1 I will thank Thee, Jehovah, with my whole heart,
In presence of the gods will I harp to Thee.
2 I will worship toward Thy holy Temple,
And will thank Thy name for Thy loving-kindness and for Thy truth,
For Thou hast magnified Thy promise above all Thy name.
3 In the day [when] I called Thou answeredst me,
Thou didst make me bold--in my soul [welled up] strength.
4 Jehovah, all the kings of the earth shall thank Thee,
When they have heard the words of Thy mouth.
5 And they shall sing of the ways of Jehovah,
For great is the glory of Jehovah.
6 For Jehovah is high, and the lowly He regards,
And the lofty from afar off He knows.
7 If I walk in the midst of trouble Thou wilt revive me,
Against the wrath of mine enemies Thou wilt stretch forth Thy
hand,
And Thy right hand shall save me.
8 Jehovah will complete [all] that concerns me;
Jehovah, Thy loving-kindness [endures] for ever;
The works of Thy hands abandon not.
This is the first of a group of eight psalms attributed to David in
the superscriptions. It precedes the closing hallelujah psalms, and
thus stands where a "find" of Davidic psalms at a late date would
naturally be put. In some cases, there is no improbability in the
assigned authorship; and this psalm is certainly singularly unlike
those which precede it, and has many affinities with the earlier
psalms ascribed to David.
In reading it, one feels the return to familiar thoughts and tones.
The fragrance it exhales wakes memories of former songs. But the
resemblance may be due to the imitative habit so marked in the last
book of the Psalter. If it is a late psalm, the speaker is probably
the personified Israel, and the deliverance which seems to the singer
to have transcended all previous manifestations of the Divine name is
the Restoration, which has inspired so many of the preceding psalms.
The supporters of the Davidic authorship, on the other hand, point to
the promise to David by Nathan of the perpetuity of the kinghood in
his line, as the occasion of the psalmist's triumph.
The structure of the psalm is simple. It falls into three parts, of
which the two former consist of three verses each, and the last of
two. In the first, the singer vows praise and recounts God's wondrous
dealings with him (vv. 1-3); in the second, he looks out over all the
earth in the confidence that these blessings, when known, will bring
the world to worship (vv. 4-6); and in the third, he pleads for the
completion to himself of mercies begun (vv. 7, 8).
The first part is the outpouring of a thankful heart for recent
great blessing, which has been the fulfilment of a Divine promise.
So absorbed in his blessedness is the singer, that he neither names
Jehovah as the object of his thanks, nor specifies what has set his
heart vibrating. The great Giver and the great gift are magnified by
being unspoken. To whom but Jehovah could the current of the psalmist's
praise set? He feels that Jehovah's mercy to him requires him to become
the herald of His name; and therefore he vows, in lofty consciousness
of his mission, that he will ring out God's praises in presence of
false gods, whose worshippers have no such experience to loose their
tongues. Dead gods have dumb devotees; the servants of the living
Jehovah receive His acts of power, that they may proclaim His name.
The special occasion for this singer's praise has been some act, in
which Jehovah's faithfulness was very conspicuously shown. "Thou hast
magnified Thy promise above all Thy name." If the history of David
underlies the psalm, it is most natural to interpret the "promise"
as that of the establishment of the monarchy. But the fulfilment,
not the giving, of a promise is its magnifying, and hence one would
incline to take the reference to be to the great manifestation
of God's troth in restoring Israel to its land. In any case the
expression is peculiar, and has induced many attempts at emendation.
Baethgen would strike out "Thy name" as a dittograph from the
previous clause, and thus gets the reading "done great things beyond
Thy word"--_i.e._, transcended the promise in fulfilment--which
yields a good sense. Others make a slight alteration in the word "Thy
name," and read it "Thy heavens," supposing that the psalmist is
making the usual comparison between the manifestation of Divine power
in Nature and in Revelation, or in the specific promise in question.
But the text as it stands, though peculiar, is intelligible, and
yields a meaning very appropriate to the singer's astonished
thankfulness. A heart amazed by the greatness of recent blessings is
ever apt to think that they, glittering in fresh beauty, are greater,
as they are nearer and newer, than the mercies which it has only
heard of as of old. To-day brings growing revelations of Jehovah to
the waiting heart. The psalmist is singing, not dissertating. It
is quite true that if his words are measured by the metaphysical
theologian's foot-rule, they are inaccurate, for "the name of God
cannot be surpassed by any single act of His, since every single
act is but a manifestation of that name"; but thankfulness does not
speak by rule, and the psalmist means to say that, so great has been
the mercy given to him and so signal its confirmation of the Divine
promise, that to him, at all events, that whole name blazes with new
lustre, and breathes a deeper music. So should each man's experience
be the best teacher of what God is to all men.
In ver. 3_b_ the psalmist uses a remarkable expression, in saying
that Jehovah had made him bold, or, as the word is literally,
_proud_. The following words are a circumstantial or subsidiary
clause, and indicate how the consciousness of inbreathed strength
welling up in his soul gave him lofty confidence to confront foes.
The second part (vv. 4-6) resembles many earlier psalms in
connecting the singer's deliverance with a world-wide manifestation
of God's name. Such a consciousness of a vocation to be the world's
evangelist is appropriate either to David or the collective Israel.
Especially is it natural, and, as a fact, occurs in post-exilic
psalms. Here "the words of Thy mouth" are equivalent to the promise
already spoken of, the fulfilment of which has shown that Jehovah the
High has regard to the lowly--_i.e._, to the psalmist; and "knows
the lofty"--_i.e._, his oppressors--"afar off." He reads their
characters thoroughly, without, as it were, needing to approach for
minute study. The implication is that He will thwart their plans
and judge the plotters. This great lesson of Jehovah's providence,
care for the lowly, faithfulness to His word, has exemplification in
the psalmist's history; and when it is known, the lofty ones of the
earth shall learn the principles of Jehovah's ways, and become lowly
recipients of His favours and adoring singers of His great glory.
The glowing vision is not yet fulfilled; but the singer was
cherishing no illusions when he sang. It _is_ true that the story
of God's great manifestation of Himself in Christ, in which He has
magnified His Word above all His name, is one day to win the world.
It _is_ true that the revelation of a God who regards the lowly is
the conquering Gospel which shall bow all hearts.
In the third part (vv. 7, 8), the psalmist comes back to his
own needs, and takes to his heart the calming assurance born of
his experience, that he bears a charmed life. He but speaks the
confidence which should strengthen every heart that rests on God.
Such an one may be girdled about by troubles, but he will have an
inner circle traced round him, within which no evil can venture. He
may walk in the valley of the shadow of death unfearing, for God will
hold his soul in life. Foes may pour out floods of enmity and wrath,
but one strong hand will be stretched out against (or _over_) the
wild deluge, and will draw the trustful soul out of its rush on to
the safe shore. So was the psalmist assured; so may and should those
be who have yet greater wonders for which to thank Jehovah.
That last prayer of the psalm blends very beautifully confidence
and petition. Its central clause is the basis of both the confidence
in its first, and the petition in its last, clause. Because Jehovah's
loving-kindness endures for ever, every man on whom His shaping
Spirit has begun to work, or His grace in any form to bestow its
gifts, may be sure that no exhaustion or change of these is possible.
God is not as the foolish tower-builder, who began and was not
able to finish. He never stops till He has completed His work; and
nothing short of the entire conformity of a soul to His likeness and
the filling of it with Himself can be the termination of His loving
purpose, or of His achieving grace. Therefore the psalmist "found it
in his heart to pray" that God would not abandon the works of His own
hands. That prayer appeals to His faithfulness and to His honour. It
sets forth the obligations under which God comes by what He has done.
It is a prayer which goes straight to His heart; and they who offer
it receive the old answer, "I will not leave thee till I have done
unto thee that which I have spoken to thee of."