1 Jehovah, not in Thine indignation do Thou rebuke me,
Nor in Thy hot anger chastise me.
2 For Thine arrows are come down into me,
And down upon me comes Thy hand.
3 There is no soundness in my flesh because of Thy wrath
There is no health in my bones because of my sin.
4 For my iniquities have gone over my head;
As a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me.
5 My bruises smell foully, they run with matter,
Because of my folly.
6 I am twisted [with pain]; I am bowed down utterly;
All the day I drag about in squalid attire.
7 For my loins are full of burning,
And there is no soundness in my flesh.
8 I am exhausted and crushed utterly;
I roar for the sighing of my heart.
9 Lord, present to Thee is all my desire,
And my sighing is not hid from Thee.
10 My heart flutters, my strength has left me,
And the light of my eyes--even it is no more with me.
11 My lovers and friends stand aloof from my stroke,
And my near [kin] stand far off.
12 And they who seek after my life set snares [for me],
And they who desire my hurt speak destruction,
And meditate deceits all the day.
13 And I, like a deaf man, do not hear,
And am like one dumb, who opens not his mouth.
14 Yea, I am become like a man who hears not,
And in whose mouth are no counter-pleas.
15 For for Thee, Jehovah, do I wait;
Thou, Thou wilt answer, O Lord, my God.
16 For I said, Lest they should rejoice over me,
[And] when my foot slips, should magnify themselves over me
17 For I am ready to fall,
And my sorrow is continually present to me.
18 For I must declare my guilt,
Be distressed for my sin.
19 And my enemies are lively, they are strong,
(And my enemies without cause are strong?)
And they who wrongfully hate me are many;
20 And, requiting evil for good,
They are my adversaries because I follow good.
21 Forsake me not, Jehovah;
My God, be not far from me.
22 Haste to my help,
O God, my salvation.
This is a long-drawn wail, passionate at first, but gradually calming
itself into submission and trust, though never passing from the minor
key. The name of God is invoked thrice (vv. 1, 9, 15), and each time
that the psalmist looks up his burden is somewhat easier to carry, and
some "low beginnings of content" steal into his heart and mingle with
his lament. Sorrow finds relief in repeating its plaint. It is the
mistake of cold-blooded readers to look for consecution of thought in
the cries of a wounded soul; but it is also a mistake to be blind to
the gradual sinking of the waves in this psalm, which begins with
deprecating God's wrath, and ends with quietly nestling close to Him
as "my salvation."
The characteristic of the first burst of feeling is its unbroken
gloom. It sounds the depths of darkness, with which easy-going,
superficial lives are unfamiliar, but whoever has been down into them
will not think the picture overcharged with black. The occasion of the
psalmist's deep dejection cannot be gathered from his words. He, like
all poets who teach in song what they learn in suffering, translates
his personal sorrows into language fitting for others' pains. The
feelings are more important to him and to us than the facts, and we
must be content to leave unsettled the question of his circumstances,
on which, after all, little depends. Only, it is hard for the present
writer, at least, to believe that such a psalm, quivering, as it
seems, with agony, is not the genuine cry of a brother's tortured
soul, but an utterance invented for a personified nation. The close
verbal resemblance of the introductory deprecation of chastisement in
anger to Psalm vi. 1 has been supposed to point to a common
authorship, and Delitzsch takes both psalms, along with Psalms xxxii.,
and li. as a series belonging to the time of David's penitence after
his great fall from purity. But the resemblance in question would
rather favour the supposition of difference of authorship, since
quotation is more probable than self-repetition. Jer. x. 23 is by some
held to be the original, and either Jeremiah himself or some later
singer to have been the author of the psalm. The question of which of
two similar passages is source and which is copy is always ticklish.
Jeremiah's bent was assimilative, and his prophecies are full of
echoes. The priority, therefore, probably lies with one or other of
the psalmists, if there are two.
The first part of the psalm is entirely occupied with the subjective
aspect of the psalmist's affliction. Three elements are conspicuous:
God's judgments, the singer's consciousness of sin, and his mental and
probably physical sufferings. Are the "arrows" and crushing weight of
God's "hand," which he deprecates in the first verses, the same as the
sickness and wounds, whether of mind or body, which he next describes so
pathetically? They are generally taken to be so, but the language of
this section and the contents of the remainder of the psalm rather point
to a distinction between them. It would seem that there are three
stages, not two, as that interpretation would make them. Unspecified
calamities, recognised by the sufferer as God's chastisements, have
roused his conscience, and its gnawing has superinduced mental and
bodily pain. The terribly realistic description of the latter may,
indeed, be figurative, but is more probably literal. The reiterated
synonyms for God's displeasure in vv. 1, 3, show how all the aspects of
that solemn thought are familiar. The first word regards it as an
outburst, or explosion, like a charge of dynamite; the second as
"glowing, igniting"; the third as effervescent, bubbling like lava in a
crater. The metaphors for the effects of this anger in ver. 2 deepen the
impression of its terribleness. It is a fearful fate to be the target
for God's "arrows," but it is worse to be crushed under the weight of
His "hand." The two forms of representation refer to the same facts, but
make a climax. The verbs in ver. 2 are from one root, meaning to come
down, or to lie upon. In 2 _a_ the word is reflexive, and represents the
"arrows" as endowed with volition, hurling themselves down. They
penetrate with force proportionate to the distance which they fall, as a
meteoric stone buries itself in the ground. Such being the wounding,
crushing power of the Divine "anger," its effects on the psalmist are
spread out before God, in the remaining part of this first division,
with plaintive reiteration. The connection which a quickened conscience
discerns between sorrow and sin is strikingly set forth in ver. 3, in
which "thine indignation" and "my sin" are the double fountain-heads of
bitterness. The quivering frame first felt the power of God's anger, and
then the awakened conscience turned inwards and discerned the occasion
of the anger. The three elements which we have distinguished are clearly
separated here, and their connection laid bare.
The second of these is the sense of sin, which the psalmist feels as
taking all "peace" or well-being out of his "bones," as a flood
rolling its black waters over his head, as a weight beneath which he
cannot stand upright, and again as foolishness, since its only effect
has been, to bring to him not what he hoped to win by it, but this
miserable plight.
Then, he pours himself out, with the monotonous repetition so natural
to self-pity, in a graphic accumulation of pictures of disease, which
may be taken as symbolic of mental distress, but are better understood
literally. With the whole, Isa. i. 5, 6, should be compared, nor
should the partial resemblances of Isa. liii. be overlooked. No
fastidiousness keeps the psalmist from describing offensive details.
His body is scourged and livid with parti-coloured, swollen weals from
the lash, and these discharge foul-smelling matter. With this compare
Isa. liii. 5, "His stripes" (same word). Whatever may be thought of
the other physical features of suffering, this must obviously be
figurative. Contorted in pain, bent down by weakness, dragging himself
wearily with the slow gait of an invalid, squalid in attire, burning
with inward fever, diseased in every tortured atom of flesh, he is
utterly worn out and broken (same word as "bruised," Isa. liii. 5).
Inward misery, the cry of the heart, must have outward expression,
and, with Eastern vehemence in utterance of emotions which Western
reticence prefers to let gnaw in silence at the roots of life, he
"roars" aloud because his heart groans.
This vivid picture of the effects of the sense of personal sin will
seem to superficial modern Christianity, exaggerated and alien from
experience; but the deeper a man's godliness, the more will he listen
with sympathy, with understanding and with appropriation of such
piercing laments as his own. Just as few of us are dowered with
sensibilities so keen as to feel what poets feel, in love or hope, or
delight in nature, or with power to express the feelings, and yet can
recognise in their winged words the heightened expression of our own
less full emotions, so the truly devout soul will find, in the most
passionate of these wailing notes, the completer expression of his own
experience. We must go down into the depths and cry to God out of
them, if we are to reach sunny heights of communion. Intense
consciousness of sin is the obverse of ardent aspiration after
righteousness, and that is but a poor type of religion which has not
both. It is one of the glories of the Psalter that both are given
utterance to in it in words which are as vital to-day as when they
first came warm from the lips of these long dead men. Everything in
the world has changed, but these songs of penitence and plaintive
deprecation, like their twin bursts of rapturous communion, were "not
born for death." Contrast the utter deadness of the religious hymns of
all other nations with the fresh vitality of the Psalms. As long as
hearts are penetrated with the consciousness of evil done and loved,
these strains will fit themselves to men's lips.
Because the psalmist's recounting of his pains was prayer and not
soliloquy or mere cry of anguish, it calms him. We make the wound deeper
by turning round the arrow in it, when we dwell upon suffering without
thinking of God; but when, like the psalmist, we tell all to Him,
healing begins. Thus, the second part (vv. 9-14) is perceptibly calmer,
and though still agitated, its thought of God is more trustful, and
silent submission at the close takes the place of the "roaring," the
shrill cry of agony which ended the first part. A further variation of
tone is that, instead of the entirely subjective description of the
psalmist's sufferings in vv. 1-8, the desertion by friends and the
hostility of foes, are now the main elements of trial. There is
comparative peace for a tortured heart in the thought that all its
desire and sighing are known to God. That knowledge is prior to the
heart's prayer, but does not make it needless, for by the prayer the
conviction of the Divine knowledge has entered the troubled soul, and
brought some prelude of deliverance and hope of answer. The devout soul
does not argue "Thou knowest, and I need not speak," but "Thou knowest,
therefore I tell Thee"; and it is soothed in and after telling. He who
begins prayer, by submitting to chastisement and only deprecating the
form of it inflicted by "wrath," will pass to the more gracious thought
of God as lovingly cognisant of both his desire and his sighing, his
wishes and his pains. The burst of the storm is past, when that light
begins to break through clouds, though waves still run high.
How high they still run is plain from the immediate recurrence of the
strain of recounting the singer's sorrows. This recrudescence of woe
after the clear calm of a moment is only too well known to us all in our
sorrows. The psalmist returns to speak of his sickness in ver. 10, which
is really a picture of syncope or fainting. The heart's action is
described by a rare word, which in its root means to go round and round,
and is here in an intensive form expressive of violent motion, or
possibly is to be regarded as a diminutive rather than an intensive,
expressive of the thinner though quicker pulse. Then come collapse of
strength and failure of sight. But this echo of the preceding part
immediately gives place to the new element in the psalmist's sorrow,
arising from the behaviour of friends and foes. The frequent complaint
of desertion by friends has to be repeated by most sufferers in this
selfish world. They keep far away from his "stroke," says the psalm,
using the same word as is employed for leprosy, and as is used in the
verb in Isa. liii. 4 ("stricken"). There is a tone of wonder and
disappointment in the untranslatable play of language in ver. 11 _b_.
"My near relations stand far off." Kin are not always kind. Friends have
deserted because foes have beset him. Probably we have here the facts
which in the previous part are conceived of as the "arrows" of God.
Open and secret enemies laying snares for him, as for some hunted wild
creature, eagerly seeking his life, speaking "destructions" as if they
would fain kill him with their words, and perpetually whispering lies
about him, were recognised by him as instruments of God's judgment,
and evoked his consciousness of sin, which again led to actual
disease. But the bitter schooling led to something else more
blessed--namely, to silent resignation. Like David, when he let Shimei
shriek his curses at him from the hillside and answered not, the
psalmist is deaf and dumb to malicious tongues. He will speak to God,
but to man he is silent, in utter submission of will.
Isaiah liii. 7 gives the same trait in the perfect Sufferer, a faint
foreshadowing of whom is seen in the psalmist; and 1 Peter ii. 23 bids
all who would follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, like Him open
not their mouths when reviled, but commit themselves to the righteous
Judge.
Once more the psalmist lifts his eyes to God, and the third invocation
of the Name is attended by an increase of confidence. In the first
part, "Jehovah" was addressed; in the second the designation "Lord"
was used; in the third, both are united and the appropriating name "my
God" is added. In the closing invocation (v. 22-3) all three reappear,
and each is the plea of a petition. The characteristics of these
closing verses are three: humble trust, the marshalling of its
reasons, and the combination of acknowledgment of sin and professions
of innocence. The growth of trust is very marked, if the first part,
with its synonyms for God's wrath and its deprecation of unmeasured
chastisement and its details of pain, be compared with the quiet hope
and assurance that God will answer, and with that great name "my
Salvation." The singer does not indeed touch the heights of triumphant
faith; but he who can grasp God as his, and can be silent because he
is sure that God will speak by delivering deeds for him and can call
Him his Salvation, has climbed far enough to have the sunshine all
round him, and to be clear of the mists among which his song began.
The best reason for letting the enemy speak on unanswered is the
confidence that a mightier voice will speak. "But thou wilt answer,
Lord, for me" may well make us deaf and dumb to temptations and
threats, calumnies and flatteries.
How does this confidence spring in so troubled a heart? The fourfold
"For" beginning each verse from 15 to 18 weaves them all into a chain.
The first gives the reason for the submissive silence as being quiet
confidence; and the succeeding three may be taken as either dependent
on each other, or, as is perhaps better, as co-ordinate and
all-assigning reasons for that confidence. Either construction yields
worthy and natural meanings. If the former be adopted, trust in God's
undertaking of the silent sufferer's cause is based upon the prayer
which broke his silence. Dumb to men, he had breathed to God his
petition for help, and had buttressed it with this plea "Lest they
rejoice over me," and he had feared that they would, because he knew
that he was ready to fall and had ever before him his pain, and that
because he felt himself forced to lament and confess his sin. But it
seems to yield a richer meaning, if the "For's" be regarded as
co-ordinate. They then become a striking and instructive example of
faith's logic, the ingenuity of pleading which finds encouragements in
discouragements. The suppliant is sure of answer because he has told
God his fear, and yet again because he is so near falling and
therefore needs help so much, and yet again because he has made a
clean breast of his sin. Trust in God's help, distrust of self,
consciousness of weakness, and penitence make anything possible rather
than that the prayer which embodies them should be flung up to an
unanswering God. They are prevalent pleas with Him in regard to which
He will not be "as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth there is
no reply." They are grounds of assurance to him who prays.
The juxtaposition of consciousness of sin in ver. 18 with the
declaration that love of good was the cause of being persecuted, brings
out the twofold attitude, in regard to God and men, which a devout soul
may permissibly and sometimes must necessarily assume. There may be the
truest sense of sinfulness, along with a clear-hearted affirmation of
innocence in regard to men, and a conviction that it is good and
goodwill to them, not evil in the sufferer, which makes him the butt of
hatred. Not less instructive is the double view of the same facts
presented in the beginning and end of this psalm. They were to the
psalmist first regarded as God's chastisement in wrath, His "arrows" and
heavy "hand," because of sin. Now they are men's enmity, because of his
love of good. Is there not an entire contradiction between these two
views of suffering, its cause and source? Certainly not, but rather the
two views differ only in the angle of vision, and may be combined, like
stereoscopic pictures, into one rounded, harmonious whole. To be able so
to combine them is one of the rewards of such pleading trust as breathes
its plaintive music through this psalm, and wakes responsive notes in
devout hearts still.