Psalms 31
ButlerThe designed result of so speedy and thorough a change in his affliction, after it had wholesomely humbled him, was Jehovah’s praise. And the praise of Jehovah forever is also his determination, as this Psalm vows, and at the same time carries it out. D.
1. In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed:
Deliver me in thy righteousness.
2. Bow down thine ear unto me; deliver me speedily:
Be thou to me a strong rock, an house of defence to save me.
3. For thou art my rock and my fortress;
Therefore for thy name’s sake lead me and guide me.
4. Pluck me out of the net that they have laid privily for me;
For thou art my strong hold.
5. Into thine hand I commend my spirit:
Thou hast redeemed me, O LORD, thou God of truth.
6. I hate them that regard lying vanities: But I trust in the LORD.
7. I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy: For thou hast seen my affliction;
Thou hast known my soul in adversities.
8. And thou hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy;
Thou hast set my feet in a large place.
9. Have mercy upon me, O LORD, for I am in distress:
Mine eye wasteth away with grief, yea, my soul and my body.
10. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing:
My strength falleth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are wasted away.
11. Because of all mine adversaries I am become a reproach,
Yea, unto my neighbours exceedingly, and a fear to mine acquaintance:
They that did see me without fled from me.
12. I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.
13. For I have heard the defaming of many, Terror on every side:
While they took counsel together against me, They devised to take away my life.
14. But I trusted in thee, O LORD:
I said, Thou art my God.
15. My times are in thy hand:
Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.
16. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: Save me in thy lovingkindness.
17. Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee:
Let the wicked be ashamed, let them be silent in Sheol.
18. Let the lying lips be dumb;
Which speak against the righteous insolently,
With pride and contempt.
19. Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee,
Which thou hast wrought for them that put their trust in thee, before the sons of men!
20. In the covert of thy presence shalt thou hide them from the plottings of man:
Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.
21. Blessed be the LORD:
For he hath shewed me his marvellous lovingkindness in a strong city.
22. As for me, I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes:
Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when I cried unto thee.
23. O love the LORD, all ye his saints : The LORD preserveth the faithful, And plentifully rewardeth the proud doer.
A PSALM in which earnest prayer for deliverance from trouble is kindled and animated throughout by a lively trust and hope in God. It consists of three principal divisions: The singer prays God to be gracious to him in his trouble, expressing at the same time his trust in Him, who in times past had been his deliverer (vs. 1-8). He pours out before God the story of his sufferings and his sorrows, beseeching Him again to lift upon him the light of His countenance, and to put his enemies to shame (vs. 9-18). He concludes with praise and thanksgiving to God for His goodness to all who trust in Him, and particularly to himself; and calls upon all the righteous to love the Lord (vs. 19-24). P.
1-8. He begins with a prayer for deliverance which is grounded on the confidence which Jehovah, to whom he commits himself, never can disappoint; and rejoices beforehand in the security he anticipates without a doubt. From the fact of his being hidden in God springs the confident certainty, that neither now nor ever can it come to pass with him that he will be ashamed or that his hope will disappoint him. D.—Faith and prayer must go together. He that believes, let him pray; I believe, therefore have I spoken; and he that prays, let him believe, for the prayer of faith is the prevailing prayer. We have both here. H.
1. David, the record says (1 Sam. 30), “encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” “The Lord his God” gives us the key-note of his life. It was forever settled in his soul that Jehovah was his own God. He held this conviction in the spirit of a consciously full consecration to His honor and service, and of a strong, unshaken trust in His care and protection. With such a mutual understanding between God and himself, he might fitly say: “Let me never be put to shame.” “Deliver me in Thy righteousness” rests its plea not on the ground of David’s absolute sinlessness (see v. 10), but of God’s fidelity to His promise and to His covenant obligations. C.—For the support of faith, mark well whereon it may safely rest; even upon God’s righteousness, as well as upon His mercy. On this ground did the apostle in faith expect the crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4: 7, 8), because the Lord from whom he expected it is a righteous judge; and the Psalmist is bold to appeal to the righteousness of God. We may be well assured that what God’s goodness,
24. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. All ye that hope in the LORD.
grace, and mercy moved Him to promise, His truth, His faithfulness, and righteousness will move Him to perform. W. Gouge.
2. A rock. The general idea of this symbol is firmness, solidity. God is a rock for a foundation, for a fortress, for shade and refreshment. Note that ever built on that Rock have been confounded. A. M.
3. What he asks in the preceding verse he here asserts, that God is his protector, and must therefore of necessity protect him, not only for the sufferer’s sake, but for the honor of His own name or manifested nature. A.—God’s name was committed to his protection by the fact that David had accepted His promises, had given himself to His service on the guaranty of the requisite protection, and therefore was entitled to feel that Jehovah’s name was pledged for his deliverance. C.
For Thy name’s sake. If merely a creature’s honor or the glory of angels were involved, man’s salvation would indeed be uncertain. But every step involves the honor of God. We plead for His name’s sake. If God should begin and not continue, or if He should carry on but not complete the work, all would admit that it was for some reason that must bring reproach on the Almighty. This can never be. God was self-moved to undertake man’s salvation. His glorious name makes it certain the top-stone shall be laid in glory. Plumer.
5. Into the hand of this God, who is and who will be all this to him, he commits his spirit; he hands it over into His hand as a trust, or deposit, for what is deposited there is safely laid up and removed from all danger and all need. D.—These words are appropriate to any dying saint, and were used by Jesus dying, and by the martyred Stephen; yet we need not assume that in using them David thought of himself as dying, but rather as fully committing the whole question of life and death into the hands of his God, in the assurance that God both had redeemed him from death in other perils and would again. In offering his prayer thus, “Lord God of truth,” he indicated the hold he consciously had upon God’s promise and veracity for his deliverance. C.
Upon the expression of confidence in the power and faithfulness of God, follows the expression of the singer’s resolve. My spirit (ruach), more than my soul or life (nephes’).
It is not only from sickness and death, but from sin and all enemies that the man of God would be kept, and therefore he commends to God, not his body or his bodily life alone, but the life of his spirit, which is more precious. “Thou hast been, and Thou art, my Redeemer;” and further, there is implied, “because Thou changest not, I confidently anticipate redemption from this present calamity.” The past continuing up to the present moment (strict perfect) is in the singer’s mind a pledge of the future, especially because God is the God of truth, as opposed to the lying vanities (in the next verse), i.e., all false objects of trust, here perhaps especially false gods. P.—That which encourages us to commit our spirits into the hand of God is, that He has not only created but redeemed them; the particular redemptions of the Old Testament Church and the Old Testament saints were typical of our redemption by Jesus Christ. H.
In the hour of death the palpitating heart must appropriate the personal affection of the Redeemer to His people. This appropriation is the secret of dying. Christianity meets us where we most of all need its aid; and meets us too with the very aid we need. It does not tell us of the splendors of the invisible world; but it does far better when, in three words, it informs us that to loosen from the shore of mortality is to be with Christ. This is precisely the assurance which the occasion demands; for it not only quickens the devout affections, but it fixes them on their object. All security and all joy are comprised in the idea of beholding and of approaching the Son of God—the Son of man—now exercising universal dominion; and especially ruling the world of spirits. “If I go, I will come again to receive you to Myself.” I. T.
As we think of Psalms in connection with the blessed hope of eternal life, we associate with them calm sweet faces, from which, when our eyes see them next, the lines of pain and sorrow shall be smoothed out, and they shall look fairer and nobler than they ever did. From the cross, the stake, the fagot, the sick-room, fragments of Psalms break upon our ears, set to the music of Easter. This verse rises from saint after saint; it came from Stephen, Polycarp, Basil, Epiphanius of Pavia, Bernard, Huss, Luther, Melanchthon. Bishop Alexander.
7. Sure of being heard, he resolves to give expression to his grateful joy for Jehovah’s grace, because He has looked upon his sorrow, because He has known and exerted Himself for his soul’s needs. D.—In the midst of trouble faith will furnish matter of joy and promise to itself gladness, especially from the memory of by-past experiences of God’s mercy. The ground of our gladness, when we have found a proof of God’s kindness to us, should not be in the benefit so much as in the fountain of the benefit; for this giveth us hope to drink again of the like experience from the fountain which did send forth that benefit. Therefore David says, “I will be glad and rejoice in Thy mercy.” Diekson.—For mercy past he is grateful, and for mercy future, which he believingly anticipates, he is joyful. In our most importunate intercessions we must find breathing time to bless the Lord; praise is never a hindrance to prayer, but a refreshment therein. Those two words, glad and rejoice, are an instructive reduplication, we need not stint ourselves in our holy triumph.
“For Thou hast considered my trouble.” Thou hast seen it, weighed it, directed it, fixed a bound to it, and in all ways made it a matter of tender consideration. A man’s consideration means the full exercise of his mind; what must God’s consideration be! S.—All pain, sickness, weariness, distress, languor, agony of mind or body, whether in ourselves or others, is to be treated reverently, seeing in it our Maker’s hand passing over us; fashioning, by suffering, the imperfect or decayed substance of our souls. Every sorrow is a billow on this world’s troublesome sea, which we must pass over on the cross, to bear us nearer to our home. Each trouble is meant to relax the world’s hold over us, and our hold upon the world, each loss to make us seek our gain in heaven. Pasey.—Nothing is intolerable that is necessary. God hath bound thy trouble upon thee by His Providence, with a design to try thee and with purposes to reward and to crown thee. These cords thou canst not break, and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the hand of God to do what He please. Jeremy Taylor.
8. Set my feet in a large place. It is not every sort of comforting a mourner will call “blessed.” If you cannot let me in through this gateway of distress to a peace, a largeness of delight unfelt before; if you do not turn my very tears to showers of sunshine, and lift me from my valley up to heights of glorious bliss on which I could not otherwise have stood; where, I pray you, is the “blessedness” of my “mourning”? Dykes.—Many a man’s experience will bear out the seeming paradox that the joys of the spirit which clings with an unwavering confidence to the promises of God are greatest in the hours of the greatest trial, because faith then is strongest in its exercise. It is in moral as in natural things; music sounds softer and sweeter by night than by day, because then all is still, and the notes are brought out more fully. It is in the hour of calamity that the ruptured heart-strings yield the sweetest melody, when touched by God, and the notes of praise are loudest and richest, because the promises of truth which alone can raise them then seem most precious. E. Mason.
Oh, holy path of God! when it leads us through many sorrows, apparently downward, but in reality upward. The narrower and more thorny the path, the more splendid the goal to which it leads. The more that this world owes us in friends and the fulfilling of our wishes, so much richer and more comforting is the adjustment in the other world. Well for us that we, as Christians, have a so much clearer insight into eternity and the mystery of its retribution, that we, in faith in the Sufferer of all sufferers, can utter the words, “Through cross to crown,” and find comfort in them, even here, for all the sufferings of this life. Christlieb.
9-13. After the paan sung in the fulness of faith before the victory, prayer begins again in this second portion of the Psalm; this prayer is grounded on the greatness of his suffering, which the Psalmist, after strengthening himself in his confidence on God, now sets before Him all the more comprehensively. D.
9,10. Recurring again to his bitter trials, he represents them as a long and terrible affliction—as wasting his life-power, impairing his health, poisoning the fountains of his peace and comfort, and all the more so because blended with a sense of sin, which is but too often one of the most bitter ingredients in the cup of trial on earth. C.—Because of mine iniquity. See how the eye is turned within, as well as without, upon his enemies. Suffering does its work when it leads us to commune with our own hearts, and to discover the evils which are hidden there. P.
11-13. Not for any fault of his own David became an outcast and exile from many of his former friends and neighbors. Few had the courage or the sympathy with him to be willing to appear as his friend. Hence his circumstances made him, in these respects, a sort of type of his greater Son, who, not at all for His own fault, was “despised and rejected of men.” C.
12. The expression seems to correspond exactly to the second member of the English proverb, out of sight, out of mind. The comparison with an earthen vessel, at best of little value, easily broken, and when broken worthless, only fit to be contemptuously thrown aside, is a favorite with Jeremiah, who appears to have derived it, with some other favorite ideas and expressions, from the Psalm before us. A.
14-18. But although a curse of the world and the offscouring of all people, he trusts in God, his deliverer and avenger. It seemed as though Jehovah had given him up in anger, but he trusts in Him, and in spite of this appearance he prays to Him with the words of appropriating faith. D.
14. And I on Thee did trust, Jehovah; I said, My God (art) Thou! “Amid these distresses, and in spite of them, I still confided in Jehovah, and expressed my confidence by solemnly avouching Him to be my God, and therefore bound by covenant to save me, as I am no less bound by covenant to trust Him.” It is worthy of remark how constantly the ancient saints make trust in God essential to all spiritual safety. A.
Thou art my God. The assurance of faith rests as on a rock upon the Person and Word of God. Christ has died for me and risen again. He invites me to come to Him, to rest on Him, to believe His love, to accept His salvation, to receive His grace, to bear His yoke. I will believe His love, on the authority of His Word, far above what I can either ask or think. I accept the salvation which the voice of His quickening Spirit has made a supreme necessity to my conscience, and, by methods chosen by Himself, has brought home to my heart. Bishop Thorold.
15. In Thy hand (are) my times; set me free from the hand of my foes and from my persecutors. By times we are to understand the current of events or the vicissitudes of life, as when we speak familiarly of good times or hard times. There may be also an allusion to the turning points or critical junctures of his history. The first clause presents the ground or reason of the second. “Since the events of my life are at Thy disposal, set me free,” etc. Freeing from the hand is the opposite of shutting up in it. Foes and persecutors are not distinct classes, but different descriptions of the same. A.
My times; i.e., all my life with its “sundry and manifold changes,” its joys and sorrows, its hopes and conflicts, are not the sport of chance, or the creatures of a blind fate, but are in Thy hand. O Thou living, personal Redeemer. On this confidence are grounded the petitions which follow, and the hopes expressed. P.—If God have our times in His hand He can help us; and if He be our God He will help us; and then what can discourage us? It is a great support to those who have God for their God, that their times are in His hand; and He will be sure to order and dispose of them for the best to all those who commit their spirits into His hand, to suit them to their times. The time of life is in God’s hands, to lengthen or shorten, embitter or sweeten as He pleases. Our times, all events that concern us and the timing of them, these are at God’s disposal; they are not in our own hands, for the way of man is not in himself, not in our friends’ hands, nor in our enemies’ hands, but in God’s; every man’s judgment proceedeth from Him. David does not in his prayers prescribe to God, but subscribe to Him: “Lord, my times are in Thy hand, and I am well pleased that they are so, they could not be in a better hand; Thy will be done.” H.
We are not waifs and strays upon the ocean of fate, but are steered by infinite wisdom toward our desired haven. Providence is a pillow for anxious heads, an anodyne for care, a grave for despair. S.—God has chosen for us the period of the world in which we should live. Feeling that God has placed us in this age, that we may make our impress on it, we should prepare ourselves faithfully for doing its work. Our circumstances and the direction of our lives upon earth are in God’s hand. We are standing while the generations that rose up by our side are sleeping in the ground. We live because it is God’s good pleasure that we should still have a work to do and responsibilities to meet. If God thus encircles us by the agencies of His providential power and grace, then we ought to feel our dependence on God, not on man, not on the best-laid plans. This sense of dependence should keep us in the attitude of prayer. Only by realizing this great truth do we prepare ourselves either for great happiness or great usefulness. The God in whose hands our times are holds the times of all other human beings, holds all agencies, directs all events according to the counsel of His will, and we shall be successful only when we place ourselves directly in harmony with His laws. What a source of comfort it is when we can believe fully that our times are in God’s hand! If we feel we are resting upon the bosom of Omnipotence, what can disturb our repose? M. Simpson.
Happy the man who endures patiently; who in spite of all, hoping against hope, out of the depth of his soul can say: “I trusted in Thee, O Lord; I said, Thou art my God, my times are in Thy hand!” The one is not found without the other; first, the my of faith, and then the Thy of perfect, childlike submission. Such a submissive, trusting soul may say: My lot in life is determined, my course in life is guided, the period of my life is fixed by God’s hand. And above all, the goal of my life is guaranteed by God. The hand which points the way, and thus far has led the pilgrim forward, never let slip one whom He has grasped. “My times” become at last eternities; and the hand that sustained the first has in due season also the last to bestow. Thence the same lips which uttered these avowals assume immediately afterward the vaunt of hope, which involuntarily rises above time present: “Oh, how great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee!” (v. 19). Van O.
16. Let Thy face shine on Thy servant; save me in Thy mercy. The first clause contains an allusion to the sacerdotal benediction recorded in Num. 6: 25. “Crant me a sensible assurance of Thy favor.” This he asks because he is His servant, a relation implying the necessity of God’s interposition in his favor. While God is God, He cannot leave His faithful servants to perish. Even here, however, his appeal is to God’s mercy, as the only source or means of safety.
17. He distinguishes himself, as one who calls upon God, from the wicked who do not, and appeals to the righteousness of God as requiring that defeat and disappointment should fall, not upon the class to which he belongs and of which he is the representative, but upon that represented by his enemies, of whom it has been well said that they are not reckoned sinners because they are his enemies, but enemies because they are sinners; or, in other words, enemies to him because they are the enemies of God. A.
18. Lying lips. It is not calumny, nor treachery, that does the most harm in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian; the provident lie of the politician; the jealous lie of the partisan; the merciful lie of the friend; and the careless lie of each man to himself, which darken and degrade our life. Ruskin.
It would seem, in fact, that there is scarcely an assailable point or quality in us, which is not capable of being suborned into the service of lying lips. There is the lie of sheer cowardice, told to evade some threatened personal danger, or the formidable lion of public opinion, or the ridicule of unprincipled associates.
There is the lie of cupidity and money-making, direct or indirect; the lie of convenience, the lie of shame, the lie of flattery, with its double wrong. Then there are all the degrees of falsehood—exaggerations, or adding to the truth, extenuations, or taking from it—of which it is enough to say that when once a living conscience takes knowledge how easily their falsifying processes go on, it must watch their beginnings as we watch the first symptoms of pestilence. There are equivocations, deceptions in which people allow themselves by first practising the self-deception that a falsehood half-hidden from men is wholly hidden from God, or that it is safe to go half-way in that which is an abomination to Him. You need not be reminded that there are acted falsehoods, of manner and gesture, of signs and ornaments, of pretended friendship and assumed cordiality and hypocritical devotion; nor need it be repeated to you that speech is no more an expression of the mind than action is, and that by “lying lips” Scripture means all the lies that the whole body can tell, and that one of them is just as hateful to the God of truth and just as sure of judgment as another. F. D. H.
19-24. His well-grounded hope now brings triumphant certainty, and this breaks forth in glad acknowledgment of God’s goodness to the righteous, and an exhortation to all to wait on Him in unshaken confidence of heart. D.
19. His prayer is heard and his soul is thereby deeply affected with a sense of the great goodness which God has ever in reserve, secretly stored away but ever in readiness for its fit occasion. C.—Mark the phrase “Laid up for them;” His mercy and goodness is intended for them, as a father that lays by such a sum of money as a portion for such a child. Gurnall.
This text is the expression of a Divine law, the law of God’s wise reserve in dispensing His favors. He does not reveal Himself, nor bestow His blessings, nor develop His purposes, nor mature His plans all at once. He gives liberally, but not the whole. He keeps something always in the background; there is always something better in store for those who fear Him. There is in His Word, His promises, His providences a hidden element which comes out only through time, and experience, and search, and diligent effort. There are certain great blessings of God which no man is able to receive at once without preparation. And it ought not to be forgotten that a part of this preparation depends upon ourselves; and that therefore it is sometimes our fault that the laid-up goodness is kept back. . . . But God’s goodness is not always kept hidden. If there is reserve, there is also unfolding. If there is laying up of goodness, there is also working it out publicly before men’s faces. But if we want the goodness wrought out, we must have faith in the goodness which is laid up. If we want the performance, we must trust the promise. V.—In the former clause, God’s goodness is said to be laid up; in the latter, to be wrought. Goodness is laid up in the promise, wrought in the performance; and that goodness which is laid up is wrought for them that trust in God; and thus, as God’s faithfulness engageth us to believe, so our faith engageth God’s faithfulness to perform the promise. Hardy.
Oh, how great is Thy goodness! How profound are the counsels of it; how rich the treasures of it; how free and extensive the communications of it! Those who are interested in this goodness are described to be such as fear God and trust in Him, as stand in awe of His greatness and rely on His grace. This goodness is said to be laid up for them and wrought for them. There is goodness laid up for them in the other world, an inheritance reserved in heaven, and there is a goodness wrought for them in this world, goodness wrought in them. There is enough in bank and enough in hand. This goodness is laid up in His promise for all that fear God, to whom assurance is given that they shall want no good thing. But it is wrought for those that trust in Him—that by faith take hold of the promise, put it in suit, and draw out to themselves the benefit and comfort of it. If what is laid up for us in the treasures of the everlasting covenant be not wrought for us it is our own fault; because we do not believe. H.
God always takes the initiative. His grace always anticipates us. Forgiveness was waiting for us long before we ever sought it. Spiritual blessings wait to descend upon us, and have waited so long, not because God was not willing to give them, but because we had not truly sought them nor been prepared to receive them. We can never anticipate His grace and willingness. All things that we may wisely have are ready for us. J. R. Miller.—The Lord has laid up in reserve for His people supplies beyond all count. In the treasury of the covenant, in the field of redemption, in the caskets of the promises, in the granaries of providence, the Lord has provided for all the needs which can possibly occur to His chosen. Overwhelming are the proofs of the Lord’s favor to believers, history terms with amazing instances, and our own lives are full of prodigies of grace. We serve a good Master. Faith receives a large reward even now, but looks for her full inheritance in the future. S.
God never gives all He has to give. The time never comes when He has nothing left to bestow. We never reach the best in Divine blessings. The unrevealed is ever better than the revealed. There is no danger that we shall ever come to the end of God’s goodness, or to any experience for which He will have no blessing ready. Yet the Divine goodness is not emptied out in heaps at our feet, when we first start in faith’s pathway. Rather, it is kept in reserve for us until we need it, and then disbursed. That is the thought in these words: “How great is Thy goodness which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee.” The goodness is laid up, stored away, kept in reserve. This is the Divine method both in providence and in grace. God laid up goodness in the creation and preparation of the earth. So far as we know, there has been nothing new created since the beginning, but there has been a continual succession of developments of hidden treasures and powers, to meet the new needs of the multiplying and advancing race; and in grace the Divine method is the same. God’s storehouses of spiritual truth never are opened to us until we really need their blessing. They are placed, so to speak, along our life-path, the right supply at the right point. The best of God’s goodness is “laid up” in heaven; hence, to a Christian death is always a glorious gain. The best things can only be gotten when we pass through death’s gate into the Father’s house. Thus this principle of reserved goodness runs through all God’s economy. Blessings are “laid up” and are gotten as we need them. Every experience brings us to its own store. Sorrow comes, and, veiled in the sorrow, the angel of comfort comes too. It grows dark, and then the lamps of promise shine out. Losses are met, and there is a Divine secret that changes loss into gain. A bitter cup is given, and it proves to be medicine for our soul. Death comes, and seems the end of all, but but it is only the beginning of all, for it leads us away from empty shadows to eternal realities. J. R. Miller.
For them that put their trust in Thee. How clearly does reason command me to trust Him, absolutely and implicitly to trust Him, and to distrust myself? He is essential, infinite perfection, wisdom, power, and love. There is nothing to be trusted in any creature but God working in it, or by it. I am altogether His own, by right, by devotion, and by consent. He is the giver of all good to every creature, as freely as the sun gives its light, and shall we not trust the sun to shine? He is my Father, and has taken me into His family, and shall I not trust my heavenly Father? He has given me His Son as the greatest pledge of His love, and “shall He not with Him also freely give me all things?” His Son purposely came to reveal His Father’s unspeakable love, and shall I not trust Him who has proclaimed His love by such a messenger from heaven? He has given me the Spirit of His Son, even the Spirit of adoption, the witness, pledge and earnest of heaven, the seal of God upon me, “holiness to the Lord,” and shall I not believe His love and trust Him? He has made me a member of His Son, and will He not take care of me, and is not Christ to be trusted with His members? I am His interest and the interest of His Son, freely beloved and dearly bought, and may I not trust Him with His treasure? He is in covenant with me and has “given me many great and precious promises,” and can He be “unfaithful”? My Saviour is the “forerunner,” who has “entered into the holiest,” and is there interceding for me, having first conquered death to assure us of a future life, and ascended into heaven to show us whither we must ascend, and shall I not follow Him through death and trust such a guide and captain of my salvation? He is there to “prepare a place for me, and will receive me unto Himself,” and may I not confidently expect it? Baxter.
20. In this, as in so many cases, the Psalmist strikes an answering chord in the common experience of men of all times. A large share of good men’s troubles come out of the talk of others. Is the picture of the old English divine overdrawn, after all? Hear a few of his stately periods. “Every gossiping is, as it were, a court of justice; every seat becometh a tribunal; at every table standeth a bar, whereto all men are cited, whereat every man as it happeneth is arraigned and sentenced; no sublimity, no integrity or innocence of life, no prudence or circumspection of demeanor can exempt any person from it; not one escapeth being taxed under some scandalous name or odious character, one or other. Not only the outward actions and visible practices of men are judged; but their retired sentiments are brought under trial, their inward dispositions have a verdict passed on them, their final states are determined—yea, God Himself is hardly spared.” (South.) We grow ashamed of ourselves, if there is any true manhood left in us, because we are so often drawn into this current of talk about our neighbors. We hear the gossip, and we happen to know a fact or to have heard a piece of news, and almost ere we know it, in it goes into the common stock; and, if we are not very careful, we find ourselves falling into censorious talk, flinging out sharp arrows of sarcasm or pulling a neighbor’s defects a little farther out into the light; and when we come to sit down and think over what we have said, unless we are very much hardened, we feel ashamed and sorry and indignant at ourselves, and are tempted to wish that we might never again be in society where people are talked over. But to get out of the reach of talk is to get out of society altogether; and to get out of society is not only no man’s duty, but it is the sin of any man who attempts it. God provides better for men than by withdrawing them from the world where their work lies. Man is delivered from temptation not by being taken out of it, but by being helped to conquer it. Man is not hidden from the strife of tongues by being withdrawn from it. God has a better refuge than that, and that is Himself. “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.” In putting a man in right relations with Himself, God puts him in right relation to the world’s talk. To quote the beautiful words of a living preacher, “If we are really Christ’s, then back into the very bosom of His Father, where Christ is hid, there He will carry us. We, too, shall look out and be as calm and as independent as He is. The needs of men shall touch us just as keenly as they touch Him, but the sneers and strifes of men shall pass us by as they pass by Him and leave no mark on His unruffled life. It will be just as impossible when that time comes for us to work ourselves into a passion about yesterday’s gossip as it was for Jesus to become a partisan in the quarrel about the divided inheritance; and yet for us, just as for Him, this will not mean a cold and selfish separation from our brethren. We shall be infinitely closer to their real life when we separate ourselves from their outside strife and superficial pride, and know and love them truly by knowing and loving them in God.” This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. In this world we must be exposed to the strife of tongues. You who are worried by men’s talk; you who are tempted to respect it as a rule of living; you who care so very much about what the world says, hear His voice. Give your minds to character and not to talk.
Concentrate your effort and your thought upon being like Christ, and then the talk will wag on its own way and will not touch you as you walk the path which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. He shall hide you in the secret of His presence from the pride of man. He shall keep you secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues. V.
22. He confesseth the great distress he was in, and how weak his faith was under the temptation; this he doth, that he may give the greater glory to God. Though faith seem to yield, yet it falleth not; even when it is at the weakest, it is uttering itself in some act, as here the expression of David’s infirmity in faith is directed to God and his earnest prayer joined with it. There may be in a soul at one time both grief oppressing and hope upholding; both darkness of trouble and the light of faith; both desperately doubting and strong gripping of God’s truth and goodness; both a fainting and a fighting; a seeming yielding in the fight and yet a striving of faith against all opposition, and a settled stayedness of faith, as here. Dickson.
23. In this and the remaining verse he makes a further application of the truth, which he had just attested from his own experience, to the case of all God’s saints or gracious ones, at once the subjects and the objects of benignant dispositions, those who are merciful because they obtain mercy. A.—On the one hand God preserves the faithful, and so approves Himself true to His promises; on the other hand, in abundant measure, He recompenses those who practise pride—before God the Lord the sin of sins. D.
The glow of personal attachment to Jehovah which kindles in the trustful words is eminently characteristic. It anticipates the final teaching of the New Testament in bringing all the relations between God and the devout soul down to the one bond of love. “We love Him because He first loved us,” says John. And David has the same discernment that the basis of all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of God, and that the only response which that seeking love requires is the awakening of the echo of its own Divine voice in our hearts. Love begets love; love seeks love; love rests in love. Our faith corresponds to His faithfulness, our obedience to His command, our reverence to His majesty; but our love resembles His, from which it draws its life. So the one exhortation is “love the Lord,” and the ground of it lies in that name—“His beloved”—those to whom He shows His lovingkindness (v. 21). A. M.