Psalms 131
Butler1. LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty;
Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, Or in things too wonderful for me.
2. Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul;
Like a weaned child with his mother, My soul is with me like a weaned child.
3. O Israel, hope in the LORD From this time forth and for evermore.
WHETHER written by David, to whom the title gives it, or not, this short Psalm, one of the most beautiful in the whole book, assuredly breathes David’s spirit. A childlike simplicity, an unaffected humility, the honest expression of that humility as from a heart spreading itself out in conscious integrity before God—this is what we find in the Psalm, traits of a character like that of David. Delitzsch calls the Psalm an echo of David’s answer to Michal (2 Sam. 6:22), “And I will become of still less account than this, and I will be lowly in mine own eyes.” At the same time, with the majority of interpreters, he holds it to be a post-exile Psalm, written with a view to encourage the writer himself and his people to the same humility, the same patient waiting upon God, of which David was so striking an example. P.
The Psalmist describes a contentment, resignation, and devotion to the Divine will, the most absolute, after lengthened struggles and temptations. The storm of passion has been allayed, all proud longings and vain expectations have been curbed. As a child at rest the poet waits the future which is before him, with joyous confidence in its revelations, and faithful encouragement to his people to wait with him. Nothing can be more beautiful than the sketch in the Psalm of a new birth to a new life; nothing more striking than its guarantee of a better future which the anticipated new birth holds out; nothing more suggestive of the noblest promise than the renunciation of all selfish personal aims, and resolution of them into a prayer for the nation’s weal. The short lovely song is as a bud in spring. Ewald.
The previous Psalm is a song of forgiveness; this a song of humility; the former celebrates the blessedness of the man whose transgressions are pardoned; the latter celebrates the blessedness of the man who is of a meek and lowly spirit. Forgiveness should humble us. Forgiveness implies sin; and should not the sinner clothe himself with humility? and when, not for any desert of his, but simply by the free grace of heaven, his sins have been pardoned, should he not bind the garments of humility still more closely about him? The man who is of a nature at once sincere and sweet will be even more humbled by the sense of an undeserved forgiveness than by the memory of the sins from which it has cleansed him. Very fitly, therefore, does the Psalm of humility follow the Psalm which sings of the Divine lovingkindness and tender mercy. It is the frank utterance of a soul so childlike and lowly that it can assert its own loveliness without losing it. Its tone is grateful, not vain-glorious. It is an appeal to the great Searcher of hearts as to the real state of the heart that speaks to Him. It is a thankful acknowledgment that He, Jehovah, has freed it from the agitations of self- will, and brought it to the rest and peace of a constant trust in Him. And this theme is wrought out with rare skill. Cox.
1. He could in truth of heart appeal to God,
“Lord, my heart is not haughty.” He appealeth to Him who knoweth all things. Lord, from whom nothing is hid, Thou knowest that this is the very disposition of my soul. God will accept the appeal; for in the account of God we are that which we sincerely desire and endeavor to be, and that which is the general course and tenor of our lives, though there be some intermixture of failing. Manton.
Here are three things to be noted: The absence of the proud heart. “Jehovah, my heart is not haughty.” In the heart of the truly humble man all high thoughts of self-righteousness and all notions of self-reliance are effectually abased. He is “poor in spirit,” conscious of spiritual poverty and deep need, and consequently humble before God. The absence of the “high look.” “Nor mine eyes lofty.” “Pride has its seat in the heart, and betrays itself especially in the eyes.” The absence of ambitious projects. “Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.” The Psalmist did not strive with or after things that lay beyond his power or his sphere. He did not seek to know the mysteries of the humanly unknowable. Even if we could “understand all the mysteries and all knowledge,” that would not give rest to our soul. He did not attempt to do that which was beyond his power. Rest is not attained through the efforts of daring and “vaulting ambition.” Anon.
2. The verbs translated, “behaved,” “quieted myself,” suggest rather this sense: I have levelled down (toned down) and silenced my soul; I have suppressed and kept down undue aspirations, as a weaned child keeps down his natural cravings and makes himself quiet without the long enjoyed indulgence. C.—“The weaned child,” writes a mother, with reference to this passage, “has for the first time become conscious of grief. The piteous longing for the sweet nourishment of his life, the broken sob of disappointment, mark the trouble of his innocent heart; it is not so much the bodily suffering; he has felt that pain before, and cried while it lasted; but now his joy and comfort are taken away, and he knows not why. When his head is once more laid upon his mother’s bosom, then he trusts and loves and rests, but he has learned the first lesson of humility, he is cast down, and clings with fond helplessness to his one friend.”
As a weaned child lies close to its mother, satisfied with the fact that it has its mother, his soul, which is by nature restless and craving, is stilled; it does not long after earthly enjoyments and blessings, it does not desire that God should give it these; but it is satisfied with God’s fellowship, it finds full satisfaction in Him. D.—Surely no figure could more forcibly express either the cost at which he gained rest, or the purity and unselfishness of the rest he gained, than this homely figure of the weaned child. When once the boy is fairly weaned, he lies still and content on his mother’s bosom, no longer craving, and fretful unless his craving be satisfied. “So has it been with me,” says the Psalmist. “I, too, was as one banished from God, the source of all comfort and joy. I have had to endure pain, loss, and the stings of unsatisfied desire. But, at last, my soul is weaned from all discontented thoughts, from all fretful desires for earthly good, from all selfish cravings, and waits in stillness on God, finding its satisfaction in His mere presence, resting peacefully in His arms.” Cox.
Observe, the “child”—which is drawn for us to copy—is “weaned;” the process is complete; it has been truly disciplined; the lesson is learned; and now it rests in its “weaning.” The whole image expresses a repose which follows a struggle. There has been a distress, and a battle, and a self-victory; and now the stilled will is hushed into submission and contentment; ready to forego what is most liked, and to take just whatever is given it—“a weaned child.” It was a perfectly subjugated will—nevertheless, a will. And this is what is required of us; and what the nature of our manhood and the provisions of our religion have to assume. A will, decidedly a will; the more decided the will, the stronger the character, and the greater the man. But a will that is always being given up, separated, conformed, constantly, increasingly conformed. The unity of the two wills is heaven. J. Vaughan.
This weanedness of soul presupposes a power left in the soul of loving and desiring. It is not the destruction of its appetite, but the controlling and changing of it. A weaned child still hungers, but it hungers no more after the food that once delighted it; it is quiet without it; it can feed on other things; so a soul weaned from the world still pants much as ever for food and happiness, but it no longer seeks them in worldly objects. There is nothing in the world that it feels necessary for its happiness. This thing it loves, and that thing it values, but it knows that it can do without them, and it is ready to do without them whenever God pleases. Money, business, honor, pleasure, affection, friends, children, everything of an earthly kind that the hungry heart of man ever delighted itself in—this weanedness of soul says of them all, “If need be, let them go.” It checks the mind in the pursuit of them, it sobers it in the enjoyment of them, it prepares it to part with them, it quiets it when they are gone. It enables a man to rejoice in them while he has them, as though he rejoiced not; and to weep for them when he loses them, as though he wept not. We may trace this weanedness of soul to various causes—if we look upward, to God working by His Spirit in our hearts; if we look around us, to worldly disappointments and afflictions; if we look within us, to the discoveries we have had made to us of the grace and glory of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel, and the joy they have imparted to us. And may we trace it also to ourselves? to our own self-denial and efforts falling in with God’s gracious purposes? If so, it is to the glory of Jehovah’s grace, for not an effort heavenward would one of us make did not the living God constrain us. C. Bradley.
Blessed are those afflictions which subdue our affections, which wean us from self-sufficiency, which educate us into Christian manliness, which teach us to love God not merely when He comforts us, but even when He tries us. Well might the sacred poet repeat his figure of the weaned child; it is worthy of admiration and imitation; it is doubly desirable and difficult of attainment. Such weanedness from self springs from the gentle humility declared in the former verse, and partly accounts for its existence. If pride is gone, submission will be sure to follow; and, on the other hand, if pride is to be driven out, self must also be vanquished. S.
He who has longest studied the Gospel—who has risen into its strongest and purest light—and who, by broad, deep, and varied experience, has had his soul so schooled and taught as to have become proficient in the learning of the heart—he is the man who will have most about him of the humility of childhood, from his having found out for himself both the extent and limits of the human understanding. The most mature Christian will live in the exercise of the most simple faith. He who knows most of God will know most of himself; he will, therefore, believe when others doubt, and will distrust when others presume. T. Binney.—Our true knowledge is to know our own ignorance. Our true strength is to know our own weakness. Our true dignity is to confess that we have no dignity, and are nobody and nothing in ourselves, and to cast ourselves down before the dignity of God, under the shadow of whose wings and in the smile of whose countenance alone is any created being safe. Let us cling to our Father in heaven, as a child clings to his father’s hand C. Kingsley.
President Edwards was no less eminent as a philosopher than as a Christian, and was versed in discriminating between what is false and what is true in religious experience. Writing of his early religious life, he says: “Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature, which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. The soul of a true Christian appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun. There was no part of creature holiness that I had so great a sense of its loveliness as humility, brokenness of heart and poverty of spirit, and there was nothing that I so earnestly longed for. My heart panted after this, to lie low before God, as in the dust, that I might be nothing, and that God might be all; that I might become as a little child.” And, again: “Sometimes only mentioning a single word causes my heart to burn within me, or only seeing the name of Christ, or the name of some attribute of God. And God has appeared glorious to me on account of the Trinity. It has made me have exalting thoughts of God, that He subsists in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own good estate, but in a direct view of the glorious things of the Gospel.” J. W. A.
3. Prayer, as at the close of the last Psalm, that the experience of the individual may become the experience of the nation, that they too may learn to lie still and trust and wait, in that hope which, like faith and love, abideth forever (1 Cor. 13 : 13). P.
Humility is the root of hope. Hope is the blossom of meekness. The sorrows of a broken heart, the self-restraint of a meek and quiet spirit, the posture and temper of a little child—these are the forerunners and the sources of a lively hope. There are certain characteristics of hope expressed in this Psalm, which we can at once transfer to our own experience. It is a Divine hope, “Hope in the Lord.” It is a diffusive hope. The hope of the Psalmist was strong enough to quicken the hope of all around him; he sang, “Let Israel hope in the Lord.” A true hope has the power of infusing itself into the heart of others. It is a practical hope. This characteristic is to be gathered out of the words “from henceforth.” It is a hope that should take its start from the actual circumstances in which we are placed. It is an eternal hope. “From henceforth, even forever,” is the watchword of our Psalm. Our hope should and must take the long “forever” in. It has to do with unchanging realities, with an everlasting salvation; it looks forward to unseen things; it anticipates the ultimate fulfilment and accomplishment of all things that have been spoken by holy prophets since the world began. H. R. Reynolds.
We all need the gift of humility now. Our hearts are haughty, and our eyes lifted up. We do too commonly busy ourselves with things too great and wonderful for us. And hence it is that we are so restless and perturbed. There is no peace but in the humility which leans on God, which trusts in Him, which confesses weakness and ignorance and guilt; which is not ashamed to say, “I do not know,” “I cannot tell;” which rejoices not in the faults and defects of others, but rejoices in whatever is true in them and good and kind. Only as we recover the spirit of a little child, of a weaned child, and rest in simple, lowly faith in God shall we enter into the peace which passeth all understanding. Cox.
It is only when we begin to think about life, and how we should live, that the art of being quiet assumes its real value. It removes what
De Quincey calls “the burden of that distraction which lurks in the infinite littleness of details.” It is the infinite littleness of details which takes the glory and the dignity from our common life, and which we who value that life for its own sake and for the sake of its great Giver must strive to make finite. The art of being quiet is necessary to enable a man to possess his own soul in peace and integrity—to examine himself, to understand what gifts God has endowed him with, and to consider how he may best employ them in the business of the world. This is its universal utility. It is unwholesome activity which requires not repose and thoughtful quiet as its forerunner, and every man should secure some portion of each day for voluntary retirement and repose within himself. Chambers’s Journal.
It is good to prepare the thoughts in gentleness and silence for the consideration of duty. Silence as well as gentleness would seem beloved of God. For to the human sense, and like the mighty manifestation of a serene lesson, the skies and the great spaces between the stars are silent. Silent, too, for the most part, is earth, save where gentle sounds vary the quiet of the country and the fluctuating solitudes of the waters. Folly and passion are rebuked before it; peace loves it, and hearts are drawn together by it, conscious of one service and of one duty of sympathy. Violence is partial and transitory; gentleness alone is universal and ever sure. Leigh Hunt.
It is the quiet, unheralded lives that are building up the kingdom of heaven. Not much note is taken of them here. Their monuments will not make much show in the churchyard. Their names will not be passed down to posterity with many wreaths about them. But they are God’s favorites. Their work is blessed. Anon.