1 El, Elohim, Jehovah has spoken, and called the earth
From the place of sunrise to its going down.
2 From Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God has shone.
3 Our God will come, and cannot be silent:
Fire devours before Him,
And round Him it is tempestuous exceedingly.
4 He calls to the heavens above,
And to the earth, that He may judge His people:
5 "Assemble to Me My favoured ones,
Who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice."
6 And the heavens declare His righteousness;
For God--the judge is He. Selah.
7 Hearken, My people, and I will speak;
O Israel, and I will witness against thee:
Elohim, thy God am I.
8 Not on [account of] thy sacrifices will I reprove thee;
Yea, thy burnt offerings are before me continually.
9 I will not take a bullock out of thy house,
Nor out of thy folds he-goats.
10 For Mine is every beast of the forest,
The cattle on the mountains in thousands.
11 I know every bird of the mountains,
And whatever moves on the field is before Me.
12 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee:
For Mine is the world and its fulness.
13 Shall I eat the flesh of bulls, or the blood of he-goats shall I
drink?
14 Sacrifice to God thanksgiving;
And pay thy vows to the Most High:
15 And call on Me in the day of trouble.
I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.
16 But to the wicked [man] God saith,
What hast thou to do to tell My statutes,
And that thou takest My covenant into thy mouth?
17 And [all the while] thou hatest correction,
And flingest My words behind thee.
18 If thou seest a robber, thou art pleased with him;
And with adulterers is thy portion.
19 Thy mouth thou dost let loose for evil,
And thy tongue weaves deceit.
20 Thou sittest [and] speakest against thy brother;
At thine own mother's son thou aimest a thrust.
21 These things hast thou done, and I was silent;
Thou thoughtest that I was altogether like thyself:
I will reprove thee, and order [the proofs] before thine eyes.
22 Consider now this, ye that forget God,
Lest I tear you in pieces, and there be no deliverer:
23 He who offers thanksgiving as sacrifice glorifies Me;
And he who orders his way [aright]--I will show him the salvation
of God.
This is the first of the Asaph psalms, and is separated from the other
eleven (Psalms lxxiii.-lxxxiii.) for reasons that do not appear.
Probably they are no more recondite than the verbal resemblance
between the summons to all the earth at the beginning of Psalm xlix.
and the similar proclamation in the first verses of Psalm l. The
arrangement of the Psalter is often obviously determined by such
slight links. The group has certain features in common, of which some
appear here: _e.g._, the fondness for descriptions of theophanies;
the prominence given to God's judicial action; the preference for
the Divine names of El, Adonai (the Lord), Elyōn (Most High). Other
peculiarities of the class--_e.g._, the love for the designation
"Joseph" for the nation, and delight in the image of the Divine
Shepherd--are not found in this psalm. It contains no historical
allusions which aid in dating it. The leading idea of it--viz., the
depreciation of outward sacrifice--is unhesitatingly declared by many
to have been impossible in the days of the Levite Asaph, who was one
of David's musical staff. But is it so certain that such thoughts
were foreign to the period in which Samuel declared that obedience
was better than sacrifice? Certainly the tone of the psalm is that of
later prophets, and there is much probability in the view that Asaph
is the name of the family or guild of singers from whom these psalms
came rather than that of an individual.
The structure is clear and simple. There is, first, a magnificent
description of God's coming to judgment and summoning heaven and earth
to witness while He judges His people (vv. 1-6). The second part (vv.
7-15) proclaims the worthlessness of sacrifice; and the third (vv.
16-21) brands hypocrites who pollute God's statutes by taking them
into their lips while their lives are foul. A closing strophe of two
verses (22, 23) gathers up the double lesson of the whole.
The first part falls again into two, of three verses each, of which
the former describes the coming of the judge, and the latter the
opening of the judgment. The psalm begins with a majestic heaping
together of the Divine names, as if a herald were proclaiming the
style and titles of a mighty king at the opening of a solemn assize.
No English equivalents are available, and it is best to retain the
Hebrew, only noting that each name is separated from the others by the
accents in the original, and that to render either "the mighty God"
(A.V.) or "the God of gods" is not only against that punctuation, but
destroys the completeness symbolised by the threefold designation.
Hupfeld finds the heaping together of names "frosty." Some ears will
rather hear in it a solemn reiteration like the boom of triple
thunders. Each name has its own force of meaning. El speaks of God
as mighty; Elohim, as the object of religious fear; Jehovah, as the
self-existent and covenant God.
The earth from east to west is summoned, not to be judged, but to
witness God judging His people. The peculiarity of this theophany is
that God is not represented as coming from afar or from above, but as
letting His light blaze out from Zion, where He sits enthroned. As His
presence made the city "the joy of the whole earth" (Psalm xlviii.
2), so it makes Zion the sum of all beauty. The idea underlying the
representation of His shining out of Zion is that His presence among
His people makes certain His judgment of their worship. It is the
poetic clothing of the prophetic announcement, "You only have I known
of all the inhabitants of the earth; therefore will I punish you for
your iniquities." The seer beholds the dread pomp of the advent of the
Judge, and describes it with accessories familiar in such pictures:
devouring fire is His forerunner, as clearing a path for Him among
tangles of evil, and wild tempests whirl round His stable throne.
"He cannot be silent." The form of the negation in the original is
emotional or emphatic, conveying the idea of the impossibility of His
silence in the face of such corruptions.
The opening of the court or preparation for the judgment follows.
That Divine voice speaks, summoning heaven and earth to attend as
spectators of the solemn process. The universal significance of God's
relation to and dealings with Israel, and the vindication of His
righteousness by His inflexible justice dealt out to their faults,
are grandly taught in this making heaven and earth assessors of that
tribunal. The court having been thus constituted, the Judge on His
seat, the spectators standing around, the accused are next brought in.
There is no need to be prosaically definite as to the attendants who
are bidden to escort them. His officers are everywhere, and to ask who
they are in the present case is to apply to poetry the measuring lines
meant for bald prose. It is more important to note the names by which
the persons to be judged are designated. They are "My favoured ones,
who have made a covenant with Me by (lit. _over_) sacrifice." These
terms carry an indictment, recalling the lavish mercies so unworthily
requited, and the solemn obligations so unthankfully broken. The
application of the name "favoured ones" to the whole nation is
noteworthy. In other psalms it is usually applied to the more devout
section, who are by it sharply distinguished from the mass; here
it includes the whole. It does not follow that the diversity of
usage indicates difference of date. All that is certainly shown is
difference of point of view. Here the ideal of the nation is set
forth, in order to bring out more emphatically the miserable contrast
of the reality. Sacrifice is set aside as worthless in the subsequent
verses. But could the psalmist have given clearer indication that
his depreciation is not to be exaggerated into entire rejection of
external rites, than by thus putting in front of it the worth of
sacrifice when offered aright, as the means of founding and sustaining
covenant relations with God? If his own words had been given heed to,
his commentators would have been saved the blunder of supposing that
he is antagonistic to the sacrificial worship which he thus regards.
But before the assize opens, the heavens, which had been summoned to
behold, declare beforehand His righteousness, as manifested by the
fact that He is about to judge His people. The Selah indicates that a
long-drawn swell of music fills the expectant pause before the Judge
speaks from His tribunal.
The second part (vv. 7-15) deals with one of the two permanent
tendencies which work for the corruption of religion--namely,
the reliance on external worship, and neglect of the emotions of
thankfulness and trust. God appeals first to the relation into which
He has entered with the people, as giving Him the right to judge.
There may be a reference to the Mosaic formula, "I am Jehovah, thy
God," which is here converted, in accordance with the usage of this
book of the Psalter, into "God (Elohim), thy God." The formula which
was the seal of laws when enacted is also the warrant for the action
of the Judge. He has no fault to find with the external acts of
worship. They are abundant and "continually before Him." Surely this
declaration at the outset sets aside the notion that the psalmist
was launching a polemic against sacrifices _per se_. It distinctly
takes the ground that the habitual offering of these was pleasing
to the Judge. Their presentation continually is not reproved, but
approved. What then is condemned? Surely it can be nothing but
sacrifice without the thanksgiving and prayer required in vv. 14, 15.
The irony of vv. 9-13 is directed against the folly of believing that
in sacrifice itself God delighted; but the shafts are pointless as
against offerings which are embodied gratitude and trust. The gross
stupidity of supposing that man's gift makes the offering to be God's
more truly than before is laid bare in the fine, sympathetic glance
at the free, wild life of forest, mountain, and plain, which is all
God's possession, and present to His upholding thought, and by the
side of which man's folds are very small affairs. "The cattle" in
ver. 10 are not, as usually, domesticated animals, but the larger wild
animals. They graze or roam "on the mountains of a thousand"--a harsh
expression, best taken, perhaps, as meaning mountains where thousands
[of the cattle] are. But the omission of one letter gives the more
natural reading "mountains of God" (_cf._ Psalm xxxvi. 6). It is
adopted by Olshausen and Cheyne, and smooths the construction, but has
against it its obliteration of the fine thought of the multitudes of
creatures peopling the untravelled hills. The word rendered "whatever
moves" is obscure; but that meaning is accepted by most. Cheyne in his
Commentary gives as alternative "that which comes forth abundantly,"
and in "Orig. of Psalt.," 473, "offspring." All these are "with
Me"--_i.e._, present to His mind--a parallel to "I know" in the first
clause of the same verse.
Vv. 12, 13, turn the stream of irony on another absurdity involved
in the superstition attacked--the grossly material thought of God
involved in it. What good do bulls' flesh and goats' blood do to Him?
But if these are expressions of thankful love, they are delightsome
to Him. Therefore the section ends with the declaration that the true
sacrifice is thanksgiving and the discharge of vows. Men honour God by
asking and taking, not by giving. They glorify Him when, by calling
on Him in trouble, they are delivered; and then, by thankfulness and
service, as well as by the evidence which their experience gives that
prayer is not in vain, they again glorify Him. All sacrifices are
God's before they are offered, and do not become any more His by being
offered. He neither needs nor can partake of material sustenance. But
men's hearts are not His without their glad surrender, in the same
way as after it; and thankful love, trust, and obedience are as the
food of God, sacrifices acceptable, well-pleasing to Him.
The third part of the psalm is still sterner in tone. It strikes at
the other great corruption of worship by hypocrites. As has been often
remarked, it condemns breaches of the second table of the law, just as
the former part may be regarded as dealing with transgressions of the
first. The eighth, seventh, and ninth commandments are referred to in
vv. 18, 19, as examples of the hypocrites' sins. The irreconcilable
contradiction of their professions and conduct is vividly brought out
in the juxtaposition of "declare My statutes" and "castest My words
behind thee." They do two opposite things with the same words--at the
same time proclaiming them with all lip-reverence, and scornfully
flinging them behind their backs in their conduct. The word rendered
in the A.V. "slanderest" is better taken as in margin of the R.V.,
"givest a thrust," meaning to use violence so as to harm or overthrow.
Hypocrisy finds encouragement in impunity. God's silence is an
emphatic way of expressing His patient tolerance of evil unpunished.
Such "long-suffering" is meant to lead to repentance, and indicates
God's unwillingness to smite. But, as experience shows, it is often
abused, and "because sentence against an evil work is not executed
speedily, the heart of the sons of men is throughly set in them to
do evil." The gross mind has gross conceptions of God. One nemesis
of hypocrisy is the dimming of the idea of the righteous Judge.
All sin darkens the image of God. When men turn away from God's
self-revelation, as they do by transgression and most fatally by
hypocrisy, they cannot but make a God after their own image. Browning
has taught us in his marvellous "Caliban on Setebos" how a coarse
nature projects its own image into the heavens and calls it God. God
made man in His own likeness. Men who have lost that likeness make
God in theirs, and so sink deeper in evil till He speaks. Then comes
an apocalypse to the dreamer, when there is flashed before him what
God is and what he himself is. How terror-stricken the gaze of these
eyes before which God arrays the deeds of a life, seen for the first
time in their true character! It will be the hypocrite's turn to keep
silence then, and his thought of a complaisant God like himself will
perish before the stern reality.
The whole teaching of the psalm is gathered up in the two closing
verses. "Ye that forget God" includes both the superstitious
formalists and the hypocrites. Reflection upon such truths as those
of the psalm will save them from else inevitable destruction. "This"
points on to ver. 23, which is a compendium of both parts of the
psalm. The true worship, which consists in thankfulness and praise, is
opposed in ver. 23 _a_ to mere externalisms of sacrifice, as being the
right way of glorifying God. The second clause presents a difficulty.
But it would seem that we must expect to find in it a summing up
of the warning of the third part of the psalm similar to that of
the second part in the preceding clause. That consideration goes
against the rendering in the R.V. margin (adopted from Delitzsch):
"and prepares a way [by which] I may show," etc. The ellipsis of
the relative is also somewhat harsh. The literal rendering of the
ambiguous words is, "one setting a way." Graetz, who is often wild in
his emendations, proposes a very slight one here--the change of one
letter, which would yield a good meaning: "he that is perfect in his
way." Cheyne adopts this, and it eases a difficulty. But the received
text is capable of the rendering given in the A.V., and, even without
the natural supplement "aright," is sufficiently intelligible. To
order one's way or "conversation" is, of course, equivalent to giving
heed to it according to God's word, and is the opposite of the conduct
stigmatised in vv. 16-21. The promise to him who thus acts is that
he shall see God's salvation, both in the narrower sense of daily
interpositions for deliverance, and in the wider of a full and final
rescue from all evil and endowment with all good. The psalm has as
keen an edge for modern as for ancient sins. Superstitious reliance
on externals of worship survives, though sacrifices have ceased; and
hypocrites, with their mouths full of the Gospel, still cast God's
words behind them, as did those ancient hollow-hearted proclaimers and
breakers of the Law.