Psalms 61

1. HEAR my cry, O God; Attend unto my prayer. 2 From the end of the earth will I call unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. 3 For thou hast been a refuge for me, A strong tower from the enemy. 4 I will dwell in thy tabernacle for ever: I will take refuge in the covert of thy wings. [Selah

5. For thou, O God, hast heard my vows: Thou hast given me the heritage of those that fear thy name. 6 Thou wilt prolong the king’s life: His years shall be as many generations. 7 He shall abide before God for ever: O prepare lovingkindness and truth, that they may preserve him. 8 So will I sing praise unto thy name for ever, That I may daily perform my vows.

THERE is no reason to doubt that David was the author, and the language of v. 2 renders it probable that it was written when he was shut out from the sanctuary, and therefore either during his persecution by Saul or during the rebellion of Absalom. V. 4 makes the latter the more probable occasion. At a time when the tabernacle had itself no settled resting-place, the wish to dwell and abide in it is not so natural as afterward, when the ark was fixed on Mount Zion. P.—It is a Psalm belonging to the time of Absalom, composed in Mahanaim or somewhere else in Gilead, when the royal army had beaten the rebels in the wood of Ephraim. D.—The king referred to in vs. 6 and 7 is evidently himself. He probably uses the third person because his thought embraces the royal line that God had promised should descend from him, and rule in righteousness forever. Under this aspect the Psalm is Messianic. De Witt.

The Psalm itself consists of a prayer with an expression of strong confidence (vs. 1-4), and an appeal to the Divine promise, as the ground and object of that confidence (vs. 5-8). A.

1-3. We may take this language as an index of his feeling of exile and loneliness when thrust away from the city of his throne and of his God. To such a heart as David’s such an exile would seem like a banishment to the ends of the earth. From this heart-oppressing exile—his soul overwhelmed with grief—he cried to God for help. Verily, that was a time for a child of God to pray! Why should he not? What else could he think of? Whither else could he turn for help? “Lead me to the rock which is too high for me to reach for safety without a guiding and helping hand.” He pleads what God had done in his former exigencies: “For Thou hast in other days been a shelter for me: so be Thou my shelter yet again.” This is one of the comforts of Christian experience—the logic of past mercies, good to inspire hope and prayer for help under pending and pressing want. C.

1. Hear my cry. When it comes to crying with us, we need not doubt but that it will come to attending with God. Our Heavenly Father is not hardened against the cries of His own children. What a consoling thought it is that the Lord at all times hears His people’s cries, and is never forgetful of their prayers! Whatever else fails to move Him, praying breath is never spent in vain. S.

2. Will call unto Thee when my heart is overwhelmed. It is not lack of faith to feel an ill nor to be oppressed by it.

The heart may and must rise and sink; we can by God’s grace control it, hold it down, keep it outwardly still, hinder it from having any wrong vent; we cannot hush its beatings. Hard words will vex; unkindness will pierce; neglect will wound; threatened evils will make the soul quiver; sharp pain or weariness will rack the body or make it restless; cold will fret the frame; hunger will gnaw it. But what says the Psalmist? “When my heart is overwhelmed I will cry.” To whom? Not of God, but to God. As thou learnest this lesson, to carry all thy sorrows to God and lie at the Saviour’s feet and spread thy griefs before Him, thou wilt find a calm come over thee thou knowest not whence. Thy heart will still rise and sink, not restlessly nor waywardly, not in violent gusts of passion; but whether rising or sinking, amid all outward heavings of this world’s waves, resting in stillness on the bosom of the ocean of the love of God. Then shalt thou learn, not to endure only patiently, but in everything against thy will humbly and quickly to see and to love the loving will of God. Thy faith and thy love and thy hope will grow the more thou seest the work of God with thee; thou wilt joy in thy sorrow, and thy sorrow will be turned into joy. Pasey.

The rock was too high for David himself to get into, and therefore he sets to the scaling ladder. “Lead me to the rock. Hear my cry, attend unto my prayer.” So he makes prayer the scaling ladder to get upon that rock that otherwise had been too high for him; he gets that safety and deliverance which otherwise but by prayer unto God had been impossible to have been obtained. Jeremiah Dyke.

It is more the image of one overtaken by the tide, as he is hastening onward to get beyond its reach, and yet with every step he sees it rolling nearer and nearer to him; he hears its angry roar, the loosening sand sinks beneath his tread—a few minutes more, and the waves will be around him; despair hath “overwhelmed his heart;” when in the very depths of his agony he sees a point of rock high above the waves. “Oh, that I could reach it and be safe!” And then comes the cry, the agonizing cry, to Him that is mighty to save, “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” It is the sinner’s cry to the sinner’s Saviour! Bouchier.—Tribulation brings us to God, and brings God to us. Faith’s greatest triumphs are achieved in her heaviest trials. Affliction encompasses me as a cloud, it swallows me up like a sea, it shuts me in with thick darkness, yet God is near, near enough to hear my voice, and I will call Him. Is not this brave talk? S.

Christ is the Rock of Ages, to whom all weary, thirsty, wandering souls are invited to come for rest. No floods or storms can carry away that sure and safe retreat. Amid all the changes and agitations of the world the Rock of our salvation stands firm. It has been beaten upon by the tempests of war; it has been assailed by the combined hosts of earth and hell; busy hands have been laboring for centuries to dig up its foundations. But the Rock of Ages stands to-day, amid all the wastes and conflicts of the world, offering rest to the weary and the water of life to the perishing. Never before were the reasons for trusting in Christ so many and so strong as they are to-day. D. Macdonald.

How many confessions underlie these words. Blindness, else David would not have said, “Lead me.” Weakness, otherwise he would not have thought of a rock. Littleness; therefore he says, “Higher than I.” The first thing that we all want is the feeling of safety. We need a calm, quiet place where our heaving thoughts will grow still, and where no external circumstances shall be able to move us greatly. That calm and refuge is Christ, and all who come nearer to Him do at His side pass strangely into peace. His work is so strong, His faithfulness is so sure, His presence is so tranquillizing that those who are brought to Him are always at rest. J. V.

In a state of ease, we have only to exchange one object of desire for another; but when the world is impaired to us, when those we lean on are taken from us, then we must choose between despair and God; we must find comfort nowhere, or all in Him! The Christian is often observed to bear an overwhelming calamity better than the lighter afflictions of life; and the reason is this: that then, beaten off from every other support, he is driven to his Rock. In ordinary trials, we are apt to look to ourselves; in great disasters we are compelled to go in the strength of another; the world appears a shadow, and only God remains! R. Hall.

4. Let me find shelter in the covert of Thy wings. The Psalmist refers to the outspread wings of the cherubim on the Mercy-seat. The tabernacle was a figure of the heavenly sanctuary, the cherubim represented the protecting love of the heavenly King, and were the recognized symbols of His presence. Cook.—I will sojourn (or abide) in Thy tent (or tabernacle) ages (or eternities—i.e., forever); I will trust

(take refuge or find shelter) in the shadow of Thy wings. The first verb expresses strong desire or fixed determination. To dwell in God’s tent or house is to be a member of His family, to enjoy His bounty and protection, and to live in intimate communion with Him. A.

He is of good cheer, for God has already proved Himself a refuge to him, a strong tower, bidding defiance to every attack, a tower which has surrounded him, the persecuted one, so that the enemy cannot possibly get at him (cf. Prov. 18 : 10). He is already on the way toward home, and that, too, his own most dearly loved, his true home; he will or shall (in accordance with God’s will) dwell in God’s tent. D.—This is the utterance of David’s heart. Having loved the house and worship of God in His holy tabernacle above his chief joy; having given to it his best thoughts, his noblest powers of poetry and song; and having rested in the sweetness of trust and in the simplicity of faith upon God’s promises to himself and his seed for generations to come, including the Great Messiah as the ultimate consummation of these promises (See 2 Sam., chap. 7), what could be more fitting than this outpouring of prayer and this utterance of his strong confidence in God? “Selah” is fully in place here. Let the reader pause and enter into the sympathies of David’s great and godlike heart! C.

The bird will endure any violence of storm, if only the wing of the mother bird be extended over it and gathered about it. “I will cry unto Thee,” said David, “when my heart is overwhelmed; I will trust in the covert of Thy wings.” “I know whom I have believed,” said Paul. The faith we have in His dealings rests upon the knowledge we have of Him. Comfort, therefore, widens as knowledge deepens. In our sorrow we shall as children of God be quieted by remembering that if we could see things exactly as He sees them, we should want events ordered precisely as He has ordered them. And if we are true sons and daughters of God, then we can trust Him for all the future. His love never wears out. C. H. P.—God’s love covers all our sins; it hides us in the hollow of His hand; restless and care-worn as we are, it shields us beneath the wings of the dove of peace. It brings rest to the weary, the entering into the rest that remaineth for the people of God, not after death only, but now. Hallock.

It is the within that makes the without. If the soul be jarring, no circumstances can be chiming. If the inner life be smitten with winds and tossed, the brightest and stillest outward prospect will look stormy. If the soul but know how to sing inwardly, there will be birds enough outside to sing, even amid the most wintry weather. The great trouble is heart trouble. It is the philosophy of Christianity that it searches for the soul; if that be made right, prisons will become palaces. Rest for souls is the supreme gift. The great Teacher tells us that the way of the reception of this supreme gift is the way of the yoke. This is the inexorable way. The lawless soul must be the clashing soul. Wayland Hoyt.

5,6. Observe how the Psalmist rings the changes on, “Thou hast,” and “I will” (vs. 3, 4, 5, and 6). Experience is the nurse of faith. From the past we gather arguments for present confidence. Many and many a time had the persecutions of Saul and the perils of battle imperilled David’s life, and only by miracle had he escaped, yet was he still alive and unhurt; this he remembers, and he is full of hope. S.

God has acknowledged David’s cause; the land of Israel is again wrested from those to whom it does not belong, and there begins a new period of the reign of its lawful king. With reference to this new period the king beseeches for himself that God would add to the duration of his life another measure of more than a generation—i.e., a rich measure. D.—His use of the third person shows that he does not mean himself alone, but the king of Israel as an ideal or collective person, comprehending his posterity. The life of this ideal person would of course not be restricted to a single generation, but continued through many, which is the meaning of the idiomatic expression in the last clause. A.

His years as many generations. He lived to see generation after generation personally; in his descendants he lived as king through a very long period; his dynasty continued for many generations; and in Christ Jesus, his seed and Son, spiritually David reigns on evermore. S.—The series of years and even ages of which he speaks extends prospectively to the coming of Christ, it being the very condition of the kingdom that God maintained them as one people under one head, or when scattered united them again. The same succession still subsists in reference to ourselves. Christ must be viewed as living in His members to the end of the world. Calvin.

8. So, in this hope, inspired by this sweet confidence in Thy promise, I will sing the praises of Thy name forever. We see that his religion was a living power in his soul—a

fountain of inspiration to his hope and endurance—an inexpressible comfort to his otherwise desolate heart. What time all else, or almost all, had failed him, his hope still rested on God’s promise. He had known God; had trusted Him through scenes of sore and searching trial before; and this new avalanche of trouble only drove him again to the same Refuge. C.