7.05. Chapter 1 - The Invocation
Chapter 1 The Invocation
“O SHEPHERD of Israel, give ear”—this is the order of the words in the original in the first line of our psalm. How beautiful and significant is this name of God! it was first used by Jacob in blessing Ephraim and Manasses in Gen_48:15, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God who hath fed me”1 (literally “who hath shepherded me”) “all my life long unto this day, the Angel which hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads”; and again in his final blessing of Joseph he exclaims: “Thence is the Shepherd the stone of Israel.” We can imagine how full of meaning that name, as applied to God, must have been in the mouth of the patriarch. He knew what it meant to be a shepherd. For twenty years he had tended Laban’s sheep, enduring all sorts of hardships and privations in his devotion to them. “Thus I was,” he says in his remonstrance with his wily father-in-law, “in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep departed from my eyes” (Gen_31:40). It subsequently became a very favourite name for God; and no wonder, for next to the precious names “father” and “husband,” there is no name which so fully describes what God is to His people and to the soul that trusts in Him. It is, however, only in and through Christ that we can learn to know God in this very blessed relationship. This is clearly set forth in the prophetic scriptures in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament. The great Old Testament scripture which sets forth the shepherd relation of God to His people is Eze_34:1 &c. There we read how God will “seek” and “deliver” and “heal” and “strengthen” and “feed” and “rest” and “satisfy” His flock; but when we come to the last part of that chapter, He tells us that He would be and shall yet be all this for Israel in and through the Messiah “And I will set up one Shepherd over them,” He says, and “He shall feed them, even My servant David; He shall feed them and be their Shepherd; they shall dwell safely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods.” And so also in Eze_37:24, “And my servant David2 shall be king over them, and they all shall have one Shepherd; they shall also walk in My judgments and observe My statutes and do them.” It is only, therefore, when Israel’s ear is opened to hear the voice of Him who says, “I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep,” that they will be able intelligently and in truth to say, “Jehovah is my Shepherd”; or to cry out, as the prophetic writer by the Spirit of Inspiration does in this psalm, “O Shepherd of Israel.”
1 There is much more in the Hebrew word רֹעֶ֣ה than “to feed.” There are implied in it also the ideas of keeping, leading, ruling over, &c.
2 Even the Jews explained the name “David” in these passages as applying to the Messiah—the great Son of David, in whom all the promises to the Davidic house are centred. Thus Kimchi, in his comment on Eze_34:23, says: “My servant David—that is, the Messiah who shall spring from his seed in the time of salvation”; and in Eze_37:24, he observes: “The King Messiah—His name shall be called David because He shall be of the seed of David.” And so practically all the Jewish commentators. The figure of the Shepherd and the flock is continued in the second line:
“Thou that leadest Joseph like a flock”— who in thy capacity as Shepherd of Israel didst tend and guide, and wert all to them that a shepherd is to his flock:
“Thou that dwellest [literally ‘that sittest enthroned’] between the Cherubim”— i.e., who didst manifest Thy special presence in our midst, dwelling in the Tabernacle and in the Temple in that symbolic cloud of the Shekinah glory—
“Shine forth”— let the light of Thy countenance, O thou Sun of Righteousness, break through and dispel the clouds and the darkness by which we are now surrounded. But the word which the psalmist uses really expresses a prayer for the manifest and personal appearing of His glory for the deliverance of His oppressed, suffering people, and to the dismay of their enemies. It is a somewhat parallel cry to that in Isa_64:1-2.
“Oh that Thou wouldst rend the heavens, that Thou wouldst come down, that the mountains might quake at Thy presence . . . to make Thy Name known to Thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at Thy presence.” In the Hebrew Psalter this word
“Our God cometh, and shall not keep silence.” The second place is in Psa_80:1 and the third in Psa_94:1, “O Jehovah, thou God to whom vengeance belongeth, O God to whom vengeance belongeth, shine forth.” And all these three passages in the Psalms are based on the sublime scripture in Deu_33:2, in the blessing wherewith Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel before he died.
“And he said:
Jehovah came from Sinai, And rose [or “burst forth”—i.e., as the rising sun] from Seir unto them;
He shined forth from Mount Paran, And he came with [or “from”] the myriads of His holy ones: From His right hand went forth a fiery law unto them.” The imagery of this passage is beautiful, the figure being borrowed from the breaking of the dawn, and the progressive splendour of the sun-rising. Oh, what a wonderful event in the history of the world and of Israel was the revelation of the glory of Jehovah on Sinai! What a bursting forth of light on the moral darkness of this earth! But, alas! by reason of the weakness of the flesh it was not the light of life, but rather of death; for it revealed to man his sin and utter helplessness, and the perfect holiness of the God who is “a consuming fire.” But the law contained not only the promise, but was in itself also a preparing for the Gospel; and, therefore, in the fulness of time, though not attended by outward splendour as on Sinai, another Epiphany (2Ti_1:10) of God our Saviour took place, bringing not “a fiery law,” but the Gospel of His grace, which abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. The acceptable year of the Lord ushered in by that Epiphany is rapidly running to its close; and although for nigh nineteen centuries favour has been preached to the wicked, yet he has not leaned righteousness. Men are beginning to ask if the faith founded by the Son of God has not already proved a failure; and scoffers boldly say: “Where is the promise of His coming, and what sign is there of any change or interruption of the present state of things?” Even the professing Church, lost for the most part in worldliness and error, seeks to strike its roots in the earth, crying peace and progress, and acting as if all things will for ever continue as they are.1
1 See the chapter, “The Silence of God—how it shall be Broken,” in the author’s work, The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew. But this earth shall yet again see the glory of the personal presence of the Lord, and the answer to the prophetic prayer, “Shine forth,” will be the “appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ”—“at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven, with the angels of His power, in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to them that know not God, and to them that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Tit_2:13; 2Th_1:7-8)—when in a special manner He will show Himself to be the “Shepherd of Israel” and their Deliverer. The prayer is continued in the same strain in the second verse:
“Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh,”
—even as Thou didst in our fathers’ times when Thou didst march at the head of the tribes, in the Pillar of Cloud and Pillar of Fire, scattering Thine enemies before Thee1—
“Stir up Thy might,” which now seems to be slumbering; and which reminds us of Isa_51:9, “Awake, awake, put on strength, O Arm of Jehovah; awake as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Art Thou not it [that great power] that cut Rahab [i.e., Egypt] in pieces, that pierced the dragon [of the Nile—i.e., Pharaoh]? Art Thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?” Oh that Thou wouldst again “stir up Thy might and come to save us!” or, as the last line of the second verse of our psalm reads more literally, “And go forth for salvation to us,” which prayer for God’s Yeshuah (“salvation”) will only be fulfilled in the going or coming forth of Him whose Hebrew name is יֵשׁוּעַ Jeshua—i.e., “Saviour,” and who shall yet “save His people from their sins” (Mat_1:21), and “out of all their troubles” (Psa_25:22).
1 See remarks on the reason of the special mention of these tribes in the Introduction.