“is the everlasting refuge of the saints of God, even in the greatest dangers. And even if they have broken it, can the unbelief of men make the truth of God of none effect?” The covenant is that made first with Abraham, and then renewed with him and with the fathers. P. —Here is the master-key—heaven’s gate must open to this. His covenant He will not break, nor alter the thing that hath gone forth out of His lips. The Lord had promised to bless the seed of Abraham, and make them a blessing; here they plead that ancient word, even as we also may plead the covenant made with the Lord Jesus for all believers. What a grand word it is! S.

Have respect unto the covenant.

This presseth the Lord more than the former, for it lays hold on God’s faithfulness, and truth, and fatherly goodness. If they be not in covenant with God, it may be charged upon them, “You have violated My holy law, you have incensed My wrath against you by your perverse ways, therefore I will not help you, but give you up;” but now the souls that be in covenant with God will not be put off so (be it spoken with holy reverence), but will cry out, O Lord, though our iniquities testify against us, yet “have respect unto Thy covenant.” Yet be sure you walk uprightly before the Lord. Langley.

1. We give thanks unto thee, O God, We give thanks, for thy name is near: Men tell of thy wondrous works. 2 For I will take a set time, I will judge uprightly. 3 The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I have set up the pillars of it. [Selah 4 I said unto the arrogant, Deal not arrogantly: And to the wicked, Lift not up the horn. 5 Lift not up your horn on high; Speak not with a stiff neck. 6 For neither from the east, nor from the west,

Nor yet from the south, cometh lifting up. 7 But God is the judge: He putteth down one, and lifteth up another. 8 For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine foameth; It is full of mixture, and he poureth out of the same: Surely the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall drain them out, and drink them. 9 But I will declare for ever, I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. 10 All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off; But the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up.

THIS Psalm is probably to be referred to the defeat of the Assyrians under Sennacherib before Jerusalem (2 Kings 19). Hengstenberg regards it “as the lyrical accompaniment of Isaiah’s prophecies in view of impending destruction by the Assyrians, and as the evidence of the living faith with which God’s people received His promise.” De Witt.

The Psalm celebrates in prophetic strain the righteous judgment of God. The voice of God Himself from heaven declares His righteousness, announces to the world that He is not, as human impatience has ever been wont to deem.

regardless of wrong and suffering; but that He only waits for the moment which to His infinite wisdom seems best, that He may chastise the insolence of evil-doers. There are no clearly marked historical allusions in the Psalm. It seems, however, not improbable, as has been conjectured by many commentators (Ewald, Tholuck, Delitzsch, etc.), that it may refer to the time of the Assyrian invasion, either as celebrating, or immediately anticipating, the defeat of Sennacherib.

The Psalm opens with the ascription of praise which God’s wonders, now and in all past time, have called forth (v. 1). It passes then to the prophetic announcement of the truth which has been uttered from heaven and echoed with triumph upon earth, of God’s righteous judgment (vs. 2-8). Finally, it concludes with a determination to publish the praise of Jehovah forever, while the same prophetic strain of triumph is heard as in one last echo repeating itself (vs. 9, 10). P.

TITLE. To the chief musician. Al-tashheth. A Psalm by Asaph. A song (of praise). In this Psalm the ancient Church expresses a confident anticipation of Divine assistance and deliverance from the domination of some great hostile power, the catastrophe of which is here foretold. The immediate historical occasion we have no direct means of determining; but the one to which the Psalm itself seems most appropriate is the destruction of the Assyrian host in the reign of Hezekiah. A.

1,2. The connection between these verses is not, at first sight, very obvious. It may, perhaps, be traced as follows: First, the Psalmist blends in one the past and the present. God has been, and is now, the object of Israel’s praise; as He has both in the past and in the present displayed His wonders on their behalf. Then He abruptly cites the words of God, words whose fulfilment he had just witnessed, or whose approaching fulfilment he saw in the spirit of prophecy, words that were themselves an exemplification of the truth that God is near despite the madness of men and the disorders of the world. P.

1. The clause, “Thy name is near,” is a fine illustration of the Hebrew usage of the word “name” to represent the special manifestations of God to men in the line of His power, wisdom, and love, here expressively grouped under the phrase, “Thy wonderful works.” The last part of the verse, more closely translated, might stand: “Thy name is near; Thy wondrous works declare it;” or possibly thus: They (men in general) declare Thy wondrous works. God is so near, manifests Himself so openly and so signally that His glorious works are on every tongue; or those works themselves are both lip and tongue to declare it. Nothing less than this could fitly represent the prevalent feeling of the sons and daughters of Jerusalem when they arose one morning to find one hundred and eighty-five thousand dead corpses where but the night before lay the proud host of Assyria’s king—the spoil strown over the country along their retreating path and the survivors of that host gone, never to return! Did they not feel deep in their heart that not their own hand but God’s hand had done this? Ah, indeed, His name on that eventful night was near! His wondrous works told it too plainly to be misunderstood. C.

2. For I will take a set time; I will equitably judge. The best interpreters are now in favor of explaining these as the words of God Himself, containing the promise upon which was built the hope expressed in the preceding verse. Take then includes the two ideas of choosing and using for the end proposed. In the word translated set time, the idea of constituted time is predominant. As if he had said, I will appoint a time, and when it comes, I will ascend the judgment-seat. The parties to be tried are the foes and oppressors of God’s people. The pronoun is emphatic; I, and no other, will be judge. A.

2,3. The exact thought is better thus: “For I will take a set time; I will judge right-cously. The land and all the dwellers in it are panic-smitten; I have adjusted the pillars thereof.” That is, I will assign a time for manifesting My royal prerogative of judging the nations; then I will judge them in right-cousness. C.

God is abruptly introduced as the speaker. The oracle is thus given as from the mouth of God Himself, to those who may be in doubt or perplexity because their lot is cast in troublous times. When the set time is come; literally, “When I shall have taken (reached) the set time,” i.e., the time appointed in the Divine counsels. The thread of time is ever running, as it were, from the spindle, but at the critical moment God’s hand arrests it. God is ever the righteous Judge, but He executes His sentence, not according to man’s impatient expectations, but at the exact instant which He has chosen. Such a critical moment is the present. The world itself seems “utterly broken down and clean dissolved,” but He who once built it up like a stately palace, still stays its pillars with His hand. The natural framework and the moral framework are here identified. To the poet’s eye, the world of nature and the world of man are not two, but one. The words of Hannah’s song (1 Sam. 2: 8) furnish an exact parallel: “For the pillars of the earth are Jehovah’s, and He hath set the world upon them”—language which, as the context shows, has a moral application. P.

4-7. The course of thought is, Throw not your horn proudly in the air as if your power were supreme, and the destinies of all earth’s nations were in your hand; for the decision of destinies comes neither from the east nor west, nor from the glorious old mountains of the region of Sinai, but God only and alone is judge—the sole and Almighty Arbiter of human destiny. C.

6. For. The poet himself speaks, taking up and applying to himself and to others the Divine sentence which he had just been commissioned to deliver. Glory and power come not from any earthly source, though a man should seek it in every quarter of the globe, but only from God, who lifteth up and casteth down, according to His own righteous sentence. From the south, the great wilderness lying in that direction. Thus three quarters are mentioned, the north only being omitted. This may be accounted for, supposing the Psalm to refer to Sennacherth, by the fact that the Assyrian army approached from the north; and therefore it would be natural to look in all directions but that for assistance to repel the invader. Lifting up. The word is evidently an emphatic word in the Psalm; it is the same which occurs in vs. 4 and 5, and again in vs. 7 and 10. “Lifting up,” in its Hebrew sense, does not mean “promotion,” as we commonly understand it, but deliverance from trouble; safety; victory. The image, in particular, of lifting up the head or the horn (the last, borrowed from wild beasts, in which the horn is the symbol of strength), denotes courage, strength, victory over enemies. P.

7. God is the Judge, the Governor or Umpire; when parties contend for the prize He puts down one and sets up another, as He sees fit, so as to serve His own purposes and bring to pass His own counsels. Herein He acts by prerogative, and is not accountable to us for any of these matters; nor is it any damage, danger, or disgrace that He who is infinitely wise, holy, and good has power to set up and put down whom and when and how He pleases. H.

The rise and fall of nations and empires are in this Psalm ascribed to God. He exalts one and puts down another at His pleasure. In this He generally uses instrumentality, but that instrumentality is always rendered effectual by His own agency. When nations or individuals are prosperous and powerful, they usually ascribe all to themselves or to fortune. But it is God who has raised them to eminence. When they boast He can humble them. In these verses God is considered as the governor of the world, punishing the wicked and pouring out judgments on His enemies. The calamities of war, pestilence, and famine are all ministers of providence to execute wrath. A. Carson.

8. The meaning is that they shall have nothing left for it, no resource or alternative, except to drain the cup to the very dregs, i.e., to suffer God’s wrath to the uttermost. The position given to the subject of the sentence at its close makes it more emphatic. A.—The dregs of the cup all the wicked of the earth will be compelled to drink out; they may not drink and put down the cup, but they must drink it out with involuntary avidity even to the last drop (Ezek. 23: 34). We have here the primary passage of a figure which is worked out by the prophets in an ever grander manner. D.

Here is an eternal truth with which we would not part: God must hate sin and be forever sin’s enemy. Because He is the Lord of love, therefore must He be a consuming fire to evil; God is against evil, but for us; if, then, we sin He must be against us; in sinning we identify ourselves with evil, therefore we must endure the consuming fire. Oh, brethren, in this soft age in which we live it is good to fall back on the first principles of everlasting truth. We have come to think that education may be maintained by mere laws of love instead of discipline, and that public punishment may be abolished. We say that these things are contrary to the Gospel; and here, doubtless, there is an underlying truth: it is true that there may be a severity in education which defeats itself, it is true that love and tenderness may do more than severity; but yet under a system of mere love and tenderness no character can acquire manliness or firmness. When you have once got rid of the idea of public punishment, then by degrees you will also get rid of the idea of sin: where is it written in the Word of God that the sword of His minister is to be borne in vain? In this world of groaning and of anguish, tell us where it is that the law which links suffering to sin has ceased to act? F. W. Robertson.

9. But as for me—placing himself and the congregation of Israel in opposition to the proud oppressors—I will be the everlasting herald of this great and memorable act. This is the true Non omnis moriar.

10. Triumphantly in this last verse he claims, for himself and for the Church, a share in the signal act of deliverance. That which God threatens (vs. 4, 5), He accomplishes by the hand of His servants. Every horn of worldly power must fall before Him. Ewald sees an emphasis in the word all, repeated v. 8 and here. The punishment is, as yet, only begun. Some only have drunk of that deadly wine, but the cup is large, and all the wicked must drain it. P.