Psalms 36

It is inconceivable that in the moments of highest religious consecration in which he composed his Psalms, the unholy fire of personal passion should have mingled with the holy fire of his love to God. All the imprecations found in these Psalms flow from the pure spring of unselfish jealousy for God’s honor. That this jealousy appears here as jealousy for his own person arises from the fact that David stands over against Saul, the king alienated from God, as the divinely anointed heir of the kingdom, and that to his mind the cause of God, the continuance of the Church, and the future of Israel coincide with his own fortunes. The fire of his wrath is kindled at this focus of the view that he takes of himself in connection with the history of redemption. It is therefore holy fire. D.

When we remember his chivalrous abstinence once and again from slaying the guilty Saul, we must allow that, for his age and time, he was singularly free from vindictiveness. It is not likely that he should keep malice and anger hoarded up in his soul, and relieve himself of it in the moments when he held communion with his God; cursing, just as he saw by faith the battlements of the city of Eternal Peace. It is very remarkable that each of the Psalms in which the strongest imprecatory passages are found contains also gentle undertones, breathings of beneficent love. Thus, “When they were sick I humbled my soul with fasting; I behaved myself as though it had been my friend or brother.” “They have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love” (109: 4). If the Psalms in question contain “wild imprecations,” if a “vindictive spirit burns fiercely in them,” we are not justified in styling that the “spirit of the elder dispensation.” That spirit said, “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The best Jewish commentators understand neighbor to include both kinsmen and strangers, both Israelites and non-Israelites. That spirit said, “Rejoice not when thy enemy falls, and let not thy heart be glad when he stumbles.” Bishop Alexander.

1. 1 THE transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, There is no fear of God before his eyes. 2. 2 For he flattereth himself in his own eyes, That his iniquity shall not be found out and be hated. 3. 3 The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit: He hath left off to be wise and to do good. 4. 4 He deviseth iniquity upon his bed;

He setteth himself in a way that is not good; He abhorreth not evil.

1. 5 Thy lovingkindness, O LORD, is in the heavens; Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies. 2. 6 Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God; Thy judgments are a great deep. O LORD, thou preservest man and beast.

7. How precious is thy lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge under the shadow of thy wings. 8 They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; And thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. 9 For with thee is the fountain of life: In thy light shall we see light.

THIS Psalm is not so distinct in its features that we can assign it to any particular occasion in the life of David, or associate it with any definite period of Jewish history. It opens with a striking picture of what a wicked man is, who abandons himself, without check or remorse, to the inspirations of his own evil heart (vs. 1-4). Next, as if oppressed and terrified with the picture which he has drawn of secure and thoughtful wickedness, the Psalmist turns with a quick revulsion of feeling to Him whose love and truth are at all times a sure defence. Here he pours out all the fulness of his heart. Words seem to fail him as there rise before him, in all their length and breadth, the lovingkindness, the faithfulness, the righteousness of Jehovah (vs. 5-9). Lastly, with his heart full of what God is, he prays that God would show His lovingkindness and His righteousness to those who, like himself, were upright in heart, and would defeat the designs of the wicked. He concludes with the confident acknowledgment that his prayer has been heard (vs. 10-12). P.

Religion, for the Psalmists, is a present joy. The purest pleasure is in the exercise of the affections which have God for their object. The thirty-sixth Psalm may be taken as a specimen. Turning from the darkness of the unregenerate heart, David, the servant of the Lord, looks upon the objects which are most glorious and most beautiful in nature—the strong mountains, the great deep, the heavens—as shadows of God’s beauty. He thinks of a joy as in the coolness and music of the river of God. God is at once a fountain and a light. There is neither thirst nor darkness for those who know Him. The reality of God and the soul is the conviction of the Psalmists. Psalm after Psalm is a monologue of the soul with God, or a dialogue between it and God. Bishop Ken’s line,

“And thought to thought with Thee converse,”

is the very expression of the spirit of the Psalms. Yet they are filled with a joy which is at once

10. O continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee; And thy righteousness to the upright in heart. 11 Let not the foot of pride come against me, And let not the hand of the wicked drive me away. 12 There are the workers of iniquity fallen: They are thrust down, and shall not be able to rise.

solemn and childlike. In spite of all their sighs and tears, for all their tender sympathy with the passion of Christ, and with the sorrows of His people, “the power of light lives inexhaustibly” in them. One only (the eighty-eighth) begins and ends with a sob. In all the rest joy sparkles, if not on the crest of every wave, yet along the line of every tide. Bishop Alexander.

1. Thus saith depravity to the wicked (one) in the midst of my heart, there is no fear of God before his eyes. This is one of the most difficult verses in the whole Book of Psalms. Amid various and doubtful explanations one thing is certain, that the wicked man is here described as one who fears not God, just as the fear of God is elsewhere put for godliness or piety. A.—All the critics feel the difficulties of this verse. The Hebrew word answering to “saith” is not a verb, but a noun, meaning properly an oracle—an utterance either from God Himself, or from one supposed to be under special inspiration. It is almost distinctively the word by which the prophetic declarations of God are indicated and is commonly translated, “Thus saith the Lord.” In accordance with this usage we have here the sentiment, Depravity is the sinner’s oracle. Its impulses have to him an authority potent as the voice of God, or at least, as those oracular responses which are supposed to come from superhuman sources. C.—The Psalmist hears within his own heart the echo of the suggestions which sin whispers oracularly to the wicked; this explains to him how it is that a man can sin so fearlessly: he who listens to it loses altogether the sense of God’s presence and the fear of His judgments. Cook.

2. Here is one reason why he fears not God, but gives heed to the impulses of his depravity. He flatters himself—not “until,” but in reference to the finding out of his iniquity and the hating of it. Now since the fear of God is the thing denied of him the thought here must be that he flatters himself God will not find out his iniquity to hate and therefore punish it. Under the right construction, the verse gives with surpassing accuracy the philosophy of sinning—viz., men flatter themselves that God will never search out, find, hate, and therefore punish their sin. C.—He flattereth himself in his own eyes; while he goes on in sin, he thinks he does wisely and well for himself, and either does not see, or will not own, the evil and danger of his wicked practices; he calls evil good, and good evil; his licentiousness he pretends to be but his just liberty; his fraud passes for his prudence and policy; and his persecuting he people of God, he suggests to himself is a piece of necessary justice. If his own conscience threaten him for what he does, he says, God will not require it, I shall have peace though I go on. Sinners are self-destroyers, by being self-flatterers; Satan could not deceive them if they did not deceive themselves. H.

5. 6. A burst of rapture; here is the voice of the true oracle; all the attributes of the Lord stand out at once before the eyes of God’s servant, never more distinctly than when the workings of evil give intensity to his feelings. Cook.—Words seem to fail him when he would speak of the lovingkindness, the faithfulness, the righteousness of God. The universe itself is too little to set forth their greatness. P.—The beauty of this Psalm lies in this expressive contrast which places the glorious excellencies of Israel’s God over against the ineffable wickedness and guilt of sinners, who throw a loose rein upon their depraved impulses. The sense is that God’s mercy towers high, up to heaven; it is great and glorious, high as heaven, vast as the universe! So of God’s “righteousness” and of His “judgments;” the strongest expressions are used to indicate their richness, depth, and unutterable glory. C.

6. Thy righteousness (is) like the hills of the Almighty; Thy judgments (are) a great deep; man and beast Thou wilt save (oh), Jehovah! Righteousness here means rectitude in its widest sense, including the veracity and faithfulness mentioned in the foregoing verse. It is here described as infinite, by a comparison with natural emblems of immensity. The first are the mountains of God, or of the mighty (God), the Divine name here used being that which properly denotes omnipotence. The constant usage of the term as a Divine name seems decisive in favor of the sense, hills produced by the almighty power of God and therefore proving it. The great deep, the ocean. The idea conveyed is not so much that of depth and mystery as that of vastness and immensity. The comprehensiveness of God’s protecting care is further indicated by the combination man and

beast (or brute). To save includes the acts of helping, protecting and providing. A.

Great mountains. Or, “mountains of God;” God’s creation, on which He has stamped the impress of His own majesty and grandeur. Such epithets as these show how deeply the Hebrew felt the beauty and majesty of natural scenery; the mountains were to him an outward representation of the righteousness, deep rooted in the very essence of the Godhead, and towering over the earth in its manifestation. Cook.—God’s righteousness, celebrated by David, is justice inflexible toward sin and mercy ineffable toward sinners (Rom. 3: 24). In this verse the Psalmist presents the two truths together, the sin and the mercy. David away back there in the truth’s twilight knew not how better to tell God’s character than by taking earth’s grandest objects—the massive peaks that keep guard from snowy Lebanon or, it may be, those grander masses of which David had heard from his Eastern vassals, the Himalayas—and making them God’s emblem. A God that inflexibly visits sin, yet is merciful, may, like the great mountains, seem icy and cold. Justice is an icy and cold attribute, especially to the view of men who have reason to be afraid. Yet as the icy and cold glaciers send down perennial streams that make the earth full of gladness and rejoicing all the year, so the strict judgment of the Almighty is for the perennial blessing not of earth only, but of the universe of worlds. If there were not justice in God, and no punishment, no dreadful lasting penalty upon sinning intelligences, there would be no heaven, no pure river of water of life, no green fields beyond the flood, no resting-place from wickedness—there would be nothing in the whole wide universe save hell. H. M. McCracken.

God’s righteousness is declared to be like the great mountains. Like them, it is durable. The mountains have been often employed as emblems of permanence and stability. Sometimes God compares Himself with the mountains, and then we read that “as the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about His people from henceforth even forever.” Sometimes He contrasts Himself with the mountains, and then we read that “the mountains may depart, and the hills be removed, but that His kindness shall not depart from His people.” The permanence of God’s righteousness follows of necessity from the inherent unchangeableness of God Himself. His righteousness is exposed to none of the circumstances or accidents which bring peril to the righteousness of man. God’s righteousness is like the great mountains in its mysteriousness. Indeed, it is not only His righteousness, it is Himself, in all the essentiality of His being and perfections, that is a mystery. Faith must come to the aid of reason when we contemplate the righteousness of God as it slowly but surely accomplishes its purposes in the government of the world. God’s righteousness is like the great mountains because, like them, it has heights which it is dangerous to climb. We cannot comprehend the higher mysteries of the Gospel; and if we could, it is more than doubtful whether any corresponding benefit could be derived from them. Men can no more live on the high mountains of theology than they can on the high mountains of the earth. God’s righteousness is like the great mountains because, like them, it is a bulwark and a defence to all who regard it with reverence and faith. While it has heights on which the presumptuous spectator is sure to be lost if he should attempt to climb them, these very heights, if he will remain in the position which God has assigned to him, will be his surest defence and guard. No truth furnishes a more solid basis for the soul than the righteousness of God as it is revealed in the Scriptures. E. Mellor.

Nothing is more clear to any really thoughtful person than that, until some high point is passed, God ought to be enveloped in greater mystery, and will be, the closer He is brought to the mind. Knowing nothing of Him, He is no mystery at all; knowing a little, He is mystery begun; knowing more, He is a great and manifold deep, not to be fathomed. We are, and ought to be, overwhelmed by His magnitudes, till we are able to mount higher summits of intelligence than now. Bushnell.

The conception of the Psalmist is truthful, beautiful, and impressive. God’s judgments are the deep which we cannot explore, but from this deep rise mountains, and these mountains are the righteousness of God; as they gird around the waters, so does the righteousness of God embrace all His dealings. As we doubt not that their foundations are the same with their summits, so we cannot doubt that the righteousness of God is the same in what is dark as in what is clear. Nay, more than this, as the surface of the water often mirrors the tops of the surrounding mountains, so not infrequently can an attentive eye observe the image of God’s righteousness upon the very front of His dispensations. Not without reason the Psalmist says, “Thy righteousness is like the great mountains,” before he speaks of the great deep of God’s judgments; for it is only upon the ground which His righteousness puts under us that we can look calmly upon His judgments; only the intelligent and firm conviction of that righteousness which can balance and steady the mind amid His mysteries. As by the righteousness of God we mean that perfection by which He is holy and just in Himself, and observes the strictest rules of equity in His dealings with His creatures; to be convinced of His righteousness is to be satisfied that, whatever may be appearances, God is guided in His actions by the most unimpeachable principles, and has only to make known His reasons to secure the approval of all His intelligent creatures. We cannot be satisfied of God’s righteousness, without being thoroughly persuaded that even when His dealings are the darkest, they need only to be seen in the light of His wisdom to commend themselves as the best that could be devised. Thus it was that the Psalmist fortified himself against the inscrutableness of the Divine judgments, by assuring himself of the Divine righteousness; and herein he teaches us a lesson we are very apt to overlook, but which our comfort requires us perfectly to learn. We cannot always walk in the light; sometimes God will throw darkness about us; prosperity cannot be our unfailing allotment; our life is a checkered scene, the bright spots of which are intermingled with shade. If we have our hours of ease, we must have hours of difficulty; if we have comforts, we must have trials likewise. At times we may feel that we are treading upon the solid earth, and again we are launched out upon the ocean of God’s judgments. And nothing will give us light in darkness, or strength in weakness, or relief in perplexity; nothing will equip us for the hour of difficulty or trial but the conviction, intelligent and thorough, of this simple truth, God’s “righteousness is like the great mountains.” Fixed upon this ground, we should always be firm, calm, collected, never afraid of evil tidings, never dismayed by the Divine dealings, because we would be stable, trusting in God. E. Mason.

Thou preservest. One of the most touching characteristics of Hebrew poetry is the instantaneous transition from the contemplation of God’s majesty and unapproachable essence to that of His providential care. Compare Psalms 104 and 145: 14-16; see also the last words in Jonah. Cook.

Thou preservest man and beast. He gave them being at first, and He is the fountain of their being at every subsequent moment; and there is not in this wide creation the single living thing which is not perpetually drawing upon God; so literally dependent upon His care and bounty, that an instant’s suspension of His providential arrangements would suffice to quench the vital principle. What a picture is opened before us by the simple fact that in every department God is momentarily engaged in ministering to the beings whom He has called into existence; studying in all His appointments and arrangements the good of His creatures, everywhere showing Himself attentive to the comforts and the wants of the meanest living things; and while ordering the course of nature and marshalling the ranks of cherubim and seraphim, He is yet bending down from His throne and applying as close a guardianship to the ephemera which floats in the breeze as though it were the only animated creature, the only one requiring His providential care! E. Mason.

5-7. The sublimity and superabundance of the Divine grace and faithfulness the poet sets forth figuratively after earthly analogies; they are revealed upon earth in an elevation that reaches the heavens, they transcend all human thought, desire and understanding. Of God’s righteousness the poet says that it is like mountains of God, unchangeably stable, like the colossal primal mountains which prove God’s greatness and glory; and of God’s judgments, that they are incomprehensible and unsearchable, like the great, deep-waved ocean. Absorbed in this adorable depth, the singer exclaims, How precious is Thy grace, Elohim, i.e., how valuable beyond all treasures and how dear to him that knows how to prize it! D.

We have, first, God in the boundlessness of His loving nature. The one pure light of the Divine nature is broken up in the prism of the Psalm into various rays, which theologians call, in their abstract way, Divine attributes. These are “mercy, faithfulness, righteousness.” Then we have two sets of Divine acts: judgments and the preservation of man and beast; and finally we have again “lovingkindness,” which means substantially this: active love communicating itself to creatures that are inferior, and that might have expected something else to befall them. This “quality of mercy” stands here at the beginning and the end. It is the final upshot of all revelation. Next to mercy comes faithfulness. God’s faithfulness is, in its narrowest sense, His adherence to His promises. Not only His articulate promises, but His past actions bind Him. His words, His acts, His own nature bind God to bless and help. His faithfulness is the expression of His unchangeableness. The next beam of the Divine brightness is righteousness. The notion of righteousness here is that God has a law for His being to which He conforms, and that whatsoever things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure down here—these things are fair, and lovely, and good, and pure up there; that He is the archetype of all excellence, the ideal of all moral completeness; that we can know enough of Him to be sure that what we call right He loves, and what we call right He practises. God’s judgments are the whole of the ways, the methods, of the Divine government. They are the expressions of His thoughts, and these thoughts are thoughts of good, and not of evil. Last, we have the picture of man sheltering beneath God’s wings. God’s lovingkindness, or mercy, is precious, for that is the true meaning of the word translated “excellent.” We are rich when we have that for ours; we are poor without it. The last verse tells us how we can make God our own: “They put their trust under the shadow of Thy wings.” God spreads the covert of His wing, strong and tender, beneath which we may all gather ourselves and nestle. And how can we do that? By the simple process of fleeing unto Him, as made known to us in Christ our Saviour, to hide ourselves there. A. M.

7-9. The expressions here which denote the abundance of Divine blessings upon the righteous man seem to be taken from the temple, from whence they were to issue. Under the covert of the temple, the wings of the cherubim, they were to be sheltered. The richness of the sacrifices, the streams of oil, wine, odors, etc., and the light of the golden candlestick, are all plainly referred to. S. Burder.

Thy wings. A common figure in the Psalms, taken more immediately from the wings of the cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat which covered the ark; but more remotely from birds, which defend their young by overshadowing them with their wings. Bishop Francis Hare.—The wings of the mother-bird are the natural shelter for her young. So she draws the little ones close to her warm bosom and spreads over them her sheltering wings. Our Divine Lord reproduces this figure as to even the city of His murderers—“How often would I have gathered thy children as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings!” C.

We come out of nothingness into being, and find ourselves nestled upon the bosom of a mother whose love for us yearns for a stronger expression than she can bestow, and under the protection of a father who would place his life between us and harm. It is thus that we come into the world. We shall go out of it alone. We shall try the realities of the unknown companionless. Human love can follow us to the brink, but no further. We shall part with those we love and trust—shall we meet with those we love and trust? or shall we be strangers, with none to know or recognize or care for us? Here we have shelter from the sun and from the cold and the storms—shall we have shelter there? Let us provide ourselves, under the shadow of the wings of Him who is the Almighty. Close to His warm, cherishing heart here, we shall be so forever. We can be cast upon no shore where He is not. No storm can fall and no wind can blow where that covert is not nigh. There is no realm where His friendship is not more cheering than all human friendships. In no part of the universe will we be away from the shelter of our home, nor away from the companionship and smile of our loving Father, and the cherishing love of our Elder Brother. Let us enter God’s family, where we are more than welcome—where our entrance will give joy even to the angels. There we shall never be from home, never shelterless, never companionless. The clasping hands of the good by here will only be released that the hands of the joyful welcome may be given. We shall take our hands from the clinging hold, reluctant to release us, only that we may lay them in the warm palm of the King. We shall be pressed to more than a mother’s bosom. We shall have the strong arm of our heavenly Father between us and harm. Our infancy in the new life will be a conscious infancy, our safety a conscious safety. This is what Christ means in calling to us: “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Interior.

8. 9. The shadow of God’s wings is the protection of His love, which hides one from trial and persecution. To be thus hidden in God is the most ineffable blessedness; they satiate themselves, drink full draughts of the “fatness of Thy house.” The house of God is His sanctuary and, in general, the sphere of His grace. The fulness of the gifts and blessings and refreshings wherewith God entertains His own is called Eden, a stream of delights, wherewith He refreshes and fructifies the soul, a stream of paradisiacal delights. As the four arms of the river of Paradise had one common source, so this has its source in God; yea, God Himself is this source. All life streams forth from Him, the absolutely self-existent and blessed One; the more intimately, therefore, men are connected with Him, in so much the fuller draughts do they drink life from the primal fountain of life. And just as God is the fountain of life, so is He also the fountain of light; apart from God seeing we see only darkness; whereas, absorbed in the ocean of God’s light, we are enlightened by Divine knowledge and illuminated by spiritual joy. D.

9. For with Thee is a fountain of life; in Thy light shall we see light. They shall derive all this from Thee, because in Thee alone is the exhaustless source of all these blessings. With Thee, in Thy presence, in union and communion with Thee. The well-spring, fountain-head, or source of life, a summary expression for all enjoyments and advantages. The same idea is then clothed in another figurative dress. In Thy light we shall see light. It is only by the light of God’s countenance that man can see any good. It is only in God’s favor that he can be happy. The only bliss attainable or desirable is that which is bestowed by God, and resides in Him. A.—These are some of the most wonderful words in the Old Testament. Their fulness of meaning no commentary can ever exhaust. They are, in fact, the kernel and the anticipation of much of the profoundest teaching of John. P.

In Thy light. John found here the central truth of his doctrinal system (see 1: 4). The true light can only be discerned by those who live in it. The believing soul lives in an element of light, which at once quickens and satisfies the spiritual faculty, whereby heaven and heavenly things are realized. Cook.—Turn thou to the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In that alone is life, and the Life is the light of men. What, then, but apparitions can remain to a philosophy which strikes death through all things visible and invisible; satisfies itself then only, when it can explain those abstractions of the outward senses (which by an unconscious irony it names indifferently facts and phenomena) mechanically—that is, by the laws of death; and brand with the name of mysticism every solution grounded in life, or the powers and intuitions of life? Coleridge.

In Thy light shall we see light. A person whose life is hid with Christ in God sees all things as God sees them, praises God’s Word in every part, in every shade, turn, and application of it; sees and rejoices in God’s will in His Word, beholds His attributes, bright, lovely, and glorious in all His testimonies, and esteems all His precepts concerning all things to be right. All the aspects of God’s Word are light and loveliness to such a soul. And all the precious influences of God’s Word have their full and blessed effect upon such a soul. It grows in grace, in the symmetry and beauty of grace; every faculty of the soul, every power of the mind, as well as the feelings of the heart, grow in the presence of Christ, beneath His eye, His light, His care. G. B. C.

The light and the soul which receives will act and react. The light beheld transforms. The soul transformed is capable of more light. That again flows in, and purifies and beautifies. Thus, in continuous reciprocal energy, the endless process of learning to know an infinite Saviour, and becoming like a perfect Lord, goes on with constant approximation, and yet with somewhat ever undisclosed. The gift is not once for all, but is continuous through eternity. We shall become like Christ by knowing Him. We shall know Him by getting like Him. A. M.

Every part of life cannot but have a connection with that unseen world by which we are surrounded. To realize this connection is faith; to seek fellowship with its King through Christ is prayer. And just so far as we limit our purposes and desires by the visible and the temporal, we miss our true aim, we sin. Just so far as we claim no heavenly guidance and support, the clearest sight of the beauty of the eternal order is simply a vision of condemnation. And if this be so, or rather since this is so, while that heavenly light can stream over the occupations of our daily business; while that heavenly communion can be made vital by lifting the soul upward in the momentary acknowledgment of God’s presence, shall we not be satisfied to do calmly and for eternity that which we find prepared for us, knowing that all so done must work its proper work, unflattered by success and undisturbed by failure? Bishop Westcott.

God gives truth—revealed truth—to man. He gives also this great privilege of prayer—access to Himself—to ask the meaning of the thing revealed. The Bible abounds in promises, the most direct and specific, to give light and wisdom, and holy guidance and Holy Spirit, to them that ask Him. So that one who comes to God in prayer for intellectual and moral light, prayer that is earnest and continuous, will have the light he seeks as certainly as the man who, at midnight, turns his face eastward and travels to meet the rising of the sun. Raleigh.—This is specially true in sickness and sorrow. God loves to show what His light is by making it burn where all around is very dark.

Watch; if you can only see it, there is already a line upon the cloud. The day-star is risen, and soon it will all come in its own order—a twilight, a breaking, a fleeing away of the shadows, a mounting of the sun in your heart higher and higher, a cheering warmth, a meridian splendor. J. V.—By the fact then that we have the Light, by the fact that we are the children of the Light, by the glorious fact that we who were sometime darkness are now in the light, by the fact that the light is given us not to gratify our curiosity but to live in, by the other fact that it will grow dim if we fail to walk in it, and will brighten more and more unto the perfect day if we do walk in it, let us walk in the Light. The Father of Lights from His Throne bids us so to walk. It will be a walk of peace and an end of glory. J. Drummond.

Adoration is the gate of knowledge. When this gate of the soul is fully opened, in our deliverance from all impurity, what a revelation of knowledge must follow! Our adoring nature, transparent to God as a window to the sun, is filled with His eternal light. Every object of knowledge shines with inconceivable beauty. The resurrection morning is a true sun-rising, the inbursting of a cloudless day on all the righteous dead. They wake, transfigured, at their Master’s call, with the fashion of their countenance altered and shining like His own. Bushnell.—Heaven is the world of light. More clearly, more comprehensively, than we now see the first principles of knowledge, we shall then perceive all those miracles and mysteries of the Divine dispensations, in nature, providence, and grace, of which we now hear or speak so much, and understand so little; in reference to which we now think as children; but then, from this infantine state, we shall rise to adult maturity of mind. Man is formed to expatiate and luxuriate in varied knowledge; what a feast of knowledge, ennobled by devotion, will be spread in heaven for the intellect, proportionately expanded to receive it! R. Hall.

12. The emphatic form of the word there is well put by Dr. Alexander: “There has very much the same sense as in common parlance when uttered as a sudden exclamation: There! they have fallen (already)!” At the moment of his prayer, a sense of assured confidence comes over his soul; he sees his prayer answered; his enemies already prostrate and his fears vanished away! C.

In vs. 8 and 9 we have a wonderful picture

of the blessedness of the godly, the elements of which consist in four things: satisfaction, represented under the emblem of a feast; joy, represented under the imagery of full draughts from a flowing river of delight; life, pouring from God as a fountain; light, streaming from Him as a source. First, “They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of Thy house.” There is an allusion to the festal meal of priests and worshippers in the Temple on the occasion of the peace-offering; and there is also the simpler metaphor of God as the Host at His table, at which we are guests. The plain teaching of the text is that by the might of a calm trust in God the whole mass of a man’s desires are filled and satisfied. God, and God alone, is the food of the heart. God, and God alone, will satisfy your need. The next element of blessedness here: “Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures.” The teaching is that the simple act of trusting beneath the shadow of God’s wings brings to us an ever-fresh and flowing river of gladness, of which we may drink. All real and profound possession of, and communion with, God in Christ will make us glad—glad with a gladness altogether unlike that of the world round about us, far deeper, far quieter, far nobler, the sister and ally of all great things, of all pure life, of all generous and lofty thought. The third element of the blessedness of the godly is represented under the metaphor of life, pouring from the fountain, which is God. The words are true in regard of the lowest meaning of life, “physical existence;” and they give a wonderful idea of the connection between God and all living creatures. Wherever there is life, there is God. The creature is bound to the Creator by a mystic bond and tie of kinship, by the fact of life. But the text refers to something higher than that, to that life of the spirit in communion with God

which is the true and proper sense of life, the one in which the word is almost always used in the Bible. As a fourth element of blessedness, “In Thy light shall we see light.” The reference is to the spiritual gift which belongs to the men who “put their trust beneath the shadow of Thy wings.” In communion with Him who is the Light as well as the Life of men, we see a whole universe of glories, realities, and brightnesses. In communion with God, we see light upon all the paths of duty. In the same communion with God, we get light in all seasons of darkness and sorrow. “To the upright there ariseth light in the darkness.” A. M.