Chapter VII: Book II: Psalms Xlii.-Lxxii (6)

The general drift of the second part (vv. 6-9) is to call down Divine retribution on these obstinate, irreclaimable evil-doers. Figure is heaped on figure in a fashion suggestive of intense emotion. The transiency of insolent evil, the completeness of its destruction, are the thoughts common to them all. There are difficulties in translation, and, in ver. 9, probable textual corruption; but these should not hide the tremendous power of gloomy imagination, which can lay hold of vulgar and in part loathsome things, and, by sheer force of its own solemn insight, can free them from all low or grotesque associations, and turn them into awful symbols. The intense desire for the sweeping away of evil-doers has met us in many previous psalms, and it is needless to repeat former observations on it. But it is nowhere expressed with such a wealth of metaphor as here. The first of these, that of crushing the jaws and breaking the teeth of a beast of prey, occurs also in Psalm iii. 7. It is less terrible than the subsequent imprecations, since it only contemplates the wickeds' deprivation of power to do harm. In ver. 7 _a_ their destruction is sought, while, in the second clause of the same verse, the defeat of their attempts is desired. Ver. 8 then expands the former wish, and ver. 9 the latter. This plain symmetrical arrangement makes the proposals to resort to transposition unnecessary. Mountain torrents quickly run themselves dry; and the more furious their rush, the swifter their exhaustion. They leave a chaos of whitened stones, that lie bleaching in the fierce sun when the wild spate is past. So stormy and so short will be the career of evil-doers. So could a good man of old wish it to be; and so may we be sure of and desire the cessation of oppression and man's inhumanity to man. Ver. 7 _b_ is obscure. All these figures are struck out with such parsimony of words that they are difficult. They remind one of some of the stern, unfinished work of Michael Angelo, where a blow or two of his chisel, or a dash or two of his brush, has indicated rather than expressed his purpose, and left a riddle, fascinating in its incompleteness, for smaller men to spell out. In ver. 7 _b_ it may be asked, Who is the archer? If God, then the whole is a presentation as if of an occurrence taking place before our eyes. God shoots His arrow, and at once it lodges in the heart of the enemies, and they are as though cut off. But it is better to take the wicked as the subject of both verbs, the change from singular to plural being by no means unusual in successive clauses with the same subject. If so, this clause recurs to the thought of ver. 6, and prays for the neutralising of the wicked man's attempts. He fits his arrows, aims, and draws the bow. May they fall harmless, as if barbless! An emendation has been proposed by which the clause is made parallel with Psalm xxxvii. 2, "As grass let them be quickly cut off," thus securing a complete parallel with _a_, and avoiding the difficulty in the word rendered by us "pointless." But the existing text gives a vigorous metaphor, the peculiarity of which makes it preferable to the feebler image of withering grass.

The prayer for destruction is caught up again in ver. 8, in two daring figures which tremble on the verge of lowering the key of the whole; but by escaping that peril, produce the contrary effect, and heighten it. A slug leaves a shining track of slime as it creeps, which exudes from its soft body, and thus it seems to disintegrate itself by its own motion. It is the same thought of the suicidal character of bad men's efforts which was expressed by the stream foaming itself away in the nullah. It is the eternal truth that opposition to God's will destroys itself by its own activity. The unfulfilled life of a premature birth, with eyes which never opened to the light for which they were made, and possibilities which never unfolded, and which is huddled away into a nameless grave, still more impressively symbolises futility and transiency.

In ver. 9 the figure has given much trouble to commentators. Its broad meaning is, however, undoubted. It is, as ver. 6 and ver. 7 _b_, symbolic of the Divine intervention which wrecks wicked men's plans before they are wrought out. The picture before the psalmist seems to be that of a company of travellers round their camp fire, preparing their meal. They heap brushwood under the pot, and expect to satisfy their hunger; but before the pot is warmed through, not to say before the water boils or the meat is cooked, down comes a whirlwind, which sweeps away fire, pot, and all. Every word of the clause is doubtful, and, with the existing text, the best that can be done is not wholly satisfactory. If emendation is resorted to, the suggestion of Bickell, adopted by Cheyne, gives a good sense: "[And] while your [flesh] is yet raw, the hot wrath [of Jehovah] shall sweep it away." Baethgen makes a slighter alteration, and renders, "While it is still raw, He sweeps it away in wrath." Retaining the existing text (which is witnessed by the LXX. and other old versions), probably the best rendering is, "Whether [it be] green or burning, He shall whirl it away." This general understanding of the words is shared by commentators who differ as to what is represented as swept away,--some making it the thorn fire, the twigs of which may be either full of sap or well alight; while others take the reference to be to the meat in the pot, which may be either "living," _i.e._ raw, or well on the way to being cooked. Neither application is quite free from difficulty, especially in view of the fact that some pressure has to be put on the word rendered "burning," which is not an adjective, but a noun, and is usually employed to designate the fiery wrath of God, as it is rendered in the amended text just mentioned. After all attempts at clearing up the verse, one must be content to put a mark of interrogation at any rendering. But the scope of the figure seems discoverable through the obscurity. It is a homely and therefore vigorous picture of half-accomplished plans suddenly reduced to utter failure, and leaving their concocters hungry for the satisfaction which seemed so near. The cookery may go on merrily and the thorns crackle cheerily, but the simoom comes, topples over the tripod on which the pot swung, and blows the fire away in a hundred directions. Peter's gibbet was ready, and the morning of his execution was near; but when day dawned, "there was no small stir what was become of him." The wind had blown him away from the expectation of the people of the Jews into safe quarters; and the fire was dispersed.

The closing part (vv. 10, 11) breathes a stern spirit of joy over the destruction of the wicked. That is a terrible picture of the righteous bathing his feet in the blood of the wicked (Psalm lxviii. 23). It expresses not only the dreadful abundance of blood, but also the satisfaction of the "righteous" at its being shed. There is an ignoble and there is a noble and Christian satisfaction in even the destructive providences of God. It is not only permissible but imperative on those who would live in sympathy with His righteous dealings and with Himself, that they should see in these the manifestation of eternal justice, and should consider that they roll away burdens from earth and bring hope and rest to the victims of oppression. It is no unworthy shout of personal vengeance, nor of unfeeling triumph, that is lifted up from a relieved world when Babylon falls. If it is right in God to destroy, it cannot be wrong in His servants to rejoice that He does. Only they have to take heed that their emotion is untarnished by selfish gratulation, and is not untinged with solemn pity for those who were indeed doers of evil, but were themselves the greatest sufferers from their evil. It is hard, but not impossible, to take all that is expressed in the psalm, and to soften it by some effluence from the spirit of Him who wept over Jerusalem, and yet pronounced its doom.

The last issue of God's judgments contemplated by the psalm warrants the joy of the righteous; for in these there is a demonstration to the world that there is "fruit" to the righteous, and that notwithstanding all bewilderments from the sight of prosperous wickedness and oppressed righteousness "there is a God who judges in the earth." The word "judging" is here in the plural, corresponding with "God" (Elohim), which is also plural in form. Possibly the construction is to be explained on the ground that the words describe the thoughts of surrounding, polytheistic nations, who behold the exhibition of God's righteousness. But more probably the plural is here used for the sake of the contrast with the "gods" of ver. 1. Over these unworthy representatives of Divine justice sits the true judge, in the manifoldness of His attributes, exercising His righteous though slow-footed judgments.

PSALM LIX.

1 Deliver me from my enemies, O my God:
Out of the reach of those who arise against me set me on high.
2 Deliver me from workers of iniquity,
And from men of blood save me.
3 For, see, they have lain in wait for my soul,
The violent gather together against me:
Not for transgression or sin of mine, Jehovah.
4 Without [my] fault they run and set themselves in array:
Awake to meet me, and behold.
5 And Thou, Jehovah, God of hosts, God of Israel,
Rouse Thyself to visit all the nations:
Be not gracious to wicked apostates. Selah.

6 They return at evening, they snarl like dogs, and prowl round the
city.
7 See, they foam at the mouth;
Swords are in their lips:
For "Who hears?"
8 But Thou, Jehovah, shalt laugh at them;
Thou mockest at all the nations.
9 My Strength, for Thee will I watch:
For God is my high tower.

10 My God shall come to meet me with His loving-kindness:
God will let me look on my adversaries.
11 Slay them not, lest my people forget:
Make them wanderers by Thy power (army?), and cast them down,
O Lord our shield.
12 [Each] word of their lips is a sin of their mouth,
And they snare themselves in their pride,
And for the cursing and lying [which] they speak.
13 End [them] in wrath, end [them], that they be no more:
And let them know that God is ruler in Jacob,
Unto the ends of the earth. Selah.

14 And they shall return at evening, they shall growl like dogs,
And prowl round the city.
15 They--they shall wander about for food,
If they are not gorged, then [so must] they pass the night.
16 And I will sing Thy strength,
And sound aloud Thy loving-kindness in the morning,
For Thou hast been a high tower for me,
And a refuge in the day of my straits.
17 My strength, to Thee will I harp,
For God is my high tower, the God of my loving-kindness.

The superscription makes this the earliest of David's psalms, dating from the Sauline persecution. It has many points of connection with the others of that group, but its closest affinities are with Psalm lv., which is commonly considered to belong to the period of incubation of Absalom's rebellion (_cf._ Psalm lv. 10 with lix. 6, 14, and lv. 21 with lix. 7). The allusion to enemies patrolling the city, which is common to both psalms, seems to refer to a fact, and may in this psalm be founded on the watchfulness of Saul's emissaries; but its occurrence in both weakens its force as here confirmatory of the superscription. It does not necessarily follow from the mention of the "nations" that the psalmist's enemies are foreigners. Their presence in the city and the stress laid on words as their weapons are against that supposition. On the whole, the contents of the psalm do not negative the tradition in the title, but do not strongly attest it. If we have accepted the Davidic authorship of the other psalms of this group, we shall extend it to this one; for they clearly are a group, whether Davidic or not. The psalm falls into two principal divisions (vv. 1-9 and 10-17), each closing with a refrain, and each subdivided into two minor sections, the former of which in each case ends with Selah, and the latter begins with another refrain. The two parts travel over much the same ground of petition, description of the enemies, confidence in deliverance and in the defeat of the foes. But in the first half the psalmist prays for himself, and in the second he prays against his persecutors, while assured confidence in his own deliverance takes the place of alarmed gaze on their might and cruelty.

The former half of the first part begins and ends with petitions. Imbedded in these is a plaintive recounting of the machinations of the adversaries, which are, as it were, spread before God's eyes, accompanied with protestations of innocence. The prayers, which enclose, as in a circlet, this description of unprovoked hatred, are varied, so that the former petitions are directed to the singer's deliverance, while the latter invoke judgment on his antagonists. The strong assertion of innocence is, of course, to be limited to the psalmist's conduct to his enemies. They attack him without provocation. Obviously this feature corresponds to the facts of Saul's hatred of David, and as obviously it does not correspond to the facts of Israel's sufferings from foreign enemies, which are supposed by the present favourite interpretation to be the occasion of the psalm. No devout singer could so misunderstand the reason of the nation's disasters as to allege that they had fallen upon innocent heads. Rather, when a psalmist bewailed national calamities, he traced them to national sins. "Anger went up against Israel, because they believed not in God." The psalmist calls God to look upon the doings of his enemies. Privy plots and open assaults are both directed against him. The enemy lie in wait for his life; but also, with fell eagerness, like that of soldiers making haste to rank themselves in battle-array, they "run and set themselves." This is probably simply metaphor, for the rest of the psalm does not seem to contemplate actual warfare. The imminence of peril forces an urgent prayer from the threatened man. So urgent is it that it breaks in on the parallelism of ver. 4, substituting its piercing cry "Awake, behold!" for the proper second clause carrying on the description in the first. The singer makes haste to grasp God's hand, because he feels the pressure of the wind blowing in his face. It is wise to break off the contemplation of enemies and dangers by crying to God. Prayer is a good interruption of a catalogue of perils. The petitions in ver. 5 are remarkable, both in their accumulation of the Divine names and in their apparent transcending of the suppliant's need. The former characteristic is no mere artificial or tautological heaping together of titles, but indicates repeated acts of faith and efforts of contemplation. Each name suggests something in God which encourages hope, and when appealed to by a trusting soul, moves Him to act. The very introductory word of invocation, "And Thou," is weighty. It sets the might of God in grand contrast to the hurrying hatred of the adversary; and its significance is enhanced if its recurrence in ver. 8 and its relation to "And I" in ver. 16 are taken into account.

The combination of the Divine names is remarkable here, from the insertion of God (Elohim) between the two parts of the standing name, Jehovah of hosts. The anomaly is made still more anomalous by the peculiar form of the word Elohim, which does not undergo the modification to be expected in such a construction. The same peculiarities occur in other Elohistic psalms (lxxx. 4, 19, and lxxxiv. 8). The peculiar grammatical form would be explained if the three words were regarded as three co-ordinate names, Jehovah, Elohim, Zebaoth, and this explanation is favoured by good critics. But it is going too far to say, with Baethgen, that "Zebaoth _can only_ be understood as an independent Divine name" (Komm., _in loc._). Other explanations are at least possible, such as that of Delitzsch, that "Elohim, like Jehovah, has become a proper name," and so does not suffer modification. The supplicatory force of the names, however, is clear, whatever may be the account of the formal anomalies. They appeal to God and they hearten the appellant's confidence by setting forth the loftiness of God, who rules over the embattled forces of the universe, which "run and set themselves in array" at His bidding and for His servant's help, and before which the ranks of the foes seem thin and few. They set forth also God's relation to Israel, of which the single suppliant is a member.

The petition, grounded upon these names, is supposed by modern commentators to prove that the psalmist's enemies were heathens, which would, of course, destroy the Davidic authorship, and make the singer a personification of the nation. But against this is to be observed the description of the enemies in the last clause of ver. 5 as "apostates," which must refer to Israelites. The free access to the "city," spoken of in ver. 6, is also unfavourable to that supposition, as is the prominence given to the _words_ of the enemy. Foreign foes would have had other swords than those carried between their lips. The prayer that Jehovah would arise to visit "all nations" is much more naturally explained, as on the same principle as the judgment of "the peoples" in Psalm vii. All special cases are subsumed under the one general judgment. The psalmist looks for his own deliverance as one instance of that world-wide manifestation of Divine justice which will "render to every man according to his deeds." Not only personal considerations move him to his prayer; but, pressing as these are, and shrill as is the cry for personal deliverance, the psalmist is not so absorbed in self as that he cannot widen his thoughts and desires to a world-wide manifestation of Divine righteousness, of which his own escape will be a tiny part. Such recognition of the universal in the particular is the prerogative in lower walks of the poet and the man of genius; it is the strength and solace of the man who lives by faith and links all things with God. The instruments here strike in, so as to fix attention on the spectacle of God aroused to smite and of the end of apostates.

The comparison of the psalmist's enemies to dogs occurs in another psalm ascribed to David (xxii. 16, 20). They are like the masterless, gaunt, savage curs which infest the streets of Eastern cities, hungrily hunting for offal and ready to growl or snarl at every passer-by. Though the dog is not a nocturnal animal, evening would naturally be a time when these would specially prowl round the city in search of food, if disappointed during the day. The picture suggests the enemies' eagerness, lawlessness, foulness, and persistency. If the psalm is rightly dated in the superscription, it finds most accurate realisation in the crafty, cruel watchfulness of Saul's spies. The word rendered by the A.V. and R.V. "make a noise" is "said usually of the growling of the bear and the cooing of the dove" (Delitzsch). It indicates a lower sound than barking, and so expresses rage suppressed lest its object should take alarm. The word rendered (A.V. and R.V.) "belch" means to gush out, and is found in a good sense in Psalm xix. 1. Here it may perhaps be taken as meaning "foam," with some advantage to the truth of the picture. "Swords are in their lips"--_i.e._, their talk is of slaying the psalmist, or their slanders cut like swords; and the crown of their evil is their scoff at the apparently deaf and passive God.

With startling suddenness, as if one quick touch drew aside a curtain, the vision of God as He really regards the enemies is flashed on them in ver. 8. The strong antithesis expressed by the "And Thou," as in ver. 5, comes with overwhelming force. Below is the crowd of greedy foes, obscene, cruel, and blasphemous; above, throned in dread repose, which is not, as they dream, carelessness or ignorance, is Jehovah, mocking their fancied security. The tremendous metaphor of the laughter of God is too boldly anthropomorphic to be misunderstood. It sounds like the germ of the solemn picture in Psalm ii., and is probably the source of the similar expression in Psalm xxxvii. 13. The introduction of the wider thought of God's "mocking"--_i.e._, discerning, and manifesting in act, the impotence of the ungodly efforts of "all nations"--is to be accounted for on the same principle of the close connection discerned by the devout singer between the particular and the general, which explains the similar extension of view in ver. 5.

Ver. 9 is the refrain closing the first part. The reading of the Hebrew text, "His strength," must be given up, as unintelligible, and the slight alteration required for reading "my" instead of "his" adopted, as in the second instance of the refrain in ver. 17. The further alteration of text, however, by which "I will harp" would be read in ver. 9 instead of "I will watch" is unnecessary, and the variation of the two refrains is not only in accordance with usage, but brings out a delicate phase of progress in confidence. He who begins with waiting for God ends with singing praise to God. The silence of patient expectance is changed for the melody of received deliverance.

The first part of the second division, like the corresponding portion of the fist division, is mainly prayer, but with the significant difference that the petitions now are directed, not to the psalmist's deliverance, but to his enemies' punishment. For himself, he is sure that his God will come to meet him with His loving-kindness, and that, thus met and helped, he will look on, secure, at their ruin. The Hebrew margin proposes to read "The God of my loving-kindness will meet me"--an incomplete sentence, which does not tell with what God will meet him. But the text needs only the change of one vowel point in order to yield the perfectly appropriate reading, "my God shall meet me with His loving-kindness," which is distinctly to be preferred. It is singular that the substitution of "my" for "his," which is needlessly suggested by the Hebrew margin for ver. 10, is required but not suggested for ver. 9. One is tempted to wonder whether there has been a scribe's blunder attaching the correction to the wrong verse. The central portion of this part of the psalm is composed of terrible wishes for the enemies' destruction. There is nothing more awful in the imprecations of the Psalter than that petition that the boon of a swift end to their miseries may not be granted them. The dew of pity for suffering is dried up by the fire of stern desire for the exhibition of a signal instance of Divine judicial righteousness. That desire lifts the prayer above the level of personal vengeance, but does not lighten its awfulness. There may be an allusion to the fate of Cain, who was kept alive and made a "fugitive and a vagabond." Whether that is so or not, the wish that the foes may be kept alive to be buffeted by God's _strength_--or, as the word may mean, to be scattered in panic-struck rout by God's _army_--is one which marks the difference between the old and the new covenants. The ground of these fearful punishments is vehemently set forth in ver. 12. Every word which the adversaries speak is sin. Their own self-sufficient pride, which is revolt against dependence on God, is like a trap to catch them. They speak curses and lies, for which retribution is due. This recounting of their crimes, not so much against the psalmist, though involving him, as against God, fires his indignation anew, and he flames out with petitions which seem to forget the former ones for lingering destruction: "End them in wrath, end them." The contradiction may be apparent only, and this passionate cry may presuppose the fulfilment of the former. The psalmist will then desire two dreadful things--first, protracted suffering, and then a crushing blow to end it. His ultimate desire in both is the same. He would have the evil-doers spared long enough to be monuments of God's punitive justice; he would have them ended, that the crash of their fall may reverberate afar and proclaim that God rules in Jacob. "Unto the ends of the earth" may be connected either with "rules" or with "know." In the former construction the thought will be, that from His throne in Israel God exercises dominion universally; in the latter, that the echo of the judgment on these evil-doers will reach distant lands. The latter meaning is favoured by the accents, and is, on the whole, to be preferred. But what a strange sense of his own significance for the manifestation of God's power to the world this singer must have had, if he could suppose that the events of his life were thus of universal importance! One does not wonder that the advocates of the personification theory find strong confirmation of it in such utterances; and, indeed, the only other explanation of them is that the psalmist held, and knew himself to hold, a conspicuous place in the evolution of the Divine purpose, so that in his life, as in a small mirror, there were reflected great matters. If such anticipations were more than wild dreams, the cherisher of them must either have been speaking in the person of the nation, or he must have known himself to be God's instrument for extending His name through the world. No single person so adequately meets the requirements of such words as David.

The second part of this division (ver. 14) begins with the same words as the corresponding part of the first division (ver. 6), so that there is a kind of refrain here. The futures in vv. 14, 15, may be either simple futures or optatives. In the latter case the petitions of the preceding verses would be continued here, and the pregnant truth would result that continuance in sin is the punishment of sin. But probably the imprecations are better confined to the former part, as the Selah draws a broad line of demarcation, and there would be an incongruity in following the petition "End them" with others which contemplated the continuance of the enemies. If the verses are taken as simply predictive, the point of the reintroduction of the figure of the pack of dogs hunting for their prey lies in ver. 15. There they are described as balked in their attempts, and having to pass the night unsatisfied. Their prey has escaped. Their eager chase, their nocturnal quest, their growling and prowling, have been vain. They lie down empty and in the dark--a vivid picture, which has wider meanings than its immediate occasion. "Ye lust and desire to have, and cannot obtain." An eternal nemesis hangs over godless lives, condemning them to hunger, after all efforts, and wrapping their pangs of unsatisfied desire in tragic darkness.

A clear strain of trust springs up, like a lark's morning song. The singer contrasts himself with his baffled foes. The "they" at the beginning of ver. 15 is emphatic in the Hebrew, and is matched with the emphatic "And I" which begins ver. 16. His "morning" is similarly set over against their "night." So petition, complaint, imprecation, all merge into a song of joy and trust, and the whole ends with the refrain significantly varied and enlarged. In its first form the psalmist said, "For Thee will I watch"; in its second he rises to "To Thee will I harp." Glad praise is ever the close of the vigils of a faithful, patient heart. The deliverance won by waiting and trust should be celebrated by praise. In the first form the refrain ran "God is my high tower," and the second part of the psalm began with "My God shall meet me with His loving-kindness." In its second form the refrain draws into itself these words which had followed it, and so modifies them that the loving-kindness which in them was contemplated as belonging to and brought by God is now joyfully clasped by the singer as his very own, by Divine gift and through his own acceptance. Blessed they who are led by occasion of foes and fears to take God's rich gifts, and can thankfully and humbly feel that His loving-kindness and all its results are theirs, because He Himself is theirs and they are His!

PSALM LX.

1 O God, Thou hast cast us off, hast broken us,
Hast been angry with us--restore us again.
2 Thou hast shaken the land, hast rent it--
Heal its breaches, for it trembles.
3 Thou hast made Thy people see hard things,
Thou hast given them to drink reeling as wine.
4 Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee,
[Only] that they may flee before the bow. Selah.

5 That Thy beloved ones may be delivered,
Save with Thy right hand, and answer us.
6 God has spoken in His holiness,--I will exult:
I will divide Shechem, and measure out the valley of Succoth.
7 Mine is Gilead, and mine Manasseh,
And Ephraim is the strength of my head,
Judah, my baton of command.
8 Moab is my wash basin,
Upon Edom will I throw my shoe,
Because of me, Philistia, shout aloud.

9 Who will bring me into the fenced city?
Who has guided me into Edom?
10 Hast not Thou, O God, cast us off?
And goest not out, O God, with our hosts.
11 Give us help from the oppressor
For vain is help of man.
12 In God we shall do prowess:
And He, He will tread down our oppressors.

This psalm has evidently a definite historical background. Israel has been worsted in fight, but still continues its campaign against Edom. Meditating on God's promises, the psalmist anticipates victory, which will cover defeat and perfect partial successes, and seeks to breathe his own spirit of confidence into the ranks of his countrymen. But the circumstances answering to those required by the psalm are hard to find. The date assigned by the superscription cannot be called satisfactory; for David's war there referred to (2 Sam. viii.) had no such stunning defeats as are here lamented. The Divine Oracle, of which the substance is given in the central part of the psalm, affords but dubious indications of date. At first sight it seems to imply the union of all the tribes in one kingdom, and therefore to favour the Davidic authorship. But it may be a question whether the united Israel of the Oracle is fact or prophecy. To one school of commentators, the mention of Ephraim in conjunction with Judah is token that the psalm is prior to the great revolt; to another, it is proof positive that the date is after the destruction of the northern kingdom. The Maccabean date is favoured by Olshausen, Hitzig, and Cheyne among moderns; but, apart from other objections, the reappearance of vv. 5-12 in Psalm cviii. implies that this piece of Hebrew psalmody was already venerable when a later compiler wove part of it into that psalm. On the whole, the Davidic authorship is possible, though clogged with the difficulty already mentioned. But the safest conclusion seems to be Baethgen's modest one, which contrasts strongly with the confident assertions of some other critics--namely, that assured certainty in dating the psalm "is no longer possible."

It falls into three parts of four verses each, of which the first (vv. 1-4) is complaint of defeat and prayer for help; the second (vv. 5-8), a Divine Oracle assuring victory; and the third (vv. 9-12), the flash of fresh hope kindled by that God's-word.

The first part blends complaint and prayer in the first pair of verses, in each of which there is, first, a description of the desperate state of Israel, and then a cry for help. The nation is broken, as a wall is broken down, or as an army whose ordered ranks are shattered and scattered. Some crushing defeat is meant, which in ver. 2 is further described as an earthquake. The land trembles, and then gapes in hideous clefts, and houses become gaunt ruins. The state is disorganised as in consequence of defeat. It is an unpoetical mixture of fact and figure to see in the "rending" of the land allusion to the separation of the kingdoms, especially as that was not the result of defeat.

There is almost a tone of wonder in the designation of Israel as "Thy people," so sadly does the fate meted out to them contrast with their name. Stranger still and more anomalous is it, that, as ver. 3 _b_ laments, God's own hand has commended such a chalice to their lips as should fill them with infatuation. The construction "wine of reeling" is grammatically impossible, and the best explanation of the phrase regards the nouns as in apposition--"wine which is reeling," or "reeling as wine." The meaning is that God not only sent the disaster which had shaken the nation like an earthquake, but had sent, too, the presumptuous self-confidence which had led to it.

Ver. 4 has received two opposite interpretations, being taken by some as a prolongation of the tone of lament over disaster, and by others as commemoration of God's help. The latter meaning violently interrupts the continuity of thought. "The only natural view is that which sees" in ver. 4 "a continuation of the description of calamity" in ver. 3 (Cheyne, _in loc._). Taking this view, we render the second clause as above. The word translated "that they may flee" may indeed mean to lift themselves up, in the sense of gathering round a standard, but the remainder of the clause cannot be taken as meaning "because of the truth," since the preposition here used never means "because of." It is best taken here as _from before_. The word variously rendered _bow_ and _truth_ is difficult. It occurs again in Prov. xxii. 21, and is there parallel with "truth" or faithfulness in fulfilling Divine promises. But that meaning would be inappropriate here, and would require the preceding preposition to be taken in the impossible sense already noted. It seems better, therefore, to follow the LXX. and other old versions, in regarding the word as a slightly varied mode of spelling the ordinary word for a bow (the final dental letter being exchanged for a cognate dental). The resulting meaning is deeply coloured by sad irony. "Thou hast indeed given a banner--but it was a signal for flight rather than for gathering round." Such seems the best view of this difficult verse; but it is not free from objection. "Those who fear Thee" is not a fitting designation for persons who were thus scattered in flight by God, even if it is taken as simply a synonym for the nation. We have to make choice between two incongruities. If we adopt the favourite view, that the verse continues the description of calamity, the name given to the sufferers is strange. If we take the other, that it describes God's gracious rallying of the fugitives, we are confronted with a violent interruption of the tone of feeling in this first part of the psalm. Perowne accepts the rendering _from before the bow_, but takes the verb in the sense of mustering round, so making the banner to be a rallying-point, and the giving of it a Divine mercy.

The second part (vv. 5-8) begins with a verse which Delitzsch and others regard as really connected, notwithstanding the Selah at the end ver. 4, with the preceding. But it is quite intelligible as independent, and is in its place as the introduction to the Divine Oracle which follows, and makes the kernel of the psalm. There is beautiful strength of confidence in the psalmist's regarding the beaten, scattered people as still God's "darlings." He appeals to Him to answer, in order that a result so accordant with God's heart as the deliverance of His beloved ones may be secured. And the prayer has no sooner passed his lips than he hears the thunderous response, "God has spoken in His holiness." That infinite elevation of His nature above creatures is the pledge of the fulfilment of His word.

The following verses contain the substance of the Oracle; but it is too daring to suppose that they reproduce its words; for "I will exult" can scarcely be reverently put into the mouth of God. The substance of the whole is a twofold promise--of a united Israel, and a submissive heathendom. Shechem on the west and Succoth on the east of Jordan, Gilead and Manasseh on the east, and Ephraim and Judah on the west, are the possession of the speaker, whether he is king or representative of the nation. No trace of a separation of the kingdoms is here. Ephraim, the strongest tribe of the northern kingdom, is the "strength of my head," the helmet, or perhaps with allusion to the horns of an animal as symbols of offensive weapons. Judah is the ruling tribe, the commander's baton, or possibly "lawgiver," as in Gen. xlix. Israel thus compact together may count on conquests over hereditary foes.

Their defeat is foretold in contemptuous images. The basin for washing the feet was "a vessel unto dishonour"; and, in Israel's great house, no higher function for his ancestral enemy, when conquered, would be found. The meaning of casting the shoe upon or over Edom is doubtful. It may be a symbol for taking possession of property, though that lacks confirmation; or Edom may be regarded as the household slave to whom the master's shoes are thrown when taken off; or, better, in accordance with the preceding reference to Moab, Edom may be regarded as part of the master's house or furniture. The one was the basin for his feet; the other, the corner where he kept his sandals.

If the text of ver. 8 _c_ is correct, Philistia is addressed with bitter sarcasm, and bidden to repeat her ancient shouts of triumph over Israel now, if she can. But the edition of these verses in Psalm cviii. gives a more natural reading, which may be adopted here: "Over Philistia will I shout aloud."

The third part (vv. 9-12) is taken by some commentators to breathe the same spirit as the first part. Cheyne, for instance, speaks of it as a "relapse into despondency," whilst others more truly hear in it the tones of rekindled trust. In ver. 9 there is a remarkable change of tense from "Who will bring?" in the first clause, to "Who has guided?" in the second. This is best explained by the supposition that some victory over Edom had preceded the psalm, which is regarded by the singer as a guarantee of success in his assault of "the fenced city," probably Petra. There is no need to supplement ver. 10, so as to read, "Wilt not Thou, O God, which," etc. The psalmist recurs to his earlier lament, not as if he thought that it still held true, but just because it does not. It explained the reason of past disasters; and, being now reversed by the Divine Oracle, becomes the basis of the prayer which follows. It is as if he had said, "We were defeated because Thou didst cast us off. Now help as Thou hast promised, and we shall do deeds of valour." It is impossible to suppose that the result of the Divine answer which makes the very heart of the psalm, should be a hopeless repetition of the initial despondency. Rather glad faith acknowledges past weakness and traces past failures to self-caused abandonment by a loving God, who let His people be worsted that they might learn who was their strength, and ever goes forth with those who go forth to war with the consciousness that all help but His is vain, and with the hope that in Him even their weakness shall do deeds of prowess. "Hast not Thou cast us off?" may be the utterance of despair; but it may also be that of assured confidence, and the basis of a prayer that will be answered by God's present help.

PSALM LXI.

1 Hear, O God, my shrill cry,
Attend to my prayer.

2 From the end of the earth I cry to Thee, when my heart is wrapped
[in gloom]:
Lead me on to a rock that is too high for me to [reach]
3 For Thou hast been a place of refuge for me,
A tower of strength from the face of the foe.
4 Let me dwell a guest in Thy tent for ever,
Let me find refuge in the covert of Thy wings. Selah.
5 For Thou, O God, hast hearkened to my vows,
Thou hast given [me] the heritage of them that fear Thy name.

6 Days mayest Thou add to the days of the king,
May his years be as many generations.
7 May he sit before God for ever:
Give charge to loving-kindness and troth, that they guard him.

8 So will I harp to Thy name for aye,
That I may fulfil my vows day by day.

The situation of the singer in this psalm is the same as in Psalm lxiii. In both he is an exile longing for the sanctuary, and in both "the king" is referred to in a way which leaves his identity with the psalmist questionable. There are also similarities in situation, sentiment, and expression with Psalms xlii. and xliii.--_e.g._, the singers exile, his yearning to appear in the sanctuary, the command given by God to His Loving-kindness (xlii. 8 and lxi. 8), the personification of Light and Troth as his guides (xliii. 3), compared with the similar representation here of Loving-kindness and Troth as guards set by God over the psalmist. The traditional attribution of the psalm to David has at least the merit of providing an appropriate setting for its longings and hopes, in his flight from Absalom. No one of the other dates proposed by various critics seems to satisfy anybody but its proposer. Hupfeld calls Hitzig's suggestion "wunderbar zu lesen." Graetz inclines to the reign of Hezekiah and thinks that "the connection gains" if the prayer for the preservation of the king's life refers to that monarch's sickness. The Babylonish captivity, with Zedekiah for "the king," is preferred by others. Still later dates are in favour now. Cheyne lays it down that "pre-Jeremian such highly spiritual hymns (_i.e._, Psalms lxi. and lxiii.) obviously cannot be," and thinks that "it would not be unplausible to make them contemporaneous with Psalm xlii., the king being Antiochus the Great," but prefers to assign them to the Maccabean period, and to take "Jonathan, or (better) Simon" as the king. Are "highly spiritual hymns" probable products of that time?

If the Selah is accepted as marking the end of the first part of the psalm, its structure is symmetrical, so far as it is then divided into two parts of four verses each; but that division cuts off the prayer in ver. 4 from its ground in ver. 5. Selah frequently occurs in the middle of a period, and is used to mark emphasis, but not necessarily division. It is therefore better to keep vv. 4 and 5 together, thus preserving their analogy with vv. 2 and 3. The scheme of this little psalm will then be an introductory verse, followed by two parallel pairs of verses, each consisting of petition and its grounding in past mercies (vv. 2, 3, and 4, 5), and these again succeeded by another pair containing petitions for the king, while a final single verse, corresponding to the introductory one, joyfully foresees life-long praise evoked by the certain answers to the singer's prayer.

The fervour of the psalmist's supplication is strikingly expressed by his use in the first clause, of the word which is ordinarily employed for the shrill notes of rejoicing. It describes the quality of the sound as penetrating and emotional, not the nature of the emotion expressed by it. Joy is usually louder-tongued than sorrow; but this suppliant's need has risen so high that his cry is resonant. To himself he seems to be at "the end of the earth"; for he measures distance not as a map-maker, but as a worshipper. Love and longing are potent magnifiers of space. His heart "faints," or is "overwhelmed." The word means literally "covered," and perhaps the metaphor may be preserved by some such phrase as _wrapped in gloom_. He is, then, an exile, and therefore sunk in sadness. But while he had external separation from the sanctuary chiefly in view, his cry wakes an echo in all devout hearts. They who know most about the inner life of communion with God best know how long and dreary the smallest separation between Him and them seems, and how thick is the covering spread over the heart thereby.

The one desire of such a suppliant is for restoration of interrupted access to God. The psalmist embodies that yearning in its more outward form, but not without penetrating to the inner reality in both the parallel petitions which follow. In the first of these, (ver. 2 _b_) the thought is fuller than the condensed expression of it. "Lead me on" or in, says he, meaning, Lead me _to_ and set me _on_. His imagination sees towering above him a great cliff, on which, if he could be planted, he might defy pursuit or assault. But he is distant from it, and the inaccessibility which, were he in its clefts, would be his safety, is now his despair. Therefore he turns to God and asks Him to bear him up in His hands, that he may set his foot on that rock. The figure has been, strangely enough, interpreted to mean a rock of difficulty, but against the usage in the Psalter. But we do not reach the whole significance of the figure if we give it the mere general meaning of a place of safety. While it would be too much to say that "rock" is here an epithet of God (the absence of the definite article and other considerations are against that), it may be affirmed that the psalmist, like all devout men, knew that his only place of safety was in God. "_A_ rock" will not afford adequate shelter; our perils and storms need "_the_ Rock." And, therefore, this singer bases his prayer on his past experience of the safe hiding that he had found in God. Place of refuge and strong tower are distinctly parallel with "rock." The whole, then, is like the prayer in Psalm xxxi. 2, 3: "Be Thou to me a strong rock. For Thou art my rock."

The second pair of verses, containing petition and its ground in past experience (vv. 4, 5), brings out still more clearly the psalmist's longing for the sanctuary. The futures in ver. 4 may be taken either as simple expressions of certainty, or, more probably, as precative, as is suggested by the parallelism with the preceding pair. The "tent" of God is the sanctuary, possibly so called because at the date of the psalm "the ark of God dwelt in curtains." The "hiding-place of Thy wings" may then be an allusion to the Shechinah and outspread pinions of the Cherubim. But the inner reality is more to the psalmist than the external symbols, however his faith was trained to connect the two more indissolubly than is legitimate for us. His longing was no superstitious wish to be near that sanctuary, as if external presence brought blessing, but a reasonable longing, grounded on the fact for his stage of revelation, that such presence was the condition of fullest realisation of spiritual communion, and of the safety and blessedness thence received. His prayer is the deepest desire of every soul that has rightly apprehended the facts of life, its own needs and the riches of God. The guests in God's dwelling have guest-rights of provision and protection. Beneath His wings are safety, warmth, and conscious nearness to His heart. The suppliant may feel far off, at the end of the world; but one strong desire has power to traverse all the distance in a moment. "Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also"; and where the heart is, there the man is.

The ground of this second petition is laid in God's past listening to vows, and His having given the psalmist "the heritage of those that fear Thy name." That is most naturally explained as meaning primarily the land of Israel, and as including therein all other blessings needful for life there. While it is capable of being otherwise understood, it is singularly appropriate to the person of David during the period of Absalom's rebellion, when victory was beginning to declare itself for the king. If we suppose that he had already won a battle (2 Sam. xviii. 6), we can understand how he takes that success as an omen and urges it as a plea. The pair of verses will then be one instance of the familiar argument which trustful hearts instinctively use, when they present past and incomplete mercies as reasons for continued gifts, and for the addition of all which is needed to "perfect that which concerneth" them. It rests on the confidence that God is not one who "begins and is not able to finish."

Very naturally, then, follows the closing prayer in vv. 6, 7. The purely individual character of the rest of the psalm, which is resumed in the last verse, where the singer, speaking in the first person, represents his continual praise as the result of the answer to his petitions for the king, makes these petitions hopelessly irrelevant, unless the psalmist is the king and these prayers are for himself. The transition to the third person does not necessarily negative this interpretation, which seems to be required by the context. The prayer sounds hyperbolical, but has a parallel in Psalm xxi. 4, and need not be vindicated by taking the dynasty rather than the individual to be meant, or by diverting it to a Messianic reference. It is a prayer for length of days, in order that the deliverance already begun may be perfected, and that the psalmist may dwell in the house of the Lord for ever (_cf._ Psalms xxiii. 6; xxvii. 4). He asks that he may sit enthroned before God for ever--that is, that his dominion may by God's favour be established and his throne upheld in peace. The psalm is in so far Messianic that the everlasting kingdom of the Christ alone fulfils its prayer.

The final petition has, as has been noticed above, parallels in Psalms xlii., xliii., to which may be added the personifications of Goodness and Loving-kindness in Psalm xxiii. 6. These bright harnessed angels stand sentries over the devout suppliant, set on their guard by the great Commander; and no harm can come to him over whom God's Loving-kindness and Faithfulness keep daily and nightly watch.

Thus guarded, the psalmist's prolonged life will be one long anthem of praise, and the days added to his days will be occupied with the fulfilment of his vows made in trouble and redeemed in his prosperity. What congruity is there between this closing verse, which is knit closely to the preceding by that "So," and the previous pair of verses, unless the king is himself the petitioner? "Let _him_ sit before God for ever"--how comes that to lead up to "So will _I_ harp to Thy name for ever"? Surely the natural answer is, Because "he" and "I" are the same person.

PSALM LXII.

1 Only upon God [waits] my soul [in] silence:
From Him is my salvation.
2 Only He is my rock and my salvation,
My high tower, I shall not be greatly moved.
3 How long will ye rush upon a man?
[How long] will ye all of you break him down,
Like a bulging wall, a tottering fence?
4 Only from his elevation do they consult to thrust him down, they
delight in lies:
Each blesses with his mouth, and in their inner [part] they
curse. Selah.

5 Only to God be silent, my soul,
For from Him is my expectation.
6 Only He is my rock and my salvation,
My high tower; I shall not be moved.
7 On God is my salvation and my glory,
The rock of my strength, my refuge, is in God.
8 Trust in him in every time, O people!
Pour out before Him your heart,
God is a refuge for us. Selah.