1 Out of the depths have I cried to Thee, Jehovah.
2 Lord, hearken to my voice,
Be Thine ears attent
To the voice of my supplications.
3 If Thou, Jah, shouldest mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?--
4 For with Thee is forgiveness,
That Thou mayest be feared.
5 I have waited for Jehovah,
And in His word have I hoped.
6 My soul [hopes] for the Lord
More than watchers for the morning,
--Watchers for the morning.
7 Let Israel hope in Jehovah,
For with Jehovah is loving-kindness,
And in abundance with Him is redemption.
8 And He--He will redeem Israel
From all his iniquities.
In a very emphatic sense this is a song of ascents, for it climbs
steadily from the abyss of penitence to the summits of hope. It falls
into two divisions of four verses each, of which the former breathes
the prayer of a soul penetrated by the consciousness of sin, and the
latter the peaceful expectance of one that has tasted God's forgiving
mercy. These two parts are again divided into two groups of two
verses, so that there are four stages in the psalmist's progress from
the depths to the sunny heights.
In the first group we have the psalmist's cry. He has called, and
still calls. He reiterates in ver. 2 the prayer that he had long
offered and still presents. It is not only quotation, but is the cry
of present need. What are these "depths" from which his voice sounds,
as that of a man fallen into a pit and sending up a faint call? The
expression does not merely refer to his creatural lowliness, nor
even to his troubles, nor even to his depression of spirit. There
are deeper pits than these--those into which the spirit feels itself
going down, sick and giddy, when it realises its sinfulness. Unless a
man has been down in that black abyss, he has scarcely cried to God
as he should do. The beginning of true personal religion is the sense
of personal sin. A slight conception of the gravity of that fact
underlies inadequate conceptions of Christ's nature and work, and is
the mother of heresies in creed and superficialities and deadnesses
in practice. A religion that sits lightly upon its professor,
impelling to no acts of devotion, flashing out in no heroisms, rising
to no heights of communion--that is to say, the average Christianity
of great masses of so-called Christians--bears proof, in its languor,
that the man knows nothing about the depths, and has never cried to
God from them. Further, if out of the depths we cry, we shall cry
ourselves out of the depths. What can a man do who finds himself at
the foot of a beetling cliff, the sea in front, the wall of rock
at his back, without foothold for a mouse, between the tide at the
bottom and the grass at the top? He can do but one thing: he can
shout, and perhaps may be heard, and a rope may come dangling down
that he can spring at and clutch. For sinful men in the miry pit the
rope is already let down, and their grasping it is the same act as
the psalmist's cry. God has let down His forgiving love in Christ,
and we need but the faith which accepts while it asks, and then we
are swung up into the light, and our feet set on a rock.
Vv. 3, 4, are the second stage. A dark fear shadows the singer's
soul, and is swept away by a joyful assurance. The word rendered above
"mark" is literally _keep_ or _watch_, as in ver. 6, and here seems
to mean to _take account of_, or _retain_ in remembrance, in order to
punish. If God should take man's sin into account in His dispositions
and dealings, "O Lord, who shall stand?" No man could sustain that
righteous judgment. He must go down before it like a flimsy hut before
a whirlwind, or a weak enemy before a fierce charge. That thought comes
to the psalmist like a blast of icy air from the north, and threatens
to chill his hope to death and to blow his cry back into his throat.
But its very hypothetical form holds a negation concealed in it. Such
an implied negative is needed in order to explain the "for" of ver. 4.
The singer springs, as it were, to that confidence by a rebound from
the other darker thought. We must have tremblingly entertained the
contrary dread possibility, before we can experience the relief and
gladness of its counter-truth. The word rendered "forgiveness" is a
late form, being found only in two other late passages (Neh. ix. 17;
Dan. ix. 9). It literally means _cutting off_, and so suggests the
merciful surgery by which the cancerous tumour is taken out of the
soul. Such forgiveness is "with God," inherent in His nature. And that
forgiveness lies at the root of true godliness. No man reverences,
loves, and draws near to God so rapturously and so humbly as he who has
made experience of His pardoning mercy, lifting a soul from its abysses
of sin and misery. Therefore the psalmist, taught by what pardon has
done for him in drawing him lovingly near to God, declares that its
great purpose is "that Thou mayest be feared," and that not only by
the recipient, but by beholders. Strangely enough, many commentators
have found a difficulty in this idea, which seems sun-clear to those
whose own history explains it to them. Grätz, for instance, calls it
"completely unintelligible." It has been very intelligible to many a
penitent who has been by pardon transformed into a reverent lover of
God.
The next stage in the ascent from the depths is in vv. 5, 6, which
breathe peaceful, patient hope. It may be doubtful whether the
psalmist means to represent that attitude of expectance as prior to
and securing forgiveness or as consequent upon it. The latter seems
the more probable. A soul which has received God's forgiveness is
thereby led into tranquil, continuous, ever-rewarded waiting on Him,
and hope of new gifts springs ever fresh in it. Such a soul sits
quietly at His feet, trusting to His love, and looking for light and
all else needed, to flow from Him. The singleness of the object of
devout hope, the yearning which is not impatience, characterising
that hope at its noblest, are beautifully painted in the simile
of the watchers for morning. As they who have outwatched the long
night look eagerly to the flush that creeps up in the east, telling
that their vigil is past, and heralding the stir and life of a
new day with its wakening birds and fresh morning airs, so this
singer's eyes had turned to God, and to Him only. Ver. 6 does not
absolutely require the supplement "hopes." It may read simply "My
soul is towards Jehovah"; and that translation gives still more
emphatically the notion of complete turning of the whole being to
God. Consciousness of sin was as a dark night; forgiveness flushed
the Eastern heaven with prophetic twilight. So the psalmist waits for
the light, and his soul is one aspiration towards God.
In vv. 7, 8, the psalmist becomes an evangelist, inviting Israel to
unite in his hope, that they may share in his pardon. In the depths
he was alone, and felt as if the only beings in the universe were
God and himself. The consciousness of sin isolates, and the sense of
forgiveness unites. Whoever has known that "with Jehovah is pardon"
is impelled thereby to invite others to learn the same lesson in
the same sweet way. The psalmist has a broad gospel to preach, the
generalisation of his own history. He had said in ver. 4 that "with
Jehovah is forgiveness" (lit. _the_ forgiveness, possibly meaning
_the needed forgiveness_), and he thereby had animated his own hope.
Now he repeats the form of expression, only that he substitutes
for "forgiveness" the loving-kindness which is its spring, and
the redemption which is its result; and these he presses upon his
fellows as reasons and encouragements for their hope. It is "abundant
redemption," or "multiplied," as the word might be rendered. "Seventy
times seven"--the perfect numbers seven and ten being multiplied
together and their sum increased sevenfold--make a numerical symbol for
the unfailing pardons which we are to bestow; and the sum of the Divine
pardon is surely greater than that of the human. God's forgiving grace
is mightier than all sins, and able to conquer them all.
"He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities"; not only from their
consequences in punishment, but from their power, as well as from their
guilt and their penalty. The psalmist means something a great deal
deeper than deliverance from calamities which conscience declared to be
the chastisement of sin. He speaks New Testament language. He was sure
that God would redeem from all iniquity; but he lived in the twilight
dawn, and had to watch for the morning. The sun is risen for us; but
the light is the same in quality, though more in degree: "Thou shalt
call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins."