Psalms 143
Butler1. HEAR my prayer, O LORD; give ear to my supplications:
In thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
2. And enter not into judgment with thy servant;
For in thy sight no man living is righteous.
3. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul;
He hath smitten my life down to the ground:
He hath made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead.
4. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me;
My heart within me is desolate.
5. I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all thy doings:
I muse on the work of thy hands.
6. I spread forth my hands unto thee:
My soul thirsteth after thee, as a weary land.
[Selah
7. Make haste to answer me, O LORD; my spirit faileth:
THIS is the last of the seven Penitential Psalms, as they are called. In the Hebrew it is styled a Psalm of David; in some copies of the LXX it is further said to have been written when he had to flee from his son Absalom. It is probable that the deep tone of sorrow and anguish which pervades the Psalm, and the deep sense of sin, led to the belief that it must be referred to that occasion. The spirit and the language, it is true, are not unworthy of David; yet the many passages borrowed from earlier Psalms make it more probable that this Psalm is the work of some later poet. Delitzsch says, very truly, that if David himself did not write it—and he admits that the many expressions derived from other sources are against such a supposition—still the Psalm is “an extract of the most precious balsam from the old Davidic songs.” Like other post-exile Psalms (such, for instance, as the one hundred and sixteenth and one hundred and nineteenth), it is a witness to us of the depth and reality of the religious life in the later history of the nation, and an evidence also of the way in which that life was upheld and cherished by the inspired
Hide not thy face from me;
Lest I become like them that go down into the pit.
8. Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning;
For in thee do I trust:
Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk;
For I lift up my soul unto thee.
9. Deliver me, O LORD, from mine enemies:
I flee unto thee to hide me.
10. Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God:
Thy spirit is good; lead me in the land of uprightness.
11. Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name’s sake:
In thy righteousness bring my soul out of trouble.
12. And in thy lovingkindness cut off mine enemies,
And destroy all them that afflict my soul;
For I am thy servant.
words of David and other Psalmists and prophets of old. The Psalm consists of two parts, each of which is of six verses, the conclusion of the first being marked by the Selah. The first portion contains the complaint (vs. 1-6); the second the prayer founded on that complaint vs. 7-12). P.
I. Jehovah, hear my prayer, give ear unto my cries for mercy; in Thy faithfulness answer me (and) in Thy righteousness. The combination of faithfulness and righteousness can hardly be regarded as distinct grounds of argument, but rather as modified statements of the same. The faithfulness of God has direct reference to His promise or covenant engagements; His righteousness has reference to the claims of His own people, but claims which owe their existence to those same covenant engagements. A.—He sets forth two reasons for the answering of his prayer that are found in God Himself: The truthfulness with which He evinces the truth of His promises; i.e., His faithfulness to His promises; and, His righteousness, not in a legal sense, but in the evangelical sense. D.—It is to God’s own character that the appeal is made.
It is there first, and not in his own misery, that the sinner finds the great argument why his prayer should be answered. It is precisely the same ground which John takes: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous (true to His promise and true to His revealed character) to forgive us our sins.” P.
2. And enter not into judgment with Thy servant, for just before Thee is no one living.** To enter into judgment is a forensic phrase meaning to go to law, to prosecute, to sue. The verb in the last clause is not a passive meaning to be justified, but a neuter meaning to be just or innocent, to be in the right or on the right side of the controverted question. The acknowledgment in this verse has caused the Psalm to be reckoned among the penitential Psalms. A.
—The noticeable point here is that David prays to be answered on the basis of God’s faithfulness and righteousness, while yet he deprecates being judged on the score of strict justice, and even says that no living man can abide such an ordeal and come forth justified. This moral attitude, this unique position between God’s covenanted faithfulness and integrity on the one hand, and His simple justice in the eye of law on the other, is by no means unknown to Christian experience. It is the case of one conscious of imperfections, deeply sensible of being all unable to stand before God blameless in law; yet encouraged to take hold of Divine promise because it is promise; of God’s mercy because it is simple mercy; favor shown to those who have sinned and who are still conscious of moral weakness and shortcomings. C.
The godly man, in his desire to have his character vindicated before man, appeals to the just Judge, but instantly falls back with a guilty sense that before His tribunal none can stand. Aglen.—The outward rule applied by the human observer to external conduct, the man might bear and might feel that he could present to it a fairly adequate external righteousness; but the spiritual rule of the Divine law, reaching to motive, affection, and will, to the thoughts and intents of the heart; the eye that is as a flame of fire penetrating into these, exploring and revealing their secret recesses, he could not bear that; he could not bear it even with respect to those same things which might demand the favorable judgment of men, for while men can look only on the outward appearance, at visible external phenomena, God looks at the inner actuating and modifying forces which are busy within; things not seen, but which in His sight determine the character of the things that are seen. T. Binney.
The burden of the Psalmist’s lamentation was none other than that which we hear in so many notes, high and low, through the whole scale of suffering in other cries of penitence or prayers for pardon. The soul of man finds itself in the presence of God, and feels that it is not and cannot be justified; that God cannot count it righteous because it is not so, and yet that, unless it be justified there can be no peace or blessedness for it. This was the problem of all problems. The man who trod the path of obedience found that it was the way of peace; but when his foot slipped and temptation came on him, and the enemy persecuted his soul, how was he to regain his ground? The devout worshipper might come before the Lord with sacrifices and burnt offerings, but he soon found that the righteous God had no pleasure in them; that He did not require them, only or chiefly, at the hands of His servants. The old difficulty returned in all its force: “In the sight of God could no man living be justified.” How terrible, then, would it be if He were to enter into judgment! Plumptre.
He doth not say, “With an enemy, a rebel, a traitor, an impenitent sinner;” but “with Thy servant,” one that is devoted to Thy fear, one that is consecrated to Thy service, one that is really and indeed “wholly Thine, as much and as fully as he can be.” As if he had said, “Lord, if the holiest, purest, best of men should come and stand before Thee in judgment, or plead with Thee, they must needs be cast in their cause. ‘If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities,’ alas! ‘O Lord, who shall stand?’” T. Lye.
3. The suffering had made him look within, had shown him his own heart in its sinfulness and its misery; and this deep sense of sin and misery had led to the prayer in v. 2. Hence his deliverance from his enemy and the forgiveness of his sin are naturally connected in his mind. P.
4. Is desolate.** Or rather, “is full of amazement,” literally, “astonishes itself;” seeks to comprehend the mystery of its sufferings, and is ever beaten back upon itself in its perplexity; such is the full force of the reflexive conjugation here employed. P.
5,6. He remembers the days of old in which Jehovah was manifestly with him; he meditates upon the whole redemptive work of God with all the mighty and gracious deeds in which it has hitherto unfolded itself; he muses upon the work of His hands; i.e., the hitherto so wondrously moulded history of himself and his people. The contrast which presents itself to the Psalmist when he thus compares his present.
with the past only opens his wounds still deeper and makes his prayer for help all the more urgent. He spreads forth his hands unto God that He may receive him and espouse his cause. Like a thirsty land his soul is toward Him. D.
5. I meditate, I muse.** The mind and the heart are absorbing faculties. If we run over truth we shall carry little of it along with us. Nothing will take any adequate effect. Our growth will be slow, if indeed we grow at all. The joy, too, of spiritual life will be small; it will have little elevation, little unworldly refinement. Every step in our experience requires a thoughtful and accounting mind toward Him; and in such a mind we shall ever find peace and support. None can think for us, none do our duty but ourselves. If we do not drink of the waters of life they will not heal us; if we do not absorb, as it were, the image and life of truth, they will not be in us, nor ever become the fashion and energy of our living. There is a sweetness, a power in the Divine promises not to be hastily made ours, but ours as the wisdom of years is that which we have toiled for as the price and glory of life! H. Hooker.
There is one art of which every man should be master, the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all? To what end was man alone, of all animals, endued by the Creator with the faculty of self-consciousness? But you are likewise born in a Christian land; and revelation has provided for you new subjects for reflection, and new treasures of knowledge, never to be unlocked by him who remains self-ignorant. Self-knowledge is the key to this casket; and by reflection alone can it be obtained. Coleridge.—Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action. So meditate that thou mayest do; so do that thou mayest purchase honor, for which purchase give God the glory. Quarles.
6. I have spread forth my hands,** as the weary child stretches forth its hands to its mother, that on her bosom it may be hushed to rest. P.
I meditate. I stretch forth my hands. Meditation is prayer’s handmaid to wait on it, both before and after the performance of supplication. It is as the plough before the sower, to prepare the heart for the duty of prayer; and as the harrow after the sower, to cover the seed when ’tis sown. As the hopper feeds the mill with grist, so does meditation supply the heart with matter for prayer. Gurnall.—In the Hebrew poets the longing for God never strikes one as morbid or unnatural to the men who uttered it. It is as natural for them to long for God as for the swallow to seek her nest. Throughout all their images no suspicion rises within us that they are exaggerating. We feel how truly they are reading themselves, their deepest selves. No false note occurs in all their aspiration. How joyous a thing it was to the Hebrews to seek their God! How artlessly they call upon Him to entertain them in His pavilion, to cover them with His feathers, to hide them in His secret place, to hold them in the hollow of His hand, or stretch around them the everlasting arms! H. Drummond.
7. God is a pitiful Spirit to failing spirits.** “I will not contend (saith the Lord) forever, neither will I be always wroth;” why? we deserve His wrath should last and take fire forever against us; yea, but (saith the Lord) this is the reason, “The spirit should fail before Me, and the souls which I have made” (Isa. 57 : 16); I love and pity the fainting souls and spirits of men; I will help my children; how can I see my creatures whom I made and do love, to perish for want of my help? David knew the Lord’s nature, and that this was a speeding argument in prayer, which made him here and elsewhere so often use it. A pitiful father will not see the spirit of his children utterly fail. It is His opportunity; He usually helps when all other helps fail, that we may the more strongly cleave to Him, and ground ourselves upon Him, as knowing how infirm we are, if He confirm us not. When man’s cruse of oil is dry and fails and can drop no more, then is God’s time to prepare His. Thus helped He the Israelites at the Red Sea, when all man’s strength and wisdom was at a stand. He loves to be seen in the mount, in extremities. T. Calvert.
8. Cause me to hear Thy loving-kindness.** In God’s favor is life, wealth, and grace, all good things and pleasure for evermore, so that if He look kindly to us we need be afraid of nothing. But how shall he be assured of His favor? Even by hearing it, as he saith in the fifty-first Psalm: “Make me to hear joy and gladness.” The voice which is heard is the Word of God, which, being apprehended by faith, is able to comfort our souls in whatsoever temptation. Symson.—Loving-kindness is a favorite expression, a choice theme of David’s. It is used more in the Book of Psalms than in any other book in the Scriptures. Loving-kindness is love showing kindness; it is the sun of love shining with rays of kindness; the river of love sending forth streams of kindness; it is the heart of love uttering itself by words of kindness, doing deeds, and giving gifts of kindness. W. Abbott.
In Thee do I trust. Our plea with the Lord is our faith; if we are relying upon Him He cannot disappoint us; “In thee do I trust” is a sound and solid argument with God. He who made the ear will cause us to hear; He who is love itself will have the kindness to bring His loving-kindness before our minds. S.
Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk. This may be said to comprise every other prayer. If God gives His servant to “know the way wherein he should walk,” and strength to walk in it, peace, and order, and liberty, and joy will soon come. Life is a daily difficulty. Think of the number of things that are to be believed, that are to be renounced, that are to be examined, that are to be distinguished in themselves and from other things, that are to be tentatively dealt with, that are to be done, that are to be left undone, that are to be waited for, that are to be suffered. All these are included in the “way wherein we should walk.” First, as respects opinions and beliefs. There can be no living way for a man that does not involve these. We are bound to form them, and the point is that there is very great difficulty in forming some of them or in keeping them when we have them. Any one of us, if we will, may be of them that believe to the saving of the soul. How? By bringing the whole case fully and earnestly before God. If we come really to Him, we have solved the difficulty, we have come into the new and living way, and God will make that way more and more plain before our face; whereas if we abide among the exterior things, examining, considering, comparing, putting this opinion against that, and working the whole matter simply as a high intellectual problem, without ever making the last and highest appeal, we have no certainty of a good and true issue. Secondly, in respect of conduct also, we find life to be a scene of constant difficulty. Even those who know the way they should go, so far as it consists of beliefs, convictions, principles, find it still in their practise to be a way of continual difficulty. What can we do? We can pray. We can use this text and get the benefits it carries. The solution of all difficulty, be it what it may, is “to lift up the soul to God.” God is the God of peace; and to lift up the soul to Him is to rise out of storm into calm, is to leave the self-made troubles of life beneath us while we mount up on eagles’ wings into His eternal and illimitable tranquillity. Raleigh.
Cause me to know, for I lift up my soul unto Thee. Religious life is more than feeling, more than knowledge, more than obedience to a moral code; and yet religion is feeling, it is mental illumination, it is especially moral effort; because it is that which implies, comprehends, and combines them all. It is the sacred bond, freely accepted, generously, enthusiastically, persistently welcomed, whereby the soul binds itself to God, its true Friend. To be thus bound to a person is to cherish strong feelings toward him; it is to seek to know all that can be known about his wishes and character, and to register this knowledge in exact terms; it is to obey scrupulously all that is clearly ascertained to be his will. “Show Thou me the way that I should walk in, for I lift my soul unto Thee!” This is the language of feeling, pure and strong; it is the language of intelligence, ever desiring a higher knowledge of its Highest Object; it is the language of obedience, the most absolute that man can proffer. It is these, because it is the voice, the exceeding great cry of that unquenchable passion, of that irrepressible aspiration whereby the soul of man shows forth its truest dignity and highest virtue in seeking the better to know and love and serve its Highest and Invisible Object; because, in a word, it is the language of religion. Liddon.
The heavenward look will guard us from the temptations which surround all our service and the distractions which lay waste our lives. It is habitual communion with Christ alone that will give the persistency that makes systematic, continuous efforts for Him possible, and yet will keep systematic work from degenerating, as it ever tends to do, into mechanical work. We are ever apt to trust to our work, to do it without a distinct recurrence at each moment to the principles on which it rests, and the motives by which it should be actuated; to become so absorbed in details that we forget the purpose which alone gives them meaning, to overestimate the external aspects of it, to lose sight of the solemn truths which make it so grand, and to think of it as commonplace because it is common, as ordinary because it is familiar. And from these most real dangers, which beset us all there is no refuge but the frequent, the habitual gaze into the open heavens, which will show us again the realities of things, and bring to our spirits, dwarfed even by habits of goodness, the freshening of former motives by the vision of Jesus Christ. For ourselves, and for all that we do for Him, living communion with God is the means of power and peace, of security and success. A. M.
8-12. The series of petitions may thus be grouped: Prayer for God’s mercy or loving-kindness, as that on which all hangs, and then for guidance (v. 8). For deliverance from enemies, and then still more fully for a knowledge of God’s will and the gifts of His Spirit, that he may obey that will (vs. 9, 10). For a new life, and deliverance from suffering, and now not only for deliverance from his enemies, but for their destruction (vs. 11, 12). P.
10. Jehovah alone, unto whom he has fled for refuge, can make him know in the externally and internally perilous position in which he finds himself what is right and salutary; He alone can teach him how to carry out the recognized will of God. This is what he begs of Him in v. 10; for Jehovah is indeed his God, who cannot leave him in error; may His good Spirit, then, i.e., His Spirit which willingly furthers the salvation of man, lead him. D.
To do Thy will. Not merely to know it; hence the need of the Holy Spirit’s aid, His quickening, guiding, strengthening, as well as His enlightening influence. P.—We are to pray that God would teach us to know and then teach us to do His will. Knowledge without obedience is lame, obedience without knowledge is blind; and we must never hope for acceptance if we offer the blind and the lame to God. Vincent Alsop.
Thy Spirit is good. It is vain to imagine that our obedience is to have no other rule but the Spirit without an attendance to the law; the Spirit is, indeed, the efficient cause of our obedience, and hence we are said to be “led by the Spirit;” but it is not properly the rule of our obedience, but the will of God revealed in His Word is the rule; the Spirit is the wind that drives us in our obedience; the law is our compass, according to which it steers our course for us. The Spirit and the law, the wind and the compass, can stand well together. “Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God” (there is David’s rule, viz., God’s will revealed); “Thy Spirit is good” (there is David’s wind, that enabled him to steer his course according to it). The Spirit of life doth free us from the law of sin and death, but not from the holy, and pure, and good, and righteous law of God (Rom. 8: 1-3). T. Shepherd.—We are inclined and enabled to good by the sanctifying Spirit. In the Christian religion, not only the precepts are good, but there goeth along with them the power of God to make us good. The Spirit’s direction hath strength joined with it. And He is a good Spirit as He doth incline us to good. The Spirit is the only fountain of all goodness and holiness (Neh. 9: 20): “Thou gavest also Thy good Spirit to instruct them.” Why is He so often called the good Spirit but that all His operations tend to make men good and holy? Eph. 5: 9, “The fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” Manton.
Perhaps we have not sufficiently considered the lovingness of the character of the Third Person in the Holy Trinity. To the minds of many who still recognize His complete personality He is as One almost passionless. To some He is associated with the thoughts of reproof and sternness. The chief and highest name of the Holy Spirit is “Comforter,” and not a comforter, as though He were one among many, but exclusively, so that whatever comfort there is in all the world dates itself in Him, “the Comforter.” His very title, twice repeated, is “Spirit of love,” and His first-fruit and all His fruits—for each fruit in order is only the expression of the first; it is only the same grace placed in a different combination—“love.” The Holy Ghost is a great Leader. He guides into all truth; truth of thought first, truth of feeling next, truth of action afterward. His leadings tend to the land of uprightness. And where is that? Truth’s land must be Christ’s land, because Christ is truth; and therefore the Gospel must be “the land of uprightness.” J. Vaughan.
Land of uprightness. Literally, “in a level land,” or “on level ground,” where there is no fear of stumbling and falling. The word mishōr is constantly used of the plain (champaign) country. P.—The land of plainness, a land where no wickedness of men, and malice of Satan, vex the soul from day to day; a land where no rough paths and crooked turns lengthen out the traveller’s weary journey (see v. 5); but where all is like the smooth pasture-lands of Reuben, a fit place for flocks to lie down. A. Bonar.
Teach me to do Thy will, for Thou art my God. Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. These two clauses mean substantially the same thing. The Psalmist’s longings are expressed in the first of them in plain words, and in the second in a figure. “To do God’s will” is to be in “the land of uprightness.” In each case his prayer is based upon a motive or plea. “Thou art my God.” His faith apprehends a personal bond between him and God, and feels that that bond obliges God to teach him His will. “Thy Spirit is good,” and therefore the trusting spirit has a right to ask to be made good likewise. The relation of the believing spirit to God not only obliges God to teach it His will, but to make it partaker of His own image and conformed to His own purity. Or the last clause may be read, “Let Thy good Spirit lead me.” In either case the goodness of the Divine Spirit is the plea upon which the prayer is grounded. And the thought just comes to this: We have the right to expect that we shall be made participant of the Divine nature. So sweet, so deep, so tender is the tie that knits a devout soul to God, that nothing short of conformity to the perfect purity of God can satisfy the aspirations of the creature or discharge the obligations of the Creator. It is a daring thought. The Psalmist’s desire was a prophecy. The New Testament vindicates and fulfils it when it says, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” Christ’s heart cannot be satisfied, Christ’s cross cannot be rewarded, the Divine nature cannot be at rest, the purpose of redemption cannot be accomplished until all that have trusted in Christ are partakers of Divine purity, and all the wanderers are led by devious and yet by right paths, by crooked and yet by straight ways, by places rough and yet smooth into the land of uprightness. Where and what He is, there and that shall also His servants be. A. M.
11. Quicken me, O Lord, for Thy name’s sake. For the sake of Thine own glory, that Thou mayest show Thyself to be the God of loving-kindness and power, which thou art esteemed to be. Fauset.—For Thy righteousness’ sake. It is worthy of observation that the Psalmist pleads God’s righteousness as the foundation on which he bases his supplication for the deliverance of his soul from trouble, and God’s loving-kindness or mercy as that on which he grounds his prayer, or his conviction, that God will destroy his enemies. This is not the language of a revengeful and bloodthirsty spirit. Bib. Com.
11, 12. Thy name’s sake . . . Thy righteousness’ sake . . . And of Thy mercy. Mark here with what three cords David seeks to draw God to grant him his suits; for His name’s sake, for His righteousness’ sake, and for His mercy’s sake, three such motives that it must be a very hard suit that God will deny if either of them be used. R. Baker.—Mercies asked with an act of faith and assurance shall be obtained; God, for the sake of His name and His righteousness, of His glory and His faithfulness in the performance of His promises, will not fail to be favorable and gracious to his servants, quickening them and bringing them by degrees out of all their troubles. Bishop Horne.
12. We have nothing to do with the historical sense of these and other like passages; it is not and cannot be in their historical and human meaning that the Psalms are the perpetual storehouse of prayer and thanksgiving for the people of God in every age. But the spiritual meaning of these words expresses an eternal truth which we should do ill not to remember. We have enemies, we have those that vex our soul; the Psalmist spoke a language which every one of God’s servants may echo. Did Paul mean anything or nothing when he said our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the princes of this world’s darkness, against evil spirits not confined in the great deep, but ranging at will in this upper world? Did Peter mean anything or nothing when he said, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”? By these words we see that if we are indolent or slumbering, we have an enemy who is wakeful; that as we hope for the help of God’s Spirit, so we have against us the power of the spirit of evil; that with a working mysterious indeed, and incomprehensible, as is the working of God’s Spirit no less, yet with a fruit clearly manifest, there is an influence busy in undoing every work of grace in our souls, in driving away every thought of penitence or of love, in instigating every evil desire, in deepening every fit of spiritual slumber. Indeed it is no unmeaning prayer. “Destroy them that afflict my soul.” T. Arnold.
Thy servant. Does God give His servants wages for what they do? Yes, always. Salvation is not wages; heaven is not wages. Where, then, are the wages of good works? Very often providences, sometimes happy ones, sometimes bitter ones, but both wages; conscience, a good conscience; growth, more grace, more light, more peace, more faith, and more of the presence of Christ; and in heaven the degrees, higher measures, and capacities of glory awarded according to the service done. J. Vaughan.
The Psalms bring before us in all its fulness and richness the devotional element of the religious character. They are the first great teachers and patterns of prayer. And they show this side of the religious character in varied and finished detail, in all its compass and living and spontaneous force. R. W. Church.