Psalms 12
Butler1. HELP, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; For the faithful fail from among the children of men. 2 They speak vanity every one with his neigh- bour: With flattering lip, and with a double heart, do they speak. 3 The LORD shall cut off all flattering lips. The tongue that speaketh great things: 4 Who have said, With our tongue will we pre- vail; Our lips are our own: who is lord over us?
THE Psalmist is evidently smarting from the falseness and hypocrisy of the time. The de- fection which he deplores is a national defec- tion. Like Elijah in the deserts, he feels him- self alone. “There is not one godly man left: the true-hearted are cut off.” A taint has spread through society (to use the modern ex- pression, for which the Hebrew poet says, “this generation”). Falsehood is everywhere, truth nowhere. The heart of men is double: their lips are flattering lips (v. 3). And while they utter slander, hypocrisy, and lies, they boast of their power; and not only give their tongues license, but justify the license: “Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?” Now this utter hollowness and insincerity are very hard to bear. The few who, in the midst of the general corruption, still retain their integ- rity are persecuted, and sigh for deliverance. This deliverance is promised them in the form of a Divine interposition. The singer, filled with the spirit of prophecy, consoles himself, and those afflicted like himself, not in his own words, but in the words of God (v. 6). And then, remembering how pure those words are, how unalterably true—not like the words of men which seem so fair, but are so false—he feels that there he can rest, calm in the convic- tion that, though the wicked walk on every side, Jehovah will save them that love Him from all their machinations (v. 8). Both the circumstances of the Psalmist and his prayer are very similar to what we find in the two im- mediately preceding Psalms. In Psalm 11 his belief as to the overthrow of the wicked is based upon God’s character as a righteous God. In this Psalm it rests apparently upon a special
5. For the spoiling of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, Now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety at whom they puff. 6 The words of the LORD are pure words, As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, Purified seven times. 7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, Thou shalt preserve them from this genera- tion forever. 8 The wicked walk on every side, When vileness is exalted among the sons of men.
promise, but in fact upon God’s Word. But God’s Word teaches us what God’s character is. The difference therefore is formal, not real. P.
1. The whole verse is a strong hyperbolical description of the small number of good men left in the community, and their consequent exposure to the malice of the wicked. Such expressions, as Luther well suggests, are too familiar in the dialect of common life to be mis- taken or produce perplexity. A.
Ask the children of this world what it is, in their account, that makes the times bad; they will tell you, Scarcity of money, decay of trade, and the desolations of war make the times bad; but the Scripture lays the badness of the times upon causes of another nature. When there is a general decay of piety and honesty among men, the times are then truly bad. When the godly man ceases, and the faithful fail. Observe how these two characters are here put together, the godly and the faithful. As there is no true policy, so there is no true piety, with- out honesty. Godly men are faithful men, fast men, so they have sometimes been called; their word is as confirming as their oath, as binding as their bond; they make conscience of being true both to God and man. They are here said to cease and fail, either by death, or by deser- tion, or by both. H.
The godly man. That only is godliness which reveres and honors God in a way suited to that high and incommunicable character. Genuine piety expresseth itself thus: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee, O Lord? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee.” We are not godly, whatever we profess or seem, if in our most deliberate and affectionate choice we do not prefer the one true God and the enjoyment of His favor to all that can be found throughout the wide extent of His works; if we make not His will the measure of ours, His law the sovereign guide of our conduct, and His glory the ultimate end of our obedience. R. Walker.
2. Vanity, i.e., falsehood, they will speak; as they now do, so will they persist in doing; (each) man with his neighbor, not merely with another man, but with his friend, his brother, toward whom he was particularly bound to act sincerely. A.—They speak with a double heart. The original is, “A heart and a heart;” one for the Church, another for the change; one for Sundays, another for working days. A man without a heart is a wonder, but a man with two hearts is a monster. T. Adams.
2-4. A “double heart” in the strong idiom of the Hebrew is “a heart and a heart”—one to hide and live by; another to show to the world and not to live by. But the Lord cannot be deceived by such men. He utterly abhors their double heart, and will cut them off for their sins. Expressively said, he will cut off those treacherous lips—that proud, lying tongue! Their spirit is further described as virtually saying, “With our tongue we are mighty;” like heroes we say what we please; who shall dare dictate to us? Wonderfully true to human nature! C.
A guileful heart makes guileful tongue and lips. It is the workhouse where is the forge of deceits and slanders and other evil speakings; and the tongue is only the outer shop where they are vended, and the lips the door of it; so then such ware as is made within, such and no other can be set out. From evil thoughts, evil speakings; from a profane heart, profane words; and from a malicious heart, bitter or calumnious words; and from a deceitful heart, guileful words, well varnished but lined with rottenness. And so in the general, from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, as our Saviour teaches. That which the heart is full of runs over by the tongue. If the heart be full of God the tongue will delight to speak of Him; much of heavenly things within will breathe forth something of their sweetness by the mouth; and if nothing but earth is there, all that man’s discourse will be vain and purposeless. Leighton.
Consider our markets, our fairs, our private contracts and bargains, our shops, our cellars, our weights, our measures, our promises, our protestations, our politic tricks and villainous Machiavelsm, our enhancing of the prices of all commodities, and tell, whether the twelfth Psalm may not as fitly be applied to our times as to the days of the man of God. R. Wolcombe.
5. For the spoiling of the poor. Fear ye, whosoever ye be, that do wrong the poor; you have power and wealth and the favor of the judges, but they have the strongest weapons of all, sighings and groanings, which fetch help from heaven for them. These weapons dig down houses, throw up foundations, overthrow whole nations. Chrysostom.—The sighing of the needy. A desire is a small matter, especially of the poor man, yet God regards the desire of the poor, and calls a good desire the greatest kindness; “The desire of a man is his kindness.” A tear makes no great noise, yet hath a voice, “God hath heard the voice of my weeping.” A groan is a poor thing, yet is the best part of a prayer sometimes; a sigh is less, yet God is awakened and raised up by it. J. Sheffield.
6. The sayings of Jehovah are pure sayings, silver purged in a furnace of earth, refined seven times. The Psalmist does not use the term commonly translated words, but one derived from the verb to say, with obvious allusion to the use of the verb itself in the preceding verse. What Jehovah there says, the promises there given, are here declared to be true without any mixture of mistake or falsehood. This is expressed by the favorite figure of pure metallic ore. The idea of extreme or perfect purity is conveyed by the idiomatic phrase, purified seven times, i.e., repeatedly, or sevenfold, i.e., completely. A.—God’s Word is pure silver that has flown off and left all dross behind it, silver that has, as it were, passed seven times through the furnace, and is therefore altogether free of alloy and very precious. Silver is an emblem of everything that is precious and pure, and seven is the number of the completed process. D.—The expression may import two things: first, the infallible certainty of the word; as gold endureth in the fire when the dross is consumed. Vain conceits comfort us not in a time of trouble; but the word of God, the more it is tried, the more you will find the excellency of it—the promise is tried as well as we are tried in deep afflictions; but, when it is so, it will be found to be most pure; as pure gold suffers no loss by the fire, so the promises suffer no loss when they are tried, but stand to us in our greatest troubles. Secondly, it notes the exact perfection of the word: there is no dross in silver and gold that hath been often refined, so there is no defect in the Word of God. Manton.
The poet dwells on the purity and perfect truth of God’s promises, not only as opposed to all lying lips of men, but also that he may thus more deeply print upon the heart of the afflicted the certain fulfilment of the promise. This emphatic assertion was rendered necessary by the widespread and apparently long-prevailing corruption. For those who were weak in faith might begin to doubt whether the truth of God itself had not failed. P.
Truth is the most glorious thing; the least filing of this gold is precious. Truth is ancient; its gray hairs make it venerable; it comes from Him who is the Ancient of Days. Truth is unerring; it is the star which leads to Christ. Truth is pure; it is compared to silver refined seven times. There is not the least spot on truth’s face: it breathes nothing but sanctity. Truth is triumphant; it is like a great conqueror; when all its enemies lie dead it keeps the field, and sets up its trophies of victory. “The heavens being on fire shall be dissolved,” but not that truth which came from heaven. T. Watson.—God suffers desperate opinions to be vented for the purging of His own truth. The truth of God is compared to “silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” Every corrupt opinion that comes to be vented against any truth of God is a new furnace, it comes out the purer for it. Arrowsmith.
The Bible has passed through the furnace of persecution, literary criticism, philosophic doubt, and scientific discovery, and has lost nothing but those human interpretations which clung to it as alloy to precious ore. The experience of saints has tried it in every conceivable manner, but not a single doctrine or promise has been consumed in the most excessive heat. S.—No truth is established till it has been denied and has survived. Antagonism to the Word of God should have, and will have, to those who use it rightly, a blessing in its train, in bringing out yet more of the preciousness and manifoldness, the all-sufficiency and the universality of the Book. “The more ’tis shook, the more it shines.” The fiercer the blast, the firmer our confidence in the inexpugnable solidity of that tower of strength that stands four square to every wind that blows. A. M.
The Scriptures carry in themselves independent and convincing evidence of the truth, validity, and sufficiency of all the narratives, doctories, promises, and threatenings they contain. Truth is its own witness, and exacts our assent. I recognize the handwriting of a friend without needing to be told who has written to me. We want not the stars, much less a torch, to show us the sun; it is only the blind that cannot see. Bengel.
Tested by the chances of any mere human conflict, of any philosophic or literary strife, the Bible would ages ago have vanished from the field and been consigned to oblivion; but here it is yet, the mightiest element in human thought, and challenging to the conflict the mightiest of human antagonisms. How it rises up, ever higher and stronger, against every fresh assault! every new phase of unbelief, when it is really new, only calling out some before unknown aspect of power in this exhaustless defence. But it is not enough to say that the Bible has kept its ground in the world; it has ever been extending itself, not only into new territory, but into new fields of thought. Philosophy assumes to be independent of it, but finds, in the end, that it must go the way of all human speculations, or fortify itself by ideas that can never more belong to human thinking should this book be discarded from the world. So science, too, often “seems first in its own cause, until revelation cometh and searcheth it.” Some startling discovery has raised the hopes of unbelief, but soon this more ancient power in the world, this power of the unseen and the eternal, rides over the sense difficulty, or shows it to belong to a lower plane of knowledge with which the diviner truth can have no actual or imagined collision. Every other assumed revelation has been addressed to but one phase of humanity. They have been adapted to one age, to one people, or one peculiar style of human thought. Their books have never assumed a cosmical character, or been capable of any catholic expansion. They could never be “accommodated” to other ages, or acclimated to other parts of the world. They are indigenous plants, that can never grow out of the zone that gave them birth. Zoroaster never made a disciple beyond Persia or its immediate neighborhood; Confucius is wholly Chinese as Socrates is wholly Greek. T. Lewis.
The Bible has passed triumphantly through the ordeal of verbal criticism. English infidels of the last century raised a premature paan over the discovery and publication of so many various readings. They imagined that the popular mind would be rudely and thoroughly shaken, that Christianity would be placed in imminent peril of extinction, and that the