Psalms 42
Butler1. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, So panteth my soul after thee, O God. 2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my meat day and night, While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? 4 These things I remember, and pour out my soul within me, How I went with the throng, and led them to the house of God, With the voice of joy and praise, a multi- tude keeping holyday. 5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him For the health [or, help] of his countenance. 6 O my God, my soul is cast down within me: Therefore do I remember thee from the land of Jordan,
And the Hermans, from the hill Mizar. 7 Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts. All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. 8 Yet the LORD will command his lovingkind- ness in the day-time, And in the night his song shall be with me, Even a prayer unto the God of my life. 9 I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I mourning because of the oppres- sion of the enemy? 10 As with a sword in my bones, mine adver- saries reproach me; While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? 11 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, Who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
THIS forty-second Psalm has been for cen- turies one of the most powerful cordials for the heartsick and despondent, and its virtue has grown rather than diminished with the lapse of years, and yet we do not know its author, nor its date, nor the peculiar circumstances under which it was written. All we know is that it is the utterance of some one in deep trouble, and that it tells us how he found comfort, and how we may find it under similar circumstances. V.
There are good grounds for concluding that this Psalm and the next constituted originally but one poem. The internal evidence favors this hypothesis. Nor is external evidence want- ing which points the same way. Thirty-seven of Kennicott’s manuscripts and nine of De Rossi’s have but one Psalm instead of two. The LXX., it is true, make a distinct Psalm of the forty-third. But, according to Delitzsch, an old Midrash which reckons one hundred and forty-seven Psalms in all, takes these two as one, as well as Psalms 9, 10, and 32, 33. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that each Psalm is complete in itself; and it is conceiv- able that, though originally existing as one poem, the present arrangement might have been adopted the better to suit the purposes either of personal or liturgical use. P.—The sameness of the situation, of the character, of the structure and of the refrain decides in favor of our regarding them, though commonly counted two, as being but one. The one Psalm consists of three divisions; the Psalmist’s sorrow breaks out thrice into complaint, and is each time overcome by the encouraging voice of his higher consciousness. In the portrayal of the present and the future there is an unmistakable advance. And it is not until the third division (Psalm 43) that complaint, resignation, and hope are rendered complete by the addition of confident prayer. D.
God in Scripture frequently uses nature to illustrate grace. What is still more remarkable, He uses often the sterner aspects of nature, those with which power and terror are associated, to illustrate or to emphasize His tenderness and love toward His children. The forty-second Psalm is a Psalm of distress and longing. It is set in the key of a stormy ocean. In it is heard the sound of the floods. “Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts. All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me.” But out of the noise of the waves comes a voice of hope and cheerful trust. “Yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me.” The Psalm is the utterance of a man looking back out of present sorrow over a happy past. The scene is laid among the mountains on the east of the Jordan. From these the spectator had unfolded to him a magnificent view of the Land of Promise. Lebanon, the Sea of Galilee, the plain of Esdraelon, Carmel and the Mediterranean, the whole range of the mountains of Judah and Ephraim, Bethlehem and Jerusalem could be seen from different standpoints. The prospect from the Hermans and from Mizar, the little hill, was full of points consecrated by their histories of God’s special manifestation and help. V.
TITLE. To the chief musician. Maschil. To the sons of Korah. The obvious reference to personal experience and feelings in this Psalm made it the more necessary to designate it as a maschil or didactic Psalm, intended for permanent and public use. A.
1,2. Thousands of years have gone by since these words first found expression. They never fail to find a deep response within the inmost sanctuary of a longing soul, since they represent the deepest need of every human heart. No one can understand this Psalm of the panting hart as can the Christian who has been conducted by the Lord unto living fountains of waters. He is not satisfied when he has but begun to know the Lord; he seeks to make advance from light to light, from one stage to another in true blessedness. The more he has enjoyed of fellowship with God, the more he longs to taste of it; the more God condescends to him, the higher does he seek to rise to God. Van O.
The soul of man bears the image of God; so nothing can satisfy it but He whose image it bears. Our soul, says Augustine, was created as by God, so for God, and is therefore never quiet till it rest in God. As man fell at first into this restlessness by falling away from God, so he cannot be recovered of it but by returning to Him again. As the dove after she left the ark found no rest for the sole of her foot in the wide world till she betook her again thither from whence she came forth, so neither can man, fallen from God, find any sure rest for the foot of his soul in the whole world beside, till he come back to Him again from whom he came at the first. Gataker.
It is not only fear or terror, bearing us along as on the wings of wind, or in the rattling of the thunder-storm, which has shown man that there is a God; nor has he first read God’s great name inscribed among the stars. Deep, strong as the instinctive influence through which the new-born babe longs for the mother’s breast, which it has not yet known; loud as the cry raised by young ravens for the food, whose taste they never yet have felt; strong, and yet silent, as the attraction for the light, not yet perceived, felt by the scarce developed plant, and the as yet unopened eye—the inward thirsting for the everlasting Source of all that breathes and lives makes itself deeply felt within us all. Schubert.—The most inward desires, the purest affections, the loftiest aspirings, that stir our blood—all that is tender in us and all that is strong, all that is sacred and all that is enduring—pain and loss, love and death, repentance and fear—as each in turn through all this solemn discipline of life has its hour of trial or of triumph—cry out for the living God, and bid us worship the Father in spirit. F. D. H.
He who begins to realize God’s majestic beauty and eternity, and feels in contrast how little and how transitory man is, how dependent and feeble, longs to lean upon God for support. For where rather should the weak rest than on the strong, the creature of a day than on the Eternal, the imperfect than on the centre of perfection? And where else should God dwell than in the human heart? for if God is in the universe, among things inanimate and without conscience, how much more ought He to dwell with our souls; and our souls, too, seem to be infinite in their cravings; who but He can satisfy them? Thus a restless instinct agitates the soul, guiding it dimly to feel that it was made for some definite but unknown relation toward God. Then the soul understands and knows that God is her God, dwelling with her more closely than any creature can; yea, neither stars, nor sea, nor smiling nature hold God so intimately as the bosom of the soul. He becomes the soul of the soul. All nature is ransacked by the Psalmists for metaphors to express this single thought, “God is for my soul, and my soul is for God.” Father, Brother, Friend, King, Master, Shepherd, Guide, are common titles. God is their tower, their glory, their rock, their shield, their sun, their star, their joy, their portion, their trust, their life. The Psalmist describes his soul as God’s only and favorite child (22:20), His darling one. So it is that joy bursts out into praise, and all things look brilliant, and hardship seems easy, and duty becomes delight, and contempt is not felt, and every morsel of bread is sweet. The whole world seems fresh to him with sweetness before untested. F. Newman.
The devout heart yearns after a Personal God. Its instinctive desire is after a Father and a Friend—a loving ear into which its sorrows may be poured—a loving heart on which its weariness may rest. This deep-felt want of our natures is most fully and adequately met in the Person of Jesus Christ. For here is One whom, while we may reverence and adore as God, we can think of as clearly and love as simply, trustingly, tenderly as the best known and loved of our earthly friends. Here we have set before us the Eternal dwelling in time, the Invisible and Spiritual God revealed in that Word of Life which human eyes have seen and human hands have handled. No longer when we read or muse or pray need our minds be at a loss, our thoughts wander forth through eternity in search of a Living God. Caird.
To have this God as our God—reconciled to us in Christ, to enjoy His favor, to walk with Him as a friend—speaking to Him in prayer and praise, and hearing His voice in His Word and ordinances—to have a meanness for His presence, and the eternal vision and fruition of Him in the world of spirits—these are now the things after which the renewed soul pants. “My soul is athirst for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” Goode.—The “hunger and thirst” of the Christian soul is a something which is never satisfied, which, the more it receives, desires the more; which, having tasted that the Lord is gracious, rests not until it tastes again; which, having found strength for duty in spiritual communion, finds, in the discharge of that duty, the return of a healthful appetite for spiritual communion again. Monsell.—The hunger of a Christian soul is now a hunger simply to be like Jesus, a hunger whetted evermore by the vision of Him in His beauty. The conformity of righteousness is desired now, not as conformity to a hard or cold imperative from heaven, but as assimilation through sympathy to the very heart which forever beats and glows in holy love within the Beloved of our hearts. Dykes.
Longings and aspirations, weaknesses and woes, the limit of creature helps and loves, the disproportion between us and the objects around us—all these facts of familiar experience do witness, alike by blank misgivings and by bright hopes, by many disappointments and by indestructible expectations surviving them all, that nothing which has a date, a beginning, or an end can fill our souls or give us rest. No matter how you may get on in the world—though you may fulfil every dream with which you began in your youth—you will certainly find that without Christ for your brother and Saviour, God for your friend, and heaven for your hope, life, with all its fulness, is empty. It lasts long, too long as it sometimes seems for work, too long for hope, too long for endurance; long enough to make love die, and joys wither and fade, and companions drop away; but without God and Christ you will find it but as a watch in the night. At no moment through the long weary years will it satisfy your whole being; and when the weary years are all past it will seem to have been but as one troubled moment breaking the eternal silence. At every point so profitless, and all the points making so thin and short a line! A. M.
What, then, does this eagerness in coveting and this impotence in acquiring teach us, but that man originally possessed real happiness, of which nothing is now left to him but the footsteps and empty traces, which he vainly endeavors to replenish with all the abundance that surrounds him; seeking from absent enjoyments the relief which he finds not in such as are present, and which neither the present nor the absent can bestow on him, because this immense void can only be filled by an infinite and unchangeable object. Pascal.
Communion with God is the highest prerogative of spiritual beings. It is the instinctive craving of human souls; it is the supreme privilege and joy of the religious life; it is the inspiration and strength of all great service. God redeems us and saves us by drawing us to Himself. By mysterious voices He solicits us; by irrepressible instincts He impels us; by subtle affinities He holds us; by ineffable satisfactions He makes us feel His nearness and fills us with rest and joy. H. Allon.
3. Our faith and love are subject to manifold interruptions. The evidence of God’s presence is much like the light which shines, now and then, through the crevices of the rifted clouds. The best intercourse of the most favored men with their Maker, in the transfigurations of devotion, is imperfect. It is unsatisfactory, and provokes hungerings and thirstings after some manifestation of God more direct and sensible. Meanwhile this process of spiritual reconciliation and recovery is going on, and the promise of redemption is, that man again shall see the face of his God. Now, partially restored, man sees through a glass darkly, but ultimately his intercourse with his Maker shall be immediate, uninterrupted, direct, and joyful. Through the mighty power of Him who assumed our nature, we shall be as truly reconciled to God, harmonized with Him, and associated with Him, as if the shadow of sin, and fear, and repulsion had never passed upon the soul. W. Adams.
4. The act of reflection or self-introversion is expressed by the strong figure of pouring out his soul upon himself, which at the same time suggests the idea of lively emotion; not necessarily of grief, but of mingled joy and sadness in the recollection of past sufferings and deliverances, just as we might speak of a man’s heart being melted, either with sorrow or gratitude, or both. A.
I pour out my soul. The expression “pour out” is specially used of the outpouring of the soul in prayer (cf. Psalm 62: 8; 102 title; 1 Sam. 1: 15; Lam. 2: 19). Cook.—The very soul of prayer lies in the pouring out of the soul before God. T. Brooks.—Longing desire prayeth always, though the tongue be silent. If thou art ever longing, thou art ever praying. When sleepeth prayer? When desire grows cold. Augustine.—The Master’s benediction is upon those that hunger and thirst after righteousness. It is the longing soul that grows. There are better things before you than you have yet attained. Strive to reach them. It is not easy to rise Christward, heavenward, to advance in the Christian life, to grow better. Many people are discouraged because they do not appear to themselves to be making advance. But even true longing is growth. It is the soul’s reaching godward. J. R. M.
Though David was shut out from the sanctuary, yet David’s soul was a sanctuary for God; for God is not tied to a sanctuary made with hands. God hath two sanctuaries, He hath two heavens—the heaven of heavens and a broken spirit. God dwelt in David as in His temple. God was with David and in him; and He was never more with him nor never more in him than in his greatest afflictions. Sibbes.
5. It is the struggle between the spirit of faith and the spirit of dejection, between the higher nature and the lower, between the spirit and the flesh. The true I speaks; the faith which is born of God rebukes the depression and gloom of his natural infirmity. P.—The exceeding beauty of this address to the soul rests upon a deep truth of inward experience. The higher spiritual principle controls and guides the emotions. Cook.
Cast down. The form of the verb favors the reflexive sense—a self-produced effect: Why art thou breaking down thine own hopes and courage? Why indulge such self-depressing thoughts? The next words carry forward this view: Why such unrest? such inward anxiety? such lack of trust? Hope thou in God! Poetically the hopeful spirit accosts the desponding one, as if there were two conflicting hearts in his inner being: one lying prone in the dust, borne down in discouragement; the other lifting its eye upward; catching a glimpse of the faithful God; calling upon his fellow to take courage and still hope in God. “For the help of His countenance;” literally, for the salvation of His face, i.e., for the salvation which His manifested presence will bring. Truly there is salvation in His presence! When His face shines upon us we are already saved! C.
Hope thou in God. The word which is here rendered “hope” denotes that expectation which is founded on faith in God, and which leads the soul to wait upon Him. The idea is beautifully expressed in Psalm 39: 7, “And now, Lord, what wait I for? my hope is in Thee.” Henry March.—Or, wait thou for God. There is a shade of difference between the two words: “to wait” implies patient, submissive expectation, bound up with hope, and indeed a form of hope, but with less of brightness than of resignation. Cook.
“This hope was in God. The mistake we make,” says Robertson, “is to look for a source of comfort in ourselves; self-contemplation, instead of gazing upon God;” and, then, after showing that it is impossible to derive consolation from our own feelings, because they are so variable, or from our own acts, because in a low state no man can judge of these aright, and warning us that besides, while engaged in this self-inspection, we lose time in remorse, he continues, “When we gaze on God, then first the chance of consolation dawns. He is not affected by our mutability; our changes do not alter Him. When we are restless, He remains serene and calm; when we are low, selfish, mean, or dispirited, He is still the unalterable I am, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. What God is in Himself, not what we may chance to feel Him in this or that moment to be, that is our hope. ‘My soul, hope thou in God.’” P.
To think of what we have to do and to bear in this life is quite likely to be disheartening. To think of God’s sure help in our doing and in our enduring can hardly fail of giving us courage and hope and joy. Many of us know what it is to meet the cares and trials and griefs which we anticipate for the day, even before we are fairly awake in the morning. Through the slowly opening gate of consciousness they flood in upon us like a turbid stream that has been surging without while we slept, impatient for an entrance. By allowing these apprehensions to have the mastery, the new day, God’s special gift to us, is marred at its very beginning; the wonder of the dawning light passes unnoticed, and the strength of the early hours, which was given us for efficient service, is weakened and half wasted. As an antidote to this joy-poisoning habit our first thoughts of the day should float upward, and our morning greeting to our troubled soul should be, “Hope thou in God.” Experience shows us that our fears are often only a delusion, prompted by minor difficulties magnified in the morning mist, or by shadows that have no answering substance. On the other hand, we have been shown concerning the cares and trials and griefs which God does appoint for us, that as we look to and trust in Him He furnishes strength and grace to meet them in the hour of their appearing. Our fears may mislead us. Our faith never will. Our troubles may be less than we think for. God’s love is always more. H. C. T.
It is not trouble that troubles but discontent. It is not the water without the ship, but the water that gets within the leak, which drowns it. It is not outward affliction that can make the life of a Christian sad; a contented mind would sail above these waters; but when there is a leak of discontent open, and trouble gets into the heart, then it is disquieted and sinks. Do therefore as the mariners, pump the water out and stop this spiritual leak in thy soul, and no trouble can hurt thee. Watson.
6. Still depressed, the Psalmist addresses God directly, laying open his whole case: “O my God, my soul is fearfully borne down with grief, depression; Oh, let me remember thee from this far-off land of the Jordan—from these mountains of Hermon. It avails me nothing to brood over my affliction, still turning my eye away from Thee; let me rather turn toward Thee, my God, and remember Thee from this land of my exile.” The mountains of Hermon were the northeast boundary of Palestine entire. The hill Mizar (the little) seems to have been a special locality in the Hermon range, marking perhaps more definitely the place of his rest at this time. C.
Those Eastern hills were to the Western Israelites the land of exile—the refuge of exiles. From their heights Abner in his flight from the Philistines, and David in his flight from Absalom, and the Israelites on their way to Babylon, and the Christian Jews of Pella caught the last glimpse of their familiar mountains. There is one plaintive strain which sums up all these feelings—the forty-second Psalm. The place is, beyond doubt, the trans-Jordanic hills, which always behold, as they are always beheld from Western Palestine. As before the eyes of the exile the “gazelle” of the forests of Gilead panted after the fresh streams of water which there descend to the Jordan, so his soul panted after God, from whose outward presence he was shut out. The river with its winding rapids, “deep calling to deep,” lay between him and his home. All that he could now do was to remember the past, as he stood “in the land of Jordan,” as he saw the peaks of “Hermon,” as he found himself on the eastern heights of Mizar, which reminded him of his banishment and solitude. Stanley.
The words are indeed those of a man whose soul is bowed down, but their lesson does not encourage despondency, but, on the contrary, hopefulness and peace. The lesson lies in one sentence: “I will remember Thee.” V.—
Therefore will I remember Thee. “Because I am very low in spirit, am deeply sorrowful, therefore will I remember Thee. I will remember how condescending Thou art to Thy ‘poor and afflicted people;’ how kind and patient to hear their complaint when they pour out the soul before Thee. I will remember Thy lovingkindness to me in seasons past; how Thou hast looked on my distress, hast heard the voice of my supplications, hast delivered me from my trials, or helped me to bear their burden, strengthening me with strength in my soul. I will remember all that I have enjoyed of Thy presence when waiting on Thee in Thy house, or when celebrating Thy praises there in company with Thy ‘saints, the excellent of the earth.’ I will remember that Thou art my God, that Thou hast manifested Thyself to my soul, that Thou hast enabled me to choose Thee for my portion, that I have trusted in Thee, and have never been confounded. I will remember that word of promise on which Thou hast caused me to hope, to which Thou hast ever been faithful throughout all the past, and will be even unto the end.” How happy, even in the midst of their unhappiness, are they who in their trials can thus take shelter in God!
7. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of Thy waterspouts.** Here he has conjoined two awful and terrific phenomena of nature. It is a fact well ascertained by the evidence of travellers, that the falling of waterspouts is not uncommon on the coast of Judea. It should seem that they are occasioned by the congregating of great masses of cloud, whose waters concentrating to a point, pour themselves down in a tremendous column, accompanied with a roaring noise. Now the image conceived in the mind of the Psalmist seems to be that of the rushing of this vast waterspout down into the sea, already agitated, and increasing the turbulence and disorder of its waves. What would be the situation of a vessel in the midst of such a tempest, the deluge pouring down from above, and all around her the furious ocean heaving its tremendous surges—how ungovernable, how helpless, how next to impossible that she should escape foundering except by some almost miraculous interference! Yet to such a situation does David here compare the state of his soul when submersed, as it were, under a sea of afflictions; “All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me!” H. March.
Were it not for conflicts, what super-excellent use were there in faith? In daily and ordinary gusts every man of a patient temper or cheerful disposition can hold up his head; but when a black tempest comes, a tenth wave flows and one deep calls unto another, nature yields, spirit faints, heart fails; then to stand erect, then to live and reign, that only faith can do which hath the Word for its compass and Christ at the helm. Ward.—It is the night and the tempest which try our faith, which tell us whether or not we have a real faith. And hence it is that those who have passed through deep spiritual experiences, who have known many losses and griefs, if they have improved them, are distinguished by a settled calm which no shock of change disturbs, and at which we of little faith or unready faith can only wonder and admire. The ties which bind them to this visible and temporal world have been detached one by one; the ties which bind them to the world unseen and eternal have been multiplied and strengthened. Future changes can only detach the few weak links which still bind them to earth; the treasures they may yet lose will be laid up for them in heaven; their heart is where their treasure is; they walk by faith; their affections are above; their life is hid with Christ in God. Cor.
8. Yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness.** He does not say simply that the Lord will bestow, but “command His lovingkindness.” As the gift bestowed is grace—free favor to the unworthy; so the manner of bestowing it is sovereign. It is a royal donative. And if He commands the blessing, who shall hinder its reception? H. March.—‘Tis all one to a godly man, night or day. For what night can there be to him who hath God always with him, who is a sun to comfort him, as well as a shield to protect him; and the light of whose countenance, if it be but very little, is more comfortable than all things else whatsoever that the day can bring with it. He can say, “When I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me.” Z. Bogan.
For the day God commands “His lovingkindness,” for the night He gives “His song.” There must be something suitable in each of these provisions to the circumstances, the more so, that similar expressions are found in other passages of Scripture. The “songs of the night” is as favorite a word of the Old Testament as “glory in tribulation” is of the New, and it is one of those which prove that both Testaments have the self-same root and spirit. The lovingkindness of God is a movement—not so much from us to God as from God to us—of which a believing man is not insensible, but toward which his position is more that of a passive recipient. It is God’s goodness, like the daylight’s gladness, thrown on and around him to lighten up his life. It is a promise which, to a thoughtful man, is very precious. Prosperity without God’s favor in it is less than nothing; but if God’s lovingkindness be there, it is better than life. It brings with it the assurance that all things shall work together for good to the man. It secures this, in the beginning, that he shall have strength for every day’s duty. There will be light to guide him in all his walk, and grace to help him in all his work. It secures next that prosperity shall not injure him—“the sun shall not smite him by day.” If it be God’s gentleness which has made him great, that gentleness shall dwell also within, and make him able to say, “Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty.” This lovingkindness secures, still further, that prosperity shall have its true enjoyment. God’s love gives to a man the very life of life, and bestows on the day that light of which the poet speaks—“a brighter light than ever shone on sea or shore.” Every blessing, every happy affection, every tender touch of kindred souls, is a drop from the river of life, and a foretaste of the fountain-head. Ker.
The Bible tells us of the streams that it may allure us to the fountain; it tells of the past acts of God’s faithful love that we may be led to set our hope on God, and to feel assured that He who hath helped will help, and that He who hath loved will love unto the end. Thomas Erskine.—Not only is God supremely worthy of our love, He alone is worthy of it. All that is lovely comes from God; or, rather, all that is lovely is God. Holiness, truth, morality, conscience, happiness—names, honored by the respect of all nations and the reflecting men of the greatest genius—words which make the soul of man vibrate with a holy thrill, have no authority which they do not borrow but from Him. Holiness is God’s will, truth His thought, happiness His state, morality His law, conscience His representative; and if you go back to the beginning of things, you see all these different routes which religion and sound philosophy have revealed to man, converging more and more toward their Source, and all things finally meeting together in God, the common Centre of all radiance in the whole universe. Since, then, God is your beginning, your centre, your end, your all, give Him your love, your heart, yourselves entirely. A. Monod.
My prayer unto the God of my life. Here may be seen that David’s religion was a religion of prayer after deliverance, as well as before. The selfish who cry out in trouble will have done with their prayers when the trouble is over. With David it was the very reverse. Deliverance from trouble would strengthen his confidence in God, embolden his addresses to Him, and furnish him with new arguments.
There is great need of prayer after deliverance; for the time of deliverance is often a time of temptation; the soul being elated and thrown off its guard. H. March.—Every spirit which yearns after God may hold communion with God. And inasmuch as “every man’s life is a plan of God,” God may make that fellowship serve any purposes He has for the man to fulfil. By such communion there may be an inner life of devotion and an outer life of godliness to be nurtured and sustained; or there may be a spur and a pressure applied to high and holy service; or there may be some clearer light which God wills to impart to and through the soul so communing with Him. C. C.
How can the whole soul be so nobly or profitably employed as in holding communion with its Maker? There is no affection of the mind which is not engaged in prayer, except it be the baser and the more depraved ones of our nature. Here is reverential awe stripped of all the baseness of mere fear; here is hope, not the mere hope of earthly bliss, but of the favor of God, which, when enjoyed, is the fullest bliss. Here is faith feeling itself firm and immovable in that being on whom it rests; and here is love kindled at the sight of everlasting love. True prayer quickens the soul without agitating it. It contains within itself its own answer, in the heavenly calm and repose which it communicates to the soul. McCowh.—True prayer is earnest, not tiring nor fainting. It takes every burden to God—the small and the large alike. It is submissive, referring all to the Father’s will. Its answer may not come in the direct granting of the request we make, but may come instead in more grace and strength, enabling us to keep the burden and yet rejoice. Lying at our Father’s feet in the time of our strong cryings and tears, we learn obedience, and our sobings end in praises, our struggles in acquiescence, our tears are dried, and we rise victorious—not getting our own way, but glad and happy and peaceful in God’s way. J. R. M.
9. His comfort is that God is his Rock. A Rock to build upon, a Rock to take shelter in; the Rock of ages in whom is everlasting strength would be his Rock, his Strength in the inner man both for doing and suffering. To Him he had access with confidence, to God his Rock he might say what he had to say, and be sure of a gracious audience. H.—Why hast Thou forgotten me? Not that he supposed he was literally forgotten of God, so as to be given up and abandoned by Him; because he had still sufficient trust in His faithfulness to seek Him for a refuge, and to hope in
His mercy. His expression is to be regarded as the language of feeling, not of judgment. He felt, he seemed, as one forgotten by God. March.—It is a sign of true grace when a man seriously complains of the want of grace. Hence a graceless person cannot truly complain that he hath no grace. There is grace in that complaint. J. Mason.—This feeling of forsakeness is no proof of being forsaken. Mourning after an absent God is an evidence of love as strong as rejoicing in a present one. Nay, a man may be more decisively the servant of God and goodness while in the anguish of his soul crying for light, than while resting in a common creed, and coldly serving Him. F. W. R.
10. Where is thy God?** It is the deriding question which persecutors put to the saints in the time of their trials and troubles. But they may return a bold and confident answer, “Our God is here,” our God is nigh unto us, our God is round about us, our God is in the midst of us, our God has given us His promise “that He will never leave us nor forsake us.” In every trouble, in every danger, in every death, the Lord will be sure to keep us company. T. Brooks.
Why disquieted? Every day will have its own evil, and the day’s portion which you cannot get rid of will be enough for all the strength which you have to cope with it. And anxiety about the future is vain. After all our careful watching of the heaven, the clouds will rise in an unwatched quarter. Nothing is certain but the unexpected. To-morrow will have its cares in spite of all that anxious care and foreboding can do. And what does our anxiety do? It does not empty to-morrow of its sorrows, but it empties to-day of its strength. It does not give escape from evil, but it makes us unfit to cope with it when it bursts on us. It does not bless to-morrow, and it robs to-day. For every day has its own burden, which is quite heavy enough for the day’s strength. Sufficient for each day is the evil which properly belongs to it. A. M.—It is distrust of God which lies at the root of unlawful anxiety. A feeble apprehension of God as the agent who overrules everything and determines those causes which lie outside of our reach, and those events which escape our foresight—this it is which shakes the soul with vague uncertainty and fills with causeless alarms the darkness of to-morrow. Because we are “of little faith,” therefore are we not content to plan and work, and having planned and wrought, to sit and wait. Like a soothing, cooling breath from a serener world, there comes down upon the feverish, self-tormenting spirits of men this word of one who was the messenger of Him whom we distrust: “Be not anxious about your life; be not anxious about to-morrow.” Dykes.
The great and blessed faith in our Father, God, scatters all anxious care. How should we be anxious if we know that we have a Father in heaven, and that He knows our needs? He recognizes our claims on Him. He made the needs, and will send the supply. That is a wide truth, stretching far beyond the mere earthly wants of food and raiment. My wants, so far as God has made me to feel them, are prophecies of God’s gifts. He has made them as doors by which He will come in and bless me. How, then, can anxious care fret the heart which feels the Father’s presence, and knows that its emptiness is the occasion for the gift of a Divine fulness? Trust is the only reasonable temper for a child of such a Father. Anxious care is a denial of His love or knowledge or power. A. M.—Art thou discomposed with impatience, haunted with anxiety? Think it not enough to silence thy heart from quarrelling with God, but leave not till thou canst bring it sweetly to rely on God. Holy David drove it thus far, he did not only chide his soul for being disquieted, but he charges it to trust in God. Gurnall.
Hope thou in God. Hope is the great stock of believers, it is that which upholds them under all the faintings and sorrows of their mind in this life, and in their going through the valley and shadow of death. It is the helmet of their salvation, which, while they are looking over to eternity beyond this present time, covers and keeps their head safe amid all the darts that fly round about them. In present discomfort and darkness of mind and the saddest hours hope is that which keeps up the soul, and is that with which David cheered his soul. Leighton.
Health of my countenance. Every finite spirit is inherently related to the infinite, in Him to live, and move, and have its being. It wants the knowledge of God, the society of God, the approbation of God, the internal manifestation of God, a consciousness lighted up by His presence, to receive of His fulness, to be strong in His might, to rest in His love, and be centred everlastingly in His glory. Bushnell.
And my God. The same hopeful expression as before, but the addition of “and my God” shows that the writer was growing in confidence, and was able defiantly to reply to the question, “Where is thy God?” Here, even here, He is, ready to deliver me. Thus faith closes the struggle, a victor in fact by anticipation, and in heart by firm reliance. The saddest countenance shall yet be made to shine, if there be a taking of God at His word and an expectation of His salvation. S.
Whether David’s songs were composed early or late, the majority of this sweet singer’s effusions are the songs of a sufferer, who sings for the convincing reason that he must, if only to soothe his perplexities and calm the agitations of his soul. No singer reaches his best till he sings, in language that thrills and inspires the soul, the eternal Gospel, “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God: believe also in Christ”—believe also in duty, in progress, in heaven. But for such a mission the singer must, like David, be a sufferer. It is the school of sorrow that makes poets. It is a unique sign of a Davidic Psalm that it is always a real and bold communion with the living and loving personal God. Every poem is a sacrifice. Every line throbs with love. Every verse is a word to God. The aid of biblical song in communion with God is the highest claim the Psalter has upon the gratitude and love of man. J. Clifford.
There are feelings of which we do not speak to each other; they are too sacred and too delicate. Such are most of our feelings to God. If we do speak of them, they lose their fragrance; nay, there is even a sense of indelicacy and exposure. Now the Psalms afford precisely the right relief for this feeling; wrapped up in the forms of poetry and metaphor, that which might seem exaggerated is excused by those who do not feel it; while they who do can apply them without the suspicion of uttering their own feelings. Hence their soothing power, and hence, while other portions of Scripture may become obsolete, they remain the most precious parts of the Old Testament. For the heart of man is the same in all ages. This forty-second Psalm contains the utterance of a sorrow of which men rarely speak. There is a grief worse than lack of bread or loss of friends. Men in former times called it spiritual desertion. But at times the utterances of this solitary grief are, as it were, overheard, as in this Psalm. And in a more august agony, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” F. W. R.
The Psalms stand up like a pillar of fire and light in the history of the early world. They lift us up into an atmosphere of religious thought, which is the highest that man has ever reached; they come with all the characteristic affections and emotions of humanity, everything that is deepest, tenderest, most pathetic, most aspiring, along with all the plain realities of man’s condition and destiny, into the presence of the living God. Church.
The forty-second Psalm contains a prescription for a downcast soul, consisting of three ingredients. The first is Inquiry. Why art thou cast down? Religious despondency must have a cause; and if we can discover it in any case, the old proverb holds good, that a knowledge of the disease is half the cure. Many a man is in great spiritual darkness without knowing or being able to discover the reason. In such cases the question which most vexes a sincere soul is, “Is this state of mind a mark of God’s displeasure, or not?” As we shall presently see, it may be, but again it may not be. For instance, Christians sometimes forget that they have bodies; and that the condition of their bodies has a good deal to do with the brightness or darkness of their spiritual moods; and now and then a man, through sheer ignorance, persists in some course of life, some habit of eating or drinking, which, by keeping his body in an unhealthful state, correspondingly lowers the tone of his spiritual life. Often the devil which torments him is one that goeth not out but by fasting. It is a good deal gained when the man has discovered this; when he has found that, by a little attention to his lower life, he can get out from among the waves and billows which go over him, and can climb up to the high grounds of spiritual peace and clear-seeing. But the distress may arise from estrangement between man and God. One may be among the billows because he has voluntarily tempted them. And no Christian can expect bright outlooks, a clear sense of acceptance with God, a peaceful conscience, who is living in the habitual neglect of known duty, or in the habitual indulgence in known evil. Anything which, under such circumstances, seems like peace and joy in the Holy Ghost is a delusion. Such depressed spiritual states will be very likely to follow the neglect of prayer, for instance. The road which leads to the closet is the road to hope and to praise. The road which leads past the closet leads down to the billows. Or, depression may come from the neglect of the public means of grace. If you cannot, on inquiry, discover that sin is at the bottom of your disquietude, it may occur to you that God has sent it. It is not unlike Him to disquiet those whom He loves sometimes, in the way of His discipline. If, then, He intended it for thee, O soul, why art thou disquieted? Is it because thou canst not see the end thy God has in view in thy trial, or wilt thou forget that this “light affliction which is but for a moment, worketh out for thee a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”?
The second ingredient is remembrance; and in the Psalm we see this under two aspects: the Psalmist’s remembrance of his own experience and his remembrance of God’s gracious dealing with others. In the sorrowful passages of Christian life, God often makes use of the memories of His goodness to strengthen and to encourage us. Sometimes a man is so engrossed with the pleasure and business of the present, that memory has no chance to do her work, and he is in danger of forgetting God’s benefits altogether; and so God leads him away alone, whither he does not like to go, but where, cut off from the occupations of the present, he has opportunity to survey the rich and fruitful past and to grow grateful amid his sorrow. Yea, often the very land of exile is the land of precious memories. More than one has found the very path where God has caused him to walk in tears most fruitful in memories of blessing.
The third ingredient in the prescription is hope. “Hope thou in God.” There is nothing like trouble to open a man’s eyes to the need of a personal God. In the midst of calamity man’s heart cries out for a Father in heaven. “What we want,” says one who knew as much as any other man of the deep desolation of sorrow, “is not infinituate, but a boundless One; not to feel that love is the law of the universe, but to feel One whose name is love; for else, if, in this world of order, there be no one in whose bosom that order is centred, and of whose being it is the expression, then order, affection, contrivance, wisdom, are only horrible abstractions, and we are in the dreary universe alone.” (F. W. Robertson.)
Here, then, is God’s own prescription for a downcast and disquieted soul. It bids you not to forget gratitude in your sorrow. It bids you remember the wonderful mercies of God, and to strengthen your faith with the thought that He who has wrought so graciously for you and for His people in the past, will be your God forever; your guide even unto death. It bids you hope, never losing out of your mind the disciplinary purpose of God in all sorrow, and waiting in the confident expectation that “these light afflictions, which are but for a moment,” shall work for you “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” If not here, why then by and by. If the clouds do not disperse until the dark river be past, yet you may walk by God’s voice though you see not His face; and in the land of eternal light you shall forever praise Him, who through all the changes of this mortal life is still your God, and who shall be yours forever. V.