The psalms which probably belong to the period of Absalom's rebellion
correspond well with the impression of his spirit gathered from the
historical books. Confidence in God, submission to His will, are
strongly expressed in them, and we may almost discern a progress in the
former respect as the rebellion grows. They flame brighter and brighter
in the deepening darkness. From the lowest abyss the stars are seen most
clearly. He is far more buoyant when he is an exile once more in the
wilderness, and when the masks of plot and trickery are fallen, and the
danger stands clear before him. Like some good ship issuing from the
shelter of the pier heads, the first blow of the waves throws her over
on her side and makes her quiver like a living thing recoiling from a
terror, but she rises above the tossing surges and keeps her course. We
may allocate with a fair amount of likelihood the following psalms to
this period--iii.; iv.; xxv. (?); xxviii. (?); lviii. (?); lxi.; lxii.;
lxiii.; cix. (?); cxliii.
The first two of these form a pair; they are a morning and an evening
hymn. The little band are encamped on their road to Mahanaim, with no
roof but the stars, and no walls but the arm of God. In the former the
discrowned king sings, as he rises from his nightly bivouac. He pours
out first his plaint of the foes, who are described as "many," and as
saying that, "There is no help for him in God," words which fully
correspond to the formidable dimensions of the revolt, and to the belief
which actuated the conspirators, and had appeared as possible even to
himself, that his sin had turned away the aid of heaven from his cause.
To such utterances of malice and confident hatred he opposes the
conviction which had again filled his soul, that even in the midst of
real peril and the shock of battle Jehovah is his "shield." With bowed
and covered head he had fled from Jerusalem, but "Thou art the lifter up
of mine head." He was an exile from the tabernacle on Zion, and he had
sent back the ark to its rest; but though he has to cry to God from
beyond Jordan, He answers "from His holy hill." He and his men camped
amidst dangers, but one unslumbering Helper mounted guard over their
undefended slumbers. "I laid me down and slept" there among the echoes
of the hills. "I awaked, for Jehovah sustained me;" and another night
has passed without the sudden shout of the rebels breaking the silence,
or the gleam of their swords in the starlight. The experience of
protection thus far heartens him to front even the threatening circle of
his foes around him, whom it is his pain to think of as "the people" of
God, and yet as his foes. And then he betakes himself in renewed energy
of faith to his one weapon of prayer, and even before the battle sees
the victory, and the Divine power fracturing the jaws and breaking the
teeth of the wild beasts who hunt him. But his last thought is not of
retribution nor of fear; for himself he rises to the height of serene
trust, "Salvation is of the Lord;" and for his foes and for all the
nation that had risen against him his thoughts are worthy of a true
king, freed from all personal animosity, and his words are a prayer
conceived in the spirit of Him whose dying breath was intercession for
His rebellious subjects who crucified their King, "Thy blessing be upon
Thy people."
The fourth psalm is the companion evening hymn. Its former portion
(vers. 2-4) seems to be a remonstrance addressed as if to the leaders of
the revolt ("sons of men" being equivalent to "persons of rank and
dignity"). It is the expression in vivid form, most natural to such a
nature, of his painful feeling under their slanders; and also of his
hopes and desires for them, that calm thought in these still evening
hours which are falling on the world may lead them to purer service and
to reliance on God. So forgivingly, so lovingly does he think of them,
ere he lays himself down to rest, wishing that "on their beds," as on
his, the peace of meditative contemplation may rest, and the day of
war's alarms be shut in by holy "communion with their own hearts" and
with God.
The second portion turns to himself and his followers, among whom we may
suppose some faint hearts were beginning to despond; and to them, as to
the very enemy, David would fain be the bringer of a better mind. "Many
say, Who will show us good?" He will turn them from their vain search
round the horizon on a level with their own eyes for the appearance of
succour. They must look upwards, not round about. They must turn their
question, which only expects a negative answer, into a prayer, fashioned
like that triple priestly benediction of old (Numbers vi. 24-26). His
own experience bursts forth irrepressible. He had prayed in his hour of
penitence, "Make me to hear joy and gladness" (Psa. li.); and the prayer
had been answered, if not before, yet now when peril had brought him
nearer to God, and trust had drawn God nearer to him. In his calamity,
as is ever the case with devout souls, his joy increased, as Greek fire
burns more brightly under water. Therefore this pauper sovereign,
discrowned and fed by the charity of the Gileadite pastoral chief,
sings, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that
their corn and wine increased." And how tranquilly the psalm closes, and
seems to lull itself to rest, "In peace I will at once lie down and
sleep, for Thou, O Jehovah, only makest me dwell safely." The growing
security which experience of God's care should ever bring, is
beautifully marked by the variation on the similar phrase in the
previous psalm. There he gratefully recorded that he had laid himself
down and slept; here he promises himself that he will lie down "in
peace;" and not only so, but that at once on his lying down he will
sleep--kept awake by no anxieties, by no bitter thoughts, but, homeless
and in danger as he is, will close his eyes, like a tired child, without
a care or a fear, and forthwith sleep, with the pressure and the
protection of his Father's arm about him.
This psalm sounds again the glad trustful strain which has slumbered in
his harp-strings ever since the happy old days of his early trials, and
is re-awakened as the rude blast of calamity sweeps through them once
more.
The sixty-third psalm is by the superscription referred to the time when
David was "in the wilderness of Judah," which has led many readers to
think of his long stay there during Saul's persecution. But the psalm
certainly belongs to the period of his reign, as is obvious from its
words, "_The king_ shall rejoice in God." It must therefore belong to
his brief sojourn in the same wilderness on his flight to Mahanaim,
when, as we read in 2 Sam., "The people were weary and hungry and
thirsty in the wilderness." There is a beautiful progress of thought in
it, which is very obvious if we notice the triple occurrence of the
words "my soul," and their various connections--"my soul thirsteth," "my
soul is satisfied," "my soul followeth hard after Thee;" or, in other
words, the psalm is a transcript of the passage of a believing soul from
longing through fruition to firm trust, in which it is sustained by the
right hand of God.
The first of these emotions, which is so natural to the fugitive in his
sorrows, is expressed with singular poetic beauty in language borrowed
from the ashen grey monotony of the waterless land in which he was. One
of our most accurate and least imaginative travellers describes it thus:
"There were no signs of vegetation, with the exception of a few reeds
and rushes, and here and there a tamarisk." This lonely land, cracked
with drought, as if gaping with chapped lips for the rain that comes
not, is the image of his painful yearning for the Fountain of living
waters. As his men plodded along over the burning marl, fainting for
thirst and finding nothing in the dry torrent beds, so he longed for the
refreshment of that gracious presence. Then he remembers how in happier
days he had had the same desires, and they had been satisfied in the
tabernacle. Probably the words should read, "Thus in the sanctuary have
I gazed upon Thee, to see Thy power and Thy glory." In the desert and in
the sanctuary his longing had been the same, but then he had been able
to behold the symbol which bore the name, "the glory,"--and now he
wanders far from it. How beautifully this regretful sense of absence
from and pining after the ark is illustrated by those inimitably
pathetic words of the fugitive's answer to the priests who desired to
share his exile. "And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of
God into the city. If I find favour in the eyes of the Lord, He will
bring me again, and show me both it and His habitation."
The fulfilment is cotemporaneous with the desire. The swiftness of the
answer is beautifully indicated in the quick turn with which the psalm
passes from plaintive longing to exuberant rapture of fruition. In the
one breath "my soul thirsteth;" in the next, "my soul is satisfied"--as
when in tropical lands the rain comes, and in a day or two what had been
baked earth is rich meadow, and the dry torrent-beds, where the white
stones glistered in the sunshine, foam with rushing waters and are edged
with budding willows. The fulness of satisfaction when God fills the
soul is vividly expressed in the familiar image of the feast of "marrow
and fatness," on which he banquets even while hungry in the desert. The
abundant delights of fellowship with God make him insensible to external
privations, are drink for him thirsty, food for his hunger, a home in
his wanderings, a source of joy and music in the midst of much that is
depressing: "My mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips." The little
camp had to keep keen look-out for nightly attacks; and it is a slight
link of connection, very natural under the circumstances, between the
psalms of this period, that they all have some references to the
perilous hours of darkness. We have found him laying himself down to
sleep in peace; here he wakes, not to guard from hostile surprises, but
in the silence there below the stars to think of God and feel again the
fulness of His all-sufficiency. Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes
waking. "I remember Thee upon my bed."
The fruition heartens for renewed exercise of confidence, in which
David feels himself upheld by God, and foresees his enemies' defeat and
his own triumph. "My soul cleaveth after Thee"--a remarkable phrase, in
which the two metaphors of tenacious adherence and eager following are
mingled to express the two "phases of faith," which are really one--of
union with and quest after God, the possession which pursues, the
pursuit which possesses Him who is at once grasped and felt after by the
finite creature whose straitest narrowness is not too narrow to be
blessed by some indwelling of God, but whose widest expansion of
capacity and desire can but contain a fragment of His fulness. From such
elevation of high communion he looks down and onward into the dim
future, his enemies sunken, like Korah and his rebels, into the gaping
earth, or scattered in fight, and the jackals that were snuffing
hungrily about his camp in the wilderness gorging themselves on corpses,
while he himself, once more "king," shall rejoice in God, and with his
faithful companions, whose lips and hearts were true to God and His
anointed, shall glory in the deliverance that by the arbitrament of
victory has flung back the slanders of the rebels in their teeth, and
choked them with their own lies.
Our space forbids more than a brief reference to psalm lxii., which
seems also to belong to this time. It has several points of contact with
those already considered, _e.g._, the phrase, "sons of men," in the
sense of "nobles" (ver. 9); "my soul," as equivalent to "myself," and
yet as a kind of quasi-separate personality which he can study and
exhort; the significant use of the term "people," and the double
exhortations to his own devout followers and to the arrogant enemy. The
whole tone is that of patient resignation, which we have found
characterising David now. The first words are the key-note of the whole,
"Truly unto God my soul is silence"--is all one great stillness of
submissive waiting upon Him. It was in the very crisis of his fate, in
the suspense of the uncertain issue of the rebellion, that these words,
the very sound of which has calmed many a heart since, welled to his
lips. The expression of unwavering faith and unbroken peace is much
heightened by the frequent recurrence of the word which is variously
translated "truly," "surely," and "only." It carries the force of
confident affirmation, like the "verily" of the New Testament, and is
here most significantly prefixed to the assertions of his patient
resignation (ver. 1); of God's defence (ver. 2); of the enemies'
whispered counsels (ver. 4); to his exhortation of his soul to the
resignation which it already exercises (ver. 5); and to the triumphant
reiteration of God's all-sufficient protection. How beautifully, too,
does that reiteration--almost verbal repetition--of the opening words
strengthen the impression of his habitual trust. His soul in its silence
murmurs to itself, as it were, the blessed thoughts over and over again.
Their echoes haunt his spirit "lingering and wandering on, as loth to
die;" and if for a moment the vision of his enemies disturbs their flow,
one indignant question flung at them suffices, "How long will ye rush
upon a man? (how long) will ye all of you thrust him down as (if he
were) a bowing wall, a tottering fence?" and with a rapid glance at
their plots and bitter words, he comes back again to his calm gaze on
God. Lovingly he accumulates happy names for Him, which, in their
imagery, as well as in their repetition, remind us of the former songs
of the fugitive. "My rock," in whom I hide; "He is my salvation," which
is even more than "from Him cometh my salvation;" my "fortress," my
"glory," "the rock of my strength," "my refuge." So many phases of his
need and of God's sufficiency thus gathered together, tell how familiar
to the thoughts and real to the experience of the aged fugitive was his
security in Jehovah. The thirty years since last he had wandered there
have confirmed the faith of his earlier songs; and though the ruddy
locks of the young chieftain are silvered with grey now, and sins and
sorrows have saddened him, yet he can take up again with deeper meaning
the tones of his old praise, and let the experience of age seal with its
"verily" the hopes of youth. Exhortations to his people to unite
themselves with him in his faith, and assurances that God is a refuge
for them too, with solemn warnings to the rebels, close this psalm of
glad submission. It is remarkable for the absence of all petitions. He
needs nothing beyond what he has. As the companion psalm says, his soul
"is satisfied." Communion with God has its moments of restful
blessedness, when desire is stilled, and expires in peaceful fruition.
The other psalms of this period must be left unnoticed. The same general
tone pervades them all. In many particulars they closely resemble those
of the Sauline period. But the resemblance fails very significantly at
one point. The emphatic assertion of his innocence is gone for ever.
Pardoned indeed he is, cleansed, conscious of God's favour, and able to
rejoice in it; but carrying to the end the remembrance of his sore fall,
and feeling it all the more penitently, the more he is sure of God's
forgiveness. Let us remember that there are sins which, once done, leave
their traces on memory and conscience, painting indelible forms on the
walls of our "chambers of imagery," and transmitting results which
remission and sanctifying do not, on earth at least, wholly obliterate.
Let David's youthful prayer be ours, "Keep back Thy servant from
presumptuous sins: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from
much transgression."
It does not fall within the scope of this volume to deal with the
suppression of Absalom's revolt, nor with the ten years of rule that
remained to David after his restoration. The psalter does not appear to
contain psalms which throw light upon the somewhat clouded closing
years of his reign. One psalm, indeed, there is attributed to him, which
is, at any rate, the work of an old man--a sweet song into which mellow
wisdom has condensed its final lessons--and a snatch of it may stand
instead of any summing-up of the life by us:
"Trust in the Lord, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and enjoy security;
Delight thyself also in the Lord,
And He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.
Commit thy way unto the Lord.
Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.
I have been young and now am old,
Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.
I have seen the wicked in great power,
And spreading himself like a green tree....
Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not."
May we not apply the next words to the psalmist himself, and hear him
calling us to look on him as he lies on his dying bed--disturbed though
it were by ignoble intrigues of hungry heirs--after so many storms
nearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging
home; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God:
"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man
is peace?" Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset,
all the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. The music of his
songs die away into "peace;" as when some master holds our ears captive
with tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, until
the jar of common noises, which that low sweetness had deadened, rushes
in.
One strain of a higher mood is preserved for us in the historical books
that prophesy of the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less
than his consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. The dying
eyes see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of Him who is to
be a just and perfect ruler; before the brightness of whose presence,
and the refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe
the world. As the shades gather, that radiant glory to come brightens.
He departs in peace, having seen the salvation from afar. It was fitting
that this fullest of his prophecies should be the last of his strains,
as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings had snapped them
in twain.
And then, for earth, the richest voice which God ever tuned for His
praise was hushed, and the harp of Jesse's son hangs untouched above his
grave. But for him death was God's last, best answer to his prayer, "O
Lord, open Thou my lips;" and as that cold but most loving hand
unclothes him from the weakness of flesh, and leads him in among the
choirs of heaven, we can almost hear again his former thanksgiving
breaking from his immortal lips, "Thou hast put a new song into my
mouth," whose melodies, unsaddened by plaintive minors of penitence and
pain, are yet nobler and sweeter than the psalms which he sang here, and
left to be the solace and treasure of all generations!