As our purpose in this volume is not a complete biography, it will not
be necessary to dwell on the subsequent portions of the exile, inasmuch
as there is little reference to these in the psalms. We must pass over
even that exquisite episode of Abigail, whose graceful presence and
"most subtle flow of silver-paced counsel" soothed David's ruffled
spirit, and led him captive at once as in a silken leash. The glimpse of
old-world ways in the story, the rough mirth of the shearers, the hint
of the kind of black mail by which David's little force was provided,
the snarling humour and garrulous crustiness of Nabal, David's fierce
blaze of hot wrath, the tribute of the shepherds to the kindliness and
honour of the outlaws, the rustic procession, with the gracious lady
last of all, the stately courtesy of the meeting, her calm wise
words--not flattery, yet full of predictions of prosperity most pleasant
to hear from such lips; not rebuke, yet setting in the strongest light
how unworthy of God's anointed personal vengeance was; not servile, but
yet recognising in delicate touches his absolute power over her; not
abject, and yet full of supplication,--the quick response of David's
frank nature and susceptible heart, which sweeps away all his wrath; the
budding germ of love, which makes him break into benedictions on her and
her wisdom, and thankfulness that he had been kept back from "hurting
_thee_," and the dramatic close in their happy union,--all make up one
of the most charming of the many wonderful idyls of Scripture, all
fragrant with the breath of love, and fresh with undying youth. The
story lives--alas! how much longer do words endure than the poor earthly
affections which they record!
After a second betrayal by the men of Ziph, and a second meeting with
Saul--their last--in which the doomed man parts from him with blessing
and predictions of victory on his unwilling lips, David seems to have
been driven to desperation by his endless skulking in dens and caves,
and to have seen no hope of continuing much longer to maintain himself
on the frontier and to elude Saul's vigilance. Possibly others than
Nabal grudged to pay him for the volunteer police which he kept up on
behalf of the pastoral districts exposed to the wild desert tribes. At
all events he once more made a plunge into Philistine territory, and
offers himself and his men to the service of the King of Gath. On the
offer being accepted, the little town of Ziklag was allotted to them,
and became their home for a year and four months.
To this period of comparative security one psalm has been supposed to
belong--the xxxi., which, in tone and in certain expressions,
corresponds very well with the circumstances. There are many
similarities in it with the others of the same period which we have
already considered--such, for instance, as the figure of God his rock
(ver. 3), the net which his enemies have laid for him (ver. 4), the
allusions to their calumnies and slanders (vers. 13, 18), his safe
concealment in God (ver. 20: compare xxvii. 5; lvii. 1; xvii. 8, etc.),
and the close verbal resemblance of ver. 24 with the closing words of
psalm xxvii. The reference, however, which has been taken as pointing to
David's position in Ziklag is that contained in the somewhat remarkable
words (ver. 21): "Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me His
marvellous loving-kindness in a strong city." Of course, the expression
may be purely a graphic figure for the walls and defences of the Divine
protection, as, indeed, it is usually understood to be. But the general
idea of the encompassing shelter of God has just been set forth in the
magnificent imagery of the previous verse as the tabernacle, the secret
of His presence in which He hides and guards His servants. And the
further language of the phrase in question, introduced as it is by a
rapturous burst of blessing and praise, seems so emphatic and peculiar
as to make not unnatural the supposition of a historical basis in some
event which had recently happened to the psalmist.
No period of the life will so well correspond to such a requirement as
the sixteen months of his stay in Ziklag, during which he was completely
free from fear of Saul, and stood high in favour with the King of Gath,
in whose territory he had found a refuge. We may well believe that to
the hunted exile, so long accustomed to a life of constant alarms and
hurried flight, the quiet of a settled home was very sweet, and that
behind the rude fortifications of the little town in the southern
wilderness there seemed security, which made a wonderful contrast to
their defenceless lairs and lurking-places among the rocks. Their eyes
would lose their watchful restlessness, and it would be possible to lay
aside their weapons, to gather their households about them, and, though
they were in a foreign land, still to feel something of the bliss of
peaceful habitudes and tranquil use and wont healing their broken lives.
No wonder, then, that such thankful praise should break from the
leader's lips! No wonder that he should regard this abode in a fortified
city as the result of a miracle of Divine mercy! He describes the
tremulous despondency which had preceded this marvel of loving-kindness
in language which at once recalls the wave of hopelessness which swept
across his soul after his final interview with Saul, and which led to
his flight into Philistine territory, "And David said in his heart, I
shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul" (1 Sam. xxvii. 1). How
completely this corresponds with the psalm, allowance being made for the
difference between poetry and prose, when he describes the thoughts
which had shaded his soul just before the happy peace of the strong
city--"I said in my haste,[M] I am cut off from before Thine eyes;
nevertheless Thou heardest the voice of my supplication" (ver. 22). And
rising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience to
the great truths concerning God's care of His children, the discovery of
which was to him even more precious than his personal safety, he breaks
forth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of his
consciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole household
of God--
(23) O love Jehovah, all ye beloved of Him!
The faithful doth Jehovah preserve,
And plentifully repayeth the proud-doer.
(24) Courage! and let your heart be strong,
All ye that wait for Jehovah!
[M] Confusion (Perowne), distrust (Delitzsch), anguish (Ewald),
trepidation (Calvin). The word literally means to sway backwards and
forwards, and hence to be agitated by any emotion, principally by fear;
and then, perhaps, to flee in terror.
The glow of personal attachment to Jehovah which kindles in the trustful
words is eminently characteristic. It anticipates the final teaching of
the New Testament in bringing all the relations between God and the
devout soul down to the one bond of love. "We love Him because He first
loved us," says John. And David has the same discernment that the basis
of all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of God, and that the
only response which that seeking love requires is the awaking of the
echo of its own Divine voice in our hearts. Love begets love; love seeks
love; love rests in love. Our faith _corresponds_ to His faithfulness,
our obedience to His command, our reverence to His majesty; but our love
_resembles_ His, from which it draws its life. So the one exhortation is
"love the Lord," and the ground of it lies in that name--"His
beloved"--those to whom He shows His loving-kindness (ver. 21).
The closing words remind us of the last verse of psalm xxvii. They are
distinctly quoted from it, with the variation that there the heartening
to courage was addressed to his own soul, and here to "all who wait on
the Lord." The resemblance confirms the reference of both psalms to the
same epoch, while the difference suits the change in his circumstances
from a period of comparative danger, such as his stay at Adullam, to one
of greater security, like his residence in Ziklag. The same persons who
were called to love the Lord because they were participant of His
loving-kindness, are now called to courage and manly firmness of soul
because their hope is fixed on Jehovah. The progress of thought is
significant and obvious. Love to God, resting on consciousness of His
love to us, is the true armour. "There is no fear in love." The heart
filled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters,
while the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grinding
collision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry sea
of life. Love, too, is the condition of hope. The patience and
expectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the
sweetness of the former. Of these fair sisters, Love is the elder as the
greater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which Hope
forges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experience
supplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance;
and she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, and
clear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. To
love the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. So
had the psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous years
of exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on
his lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external
security, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. Not
in vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to his
feet from their stormy waves. Not in vain will ours be to us, if we
learn the lesson which he here would divide with all those "that wait on
the Lord."
Our limits prevent the further examination of the remaining psalms of
this period. It is the less necessary, inasmuch as those which have been
already considered fairly represent the whole. The xi., xiii., xvii.,
xxii., xxv., and lxiv. may, with varying probability, be considered as
belonging to the Sauline persecution. To this list some critics would
add the xl. and lxix., but on very uncertain grounds. But if we exclude
them, the others have a strong family likeness, not only with each
other, but with those which have been presented to the reader. The
imagery of the wilderness, which has become so familiar to us,
continually reappears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares,
the hunted psalmist like a timid bird among the hills; the protestation
of innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked,
the confidence that their own devices will come down on their heads, the
intense yearning of soul after God--are all repeated in these psalms.
Single metaphors and peculiar phrases which we have already met with
recur--as, for instance, "the shadow of Thy wings" (xvii. 8, lvii. 1),
and the singular phrase rendered in our version, "show Thy marvellous
loving-kindness" (xvii. 7, xxxi. 21), which is found only here. In one
of these psalms (xxxv. 13) there seems to be a reference to his earliest
days at the court, and to the depth of loving sympathy with Saul's
darkened spirit, which he learned to cherish, as he stood before him to
soothe him with the ordered harmonies of harp and voice. The words are
so definite that they appear to refer to some historic occasion:
And as for me--in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth,
With fasting I humbled my soul,
And my prayer into my own bosom returned.
So truly did he feel for him who is now his foe. The outward marks of
mourning became the natural expression of his feelings. Such is plainly
the meaning of the two former clauses, as well as of the following
verse. As the whole is a description of the outward signs of grief, it
seems better to understand the last of these three clauses as a picture
of the bent head sunk on the bosom even while he prayed,[N] than to
break the connection by referring it either to the requital of hate for
his sympathy,[O] or to the purity of his prayer, which was such that he
could desire nothing more for himself.[P] He goes on with the
enumeration of the signs of sorrow: "As if (he had been) a friend, a
brother to me, I went,"--walking slowly, like a man absorbed in sorrow:
"as one who laments a mother, in mourning garments I bowed
down,"--walking with a weary, heavy stoop, like one crushed by a
mother's death, with the garb of woe. Thus faithfully had he loved, and
truly wept for the noble ruined soul which, blinded by passion and
poisoned by lies, had turned to be his enemy. And that same love clung
by him to the last, as it ever does with great and good men, who learn
of God to suffer long and be kind, to bear all things, and hope all
things.
[N] So Ewald and Delitzsch.
[O] Hupfeld.
[P] Perowne.
Of these psalms the xxii. is remarkable. In it David's personal
experience seems to afford only the starting-point for a purely
Messianic prophecy, which embraces many particulars that far transcend
anything recorded of his sorrows. The impossibility of finding
occurrences in his life corresponding to such traits as tortured limbs
and burning thirst, pierced hands and parted garments, has driven some
critics to the hypothesis that we have here a psalm of the exile
describing either actual sufferings inflicted on some unknown confessor
in Babylon, or in figurative language the calamities of Israel there.
But the Davidic origin is confirmed by many obvious points of
resemblance with the psalms which are indisputably his, and especially
with those of the Sauline period, while the difficulty of finding
historical facts answering to the emphatic language is evaded, not met,
by either assuming that such facts existed in some life which has left
no trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which sound
wonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. Of course, if we
believe that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighter
than the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. But, unless we
have a foregone conclusion of that sort to blind us, we shall see in
this psalm a clear example of the prophecy of a suffering Messiah. In
most of the other psalms where David speaks of his sorrows we have only
a typical foreshadowing of Christ. But in this, and in such others as
lxix. and cix. (if these are David's), we have type changing into
prophecy, and the person of the psalmist fading away before the image
which, by occasion of his own griefs, rose vast, and solemn, and distant
before his prophet gaze,--the image of One who should be perfectly all
which he was in partial measure, the anointed of God, the utterer of His
name to His brethren, the King of Israel,--and whose path to His
dominion should be thickly strewn with solitary sorrow, and reproach,
and agony, to whose far more exceeding weight of woe all his affliction
was light as a feather, and transitory as a moment. And when the
psalmist had learned that lesson, besides all the others of trust and
patience which his wanderings taught him, his schooling was nearly over,
he was almost ready for a new discipline; and the slowly-evolving
revelation of God's purposes, which by his sorrows had unfolded more
distinctly than before "the sufferings of the Messiah," was ripening for
the unveiling, in his Kinghood, of "the glory that should follow."