Psalms 149

14. And He has raised up a horn for His people, praise for all His saints, for the children of Israel—a people near to Him. Hallelujah! While all the creatures before mentioned have abundant cause to praise God for His infinite perfection and His goodness to themselves, a peculiar obligation is incumbent on His people; first, for His distinguishing favor through all periods of their history; and then, for a special mercy recently experienced, the restoration from captivity, now completed by the renewal of the temple and the reconstruction of the city walls. This restoration is described by a favorite Davidic figure, as exalting or lifting up the horn of Israel. A.—The Israel of the exile had lost its horn, i.e., its reputation and its power for defence or attack. Now God has again given it a horn, and indeed a high one, i.e., He has helped it to attain again to a position of independence among the nations that commands respect. D.

The whole creation, the heavens and their unnumbered worlds, all kingdoms of the material universe, are vocal with conscious or unconscious praise, declaring to His gratified ear His wondrous glory. We may not hear the vast harmony, infinite in variety as in strength, ceaselessly resounding through the illimitable firmaments which make the mighty fabric, a harmony to His fathomless spiritual sense ever audible. But we may hear the chorus of earth’s voices to His praise, in the manifold sounds of winds and waters, gentle or terrible, the varied tones of the trees of the wood when played upon by the breath of the zephyr or the blast of the storm, with the manifold and many-toned utterances of the whole animal creation, all these manifold voices of earth, bespeaking

God’s power, wisdom, and goodness, entering our thoughtful souls, suggest not vaguely the universal ordaining of praise to God as the sublime end and duty of all His creation. B.

The Being of God is a cause of rejoicing to the universe. Other things are drops, but this is the fountain. Other things are transient, insulated favors; fragments and atoms of beneficence; single flowers of mercy; single draughts of bliss; single odors, wafted from fields of fragrance, but God (let me speak reverently) is the very atmosphere, all comprehending and all-pervading, in which we live, and move, and have our being. Therefore, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord! He that would be joyful, let him be joyful in the Lord! The Book of Psalms is a chamber of holy voices, echo answering echo, deep calling unto deep, with the enthusiasm and rapture of adoring ecstasy and fearful love. We do but rehearse here what we shall utter above, when we call upon all things, silent or vocal, to praise the name of the Lord. J. W. A.

A life of praise bringeth comfort to the soul, as standing in the sunshine bringeth light and warmth; or as laboring doth warm the body; or as the sight and converse of our dearest friend, or the hearing of glad tidings doth rejoice the heart, without any great reasoning or arguing the case. This is the way to have comfort by feeling, to be much in the hearty praises of the Lord. When we come to heaven we shall have our joy by immediate vision, and the delightful exercise of love and praise. And if you would taste the heavenly joys on earth, you must imitate the joys of heaven in the ceaseless utterance of praise. Anon.

Sing unto the LORD a new song,

And his praise in the assembly of the saints.

2. Let Israel rejoice in him that made him:

Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.

3. Let them praise his name in the dance:

Let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.

4. For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: He will beautify the meek with salvation.

5. Let the saints exult in glory:

Let them sing for joy upon their beds.

6. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,

And a two-edged sword in their hand;

7. To execute vengeance upon the nations,

And punishments upon the peoples ; 8 To bind their kings with chains, And their nobles with fetters of iron ;

THIS Psalm breathes the spirit of intense joy and eager hope which must have been in the very nature of things characteristic of the period which succeeded the return from the Babylonish captivity. Men of strong faith and religious enthusiasm and fervent loyalty must have felt that in the very fact of the restoration of the people to their own land was to be seen so signal a proof of the Divine favor, that it could not but be regarded as a pledge of a glorious future yet in store for the nation. The burning sense of wrong, the purpose of a terrible revenge, which was the feeling uppermost when they had first escaped from their oppressors (as in Psalm 137), was soon changed into the hope of a series of magnificent victories over all the nations of the world, and the setting up of a universal dominion. It is such a hope which is expressed here. P.

1. Sing unto the Lord a new song.** Sing, for it is the fittest method for expressing reverent praise. God is ever new in His manifestations ; His mercies are new every morning ; His deliverances are new in every night of sorrow ; let your gratitude and thanksgivings be new also. Our singing should be “unto the Lord ;” the songs we sing should be of Him and to Him, “for of Him, and to Him, and through Him are all things.” S.

Saints. (His) beloved, or, “them that love Him.” A name repeated vs. 5 and 9, and therefore characteristic of the Psalm. P.—A title not to be restricted to the godly of the first times, but common to all that are saved in all after-times also, as Eph. 4 : 12. This name putteth mere morality and formal profession out of countenance, as the sun doth a glowworm. Saintship is a matter of Divine workmanship, and therefore it is far more remarkable than human excellence. In these times it is to be feared that the name is out of use, because holiness itself is out of fashion. T. Goodwin.

2. Rejoice, be joyful.** Cheerfulness and a festival spirit fills the soul full of harmony. It composes music for churches and hearts ; it makes and publishes glorifications of God ; it produces thankfulness, and serves the ends of charity ; and when the oil of gladness runs over, it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy fires, reaching up to a cloud, and making joy round about. And therefore, since

9. To execute upon them the judgment written : it is so innocent, and may be so pious and full of holy advantage, whosoever can innocently minister to this holy joy does set forward the work of religion and charity. Bishop Taylor. —An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness to serve God with. Fuller.

Give us the man who sings at his work ! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time, he will do it better, he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible of fatigue while he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous, a spiritual sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright. Carlyle.

4. The Lord** “taketh pleasure in His people,” because they are His people ; those whom He has purchased by His blood, renewed by His Spirit, and redeemed by His power. He “taketh pleasure in them,” because in them He is Himself honored and glorified ; because He sees in them the fruit of His suffering and mediation ; because of the work which He has already begun in them ; because they already exhibit some traces of His own image, some transcript of that mind which was in Him, who was “meek and lowly in heart.” The Lord takes pleasure in His people, inasmuch as He delights in the exercise of their graces toward Him. He takes pleasure in their poor attempts to please Him, because they are attempts. He weighs not the worth or merit of the action, but the principle and motive from which it springs. So the Lord hath pleasure in the prosperity of His people. We are expressly told that “He rejoiceth over them with joy ;” that “He rejoiceth over them to do them good.”

4. He will beautify the meek.** The scriptural term “meekness” is one which singularly characterizes and distinguishes the true Christian. It contains in itself a combination of graces, which are most evidently the fruit of the Spirit, and can grow on no other tree than on the Christian vine. As it respects God, it implies poverty of spirit ; humiliation of heart arising from a sense of guilt and a feeling of corruption ; submission to God’s will ; silence and patience under His rod; acquiescence with His dispensations; and a surrender of our own natural desires and inclinations to His overruling appointments. As it respects man, meekness comprehends lowliness of mind, and a readiness to prefer others before ourselves; gentleness of disposition and behavior; forbearance under provocations; forgiveness of injuries; quietness of spirit, and moderation in pushing forward our own interest and benefit. These are the qualities which distinguish “the meek.” E. Cooper.

Virtue, wisdom, and goodness, those graces of character which constitute moral beauty, never lose their power of attraction. The beauty that shines forth from a pure and sweet-tempered Christian soul far transcends, in all those qualities which command and hold a worthy admiration, the transient charm of mere outward adornment either of nature or art. Meekness, patience, kindness, charitableness, a self-denying spirit—these are the vestments of the highest type of beauty—the kind which commands not only the admiration of the best of men, but is admired by God Himself. Hallock.

Of meekness, one of the moderns (Rambach) has said, “It grows out of the ashes of self-love and on the grave of pride.” Rooting itself deep in these antecedent beatitudes, in undesert, the sense of which is soul-poverty, and ill-desert, which worketh soul-sorrow, it holds itself ready to fall in with anything, the least or the worst, which God may give. This blessed frame of spirit toward God has its consequent and counterpart in the meek man’s social temper. Dykes.—Meekness is that willingness to suffer wrong, or pain, or insult, from our neighbor patiently, and as a medicine from God, not a poison from man, which flows from the conviction that we deserve at God’s hand far heavier chastisements than we receive; and that all things, even the unkindness of others, are permitted for our good, and may be converted into blessings. Monsell.

There is scarcely a more beautiful or touching phenomenon than when prosperity, which elates a trivial or selfish nature, fills a worthier one, open to the perception of itself and others and of the infinite over all, with mingled lowliness and reverence. Certainly a pure and fixed serenity of spirit, an elevation of thought toward God, and a deepening consciousness of His overshadowing presence, are no unfitting accompaniments to outward successes or triumphs. “When I have ascended before men,” says Lord Bacon, in that most sublime and affecting prayer which he composed a few years before his death, “I have descended in humiliation before Thee.” Clulow.

Meekness has its origin in the religious experience which we call conversion; for it is when the top root of human pride is broken by a thorough crushing down of the soul of its sinfulness before God; it is when the strong man, reduced to cry for mercy at the hands of infinite justice, is fain to receive forgiveness, and hope and peace with God, as unmerited gifts from the very grace of his Redeemer; it is then, and through that religious change, that the heart grows susceptible of true meekness. Then meekness enters, and a tender feeling that one who has himself done so much evil in his day ought to bear with the evil-doing of other men; that one who owes everything to mercy should be above all things merciful. Dykes.—Meekness is love at school; love at the Saviour’s feet. It is Christian lowlihood. It is the disciple learning to know himself; learning to fear and distrust and abhor himself. It is the disciple practising the sweet but self-emptying lesson of putting on the Lord Jesus, and finding all his righteousness in that righteous other. It is the disciple learning the defects of his own character, and taking hints from hostile as well as friendly monitors. It is the disciple praying and watching for the improvement of his talents, the mellowing of his temper, and the amelioration of his character. It is the living Christian at the Saviour’s feet, learning of Him who is meek and lowly, and finding rest for his own soul. Hamilton.

5. This verse has been fulfilled in solemn crises of saintly life. On beds of death, and at the scaffold and the stake, joy and glory have been kindled in the hearts of Christ’s faithful witnesses. Le Blanc.

6-9. “God’s praises in their mouths and a two-edged sword in their hand,” for they were fresh from the wall-building of the city in which “they who builded on the wall and they that bare burdens, with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon” (Neh. 4: 17). The whole passage looks back probably to the commission which God gave Israel to drive out the idolatrous Canaanites. So far as the letter of it is concerned, its form comes from the past, though in the spirit thereof its outlook may be into the future—the bloodless victories of truth over the hearts of the King’s enemies. In the interpretation of this passage it would be quite unauthorized to ignore the great facts of the early history of Israel on the one hand, and not less so on the other hand to ignore the great facts of the future age, set forth even then in prophecy and fulfilled in the Gospel era under the Prince of Peace who gives His people only “the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.” The letter of our passage comes from the former; the spirit and the present meaning are amply revealed in the latter. C.

6. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hand. Praise and power go ever hand in hand. The two things act and react upon each other. An era of spiritual force in the Church is always one of praise; and when there comes some grand outburst of sacred song, we may expect that the people of God are entering upon some new crusade for Christ. Cromwell’s Ironsides were sneeringly called Psalm-singers; but God’s Psalm-singers are always Ironsides. He who has a “new song in his mouth” is ever stronger, both to suffer and to labor, than the man who has a dumb spirit and a hymnless heart. When he sings at his work, he will both do more and do it better than he would without his song. Hence, we need not be surprised that all through its history the Church of God has travelled “along the line o music.” W. M. Taylor.

7. To execute vengeance among the nations, punishments among the peoples. Not their own vengeance, but that of God, to whom alone it appertains. This is really nothing more than a prediction, that God would use His people as His instruments in punishing the nations by whom they had themselves been persecuted and oppressed. This was partially fulfilled in the successes of the Maccabees, but under a new and unexpected form, in the spiritual triumphs of the true religion, and its actual or prospective subjugation of the world.

9. As written may mean written in the book of God’s decrees, there is no need of supposing a reference to any part of Scripture. If there be such reference, however, it is no doubt to the threatening in Deut. 32 : 41-43. To act as God’s instruments in this great judicial process, so far from being a disgrace or hardship, is an honor reserved for all the objects of His mercy and subjects of His grace. The Psalm ends as it began, with Hallelujah! A.

(The) judgment written. This has been explained to mean the judgment written in the law, and that either the extermination of the Canaanites, as a pattern for all future acts of righteous vengeance (Stier); or, in a more general sense, such judgments as those threatened in Deut. 32 : 40-43. But perhaps it is better to take it as denoting a judgment fixed, as committed to writing, to denote its unalterable character, written thus by God Himself. As in Isa. 65 : 6, God says, “Behold it is written before Me : I will not keep silence, but will recompense, even recompense into their bosom.”

It is an honor—that is, the subjection of the world described in the previous verses. But perhaps it is better to take the pronoun as referring to God: “He is a glory to all,” etc.; i.e., either His glory and majesty are reflected in His people; or He is the author and fountain of their glory; or He is the glorious object of their praise. P.

This honor have all His saints. All the godly shared in the triumphs of the Lord when He smote Israel’s foes. We have like honor, but it is shown in victories of another sort. All the holy ones are sent upon errands by their holy Lord. The honors described in this Psalm are common to all the family of grace; and such service as the Lord appoints is to be undertaken by every one of them, without exception. The Lord honors all His chosen here, and He will glorify them all hereafter; this rule is without exception. Surely in this we have the best argument for glorifying the Lord, wherefore we close our new song with another Hallelujah, “Praise ye the Lord.” S.