_THE SONG OF THANKSGIVING._
2 SAMUEL xxii.
Some of David's actions are very characteristic of himself; there
are other actions quite out of harmony with his character. This
psalm of thanksgiving belongs to the former order. It is quite like
David, at the conclusion of his military enterprises, to cast his eye
gratefully over the whole, and acknowledge the goodness and mercy
that had followed him all along. Unlike many, he was as careful
to thank God for mercies past and present as to entreat Him for
mercies to come. The whole Book of Psalms resounds with halleluiahs,
especially the closing part. In the song before us we have something
like a grand halleluiah, in which thanks are given for all the
deliverances and mercies of the past, and unbounded confidence
expressed in God's mercy and goodness for the time to come.
The date of this song is not to be determined by the place which
it occupies in the history. We have already seen that the last
few chapters of Samuel consist of supplementary narratives, not
introduced at their regular places, but needful to give completeness
to the history. It is likely that this psalm was written considerably
before the end of David's reign. Two considerations make it all
but certain that its date is earlier than Absalom's rebellion.
In the first place, the mention of the name of Saul in the first
verse--"in the day when God delivered him out of the hand of all his
enemies and out of the hand of Saul"--would seem to imply that the
deliverance from Saul was somewhat recent, certainly not so remote
as it would have been at the end of David's reign. And secondly,
while the affirmation of David's sincerity and honesty in serving
God might doubtless have been made at any period of his life, yet
some of his expressions would not have been likely to be used after
his deplorable fall. It is not likely that after that, he would have
spoken, for example, of the cleanness of his hands, stained as they
had been by wickedness that could hardly have been surpassed. On the
whole, it seems most likely that the psalm was written about the
time referred to in 2 Sam. vii. 1--"when the Lord had given him rest
from all his enemies round about." This was the time when it was
in his heart to build the temple, and we know from that and other
circumstances that he was then in a state of overflowing thankfulness.
Besides the introduction, the song consists of three leading parts
not very definitely separated from each other, but sufficiently
marked to form a convenient division, as follows:--
I. Introduction: the leading thought of the song, an adoring
acknowledgment of what God had been and was to David (vv. 2-4).
II. A narrative of the Divine interpositions on his behalf, embracing
his dangers, his prayers, and the Divine deliverances in reply (vv.
5-19).
III. The grounds of his protection and success (vv. 20-30).
IV. References to particular acts of God's goodness in various parts of
his life, interspersed with reflections on the Divine character, from
all which the assurance is drawn that that goodness would be continued
to him and his successors, and would secure through coming ages the
welfare and extension of the kingdom. And here we observe what is so
common in the Psalms: a gradual rising above the idea of a mere earthly
kingdom; the type passes into the antitype; the kingdom of David melts,
as in a dissolving view, into the kingdom of the Messiah; thus a more
elevated tone is given to the song, and the assurance is conveyed to
every believer that as God protected David and his kingdom, so shall He
protect and glorify the kingdom of His Son for ever.
I. In the burst of adoring gratitude with which the psalm opens as
its leading thought, we mark David's recognition of Jehovah as the
source of all the protection, deliverance, and success he had ever
enjoyed, along with a special assertion of closest relationship
to Him, in the frequent use of the word "my," and a very ardent
acknowledgment of the claim to his gratitude thus arising--"God, who
is worthy to be praised."
The feeling that recognised God as the Author of all his deliverances
was intensely strong, for every expression that can denote it is
heaped together: "My rock, my portion, my deliverer; the God of my
rock, my shield; the horn of my salvation, my high tower, my refuge,
my Saviour." He takes no credit to himself; he gives no glory to his
captains; the glory is all the Lord's. He sees God so supremely the
Author of his deliverance that the human instruments that helped him
are for the moment quite out of view. He who, in the depths of his
penitence, sees but one supremely injured Being, and says, "Against
Thee, Thee only, have I sinned," at the height of his prosperity sees
but one gracious Being, and adores Him, who only is his rock and his
salvation. In an age when all the stress is apt to be laid on the
human instruments, and God left out of view, this habit of mind is
instructive and refreshing. It was a touching incident in English
history when, after the battle of Agincourt, Henry V. of England
directed the hundred and fifteenth Psalm to be sung; prostrating
himself on the ground, and causing his whole army to do the same,
when the words were sounded out, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
but to Thy name give glory."
The emphatic use of the pronoun "my" by the Psalmist is very
instructive. It is so easy to speak in general terms of what God
is, and what God does; but it is quite another thing to be able to
appropriate Him as ours, and rejoice in that relation. Luther said of
the twenty-third Psalm that the word "my" in the first verse was the
very hinge of the whole. There is a whole world of difference between
the two expressions, "The Lord is a Shepherd" and "The Lord is my
Shepherd." The use of the "my" indicates a personal transaction, a
covenant relation into which the parties have solemnly entered. No man
is entitled to use this expression who has merely a reverential feeling
towards God, and respect for His will. You must have come to God as
a sinner, owning and feeling your unworthiness, and casting yourself
on His grace. You must have transacted with God in the spirit of His
exhortation, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch
not the unclean thing; and I will be a Father unto you; and ye shall
be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."
One other point has to be noticed in this introduction--when David
comes to express his dependence on God, he very specially sets Him
before his mind as "worthy to be praised." He calls to mind the
gracious character of God,--not an austere God, reaping where He has
not sown, and gathering where He has not strawed, but "the Lord,
the Lord God merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in
goodness and truth." "This doctrine," says Luther, "is in tribulation
the most ennobling and truly golden. One cannot imagine what
assistance such praise of God is in pressing danger. For as soon
as you begin to praise God the sense of the evil will also begin
to abate, the comfort of your heart will grow; and then God will
be called on with confidence. There are some who cry to the Lord
and are not heard. Why is this? Because they do not praise the Lord
when they cry to Him, but go to Him with reluctance; they have not
represented to themselves how sweet the Lord is, but have looked
only to their own bitterness. But no one gets deliverance from evil
by looking simply upon his evil and becoming alarmed at it; he can
get deliverance only by rising above his evil, hanging it on God,
and having respect to His goodness. Oh, hard counsel, doubtless, and
a rare thing truly, in the midst of trouble to conceive of God as
sweet, and worthy to be praised; and when He has removed Himself from
us and is incomprehensible, even then to regard Him more intensely
than we regard our misfortune that keeps us from Him! Only let one
try it, and make the endeavour to praise God, though in little heart
for it he will soon experience an enlightenment."
II. We pass on to the part of the song where the Psalmist describes
his trials and God's deliverances in his times of danger (vv. 5-20).
The description is eminently poetical. First, there is a vivid
picture of his troubles. "The waves of death compassed me, and the
floods of ungodly men made me afraid; the sorrows of hell compassed
me; the snares of death prevented me" ("The cords of death compassed
me, and the floods of ungodliness made me afraid; the cords of sheol
were round about me; the snares of death came upon me," R.V.). It is
no overcharged picture. With Saul's javelins flying at his head in
the palace, or his best troops scouring the wilderness in search of
him; with Syrian hosts bearing down on him like the waves of the sea,
and a confederacy of nations conspiring to swallow him up, he might
well speak of the waves of death and the cords of Hades. He evidently
desires to describe the extremest peril and distress that can be
conceived, a situation where the help of man is vain indeed. Then,
after a brief account of his calling upon God, comes a most animated
description of God coming to his help. The description is ideal, but
it gives a vivid view how the Divine energy is roused when any of
God's children are in distress. It is in heaven as in an earthly home
when an alarm is given that one of the little children is in danger,
has wandered away into a thicket where he has lost his way: every
servant is summoned, every passer-by is called to the rescue, the
whole neighbourhood is roused to the most strenuous efforts; so when
the cry reached heaven that David was in trouble, the earthquake and
the lightning and all the other messengers of heaven were sent out
to his aid; nay, these were not enough; God Himself flew, riding on
a cherub, yea, He did fly upon the wings of the wind. Faith saw God
bestirring Himself for his deliverance, as if every agency of nature
had been set in motion on his behalf.
And this being done, his deliverance was conspicuous and complete.
He saw God's hand stretched out with remarkable distinctness. There
could be no more doubt that it was God that rescued him from Saul
than that it was He that snatched Israel from Pharaoh when literally
"the channels of the sea appeared, the foundations of the world were
discovered, at the rebuking of the Lord, at the blast of the breath
of His nostrils." There could be no more doubt that it was God who
protected David when men rose to swallow him up than that it was He
who drew Moses from the Nile--"He sent from above, He took me, He
drew me out of many waters." No miracles had been wrought on David's
behalf; unlike Moses and Joshua before him, and unlike Elijah and
Elisha after him, he had not had the laws of nature suspended for his
protection; yet he could see the hand of God stretched out for him
as clearly as if a miracle had been wrought at every turn. Does this
not show that ordinary Christians, if they are but careful to watch,
and humble enough to watch in a chastened spirit, may find in their
history, however quietly it may have glided by, many a token of the
interest and care of their Father in heaven? And what a blessed thing
to have accumulated through life a store of such providences--to have
Ebenezers reared along the whole line of one's history! What courage
after looking over such a past might one feel in looking forward to
the future!
III. The next section of the song sets forth the grounds on which
the Divine protection was thus enjoyed by David. Substantially these
grounds were the uprightness and faithfulness with which he had
served God. The expressions are strong, and at first sight they have
a flavour of self-righteousness. "The Lord rewarded me according to
my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath He
recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not
wickedly departed from my God. For all His judgments were before me,
and I put not away His statutes from me. I was also perfect with Him,
and I kept myself from mine iniquity." But it is impossible to read
this Psalm without feeling that it is not pervaded by the spirit
of the self-righteous man. It is pervaded by a profound sense of
dependence on God, and of obligation to His mercy and love. Now that
is the very opposite of the self-righteous spirit. We may surely find
another way of accounting for such expressions used by David here. We
may surely believe that all that was meant by him was to express the
unswerving sincerity and earnestness with which he had endeavoured to
serve God, with which he had resisted every temptation to conscious
unfaithfulness, with which he had resisted every allurement to
idolatry on the one hand or to the neglect of the welfare of God's
nation on the other. What he here celebrates is, not any personal
righteousness that might enable him as an individual to claim the
favour and reward of God, but the ground on which he, as the public
champion of God's cause before the world, enjoyed God's countenance
and obtained His protection. There would be no self-righteousness in
an inferior officer of the navy or the army who had been sent on some
expedition saying, "I obeyed your instructions in every particular; I
never deviated from the course you prescribed." There would have been
no self-righteousness in such a man as Luther saying, "I constantly
maintained the principles of the Bible; I never once abandoned
Protestant ground." Such affirmations would never be held to imply a
claim of personal sinlessness during the whole course of their lives.
Substantially all that is asserted is, that in their public capacity
they proved faithful to the cause entrusted to them; they never
consciously betrayed their public charge. Now it is this precisely
that David affirms of himself. Unlike Saul, who abandoned the law of
the kingdom, David uniformly endeavoured to carry it into effect. The
success which followed he does not claim as any credit to himself,
but as due to his having followed the instructions of his heavenly
Lord. It is the very opposite of a self-righteous spirit. He would
have us understand that if ever he had abandoned the guidance of God,
if ever he had relied on his own wisdom and followed the counsels of
his own heart, everything would have gone wrong with him; the fact
that he had been successful was due altogether to the Divine wisdom
that guided and the Divine strength that upheld him.
Even with this explanation, some of the expressions may seem too
strong. How could he speak of the cleanness of his hands, and of his
not having wickedly departed from his God? Granting that the song
was written before his sin in the case of Uriah, yet remembering how
he had lied at Nob and equivocated at Gath, might he not have used
less sweeping words? But it is not the way of burning, enthusiastic
minds to be for ever weighing their words, and guarding against
misunderstandings. Enthusiasm sweeps along in a rapid current. And
David correctly describes the prevailing features of his public
endeavours. His public life was unquestionably marked by a sincere
and commonly successful endeavour to follow the will of God. In
contrast with Saul and Ishbosheth, side by side with Absalom or
Sheba; his career was purity itself, and bore out the rule of
the Divine government, "With the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself
merciful, and with the upright man Thou wilt show Thyself upright.
With the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure, and with the froward Thou
wilt show Thyself unsavoury." If God is to prosper us, there must
be an inner harmony between us and Him. If the habit of our life be
opposed to God, the result can only be collision and rebuke. David
was conscious of the inner harmony, and therefore he was able to rely
on being supported and blessed.
IV. In the wide survey of his life and of his providential mercies,
the eye of the Psalmist is particularly fixed on some of his
deliverances, in the remembrance of which he specially praises God.
One of the earliest appears to be recalled in the words, "By my
God have I leaped over a wall,"--the wall, it may be supposed, of
Gibeah, down which Michal let him when Saul sent to take him in his
house. Still further back, perhaps, in his life is the allusion in
another expression--"Thy gentleness hath made me great." He seems
to go back to his shepherd life, and in the gentleness with which
he dealt with the feeble lamb that might have perished in rougher
hands to find an emblem of God's method with himself. If God had not
dealt gently with him, he never would have become what he was. The
Divine gentleness had made paths easy that rougher treatment would
have made intolerable. And who of us that looks back but must own
our obligations to the gentleness of God, the tender, forbearing,
nay loving, treatment He has bestowed on us, even in the midst of
provocations that would have justified far harsher treatment?
But what? Can David praise God's gentleness and in the next words
utter such terrible words against his foes? How can he extol God's
gentleness to him and immediately dwell on his tremendous severity
to them? "I have consumed them and wounded them that they could not
arise; yea, they are fallen under my feet.... Then did I beat them as
small as the dust of the earth, I did stamp them as the mire of the
street, and did spread them abroad." It is the military spirit which
we have so often observed, looking on his enemies in one light only,
as identified with everything evil and enemies of all that was good.
To show mercy to them would be like showing mercy to destructive wild
beasts, raging bears, venomous serpents, and rapacious vultures.
Mercy to them would be cruelty to all God's servants; it would be
ruin to God's cause. No! for them the only fit doom was destruction,
and that destruction he had dealt to them with no unsparing hand.
But while we perceive his spirit, and harmonise it with his general
character, we cannot but regard it as the spirit of one who was
imperfectly enlightened. We tremble when we think what fearful
wickedness persecutors and inquisitors have committed, under the
idea that the same course was to be followed against those whom they
deemed enemies of the cause of God. We rejoice in the Christian
spirit that teaches us to regard even public enemies as our brothers,
for whom individually kindly and brotherly feelings are to be
cherished. And we remember the new aspect in which our relations to
such have been placed by our Lord: "Love your enemies, bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them
that despitefully use you and persecute you."
In the closing verses of the Psalm, the views of the Psalmist seem
to sweep beyond the limits of an earthly kingdom. His eye seems to
embrace the wide-spreading dominion of Messiah; at all events, he
dwells on those features of his own kingdom that were typical of the
all-embracing kingdom of the Gospel: "Thou hast made me the head of the
nations; a people whom I have not known shall serve me. As soon as they
hear of me they shall obey me; the strangers shall submit themselves
unto me." The forty-ninth verse is quoted by St. Paul (Rom. xv. 9) as a
proof that in the purpose of God the salvation of Christ was designed
for Gentiles as well as Jews. "It is beyond doubt," says Luther, "that
the wars and victories of David prefigured the passion and resurrection
of Christ." At the same time, he admits that it is very doubtful
how far the Psalm applies to Christ, and how far to David, and he
declines to press the type to particulars. But we may surely apply the
concluding words to David's Son: "He showeth loving-kindness to his
anointed, to David and to his seed for evermore."
It is interesting to mark the military aspect of the kingdom gliding
into the missionary. Other psalms bring out more clearly this
missionary element, exhibit David rejoicing in the widening limits of
his kingdom, in the wider diffusion of the knowledge of the true God,
and in the greater happiness and prosperity accruing to men. And yet,
perhaps, his views on the subject were comparatively dim; he may have
been disposed to identify the conquests of the sword and the conquests
of the truth instead of regarding the one as but typical of the other.
The visions and revelations of his later years seem to have thrown
new light on this glorious subject, and though not immediately, yet
ultimately, to have convinced him that truth, righteousness, and
meekness were to be the conquering weapons of Messiah's reign.