The Psalms Book 2: Psalms 50-54

A new series appropriately follows in this cluster of Psalms, which opens with God's summons of His people to judgment; and this calls forth the remnant's confession of corruption and blood-guilt, in both acknowledging the insufficiency of legal sacrifice and offering without brokenness of spirit and confidence in divine grace. In Zion we have an instruction that takes the shape of a plaint against their violent and deceitful oppressor with the assurance of his destruction on God's part, Who will deliver and bless His godly ones in His lovingkindness forever. Then comes the moral exposure of the lawless one, but in terms which the apostle in Rom. 3 applies to those under the law; for indeed the Jews as a mass will be first as their chief, the son of perdition; and the heart of a sinner, where not law only but Christ in grace is abandoned, is no better than an Antichrist; and this is morally true since the cross and the rejection of the gospel. The sense of this in the remnant turns by the Spirit into desire for Israel's salvation when God has scattered the bones of the foes who beleaguered the object of His choice. In Psa. 54 the Spirit of Christ identifies the godly with Himself in resting every expectation on the name of God when covenant mercies are gone; but the end is thanksgiving to Jehovah when He has delivered the godly Jew out of all trouble in the displayed judgment of his enemies.
“A psalm of Asaph. God (El), Elohim-Jehovah, hath spoken and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. Our God will come and not be silent: a fire before him shall devour, and around him it shall be tempestuous. He calleth to the heavens from above and to the earth to judge his people. Gather unto me my saints making my covenant by (over) sacrifice. And the heavens declare his righteousness, for God [is] judge himself. Selah. Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, and I will testify unto (against) thee: God, thy God, [am] I. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices and thy burnt offerings continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, [nor] he-goats out of thy folds. For mine [is] every beast of the forest, cattle upon a thousand hills; I know every bird of the mountains, and the wealth of the field [is] mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for mine [is] the world and its fullness. Shall I eat the bulls (strong ones), and drink the blood of he-goats? Sacrifice unto God thanksgiving and pay unto the Most High thy vows: and call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and the), shalt glorify me. And to the wicked God saith, What [is it] to thee, to declare my statutes? And thou hast taken my covenant into thy mouth, and thou hast hated correction, and hast cast my words behind thee. When thou saweth a thief, thou didst take pleasure in him, and with adulterers [was] thy portion. Thy mouth thou hast sent (let loose) unto evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sitteth, thou speakest against thy brother; against thy mother's son thou utterest slander.
These things hast thou done, and I kept silence, thou thoughtest I was altogether like thee. I will reprove thee and set (them) in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, forgetters of God (Eloah), lest I tear in pieces, and there be no deliverer. He that sacrificeth praise glorifieth me, and to him that ordereth [his] way will I show the salvation of God” (vss. 1-23).