Psalms 109

4. The discoveries of astronomy have added no attribute to the Divine Being. They have simply rendered the feeling of His greatness more vivid. From the earliest times pious men have believed in the existence of multitudes of intelligent beings who are superior to man, of “the army of heaven” as well as “the inhabitants of earth.” Nowhere is the Divine power set forth with deeper fervor than in the Psalms. But the moment that you grasp the idea of an Infinite Being all His works seem to be nothing in the presence of their Creator. The great and the small are alike atoms in His sight, the one not more than the other entitled to His notice. When the telescope unveiled a universe above us, so vast as to overpower the imagination, the microscope, at the same time, was uncovering a universe beneath us, finished in every part and not less full of wonders. The natural attributes of the Creator, moreover, are never to be allowed to veil from sight His moral perfections. “His mercy,” like His power, “is great above the heavens.” His condescension is equal to His might. Therefore He is said to crown man with His loving-kindness. G. P. Fisher.

6-13. Taken from Psalm 60: 5-12.

9. Over Edom will I cast my shoe. David overthrew their army in the “Valley of Salt,” and his general, Joab, following up the victory, destroyed nearly the whole male population, and placed Jewish garrisons in all the strongholds of Edom. J. L. Porter.

10,11. It is not conclusive evidence that we are not called to undertake a given work or perform a certain duty, because it is very difficult or even impossible for us to succeed without special help from God. If God calls David to take Petra, he shall take Petra. Plumer.—His hand shall lead him even to Petra, which seems unapproachable by human strength. That marvellous rock-city of the Edomites is surrounded by rocks some of which are three hundred feet high, and a single path twelve feet in width leads to it. The city itself is partly hewn out of the cloven rocks, and its ruins, which, however, belong to a later period, fill travellers with amazement. Tholuck.

12. Give us help from trouble: for vain is the help of man. This prayer has often fallen from the lips of men who have been bitterly disappointed by their fellows, and it has also been poured out unto the Lord in the presence of some gigantic labor in which mortal power is evidently of no avail. Edom cannot be entered by any human power, yet from its fastnesses the robber bands come rushing down; therefore, O Lord, do Thou interpose and give Thy people deliverance. We ought to pray with all the more confidence in God when our confidence in man is altogether gone.

13. God’s help shall inspire us to help ourselves. Where praise and prayer have preceded the battle we may expect to see heroic deeds and decisive victories. “Through God” is our secret support; from that source we draw all our courage, wisdom, and strength. S.

1. HOLD not thy peace, O God of my praise;

2. For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit have they opened against me: They have spoken unto [or, against] me with a lying tongue.

3. They compassed me about also with words of hatred, And fought against me without a cause

4. For my love they are my adversaries:

But I give myself unto prayer.

5. And they have rewarded me evil for good, And hatred for my love.

6. Set thou a wicked man over him: And let an adversary stand at his right hand. 7 When he is judged, let him come forth guilty; And let his prayer be turned into sin.

8. Let his days be few ; And let another take his office. 9 Let his children be fatherless, And his wife a widow. 10 Let his children be vagabonds, and beg ; And let them seek their bread out of their desolate places. 11 Let the extortioner catch all that he hath ; And let strangers make spoil of his labour. 12 Let there be none to extend mercy unto him ; Neither let there be any to have pity on his fatherless children. 13 Let his posterity be cut off ; In the generation following let their name be blotted out. 14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD ; And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. 15 Let them be before the LORD continually, That he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. 16 Because that he remembered not to show mercy, But persecuted the poor and needy man, And the broken in heart, to slay them. 17 Yea, he loved cursing, and it came unto him ; And he delighted not in blessing, and it was far from him. 18 He clothed himself also with cursing as with his garment, And it came into his inward parts like water, And like oil into his bones. 19 Let it be unto him as the raiment wherewith he covereth himself,

And for the girdle wherewith he is girded continually. 20 This is the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, And of them that speak evil against my soul. 21 But deal thou with me, O GOD the Lord, for thy name’s sake : Because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me, 22 For I am poor and needy, And my heart is wounded within me. 23 I am gone like the shadow when it de- clineth : I am tossed up and down as the locust. 24 My knees are weak through fasting ; And my flesh faileth of fatness. 25 I am become also a reproach unto them : When they see me, they shake their head. 26 Help me, O LORD my God ; O save me according to thy mercy : 27 That they may know that this is thy hand ; That thou, LORD, hast done it. 28 Let them curse, but bless thou : When they arise, they shall be ashamed, but thy servant shall rejoice. 29 Mine adversaries shall be clothed with dis- honour, And they shall cover themselves with their own shame as with a mantle. 30 I will give great thanks unto the LORD with my mouth ; Yea, I will praise him among the multitude. 31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the needy, To save him from them that judge his soul.

THIS is the last of the Psalms of imprecation, and differs from the ninety-sixth in being lev- elled against one enemy chiefly, not against many. This circumstance may partly account for the even more intensely-wrought and de- tailed character of the curse. Who the per- son was who was thus singled out for execration it is in vain to conjecture. P.

This Psalm consists of three parts : A com- plaint of slanderous and malignant enemies (vs. 1-5) ; a prayer for the punishment of such (vs. 6-20), and a prayer for the sufferer’s own de- liverance, with a promise of thanksgiving (vs. 21-31). This Psalm is remarkable, first, as containing the most striking instances of what are called the imprecations of the Psalms ; and then, as having been applied in the most ex- plicit manner to the sufferings of our Saviour from the treachery of Judas, and to the miser- able fate of the latter. These two peculiarities are perhaps more closely connected than they may at first sight seem. Perhaps the best solu- tion of the first is that afforded by the second, or at least by the hypothesis that the Psalmist, under the direction of the Spirit, viewed the sufferings of Israel which furnished the occasion of the Psalm, as an historical type of the Mes- siah’s sufferings from the treachery of Judas, and that with this view he expresses his abhor- rence of the crime, and acquiesces in the justice of its punishment in stronger terms than would have been, or are elsewhere, employed in refer- ence to ordinary criminals. A.

What is to hinder our acceptance of the fact that the Holy Ghost allowed the natural ex- pression of a righteous indignation against the persistently ungodly to take this form of wither- ing anathema in order to set forth by the fearful details that are given the dreadful doom of the ungodly ? Is it said that we could not, or at least would not, use these terms in reference to any violent oppressor of Christians now? Certainly not, but why? Because we have no inspiration to direct us. But we can read these awful imprecations and study them with profit as indications of the vindicatory justice of God. Nay, at times circumstances compel a hearty sympathy with them. Nothing less seems adequate to the occasion. An eminent Christian scholar who has spent his life in Syria told me that any man who lived among the Mohammedans would have no difficulty with the imprecatory Psalms. Dr. Duff said the same in regard to the Sepoy rebellion. Did not the same man who wrote the exquisite hymn to love in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians conclude that epistle with the solemn words, “If any man loveth not the Lord, let him be Anathema Maranatha?” The one word anathema wraps up in it far more than all the imprecations to be found in the Psalter. Chambers.

4. In requital for my love to them, they play the part of Satan against me. The Hebrew for “my adversaries” is a verb, the same from which the word Satan is derived. The last clause is strikingly concise: “but I . . . prayer.” As for me, my heart is all prayer. I cry to God for help constantly, to strengthen me against temptation and shield me from this hot and malign persecution. Christians have need, under such circumstances, to pray without ceasing that God would help them keep their heart right. C.—I prayer, so it is in the original; “I am for prayer, I am a man of prayer, I love prayer and prize prayer, practise prayer and make a business of prayer, and am in my element when I am at prayer.” A good man gives himself to prayer. H.

5. They have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love. Evil for good is devil-like. The revenge which pays a man back in his own coin has a kind of natural justice in it; but what shall be said of that baseness which returns to goodness the very opposite of what it has a right to expect? S.

6. Leaving the mass of his enemies, the Psalmist suddenly singles out one on whom he pours forth the terrible curse which follows. See a similar transition in chap. 55:12. Vs. 1-5 do not give the whole grounds for the curse; they are resumed in vs. 16-18. P.

6. Set Thou a wicked man over him. The first thing that the Psalmist asks is that his foe might be subjected to the evil of having a man placed over him like himself, a man regardless of justice, truth, and right. It is, in fact, a prayer that he might be punished in the line of his offences. It cannot be wrong that a man should be treated as he treats others; and it cannot be in itself wrong to desire that a man should be treated according to his character and deserts, for this is the object of all law, and this is what all magistrates and legislators are endeavoring to secure. Barnes.

An adversary; or, “Satan.” Let him have not only an unrighteous judge, but a malicious accuser. P.—Wicked one and adversary (Satan), although here used as appellatives or common nouns, are the very terms applied, in the later Scriptures, to the evil spirit or the devil. See Job 1:6; 2:1; 1 Chron. 21:1; Zech. 3:1, 2. In the place last cited he stands too at the right hand of the sinner to accuse him. A.—The sentiment is: Let him who acts the part of Satan toward me know in his own case what it is to have a Satan at his right hand, over him, with the heart to hate and the power to harm. C.

7. Let his prayer become sin. Evidently his prayer that he might be acquitted and discharged. A prayer offered for a murderer or violator of the law, that he might escape or not be punished, would be wrong, or would be a “sin;” and so, in his own case, it would be equally true that a prayer for his own escape would be “sin.” The Psalmist asks that, by the result of the trial, such a prayer might be seen to be in fact a prayer for the protection and escape of a bad man. A just sentence in the case would demonstrate this; and this is what the Psalmist prays for. Barnes.

8. Let his days be few. Who would desire a persecuting tyrant to live long? If he will do nothing but mischief the shortening of his life will be the lengthening of the world’s tranquillity. “Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days;” this is bare justice to them, and great mercy to the poor and needy. S.

Let another take his office. So every man acts and practically prays, who seeks to remove a bad and corrupt man from office. As such an office must be filled by some one, all the efforts which he puts forth to remove a wicked man tend to bring it about that “another should take his office,” and for this it is right to labor and pray. The act does not of itself imply malignity or bad feeling, but is consistent with the purest benevolence, the kindest feelings, the strictest integrity, the sternest patriotism, and the highest form of piety. Barnes.

His office, implying that the person held a position of some importance. In Acts 1:20 the passage is applied to Judas. In this verse a double loss is imprecated, the loss of life, “let his days be few,” and the loss of honor, “let another take his office;” in v. 11 a third is added, the loss of property. P.

When, under the old covenant, earthly prosperity was the portion of the wicked, and earthly adversity of the pious, the whole moral government of God seemed to be veiled in clouds and darkness. The very fact that immortality was not clearly discovered to him made the pious Israelite long more passionately for the speedy shining forth of God’s power and justice. We must interpret every book by the mind of the author. If so, we must apply this to the Bible and to the Psalms. Their real author is the Holy Spirit. It is remarkable that in the first chapter of the Acts the very strongest of these imprecations is applied as a prophecy to the betrayer of our Lord. Bishop Alexander.

10-13. These are very terrible petitions; but it is God, not man, who has appointed these calamities as the ordinary consequences of persistence in wickedness. It is God, not man, who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third and fourth generations. It is because this is the ordinary portion of the transgressors, and that thus in God’s wonted way His abhorrence of the transgressions of His enemies might be marked, that the Psalmist prays for these calamities. He asks God to do what He had declared He would do, and this for public ends, for he says: “I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth; yea, I will praise Him among the multitude. For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul” (vs. 30, 31). R. A. Bertram.

14. Let the guilt of his fathers be remembered by Jehovah, and his mother’s sin not blotted out. This is perhaps the most fearful imprecation in the Psalm, as it extends the consequences of transgression not merely to the children, who might naturally be expected to partake of them, but to the parents. It is not to be forgotten, however, that in all such cases the personal guilt of the implicated parties is presupposed, and not inferred from their connection with the principals. A.

14,15. The ground of these imprecations bespeaks them very just, though they sound very severe. To justify the imprecations of vengeance upon the sinner’s posterity, the sin of his ancestors is here brought into the account, the iniquity of his fathers, and the sin of his mother. These God often visits, even upon the children’s children, and is not unrighteous therein; when wickedness has long run in the blood, justly does the curse run along with it. Thus all the innocent blood that had been shed upon the earth, from that of righteous Abel, was required from that persecuting generation who, by putting Christ to death, filled up the measure of their fathers, and left as long a train of vengeance to follow them as the train of guilt was that went before them, which they themselves agreed to by saying, His blood be upon us and on our children. H.

16. Because they would show no mercy, let no mercy be shown them. Because they chased down (Hebrew) the afflicted and heartbroken, even to slaughter, let their retribution be just and thorough, following their name and their posterity till their memory is blotted from the earth. These conceptions, a sinner punished in his posterity; punished also by the sin of his father and of his mother coming down upon him, are deeply tinged with the Oriental character. They are peculiar, not merely as being terribly strong, but as involving the sentiment that a man lives in the glory of his ancestry and in the glory of his posterity, and therefore his punishment may be knit together with theirs.

17,18. Here we come upon grammatical forms which are simply historical, and not at all imperative or optative, i.e., which are not prayer, nor even prediction. The only proper rendering is on this wise: “And he even loved cursing, and consequently [or, then] it came upon him; and he did not love blessing, and consequently it kept aloof from him.” As he lived in an atmosphere of cursing (we might say), but the Oriental mind puts it, he girt it about him as his robe, therefore he had his fill of it, as water might fill his stomach and oil his bones. That is, God has impressed the law of retribution upon the soul of man, so that it helps to work out this result; upon human society, so that man’s social nature and relations help forward this result, and upon the agencies of his own providential government, so that they bring up toward completeness and fulness the results of righteous and terrible retribution. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The historic fact is the thing affirmed in these verses. C.—Deep down in every man’s soul the justice of the lex talionis is established. Retaliation, not for private revenge, but as a measure of public justice, is demanded by the Psalmist and deserved by the crime. S.

18. And he has put on cursing as his garment, and it has come like water into his inside, and like oil into his bones. There is an obvious climax in this verse. That which is first described as the man’s exterior covering is then said to be within him, first as water, then as oil or fat, first in the vessels of his body, then in his very bones. The general idea is that the curse, which he denounced and endeavored to inflict on others, has taken possession of himself both within and without. A.

20. Those who answer the manifestations of love on the part of the righteous with hostility in word and deed, commit a Satanic sin for which there is no forgiveness. The curse is the fruit of their own choice and deed. D.

21. BUT THOU. He turns from his adversaries to God, from their curses to His loving-kindness. The emphatic pronoun, and the double name of God, both mark the earnestness of the appeal. P.—Do Thou for me, O God, the Lord; appear for me, act for me. If God be for us, He will do for us, will do more abundantly for us than we are able either to ask or think. He does not prescribe to God what He should do for him, but refers himself to His wisdom; “Lord, do for me what seems good in Thine eyes.” H.

For Thy name’s sake. He does not say, For my name, that it may be vindicated from reproach and shame, but for Thy name; as if he would say, whatever I may be, O Lord, and whatever may befall me, have respect to Thy name, have regard to it only. We learn here with what passion for the glory of the Divine name they ought to be animated who are peculiarly consecrated to the name of God. He does not say, “Because my case is good,” but “Because Thy mercy is good.” Note also he does not simply say, Because Thou art good or because Thou art merciful; but because Thy mercy is good. He had experienced a certain special goodness in the Divine mercy; i.e., such timeliness, kind readiness in all afflictions, and help for every kind of affliction prepared and provided. On this he rests hope and confidence, in this takes refuge. All those are truly happy who have had experience of this mercy, and can depend on it with firm hope and confidence.

22. For I am poor and needy. Note here how beautifully he unites these arguments. He had said, “Because Thy mercy is good;” and he adds, “Because I am poor and needy.” He could not have added anything more appropriate; for this is the nature of goodness and mercy, even in the human heart, much more in God, the best and most merciful of all beings, that nothing more easily moves it to give succor than the affliction, calamity, and misery of those by whom it is invoked. Musculus.

23. Shadow declineth.** The shadows of objects at sunset lengthen every instant and grow faint as they lengthen; and in the instant that they shoot to an immeasurable length disappear. Bishop Horsley.—Tossed up and down. A Christian is often tossed and shaken, yet is as Mount Zion; he is a lamb and a lion; a reed and a cedar. He is sometimes so troubled that he thinks nothing to be true in religion; yet, if he did think so, he could not at all be troubled. He thinks sometimes that God hath no mercy for him, yet resolves to die in the pursuit of it. He believes, like Abraham, against hope, and though he cannot answer God’s logic, yet, with the woman of Canaan, he hopes to prevail with the rhetoric of importunity. Bacon.

26-29. A joyous prospect of the end of the affliction. In v. 27 God’s hand stands opposed to accident, the work of men, and man’s own doing. When God at last interposes, all will undeniably perceive that it is His hand which here performs that which was impossible in the eyes of men, and that it is His work which has been accomplished in this affliction and its issue. He blesses him whom men curse; these arise and are confounded, whereas His servant can rejoice in the end of his affliction. D.

28,29. It is better here to translate with grammatical precision, on this wise: “They will curse, but Thou wilt bless; they have risen up” [as mine enemies], “and consequently were confounded; but Thy servant” [myself, because I am Thy servant] “will rejoice. My haters will be clothed with shame; they will cover themselves with their own disgrace as with a mantle.”

30,31. The tenses throughout these verses are future, as they were throughout vs. 28, 29. Here [not there] our English version has rendered them accurately. C.—The contrast between this concluding thought and v. 6 is unmistakable. Satan stands accusing at the right hand of the tormentor; God stands vindicating at the right hand of the tormented one; he who delivered him over to human judges is condemned, and he who was delivered over is “taken away from oppression and judgment” (Isa. 53: 8) by the Judge of the judges, in order that, as we now hear in the following Psalm, he may sit at the right hand of the heavenly King. D.

31. He shall stand at the right hand of the poor. One of the oldest rabbinical commentaries has a very beautiful gloss on this passage. “Whenever a poor man stands at thy door, the Holy One, blessed be His Name, stands at his right hand. If thou givest him alms, know that thou shalt receive a reward from Him who standeth at his right hand." A. E.

If any part of the Bible belongs to a past age, it would seem to be the imprecatory prayers of the Psalms. At least it might be said a later revelation has abrogated their use. And yet there are times now, and men now, and transactions now taking place upon the earth, and wrongs and enormities still heard of, in reference to which these prayers would seem to be still wanted as the most appropriate language. All other speech fails to express the righteous indignation so different from the personal revenge. It demands its own appropriate language, and the ethical want finds its true relief in these portions of the Church’s immutable liturgy. T. Lewis.

The gentlest hearts burn with indignation when they hear of barbarities to women and children, of crafty plots for ruining the innocent, of cruel oppression of helpless orphans, and gratuitous ingratitude to the good and gentle. We wish well to all mankind, and for that very reason we sometimes blaze with indignation against the inhuman wretches by whom every law which protects our fellow-creatures is trampled down, and every dictate of humanity is set at nought. S.

It now remains to speak of the imprecations in this Psalm. In my view our English version gives the imprecatory sense in several passages where the original does not. The true mission of the translator, as of the expositor, is to meet the demands of the original tongue with the utmost possible precision, it being the function of God only to speak the Word; of His servants honestly to interpret. There is real imprecation in this Psalm, and we are now to inquire into its moral character considered as the utterance of the author: Is it, or is it not, consistent with Christian love, with the spirit of the Gospel of Christ?

The solution of this great question turns on a power of mind common to all intelligent moral agents by which we are able to contemplate any other moral agent variously, holding him before our mind, now in one light, now in another, according to the features which are prominent in his case, as thus: We are able to love the man and hate the sinner; to love him thought of as man; but to hate, not his conduct only but himself, its responsible author, thought of simply as a destroyer of other’s happiness. Thinking of him as a sentient being, capable of happiness and of misery, we desire his happiness, we deprecate his misery; but thinking of him as the deliberate and sworn foe and destroyer of all happiness, even to his utmost power, we wish and pray that God’s retribution may seize upon him, arrest his career of mischief, and make his sufferings exemplary for the restraint of others like-minded toward evil. The traitor in arms against his country we shoot down and spare not; the same rebel, wounded, disarmed, and at our mercy, we spare and lift up as swiftly as we smote him when in arms. Thinking of man as a fellow-creature, as one whose sensibilities to joy or woe are like our own, we love his welfare and mourn over his fall; but thinking of him as the enemy of God, as the determined foe of all real, high, and noble blessedness in the universe, our indignation is bound to rise against him; we cannot suppress it; we are false to the highest interests of truth and right if we disapprove or restrain it. The necessity and the responsibilities of civil government in this world of crime furnish apt illustration. The men of largest, purest benevolence are the best men to frame criminal law; the best men to administer it from the bench; the best men to execute it in prison, in penitentiary, or upon the scaffold. Solemnly and firmly, with tender compassion, yet with unflinching fidelity, they may love the culprit, but they must inflict the penalty he deserves. In the righteous demands of law they acquiesce simply because there is a greater good behind which must be protected by the lesser sacrifice of the guilty criminal. Under the stress of a necessity which they deplore, they say from the bottom of their heart, The guilty man must die; we should deprecate his escape; in behalf of all society and of universal good, we feel a sense of relief when justice exacts the murderer’s life, blood for blood. The tribunal of the Supreme Judge of the universe differs from this only as being perfect and universal. Justice is the same thing there as here. Benevolence is the same. The ultimate question, therefore, is reduced to this: Shall God reign, or shall Satan? Shall the right triumph, or the wrong? Shall the innocent be protected, or the guilty; the good in heart, or the evil? And to our present point, Where shall our sympathies be; with God, or with His enemies? This is the ultimate question, beyond which we have no occasion to go. C.

Anger against sin and a desire that evil-doers may be punished, are not opposed to the spirit of the Gospel, or to that love of enemies which our Lord both enjoined and exemplified. If the emotion or its utterance were essentially sinful, how could Paul wish the enemy of Christ and

the perverter of the Gospel to be accursed (1 Cor. 16 : 22 ; Gal. 1 : 8) ; and especially, how could the spirit of the martyred saints in heaven call on God for vengeance (Rev. 6 : 10), and join to celebrate its final execution (Rev. 19 : 1-6)? Kitto.