1 O God, with our ears we have heard,
Our fathers have told to us,
The work Thou didst work in their days,
In the days of yore.
2 Thou [with] Thy hand didst dispossess nations, and didst plant
_them_,
Didst afflict peoples and spread _them_ forth.
3 For not by their own sword did they possess the land,
And their own arm did not save them,
But Thy right hand and Thine arm, and the light of Thy face,
Because Thou hadst delight in them.
4 Thou Thyself art my King, O God;
Command salvations for Jacob.
5 Through Thee can we butt down our oppressors;
In Thy name can we trample those that rise against us.
6 For not in my own bow do I trust,
And my own sword does not save me.
7 But Thou hast saved us from our oppressors,
And our haters Thou hast put to shame.
8 In God have we made our boast all the day,
And Thy name will we thank for ever. Selah.
9 Yet Thou hast cast [us] off and shamed us,
And goest not forth with our hosts.
10 Thou makest us turn back from the oppressor,
And our haters plunder to their hearts' content.
11 Thou makest us like sheep for food,
And among the nations hast Thou scattered us.
12 Thou sellest Thy people at no profit,
And hast not increased [Thy wealth] by their price.
13 Thou makest us a reproach for our neighbours,
A mockery and derision to those around us.
14 Thou makest us a proverb among the nations,
A nodding of the head among the peoples.
15 All the day is my dishonour before me,
And the shame of my face has covered me,
16 Because of the voice of the rebuker and blasphemer,
Because of the face of the enemy and the revengeful.
17 All this is come upon us, and [yet] have we not forgotten Thee,
Nor been false to Thy covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
Nor our footsteps swerved from Thy way.
19 That Thou shouldest have crushed us in the place of jackals,
And covered us with thick darkness.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
And spread out our hands to a strange God,
21 Would not God search out this? for He knows the secrets of the
heart.
22 Nay, for Thy sake are we killed all the day;
We are reckoned as sheep for slaughter.
23 Awake; why sleepest Thou, Lord?
Arise; cast not off for ever.
24 Why hidest Thou Thy face,
Forgettest our affliction and oppression?
25 For bowed to the dust is our soul;
Our body cleaves to the earth.
26 Arise [for] a help for us,
And redeem us for Thy loving-kindness' sake.
Calvin says that the authorship of this psalm is uncertain, but
that it is abundantly clear that it was composed by any one rather
than David, and that its plaintive contents suit best the time when
the savage tyranny of Antiochus raged. No period corresponds to the
situation which makes the background of the psalm so completely as
the Maccabean, for only then could it be truly said that national
calamities fell because of the nation's rigid monotheism. Other epochs
have been thought of, so as to avoid the necessity of recognising
Maccabean psalms, but none of them can be said to meet the conditions
described in the psalm. The choice lies between accepting the
Maccabean date and giving up the attempt to fix one at all.
Objections to that late date based upon the history of the completion
of the canon take for granted more accurate and complete knowledge
of a very obscure subject than is possessed, and do not seem strong
enough to negative the indications arising from the very unique fact,
asserted in the psalm, that the nation was persecuted for its faith
and engaged in a religious war. The psalm falls into four parts: a
wistful look backwards to days already "old," when God fought for
them (vv. 1-8); a sad contrast in present oppression (vv. 9-16);
a profession of unfaltering national adherence to the covenant
notwithstanding all these ills (vv. 17-22); and a fervent cry to a God
who seems asleep to awake and rescue His martyred people (vv. 23-26).
The first part (vv. 1-8) recalls the fact that shone so brightly in
all the past, the continual exercise of Divine power giving victory to
their weakness, and builds thereon a prayer that the same law of His
providence might be fulfilled now. The bitter side of the retrospect
forces itself into consciousness in the next part, but here Memory is
the handmaid of Faith. The whole process of the Exodus and conquest of
Canaan is gathered up as one great "work" of God's hand. The former
inhabitants of the land were uprooted like old trees, to give room for
planting the "vine out of Egypt." Two stages in the settlement are
distinguished in ver. 2: first came the "planting" and next the growth;
for the phrase "didst spread them forth" carries on the metaphor of
the tree, and expresses the extension of its roots and branches. The
ascription of victory to God is made more emphatic by the negatives in
ver. 3, which take away all credit of it from the people's own weapons
or strength. The consciousness of our own impotence must accompany
adequate recognition of God's agency in our deliverances. The conceit
of our own power blinds our vision of His working hand. But what moved
His power? No merit of man's, but the infinite free grace of God's
heart. "The light of Thy face" is the symbol of God's loving regard,
and the deepest truth as to His acts of favour is that they are the
outcome of His own merciful nature. He is His own motive. "Thou hadst
delight in them" is the ultimate word, leading us into sacred abysses of
self-existent and self-originated Deity. The spirit, then, of Israel's
history is contained in these three thoughts: the positive assertion
of God's power as the reason for their victories; the confirmatory
negative, putting aside their own prowess; and the tracing of all God's
work for them solely to His unmerited grace.
On this grand generalisation of the meaning of past centuries a
prayer is built for their repetition in the prosaic present. The
psalmist did not think that God was nearer in some majestic past
than now. His unchangeableness had for consequence, as he thought,
continuous manifestation of Himself in the same character and relation
to His people. To-day is as full of God as any yesterday. Therefore
ver. 4 begins with an emphatic recognition of the constancy of the
Divine nature in that strong expression "Thou Thyself," and with an
individualising transition for a moment to the singular in "my King,"
in order to give most forcible utterance to the thought that He was
the same to each man of that generation as He had been to the fathers.
On that unchanging relation rests the prayer, "Command salvations for
(lit. _of_) Jacob," as if a multitude of several acts of deliverance
stood before God, as servants waiting to be sent on His errands. Just
as God (Elohim) takes the place of Jehovah in this second book of
the Psalter, so in it Jacob frequently stands for Israel. The prayer
is no sooner spoken than the confidence in its fulfilment lifts the
suppliant's heart buoyantly above present defeat, which will in the
next turn of thought insist on being felt. Such is the magic of every
act of true appeal to God. However dark the horizon, there is light if
a man looks straight up. Thus this psalmist breaks into anticipatory
pæans of victory. The vivid image of ver. 5 is taken from the
manner of fighting common to wild horned animals, buffaloes and the
like, who first prostrate their foe by their fierce charge and then
trample him. The individualising "my" reappears in ver. 6, where the
negation that had been true of the ancestors is made his own by the
descendant. Each man must, as his own act, appropriate the universal
relation of God to men and make God his God, and must also disown for
himself reliance on himself. So he will enter into participation in
God's victories. Remembrance of the victorious past and confidence
in a like victorious future blend in the closing burst of praise
and vow for its continuance, which vow takes for granted the future
continued manifestation of deliverances as occasions for uninterrupted
thanksgivings. Well might some long-drawn, triumphant notes from the
instruments prolong the impression of the jubilant words.
The song drops in the second part (vv. 9-16) from these clear heights
with lyric suddenness. The grim facts of defeat and consequent
exposure to mocking laughter from enemies force themselves into
sight, and seem utterly to contradict the preceding verses. But the
first part speaks with the voice of faith, and the second with that
of sense, and these two may sound in very close sequence or even
simultaneously. In ver. 9 the two verbs are united by the absence of
"us" with the first; and the difference of tense in the Hebrew brings
out the dependence of the second on the first, as effect and cause.
God's rejection is the reason for the nation's disgrace by defeat.
In the subsequent verses the thoughts of rejection and disgrace are
expanded, the former in ver. 9 _b_ to ver. 12, and the latter in vv.
13-16. The poet paints with few strokes the whole disastrous rout. We
see the fated band going out to battle, with no Pillar of Cloud or Ark
of the Covenant at their head. They have but their own weapons and
sinews to depend on--not, as of old, a Divine Captain. No description
of a fight under such conditions is needed, for it can have only one
issue; and so the next clause shows panic-struck flight. Whoever goes
into battle without God comes out of it without victory. Next follows
plundering, as was the savage wont of these times, and there is no
force to oppose the spoilers. The routed fugitives are defenceless and
unresisting as sheep, and their fate is to be devoured, or possibly
the expression "sheep for food" may be substantially equivalent to
"sheep for the slaughter" (ver. 22), and may refer to the usual
butchery of a defeated army. Some of them are slain and others carried
off as slaves. The precise rendering of ver. 12 _b_ is doubtful.
Calvin, and, among the moderns, Hitzig, Ewald, Delitzsch, Cheyne,
take it to mean "Thou didst not set their prices high." Others, such
as Hupfeld, Baethgen, etc., adhere to the rendering, "Thou didst not
increase [Thy wealth] by their price." The general sense is clear, and
as bold as clear. It is almost sarcasm, directed against the Divine
dealings: little has He gained by letting His flock be devoured and
scattered. Hupfeld attaches to the bitter saying a deep meaning:
namely, that the "sale" did not take place "for the sake of profit
or other external worldly ends, as is the case with men, but from
higher disciplinary grounds of the Divine government--namely, simply
as punishment for their sins, for their improvement." Rather it may
indicate the dishonour accruing to the God, according to the ideas
of the old world, when His votaries were defeated; or it may be the
bitter reflection, "We can be of little worth in our Shepherd's eyes
when He parts with us so easily." If there is any hint of tarnish
adhering to the name of God by His people's defeat, the passage to the
second main idea of this part is the easier.
Defeat brings dishonour. The nearer nations, such as Edomites,
Ammonites, and other ancestral foes, are ready with their gibes. The
more distant peoples make a proverb out of the tragedy, and nod their
heads in triumph and scorn. The cowering creature, in the middle of
this ring of mockers, is covered with shame as he hears the babel of
heartless jests at his expense, and steals a glance at the fierce
faces round him.
It is difficult to find historical facts corresponding with this
picture. Even if the feature of selling into captivity is treated
as metaphor, the rest of the picture needs some pressure to be made
to fit the conditions of the Maccabean struggle, to which alone the
subsequent avowals of faithfulness to God as the cause of calamity
answer. For there were no such periods of disgraceful defeat and utter
devastation when once that heroic revolt had begun. The third part of
the psalm is in full accord with the religious consciousness of that
Indian summer of national glories; but it must be acknowledged that
the state of things described in this second part does not fit quite
smoothly into the hypothesis of a Maccabean date.
The third part (vv. 17-22) brings closely together professions of
righteousness, which sound strangely in Christian ears, and complaints
of suffering, and closes with the assertion that these two are cause and
effect. The sufferers are a nation of martyrs, and know themselves to be
so. This tone is remarkable when the nation is the speaker; for though
we find individuals asserting innocence and complaining of undeserved
afflictions in many psalms, a declaration of national conformity with
the Law is in sharp contradiction both to history and to the uniform
tone of prophets. This psalmist asserts not only national freedom from
idolatry, but adherence in heart and act to the Covenant. No period
before the exile was clear of the taint of idol worship and yet darkened
by calamity. We have no record of any events before the persecutions
that roused the Maccabean struggle which answer to the martyr cry of
ver. 22: "For Thy sake we are killed all the day." It may, indeed, be
questioned what is the relation in time of the two facts spoken of in
vv. 17-19. Which comes first, the calamity or the steadfastness? Does
the psalmist mean, "We are afflicted, and yet we are in affliction
true to God," or "We were true to God, and yet are afflicted"?
Probably the latter, as in the remainder of this part. "The place of
jackals" is apparently the field of defeat referred to in the second
part, where obscene creatures would gather to feast on the plundered
corpses. The Christian consciousness cannot appropriate the psalmist's
asseverations of innocence, and the difference between them and it
should not be slurred over. But, on the other hand, his words should
not be exaggerated into charges of injustice against God, nor claims
of absolute sinlessness. He does feel that present national distresses
have not the same origin as past ones had had. There has been no such
falling away as to account for them. But he does not arraign God's
government. He knows why the miseries have come, and that he and his
fellows are martyrs. He does not fling that fact down as an accusation
of Providence, but as the foundation of a prayer and as a plea for God's
help. The words may sound daring; still they are not blasphemy, but
supplication.
The fourth part is importunate prayer. Its frank anthropomorphisms of a
sleeping God, forgetting His people, surely need little defence. Sleep
withdraws from knowledge of and action on the external world, and hence
is attributed to God, when He allows evils to run unchecked. He is said
to "awake," or, with another figure, to "arise," as if starting from His
throned calm, when by some great act of judgment He smites flourishing
evil into nothingness. Injustice is surely done to these cries of
the _Ecclesia pressa_ when they are supposed to be in opposition to
the other psalmist's word: "He that keepeth Israel slumbers not, nor
sleeps." Some commentators call these closing petitions commonplace; and
so they are. Extreme need and agony of supplication have other things to
think of than originality, and so long as sorrows are so commonplace and
like each other, the cries of the sorrowful will be very much alike. God
is pleased with well-worn prayers, which have fitted many lips, and is
not so fastidious as some critics.