1 Waiting, I waited for Jehovah,
And He bent to me and heard my [loud] cry.
2 And lifted me from the pit of destruction,
From the mire of the bog,
And set my feet on a rock--
Established my steps,
3 And put in my mouth a new song,
Praise unto our God.
Many shall see and fear,
And trust in Jehovah.
4 Blessed is the man who has made Jehovah his trust,
And has not turned [away] to the proud and deserters to a lie.
5 In multitudes hast Thou wrought, Jehovah, my God;
Thy wonders and Thy purposes towards us--
There is none to be set beside Thee--
Should I declare them and speak them,
They surpass numbering.
6 Sacrifice and meal-offering Thou didst not delight in--
Ears hast Thou pierced for me--
Burnt-offering and sin-offering Thou didst not demand.
7 Then I said, Behold, I am come--
In the roll of the book it is prescribed to me--
8 To do Thy pleasure, my God, I delight,
And Thy law is within my inmost parts.
9 I proclaimed glad tidings of Thy righteousness in the great
congregation;
Behold, my lips I did not restrain,
Jehovah, Thou knowest.
10 Thy righteousness did I not hide within my heart;
Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation did I speak;
I concealed not Thy loving-kindness and Thy truth from the great
congregation.
11 Thou, Jehovah, wilt not restrain Thy compassions from me;
Thy loving-kindness and Thy troth will continually preserve me.
12 For evils beyond numbering have compassed me;
My iniquities have overtaken me, and I am not able to see:
They surpass the hairs of my head,
And my heart has forsaken me.
13 Be pleased, Jehovah, to deliver me;
Jehovah, hasten to my help.
14 Shamed and put to the blush together be the seekers after my soul
to carry it away!
Turned back and dishonoured be they who delight in my calamity!
15 Paralysed by reason of their shame
Be they who say to me, Oho! Oho!
16 Joyful and glad in Thee be all who seek Thee!
Jehovah be magnified, may they ever say who love Thy salvation!
17 But as for me, I am afflicted and needy;
The Lord purposes [good] for me:
My Help and my Deliverer art Thou;
My God, delay not.
The closing verses of this psalm reappear with slight changes as an
independent whole in Psalm lxx. The question arises whether that is a
fragment or this a conglomerate. Modern opinion inclines to the latter
alternative, and points in support to the obvious change of tone in the
second part. But that change does not coincide with the supposed line
of junction, since Psalm lxx. begins with our ver. 13, and the change
begins with ver. 12. Cheyne and others are therefore obliged to suppose
that ver. 12 is the work of a third poet or compiler, who effected a
junction thereby. The cumbrousness of the hypothesis of fusion is plain,
and its necessity is not apparent, for it is resorted to in order to
explain how a psalm which keeps so lofty a level of confidence at first
should drop to such keen consciousness of innumerable evils and such
faint-heartedness. But surely such resurrection of apparently dead
fears is not uncommon in devout, sensitive souls. They live beneath
April skies, not unbroken blue. However many the wonderful works which
God has done and however full of thankfulness the singer's heart, his
deliverance is not complete. The contrast in the two parts of the
psalm is true to facts and to the varying aspects of feeling and of
faith. Though the latter half gives greater prominence to encompassing
evils, they appear but for a moment; and the prayer for deliverance
which they force from the psalmist is as triumphant in faith as were
the thanksgivings of the former part. In both the ground tone is that
of victorious grasp of God's help, which in the one is regarded in
its mighty past acts, and in the other is implored and trusted in for
present and future needs. The change of tone is not such as to demand
the hypothesis of fusion. The unity is further supported by verbal links
between the parts: _e.g._, the innumerable evils of ver. 12 pathetically
correspond to the innumerable mercies of ver. 5, and the same word for
"surpass" occurs in both verses; "be pleased" in ver. 13 echoes "Thy
pleasure" (will, A.V.) in ver. 8; "cares" or _thinks_ (A.V.) in ver. 17
is the verb from which the noun rendered _purposes_ (thoughts, A.V.) in
ver. 5 is derived.
The attribution of the psalm to David rests solely on the
superscription. The contents have no discernible points of connection
with known circumstances in his or any other life. Jeremiah has been
thought of as the author, on the strength of giving a prosaic literal
meaning to the obviously poetical phrase "the pit of destruction"
(ver. 2). If it is to be taken literally, what is to be made of the
"rock" in the next clause? Baethgen and others see the return from
Babylon in the glowing metaphors of ver. 2, and, in accordance with
their conceptions of the evolution of spiritual religion, take the
subordination of sacrifice to obedience as a clear token of late date.
We may, however, recall 1 Sam. xv. 22, and venture to doubt whether
the alleged process of spiritualising has been so clearly established,
and its stages dated, as to afford a criterion of the age of a psalm.
In the first part, the current of thought starts from thankfulness
for individual deliverances (vv. 1-3); widens into contemplation of
the blessedness of trust and the riches of Divine mercies (vv. 4,
5); moved by these and taught what is acceptable to God, it rises
to self-consecration as a living sacrifice (vv. 6-8); and, finally,
pleads for experience of God's grace in all its forms on the ground of
past faithful stewardship in celebrating these (vv. 9-11). The second
part is one long-drawn cry for help, which admits of no such analysis,
though its notes are various.
The first outpouring of the song is one long sentence, of which the
clauses follow one another like sunlit ripples, and tell the whole
process of the psalmist's deliverance. It began with patient waiting;
it ended with a new song. The voice first raised in a cry, shrill
and yet submissive enough to be heard above, is at last tuned into
new forms of uttering the old praise. The two clauses of ver. 1 ("I"
and "He") set over against each other, as separated by the distance
between heaven and earth, the psalmist and his God. He does not begin
with his troubles, but with his faith. "Waiting, he waited" for
Jehovah; and wherever there is that attitude of tense and continuous
but submissive expectance, God's attitude will be that of bending to
meet it. The meek, upturned eye has power to draw His towards itself.
That is an axiom of the devout life confirmed by all experience, even
if the tokens of deliverance delay their coming. Such expectance,
however patient, is not inconsistent with loud crying, but rather
finds voice in it. Silent patience and impatient prayer, in too great
a hurry to let God take His own time, are equally imperfect. But the
cry, "Haste to my help" (ver. 13), and the final petition, "My God,
delay not," are consistent with true waiting.
The suppliant and God have come closer together in ver. 2, which
should not be regarded as beginning a new sentence. As in Psalm
xviii., prayer brings God down to help. His hand reaches to the man
prisoned in a pit or struggling in a swamp; he is dragged out, set on
a rock, and feels firm ground beneath his feet. Obviously the whole
representation is purely figurative, and it is hopelessly flat and
prosaic to refer it to Jeremiah's experience. The "many waters" of
Psalm xviii. are a parallel metaphor. The dangers that threatened the
psalmist are described as "a pit of destruction," as if they were a
dungeon into which whosoever was thrown would come out no more, or in
which, like a wild beast, he has been trapped. They are also likened
to a bog or quagmire, in which struggles only sink a man deeper.
But the edge of the bog touches rock, and there is firm footing and
unhindered walking there, if only some great lifting power can drag
the sinking man out. God's hand can, and does, because the lips,
almost choked with mire, could yet cry. The psalmist's extremity
of danger was probably much more desperate than is usual in such
conditions as ours, so that his cries seem too piercing for us to make
our own; but the terrors and conflicts of humanity are nearly constant
quantities, though the occasions calling them forth are widely
different. If we look deeper into life than its surface, we shall
learn that it is not violent "spiritualising" to make these utterances
the expression of redeeming grace, since in truth there is but one or
other of these two possibilities open for us. Either we flounder in a
bottomless bog, or we have our feet on the Rock.
God's deliverance gives occasion for fresh praise. The psalmist has to
add his voice to the great chorus, and this sense of being but one of a
multitude, who have been blessed alike and therefore should bless alike,
occasions the significant interchange in ver. 3 of "my" and "our," which
needs no theory of the speaker being the nation to explain it. It is
ever a joy to the heart swelling with the sense of God's mercies to
be aware of the many who share the mercies and gratitude. The cry for
deliverance is a solo; the song of praise is choral. The psalmist did
not need to be bidden to praise; a new song welled from his lips as by
inspiration. Silence was more impossible to his glad heart than even to
his sorrow. To shriek for help from the bottom of the pit and to be dumb
when lifted to the surface is a churl's part.
Though the song was new in this singer's mouth, as befitted a
recipient of deliverances fresh from heaven, the theme was old;
but each new voice individualises the commonplaces of religious
experience, and repeats them as fresh. And the result of one man's
convinced and jubilant voice, giving novelty to old truths because he
has verified them in new experiences, will be that "many shall see,"
as though they behold the deliverance of which they hear, "and shall
fear" Jehovah and trust themselves to Him. It was not the psalmist's
deliverance, but his song, that was to be the agent in this extension
of the fear of Jehovah. All great poets have felt that their words
would win audience and live. Thus, even apart from consciousness of
inspiration, this lofty anticipation of the effect of his words is
intelligible, without supposing that their meaning is that the signal
deliverance of the nation from captivity would spread among heathens
and draw them to Israel's faith.
The transition from purely personal experience to more general thoughts
is completed in vv. 4, 5. Just as the psalmist began with telling of
his own patient expectance and thence passed on to speak of God's
help, so in these two verses he sets forth the same sequence in terms
studiously cast into the most comprehensive form. Happy indeed are
they who can translate their own experience into these two truths for
all men: that trust is blessedness and that God's mercies are one long
sequence, made up of numberless constituent parts. To have these for
one's inmost convictions and to ring them out so clearly and melodiously
that many shall be drawn to listen, and then to verify them by their own
"seeing," is one reward of patient waiting for Jehovah. That trust must
be maintained by resolute resistance to temptations to its opposite.
Hence the negative aspect of trust is made prominent in ver. 4 _b_, in
which the verb should be rendered "turns not" instead of "respecteth
not," as in the A.V. and R.V. The same motion, looked at from opposite
sides, may be described in turning to and turning from. Forsaking other
confidences is part of the process of making God one's trust. But it is
significant that the antithesis is not completely carried out, for those
to whom the trustful heart does not turn are not here, as might have
been expected, rival objects of trust, but those who put their own trust
in false refuges. "The proud" are the class of arrogantly self-reliant
people who feel no need of anything but their own strength to lean on.
"Deserters to a lie" are those who fall away from Jehovah to put their
trust in any creature, since all refuges but Himself will fail. Idols
may be included in this thought of _a lie_, but it is unduly limited if
confined to them. Much rather it takes in all false grounds of security.
The antithesis fails in accuracy, for the sake of putting emphasis on
the prevalence of such mistaken trust, which makes it so much the harder
to keep aloof from the multitudes and stand alone in reliance on Jehovah.
Ver. 5 corresponds with ver. 4, in that it sets forth in similar
generality the great deeds with which God is wont to answer man's
trust. But the personality of the poet breaks very beautifully through
the impersonal utterances at two points: once when he names Jehovah as
"my God," thus claiming his separate share in the general mercies and
his special bond of connection with the Lover of all; and once when he
speaks of his own praises, thus recognising the obligation of individual
gratitude for general blessings. Each particle of finely comminuted
moisture in the rainbow has to flash back the broad sunbeam at its
own angle. God's "wonders and designs" are "realised Divine thoughts
and Divine thoughts which are gradually being realised" (Delitzsch).
These are wrought and being wrought in multitudes innumerable; and, as
the psalmist sees the bright, unbroken beams pouring forth from their
inexhaustible source, he breaks into an exclamation of adoring wonder
at the incomparable greatness of the ever-giving God. "There is none
to set beside Thee" is far loftier and more accordant with the tone
of the verse than the comparatively flat and incongruous remark that
God's mercies cannot be told to Him (A.V. and R.V.). A precisely similar
exclamation occurs in Psalm lxxi. 19, in which God's incomparable
greatness is deduced from the great things which He has done. Happy
the singer who has an inexhaustible theme! He is not silenced by the
consciousness of the inadequacy of his songs, but rather inspired to the
never-ending, ever-beginning, joyful task of uttering some new fragment
of that transcendent perfection. Innumerable wonders wrought should be
met by ever-new songs. If they cannot be counted, the more reason for
open-eyed observance of them as they come, and for a stream of praise as
unbroken as is their bright continuance.
If God's mercies thus baffle enumeration and beggar praise, the
question naturally rises, "What shall I render to the Lord for all
His benefits?" Therefore the next turn of thought shows the psalmist
as reaching the lofty spiritual conception that heartfelt delight in
God's will is the true response to God's wonders of love. He soars
far above external rites as well as servile obedience to unloved
authority, and proclaims the eternal and ultimate truth that what
God delights in is man's delight in His will. The great words which
rang the knell of Saul's kingship may well have sounded in his
successor's spirit. Whether they are the source of the language of
our psalm or not, they are remarkably similar. "To obey is better
than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (1 Sam. xv.
23), teaches precisely the same lesson as vv. 6-8 of this psalm.
The strong negation in ver. 6 does not deny the Divine institution
of the sacrificial law, but affirms that something much deeper than
external sacrifices is the real object of God's desire. The negation
is made emphatic by enumerating the chief kinds of sacrifice. Whether
they are bloody or bloodless, whether meant to express consecration
or to effect reconciliation, they are none of them the true
sacrifices of God. In ver. 6 the psalmist is entirely occupied with
God's declarations of His requirements; and he presents these in a
remarkable fashion, intercalating the clause, "Ears hast Thou pierced
for me," between the two parallel clauses in regard to sacrifice. Why
should the connection be thus broken? The fact that God has endowed
the psalmist with capacity to apprehend the Divine speech reveals
God's desire concerning him. Just because he has ears to hear, it
is clear that God wishes him to hear, and therefore that outward
acts of worship cannot be the acknowledgment of mercies in which God
delights. The central clause of the verse is embedded in the others,
because it deals with a Divine act which, pondered, will be seen to
establish their teaching. The whole puts in simple, concrete form a
wide principle, namely, that the possession of capacity for receiving
communications of God's will imposes the duty of loving reception and
obedience, and points to inward joyful acceptance of that will as the
purest kind of worship.
Vv. 7 and 8 are occupied with the response to God's requirements thus
manifested by His gift of capacity to hear His voice. "Then said I."
As soon as he had learned the meaning of his ears he found the right
use of his tongue. The thankful heart was moved to swift acceptance of
the known will of God. The clearest recognition of His requirements
may coexist with resistance to them, and needs the impulse of loving
contemplation of God's unnumbered wonders to vivify it into glad
service. "Behold, I am come," is the language of a servant entering
his master's presence in obedience to his call. In ver. 7 the second
clause interrupts just as in ver. 6. There the interruption spoke of
the organ of receiving Divine messages as to duty; here it speaks
of the messages themselves: "In the roll of the book is my duty
prescribed for me." The promise implied in giving ears is fulfilled
by giving a permanent written law. This man, having ears to hear, has
heard, and has not only heard, but welcomed into the inmost recesses
of his heart and will, the declared will of God. The word rendered
"delight" in ver. 8 is the same as is rendered "desire" in ver. 6
(A.V.); and that rendered by the A.V. and R.V. in ver. 8 "will" is
properly "good pleasure." Thus God's delight and man's coincide.
Thankful love assimilates the creature's will with the Divine, and
so changes tastes and impulses that desire and duty are fused into
one. The prescriptions of the book become the delight of the heart.
An inward voice directs. "Love, and do what Thou wilt"; for a will
determined by love cannot but choose to please its Beloved. Liberty
consists in freely willing and victoriously doing what we ought, and
such liberty belongs to hearts whose supreme delight is to please
the God whose numberless wonders have won their love and made their
thanksgivings poor. The law written in the heart was the ideal even
when a law was written on tables of stone. It was the prophetic
promise for the Messianic age. It is fulfilled in the Christian life
in the measure of its genuineness. Unless the heart delights in the
law, acts of obedience count for very little.
The quotation of vv. 7, 8, in Heb. x. 5-7, is mainly from the LXX.,
which has the remarkable rendering of ver. 6 _b_, "A body hast Thou
prepared for me." Probably this is meant as paraphrase rather than
as translation; and it does represent substantially the idea of the
original, since the body is the instrument for fulfilling, just as the
ear is the organ for apprehending, the uttered will of God. The value
of the psalm for the writer of Hebrews does not depend on that clause,
but on the whole representation which it gives of the ideal of the
perfectly righteous servant's true worship, as involving the setting
aside of sacrifice and the decisive pre-eminence of willing obedience.
That ideal is fulfilled in Jesus, and really pointed onwards to Him.
This use of the quotation does not imply the directly Messianic
character of the psalm.
"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and thus
the passage is easy from inward delight in God's will to public
declaration of His character. Every true lover of God is a witness of
His sweetness to the world. Since the psalmist had His law hidden in
the depths of his being, he could not "hide" His righteousness within
his heart, but must magnify it with his tongue. That is a feeble and
doubtful love which knows no necessity of utterance. To "love and be
silent" is sometimes imperative, but always burdensome; and a heart
happy in its love cannot choose but ripple out in music of speech.
The psalmist describes himself as a messenger of glad tidings, a true
evangelist. The multiplicity of names for the various aspects of God's
character and acts which he heaps together in these verses serves to
indicate their manifoldness, which he delighted to contemplate, and
his long, loving familiarity with them. He sets his treasure in all
lights, and views it from all points, as a man will turn a jewel in
his hand and get a fresh flash from every facet. "Righteousness," the
good news that the Ruler of all is inflexibly just, with a justice
which scrupulously meets all creatures' needs and becomes penal and
awful only to the rejecters of its tender aspect; "faithfulness,"
the inviolable adherence to every promise; "salvation," the actual
fulness of deliverance and well-being flowing from these attributes;
"loving-kindness" and "troth," often linked together as expressing at
once the warmth and the unchangeableness of the Divine heart--these
have been the psalmist's themes. Therefore they are his hope; and
he is sure that, as he has been their singer, they will be his
preservers. Ver. 11 is not prayer, but bold confidence. It echoes the
preceding verse, since "I did not restrain" (ver. 9) corresponds with
"Thou wilt not restrain," and "Thy loving-kindness and Thy troth" with
the mention of the same attributes in ver. 10. The psalmist is not so
much asserting his claims as giving voice to his faith. He does not
so much think that his utterance is deserving of remuneration as that
God's character makes impossible the supposition that he, who had so
loved and sung His great name in its manifold glories, should find
that name unavailing in his hour of need.
There is an undertone of such felt need even in the confidence of
ver. 11; and it becomes dominant from ver. 12 to the end, but not so
as to overpower the clear note of trust. The difference between the
two parts of the psalm is great, but is not to be exaggerated as if
it were contrariety. In the former part thanksgiving for deliverance
from dangers recently past predominates; in the latter, petition for
deliverance from dangers still threatening: but in both the psalmist
is exercising the same confidence; and if in the beginning he hymns
the praises of God who brought him out of the pit of destruction,
in the end he keeps firm hold of Him as His "Help and Deliverer."
Similarly, while in the first portion he celebrates the "purposes
which are to usward," in the latter he is certain that, needy as he
is, Jehovah has "purposes" of kindness to him. The change of tone is
not so complete as to negative the original unity, and surely it is
not difficult to imagine a situation in which both halves of the psalm
should be appropriate. Are there any deliverances in this perilous
and incomplete life so entire and permanent that they leave no room
for future perils? Must not prevision of coming dangers accompany
thankfulness for past escapes? Our Pharaohs are seldom drowned in
the Red Sea, and we do not often see their corpses stretched on the
sand. The change of tone, of which so much use is made as against
the original unity of the psalm, begins with ver. 12; but that
verse has a very strong and beautiful link of connection with the
previous part, in the description of besetting evils as innumerable.
Both words of ver. 5 are repeated, that for "surpass" or "are more
than" in ver. 12 _c_, that for "number" in _a_. The heart that has
felt how innumerable are God's thoughts and deeds of love is not
utterly reduced to despair, even while it beholds a sea of troubles
rolling its white-crested billows shoreward as far as the horizon.
The sky stretches beyond them, and the true numberlessness of God's
mercies outdoes the great yet really limited range of apparently
numberless sins or sorrows, the consequences of sin. "Mine iniquities
have overtaken me" like pursuing foes, and every calamity that held
him in its grip was a child of a sin of his. Such consciousness of
transgression is not inconsistent with "delight in the law of God
after the inward man," as Paul found out (Rom. vii. 22, 23), but it
sets aside the attempt to make this a directly Messianic psalm. "I am
not able to see." Such is the only possible rendering, for there is
no justification for translating the simple word by "look up." Either
the crowd of surrounding calamities prevent the psalmist from seeing
anything but themselves, or, more probably, the failure of vital power
accompanying his sorrow dims his vision (Psalm xxxviii. 10).
From ver. 13 onwards Psalm lxx. repeats this psalm, with unimportant
verbal differences. The first of these is the omission of "Be pleased"
in ver. 13, which binds this second part to the first, and points
back to "Thy pleasure" (ver. 8). The prayer for the confusion of
enemies closely resembles that in Psalm xxxv., ver. 14 being almost
identical with vv. 4 and 26 there, and ver. 15 recalling ver. 21 of
that psalm. The prayer that enemies may fail in their designs is
consistent with the most Christlike spirit, and nothing more is asked
by the psalmist, but the tinge of satisfaction with which he dwells
on their discomfiture, however natural, belongs to the less lofty
moral standard of his stage of revelation. He uses extraordinarily
forcible words to paint their bewilderment and mortification--may they
blush, turn pale, be driven back, be as if paralysed with shame at
their baffled malice! The prayer for the gladness of God's servants
and seekers is like Psalm xxxv. 27. It asks that fruition as complete
as the disappointment of the foes may be the lot of those whose
desires set towards God, and it is prophecy as well as prayer. Seekers
after God ever find Him, and are more joyful in possession than they
hoped to be while seeking. He alone never eludes search, nor ever
disappoints attainment. They who long for His salvation will receive
it; and their reception will fill their hearts so full of blessedness
that their lips will not be able to refrain from ever-new outbursts of
the old praise, "The Lord be magnified."
Very plaintively and touchingly does the low sigh of personal need
follow this triumphant intercession for the company of the saints.
Its triple elements blend in one believing aspiration, which is not
impatience, though it pleads for swift help. "I am afflicted and
needy"; there the psalmist turns his eye on his own sore necessity.
"Jehovah has purposes for me"; there he turns to God, and links his
final petitions with his earlier trust by the repetition of the word
by which he described (ver. 5) the many gracious designs of God.
"My God, delay not"; there he embraces both in one act of faithful
longing. His need calls for, and God's loving counsels ensure, swift
response. He who delights when an afflicted and poor man calls Him
"my God" will not be slack to vindicate His servant's confidence, and
magnify His own name. That appeal goes straight to the heart of God.