We have still Joseph before us in these Psalms, as connected with a full restoration of the people. The certainty of the deliverance is rested on this, that when they heard a strange language, it was ordained, they heard a strange language now, they were spoken to in it; see Isaiah and Habakkuk. But there might be equal deliverance now; past deliverances are always with God the warrant of present hopes, because He is the same God, and always acts with the same mind. Our faith is to recall them, and then we go in this our might, to wit, that God is with us. We learn also the force of the “new moon." The sun was ever the same, but the moon emerged again into her light-the same moon, for a moment eclipsed and brought out anew, and yet the same moon, and then the trumpets of joy, the trumpets of gathering, for it was not an alarm, but "blowing alarms" had gone before; see Joel. Then we have the reason why all this had been otherwise. “I am the same Lord which brought thee out: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." But the position you have been in is that you would not hearken “Oh! that they had," says God-as the Lord, " how often would I have gathered thee"! Compare Isa. 43 and Lev. 26:40-42.
We have, then, again Israel, Jacob and Joseph-the true new moon of the people. Long had they been eclipsed, long hidden by the brighter rays of the intervening sun; but now they began to receive, afresh, light from the Lord. According to this, there was joy. Again also the reference is to what passed, with the whole nation, in the sortie from Egypt—he was now brought from a harder language, a bitterer and longer captivity, and God reveals Himself as the God that did it; God acted then in grace.
This reference is remarkable; from the Red Sea to Sinai all was pure grace, even to murmurers-after Sinai, chastisement and judgment for the same things. So Israel could learn it here. The reference is to grace-God answers to this proposition of joy, " you know how I delivered you then, and proposed as an abiding ground of affiance to me in blessing, to have no strange god." Full of blessing, they had but to open their mouths to the God that had already done such things, and brought them out of Egypt, "but you would not have me, you would not hearken unto me—had you done so, all would have been blessing, continually and abidingly—that is the real secret of your condition." What could Israel answer? Nothing! Their mouth is closed in silence, in such instruction of grace putting them in their right place. God had blessed, proposed to them to continue in blessing, and nothing else, and now showed that He had always desired to bless. What a ground for return! But in what humiliation, infinite humiliation! Silence best became the hearer of this in the Spirit. This was the noble answer of the Lord, the gracious-infinitely gracious-and righteous answer, in the midst of the new joy which yet returned to the old. “I never," says God, "departed from the gracious principle of it. You, 0 my people—it was my sorrow—departed from me, and consequently from it." A sanctifying but all consoling answer! God had never changed from this joy to which their heart returned. So with the Christian. It is Joseph specially still here.
5. Note the expression “I heard a language that I understood not." It is not the Lord interrupting the ensured joy, to put His interpretation on all that had happened. It was not want of love that hindered the blessing of Israel. Is not "I," the Lord placing Himself as coming down into Egypt out of all that was natural to Himself and His glory, and placing Himself there in the midst of what was strange to Him, to deliver them? “I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people, and I am come down to deliver them"; He speaks as identifying Himself with His people, for Egypt's language was strange to God. The language of Canaan—His Canaan—was the one He was familiar with, and owned. It would rest on the word “He went out through the land of Egypt"—thereon He says "I heard," etc.