1 Of loving-kindness and judgment will I sing,
To Thee, Jehovah, will I harp.
2 I will give heed to the way of perfectness,
When wilt Thou come to me?
I will walk with a perfect heart
Within my house.
3 I will not set before my eyes any villainous thing,
The doing of transgressions do I hate,
It shall not cleave to me.
4 A perverse heart shall depart from me,
Evil will I not know.
5 The secret slanderer of his neighbour,
Him will I root out,
The lofty-eyed and proud-hearted,
Him will I not endure.
6 My eyes are on the faithful of the land,
That they may dwell with me,
He who walks in the way of perfectness,
He shall serve me.
7 He shall not dwell in my house
Who practises deceit,
He that speaks lies
Shall not be established before my eyes.
8 Every morning will I root out
All the wicked of the land,
To cut off from the city of Jehovah
All workers of iniquity.
The contents of this psalm go far towards confirming the correctness
of the superscription in ascribing it to David, as Ewald acknowledges.
To call it an ideal description of a Jewish king, dramatically put into
such a ruler's mouth, does not do justice to the ring of earnestness
in it. No doubt, subjective impressions are unreliable guides, but it
is difficult to resist the impression that a kingly voice is audible
here, speaking no ideal description, but his own stern resolves. It is
a royal "proclamation against vice and immorality," appropriate to the
beginning of a reign. If we accept the superscription, and interpret
the abrupt question in ver. 2 "When wilt Thou come to me?" as the
utterance of David's longing to see the Ark set in Jerusalem, we get
a most fitting period for the psalm. He had but recently ascended the
throne. The abuses and confusions of Saul's last troubled years had
to be reformed. The new king felt that he was God's viceroy, and here
declares what he will strive to make his monarchy--a copy of God's. He
gives evil-doers fair warning, and bids all true men be sure of his
favour. But he will take heed to himself, before he seeks to purge his
court. So the psalm, though it has no strophical arrangement, falls
into two main parts, in the first of which the king lays down the rule
of his own conduct, and, in the second, declares war against the vermin
that infest especially an Eastern court--slanderers, arrogant upstarts,
traffickers in lies. His ambition is to have Jehovah's city worthy of
its true King, when He shall deign to come and dwell in it. Therefore
his face will be gracious to all good men, and his hand heavy on all
evil-doers. The psalm is "A Mirror for Magistrates," to quote the title
of an old English book.
The first words of the psalm seem at first sight incongruous with
its contents, which are singularly devoid of praise. But they are not
meant to refer to the psalm, but declare the singer's purpose for his
whole life. If the speaker is a real character, he is a poet-king. Of
whom is that singular combination of royalty and minstrelsy so true
as of David? If the speaker is an ideal, is it not peculiar that the
first qualification of the ideal king should be that he is a poet?
The suggestion that "loving-kindness and judgment" are here the
monarch's virtues, not Divine attributes, is negatived by usage and
by the following clause, "To Thee, _Jehovah_, will I sing." But it is
as a king that the psalmist vows to praise these twin characteristics
of the Divine rule; and his song is to be accompanied by melodious
deeds, which shape themselves after that pattern for rulers and all
men. Earthly power is then strongest when, like God's, it is informed
by loving-kindness and based on righteousness. In this connection,
it is significant that this psalm, describing what a king should be,
has been placed immediately after the series which tells who the true
King of Israel and the world is, in whom these same attributes are
ever linked together.
Vv. 2-4 outline the king's resolves for himself. With noble
self-control, this ruler of men sets before himself the narrow,
thorny way of perfectness, not the broad, flowery road of indulgence.
He owns a law above himself and a far-off goal of moral completeness,
which, he humbly feels, is yet unattained, but which he vows will
never be hidden from his undazzled eyes, by the glitter of lower
earthly good, or the rank mists of sensual pleasures. He had abundant
facilities for reaching lower aims, but he turns from these to "give
heed" to the way of perfectness. That resolve must be clearly and
strongly made by every man, prince or peasant, who would attain to
the dominion over self and externals, which is man's true royalty.
The suddenly interjected question of longing, "When wilt Thou come to
me?" is best explained by connecting it with David's desire that the
Ark should be permanently domiciled in Jerusalem--a desire which was
checked by his reflections on his own unworthiness (2 Sam. vi. 9).
Now he feels that, on the one hand, his whole-hearted desire after
righteousness makes him capable of receiving such a guest; and that,
on the other, his firmest resolves will be evanescent, without God's
presence to confirm his wavering and to help him to make his resolves
into acts. He longed for that "coming" of the symbol of God's dwelling
with men, not with heathenish desire to have it as a magic-working
charm against outward foes, but as helping his faith to grasp the fact
that God was with him, as his ally in the nobler fight against his own
baseness and his position's temptations. We dare not ask God to come
to us, unless we are conscious of desire to be pure; we cannot hope to
realise that desire, unless He is with us. So, the natural sequel of
determination to give heed to the way of perfectness is petition to
Him, to come very near and take up His abode with us.
After this most significant interruption, the stream of resolutions
runs on again. In the comparative privacy of his house, he will "walk
with a perfect heart," ever seeking to translate his convictions of
right into practice, and regulating his activities by conscience.
The recesses of an Eastern palace were often foul with lust, and hid
extravagances of caprice and self-indulgence; but this ruler will
behave there as one who has Jehovah for a guest. The language of ver.
3 is very energetic. "Any villainous thing" is literally "a thing
of Belial"; "the doing of transgressions" is literally "doing deeds
that turn aside", _i.e._ from the course prescribed. He will not take
the former as models for imitation or objects of desire. The latter
kindle wholesome hatred; and if ever he is tempted to dally with sin,
he will shake it off, as a venomous reptile that has fastened on him.
"A perfect heart" will expel "a perverse heart," but neither will the
one be gained nor the other banished without vehement and persistent
effort. This man does not trust the improvement of his character to
chance or expect it to come of itself. He means to bend his strength
to effect it. He cannot but "know evil," in the sense of being aware
of it and conscious of its seductions; but he will _not_ "know"
it, in the sense of letting it into his inner nature, or with the
knowledge which is experience and love.
From ver. 5 onwards, the king lays down the principles of his public
action, and that mainly in reference to bad men. One verse suffices
to tell of his fostering care of good men. The rest describes how he
means to be a terror to evil-doers. The vices against which he will
implacably war are not gross crimes such as ordinarily bring down
the sword of public justice. This monarch has regard to more subtle
evils--slander, superciliousness, inflated vanity ("proud-hearted" in
ver. 5 is literally wide in heart, _i.e._ dilated with self-sufficiency
or ambition). His eyes are quick to mark "the faithful in the land."
He looks for those whose faithfulness to God guarantees their fidelity
to men and general reliableness. His servants shall be like himself,
followers of "the way of perfectness." In that court, dignity and
office will go, not to talent, or to crafty arts of servility, or to
birth, but to moral and religious qualities.
In the last two verses, the psalm returns to evil-doers. The actors
and speakers of lies shall be cleared out of the palace. Such base
creatures crawl and sting about the purlieus of courts, but this
prince will have his immediate _entourage_ free from them. He longs
to get rid of the stifling atmosphere of deceit, and to have honest
men round him, as many a ruler before and since has longed. But not
only palace, but city, has to be swept clean, and one cleansing at
the beginning of a reign will not be enough. So "every morning" the
work has to be done again. "Ill weeds grow apace," and the mower must
not get weary of his scythe. God's city must be pure. "Without are
... whatsoever worketh and maketh a lie."
The psalm is a God-given vision of what a king and a kingdom might
and should be. If David wrote it, his early resolves were sadly
falsified. "I will set no villainous things before my eyes"--yet from
his "house," where he vowed to "walk with a perfect heart," he looked
on Bathsheba. "He that speaks lies shall not be established in my
sight"--yet Absalom, Ahithophel, and the sons of Zeruiah stood round
his throne. The shortcomings of the earthly shadows of God's rule
force us to turn away to the only perfect King and Kingdom, Jesus
Christ and His realm, and to the city "into which shall in nowise
enter anything that defileth."