'The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and
delivereth them.'--PSALM xxxiv. 7.
If we accept the statement in the superscription of this psalm, it dates
from one of the darkest hours in David's life. His fortunes were never
lower than when he fled from Gath, the city of Goliath, to Adullam. He
never appears in a less noble light than when he feigned madness to
avert the dangers which he might well dread there. How unlike the terror
and self-degradation of the man who 'scrabbled on the doors,' and let
'the spittle run down his beard,' is the heroic and saintly constancy of
this noble psalm! And yet the contrast is not so violent as to make the
superscription improbable, and the tone of the whole well corresponds to
what we should expect from a man delivered from some great peril, but
still surrounded with dangers. There, in the safety of his retreat among
the rocks, with the bit of level ground where he had fought Goliath just
at his feet in the valley, and Gath, from which he had escaped, away
down at the mouth of the glen (if Conder's identification of Adullam be
correct), he sings his song of trust and praise; he hears the lions roar
among the rocks where Samson had found them in his day; he teaches his
'children,' the band of broken men who there began to gather around him,
the fear of the Lord; and calls upon them to help him in his praise.
What a picture of the outlaw and his wild followers tamed into something
like order, and lifted into something like worship, rises before us, if
we follow the guidance of that old commentary contained in the
superscription!
The words of our text gain especial force and vividness by thus
localising the psalm. Not only 'the clefts of the rock' but the presence
of God's Angel is his defence; and round him is flung, not only the
strength of the hills, but the garrison and guard of heaven.
It is generally supposed that the 'Angel of the Lord' here is to be
taken collectively, and that the meaning is--the 'bright-harnessed'
hosts of these divine messengers are as an army of protectors round them
who fear God. But I see no reason for departing from the simpler and
certainly grander meaning which results from taking the word in its
proper force of a singular. True, Scripture does speak of the legions of
ministering spirits, who in their chariots of fire were once seen by
suddenly opened eyes 'round about' a prophet in peril, and are ever
ministering to the heirs of salvation. But Scripture also speaks of One,
who is in an eminent sense 'the Angel of the Lord'; in whom, as in none
other, God sets His 'Name'; whose form, dimly seen, towers above even
the ranks of the angels that 'excel in strength'; whose offices and
attributes blend in mysterious fashion with those of God Himself. There
may be some little incongruity in thinking of the single Person as
'encamping round about' us; but that does not seem a sufficient reason
for obliterating the reference to that remarkable Old Testament
doctrine, the retention of which seems to me to add immensely to the
power of the words.
Remember some of the places in which the 'Angel of the Lord' appears, in
order to appreciate more fully the grandeur of this promised protection.
At that supreme moment when Abraham 'took the knife to slay his son,'
the voice that 'called to him out of heaven' was 'the voice of the Angel
of the Lord.' He assumes the power of reversing a divine command. He
says, 'Thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from _Me_,' and
then pronounces a blessing, in the utterance of which one cannot
distinguish His voice from the voice of Jehovah. In like manner it is
the Angel of the Lord that speaks to Jacob, and says, 'I am the God of
Bethel.' The dying patriarch invokes in the same breath 'the God which
fed me all my life long,' 'the Angel which redeemed me from all evil,'
to bless the boys that stand before him, with their wondering eyes
gazing in awe on his blind face. It was that Angel's glory that appeared
to the outcast, flaming in the bush that burned unconsumed. It was He
who stood before the warrior leader of Israel, sword in hand, and
proclaimed Himself to be the Captain of the Lord's host, the Leader of
the armies of heaven, and the true Leader of the armies of Israel; and
His commands to Joshua, His lieutenant, are the commands of 'the Lord.'
And, to pass over other instances, Isaiah correctly sums up the spirit
of the whole earlier history in words which go far to lift the
conception of this Angel of the Lord out of the region of created
beings--'In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His
face saved them,'
It is this lofty and mysterious Messenger, and not the hosts whom He
commands, that our Psalmist sees standing ready to help, as He once
stood, sword-bearing by the side of Joshua. To the warrior leader, to
the warrior Psalmist, He appears, as their needs required, armoured and
militant. The last of the prophets saw that dim, mysterious Figure, and
proclaimed, 'The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple;
even the Angel of the Covenant, whom ye delight in'; and to his gaze it
was wrapped in obscure majesty and terror of purifying flame. But for us
the true Messenger of the Lord is His Son, whom He has sent, in whom He
has put His name; who is the Angel of His face, in that we behold the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; who is the Angel of the
Covenant, in that He has sealed the new and everlasting covenant with
His blood; and whose own parting promise, 'Lo! I am with you always,' is
the highest fulfilment to us Christians of that ancient confidence: 'The
Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him.'
Whatever view we adopt of the significance of the first part of the
text, the force and beauty of the metaphor in the second remain the
same. If this psalm were indeed the work of the fugitive in his rocky
hold at Adullam, how appropriate the thought becomes that his little
encampment has such a guard. It reminds one of the incident in Jacob's
life, when his timid and pacific nature was trembling at the prospect of
meeting Esau, and when, as he travelled along, encumbered with his
pastoral wealth, and scantily provided with means of defence, 'the
angels of God met him, and he named the place Mahanaim,' that is, two
camps--his own feeble company, mostly made up of women and children, and
that heavenly host that hovered above them. David's faith sees the same
defence encircling his weakness, and though sense saw no protection for
him and his men but their own strong arms and their mountain fastness,
his opened eyes beheld the mountain full of the chariots of fire, and
the flashing of armour and light in the darkness of his cave.
The vision of the divine presence ever takes the form which our
circumstances most require. David's then need was safety and protection.
Therefore he saw the Encamping Angel; even as to Joshua the leader He
appeared as the Captain of the Lord's host; and as to Isaiah, in the
year that the throne of Judah was emptied by the death of the earthly
king, was given the vision of the Lord sitting on a throne, the King
Eternal and Immortal. So to us all His grace shapes its expression
according to our wants, and the same gift is Protean in its power of
transformation; being to one man wisdom, to another strength, to the
solitary companionship, to the sorrowful consolation, to the glad
sobering, to the thinker truth, to the worker practical force--to each
his heart's desire, if the heart's delight be God. So manifold are the
aspects of God's infinite sufficiency, that every soul, in every
possible variety of circumstance, will find there just what will suit
it. That armour fits every man who puts it on. That deep fountain is
like some of those fabled springs which give forth whatsoever precious
draught any thirsty lip asked. He takes the shape that our circumstances
most need. Let us see that we, on our parts, use our circumstances to
help us in anticipating the shapes in which God will draw near for our
help.
Learn, too, from this image, in which the Psalmist appropriates to
himself the experience of a past generation, how we ought to feed our
confidence and enlarge our hopes by all God's past dealings with men.
David looks back to Jacob, and believes that the old fact is repeated in
his own day. So every old story is true for us; though outward form may
alter, inward substance remains the same. Mahanaim is still the name of
every place where a man who loves God pitches his tent. We may be
wandering, solitary, defenceless, but we are not alone. Our feeble
encampment may lie open to assault, and we be all unfit to guard it, but
the other camp is there too, and our enemies must force their way
through it before they get at us. We are in its centre--as they put the
cattle and the sick in the midst of the encampment on the prairies when
they fear an assault from the Indians--because we are so weak. Jacob's
experience may be ours: 'The Lord of Hosts is with us: the God of Jacob
is our refuge.'
Only remember that the eye of faith alone can see that guard, and that
therefore we must labour to keep our consciousness of its reality fresh
and vivid. Many a man in David's little band saw nothing but cold gray
stone where David saw the flashing armour of the heavenly Warrior. To
the one all the mountain blazed with fiery chariots, to the other it was
a lone hillside, with the wind moaning among the rocks. We shall lose
the joy and the strength of that divine protection unless we honestly
and constantly try to keep our sense of it bright. Eyes that have been
gazing on earthly joys, or perhaps gloating on evil sights, cannot see
the Angel presence. A Christian man, on a road which he cannot travel
with a clear conscience, will see no angel, not even the Angel with the
drawn sword in His hand, that barred Balaam's path among the vineyards.
A man coming out of some room blazing with light cannot all at once see
into the violet depths of the mighty heavens, that lie above him with
all their shimmering stars. So this truth of our text is a truth of
faith, and the believing eye alone beholds the Angel of the Lord.
Notice, too, that final word of deliverance. This psalm is continually
recurring to that idea. The word occurs four times in it, and the
thought still oftener. Whether the date is rightly given, as we have
assumed it to be, or not, at all events that harping upon this one
phrase indicates that some season of great trial was its birth-time,
when all the writer's thoughts were engrossed and his prayers summed up
in the one thing--deliverance. He is quite sure that such deliverance
must follow if the Angel presence be there. But he knows too that the
encampment of the Angel of the Lord will not keep away sorrows, and
trial, and sharp need. So his highest hope is not of immunity from
these, but of rescue out of them. And his ground of hope is that his
heavenly Ally cannot let him be overcome. That He will let him be
troubled and put in peril he has found; that He will not let him be
crushed he believes. Shadowed and modest hopes are the brightest we can
venture to cherish. The protection which we have is protection in, and
not protection from, strife and danger. It is a filter which lets the
icy cold water of sorrow drop numbing upon us, but keeps back the poison
that was in it. We have to fight, but He will fight with us; to sorrow,
but not alone nor without hope; to pass through many a peril, but we
shall get through them. Deliverance, which implies danger, need, and
woe, is the best we can hope for.
It is the least we are entitled to expect if we love Him. It is the
certain issue of His encamping round about us. Always with us, He will
strike for us at the best moment. The Lord God is in the midst of her
always; 'the Lord will help her, and that right early.' So like the
hunted fugitive in Adullam we may lift up our confident voices even when
the stress of strife and sorrow is upon us; and though Gath be in sight
and Saul just over the hills, and we have no better refuge than a cave
in a hillside; yet in prophecy built upon our consciousness that the
Angel of the Covenant is with us now, we may antedate the deliverance
that shall be, and think of it as even now accomplished. So the Apostle,
when within sight of the block and the headsman's axe, broke into the
rapture of his last words: 'The Lord shall deliver me from every evil
work, and will preserve me to His heavenly kingdom: to whom be glory for
ever and ever. Amen.' Was he wrong?