'Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits.'--(A.V.).
'Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden.'
--PSALM lxviii. 19 (R.V.).
The difference between these two renderings seems to be remarkable, and
a person ignorant of any language but our own might find it hard to
understand how any one sentence was susceptible of both. But the
explanation is extremely simple. The important words in the Authorised
Version, 'with benefits,' are a supplement, having nothing to represent
them in the original. The word translated '_loadeth_' in the one
rendering and '_beareth_' in the other admits of both these meanings
with equal ease, and is, in fact, employed in both of them in other
places in Scripture. It is clear, I think, that, in this case, at all
events, the Revision is an improvement. For the great objection to the
rendering which has become familiar to us all, 'Who daily loadeth us
_with benefits_,' is that these essential words are not in the original,
and need to be supplied in order to make out the sense. Whereas, on the
other hand, if we adopt the suggested emendation, 'Who daily beareth our
burdens,' we get a still more beautiful meaning, which requires no
forced addition in order to bring it out. So, then, I accept that varied
form of our text as the one on which I desire to say a few words now.
I. The first thing that strikes me in looking at it is the remarkable
and eloquent blending of majesty and condescension.
It is not without significance that the Psalmist employs that name for
God in this clause, which most strongly expresses the idea of supremacy
and dominion. Rule and dignity are the predominant ideas in the word
'Lord,' as, indeed, the English reader feels in hearing it; and then,
side by side with that, there lies this thought, that the Highest, the
Ruler of all, whose absolute authority stretches over all mankind,
stoops to this low and servile office, and becomes the burden-bearer for
all the pilgrims who will put their trust in Him. This blending together
of the two ideas of dignity and condescension to lowly offices of help
and furtherance is made even more emphatic if we glance back at the
context of the psalm. For there is no place in Scripture in which there
is flashed before the mind of the singer a grander picture of the
magnificence and the glory of God, than that which glitters and flames
in the previous verses. We read in them of God 'riding through the
heavens by His name Jehovah'; of Him as marching at the head of the
people, through the wilderness, and of the earth quivering at His tread,
and the heavens dropping at His presence. We read of Zion itself being
moved at the presence of the Lord. We read of His word going forth so
mightily as to scatter armies and their kings. We read of the chariots
of God as 'twenty thousand, even thousands of angels.' All is gathered
together in the great verse, 'Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led
captivity captive.' And then, before he has taken breath almost, the
Psalmist turns, with most striking and dramatic abruptness, from the
contemplation, awe-struck and yet jubilant, of all that tremendous,
magnificent, and earth-shaking power to this wonderful thought, 'Blessed
be the Lord! who daily beareth our burdens.' Not only does He march at
the head of the congregation through the wilderness, but He comes, if I
might so say, behind the caravan, amongst the carriers and the porters,
and will bear anything that any of the weary pilgrims intrusts to His
care.
Oh, dear brethren! if familiarity did not dull the glory of it, what a
thought that is--a God that carries men's loads! People talk much
rubbish about the 'stern Old Testament Deity'; is there anything
sweeter, greater, more heart-compelling and heart-softening, than such a
thought as this? How all the majesty bows itself, and declares itself to
be enlisted on our side, when we think that 'He that sitteth on the
circle of the heavens, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers'
is the God that 'daily beareth our burdens'!
And that is the tone of the Old Testament throughout, for you will
always find braided together in the closest vital unity the
representation of these two aspects of the divine nature; and if ever we
hear set forth a more than ordinarily magnificent conception of His
power and majesty be sure that, if you look, you will find side by side
with it a more than ordinarily tender representation of His gentleness
and His grace. And if we look deeper, this is not a case of contrast, it
is not that there are sharply opposed to each other these two things,
the gentleness and the greatness, the condescension and the
magnificence, but that the former is the direct result of the latter;
and it is just because He is Lord, and has dominion over all, that,
therefore, He bears the burdens of all. For the responsibilities of the
Creator are in proportion to His greatness, and He that has made man has
thereby made it necessary that He should, if they will let Him, be their
Burden-bearer and their Servant. The highest must be the lowest, and
just because God is high over all, blessed for ever, therefore is He the
Supporter and Sustainer of all. So we may learn the true meaning of
elevation of all sorts, and from the example of loftiest, may draw the
lesson for our more insignificant varieties of height, that the higher
we are, the more we are bound to stoop, and that men are then likest
God, when their elevation suggests to them responsibility, and when he
that is chiefest becomes the servant.
II. So, then, notice next the deep insight into the heart and ways of
God here.
'He daily beareth our burdens.' If there is any meaning in this word at
all, it means that He so knits Himself with us as that all which touches
us touches Him, that He takes a share in all our pressing duties, and
feels the reflection from all our sorrows and pains. We have no
impassive God in the heavens, careless of mankind, nor is His settled
and changeless and unshaded blessedness of such a sort as that there
cannot pass across it--if I may not say a shadow, I may at least say--a
ripple from men's pangs and troubles and cares. Love is the
identification of oneself with the beloved object. We call it sympathy,
when we are speaking about the fellow feeling between man and man that
is kindled of love. But there is something deeper than sympathy in that
great Heart, which gathers into itself all hearts, and in that great
Being, whose being underlies all our beings, and is the root from which
we all live and grow. God, in all our afflictions, is afflicted; and in
simple though profound verity, has that which is most truly represented
to men, by calling it a fellow feeling with our infirmities and our
sorrows.
'Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not nigh;
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.'
For want of a better word, we speak of the sympathy of God: but we need
something far more intimate and unwearied than we understand by that
word, to express the community of feeling between all who trust Him and
His own infinite heart. If this bearing of our burden means anything, it
gives us a deep insight, too, into His workings, as well as into His
heart. For it covers over this great truth that He Himself comes to us,
and by the communication of His own power to us, makes us able to bear
the burdens which we roll upon Him. The meaning of His 'lifting our
load,' in so far as that expression refers to the divine act rather than
the divine heart, is that He breathes into us the strength by which we
can carry the heavy task of duties, and can endure the crushing pressure
of our sorrows. All the endurance of the saints is God in them bearing
their burdens.
Notice, too, '_daily_ beareth,' or, as the Hebrew has it yet more
emphatically because more simply, 'day by day beareth.' He travels with
us, in the greatness of His might and the long-suffering of His
unwearied patience, through all our tribulation, and as He has 'borne
and carried' His people 'all the days of old,' so, at each new
recurrence of new weights, He is with us still. Like some river that
runs by the wayside and ever cheers the traveller on the dusty path with
its music, and offers its waters to cool his thirsty lips, so, day by
day, in the slow iteration of our lingering sorrows, and in the
monotonous recurrence of our habitual duties, there is with us the
ever-present help of the Ancient of Days, who measures out daily
strength for the daily load, and never sends the one without proffering
the other.
III. So, again, notice here the remarkable anticipation of the very
heart of the Gospel.
'The God who daily beareth our burdens,' says the Psalmist. He spoke
deeper things than he knew, and was wiser than he understood. For the
hope that gleams in these words comes to fulfilment, in Him of whom it
was written in prophetic anticipation, so clear and definite that it
reads like historical narrative--'He bare our grief and carried our
sorrows. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him. The Lord hath laid
on Him the iniquity of us all.'
Ah! it were of small avail to know a God that bore the burden of our
sorrows and the load of our duties, if we did not know a God who bore
the weight of our sins. For that is the real crushing weight that breaks
men's hearts and bows them to the earth. So the New Testament, with its
message of a Christ on whom is laid the whole pressure of the world's
sin, is the deepest fulfilment of the great words of my text.