Psalms 3

The Mediator, the distant hope of whom had cheered the men of ancient times on their passage to the tomb, has come in the fulness of the times to accomplish his mysterious mission, and claim from the height of the cross the fulfilment of the Divine promise, “Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession.” The nations belong to Him, He to humanity; He is prince and pastor, for His sceptre is a crook, and His subjects are sheep whom He feeds and carries in His bosom with a tenderness as great as the power with which He defends, and the authority with which He governs them. His reign is a reign of persuasion and love; He wishes none but free subjects, He wishes only to reign over hearts; He acknowledges for subjects those only who are united to Him by faith, and are desirous to be enlisted to Him only for peace, comfort, joy, and strength. He acknowledges for subjects only those who, acknowledging themselves to be sinners devoid of all glory before God, and incapable of entering by their own strength and their own merits into communion with the Father of spirits, cry for grace and mercy at the foot of His cross, and expect nothing in earth or heaven except from His powerful mediation. A. Vinet.

For professedly Christian nations, churches, institutions, their relation of earnest loyalty and faithfulness, or otherwise, to Him and to the beneficent work of His Kingdom, is decisive of their destiny; since for the work of that Kingdom, and for the glory of its King, they exist, as means to ends. Christ’s law is the law of right. His Kingdom is the kingdom of light, of purity, of peace, of love, of brotherly kindness between man and man, between class and class; the kingdom of hope, for time and for eternity, and of endless progress for human nature. Medd.—In spite of all man’s sin, the world does prosper marvellously, miraculously; in spite of all, God is stronger than the devil, life stronger than death, wisdom stronger than folly, order stronger than disorder, fruitfulness stronger than destruction; and they will be so more and more, till the last great day, when Christ shall have put all enemies under His feet and death is swallowed up in victory, and all mankind in one fold, under one Shepherd, Jesus Christ, the righteous King of all. Kingsley.

1. LORD, how are mine adversaries increased! Many are they that rise up against me. 2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. [Selah 3 But thou, O LORD, art a shield about me; My glory, and the lifter up of mine head.

4. I cry unto the LORD with my voice, And he answereth me out of his holy hill. [Selah 5 I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustaineth me. 6 I will not be afraid of ten thousands of the people, That have set themselves against me round about.

7. Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God:

For thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone;

THIS Psalm and that which follows were written by David when he fled from his son Absalom. Both Psalms, it has been conjectured, were composed on the same day; the one in the morning, the other in the evening, of the day following that on which the king quitted Jerusalem. The words are the words of one who had often sought and found help from God; and who even in this his sorest strait calmly reposes, knowing that Jehovah is his glory and the lifter-up of his head. From v. 5 we gather that the Psalm is a morning hymn. With returning day there comes back on the monarch’s heart the recollection of the enemies who threaten him—a nation up in arms against him, his own son heading the rebellion, his wisest and most trusted counsellor in the ranks of his foes. Never, not even when hunted by Saul, had he found his position one of greater danger. The odds were overwhelmingly against him. This is a fact which he does not attempt to hide from himself: “How many are mine enemies;” “Many rise up against me;” “Many say to my soul;” “Ten thousands of the people have set themselves against me.” Yet he is not crushed; he is not desponding. Enemies may be thick as the leaves of the forest, and earthly friends may be few, or uncertain, or far off. But there is one Friend who cannot fail him, and to Him David turns with a confidence and affection which lift him above all his fears. Never had he been more sensible of the reality and preciousness of the Divine protection. If he was surrounded by enemies, Jehovah was his shield. If Shimei and his crew turned his glory into shame, Jehovah was his glory; if they sought to revile and degrade him, Jehovah was the lifter-up of his head. Nor did the mere fact of distance from Jerusalem separate between him and his God. He had sent back the ark and the priests; for he would not endanger their safety, and he did not trust in them as a charm, and he knew that Jehovah could still hear him from “His holy mountain” (v. 4), could still lift up the light of His countenance upon him, and put gladness in his heart (4: 6, 7). Sustained by Jehovah, he had laid him down and slept in safety; trusting in the same mighty protection, he would lie down again to rest. Enemies might taunt (v. 2), and friends might fail him; but the victory was Jehovah’s, and he could break the teeth of the ungodly (vs. 7, 8). P.

Thou hast broken the teeth of the wicked.

8. Salvation belongeth unto the LORD:

Thy blessing be upon thy people. [Selah

One day of David’s life has been more fully chronicled than any other day in the Bible—the day when he halted after Shimei’s curses, and the king and all the people rested, weary and heart-sick. The next morning “David arose, and all the people that were with him; by the morning-light there lacked not one of them that was not gone over Jordan.” To that morning and the following night, in all probability, belong the third and the fourth Psalms. Yet, while those Psalms arose from the occasion, they suit every Christian generation. Bishop Alexander.

2. No help for him in God. Had David’s foes said of him, He deserves no help from God, he would readily have owned this as a great truth. As God’s children are comforted by the truth, so the enemy advances lies to distress them. When he attacks their faith and comfort, he boldly impeaches the love and faithfulness of their God. W. Mason.

Selah. The first stanza, or double verse, closes, like the second and fourth, with the word Selah. This term occurs seventy-three times in the Psalms and three times in the prophecy of Habakkuk. It corresponds to rest, either as a noun or verb, and like it is properly a musical term, but generally indicates a pause in the sense as well as the performance. Like the titles, it invariably forms part of the text. In the case before us, it serves as a kind of devout ejaculation to express the writer’s feelings, and at the same time warns the reader to reflect on what he reads, just as our Saviour was accustomed to say, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. A.

Art thou beset with distress of soul, or surrounded with troubles and difficulties? art thou singing a melancholy note? “Selah,” saith David; pause, consider this; lift up thy mind to attend, how dishonorable to thy God, how destructive to thy faith, peace, love, and holiness is this! Hear the voice of thy Saviour. His word is adapted to thy circumstances, however distressing or desperate. W. Mason.

3. Every hour he has reason to fear an attack that will annihilate him; but Jehovah is the shield that covers him before and behind. His kingdom has been taken from him, but Jehovah is his glory. With covered and sunk head he went up the Mount of Olives, but Jehovah is the lifter up of his head, inasmuch as He comforts and helps him. D.—An active believer, the more he is beaten off from God, either by the rebukes of Providence or the reproaches of enemies, the faster hold he will take of Him, and the closer will he cleave to Him; so David here, when his enemies said, There is no help for him in God, cries out with so much the more assurance, “But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; let them say what they will, I am sure Thou wilt never desert me, and I am resolved, I will never distrust Thee.” H.

4. Expresses not a single act, but the habit of a life. Whenever I cry, God hears me from His holy hill, i.e., Zion, where was the ark of the covenant. P.—Care and grief do us good and no hurt, when they set us a praying, and engage us, not only to speak to God, but to cry to Him, as those that are in earnest. H.

Here again the strophe ends with a devout and meditative pause, denoted as before by Selah. A.

5. I laid me down—I went to sleep—I woke up again—for Jehovah sustaineth me; His hand is my pillow. 6. Then from that thought there arose fresh confidence in his heart, “I will not be afraid of countless hosts.” P.—The same courage, which enabled him to sleep without disturbance in the midst of enemies and dangers, still sustained him when those enemies and dangers were presented to his waking senses. A.

Awakening in health and strength, he feels grateful to Him to whom he owes it. It is the consequence of the fact, that Jehovah supports him, that God’s hand is his pillow. Because this loving, almighty hand is under his head, he is unapproachable, and therefore also void of fear. D.—We lie down, and sleep, and awake again to the light and comfort of another day; and whence is it, but because the Lord has sustained us with sleep as with food? We have been safe under His protection, and easy in the arms of His good providence. H.—God is Alpha and Omega in the great world; endeavor to make Him so in the little world; practise to make Him thy last thought at night when thou sleepest, and thy first thought in the morning when thou awakest; so shall thy fancy be sanctified in the night, and thy understanding rectified in the day; so shall thy rest be peaceful, thy labors prosperous, thy life pious, and thy death glorious. Quarles.—Thy bed, when thou liest down in it, preacheth to thee thy grave; thy sleep, thy death; and thy rising in the morning, thy resurrection to judgment. Bunyan.

I will not be afraid. It makes no matter what our enemies be, though for number, legions; for power, principalities; for subtlety, serpents; for cruelty, dragons; for vantage of place, a prince of the air; for maliciousness, spiritual wickedness; stronger is He that is in us, than they who are against us; nothing is able to separate us from the love of God. In Christ Jesus our Lord, we shall be more than conquerors. W. Cowper.

7. “Save me, O my God;” mine by covenant; mine by the full choice of my soul; mine by long years of trustful service on my part and precious mercies on Thine. For I have this assurance of relief to day, that Thou hast ofttimes interposed to smite down my foes; therefore Thou surely wilt again. C.

8. Salvation belongeth unto the Lord; He has power to save, be the danger ever so great; it is His prerogative to save, when all other helps and succors fail; it is His pleasure, it is His property, it is His promise to those that are His, whose salvation is not of themselves, but of the Lord. Therefore all that have the Lord for their God, according to the tenor of the new covenant, are sure of salvation; for He that is their God, is the God of salvation. H.

7,8. His imprecations are not directed against His people, but only against those who have seduced them, and their wicked partisans. As in olden times, He still bears His people upon a loving, interceding heart. He commiserates those who have been led astray, without being angry with them. Distinctions vanish altogether from His mind, when He prays for the nation as a whole. The one concluding expression of the Psalm—remarks Ewald—throws a bright light into the depths of his noble soul. D.

Considerations for the Uniform Use of “JEHOVAH” in Place of “LORD.” There are very cogent grounds for the change. 1. In the first place, our translators in their use of the word “Lord” make no distinction between two names, “Jehovah” and “Adonai,” perfectly distinct in Hebrew, and conveying different conceptions of God. 2. In the next place, it is well known that whole Psalms are characterized, just as sections of the Pentateuch are characterized, by peculiar names of God, and it is surely of some importance to retain as far as possible these characteristic features, especially when critical discussions have made them prominent, and questions of age and authorship have turned upon them. 3. It has been held by very good authorities to be a desirable emendation in our Authorized Version. “Why continue the

translation of the Hebrew into English,” says Coleridge, “at second hand, through the medium of the Septuagint? Have we not adopted the Hebrew word Jehovah? Is not the Kurios, or Lord, of the Septuagint, a Greek substitute in countless instances for the Hebrew, Jehovah? Why not, then, restore the original word; and in the Old Testament religiously render Jehovah, by Jehovah; and every text in the New Testament, referring to the Old, by the Hebrew word in the text referred to?” No one could be a better judge on such a point than one who, like Coleridge, was both poet and critic. 4. If owing to merely superstitious scruples the name fell out of use in the Jewish Church, and if owing to a too slavish copying of the Greek and Latin versions our own version lost the word, these are reasons of no force whatever

against a return to the original use. It is no doubt a question how the word should be written when transferred to another language. “Jehovah” certainly is not a proper equivalent for the Hebrew form; for it is well known that the Jews, having lost the true pronunciation of the name, transferred to it the vowels of the other name “Adonai,” which in reading they have for centuries substituted for it. Some of the Germans write “Jahveh,” others “Jahaveh,” and Hupfeld, despairing of any certainty as to the vowels, retains merely the consonants and writes “Jhvh.” Probably the most correct equivalent in English would be “Yahveh” or “Yahaveh,” but this would look pedantic, and would doubtless shock sensitive eyes and ears far more than the comparatively familiar form, Jehovah. P.