This Psalm is the actings and principles of God, towards Israel, at the time of God's showing Himself. The thesis is manifest. The application and force of the argument towards Israel, as to its condition intermediately, is very plain. It is the summons of the saints-witnesses of God's righteousness intermediately-and Israel thereon brought into question, with the assertion however, and founded on, “I am God, even thy God," when God manifests Himself, when God is Judge Himself. It is the judicial act, wherein the saints, in covenant, with God in Christ, are assessors, and the Jewish people, His earthly company, called up to plead when God, the God of the Remnant of the Jews, speaks, and comes, calling the earth from the rising up of the sun to the going down of the same. It is applied to the distinction and ordering of those who recollect and forget God among the Jews, in warning for that time. To verse 6 it is the forming of the session, then from verse 7 it is the stating of the pleading on God's part.
This Psalm brings out the great scene of judgment, and celestial glory, connected with this—the great summons fulfilled in the coming of Christ, to which, of this part of it, Zion is the center, and in fact to the world here treated of. The whole of these Psalms take in the circumstances of the Jews premillennial, i.e., their real condition after being driven out by Antichrist—without the gate with Christ; thus forced upon "the place of dragons"—not being communion with sin. At last, through the intervention of Christ, bursting forth into all the splendor of Christ's coming, in millennial day, before the world, and from the heavens and over the earth; see verses 5 and 6, and also 4, and indeed the commencement entirely.
After the general statement, and the bringing in of Messiah, we have the judgment of moral evil when the heavens declare God's righteousness, and God is Judge Himself; and then (Psa. 51) the confession of the Remnant (as of the nation) including the death of Christ (v. 14). Then details are gone into, as usual, and the feelings which are the effect of the evil one's power, and, though the principles are the same, yet it is no longer so much moral discernment in the midst of the ungodly, as the breaking the covenant, and the power of the ungodly one. Evil is open and unashamed—holds its head on high. In Psalm 50 Jehovah judges out of Zion, but bringing in heaven to witness the judgment. It is on the ground of godliness, not sacrifice. In Psa. 51 Sacrifice is dropped also, and true inward contrition, reaching to the acknowledgment of the death of Christ, is shown in confession to God.