1 Thee will I exalt, Jehovah, for me hast Thou lifted up,
And not made my foes rejoice over me.
2 Jehovah, my God,
I cried loudly to Thee, and Thou healedst me.
3 Jehovah, Thou hast brought up from Sheol my soul;
Thou hast revived me from among those who descend to the pit.
4 Make music to Jehovah, ye who are favoured by Him;
And thank His holy Name.
5 For a moment passes in His anger,
A life in His favour;
In the evening comes weeping as a guest,
And at morn [there is] a shout of joy.
6 But I--I said in my security,
I shall not be moved for ever.
7 Jehovah, by Thy favour Thou hadst established strength to my
mountain;
Thou didst hide Thy face: I was troubled.
8 To Thee, Jehovah, I cried;
And to the Lord I made supplication.
9 "What profit is in my blood when I descend to the pit?
Can dust thank Thee? can it declare Thy faithfulness?
10 Hear, Jehovah, and be gracious to me;
Jehovah, be my Helper!"
11 Thou didst turn for me my mourning to dancing;
Thou didst unloose my sackcloth and gird me with gladness,
12 To the end that [my] glory should make music to Thee, and not be
silent:
Jehovah, my God, for ever will I thank Thee.
The title of this psalm is apparently a composite, the usual "Psalm of
David" having been enlarged by the awkward insertion of "A Song at the
Dedication of the House," which probably indicates its later
liturgical use, and not its first destination. Its occasion was
evidently a deliverance from grave peril; and, whilst its tone is
strikingly inappropriate if it had been composed for the inauguration
of temple, tabernacle, or palace, one can understand how the venerable
words, which praised Jehovah for swift deliverance from impending
destruction, would be felt to fit the circumstances and emotions of
the time when the Temple, profaned by the mad acts of Antiochus
Epiphanes, was purified and the ceremonial worship restored. Never had
Israel seemed nearer going down to the pit; never had deliverance come
more suddenly and completely. The intrusive title is best explained as
dating from that time and indicating the use then found for the song.
It is an outpouring of thankfulness, and mainly a leaf from the
psalmist's autobiography, interrupted only by a call to all who share
Jehovah's favour to help the single voice to praise Him (vv. 4, 5).
The familiar arrangement in pairs of verses is slightly broken twice,
vv. 1-3 being linked together as a kind of prelude and vv. 8-10 as a
repetition of the singer's prayer. His praise breaks the barrier of
silence and rushes out in a flood. The very first word tells of his
exuberant thankfulness, and stands in striking relation to God's act
which evokes it. Jehovah has raised him from the very sides of the
pit, and therefore what shall he do but exalt Jehovah by praise and
commemoration of His deeds? The song runs over in varying expressions
for the one deliverance, which is designated as lifting up,
disappointment of the malignant joy of enemies, healing, rescue from
Sheol and the company who descend thither, by restoration to life.
Possibly the prose fact was recovery from sickness, but the metaphor
of healing is so frequent that the literal use of the word here is
questionable. As Calvin remarks, sackcloth (ver. 11) is not a sick
man's garb. These glad repetitions of the one thought in various forms
indicate how deeply moved the singer was, and how lovingly he brooded
over his deliverance. A heart truly penetrated with thankfulness
delights to turn its blessings round and round, and see how prismatic
lights play on their facets, as on revolving diamonds. The same warmth
of feeling, which glows in the reiterated celebration of deliverance,
impels to the frequent direct mention of Jehovah. Each verse has that
name set on it as a seal, and the central one of the three (ver. 2),
not content with it only, grasps Him as "my God," manifested as such
with renewed and deepened tenderness by the recent fact that "I cried
loudly unto Thee, and Thou healedst me." The best result of God's
goodness is a firmer assurance of a personal relation to Him. "This is
an enclosure of a common without damage: to make God mine own, to find
that all that God says is spoken to me" (Donne). The stress of these
three verses lies on the reiterated contemplation of God's fresh act
of mercy and on the reiterated invocation of His name, which is not
vain repetition, but represents distinct acts of consciousness,
drawing near to delight the soul in thoughts of Him. The psalmist's
vow of praise and former cry for help could not be left out of view,
since the one was the condition and the other the issue of
deliverance, but they are slightly touched. Such claiming of God for
one's own and such absorbing gaze on Him are the intended results of
His deeds, the crown of devotion, and the repose of the soul.
True thankfulness is expansive, and joy craves for sympathy. So the
psalmist invites other voices to join his song, since he is sure that
others there are who have shared his experience. It has been but one
instance of a universal law. He is not the only one whom Jehovah has
treated with loving-kindness, and he would fain hear a chorus
supporting his solo. Therefore he calls upon "the favoured of God" to
swell the praise with harp and voice and to give thanks to His "holy
memorial," _i.e._ the name by which His deeds of grace are
commemorated. The ground of their praise is the psalmist's own case
generalised. A tiny mirror may reflect the sun, and the humblest
person's history, devoutly pondered, will yield insight into God's
widest dealings. This, then, is what the psalmist had learned in
suffering, and wishes to teach in song: that sorrow is transient and
joy perennial. A cheerful optimism should be the fruit of experience,
and especially of sorrowful experience. The antitheses in ver. 5 are
obvious. In the first part of the verse "anger" and "favour" are
plainly contrasted, and it is natural to suppose that "a moment" and
"life" are so too. The rendering, then, is, "A moment passes in His
anger, a life [_i.e._, a lifetime] in His favour." Sorrow is brief;
blessings are long. Thunderstorms occupy but a small part of summer.
There is usually less sickness than health in a life. But memory and
anticipation beat out sorrow thin, so as to cover a great space. A
little solid matter, diffused by currents, will discolour miles of a
stream. Unfortunately we have better memories for trouble than for
blessing, and the smart of the rose's prickles lasts longer in the
flesh than its fragrance in the nostril or its hue in the eye. But the
relation of ideas here is not merely that of contrast. May we not say
that just as the "moment" is included in the "life," so the "anger" is
in the "favour"? Probably that application of the thought was not
present to the psalmist, but it is an Old Testament belief that "whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth," and God's anger is the aversion of
holy love to its moral opposite. Hence comes the truth that varying
and sometimes opposite Divine methods have one motive and one purpose,
as the same motion of the earth brings summer and winter in turn.
Since the desire of God is to make men partakers of His holiness, the
root of chastisement is love, and hours of sorrow are not
interruptions of the continuous favour which fills the life.
A like double antithesis moulds the beautiful image of the last clause.
Night and morning are contrasted, as are weeping and joy; and the latter
contrast is more striking, if it be observed that "joy" is literally a
"joyful shout," raised by the voice that had been breaking into audible
weeping. The verb used means to lodge for a night, and thus the whole is
a picture of two guests, the one coming, sombre-robed, in the hour
befitting her, the other, bright-garmented, taking the place of the
former, when all things are dewy and sunny, in the morning. The thought
may either be that of the substitution of joy for sorrow, or of the
transformation of sorrow into joy. No grief lasts in its first
bitterness. Recuperative forces begin to tell by slow degrees. "The low
beginnings of content" appear. The sharpest-cutting edge is partially
blunted by time and what it brings. Tender green drapes every ruin.
Sorrow is transformed into something not undeserving of the name of joy.
Griefs accepted change their nature. "Your sorrow shall be turned into
joy." The man who in the darkness took in the dark guest to sit by his
fireside finds in the morning that she is transfigured, and her name is
Gladness. Rich vintages are gathered on the crumbling lava of the
quiescent volcano. Even for irremediable losses and immedicable griefs,
the psalmist's prophecy is true, only that for these "the morning" is
beyond earth's dim dawns, and breaks when this night which we call life,
and which is wearing thin, is past. In the level light of that sunrise,
every raindrop becomes a rainbow, and every sorrow rightly--that is,
submissively--borne shall be represented by a special and particular
joy.
But the thrilling sense of recent deliverance runs in too strong a
current to be long turned aside, even by the thought of others'
praise; and the personal element recurs in ver. 6, and persists till
the close. This latter part falls into three well-marked minor
divisions: the confession of self-confidence, bred of ease and
shattered by chastisement, in vv. 6, 7; the prayer of the man startled
into renewed dependence in vv. 8-10; and the closing reiterated
commemoration of mercies received and vow of thankful praise, which
echoes the first part, in vv. 11, 12.
In ver. 6 the psalmist's foolish confidence is emphatically contrasted
with the truth won by experience and stated in ver. 5. "The law of
God's dealings is so, but I--I thought so and so." The word rendered
"prosperity" may be taken as meaning also security. The passage from
the one idea to the other is easy, inasmuch as calm days lull men to
sleep, and make it hard to believe that "to-morrow shall" not "be as
this day." Even devout hearts are apt to count upon the continuance of
present good. "Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not
God." The bottom of the crater of Vesuvius had once great trees
growing, the produce of centuries of quiescence. It would be difficult
to think, when looking at them, that they would ever be torn up and
whirled aloft in flame by a new outburst. While continual peril and
change may not foster remembrance of God, continuous peace is but too
apt to lull to forgetfulness of Him. The psalmist was beguiled by
comfort into saying precisely what "the wicked said in his heart"
(Psalm x. 6). How different may be the meaning of the same words on
different lips! The mad arrogance of the godless man's confidence, the
error of the good man rocked to sleep by prosperity, and the warranted
confidence of a trustful soul are all expressed by the same words; but
the last has an addition which changes the whole: "_Because He is at
my right hand_, I shall not be moved." The end of the first man's
boast can only be destruction; that of the third's faith will
certainly be "pleasures for evermore"; that of the second's lapse from
dependence is recorded in ver. 7. The sudden crash of his false
security is graphically reproduced by the abrupt clauses without
connecting particles. It was the "favour" already celebrated which
gave the stability which had been abused. Its effect is described in
terms of which the general meaning is clear, though the exact
rendering is doubtful. "Thou hast [or hadst] established strength to
my mountain" is harsh, and the proposed emendation (Hupfeld, Cheyne,
etc.), "hast set me on strong mountains," requires the addition to the
text of the pronoun. In either case, we have a natural metaphor for
prosperity. The emphasis lies on the recognition that it was God's
work, a truth which the psalmist had forgotten and had to be taught by
the sudden withdrawal of God's countenance, on which followed his own
immediate passage from careless security to agitation and alarm. The
word "troubled" is that used for Saul's conflicting emotions and
despair in the witch's house at Endor, and for the agitation of
Joseph's brethren when they heard that the man who had their lives in
his hand was their wronged brother. Thus alarmed and filled with
distracting thoughts was the psalmist. "Thou didst hide Thy face,"
describes his calamities in their source. When the sun goes in, an
immediate gloom wraps the land, and the birds cease to sing. But the
"trouble" was preferable to "security," for it drove to God. Any
tempest which does that is better than calm which beguiles from Him;
and, since all His storms are meant to "drive us to His breast," they
come from His "favour."
The approach to God is told in vv. 8-10, of which the two latter are a
quotation of the prayer then wrung from the psalmist. The ground of
this appeal for deliverance from a danger threatening life is as in
Hezekiah's prayer (Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19), and reflects the same
conception of the state of the dead as Psalm vi. 5. If the suppliant
dies, his voice will be missed from the chorus which sings God's
praise on earth. "The dust" (_i.e._, the grave) is a region of
silence. Here, where life yielded daily proofs of God's "truth"
(_i.e._, faithfulness), it could be extolled, but there dumb tongues
could bring Him no "profit" of praise. The boldness of the thought
that God is in some sense advantaged by men's magnifying of His
faithfulness, the cheerless gaze into the dark realm, and the
implication that to live is desired not only for the sake of life's
joys, but in order to show forth God's dealings, are all remarkable.
The tone of the prayer indicates the imperfect view of the future life
which shadows many psalms, and could only be completed by the
historical facts of the Resurrection and Ascension. Concern for the
honour of the Old Testament revelation may, in this matter, be
stretched to invalidate the distinctive glory of the New, which has
"brought life and immortality to light."
With quick transition, corresponding to the swiftness of the answer to
prayer, the closing pair of verses tells of the instantaneous change
which that answer wrought. As in the earlier metaphor weeping was
transformed into joy, here mourning is turned into dancing, and God's
hand unties the cord which loosely bound the sackcloth robe, and arrays
the mourner in festival attire. The same conception of the sweetness of
grateful praise to the ear of God which was presented in the prayer
recurs here, where the purpose of God's gifts is regarded as being man's
praise. The thought may be construed so as to be repulsive, but its true
force is to present God as desiring hearts' love and trust, and as
"seeking such to worship Him," because therein they will find supreme
and abiding bliss. "My glory," that wonderful personal being, which in
its lowest debasement retains glimmering reflections caught from God, is
never so truly glory as when it "sings praise to Thee," and never so
blessed as when, through a longer "for ever" than the psalmist saw
stretching before him, it "gives thanks unto Thee."