Psalms 63

1. O God, thou art my God; early [or, earnestly] will I seek thee: My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, In a dry and weary land, where no water is. 2 So have I looked upon thee in the sanctuary, To see thy power and thy glory. 3 For thy lovingkindness is better than life My lips shall praise thee. 4 So will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name. 5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; And my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips; 6 When I remember thee upon my bed,

And meditate on thee in the night watches. 7 For thou hast been my help, And in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice. 8 My soul followeth hard after thee: Thy right hand upholdeth me. 9 But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, Shall go into the lower parts of the earth. 10 They shall be given over to the power of the sword: They shall be a portion for foxes. 11 But the king shall rejoice in God: Every one that sweareth by him shall glory; For the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

THROUGHOUT his Psalms David expresses intense delight in all holy seasons, services, and observances, fervent longing when separated from the tabernacle for a season (61, 63); he is never weary of extolling the grandeur, beauty, and heart-controlling influences of the sanctuary; but he dwells with far higher rapture upon the heavenly realities, of which these are significant adumbrations; secure of God’s love, joying in God’s presence, reposing on His protection, whether in his flight from Saul, or in conflict with foreign enemies, or in the period of deepest humiliation, of bodily and mental suffering. Cook.

The great peculiarity of this Psalm is its intense spirituality. It does not recount God’s wonders in creation or in providence, does not dwell on anything He has made, but thinks only of Himself as He has been set forth in the institutions of the covenant people, or in the experience of the writer. The soul kindles as it muses on the Most High and His varied perfections. It is the Giver and not His gifts on which it loves to meditate. When God’s praises are sung it is not formally or as a matter of course, but with jubilant lips as a most grateful service. And even in the stillness of the night the same theme occupies the mind as that to which it instinctively turns whenever left to its own impulses. No ancient literature of any people or country expresses such a rapturous sense of communion with God, and yet free from any sense of mystic absorption in Him. It is peculiar to the Psalter alone. T. W. C.

The Psalms have found such constant favor in every portion of the Christian Church because they address themselves to the simple, intuitive feelings of the renewed soul. They represent the freshness of the soul’s infancy, the love of the soul’s childhood; and, therefore, are to the Christian what the love of parents, the sweet affections of home, and the clinging memory of infant scenes are to men in general. Irving.

This is unquestionably one of the most beautiful and touching Psalms in the whole Psalter. Donne says of it: “As the whole book of Psalms is oleum effusum, an ointment poured out upon all sorts of sores, a cerecloth that supplies all bruises, a balm that searches all wounds; so are there some certain Psalms that are imperial Psalms, that command over all affections and spread themselves over all occasions—catholic, universal Psalms, that apply themselves to all necessities. This is one of those; for of those constitutions which are called Apostolical, one is that the Church should meet very day to sing this Psalm. And Chrysostom testifies, “That it was decreed and ordained by the primitive fathers that no day should pass without the public singing of this Psalm.’ And again he observes, that “the spirit and soul of the whole Book of Psalms is contracted into this Psalm.” That the author was David I see no reason to doubt. Characterized as it is by an exquisite tenderness and a deep personal affection toward God, and yet not wanting, withal, in energy, and even a certain abruptness of expression, it bears all the marks of his poetry. It is probable that the Psalm was composed when he was on the other side of the Jordan, in his flight from Absalom. The very tenderness and depth of feeling which characterize it, and which it has in common with 42, are what might be looked for in a heart sorely wounded and tried in its natural affections, and therefore cleaving with the more intense, devoted love to Him of whom it could say: “Thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of Thy wings will I shout for joy.” It is remarkable that in this Psalm, as in the last, there is no petition. There is gladness, there is praise, there is the most exalted communion with God, there is longing for His presence as the highest of all blessings; but there is not one word of asking for temporal, or even for spiritual good.

As David’s life shines in his poetry, so also does his character. That character was no common one. It was strong with all the strength of man, tender with all the tenderness of woman. Naturally brave, his courage was heightened and confirmed by that faith in God which never, in the worst extremity, forsook him. Naturally warm-hearted, his affections struck their roots deep into the innermost centre of his being. In his love for his parents, for whom he provided in his own extreme peril—in his love for his wife Michal—for his friend Jonathan, whom he loved as his own soul—for his darling Absalom, whose death almost broke his heart—even for the infant, whose loss he dreaded—we see the same man, the same depth and truth, the same tenderness of personal affection. On the other hand, when stung by a sense of wrong or injustice, his sense of which was peculiarly keen, he could flash out into strong words and strong deeds. He could hate with the same fervor that he loved. Evil men and evil things, all that was at war with goodness and with God—for these he found no abhorrence too deep, scarcely any imprecations too strong. Yet he was, withal, placable and ready to forgive.

This Psalm in particular exhibits with singular beauty and truth both sides of David’s character. The same tenderness of natural affection, the same depth of feeling, which breathes in every word of his elegy upon Jonathan, is here found chastened and elevated, as he pours out his soul toward God. It is the human heart which stretches out the arms of its affections, yearning, longing for the presence and love of Him who is more precious to it than life itself. This is the one side of the Psalm. The other is almost startling in the abruptness of its contrast, yet strikingly true and natural. It breathes the sternness, almost the fierceness, of the ancient warrior, hard beset by his enemies. From that lofty strain of heavenly musing with which the Psalm opens, he turns to utter his vow of vengeance against the traitors who are leagued against him; he triumphs in the prospect of their destruction. P.

The Psalm consists of two parts, each exhibiting essentially the same succession of ideas. Both begin with the expression of intense desire for God’s presence and communion with Him, and end with a confident anticipation of His mercy; but in the first (vs. 1-8), this is supposed to be displayed in the deliverance of the Psalmist from his sufferings; in the second (vs. 6-11), it is viewed as securing the destruction of his enemies. A.

Title. The contents of this Psalm fully verify its title. Like 61 and 62, it belongs to the time of Absalom’s rebellion. More specifically it is connected with the sufferings of David and his followers while he tarried near the fords of the wilderness (2 Sam. 15: 23, 28), in the region lying between the plain of Jericho and the northern shore of the Dead Sea. This is described as barren and desolate in the extreme. While here the band of exiles endured weariness and thirst (2 Sam. 16: 2). In connection with v. 2, Delitzsch quotes Furrer: “Not a strip of grass refreshes the eye here upon the wide plain, not a brook ripples, except during the rainy season.” The title is in accordance with the direction which the historian relates that David’s flight took. “It throws light upon the whole Psalm and is verified by it. The poet is a king. He longs for God in Zion, where he has so gladly beheld Him who is there revealed. He is persecuted by enemies, who have aimed at his destruction. The assertion that he finds himself in the wilderness is no mere figure of speech; and when he anticipates for his enemies that they shall become ‘a portion for jackals’ (v. 11), we can easily discern the impression that the wilderness has had upon the shape taken by his thoughts.” De Witt.

1. O God, Thou art my God. This permission to appropriate God is one of the most precious revelations of Scripture. Wonderful as it may seem, God gives Himself to us. We talk of God’s giving Himself in Christ as if that were some new gift. God had given Himself to men long before Christ came. Long before Jesus told men to pray “Our Father,” the Psalmist had said, “O God, Thou art my God.” That little word “my” represents the eternal relation of God to His people; and if God is ours, then whatever in God is available for us is ours. V.—When God, the Perfect Being, loves the creature of His Hand, He cannot divide His love. He must perforce love with the whole directness, and strength, and intensity of His Being; for He is God, and therefore incapable of partial and imperfect action. He must give Himself to the single soul with as absolute a completeness as if there were no other being besides it. And, on his side, man knows that this gift of Himself by God is thus entire; and in no narrow spirit of ambitious egotism, but as grasping and representing the literal fact, he cries, “My God.” Therefore when God had “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that who-solver believed in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,” we find Paul writing to the Galatians as if his own single soul had been redeemed by the sacrifice of Calvary: “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” H. P. L.

Early will I seek Thee. The noun which signifies “the early morning” and the verb “to seek” are both from the same root, and are both to be referred to the same primitive idea. The meaning of the root is to break in, and hence this in the verb passes into the signification of seeking (earnestly), and in the noun the dawn is so called as that which breaks in upon the darkness. P.—The verb means to begin to seek and inquire early in the morning and therefore earnestly. D.

In this hour of extremest trial, when his own son heads a powerful rebellion, and hosts of his old friends forsake him and combine to sustain this uprising, his soul turns to his God as to his best and only capable Helper. “Thou art my God”—with a precious emphasis on “my;” I will seek Thee both early and earnestly—with the early dawn of morning, and as those do who are up betimes to indulge the most yearning desire of their heart. C.

My soul thirsteth for Thee. Think who it was that made this confession. He was the greatest king of a great nation, so magnificent in his royalty that he was made a type of the Almighty King to come, to whom all the kingdoms of the earth belong. He was the greatest poet, too, of a poetical people—singing such hymns to his harp that the whole Church of God, for nearly three thousand years, down to this very day, has kept on repeating them as the ceaseless and inexhaustible liturgy of its worship because all its great ranks of intellects could make nothing like them. Such a man as this, a soldier, a monarch and a minstrel without a peer, feels himself weak and empty and thirsty before God. F. D. H.

My flesh, i.e., “my body,” answering to “my soul” in the parallelism, and so describing the whole man. In that intense worship in which every thought, feeling, desire, affection are centred in the one true object of love, body and soul both take their part. It is as a living man, every pulse of his being filled with the love of God, that he responds to that love. And when he cries out “O God, Thou art my God,” this is not merely an appropriation of God as the God of his worship and trust; it is the heart of flesh stretching out its human affections toward him who has a personal affection for his creature, and whose lovingkindness it knows to be better than life. In a dry and weary land. The language is figurative, and expresses the spiritual thirst and weariness of one who is shut out from God’s presence in the sanctuary. P.

Immanuel Kant like David found two things to move his soul to awe, the starry heavens above his head and the moral nature in his breast. And it is just here in his moral and religious necessities that man is most conscious of a craving for that, for which in every age his better nature has cried out—namely, “the living God.” It is because in our Lord we have found one clothed in our nature, but freed from our defects, that we, tempest-tossed by sin, exclaim with the great-soulled Charles Kingsley, “I cannot live without the man Christ Jesus.” The beauty of human life even at its best estate is a beauty which only makes the more evident to a thoughtful mind its marring. Like that matchless bust of Psyche in the museum of Naples, its beauty and its brokenness constitute our joint despair. What a joy it is to the soul, conscious alike of its dignity and its guilt, to behold in the gift of God’s own Son one who both honors and saves. He took not on Himself, says the apostle, the nature of angels, but took upon Him the seed of Abraham. We are drawn toward Him by every tender and grateful tie. He reaches down; but that were not enough; did He not also reach up. Man, conscious of the bondage of his will, in every age and in every clime, seeks one whose left hand is laid upon his fetter and whose right hand is laid upon God’s throne. This one who might have assumed as something infinitely below Him the estate of heavenly messengers, stooped lower still, the apostle tells us, and became man. None but man can so draw out our hearts; none but God satisfy our craving after a higher life; and we find both in “the one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Interior.

Upon those to whom God is a God, He bestows special favors; and those to whom God is a God, return special services to Him. So we find it to be all along in Scripture, as this David in another place: “Thou art my God, and I will praise Thee; Thou art my Lord, I will exalt Thee.” And so here: “Thou art my God; early will I seek Thee.” The text is an expression not only of faith, but likewise of obedience. T. Horton.—It is a great thing to have grand views of God, to get some approach to an idea of the exceeding greatness of God. We go to God too much for what we want to get. We ought to go to God, and meditate upon Him, and worship Him for what He is in Himself—His attributes, His glory. Important as this is, it is of infinitely more importance to be able to say, “Thou art my God.” This is faith. Nature can say, “O God!” but only the believer can say, “My God.” To those who can say that, the last part of David’s words and his firm resolve will come as a very easy and a necessary thing; they cannot help saying it: “Early will I seek Thee.” For it is attraction that does it. The secret of all true religion is attraction. As soon as God is “my God,” I cannot help coming nearer and nearer to Him; it is my necessity; it is my life. J. V.

In the truth that God has created us, we see much of the meaning of the Psalmist’s words. But we see even more when we reflect that He has created us for Himself. That which would be selfishness in a creature is in the great Creator a necessary result of His solitary perfection. The knowledge and love of our Maker is not, like the indulgence of a sentiment or a taste, a matter of choice. For every man who looks God and life steadily in the face, it is a stern necessity. Not to serve God is to be in the moral world that which a deformity or monster is in the world of animal existence. It is not only to defy the claims of God. It is to ignore the plain demands of our inner being, to do violence to the highest guidance of our mysterious and complex life. . . . Is God the Author and the End of our existence? Is it a solemn truth that by the incarnation and death of the Everlasting Son we have been redeemed from disobedience to the true law of our being, and that we are really free to serve our God? Is this redemption characterized by a prodigality of tenderness which must appeal, if to nothing higher, to our mere natural sense of generosity? Then we may not sit still, interested indeed but passive, as if these central and soul-stirring truths were addressed merely to our speculative faculties. There is such a thing as giving ourselves to God. It is not a beautiful but impracticable aspiration. Believe it, we can only glorify God by yielding ourselves to Him. No other attitude on our part does justice to His claims. Only when we have given ourselves to God do we know what it is indeed to pray, to speak to God with that trustful yet reverent familiarity which becomes children who feel that they have and can have no secrets to hide from their Father in heaven. Only when we have given ourselves to God do we know anything of the joy of an untroubled conscience, and of a true inward peace of soul, and of a moral assurance of salvation, through His most precious death, who makes our self-oblation an acceptable reality. In short, only when we have given ourselves to God does the full meaning of the Psalmist’s words dawn upon us, “O God, Thou art my God.” H. P. L.

We could be satisfied with no gifts from Him, however great and godlike, unless His love were in them—for in His love we have Himself. We feel that God, who has given a heart to man, must have a heart to meet it, else amid all His gifts we are orphans. Were He to cast down His redemption from an inaccessible throne, with a pride that cares not for thanks, or an indifference that despises affection, it would not be the redemption which our souls desire. But neither does He. His salvation does not coldly drop from His hand, it enters with His heart; and that heart is opened in the sympathy and sacrifice of the Son of God. The Sovereign of the universe wishes to be our friend and father, to satisfy the thirst of the soul, which longs to be pressed to an infinite heart. Ker.—He will be with us if we seek Him, and open our hearts to receive Him. What we want, and what He has promised, is His personal presence with ourselves. It is not His presence with the Church that will save us, but His presence in our own hearts. His presence with the Church—that is, with other Christians, will doubtless save them; but they are not our saviours, nor must we look for our safety from them. The point for us to seek is that He should be present with us; that our own personal faith should apprehend Him, our own personal love cleave to Him. Then He is with us, and we with Him, then are we His and shall be His at the great day. T. Arnold.

“They that seek Me early shall find Me.” It is the spring seeds that make the richest harvests, and a God sought early will be a God found ever. J. V.—For those who with the Psalmist seek Him early and intensely, and who give Him the hopes of their youth and the strength of their manhood; for those who give intellect when it is now expanding to the full measure of its grasp, and affections when they have as yet lost nothing of their freshness and purity, and will when it has learned by obedience something of that freedom, and rectitude, and strength of movement in which its perfection consists; for a Samuel, for a David, for a Saul of Tarsus, for a Timothy, aye, for an Augustine, He prepares, even in this world, a lavish acknowledgment; He bestows on such as these a fulness of blessing, and joy, and peace, which the eye of nature hath not seen nor its ear heard, nor the unrenewed heart of man conceived to tell. H. P. L.

2. The Hebrew has, Thus have I contemplated Thee in the sanctuary, to behold Thy strength and Thy glory. The meaning appears to be, The devout feelings which now possess me are the same as those with which I was animated when I worshipped in the sanctuary, and realized the strength and glory symbolized by the ark of the covenant. Cook.

“I have seen Thee.” We cannot see the essence of God, but we see Him, in seeing by faith His attributes and perfections. These sights David here pleases himself with the remembrance of; those were precious minutes which he spent in communion with God, he loved to think them over again; these he lamented the loss of, and longed to be restored to. H.—

In the sanctuary. The devotions of the sanctuary exert and are designed to exert no small influence on those of the closet and the family. The lamp of personal or domestic piety will send forth but a dim and sickly ray, unless trimmed and replenished by frequent visits to the house of the Lord. If the Psalmist David poured forth the sweetest and warmest strains of devotion in the wilderness of Judea and in the forest of Hareth, we must go back, for the secret of his high and holy inspiration, to the days when he trod the courts of the temple—days which caused his soul still to long for the courts of the Lord. If we would rise to true elevation of heart in the closet, we must “lift up our hands in the sanctuary.” Symington.

3. The first clause gives a reason for the strong desire expressed in the foregoing verses, for Thy favor is better than life, and the last clause merely add a pledge of thankful acknowledgment, my lips shall praise Thee. Better than life, not merely than the life I now live, which was scarcely entitled to be so considered, but better than any life I could live, destitute of God’s favor, which is therefore more than a sufficient substitute or compensation. A.—God’s grace is better than life, better than natural life, which is also a blessing and as the presupposition of all earthly blessings, a very great blessing. God’s grace, however, is a greater blessing, it is the summum bonum and the true life; this God of grace his lips shall praise, his morning song is of Him; for that which makes him truly blessed, and after which he even now, as heretofore, only and solely longs, is the grace of this God, the infinite value of which is to be measured by the greatness of His power and glory. D.

The Scriptures propose the fellowship of God as the consummation of felicity. We may concentrate upon Him all the faculties of our nature. He can evoke their intensest activities, give them full scope and never put a period to their flow. Thornwell.—The Divine blessing in a single word is life. Life embraces all good things that pertain to earthly prosperity. But it is not these earthly benefits in themselves that make up life. They are good things only when the possession of them is united with the experience of the gracious presence of the covenant God, so that they are pledges of His favor. Hence David (Psalm 4: 8) says that he would not exchange his heart’s delight in God for the abundance of the godless (16: 2, 5); he praises Jehovah as the highest good; and here he says, “Thy favor is better than life.” O.

God’s favor includes and bestows all that is desirable in the life that now is and in that which is to come, for God Himself is the great want of the human soul. Not merely as from His present, protecting, preserving, supplying providence He metes out to us with unsparing hand all needful temporal bounty, not merely as He hath given in the world around us all that can minister delight to the sense, all that feeds and clothes the body, as He rears our dwellings and establishes for us therein our family circles, as He rewards our industry with the means of personal and home comforts, not merely as He watches over us by night and day, as He giveth us all outward blessings richly to enjoy—but as the God of all grace, He ministers more largely and blessedly to every want of our souls, as He bestows upon us, through the blood of His Son and the quickening energy of His Spirit, pardon, peace, holiness, and the joyful hope of eternal fellowship with Him in heaven. These are the great need of every human soul. These rich, inestimable gifts of His grace for which all other gifts are but subordinate, these which flow from His favor only, these include all that is desirable to every soul. This is the grand truth which sums up all truth. In God’s favor is life, all that is to be desired and sought, all that can be possessed and enjoyed here and forevermore. And nothing that is known from human observation or experience can fix a doubt or question upon this truth. Its proofs are so many, so conclusive, that no objection drawn from the admitted mysteries of providence, from any of the darkest facts of human experience can lie against it. Without it, deny it, and what is existence, what is man? Whence he came, wherefore he lives, and whither bound, none can tell. Without it all, all is a dark, utterly insoluble problem. B.

If the excellence of others may become mine, as I cannot tell how or why, save that I love them, am in them and they in me in a sort of mingled life, what may I not become when God, in whom all beauty and all that should be loved has its original and perfection, is the object on which my thoughts attend by day and by night; when He deigns to dwell in me, as spirit only can dwell in spirit, richly by His fruits and virtues, perfecting His strength in the conscious want of mine; when He calls and I hear, yea, speaks as with a brother’s voice, and face to face in Jesus Christ, revealing Himself to my sympathies, my sight, my faith, as all in all? Here is a companionship one would think sufficient to preserve us from the corruption of the world, to awe down the rising of evil within us, and rewarding our devotion with such strong consolation as should beguile us of the sense of sorrow and overmaster all inferior attachments. H. H.

4. The connection between the first four verses is not very exact, but may be traced as follows: My soul longeth for Thee (v. 1). With the same longing with which I now desire to see Thee, I once did see Thee in Thy sanctuary (v. 2). This longing is because of Thy lovingkindness, which is more precious than all else (v. 3). Accordingly, I will praise Thee all my life long (v. 4). P.

Thus, i.e., with the same ardent desire as before expressed, he feels himself summoned to praise, which shall continue as long as life lasts. The highest expression of a truly renewed soul is the habit of earnest, grateful praise. But it is a privilege as well as a duty; and so the next couplet compares it to the joy of a rich and splendid banquet. Even in the arid wastes of the wilderness he is as much refreshed as he could be by the richest and most savory food; and his lips burst forth into jubilant song, the natural, necessary utterance of a joyful spirit. T. W. C.

Those that have their hearts refreshed with the tokens of God’s favor ought to have them enlarged in His praises. A great deal of reason we have to bless God that we have better provisions and better possessions than the wealth of this world can afford us; and that in the service of God and in communion with Him, we have better employments and better enjoyments than we can have in the business and converse of this world. H.—When the soul has found God in Christ, who is its life, its glory, its treasure, its heaven, its all, not only are the lips opened in praise, the tongue loosed to speak of the glory of Jesus; but the life, the practice, the conversation, will also be savored with the grace of truth, as an evidence that we know His love, and have been with Jesus. W. Mason.

My mouth shall praise Thee. Prayer is not only—perhaps in some of the holiest souls it is not chiefly—a petition for something we want and do not possess. In the larger sense of the word, as the spiritual language of the soul, prayer is intercourse with God, often seeking no end beyond the pleasure of such intercourse. It is praise; it is adoration; it is a colloquy in which the soul engages with the All-wise and the All-holy. When we seek the company of our friends, we do not seek it simply with the view of getting something from them. It is a pleasure to be with them, to be in possession of their sympathies and showing our delight at it; to be assuring them of their place in our hearts and thoughts. So it is with the soul, when dealing with the Friend of friends—with God. In this sense of spiritual intercourse with God, it is clear that as to much prayer the question whether it is answered can never arise, for the simple reason that no answer is asked for. H. P. L.

In nothing is the Christian’s progress in holiness more signally manifest than in his prayers. They become more and more the natural expression of the new life. Christ being more completely formed within, the believer’s seasons of communion with the Father spread themselves more widely through his days and nights. He passes very frequently, almost unconsciously, and by imperceptible gradations of feeling, from his ordinary existence among the things of this world into direct converse with that Friend who is ever nearest, while also most high and most mighty. The current of adoring thought flows on in joyous, satisfying concord with the Eternal Will. We do not stop, perhaps, to shape every aspiration into articulate speech, but we yield to the Divine breath, and move whithersoever the Spirit that maketh intercession moves. In such measure as may be, the disciple is in the Mount with the Master. And a larger and larger part of devotion will consist in thanksgiving and praise, a sure mark of spiritual growth. F. D. H.

5. “My soul shall be satisfied with fatness and fatness;” so the Hebrew hath it—that is, my soul shall be filled up to the brim with pleasure and delight, in the remembrance and enjoyment of God. T. Brooks.—The fulfilment is cotemporaneous with the desire. In the one breath, “my soul thirsteth;” in the next, “my soul is satisfied”—as when in tropical lands the rain comes, and in a day or two what had been baked earth is rich meadow, and the dry torrent-beds, where the white stones glistered in the sunshine, foam with rushing waters and are edged with budding willows. The fulness of satisfaction when God fills the soul is vividly expressed in the familiar image of the feast of “marrow and fatness,” on which he banquets even while hungry in the desert. The abundant delights of fellowship with God make him insensible to external privations, are drink for him thirsty, food for his hunger, a home in his wanderings, a source of joy and music in the midst of much that is depressing: “My mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips.” A. M.

The earthly child of his heavenly Father finds his capacity for happiness filled to the utmost only when he is at the fountain-head. He is happy when employed on the works of God, or in performing the lowliest duties which are laid upon him here; but still the great want of his soul is unsatisfied. His most intense desires are not appeased. He is not at home till he can rest in God with the most entire complacency; till he can contemplate with calm satisfaction, and, sometimes, with almost insupportable delight, the Divine attributes, while his feelings outrun his thoughts, and delightfully anticipate the great central rest to which they converge. B. B. E.

To feel as if you were in the company of God, to have delight in this feeling, to triumph in God as you would in a treasure that had come into your possession, to dwell upon Him as one friend dwells in pleasing remembrance on another, to find that the minutes spent in communion with the heavenly and unseen Witness are far the sweetest and the sunniest of your earthly pilgrimage, to have a sense of God all the day long, and that sense of Him in every way so delicious as to make the creature seem vain and tasteless in the comparison, to have His candle shining in your heart, and a secret beatitude in Him of which other men have no comprehension, to bear about with you that cheerful trust in Him, and that cherished regard to Him, which children do to a father whose love they rejoice in, and of whose good will they are most thoroughly assured, to prize the peaceful Sabbaths and the sacred retirements when your soul can wing its contemplation toward His sanctuary and there behold new glories of His character at the very time that you can exult in confidence before Him—thus to be affected toward God, and thus to glory and be glad in Him, is certainly not a common attainment; and yet we do not see how any true saint, any genuine disciple, can be altogether a stranger to it. Chalmers.

6. When I call Thee to mind upon my bed, then in the night-watches, or throughout the night-watches, I meditate on Thee, i.e., it is no fugitive recollection, but it so holds me that I spend a great portion of the night absorbed in meditation on Thee. Matter for meditation is not wanting to him, for God has become his help; He has rescued him and brought him into this wilderness; and, carefully hidden under the shadow of His wings which affords him coolness in the heat of conflict and protection from his persecutors. D.—David frequently speaks of night as the season for devout meditation (see Psalms 4: 4; 16: 7). In this passage there is evidently a direct reference to that first long night of peril and watchfulness. In the night-watches David turned to God in prayer, and received the support of which he speaks in the next verse. Cook.

Observe the connection. Meditation turns the promises into marrow, it conveys the strength of them to our souls. One morsel of meat masticated and digested dispenses more nourishment than a greater quantity that is swallowed down whole; so one promise that is ruminated upon and digested by meditation, conveys more comfort than a bundle of promises in the head that are not meditated upon, which we do not consider. The comfort which meditation brings is the most spiritual, refined joy that we are capable of. It is spiritual meditation which rejoices the angelical part of our souls within us. He that performs conscientiously the duty of meditation doth maintain such a correspondence with God as angels do; such a one doth enter into heaven by degrees and steps. Salter.

How shall we fill the chambers of meditation? The soul never sits alone within her retreat. She invites some congenial companionship. She is not altogether mistress of that retirement. Thoughts she cannot welcome will sometimes obtrude their presence. But, for the most part, she chooses her fellowships. She calls in the thoughts in whose silent circle she finds most agreeable communion. And then, in such alliance, a swift process of assimilation goes on. The soul becomes like her chosen intimates. She takes on the hue and character of those objects with which she is most at home. And here is another item in the final reckoning: We must answer for these intimacies of thought. A. L. Stone.

Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action. So meditate that thou mayest do; so do that thou mayest receive honor, for which give God the glory. Quarles.

7. “Because Thou hast been my Help, when other helps and helpers failed me, therefore I will still rejoice in Thy salvation, will trust in Thee for the future, and will do it with delight and holy joy. Thou hast been not only my Helper, but my Help;” for we could never have helped ourselves, nor could any creature have been helpful to us, but by Him. Here we may set up our Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto the Lord has helped us, and must therefore resolve that we will never desert Him, never distrust Him, nor ever droop in our walking with Him. H.

In the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice. The shadow of God’s wing is a safe shadow. Creep closer under it, closer yet. Earth has nothing human so gentle as true mother-love; but God’s wing that folds down over you is gentler than even mother-love, and you can never get out from beneath it. You need never be afraid while resting there. In all the universe there is no harm that can come nigh you. J. R. M.

8. My soul cleaves after Thee, Thy right hand holds me. This is a strong metaphorical description of the mutual relation between God and the believer; a relation of trustful dependence on the one hand, and of constant favor and protection on the other. Cleaves after is a frequent phrase for follows cleaving to thee. The right hand is the constant symbol of strength. A.

—The soul follows after God and cleaves to Him (the expression in the Hebrew is literally, “My soul hath cleaved after Thee,” so that the two ideas of following and cleaving are mingled); and God, on the other hand, stays and upholds the soul with His right hand. Out of that hand of power and love neither man nor devil can pluck it. P.

The first clause describes the cleaving of the soul to God, the second God’s steadfast support of the soul; a reciprocal action and reaction; prevenient grace first draws out the spiritual affection, then follows the assurance of support. Cook.—In the first verse we read, “My soul thirsteth for Thee;” in the fifth verse, “My soul shall be satisfied;” in the eighth verse, “My soul followeth hard after Thee.” These three points are the turning-points of the Psalm; and they show us the soul longing, the longing soul satisfied, and the satisfied soul still seeking. The word translated “followeth” here literally means to cleave or to cling. “My soul cleaveth after God.” Desire expands the heart; possession expands the heart. More of God comes when we can hold more of Him, and the end of all fruition is the renewed desire after further fruition. There is also very beautifully here the co-operation and reciprocal action of the seeking soul and the sustaining God. We hold and are held. The Psalm is a transcript of the passage of a believing soul from longing through fruition to firm trust, in which it is sustained by the right hand of God. A. M.

To press hard after God is to follow Him close, as those that are afraid of losing the sight of Him and that long to be with Him. This David did, and he owns to the glory of God, Thy right hand upholds me. God upheld him in his holy desires and pursuits, that he might not grow weary in well-doing. Those that follow hard after God would soon fail and give off if God’s right hand did not uphold them. It is He that strengthens us in the pursuit of Him, quickens our good affections, and comforts us while we have not yet attained what we are in the pursuit of. This was a great encouragement to the Psalmist to hope that He would in due time give him that which he so earnestly desired, because He had by His grace wrought in him those desires and kept them up. H.

9. And they to (their) ruin are seeking my soul; they shall go into the depths of the earth. The phrase to ruin has precisely the same sense as in Psalm 35:8—namely, to their own destruction. Are seeking, will seek; the idea suggested by the future is, that if they still persist in seeking it, they will do so to their own destruction. To seek the soul implies a purpose of destruction, without any qualifying adjunct, even in prose. The depths of the earth, literally, its lower or lowest parts, which may simply mean the grave (as we say under ground), or contain an allusion to the fate of Korah and his company. A.

9,10. Upon our modern feelings and thoughts these verses seem, perhaps, somewhat to jar. We pass all at once into a different atmosphere. We have come down from the mount of holy aspirations into the common every-day world, where human enemies are struggling and human passions are strong. Yet this very transition, harsh as it is, gives us a wonderful sense of reality. In some respects it brings the Psalm nearer to our own level. The man who has been pouring out the fervent affection of his heart toward God is no mystic or recluse, lost in ecstatic contemplation, but one who is fighting a battle with foes of flesh and blood, and who hopes to see their malice defeated, their power crushed, and their carcasses left to be the prey of jackals in the wilderness. What may be called the human force of character remains even amid thoughts whose impassioned earnestness is not of this world, and whose strain of intensely exalted spiritual fervor is such as but very few can reach. P.

David’s enemies are God’s enemies, and their success would frustrate His holy and gracious purposes. And therefore in the midst of the Psalmist’s exalted spiritual fervor, he can turn aside to set forth their sure and deserved overthrow. It shows us that David was not the victim of a weak sentimentality, but the possessor of a robust faith which took in the whole nature of God, His justice as well as His mercy, and apprehended the sterner as well as the milder of His perfections. Such Psalms as this one are of immense service in days like our own, when the moral fibre of Christians is weakened, and they speak with bated breath of the wrath to come, and fear lest any reference to the doom of the impenitent should sound harsh. For here we see by actual example that the very highest joy in God, the closest communion with Him, can and does coexist with a calm and deliberate approval of the surrender of His foes to the overthrow which their conduct has provoked. T. W. C.

11. Every one that sweareth by Him**—i.e., every one to whom God is the object of religious fear and trust and worship, the Psalmist himself and his friends and companions. Those on the other hand who, because they have no fear of God, seek to prevail by lies, shall be confounded. P.

The healthy Christian life finds its inspiration, not in contemplating its own spiritual states, but in beholding Christ. In the memoirs of most successful missionaries we find little record of subjective experiences. They were absorbed in viewing the needs of men and the love of Christ. They spent not much time in gauging their faith. They were looking unto Jesus, the beginner and completer of it. A. E. Dunning.

Penitence is the first movement to mercy, and confession to God is the first step upward. Were you satisfied with self that would be death; pain is the evidence of vitality, the outcry and alarm-bell of the sinning conscience. Take heart from it. The holiest saints on earth and in Paradise have had a poor sense of their own advancement. The true way to get comfort is to look away from yourself to Him. Our power, our light, our satisfaction, our better life itself, are in Him, and to Him we must go, and go again and again for them, not to ourselves. God grant us just discontent enough with what we are to stir and nerve us for harder and nobler labor, not so much as to depress our energies or darken our daylight! The best reply you can make to your reproachful memory, charging you with meagre attainments and slow progress, is that you will stop measuring yourself by yourself, drop the bad habit of prying about in the interior of your own weak heart for satisfaction which can come only from a higher source. Look unto the hills of God, whence comes your help, and forgetting the things which are behind reach on to better things before. F. D. H.

David, Jacob, and Paul, may be considered the three great patterns of thankfulness which are set before us in Scripture: saints, all of whom were peculiarly the creation of God’s grace, and whose very life and breath it was humbly and adoringly to meditate upon the contrast between what, in different ways, they had been and what they were. A perishing wanderer had unexpectedly become a patriarch; a shepherd, a king; and a persecutor an apostle; each had been chosen, at God’s inscrutable pleasure, to fulfil a great purpose, and each, while he did his utmost to fulfil it, kept praising God that he was made His instrument. Of the first, it was said, “Jacob have I loved;” of the second, that He chose David also His servant, and took him away from the sheep-folds. And Paul says of himself, “Last of all, He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” Newman.