1 Jehovah, hear my prayer,
And let my cry come to Thee.
2 Hide not Thy face from me in the day of my trouble,
Bend to me Thine ear,
In the day that I call answer me speedily.
3 For my days are consumed in smoke,
And my bones are burned like a brand.
4 Smitten like herbage and dried up is my heart,
For I have forgotten to eat my bread.
5 Because of the noise of my groaning,
My bones stick to my flesh.
6 I am like a pelican of the desert,
I am become like an owl of the ruins.
7 I am sleepless,
And am become like a sparrow lonely on the roof.
8 All day long my enemies reproach me,
They that are mad at me curse by me.
9 For ashes like bread have I eaten,
And my drink with tears have I mingled.
10 Because of Thy indignation and Thy wrath,
For Thou hast caught me up and flung me away
11 My days are like a long-drawn-out shadow,
And I like herbage am dried up.
12 But Thou, Jehovah, sittest enthroned for ever,
And Thy memorial is to generation after generation.
13 Thou, Thou shalt arise, shalt pity Zion,
For it is time to show her favour,
For the appointed time is come.
14 For Thy servants delight in her stones,
And [to] her dust they show favour.
15 And the nations shall fear the name of Jehovah,
And all the kings of the earth His glory,
16 Because Jehovah has built up Zion,
He has been seen in His glory,
17 He has turned to the prayer of the destitute,
And has not despised their prayer.
18 This shall be written for the generation after,
And a people [yet] to be created shall praise Jah.
19 Because He has looked down from His holy height,
Jehovah has gazed from heaven upon the earth,
20 To hear the sighing of the captive,
To free the children of death,
21 That they may tell in Zion the name of Jehovah,
And His praise in Jerusalem,
22 When the peoples are assembled together,
And the kingdoms to serve Jehovah.
23 He has brought down my strength in the way,
He has cut short my days.
24 I said, "My God, take me not away at the half of my days,"
[Since] Thy years endure through all generations.
25 Of old Thou didst found the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Thy hands.
26 They, they shall perish, but Thou, Thou shalt continue,
And all of them like a garment shall wear out,
Like a robe shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed.
27 But Thou art He,
And Thy years shall never end.
28 The sons of Thy servants shall dwell,
And their seed shall be established before Thee.
Verses 13, 14, show that the psalm was written when Zion was in
ruins and the time of her restoration at hand. Sadness shot with
hope, as a cloud with sunlight, is the singer's mood. The pressure
of present sorrows points to the time of the Exile; the lightening
of these, by the expectation that the hour for their cessation has
all but struck, points to the close of that period. There is a
general consensus of opinion on this, though Baethgen is hesitatingly
inclined to adopt the Maccabean date, and Cheyne prefers the time of
Nehemiah, mainly because the references to the "stones" and "dust"
recall to him "Nehemiah's lonely ride round the burned walls," and
"Sanballat's mocking at the Jews for attempting to revive the stones
out of heaps of rubbish" ("Orig. of Psalt.," p. 70). These references
would equally suit any period of desolation; but the point of time
indicated by ver. 13 is more probably the eve of restoration than the
completion of the begun and interrupted re-establishment of Israel
in its land. Like many of the later psalms, this is largely coloured
by earlier ones, as well as by Deuteronomy, Job, and the second
half of Isaiah, while it has also reminiscences of Jeremiah. Some
commentators have, indeed, supposed it to be his work.
The turns of thought are simple. While there is no clear strophical
arrangement, there are four broadly distinguished parts: a prelude,
invoking God to hearken (vv. 1, 2); a plaintive bemoaning of the
psalmist's condition (vv. 3-11); a triumphant rising above his
sorrows, and rejoicing in the fair vision of a restored Jerusalem,
whose Temple-courts the nations tread (vv. 12-22); and a momentary
glance at his sorrows and brief life, which but spurs him to lay hold
the more joyously on God's eternity, wherein he finds the pledge of
the fulfilment of his hopes and of God's promises (vv. 23-28).
The opening invocations in vv. 1, 2, are mostly found in other
psalms. "Let my cry come unto Thee" recalls Psalm xviii. 6. "Hide not
Thy face" is like Psalm xxvii. 9. "In the day of my straits" recurs
in Psalm lix. 16. "Bend to me Thy ear" is in Psalm xxxi. 2. "In the
day when I call" is as in Psalm lvi. 9. "Answer me speedily" is found
in Psalm lxix. 17. But the psalmist is not a cold-blooded compiler,
weaving a web from old threads, but a suffering man, fain to give his
desires voice, in words which sufferers before him had hallowed, and
securing a certain solace by reiterating familiar petitions. They are
none the less his own, because they have been the cry of others. Some
aroma of the answers that they drew down in the past clings to them
still, and makes them fragrant to him.
Sorrow and pain are sometimes dumb, but, in Eastern natures,
more often eloquent; finding ease in recounting their pangs. The
psalmist's first words of self-lamentation echo familiar strains, as
he bases his cry for speedy answer on the swiftness with which his
days are being whirled away, and melting like smoke as it escapes
from a chimney. The image suggests another. The fire that makes
the smoke is that in which his very bones are smouldering like a
brand. The word for _bones_ is in the singular, the bony framework
being thought of as articulated into a whole. "Brand" is a doubtful
rendering of a word which the Authorised Version, following some
ancient Jewish authorities, renders _hearth_, as do Delitzsch and
Cheyne. It is used in Isa. xxxiii. 14 as = "burning," but "brand"
is required to make out the metaphor. The same theme of physical
decay is continued in ver. 4, with a new image struck out by the
ingenuity of pain. His heart is "smitten" as by sunstroke (compare
Psalm cxxi. 6, Isa. xlix. 10, and for still closer parallels Hosea
ix. 16, Jonah iv. 7, in both of which the same effect of fierce
sunshine is described as the sufferer here bewails). His heart
withers like Jonah's gourd. The "For" in ver. 4_b_ can scarcely
be taken as giving the reason for this withering. It must rather
be taken as giving the proof that it was so withered, as might
be concluded by beholders from the fact that he refused his food
(Baethgen). The psalmist apparently intends in ver. 5 to describe
himself as worn to a skeleton by long-continued and passionate
lamentations. But his phrase is singular. One can understand that
emaciation should be described by saying that the bones adhered to
the skin, the flesh having wasted away, but that they stick to the
flesh can only describe it, by giving a wide meaning to "flesh," as
including the whole outward part of the frame in contrast with the
internal framework. Lam. iv. 8 gives the more natural expression.
The psalmist has groaned himself into emaciation. Sadness and
solitude go well together. We plunge into lonely places when we
would give voice to our grief. The poet's imagination sees his own
likeness in solitude-loving creatures. The pelican is never now seen
in Palestine but on Lake Huleh. Thomson ("Land and Book," p. 260:
London, 1861) speaks of having found it there only, and describes
it as "the most sombre, austere bird I ever saw." "The owl of the
ruins" is identified by Tristram ("Land of Israel," p. 67) with the
small owl _Athene meridionalis_, the emblem of Minerva, which "is
very characteristic of all the hilly and rocky portions of Syria."
The _sparrow_ may be here a generic term for any small song-bird, but
there is no need for departing from the narrower meaning. Thomson
(p. 43) says: "When one of them has lost his mate--an every-day
occurrence--he will sit on the housetop alone and lament by the hour."
The division of ver. 7 is singular, as the main pause in it falls
on "am become," to the disruption of the logical continuity. The
difficulty is removed by Wickes ("Accentuation of the Poetical
Books," p. 29), who gives several instances which seem to establish
the law that, in the musical accentuation, there is "an apparent
reluctance to place the main dividing accent after the first, or
before the last, word of the verse." The division is not logical, and
we may venture to neglect it, and arrange as above, restoring the
dividing accent to its place after the first word. Others turn the
flank of the difficulty by altering the text to read, "I am sleepless
and must moan aloud" (so Cheyne, following Olshausen).
Yet another drop of bitterness in the psalmist's cup is the frantic
hatred which pours itself out in voluble mockery all day long, making
a running accompaniment to his wail. Solitary as he is, he cannot get
beyond hearing of shrill insults. So miserable does he seem, that
enemies take him and his distresses for a formula of imprecation, and
can find no blacker curse to launch at other foes than to wish that
they may be like him. So ashes, the token of mourning, are his food,
instead of the bread which he had forgotten to eat, and there are
more tears than wine in the cup he drinks.
But all this only tells how sad he is. A deeper depth opens when he
remembers why he is sad. The bitterest thought to a sufferer is that
his sufferings indicate God's displeasure; but it may be wholesome
bitterness, which, leading to the recognition of the sin which evokes
the wrath, may change into a solemn thankfulness for sorrows which
are discerned to be chastisements, inflicted by that Love of which
indignation is one form. The psalmist confesses sin in the act of
bewailing sorrow, and sees behind all his pains the working of that
hand whose interposition for him he ventures to implore. The tremendous
metaphor of ver. 10_b_ pictures it as thrust forth from heaven to grasp
the feeble sufferer, as an eagle stoops to plunge its talons into a
lamb. It lifts him high, only to give more destructive impetus to the
force with which it flings him down, to the place where he lies, a
huddled heap of broken bones and wounds. His plaint returns to its
beginning, lamenting the brief life which is being wasted away by sore
distress. Lengthening shadows tell of approaching night. His day is
nearing sunset. It will be dark soon, and, as he has said (ver. 4), his
very self is withering and becoming like dried-up herbage.
One can scarcely miss the tone of individual sorrow in the preceding
verses; but national restoration, not personal deliverance, is
the theme of the triumphant central part of the psalm. That is no
reason for flattening the previous verses into the voice of the
personified Israel, but rather for hearing in them the sighing of
one exile, on whom the general burden weighed sorely. He lifts his
tear-laden eyes to heaven, and catches a vision there which changes,
as by magic, the key of his song--Jehovah sitting in royal state
(compare Psalms ix. 7, xxix. 10) for ever. That silences complaints,
breathes courage into the feeble and hope into the despairing. In
another mood the thought of the eternal rule of God might make man's
mortality more bitter, but Faith grasps it, as enfolding assurances
which turn groaning into ringing praise. For the vision is not only
of an everlasting Some One who works a sovereign will, but of the
age-long dominion of Him whose name is Jehovah; and since that name
is the revelation of His nature, it, too, endures for ever. It is
the name of Israel's covenant-making and keeping God. Therefore,
ancient promises have not gone to water, though Israel is an exile,
and all the old comfort and confidence are still welling up from
the Name. Zion cannot die while Zion's God lives. Lam. v. 19 is
probably the original of this verse, but the psalmist has changed
"throne" into "memorial," _i.e._ _name_, and thereby deepened the
thought. The assurance that God will restore Zion rests not only on
His faithfulness, but on signs which show that the sky is reddening
towards the day of redemption. The singer sees the indication that
the hour fixed in God's eternal counsels is at hand, because he sees
how God's servants, who have a claim on Him and are in sympathy
with His purposes, yearn lovingly after the sad ruins and dust of
the forlorn city. Some new access of such feelings must have been
stirring among the devouter part of the exiles. Many large truths are
wrapped in the psalmist's words. The desolations of Zion knit true
hearts to her more closely. The more the Church or any good cause
is depressed, the more need for its friends to cling to it. God's
servants should see that their sympathies go toward the same objects
as God's do. They are proved to be His servants, because they favour
what He favours. Their regards, turned to existing evils, are the
precursors of Divine intervention for the remedy of these. When good
men begin to lay the Church's or the world's miseries to heart, it is
a sign that God is beginning to heal them. The cry of God's servants
can "hasten the day of the Lord," and preludes His appearance like
the keen morning air stirring the sleeping flowers before sunrise.
The psalmist anticipates that a rebuilt Zion will ensure a worshipping
world. He expresses that confidence, which he shares with Isa.
xl.-lxvi., in vv. 15-18. The name and glory of Jehovah will become
objects of reverence to all the earth, because of the manifestation of
them by the rebuilding of Zion, which is a witness to all men of His
power and tender regard to His people's cry. The past tenses of vv.
16, 17, do not indicate that the psalm is later than the Restoration.
It is contemplated as already accomplished, because it is the occasion
of the "fear" prophesied in ver. 15, and consequently prior in time to
it. "Destitute," in ver. 17, is literally _naked_ or _stript_. It is
used in Jer. xvii. 6 as the name of a desert plant, probably a dwarf
juniper, stunted and dry, but seems to be employed here as simply
designating utter destitution. Israel had been stripped of every beauty
and made naked before her enemies. Despised, she had cried to God,
and now is clothed again with the garments of salvation, "as a bride
adorneth herself with her jewels."
A wondering world will adore her delivering God. The glowing hopes
of psalmist and prophet seem to be dreams, since the restored Israel
attracted no such observance and wrought no such convictions. But the
singer was not wrong in believing that the coming of Jehovah in His
glory for the rebuilding of Zion would sway the world to homage. His
facts were right, but he did not know their perspective, nor could he
understand how many weary years lay, like a deep gorge hidden from
the eye of one who looks over a wide prospect, between the rebuilding
of which he was thinking, and that truer establishment of the city of
God, which is again parted from the period of universal recognition
of Jehovah's glory by so many sad and stormy generations. But the
vision is true. The coming of Jehovah in His glory will be followed
by a world's recognition of its light.
That praise accruing to Jehovah shall be not only universal, but
shall go on sounding, with increasing volume in its tone, through
coming generations. This expectation is set forth in vv. 18-22,
which substantially reiterate the thought of the preceding, with
the addition that there is to be a new Israel, a people yet to be
created (Psalm xxii. 31). The psalmist did not know "the deep things
he spoke." He did know that Israel was immortal, and that the seed
of life was in the tree that had cast its leaves and stood bare and
apparently dead. But he did not know the process by which that new
Israel was to be created, nor the new elements of which it was to
consist. His confidence teaches us never to despair of the future
of God's Church, however low its present state, but to look down
the ages, in calm certainty that, however externals may change, the
succession of God's children will never fail, nor the voice of their
praise ever fall silent.
The course of God's intervention for Israel is described in vv. 19,
20. His looking down from heaven is equivalent to His observance, as
the all-seeing Witness and Judge (compare Psalms xiv. 2, xxxiii. 13,
14, etc.), and is preparatory to His hearing the sighing of the captive
Israel, doomed to death. The language of ver. 20 is apparently drawn
from Psalm lxxix. 11. The thought corresponds to that of ver. 17. The
purpose of His intervention is set forth in vv. 21, 22, as being the
declaration of Jehovah's name and praise in Jerusalem before a gathered
world. The aim of Jehovah's dealings is that all men, through all
generations, may know and praise Him. That is but another way of saying
that He infinitely desires, and perpetually works for, men's highest
good. For our sakes, He desires so much that we should know Him, since
the knowledge is life eternal. He is not greedy of adulation nor
dependent on recognition, but He loves men too well not to rejoice in
being understood and loved by them, since Love ever hungers for return.
The psalmist saw what shall one day be, when, far down the ages, he
beheld the world gathered in the temple-courts, and heard the shout of
their praise borne to him up the stream of time. He penetrated to the
inmost meaning of the Divine acts, when he proclaimed that they were
all done for the manifestation of the Name, which cannot but be praised
when it is known.
If the poet was one of the exiles, on whom the burden of the general
calamity weighed as a personal sorrow, it is very natural that
his glowing anticipations of national restoration should be, as
in this psalm, enclosed in a setting of more individual complaint
and petition. The transition from these to the purely impersonal
centre of the psalm, and the recurrence to them in vv. 23-28, are
inexplicable, if the "I" of the first and last parts is Israel, but
perfectly intelligible if it is one Israelite. For a moment the tone
of sadness is heard in ver. 23; but the thought of his own afflicted
and brief life is but a stimulus to the psalmist to lay hold of God's
immutability and to find rest there. The Hebrew text reads "_His_
strength," and is followed by the LXX., Vulgate, Hengstenberg, and
Kay ("He afflicted on the way with His power"); but the reading
of the Hebrew margin, adopted above and by most commentators, is
preferable, as supplying an object for the verb, which is lacking in
the former reading, and as corresponding to "_my_ days" in _b_.
The psalmist has felt the exhaustion of long sorrow and the shortness
of his term. Will God do all these glorious things of which he has
been singing, and he, the singer, not be there to see? That would
mingle bitterness in his triumphant anticipations; for it would be
little to him, lying in his grave, that Zion should be built again. The
hopes with which some would console us for the loss of the Christian
assurance of immortality, that the race shall march on to new power and
nobleness, are poor substitutes for continuance of our own lives and
for our own participation in the glories of the future. The psalmist's
prayer, which takes God's eternity as its reason for deprecating his
own premature death, echoes the inextinguishable confidence of the
devout heart, that somehow even its fleeting being has a claim to be
assimilated in duration to its Eternal Object of trust and aspiration.
The contrast between God's years and man's days may be brooded on in
bitterness or in hope. They who are driven by thinking of their own
mortality to clutch, with prayerful faith, God's eternity, use the one
aright, and will not be deprived of the other.
The solemn grandeur of vv. 25, 26, needs little commentary, but it
may be noted that a reminiscence of Isaiah II. runs through them,
both in the description of the act of creation of heaven and earth
(Isa. xlviii. 13, xliv. 24), and in that of their decaying like
a garment (Isa. li. 6, liv. 10). That which has been created can
be removed. The creatural is necessarily the transient. Possibly,
too, the remarkable expression "changed," as applied to the visible
creation, may imply the thought which had already been expressed in
Isaiah, and was destined to receive such deepening by the Christian
truth of the new heavens and new earth--a truth the contents of
which are dim to us until it is fulfilled. But whatever may be the
fate of creatures, He who receives no accession to His stable being
by originating suffers no diminution by extinguishing them. Man's
days, the earth's ages, and the æons of the heavens pass, and still
"Thou art He," the same Unchanging Author of change. Measures of time
fail when applied to His being, whose years have not that which all
divisions of time have--an end. An unending year is a paradox, which,
in relation to God, is a truth.
It is remarkable that the psalmist does not draw the conclusion
that he himself shall receive an answer to his prayer, but that
"the children of Thy servants shall dwell," _i.e._ in the land,
and that there will always be an Israel "established before Thee."
He contemplates successive generations as in turn dwelling in the
promised land (and perhaps in the ancient "dwelling-place to all
generations," even in God); but of his own continuance he is silent.
Was he not assured of that? or was he so certain of the answer to his
prayer that he had forgotten himself in the vision of the eternal God
and the abiding Israel? Having regard to the late date of the psalm,
it is hard to believe that silence meant ignorance, while it may
well be that it means a less vivid and assured hope of immortality,
and a smaller space occupied by that hope than with us. But the
other explanation is not to be left out of view, and the psalmist's
oblivion of self in rapt gazing on God's eternal being--the pledge of
His servants' perpetuity--may teach us that we reach the summit of
Faith when we lose ourselves in God.
The Epistle to the Hebrews quotes vv. 25-27 as spoken of "the Son."
Such an application of the words rests on the fact that the psalm
speaks of the coming of Jehovah for redemption, who is none other
than Jehovah manifested fully in the Messiah. But Jehovah whose
coming brings redemption and His recognition by the world is also
Creator. Since, then, the Incarnation is, in truth, the coming of
Jehovah, which the psalmist, like all the prophets, looked for as
the consummation, He in whom the redeeming Jehovah was manifested
is He in whom Jehovah the Creator "made the worlds." The writer of
the Epistle is not asserting that the psalmist consciously spoke of
the Messiah, but he is declaring that his words, read in the light
of history, point to Jesus as the crowning manifestation of the
redeeming, and therefore necessarily of the creating, God.