'Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most
High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall
any plague come nigh thy dwelling.'--PSALM xci. 9, 10.
It requires a good deal of piecing to make out from the Hebrew the
translation of our Authorised Version here. The simple, literal
rendering of the first words of these verses is, 'Surely, Thou, O Lord!
art my Refuge'; and I do not suppose that any of the expedients which
have been adopted to modify that translation would have been adopted,
but that these words seem to cut in two the long series of rich promises
and blessings which occupy the rest of the psalm. But it is precisely
this interruption of the flow of the promises which puts us on the right
track for understanding the words in question, because it leads us to
take them as the voice of the devout man, to whom the promises are
addressed, responding to them by the expression of his own faith.
The Revised Version is much better here than our Authorised Version, for
it has recognised this breach of continuity of sequence in the promises,
and translated as I have suggested; making the first words of my text,
'Thou, O Lord! art my Refuge,' the voice of one singer, and 'Because
thou hast made the Most High thy habitation, there shall no evil befall
thee, neither shall any evil come nigh thy dwelling,' the voice of
another.
Whether or no it be that in the Liturgical service of the Temple this
psalm was sung by two choirs which answered one another, does not matter
for our purpose. Whether or no we regard the first clause as the voice
of the Psalmist speaking to God, and the other as the same man speaking
to himself, does not matter. The point is that, first, there is an
exclamation of personal faith, and that then that is followed and
answered, as it were, by the further promise of continual blessings. One
voice says, 'Thou, Lord! art my Refuge,' and then another voice--not
God's, because that speaks in majesty at the end of the psalm--replies
to that burst of confidence, 'Thou hast made the Lord thy habitation'
(as thou hast done by this confession of faith), 'there shall no evil
come nigh thy dwelling.'