1 The wicked has an Oracle of Transgression within his heart;
There is no fear of God before his eyes.
2 For it speaks smooth things to him in his imagination (eyes)
As to finding out his iniquity, as to hating [it].
3 The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit;
He has ceased being wise, doing good.
4 He plots mischief upon his bed;
He sets himself firmly in a way [that is] not good;
Evil he loathes not.
5 Jehovah, Thy loving-kindness is in the heavens,
Thy faithfulness is unto the clouds.
6 Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God,
Thy judgments a mighty deep;
Man and beast preservest Thou, Jehovah.
7 How precious is Thy loving-kindness, Jehovah, O God!
And the sons of men in the shadow of Thy wings take refuge.
8 They are satisfied from the fatness of Thy house,
And [of] the river of Thy delights Thou givest them to drink.
9 For with Thee is the fountain of life;
In Thy light do we see light.
10 Continue Thy loving-kindness to those who know Thee,
And Thy righteousness to the upright in heart.
11 Let not the foot of pride come against me,
And the hand of the wicked--let it not drive me forth.
12 There the workers of iniquity are fallen;
They are struck down, and are not able to rise.
The supposition that the sombre picture of "the wicked" in vv. 1-4 was
originally unconnected with the glorious hymn in vv. 5-9 fails to give
weight to the difference between the sober pace of pedestrian prose and
the swift flight of winged poetry. It fails also in apprehending the
instinctive turning of a devout meditative spectator from the darkness
of earth and its sins to the light above. The one refuge from the sad
vision of evil here is in the faith that God is above it all, and that
His name is Mercy. Nor can the blackness of the one picture be anywhere
so plainly seen as when it is set in front of the brightness of the
other. A religious man, who has laid to heart the miserable sights of
which earth is full, will scarcely think that the psalmist's quick
averting of his eyes from these to steep them in the light of God is
unnatural, or that the original connection of the two parts of this
psalm is an artificial supposition. Besides this, the closing section of
prayer is tinged with references to the first part, and derives its
_raison d'être_ from it. The three parts form an organic whole.
The gnarled obscurity of the language in which the "wicked" is described
corresponds to the theme, and contrasts strikingly with the limpid flow
of the second part. "The line, too, labours" as it tries to tell the
dark thoughts that move to dark deeds. Vv. 1, 2, unveil the secret
beliefs of the sinner, vv. 3, 4, his consequent acts. As the text
stands, it needs much torturing to get a tolerable meaning out of ver.
1, and the slight alteration, found in the LXX. and in some old
versions, of "his heart" instead of "my heart" smooths the difficulty.
We have then a bold personification of "Transgression" as speaking in
the secret heart of the wicked, as in some dark cave, such as heathen
oracle-mongers haunted. There is bitter irony in using the sacred word
which stamped the prophets' utterances, and which we may translate
"oracle," for the godless lies muttered in the sinner's heart. This is
the account of how men come to do evil: that there is a voice within
whispering falsehood. And the reason why that bitter voice has the
shrine to itself is that "there is no fear of God before" the man's
"eyes." The two clauses of ver. 1 are simply set side by side, leaving
the reader to spell out their logical relation. Possibly the absence of
the fear of God may be regarded as both the occasion and the result of
the oracle of Transgression, since, in fact, it is both. Still more
obscure is ver. 2. Who is the "flatterer"? The answers are conflicting.
The "wicked," say some, but if so, "in his own eyes" is superfluous;
"God," say others, but that requires a doubtful meaning for
"flatters"--namely, "treats gently"--and is open to the same objection
as the preceding in regard to "in his own eyes." The most natural
supposition is that "transgression," which was represented in ver. 1 as
speaking, is here also meant. Clearly the person in whose eyes the
flattery is real is the wicked, and therefore its speaker must be
another. "Sin beguiled me," says Paul, and therein echoes this psalmist.
Transgression in its oracle is one of "those juggling fiends that palter
with us in a double sense," promising delights and impunity. But the
closing words of ver. 2 are a crux. Conjectural emendations have been
suggested, but do not afford much help. Probably the best way is to take
the text as it stands, and make the best of it. The meaning it yields is
harsh, but tolerable: "to find out his sin, to hate" (it?). Who finds
out sin? God. If He is the finder, it is He who also "hates"; and if it
is sin that is the object of the one verb, it is most natural to suppose
it that of the other also. The two verbs are infinitives, with the
preposition of purpose or of reference prefixed. Either meaning is
allowable. If the preposition is taken as implying reference, the sense
will be that the glosing whispers of sin deceive a man in regard to the
discovery of his wrong-doing and God's displeasure at it. Impunity is
promised, and God's holiness is smoothed down. If, on the other hand,
the idea of purpose is adopted, the solemn thought emerges that the
oracle is spoken with intent to ruin the deluded listener and set his
secret sins in the condemning light of God's face. Sin is cruel, and a
traitor. This profound glimpse into the depths of a soul without the
fear of God is followed by the picture of the consequences of such
practical atheism, as seen in conduct. It is deeply charged with
blackness and unrelieved by any gleam of light. Falsehood, abandonment
of all attempts to do right, insensibility to the hallowing influences
of nightly solitude, when men are wont to see their evil more clearly in
the dark, like phosphorus streaks on the wall, obstinate planting the
feet in ways not good, a silenced conscience which has no movement of
aversion to evil--these are the fruits of that oracle of Transgression
when it has its perfect work. We may call such a picture the
idealisation of the character described, but there have been men who
realised it, and the warning is weighty that such a uniform and
all-enwrapping darkness is the terrible goal towards which all listening
to that bitter voice tends. No wonder that the psalmist wrenches himself
swiftly away from such a sight!
The two strophes of the second division (vv. 5, 6, and 7-9) present
the glorious realities of the Divine name in contrast with the false
oracle of vv. 1, 2, and the blessedness of God's guests in contrast
with the gloomy picture of the "wicked" in vv. 3, 4. It is noteworthy
that the first and last-named "attributes" are the same.
"Loving-kindness" begins and ends the glowing series. That stooping,
active love encloses, like a golden circlet, all else that men can
know or say of the perfection whose name is God. It is the white beam
into which all colours melt, and from which all are evolved. As
science feels after the reduction of all forms of physical energy to
one, for which there is no name but energy, all the adorable glories
of God pass into one, which He has bidden us call love. "Thy
loving-kindness is in the heavens," towering on high. It is like some
Divine æther, filling all space. The heavens are the home of light.
They arch above every head; they rim every horizon; they are filled
with nightly stars; they open into abysses as the eye gazes; they bend
unchanged and untroubled above a weary earth; from them fall
benedictions of rain and sunshine. All these subordinate allusions may
lie in the psalmist's thought, while its main intention is to magnify
the greatness of that mercy as heaven-high.
But mercy standing alone might seem to lack a guarantee of its
duration, and therefore the strength of "faithfulness," unalterable
continuance in a course begun, and adherence to every promise either
spoken in words or implied in creation or providence, is added to the
tenderness of mercy. The boundlessness of that faithfulness is the
main thought, but the contrast of the whirling, shifting clouds with
it is striking. The realm of eternal purpose and enduring act reaches
to and stretches above the lower region where change rules.
But a third glory has yet to be flashed before glad eyes, God's
"righteousness," which here is not merely nor mainly punitive, but
delivering, or, perhaps in a still wider view, the perfect conformity
of His nature with the ideal of ethical completeness. Right is the
same for heaven as for earth, and "whatsoever things are just" have
their home in the bosom of God. The point of comparison with "the
mountains of God" is, as in the previous clauses, their loftiness,
which expresses greatness and elevation above our reach; but the
subsidiary ideas of permanence and sublimity are not to be overlooked.
"The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but His
righteousness endures for ever." There is safe hiding there, in the
fastnesses of that everlasting hill. From character the psalmist
passes to acts, and sets all the Divine dealings forth under the one
category of "judgments," the utterances in act of His judicial
estimate of men. Mountains seem highest and ocean broadest when the
former rise sheer from the water's edge, as Carmel does. The
immobility of the silent hills is wonderfully contrasted with the
ever-moving sea, which to the Hebrew was the very home of mystery. The
obscurity of the Divine judgments is a subject of praise, if we hold
fast by faith in God's loving-kindness, faithfulness, and
righteousness. They are obscure by reason of their vast scale, which
permits the vision of only a fragment. How little of the ocean is seen
from any shore! But there is no arbitrary obscurity. The sea is "of
glass mingled with fire"; and if the eye cannot pierce its depths, it
is not because of any darkening impurity in the crystal clearness, but
simply because not even light can travel to the bottom. The higher up
on the mountains men go, the deeper down can they see into that ocean.
It is a hymn, not an indictment, which says, "Thy judgments are a
great deep." But however the heights tower and the abysses open, there
is a strip of green, solid earth on which "man and beast" live in
safe plenty. The plain blessings of an all-embracing providence should
make it easier to believe in the unmingled goodness of acts which are
too vast for men to judge and of that mighty name which towers above
their conceptions. What they see is goodness; what they cannot see
must be of a piece. The psalmist is in "that serene and blessed mood"
when the terrible mysteries of creation and providence do not
interfere with his "steadfast faith that all which he beholds is full
of blessings." There are times when these mysteries press with
agonising force on devout souls, but there should also be moments when
the pure love of the perfectly good God is seen to fill all space and
outstretch all dimensions of height and depth and breadth. The awful
problems of pain and death will be best dealt with by those who can
echo the rapture of this psalm.
If God is such, what is man's natural attitude to so great and sweet a
name? Glad wonder, accepting His gift as the one precious thing, and
faith sheltering beneath the great shadow of His outstretched wing.
The exclamation in ver. 8, "How precious is Thy loving-kindness!"
expresses not only its intrinsic value, but the devout soul's
appreciation of it. The secret of blessedness and test of true wisdom
lie in a sane estimate of the worth of God's loving-kindness as
compared with all other treasures. Such an estimate leads to trust in
Him, as the psalmist implies by his juxtaposition of the two clauses
of ver. 7, though he connects them, not by an expressed "therefore,"
but by the simple copula. The representation of trust as taking refuge
reappears here, with its usual suggestions of haste and peril. The
"wing" of God suggests tenderness and security. And the reason for
trust is enforced in the designation "sons of men," partakers of
weakness and mortality, and therefore needing the refuge which, in the
wonderfulness of His loving-kindness, they find under the pinions of
so great a God.
The psalm follows the refugees into their hiding-place, and shows how
much more than bare shelter they find there. They are God's guests,
and royally entertained as such. The joyful priestly feasts in the
Temple colour the metaphor, but the idea of hospitable reception of
guests is the more prominent. The psalmist speaks the language of that
true and wholesome mysticism without which religion is feeble and
formal. The root ideas of his delineation of the blessedness of the
fugitives to God are their union with God and possession of Him. Such
is the magical might of lowly trust that by it weak dying "sons of
men" are so knit to the God whose glories the singer has been
celebrating that they partake of Himself and are saturated with His
sufficiency, drink of His delights in some deep sense, bathe in the
fountain of life, and have His light for their organ and medium and
object of sight. These great sentences beggar all exposition. They
touch on the rim of infinite things, whereof only the nearer fringe
comes within our ken in this life. The soul that lives in God is
satisfied, having real possession of the only adequate object. The
variety of desires, appetites, and needs requires manifoldness in
their food, but the unity of our nature demands that all that
manifoldness should be in One. Multiplicity in objects, aims, loves,
is misery; oneness is blessedness. We need a lasting good and an
ever-growing one to meet and unfold the capacity of indefinite growth.
Nothing but God can satisfy the narrowest human capacity.
Union with Him is the source of all delight, as of all true fruition
of desires. Possibly a reference to Eden may be intended in the
selection of the word for "pleasures," which is a cognate with that
name. So there may be allusion to the river which watered that garden,
and the thought may be that the present life of the guest of God is
not all unlike the delights of that vanished paradise. We may perhaps
scarcely venture on supposing that "Thy pleasures" means those which
the blessed God Himself possesses; but even if we take the lower and
safer meaning of those which God gives, we may bring into connection
Christ's own gift to His disciples of His own peace, and His assurance
that faithful servants will "enter into the joy of their Lord."
Shepherd and sheep drink of the same brook by the way and of the same
living fountains above. The psalmist's conception of religion is
essentially joyful. No doubt there are sources of sadness peculiar to
a religious man, and he is necessarily shut out from much of the
effervescent poison of earthly joys drugged with sin. Much in his life
is inevitably grave, stern, and sad. But the sources of joy opened are
far deeper than those that are closed. Surface wells (many of them
little better than open sewers) may be shut up, but an unfailing
stream is found in the desert. Satisfaction and joy flow from God,
because life and light are with Him; and therefore he who is with Him
has them for his. "With Thee is the fountain of life" is true in every
sense of the word "life." In regard to life natural, the saying
embodies a loftier conception of the Creator's relation to the
creature than the mechanical notion of creation. The fountain pours
its waters into stream or basin, which it keeps full by continual
flow. Stop the efflux, and these are dried up. So the great mystery of
life in all its forms is as a spark from a fire, a drop from a
fountain, or, as Scripture puts it in regard to man, a breath from
God's own lips. In a very real sense, wherever life is, there God is,
and only by some form of union with Him or by the presence of His
power, which is Himself, do creatures live. But the psalm is dealing
with the blessings belonging to those who trust beneath the shadow of
God's wing; therefore life here, in this verse, is no equivalent to
mere existence, physical or self-conscious, but it must be taken in
its highest spiritual sense. Union with God is its condition, and that
union is brought to pass by taking refuge with Him. The deep words
anticipated the explicit teaching of the Gospel in so far as they
proclaimed these truths, but the greatest utterance still remained
unspoken: that this life is "in His Son."
Light and life are closely connected. Whether knowledge, purity, or
joy is regarded as the dominant idea in the symbol, or whether all are
united in it, the profound words of the psalm are true. In God's light
we see light. In the lowest region "the seeing eye is from the Lord."
"The inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding." Faculty and
medium of vision are both of Him. But hearts in communion with God are
illumined, and they who are "in the light" cannot walk in darkness.
Practical wisdom is theirs. The light of God, like the star of the
Magi, stoops to guide pilgrims' steps. Clear certitude as to sovereign
realities is the guerdon of the guests of God. Where other eyes see
nothing but mists, they can discern solid land and the gleaming towers
of the city across the sea. Nor is that light only the dry light by
which we know, but it means purity and joy also; and to "see light" is
to possess these too by derivation from the purity and joy of God
Himself. He is the "master light of all our seeing." The fountain has
become a stream, and taken to itself movement towards men; for the
psalmist's glowing picture is more than fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who
has said, "I am the Light of the world; he that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."
The closing division is prayer, based both upon the contemplation of
God's attributes in vv. 5, 6, and of the wicked in the first part. This
distinct reference to both the preceding sections is in favour of the
original unity of the psalm. The belief in the immensity of Divine
loving-kindness and righteousness inspires the prayer for their
long-drawn-out (so "continue" means literally) continuance to the
psalmist and his fellows. He will not separate himself from these in his
petition, but thinks of them before himself. "Those who know Thee" are
those who take refuge under the shadow of the great wing. Their
knowledge is intimate, vital; it is acquaintanceship, not mere
intellectual apprehension. It is such as to purge the heart and make its
possessors upright. Thus we have set forth in that sequence of trust,
knowledge, and uprightness stages of growing Godlikeness closely
corresponding to the Gospel sequence of faith, love, and holiness. Such
souls are _capaces Dei_, fit to receive the manifestations of God's
loving-kindness and righteousness; and from such these will never
remove. They will stand stable as His firm attributes, and the spurning
foot of proud oppressors shall not trample on them, nor violent hands be
able to stir them from their steadfast, secure place. The prayer of the
psalm goes deeper than any mere deprecation of earthly removal, and is
but prosaically understood, if thought to refer to exile or the like.
The dwelling-place from which it beseeches that the suppliant may never
be removed is his safe refuge beneath the wing, or in the house, of God.
Christ answered it when He said, "No man is able to pluck them out of my
Father's hand." The one desire of the heart which has tasted the
abundance, satisfaction, delights, fulness of life, and clearness of
light that attend the presence of God is that nothing may draw it
thence.
Prayer wins prophetic certitude. From his serene shelter under the
wing, the suppliant looks out on the rout of battled foes, and sees
the end which gives the lie to the oracle of transgression and its
flatteries. "They are struck down," the same word as in the picture of
the pursuing angel of the Lord in Psalm xxxv. Here the agent of their
fall is unnamed, but one power only can inflict such irrevocable ruin.
God, who is the shelter of the upright in heart, has at last found out
the sinners' iniquity, and His hatred of sin stands ready to "smite
once, and smite no more."