Psalms 50

19. Go to the generation of his fathers.** The clause has reference to the frequent description of death in the Old Testament as a man’s sleeping with his fathers, or being gathered to his fathers. The meaning of the whole verse is, that the wealthy sinner is to die as his fathers died before him, and continue dead like them, without returning to revisit, much less to repossess, the riches and honors which he once imagined were to last forever. This completes the proof that these advantages are not legitimate or even rational occasions of envious dissatisfaction to the righteous.

20. At the close of the first strophe, the rich fool is compared to the brutes that perish, with respect to the uncertainty of his enjoyments; and again at the close of the second, with respect to his irrationality, the points of comparison being distinct but inseparable. No wonder that the sinner is cut off unawares like the brutes, when in fact he is equally irrational. A.

1. God, even God, the LORD, hath spoken, And called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof. 2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined forth. 3 Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: A fire shall devour before him, And it shall be very tempestuous round about him. 4 He shall call to the heavens above, And to the earth, that he may judge his people: 5 Gather my saints [beloved] together unto me; Those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice. 6 And the heavens shall declare his righteous- ness; For God is judge himself. [Selah 7 Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify unto [against] thee: I am God, even thy God. 8 I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; And thy burnt offerings are continually be- fore me. 9 I will take no bullock out of thy house, Nor he-goats out of thy folds.

10. For every beast of the forest is mine, And the cattle upon a thousand hills. 11 I know all the fowls of the mountains: And the wild beasts of the field are mine. 12 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: For the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. 13 Will I eat the flesh of bulls, Or drink the blood of goats? 14 Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiv- ing; And pay thy vows unto the Most High: 15 And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. 16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, And that thou hast taken my covenant in thy mouth? 17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, And castest my words behind thee. 18 When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst with him, And hast been partaker with adulterers. 19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, And thy tongue frameth deceit. 20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; Thou slandestest thine own mother’s son.

21. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence;

Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself:

But I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.

22. Now consider this, ye that forget God.

This is the first of twelve Psalms that bear the name of Asaph. The others (73-83) are the first eleven of the third book. Asaph and his sons were leaders of four out of the twenty-four classes into which the musical service for Divine worship was divided by David (1 Chr. 23: 2-5). As a writer of Psalms Asaph is mentioned with David in 2 Chr. 29: 30, where he is also called “the seer.” The Asaphic Psalms have several characteristics in common. They are distinguished by loftiness of tone, combined with spirited and picturesque expression, and especially by their frequent exhibition of the sovereign judgment of God as determining the future. De Witt.

This Psalm furnishes us with no evidence as to the time of its composition, but in elegance and sublimity of language, in force and dignity, it is worthy of the best days of Hebrew poetry. It is a magnificent exposition of the true nature of that service and worship which God requires from man. It rebukes the folly which thinks that religion is a matter of sacrifices and gifts, and declares that obedience and thanksgiving are the true fulfilling of the law. It condemns alike a prevalent formalism and a prevalent hypocrisy. How needful it was to insist upon such truths we learn from the whole history of Israel and the perpetual and indignant remonstrances of the prophets. The tendency to substitute the outward act for the inward, the sacrifices of bulls and goats for the sacrifice of thanksgiving, was deeply ingrained in the nation, till at last it ossified in Pharisaism, and wore its most hideous aspect on that day of solemn Passover, when the sacrifices of the law were offered by those whose hands were stained with the greatest crime which the world has seen. In its general tone and character it is essentially prophetic. In vs. 8-15 Hengstenberg remarks that prevailing errors as to the first table of the law, the worship of God, are condemned. In vs. 16-21 the discourse turns to the second table. Here those are reproved who have the law of God constantly in their mouths, and at the same time wickedly transgress it in their behavior toward their neighbor. P.

Lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver:

23. Whoso offereth the sacrifice of thanksgiving glorifieth me;

And to him that ordereth his conversation aright

Will I shew the salvation of God.

The theme of this Psalm is, God, the Judge of all the earth, holding men to sincere and honest worship of God and to intrinsic righteousness toward men, i.e., to obedience as to both the first table of the law and the second. Under the first head, God does not reprove His people for failure in the external rites of sacrifice and offering, but insists upon thanksgiving, the payment of vows, and prayer for Divine help in all trouble. The wicked He rebukes for insincere religion; for a heart utterly out of sympathy with God’s Word and will, and in sympathy with thieves, adulterers, and with slander of nearest friends. C.

This ode, sublime in its imagery and its scenic breadth of conception, is a canon of the relationship of men, as professed worshippers of God, toward Him who spurns from His presence the hypocrite and the profligate and the malignant, but invites the sincere and the humble on terms of favor. The Psalm is sternly moral in its tone, and makes its way with anatomic keenness through the surface to the conscience of those who are easily content with themselves, so long as they keep clear of overt acts of sin. It is God’s voice we hear, for man has never spoken in any such manner as this to his fellows. I. T.

The central thought of this Psalm is the inefficacy of outward sacrifices compared with the offerings of the heart and purity of life. The same principle is distinctly recognized in the Davidic Psalms (see 40: 6, 8; 69: 30, 31; 51: 16, 17) and by all the prophets, but is nowhere set forth more explicitly and solemnly than in this Psalm; the circumstance that it is the composition of a chief among the Levites, whose whole life was devoted to the temple-service, is specially important, showing how unfounded is the notion of a spirit of opposition or rivalry between the prophetic and priestly orders in the best days of Israel. Cook.

1-6. A magnificent exordium, in which the whole scene of judgment is described. As formerly, at the giving of the law on Sinai, so now, God is represented as appearing in Zion for the explanation of it, and for judgment against its transgressors. He comes with all the terrors of thunder and lightning and storm. He summons before His judgment-seat those whom He has taken into covenant with Himself; and at the same time, as exercising universal dominion, He calls heaven and earth to be His witnesses against them. P—The exordium of this Psalm is the most grand and striking that can possibly be imagined—the speaker God, the audience an assembled world! We cannot compare or assimilate the scene here presented with any human resemblance; nor will earth ever behold such a day till that hour when the trumpet of the archangel shall sound, and shall gather all the nations of the earth from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other; when the dead, small and great, shall stand before God. Bouchier.

1. Three Divine names are put together in a kind of climax, El, Elohim, Jehovah. The first represents God as almighty, the second as the only proper object of worship and (by its plural form) as perfect, the third as self-existent and eternal, and at the same time as the peculiar God of Israel. The same combination occurs in Josh. 22:22. It is here intended to enhance the grandeur of the scene by setting forth the titles of the judge or sovereign. A.

—The Psalm opens with the three most common and distinct names of God—El, Elohim, Jehovah—best rendered, the Almighty, God, Jehovah or Lord. The first gives the element of supreme power; the second, that combination of infinite qualities which makes Him the only proper object of worship; the third, makes prominent His changeless, eternal nature, and consequently His faithfulness to His word. The name Jehovah commonly represents Him as the God of His covenant people. This great God hath spoken and hath convened the whole earth, summoning all before His tribunal, from extremest east to remotest west. C.

2. When the Bible speaks of Zion as the dwelling-place of God, it is but the expression of the fact that there, between the cherubim, was the visible sign of His presence—that there, in the temple, as from the centre of the whole land, He ruled, and “out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shone.” The idea of the dwelling of God with men had its less perfect embodiment, has its more perfect embodiment, will have its absolutely perfect embodiment. It had its less perfect in that ancient time. It has its real but partial embodiment in this present time, when, in the midst of the whole community of believing and loving souls, which stretches wider than any society that calls itself a church, the living God abides and energizes by His Spirit and by His Son in the souls of them that believe upon Him. “Ye are come unto Mount Zion and unto the city of the living God.” And we wait for the time when, filling all the air with its light, there shall come down from God a perfect and permanent form of that dwelling; and that great city, the New Jerusalem, “having the glory of God,” shall appear, and He will dwell with men and be their God. But in all these stages of the embodiment of that great truth the glory of Zion rests in this, that in it God abides, that from it He flames in the greatness of His manifestations, which are “His praise in all the earth.” It is that presence which makes her fair, as it is that presence which keeps her safe. A. M.

3 (first clause). The future in the first clause may be rendered He is coming, as if the sound of His voice and the light of His glory had preceded His actual appearance. The imagery is borrowed from the giving of the law at Sinai. A.—He who has given the law will enter into judgment with those who have it and do not observe it; He cannot forever look on in silence. He must punish in the first instance with words, in order to warn against punishment by deeds. Fire and storm are the heralds of the Law-giver of Sinai who appears as Judge. The fire threatens to consume the sinners, and the storm threatens to drive them away like chaff. The fire is His wrath, and the storm the power of His wrath. D.

Our Lord Jesus has been prophesied of in this Psalm, wherein we have heard and sung, “God will come manifested, our God, and will not keep silence.” For the Lord Christ Himself, our God, the Son of God, in His first Advent came hidden, in His second will come manifested. When He came hidden, He was known only to His own servants; when He will come manifested, He will be known both to good and bad. When He came hidden, He came to be judged; when He will come manifested, He will come to judge. Lastly, when at that time He was judged, He kept silence; and of His silence the prophet had foretold, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer so He opened not His mouth.” But He will not be silent when He is to judge, as He was when He was to be judged. Even now, if there is any one to listen, He is not silent; but, it is said, then “He will not keep silence,” when even those who now contemn His voice shall recognize it. Augustine.

The Son of God will come in His glory with His angels. For “He will come, and will not keep silence”—that is, when He will come to judge the quick and the dead, and to render to every man according to his work; when that trumpet with its great and terrible sound will awaken those who have slept since the world began, and they will “come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.” Remember the heaven-sent vision of Daniel, how it brings the judgment before our eyes. “I beheld,” he says, “until thrones were set, and the Ancient of days did sit; His garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like pure wool, and His wheels a burning fire. A river of fire was rolling before Him. Thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him; a judgment was set, and books were opened;” books openly unfolded, things good, things bad, things manifest, things hidden, acts, words, thoughts, all things at once, so as to be heard by all, both men and angels. And those who have led evil lives, with what feeling must they needs face all this? Basil.

6. And (now) the heavens have declared His righteousness, for God (is) judge Himself. Selah. The heavens are witnesses of God’s judicial rectitude, for He Himself (and not a delegated man or angel) is the judge. The parties and the witnesses having been summoned, the judicial process now begins. The pause, denoted by the Selah, is one indicative of awe, excited by the dread solemnity of these proceedings. A.

—All this confessedly metaphorical representation of a judicial period is intended undoubtedly to convey the solemn general truth that every man’s religion will one day be tried as by fire. We may deceive ourselves, as well as others now; but the undeceiving period draweth near, and a period of inexpressible solemnity it will be to us all. D. Thomas.

7-15. From His judgment-seat God solemnly rebukes the errors and delusions which prevailed as to the nature of His service. He reminds His people of the peculiar relation in which they stand to Him, and asks if they can believe that sacrifices, merely as sacrifices, can be of any value to Him who has all creatures at His command. Thanksgiving and prayer are the sacrifices in which He delights, and these will best avail in the day of trouble. P. —God will not enter into judgment with them on account of sacrifices in the external sense, for He needs not sacrifices from Israel. His is every wild beast of the forest, His are the animals upon the mountains of thousands, i.e., the thousand (and more than thousand) mountains. D.—“I am not now rebuking thee for neglecting the forms and ritualities of sacrifice. This is not the charge brought against thee. It is not thy bullocks or he-goats that I now demand. All the cattle of the earth—the wild and the tame—are Mine.” The “beasts of the forest” are wild animals, while the cattle on the hills are domestic. The tone of these verses seem to imply that Israel had not been specially deficient in the rituals and externals of the Mosaic system. It also implies that God regards the worship of the heart as incomparably more important than these externals. C.

The reason for this act of judgment is given. First, negatively; it is not because the people had neglected the externals of the law, or had forgotten to offer the sacrifices appointed by the law. They had brought them; but they had brought them as if the act were everything, and as if the meaning of the act and the spirit in which it was done were nothing. But God demands no service for its own sake, but only as the expression of an obedient will. A thankful heart is more than all burnt-offerings. The prophets are full of the like sentiments. Thus, in Isaiah, God expostulates, “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me? I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams” (1: 12). Micah asks, “Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams?” (6: 6-8.) Hosea testifies, “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.” And so deep-rooted was this tendency in the people to exaggerate the importance of the dead work, to bring the sacrifice of the dumb animal instead of the sacrifice of the heart, that Jeremiah carries the opposition between sacrifices and obedience to the extreme of a paradox (7: 22, 23). P.

To obey is better than sacrifice, and to love God and our neighbor, better than all burnt-offerings, so much better that God by His prophets often told them that their sacrifices were not only not acceptable, but abominable to Him, while they lived in sin; instead of pleasing Him, He looked upon them as a mockery, and therefore an affront and provocation to Him. They are therefore here warned not to rest in these performances; but to conduct themselves, in all other instances, toward God as their God. H.—It is even so to day. Sacraments (so called) and sacred rites are the main concern with unconverted but religious men, but with the Most High the spiritual worship which they forget is the sole matter. Let the external be maintained by all means according to the Divine command, but if the secret and spiritual be not in them, they are a vain oblation, a dead ritual, and even an abomination before the Lord. S.

12. There is no portion of our time that is our time, and the rest God’s; there is no portion of money that is our money, and the rest God’s money. It is all His; He made it all, gives it all, and He has simply trusted it to us for His service. A servant has two purses, the master’s and his own; but we have only one. Monod.

13. Will I eat the flesh of bulls and drink the blood of goats? The future of the Hebrew verb is very expressive, suggesting the ideas of possibility, necessity, and desire. Do I desire the flesh and blood of beasts for My refreshment? Do I need them for My sustenance? Or is it even possible for Me to use them, in the way that you imagine? The negative answer, which is obviously expected to these questions, presupposes the great doctrine that Jehovah is a spirit and as such exempt from all corporeal necessities. This, then, is another refutation of the gross and impious error that He needed their oblations. If they were necessary in themselves, He could obtain them elsewhere; and that they are not necessary, follows as an inevitable consequence from the spirituality of the Divine nature. This is the language of impassioned and indignant expostulation, holding up the absurdities, to which the error of the formal worshipper inevitably tended, as a refutation of the error itself. A.

14,15. There follows now, positively, what God requires. The sacrifices which He would have are thanksgiving and the prayer of faith in the time of trouble. Under the name of thanksgiving and prayer all the rest of religion is comprehended. P.—On the side of things positively required stand thanksgiving—the grateful acknowledgment of mercies received from God; a perpetual recognition of His favors and of the love from which they come. Next, the payment of vows unto the Most High, i.e., honest and truthful dealing with God, recognizing Him as really existing, and a vow to Him therefore as a real obligation to a personal being. Next (remarkably) God invites (shall we not say requires?) them to call upon Himself in the day of their trouble, giving the promise that in such case He will set them free from such trouble and they shall glorify Him for this deliverance. The beautiful thing here is that God seems to recognize it as one of His rights and privileges to be called upon by His people for help in their time of need, asking only that then they suitably acknowledge His delivering grace and give Him the honor due therefor. Is it not wonderful? Yet it is like God! C.

14. Offer unto God thanksgiving**, literally, “sacrifice thanksgiving;” i.e., instead of the legal “sacrifice of peace offerings for a thanksgiving or a vow” (Lev. 7: 11-16), the true worshipper must offer that which the victim represents—viz., praise from a grateful heart, and all duties to which he is bound by the terms of his covenant with God. This does not imply that the outer forms are to be omitted, but that they are valueless, except as the expression of genuine devotion and obedience to God’s will. The reader must always bear in mind the Hebrew idiom, which, if taken literally, would seem to condemn that which it simply represents as of subordinate and conditional importance. It must not be supposed that this view implies a more advanced stage of religious consciousness than is found in the Pentateuch; for in that book all the obligations of the law are summed up in circumcision of the heart, and duty to God and man resting on the one great central principle of love. Cook.

Everywhere throughout Scripture is gratitude represented as a necessary quality of acceptable prayer. A humble heart not only brings the sin-offering before the Lord, but the thank-offering. Hear the duties of the devout life summed up in a few brief sentences: “Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High; call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee; and thou shalt glorify Me.” And study well an example full of these important lessons. Paul and Silas, covered with bruises, their feet in the stocks, cast into the dungeon of the prison, if they had been like some people we have seen, would have forgotten praise in the agony of prayer for deliverance. But it seems they “sang praises to God, and the prisoners heard them.” Aye, and God heard them. Potts.—Call upon Me in the day of trouble. Our troubles, though we see them coming from God’s hand, must drive us to Him, and not drive us from Him. We must thus acknowledge Him in all our ways, depend upon His wisdom, power, and goodness, and refer ourselves entirely to Him, and so give Him glory. This is a readier way of seeking His favor than by a peace-offering, and yet more acceptable. When He in answer to our prayers delivers us, as He has promised to do in such a way and time as He shall think fit, we must glorify Him, not only by a grateful mention of His favor, but by living to His praise. Thus must we keep up our communion with God; meeting Him with our prayers when He afflicts us, and with our praises when He delivers us. H.

Thankfulness should mingle with all our thoughts and feelings, like the fragrance of some penetrating perfume through the common scentless air. It should embrace all events. It should be an operating motion in all actions. We should be clear-sighted and believing enough to be thankful for pain and disappointment and loss. That gratitude will add the crowning consecration to service and knowledge and endurance. It will touch our spirits to the finest of all issues, for it will lead to glad self-surrender, and make of our whole life a sacrifice of praise. A. M.

Prayer is the outlet of the saints’ sorrows and the inlet of their supports and comforts. Flavel.—If your mind be overcharged with trouble and anxiety, go into the presence of God and spread your case before Him. Though He knows the desires of your hearts, yet He has declared He “will be sought after;” He will be “inquired of to do it for you.” Go, therefore, into the presence of that God who will at once tranquillize your spirit, give you what you wish, or make you more happy without it, and who will be your everlasting consolation if you trust in Him. He will breathe peace into your soul, and command tranquillity in the midst of the greatest storms. How much are they to be pitied who never pray! R. Hall.

The boldest words from a loving heart, jealous of God’s honor, are not irreverent in His eyes. Perfect love casts out fear and deepens reverence. We may come with free hearts, from which every weight of trembling and every cloud of doubt has been lifted. But the less the dread, the lower we shall bow before the loftiness which we love. We do not pray aright until we tell God everything. The boldness which we as Christians ought to have means literally a frank speaking out of all that is in our hearts. Such “boldness and access with confidence” will often make short work of so-called seemly reverence, but it will never transgress by so much as a hair’s-breadth the limits of lowly, trustful love. A. M.

16-21. There were those in Israel who not only exalted the outward service unduly, but who made its punctual observance a cloak for and a makeweight against their iniquity. The first evil, indeed, of superstitious formalism naturally engendered the still deadlier evil of conscious hypocrisy. Against hypocrites the

Divine rebuke is now directed. Compare Rom. 2: 17-24. P.—This earnest rebuke applies in all its force to those who by acts more or less public recognize God’s law as binding and take His covenant into their lips, yet in heart hate the restraints of duty to God, hate the instruction which demands a holy life, and thrust from them the claims of God. C.—We may deny Christ in our action and practice, and these speak much louder than our tongue. To have an orthodox belief and profession concurring with a bad life, is only to deny Christ with a greater solemnity. South.

19,20. Mischief and slander are brought out here. The first verb, “givest,” is strong; sendest forth, giving it unbounded range and no restraint; making the doing of evil its distinct and direct function, its mission, its business. The tongue concocts deceit—artful schemes for mischief. “Sittest and speakest”—as if sitting down to a day’s work, making a business of slander. C.

21. These things hast thou done, and I have held My peace; thou hast imagined I was just like thyself. I will reprove thee, and array (thy sins) before thine eyes. God is described as silent when He does not interpose with His reproofs or manifest His displeasure. Array, arrange, set in order, so that none shall be emitted or overlooked. Before thine eyes, literally, to thine eyes, or to thy face, again implying that the sight of them is not to be avoided. This declaration of severe fidelity forms an appropriate conclusion to the second lesson of the Psalm, or that in which the mask is stripped off from the vicious hypocrite, who professes to serve God while he lives in the grossest violation of His precepts, as in the first part (vs. 7-15) it was torn from the formal hypocrite, who satisfies himself with a mere outward and mechanical performance of rites designed to be significant of spiritual and devout affections. A.

Because the sinner is allowed to go on long unpunished, he waxes confident by his impunity, and imagines that God is like himself, and that good and evil are things indifferent; not that he says so in words, but his conduct shows his ignorance both of the exceeding sinfulness of sin and of the truth and righteousness of God. P.—“Because vengeance against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart is fully set on evil.” So here: While thou wast committing these sins I kept silence; and then, so far from interpreting this silence as only the longsuffering of God designed for salvation, to give thee space to repent, thou thoughtest that I was really and entirely like thyself—well enough pleased with sin and sinners. C.

I kept silence. God has spoken, and now He is giving mankind a trial, to see whether they will heed what He says. “All things continue as they were;” and an infidel may deny God if he pleases, and a bad man may defy God if he pleases. No lightning falls from heaven to blast him who denies, or him who defies. Since we know God to be grievously displeased with sin, there is something very awful in His keeping silence while it is committed under His eyes. In countries where earthquakes happen, a dead silence always goes before the earthquake. So it is with God’s silence. It will be followed, when it seems deepest, by the earthquake of His judgments. E. M. G.

I will lay in order—the whole sin in all its evil course, its poisonous root, and its deadly branches shall be put before the man. The sin that he did and would not look at, God shall make him look upon. The sin which he thought he could hide from God, or which, with strange infatuation, he supposed God took no notice of, shall be proclaimed upon the housetops. P.—What a narrow and finite apprehension this is of God! He that causeth and produceth every action—shall He not be present at every action? What can we do without Him that cannot move but in Him? He that takes notice of sparrows and numbers the seeds which the very ploughman thrusts in the ground, can any action of man escape His knowledge or slip from His contemplation? He may seem to wink at things, but never shuts His eyes. He doth not always manifest a reprehensible knowledge, yet He always retains an apprehensive knowledge. T. Adams.

Men think that some declarations of God are fitted only to make them mad; that He takes little notice of these things and will easily pass them by, as they suppose better becomes Him. This is their inward thought, “The Lord will not do good, neither will He do evil,” which, says the Psalmist, is men’s “thinking that God is such a one as themselves.” They have no serious thoughts of His greatness, holiness, purity, severity, but think He is like themselves, so far as not to be much moved with what they do. If, with them, a slight ejaculation be enough to expiate sin that their consciences be no more troubled, they think it is enough with God that it be not punished. All sin’s concernments flow from its relation to God; and as men’s apprehensions are of God so will they be of sin, which is an opposition to Him. This is the frame of the most of men; they know little of God and are little troubled about anything that relates to Him. God is not reverenced, sin is but a trifle, forgiveness is a matter of nothing; whoso will may have it for asking! Whereas he who is not acquainted with God’s holiness and purity, who knows not sin’s desert and sinfulness, knows nothing of forgiveness. Owen.

No searching can find out in Scripture any plans or promises of winning offers and tender appeals, that are to be made to those in the next world, who abuse the strivings of the Holy Spirit in this world. Therefore we would shudder to encourage people to depend upon calls to repentance after death, of which there is no echo in this world, or indication in the Word of God. We are not called upon to believe in the perdition tortures of Dante, Milton, Edwards, and others of olden time. But we do believe, and bow our heads to Him who, the gentle Jesus that He was, spoke again and again of the consequences of continued sin, in a way to make it frightfully sure that, beyond the sight of this world, there is a scene of retribution, which is unrelieved by the joys of redemption. J. L. Withrow.

22. Men live “without God in the world.” They fill their lives, or strive to do, without Him who is the alone abiding fulness; and direct their conduct without reference to His authority; and habitually act from principles which He condemns; and seek after ends which are different from and inconsistent with the great ends He has put before us all. They forget God—live and act much as if He had not spoken, as if He were not speaking now—almost as if He had no existence. Raleigh.—To the mind of the unbeliever God can scarcely be said to exist. For him and to his apprehension there is no God. Walking amid the multitudinous traces and signatures of Divine power, wisdom, and beneficence, and receiving showers of favor from His hand every moment, the unbeliever entertains no willing thought of his Creator and preserver. J. W. A.

23. (The man) sacrificing praise shall honor Me, and prepare a way (that) I may show him the salvation of God, that of which He is the author. This phrase is used instead of My salvation, for the sake of a more sonorous close. The common version of the first clause makes it an identical proposition: Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me. At the same time it greatly weakens the expression by the use of the ambiguous term offer. The words are all borrowed from vs. 14, 15, to which there is therefore a direct allusion, and by which the clause must be interpreted. It is really a promise that he whose offerings are genuine expressions of thanksgiving shall have cause or occasion to praise God for His mercies. A.—The Psalm concludes with the assertion of the same truth as v. 14. The lesson of the Psalm for all who pervert the law of God, whether to purposes of superstition or hypocrisy, is the same; God desires the heart and the will of man as the true sacrifice.

Sacrificeth thanksgiving, as above, v. 14. The verb is designedly employed in order to mark the nature of the sacrifice which God will have; slay not victims, bring not animals, but bring thanksgiving as sacrifices. There is no duty so commonly forgotten. God showers benefits upon us with both hands, large and free, and we receive them as a matter of course, and never consider whose love has bestowed them; and thus, in our unthankfulness, we rob God of His honor. Further, as thanksgiving is thus dwelt upon because it is so commonly forgotten, so it is also put as the sum of religion because it, in fact, includes all else. Faith, and prayer, and self-denial, and the endurance of the cross, and all holy exercises are, as Calvin observes, comprised in this one grace of thankfulness. P.—Praise is the best sacrifice; true, hearty, gracious thanksgiving from a renewed mind. The songs of redeemed men are the music which the ear of Jehovah delights in. Sacrifice your loving gratitude, and God is honored thereby. Not to ceremonies, not to unpurified lips, is the blessing promised, but to grateful hearts and holy lives. S.

When the thought that God’s purpose in all His acts is His own glory, is firmly united with that other, that His purpose in all His acts is our blessing, then we begin to understand how full of joy it may be for us. His glory is sought by Him in the manifestation of His loving heart, mirrored in our illuminated and gladdened hearts. To say that God’s glory is His great end is surely but another way of saying that He is love. The love that seeks to bless us desires, as all love does, that it should be known for what it is, that it should be recognized in our glad hearts, and smiled back again from our brightened faces. God desires that we should know Him, and so have eternal life; He desires that knowing Him, we should love Him, and loving should praise, and so should glorify Him. He desires that there should be an interchange of love bestowing and love receiving, of gifts showered down, of praise ascending, of fire falling from the heavens, and sweet incense, from grateful hearts, going up in fragrant clouds acceptable unto God. It is a sign of a Fatherly heart that He “seeketh” such to worship Him." He will be glorified by our praise, because He loves us so much. He commences with an offer, He advances to a command. He gives first, and then (not till then) He comes seeking fruit of the “trees” which are “the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” First, He showers down blessings; then looks for a revenue of praise! A. M.

Ordereth his conversation aright. The word “conversation” here must be carefully taken in its ancient, not its modern sense—in the sense of one’s entire life, not by any means of one’s speech only. The original has no specific reference to speech, though obviously it must include words along with deeds. The specifications of the Psalm include slander and sins of the tongue, but by no means exclude all other sins. The demand is that men be honestly, conscientiously careful to obey God’s entire law, and shape their whole life into harmony with His revealed will. So doing they shall richly experience His salvation. C.—Though the main work of religion lies within, yet “our light must so shine” that others may behold it; the foundation of sincerity is in the heart, and sincerity is a holy leaven, which if it be in the heart will work itself into the life, and make it swell and rise as high as heaven. T. Watson.

You glorify God when you are fruitful in holiness and obedience. “Herein is My Father glorified,” says our Lord, “that ye bear much fruit.” You ought to live and walk so as you may in a sort express the glorious perfections of God in your conversation, and that the image of God may be seen stamped on your very lives. Your lives should be a constant hymn to the glory and praise of God, by proclaiming to the world a deep sense of the omniscience, infinite justice, and holiness of that God whom you profess to serve. And you should walk so as others may be induced to glorify God: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, who is in heaven.” Wisheart.—The Spirit of God does what He does in us through our own agency and with our own consciousness. This is the principal drift of the direction, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who (thus) worketh in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure.” G. Bowen.

This Psalm is remarkable for other things

besides its lyric grandeur and dramatic vivacity, and its foregleams of the great white throne and the last assize. It is as spiritual and heart-searching as anything in the Gospels or epistles, and it brings out in a most satisfying way the inner side of the Old Testament religion. This it does without reflecting upon other portions of the Hebrew revelation or introducing a fatal discord between priests and prophets. Chambers.