their being connected with each other. They may have been indited at different times, but that is no matter; the Spirit of God has presented them to us together, and they so follow in order that one subject is duly unfolded in them.
The subject may be said to be this: “The sorrows of the Jewish remnant in the latter day, their triumphs, and then their joy and glory in Zion as head of the nations under their great king.”