1 Heartily do I love Thee, Jehovah, my strength!
2 Jehovah, my rock and my fortress and my deliverer,
My God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
My shield and the horn of my salvation and my high tower!
3 I call upon Him who is to be praised, Jehovah;
And from mine enemies am I saved.
4 The breakers of death ringed me round,
And streams of destruction terrified me.
5 The cords of Sheol encircled me;
The snares of death fronted me.
6 In my distress I called on Jehovah,
And to my God I loudly cried;
He heard my voice from His palace-temple,
And my loud crying before Him entered His ears.
7 Then the earth rocked and reeled,
And the foundations of the mountains quivered
And rocked again, for He was wroth.
8 Smoke went up in His nostrils,
And fire from His mouth devoured;
Brands came blazing from Him.
9 And He bowed the heavens and came down,
And cloud gloom [was] below His feet.
10 And He rode upon the cherub and flew,
And came swooping on the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness His covert, His tent round about Him,
Darkness of waters and cloud masses of the skies.
12 From the brightness before Him there passed through His
cloud-masses
Hail and brands of fire.
13 And Jehovah thundered in the heavens,
And the Most High gave forth His voice.
14 And He sent forth His arrows and scattered them,
And lightnings many, and flung them into panic.
15 And the beds of the waters were seen,
And the foundations of the earth bared,
At Thy rebuke, Jehovah,
At the blast of the breath of Thy nostrils.
16 He stretched from on high: He took me;
He drew me from many waters.
17 He rescued me from my strong enemy
And from my haters, because they were too mighty for me.
18 They fell on me in the day of my calamity,
But Jehovah became as a staff to me.
19 And He brought me out into a wide place;
He delivered me, because He delighted in me.
20 Jehovah treated me according to my righteousness;
According to the cleanness of my hands He returned [recompense]
to me.
21 For I kept the ways of Jehovah,
And did not part myself by sin from my God.
22 For all His judgments were before me,
And His statutes did I not put away from me.
23 And I was without fault with Him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.
24 Therefore Jehovah returned [recompense] to me according to my
righteousness,
According to the cleanness of my hands before His eyes.
25 With the gracious man Thou showest Thyself gracious;
With the faultless man Thou showest Thyself faultless.
26 With him who purifies himself Thou showest Thyself pure,
And with the perverse Thou showest Thyself froward.
27 For Thou savest humbled people,
And eyes uplifted Thou dost bring low.
28 For Thou lightest my lamp;
Jehovah my God brightens my darkness.
29 For by Thee I run down a troop,
And through my God I spring over a rampart.
30 As for God, His way is faultless;
The word of Jehovah is tried (as by fire):
A shield is He to all who take refuge in Him.
31 For who is God but Jehovah,
And who is a rock besides our God?
32 [It is] God who girded me with strength,
And made my way faultless;
33 Who made my feet like hinds' [feet],
And made me stand upon my high places;
34 Who schooled my hands for war,
So that my arms bend a bow of brass.
35 And Thou didst give me the shield of Thy salvation,
And Thy right hand upheld me,
And Thy humility made me great.
36 Thou didst broaden under me [a path for] my step,
And my ankles did not give.
37 I pursued my enemies, and overtook them;
And I did not turn till I had consumed them.
38 I shattered them, and they could not rise;
They fell beneath my feet.
39 And Thou girdedst me with might for battle;
Thou didst bring my assailants to their knees under me.
40 And my enemies Thou madest to turn their backs to me,
And my haters--I annihilated them.
41 They shrieked, and there was no helper,
To Jehovah, and He answered them not.
42 I pounded them like dust before the wind;
Like street mud I emptied them out.
43 Thou didst deliver me from the strifes of the people;
Thou didst set me for a head of the nations;
A people whom I knew not served me.
44 At the hearing of the ear they made themselves obedient to me;
The children of the foreigner came feigning to me.
45 The children of the foreigner faded away,
And came trembling from their strongholds.
46 Jehovah lives, and blessed be my rock;
And exalted be the God of my salvation,
47 The God who gave me revenges
And subdued peoples under me,
48 My deliverer from my enemies:
Yea, from my assailants Thou didst set me on high,
From the man of violence didst Thou rescue me.
49 Therefore will I give Thee thanks among the nations, Jehovah;
And to Thy name will I sing praise.
50 He magnifies salvations for His king,
And works loving-kindness for His anointed,
For David and for his seed for evermore.
The description of the theophany (vv. 7-19) and that of the psalmist's
God-won victories (vv. 32-46) appear to refer to the same facts,
transfigured in the former case by devout imagination and presented in
the latter in their actual form. These two portions make the two central
masses round which the psalm is built up. They are connected by a
transitional section, of which the main theme is the power of character
to determine God's aspect to a man as exemplified in the singer's
experience; and they are preceded and followed by an introduction and a
conclusion, throbbing with gratitude and love to Jehovah, the Deliverer.
The Davidic authorship of this psalm has been admitted even by critics
who are slow to recognise it. Cheyne asks, as if sure of a negative
answer, "What is there in it that suggests the history of David?"
("Orig. of the Psalter," p. 205). Baethgen, who "suspects" that a
Davidic psalm has been "worked over" for use in public worship, may
answer the question: "The following points speak for the Davidic
authorship. The poet is a military commander and king, who wages
successful wars, and subdues peoples whom he hitherto did not know.
There is no Israelite king to whom the expressions in question in the
psalm apply so closely as is the case with David." To these points may
be added the allusions to earlier trials and perils, and the distinct
correspondence, in a certain warmth and inwardness of personal relation
to Jehovah, with the other psalms attributed to David, as well as the
pregnant use of the word _to flee to a refuge_, applied to the soul's
flight to God, which we find here (ver. 2) and in the psalms ascribed to
him. If the clear notes of the psalm be the voice of personal
experience, there is but one author possible--namely, David--and the
glow and intensity of the whole make the personification theory
singularly inadequate. It is much easier to believe that David used the
word "temple" or "palace" for Jehovah's heavenly dwelling, than that the
"I" of the psalm, with his clinging sense of possession in Jehovah, his
vivid remembrance of sorrows, his protestations of integrity, his wonder
at his own victories, and his triumphant praise, is not a man, but a
frosty personification of the nation.
The preluding invocation in vv. 1-3 at once touches the high-water mark
of Old Testament devotion, and is conspicuous among its noblest
utterances. Nowhere else in Scripture is the form of the word employed
which is here used for "love." It has special depth and tenderness. How
far into the centre this man had penetrated, who could thus isolate and
unite Jehovah and himself, and could feel that they two were alone and
knit together by love! The true estimate of Jehovah's ways with a man
will always lead to that resolve to love, based on the consciousness of
God's love to him. Happy they who learn that lesson by retrospect;
happier still if they gather it from their sorrows while these press!
Love delights in addressing the beloved and heaping tender names on its
object, each made more tender and blessed by that appropriating "my." It
seems more accordant with the fervent tone of the psalm to regard the
reiterated designations in ver. 2 as vocatives, than to take "Jehovah"
and "God" as subjects and the other names as predicates. Rather the
whole is one long, loving accumulation of dear names, a series of
invocations, in which the restful heart murmurs to itself how rich it is
and is never wearied of saying, "my delight and defence." As in Psalm
xvii., the name of Jehovah occurs twice, and that of God once. Each of
these is expanded, as it were, by the following epithets, and the
expansion becomes more extended as it advances, beginning with one
member in ver. 1, having three in ver. 2 _a_ and four in ver. 2 _b_.
Leaving out the Divine names proper, there are seven in ver. 2,
separated into two groups by the name of God. It may be observed there
is a general correspondence between the two sets, each beginning with
"rock" (though the word is different in the two clauses), each having
the metaphor of a fortress, and "shield and horn of salvation," roughly
answering to "Deliverer." The first word for _rock_ is more properly
_crag_ or _cliff_, thus suggesting inaccessibility, and the second a
_rock mass_, thus giving the notion of firmness or solidity. The shade
of difference need not be pressed, but the general idea is that of
safety, or by elevation above the enemy and by reason of the
unchangeable strength of Jehovah. In that lofty eyrie, a man may look
down on all the armies of earth, idly active on the plain. That great
Rock towers unchangeable above fleeting things. The river at its base
runs past, the woods nestling at its feet bud and shed their leaves, but
it stands the same. David had many a time found shelter among the hills
and caves of Judah and the South land, and it may not be fancy that sees
reminiscences of these experiences in his song. The beautiful figure for
trust embodied in the word in 2 _b_ belongs to the metaphor of the rock.
It is found with singular appropriateness in Psalm lvii., which the
title ascribes to David "in the cave," the sides of which bent above
him and sheltered him, like a great pair of wings, and possibly
suggested the image, "In the shadow of Thy wings will I take refuge."
The difference between "fortress" and "high tower" is slight, but the
former gives more prominence to the idea of strength, and the latter to
that of elevation, both concurring in the same thought as was expressed
by "rock," but with the additional suggestion of Jehovah as the home of
the soul. Safety, then, comes through communion. Abiding in God is
seclusion from danger. "Deliverer" stands last in the first set, saying
in plain words what the preceding had put in figures. "My shield and the
horn of my salvation" come in the centre of the second set, in obedience
to the law of variety in reiteration which the poet's artistic instincts
impose. They shift the figure to that of a warrior in actual conflict.
The others picture a fugitive from enemies, these a fighter. The shield
is a defensive weapon; horns are offensive ones, and the combination
suggests that in conflict we are safe by the interposition of God's
covering power, and are armed by the same power for striking at the foe.
That power ensures salvation, whether in the narrower or wider sense.
Thus Jehovah is all the armour and all the refuge of His servant. To
trust Him is to have His protection cast around and His power infused
for conflict and victory. The end of all life's experience is to reveal
Him in these characters, and they have rightly learned its lessons whose
song of retrospect begins with "I will love Thee, Jehovah," and pours
out at His feet all happy names expressive of His sufficiency and of the
singer's rest in possessing Him. Ver. 3 is not a resolution for the
future--"I will call; ... so shall I be saved"--but the summing up of
experience in a great truth: "I call, ... and I am saved." It unfolds
the meaning of the previous names of God, and strikes the key-note for
the magnificent sequel.
The superb idealisation of past deliverances under the figure of a
theophany is prepared for by a retrospect of dangers, which still
palpitates with the memory of former fears. "A sorrow's crown of
sorrow is remembering happier things," and a joy's crown of joy is
remembering past perils. No better description of David's early life
could have been given than that contained in the two vivid figures of
vv. 4 and 5. If we adopt the more congruous reading of the other
recension of the psalm in 2 Sam. xxii., we have in both members of
ver. 4 a parallel metaphor. Instead of "sorrows" or "cords" (both of
which renderings are possible for the text of the psalm here), it
reads "breakers," corresponding with "floods" in the second clause.
"Destruction" is better than _ungodly men_ as the rendering of the
unusual word "Belial." Thus the psalmist pictures himself as standing
on a diminishing bit of solid ground, round which a rising flood runs
strong, breaking on its crumbling narrowness. Islanded thus, he is all
but lost. With swift transition he casts the picture of his distress
into another metaphor. Now he is a hunted creature, surrounded and
confronted by cords and snares. Sheol and Death have marked him for
their prey, and are drawing their nets round him. What is left for
him? One thing only. He has a voice, and he has a God. In his despair
one piercing cry breaks from him; and, wonder of wonders, that thin
shoot of prayer rises right into the heavenly palace-temple and the
ears of God. The repetition of "I called upon the Lord" connects this
with ver. 3 as the experience on which the generalisation there is
based. His extremity of peril had not paralysed the psalmist's grasp
of God as still "my God," and his confidence is vindicated. There is
an eloquent contrast between the insignificance of the cause and the
stupendous grandeur of the effect: one poor man's shrill cry and a
shaking earth and all the dread pomp attending an interposing God. A
cupful of water poured into a hydraulic ram sets in motion power that
lifts tons; the prayer of faith brings the dread magnificence of
Jehovah into the field. The reading of 2 Samuel is preferable in the
last clause of ver. 6, omitting the superfluous "before Him."
The phenomena of a thunderstorm are the substratum of the grand
description of Jehovah's delivering self-manifestation. The garb is
lofty poetry; but a definite fact lies beneath, namely some
deliverance in which the psalmist saw Jehovah's coming in storm and
lightning flash to destroy, and therefore to save. Faith sees more
truly because more deeply than sense. What would have appeared to an
ordinary looker-on as merely a remarkable escape was to its subject
the manifestation of a present God. Which eye sees the "things that
are,"--that which is cognisant only of a concatenation of events, or
that which discerns a Person directing these? The cry of this hunted
man has for first effect the kindling of the Divine "wrath," which is
represented as flaming into action in the tremendous imagery of vv. 7
and 8. The description of the storm in which God comes to help the
suppliant does not begin with these verses, as is commonly understood.
The Divine power is not in motion yet, but is, as it were, gathering
itself up for action. The complaining prayer is boldly treated as
bringing to God's knowledge His servant's straits, and the knowledge
as moving Him to wrath towards the enemies of one who takes shelter
beneath His wings. "What have I here that my"--servant is thus
bestead? saith the Lord. The poet can venture to paint a picture with
the pen, which the painter dare not attempt with the pencil. The anger
of Jehovah is described in words of singular daring, as rising like
smoke from His nostrils and pouring in fire from His lips, from which
blazing brands issue. No wonder that the earth reels even to the roots
of the mountains, as unable to endure that wrath! The frank
anthropomorphism of the picture, of which the features are taken from
the hard breathing of an angry man or animal (compare Job's crocodile
in Job xli. 10-13), and the underlying conception are equally
offensive to many; but as for the former, the more "gross" the
humanising of the picture, the less likely is it to be mistaken for
prose fact, and the more easy to apprehend as symbol: and as for the
latter, the New Testament endorses the conception of the "wrath of
God," and bids us take heed lest, if we cast it away, we maim His
love. This same psalm hymns Jehovah's "gentleness"; and the more
deeply His love is apprehended, the more surely will His wrath be
discerned as its necessary accompaniment. The dark orb and its radiant
sister move round a common centre.
Thus kindled, God's wrath flashes into action, as is wonderfully
painted in that great storm piece in vv. 9-15. The stages of a violent
thunder tempest are painted with unsurpassable force and brevity.
First we see the low clouds: far nearer the trembling earth than the
hidden blue was, and seeming to press down with leaden weight, their
boding blackness is above us; but
"Whose foot shall we see emerge,
Whose from the straining topmost dark?"
Their low gathering is followed by the sudden rush of wind, which
breaks the awful calm. In its "sound," the psalmist hears the
winnowing of mighty wings: those of the cherub on whom, as a living
chariot, Jehovah sits throned. This is called "mythology." Is it not
rather a poetic personification of elemental powers, which gives
emphasis to their being God's instruments? The cherubim are in
Scripture represented in varying forms and with different attributes.
In Ezekiel they assume a composite form, due apparently to Babylonian
influences; but here there is no trace of that, and the absence of
such strongly supports a pre-exilic date.
Blacker grows the gloom, in which awed hearts are conscious of a present
Deity shrouded behind the livid folds of the thunder-clouds, as in a
tent. Down rushes the rain; the darkness is "a darkness of waters," and
also "thick clouds of the skies," or "cloud masses," a mingled chaos of
rain and cloud. Then lightning tears a way through the blackness, and
the language becomes abrupt, like the flash. In vv. 12 and 13 the fury
of the storm rages. Blinding brightness and deafening thunder-claps
gleam and rattle through the broken words. Probably ver. 12 should be
rendered, "From the brightness before Him there came through His clouds
hail and brands of fire." Hidden in the cloudy tent is the light of
Jehovah's presence, sparkles from which, flung forth by Him, pierce the
solid gloom; and men call them lightnings. Then thunder rolls, the voice
of the Most High. The repetition in ver. 13 of "hail and brands of fire"
gives much abrupt force, and one is unwilling to part with it. The
reason for omitting it from the text is the want of grammatical
connection, but that is rather a reason for retaining it, as the
isolated clause breaks in on the continuity of the sentence, just as
the flash shoots suddenly out of the cloud. These lightnings are God's
arrows; and, as they are showered down in flights, the psalmist's
enemies, unnamed since ver. 3, scatter in panic. The ideal character of
the whole representation is plain from the last element in it--the
description in ver. 15 of laying bare the sea's depths, as the waters
were parted at the Exodus. That voice and the fierce blast from these
fire-breathing nostrils have dried the streams, and the oozy bed is
seen. God's "rebuke" has power to produce physical changes. The
earthquake at the beginning and the empty ocean bed at the end are both
somewhat outside the picture of the storm, and complete the
representation of all nature as moved by the theophany.
Then comes the purpose of all the dread magnificence, strangely small
except to the psalmist. Heaven and earth have been shaken, and
lightnings set leaping through the sky, for nothing greater than to
drag one half-drowned man from the floods. But the result of the
theophany is small only in the same fashion as its cause was small.
This same poor man cried, and the cry set Jehovah's activity in
motion. The deliverance of a single soul may seem a small thing, but
if the single soul has prayed it is no longer small, for God's good
name is involved. A nation is disgraced if its meanest subject is left
to die in the hands of foreign enemies, and blood and treasure are not
wasted if poured out lavishly for his rescue. God cannot let a
suppliant who has taken shelter in His tent be dragged thence.
Therefore there is no disproportion between the theophany and the
individual deliverance which is its sole result.
The psalmist lays aside the figure in vv. 17, 18, and comes to the
bare fact of his deliverance from enemies, and perhaps from one
especially formidable ("my enemy," ver. 17). The prose of the whole
would have been that he was in great danger and without means of
averting it, but had a hair-breadth escape. But the outside of a fact
is not all of it; and in this mystical life of ours poetry gets nearer
the heart of things than does prose, and religion nearer than either.
It is no miracle, in the narrow meaning of that word, which the
psalmist sings; but his eye has seen the unseen force which moves all
visible events. We may see the same apocalypse of a present Jehovah,
if our eyes are purged, and our hearts pure. It is always true that
the cry of a trustful soul pierces heaven and moves God; it is always
true that He comes to His servant sinking and crying, "Lord, save me;
I perish." The scene on the Galilean lake when Christ's strong grasp
held Peter up, because his fear struck out a spark of faith, though
his faith was darkened with fear, is ever being repeated.
The note slightly touched at the close of the description of the
deliverance dominates the second part of the psalm (vv. 20-31), of
which the main theme is the correspondence of God's dealings with
character, as illustrated in the singer's experience, and thence
generalised into a law of the Divine administration. It begins with
startling protestations of innocence. These are rounded into a whole
by the repetition, at the beginning and end, of the same statement
that God dealt with the psalmist according to his righteousness and
clean-handedness. If the author is David, this voice of a good
conscience must have been uttered before his great fall, after which
he could, indeed, sing of forgiveness and restoring grace, but never
again of integrity. Unlike as the tone of these verses is to that
deeper consciousness of sin which is not the least of Christ's gifts,
the truth which they embody is as much a part of the Christian as of
the earlier revelation. True, penitence must now mingle with conscious
rectitude more abundantly than it does in this psalm; but it is still
and for ever true that God deals with His servants according to their
righteousness. Cherished sin separates from Him, and forces His love
to leave cries for help many times unanswered, in order that, filled
with the fruit of their doings, His people may have a wholesome fear
of again straying from the narrow way. Unless a Christian can say, "I
keep myself from mine iniquity," he has no right to look for the
sunshine of God's face to gladden his eyes, nor for the strength of
God's hand to pluck his feet from the net. In noble and daring words,
the psalmist proclaims as a law of God's dealings his own experience
generalised (vv. 25-27). It is a bold reversal of the ordinary point
of view to regard man as taking the initiative and God as following
his lead. And yet is not life full of solemn facts confirmatory of the
truth that God is to a man what the man is to God? That is so, both
subjectively and objectively. Subjectively our conceptions of God vary
with our moral nature, and objectively the dealings of God are moulded
according to that nature. There is such a thing as colour blindness in
regard to the Divine character, whereby some men cannot see the green
of faithful love or the red of wrath, but each beholds that in God
which his vision fits him to see; and the many-sided dealings of God
are different in their incidence upon different characters, so that
the same heat melts wax and hardens clay; and further the actual
dealings are accurately adapted to the state of their objects, so
that each gets what he needs most: the loving heart, sweet love tokens
from the Divine Lover; the perverse, thwartings which come from a God
"contrary" to them who are contrary to Him. "The history of the world
is the judgment of the world." But the first of the designations of
character in ver. 25 hints that before man's initiative had been
God's; for "merciful" is the pregnant word occurring so often in the
Psalter, and so impossible to translate by any one word. It means, as
we have already had occasion to point out, one who is the subject of
the Divine loving-kindness, and who therefore loves God in return.
Here it seems rather to be taken in the sense of loving than of
beloved. He who exercises this loving-kindness, whether towards God or
man, shall find in God One who exercises it to him. But the word
itself regards man's loving-kindness towards God as being the echo of
God's, and so the very first step in determining the mutual relations
is God's, and but for it there would never have been that in man which
God could answer by showing Himself as loving. The contrasted dealings
and characters are summed up in the familiar antithesis of ver. 27.
The "afflicted" or humble are the type of God-pleasing character,
since humility, such as befits dependent creatures, is the mother of
all goodness, and "high looks" the master sin, and the whole drift of
Providence is to lift the lowly and abase the proud.
The psalmist's swift thought vibrates throughout this part of the song
between his own experience and the general truths exemplified in it.
He is too full of his own deliverance to be long silent about it, and,
on the other hand, is continually reminded by it of the wide sweep of
the beneficent laws which have been so fruitful of good to him. The
most precious result of individual mercy is the vision obtained
through it of the universal Lover of souls. "My God" will be widened
into "our God," and "our God" will rest upon "my God," if either is
spoken from the heart's depths. So in vv. 27-29 the personal element
comes again to the front. The individualising name "My God" occurs in
each verse, and the deliverance underlying the theophany is described
in terms which prepare for the fuller celebration of victory in the
last part of the psalm. God lights the psalmist's lamp, by which is
meant not the continuance of his family (as the expression elsewhere
means), but the preservation of his own life, with the added idea,
especially in ver. 28 _b_, of prosperity. Ver. 29 tells how the lamp
was kept alight, namely by the singer's victory in actual battle, in
which his swift rush had overtaken the enemy, and his agile limbs had
scaled their walls. The parallelism of the clauses is made more
complete by the emendation adopted by Lagarde, Cheyne, Baethgen, etc.,
who read ver. 29 _a_, "I [can] break down a fence," but this is
unnecessary. The same combination of running and climbing occurs in
Joel ii. 7, and the two clauses of ver. 33 seem to repeat those of
ver. 29. The swift, agile warrior, then, traces these physical powers
to God, as he does more at large in later verses.
Once more, the song passes, in ver. 30, to the wider truths taught by
the personal deliverance. "Our God" takes the place of "my God"; and
"all who take refuge in Him" are discerned as gathering, a shadowy
crowd, round the solitary psalmist, and as sharing in his blessings.
The large truths of these verses are the precious fruit of distress
and deliverance. Both have cleared the singer's eyes to see, and
tuned his lips to sing, a God whose doings are without a flaw, whose
word is like pure gold without alloy or falsehood, whose ample
protection shields all who flee to its shelter, who alone is God, the
fountain of strength, who stands firm for ever, the inexpugnable
defence and dwelling-place of men. This burst of pure adoration echoes
the tones of the glorious beginning of the psalm. Happy they who, as
the result of life's experience, solve "the riddle of this painful
earth," with these firm and jubilant convictions as the very
foundation of their being.
The remainder of the psalm (ver. 32 to end) describes the victorious
campaign of the psalmist and the establishment of his kingdom. There is
difficulty in determining the tenses of the verbs in some verses, and
interpreters vary between pasts and futures. The inclination of the
greater number of recent commentators is to carry the historical
retrospect uninterruptedly through the whole context, which, as Hupfeld
acknowledges, "allerdings das bequemste ist," and those who suppose
occasional futures interspersed (as the R.V. and Hupfeld) differ in the
places of their introduction. "Everything here is retrospective," says
Delitzsch, and certainly that view is simplest and gives unity to the
whole. The name of God is never mentioned in the entire section, except
as vainly invoked by the flying foe. Not till the closing doxologies
does it appear again, with the frequency which marks the middle part of
the psalm. A similar sparse use of it characterises the description of
the theophany. In both cases there is a peculiar force given by the
stream of verbs without expressed nominatives. The hurrying clauses here
vividly reproduce the haste of battle, and each falls like the blow of a
battle mace wielded by a strong arm. The equipment of the king for the
fight (vv. 32-36), the fierce assault, flight of the foe and their utter
annihilation (vv. 37-42), the extension by conquest of the singer's
kingdom (vv. 43, 44), successively pass before us as we listen to the
panting words with the heat of battle in them; and all rises at last
into exuberant praise, which re-echoes some strains of the introductory
burst of thanksgiving.
Many mythologies have told how the gods arm their champions, but the
psalmist reaches a loftier height than these. He ventures to think of
God as doing the humble office of bracing on his girdle, but the girdle
is itself strength. God, whose own "way is perfect" (ver. 30), makes His
servant's "way" in some measure like His own; and though, no doubt, the
figure must be interpreted in a manner congruous with its context, as
chiefly implying "perfection" in regard to the purpose in hand--namely,
warfare--we need not miss the deeper truth that God's soldiers are
fitted for conflict by their "ways" being conformed to God's. This man's
"strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure."
Strength and swiftness are the two characteristics of antique heroes,
and God's gift bestowed both on the psalmist. Light of foot as a deer
and able to climb to the robber forts perched on crags, as a chamois
would, his hands deft, and his muscular arms strong to bend the bow
which others could not use, he is the ideal of a warrior of old; and all
these natural powers he again ascribes to God's gift. A goddess gave
Achilles his wondrous shield, but what was it to that which God binds
upon this warrior's arm? As his girdle was strength, and not merely a
means of strength, his shield is salvation, and not merely a means of
safety. The fact that God purposes to save and does act for saving is
the defence against all dangers and enemies. It is the same deep truth
as the prophet expresses by making "salvation" the walls and bulwarks of
the strong city where the righteous nation dwells in peace. God does not
thus arm His servant and then send him out alone to fight as he can, but
"Thy right hand holds me up." What assailant can beat him down, if that
hand is under his armpit to support him? The beautiful rendering of the
A.V., "Thy gentleness," scarcely conveys the meaning, and weakens the
antithesis with the psalmist's "greatness," which is brought out by
translating "Thy lowliness," or even more boldly "Thy humility." There
is that in God which answers to the peculiarly human virtue of
lowliness; and unless there were, man would remain small and unclothed
with God-given strength. The devout soul thrills with wonder at God's
stooping love, which it discerns to be the foundation of all His gifts
and therefore of its blessedness. This singer saw deep into the heart of
God, and anticipated the great word of the one Revealer, "I am meek and
lowly in heart." But God's care for him does not merely fit him for the
fight: it also orders circumstances so as to give him a free course.
Having made his "feet like hinds' feet," God then prepares paths that he
should walk in them. The work is only half done when the man is endowed
for service or conflict; a field for his powers must be forthcoming, and
God will take care that no strength given by Him lies idle for want of a
wrestling ground. Sooner or later feet find the road.
Then follow six verses (37-42) full of the stir and tumult of battle.
There is no necessity for the change to futures in the verbs of vv.
37, 38, which the R.V. adopts. The whole is a picture of past
conflict, for which the psalmist had been equipped by God. It is a
literal fight, the triumph of which still glows in the singer's heart
and flames in his vivid words. We see him in swift pursuit, pressing
hard on the enemy, crushing them with his fierce onset, trampling them
under foot. They break and flee, shrieking out prayers, which the
pursuer has a stern joy in knowing to be fruitless. His blows fall
like those of a great pestle, and crush the fleeing wretches, who are
scattered by his irresistible charge, like dust whirled by the storm.
The last clause of the picture of the routed foe is better given by
the various reading in 2 Samuel, which requires only a very slight
alteration in one letter: "I did stamp them as the mire of the
streets." Such delight in the enemy's despair and destruction, such
gratification at hearing their vain cries to Jehovah, are far away
from Christian sentiments; and the gulf is not wholly bridged by the
consideration that the psalmist felt himself to be God's anointed, and
enmity to him to be treason against God. Most natural as his feelings
were, perfectly consistent with the level of religion proper to the
then stage of revelation, capable of being purified into that triumph
in the victory of good and ruin of evil without which there is no
vigorous sympathy with Christ's battle, and kindling as they do by
their splendid energy and condensed rapidity an answering glow in even
readers so far away from their scene as we are, they are still of
"another spirit" from that which Christ has breathed into the Church,
and nothing but confusion and mischief can come of slurring over the
difference. The light of battle which blazes in them is not the fire
which Jesus longed to kindle upon earth.
Thus far the enemies seem to have been native foes rebelling against
God's anointed or, if the reference to the Sauline persecution is held
by, seeking to prevent his reaching his throne. But, in the concluding
verses of this part (43-45), a transition is made to victory over
"strangers," _i.e._ foreign nations. "The strivings of the people" seems
to point back to the war described already, while "Thou hast made me the
head of the nations" refers to external conquests. In 2 Samuel the
reading is "my people," which would bring out the domestic reference
more strongly; but the suffix for "my" may be a defective form of
writing the plural; if so, the peoples in ver. 43 _a_ are the "nations"
of 43 _b_. In any case the royal singer celebrates the extension of his
dominion. The tenses in vv. 44, 45, which the R.V. again gives as
futures (as does Hupfeld), are better regarded, like all the others, as
pasts. The wider dominion is not inconsistent with Davidic origin, as
his conquests were extended beyond the territory of Israel. The picture
of the hasty surrender of the enemy at the very sound of the conqueror's
name is graphic. "They lied unto me," as the words in ver. 44 _b_ are
literally, gives forcibly the feigned submission covering bitter hate.
"They fade away," as if withered by the simoom, the hot blast of the
psalmist's conquering power. "They come trembling [or, as 2 Samuel
reads, come limping] from their strongholds."
Vv. 46 to end make a noble close to a noble hymn, in which the singer's
strong wing never flags nor the rush of thought and feeling slackens.
Even more absolutely than in the rest of the psalm every victory is
ascribed to Jehovah. He alone acts; the psalmist is simply the
recipient. To have learned by life's struggles and deliverances that
Jehovah is a living God and "my Rock" is to have gathered life's best
fruit. A morning of tempest has cleared into sunny calm, as it always
will, if tempest drives to God. He who cries to Jehovah when the floods
of destruction make him afraid will in due time have to set to his seal
that Jehovah liveth. If we begin with "The Lord is my Rock," we shall
end with "Blessed be my Rock." Thankfulness does not weary of
reiterating acknowledgments; and so the psalmist gathers up once more
the main points of the psalm in these closing strains and lays all his
mass of blessings at the feet of the Giver. His deliverance from his
domestic foes and his conquests over external enemies are wholly God's
work, and therefore supply both impulse and material for praises which
shall sound out beyond the limits of Israel. The vow to give thanks
among the nations has been thought fatal to the Davidic origin of the
psalm. Seeing, however, that some foreign peoples were conquered by him,
there was opportunity for its fulfilment. His function to make known the
name of Jehovah was the reason for his victories. David had learned the
purpose of his elevation, and recognised in an extended kingdom a wider
audience for his song. Therefore Paul penetrates to the heart of the
psalm when he quotes ver. 49 in Rom. xv. 9 as a proof that the
evangelising of the Gentiles was an Old Testament hope. The plain lesson
from the psalmist's vow is that God's mercies bind, and if felt aright
will joyfully impel, the receiver to spread His name as far as his voice
can reach. Love is sometimes silent, but gratitude must speak. The most
unmusical voice is tuned to melody by thankfulness, and they need never
want a theme who can tell what the Lord has done for their soul.
The last verse of the psalm is sometimes regarded as a liturgical
addition, and the mention of David gratuitously supposed to be adverse
to his authorship, but there is nothing unnatural in a king's
mentioning himself in such a connection nor in the reference to his
dynasty, which is evidently based upon the promise of perpetual
dominion given through Nathan. The Christian reader knows how much
more wonderful than the singer knew was the mercy granted to the king
in that great promise, fulfilled in the Son of David, whose kingdom is
an everlasting kingdom, and who bears God's name to all the nations.