Psalms 85
ButlerThy creatures have been my books, but Thy Scriptures much more. I have sought Thee in the forests, fields and gardens, but I have found Thee in Thy temples. Bacon.
1. LORD, thou hast been favourable unto thy land:
Thou hast brought back the captivity of Jacob.
2. Thou hast forgiven the iniquity of thy people,
Thou hast covered all their sin. [Selah
3. Thou hast taken away all thy wrath: Thou hast turned thyself from the fierceness of thine anger.
4. Turn us, O God of our salvation, And cause thine indignation toward us to cease.
5. Wilt thou be angry with us for ever? Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all generations?
6. Wilt thou not quicken us again: That thy people may rejoice in thee?
7. Shew us thy mercy, O LORD,
And grant us thy salvation.
8. I will hear what God the LORD will speak: For he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints:
But let them not turn again to folly.
9. Surely his salvation is nigh them that fear him;
That glory may dwell in our land.
10. Mercy and truth are met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
11. Truth springeth out of the earth; And righteousness hath looked down from heaven.
12. Yea, the LORD shall give that which is good; And our land shall yield her increase.
13. Righteousness shall go before him; And shall make his footsteps a way to walk in.
THERE seems every reason to conclude that this Psalm was written after the return of the exiles from the Babylonish captivity. It opens with an acknowledgment of God’s goodness and mercy in the national restoration, in terms which could hardly apply to any other event. But it passes immediately to earnest entreaty for deliverance from the pressure of existing evils, in language which almost contradicts the previous acknowledgment. First we hear the grateful confession, “Thou hast turned the captivity of Jacob;” and then we have the prayer, “Turn us, O God of our salvation.” If the third verse contains the joyful announcement, “Thou hast withdrawn all Thy wrath,” etc., the fifth pleads as if no such assurance had been given: “Wilt Thou forever be angry with us? Wilt Thou draw out Thine anger to all generations?” The most probable way of explaining this conflict of opposing feelings is by referring the Psalm to the circumstances mentioned by Nehemiah (1:3). The exiles on their return, he learned, were “in great affliction and reproach.” And when he obtained leave to go to Jerusalem himself, it was only in the midst of perpetual opposition and discouragement that he was able to carry on his work of restoration. The bright prospect which was opening before them had been quickly dashed. They had returned, indeed, but it was to a desolate land and a forsaken city, whose walls were cast down, and her gates burned with fire; while jealous and hostile tribes were ever on the watch to assail and vex them. Hence it is that the entreaty for mercy follows so hard upon the acknowledgment that mercy has been vouchsafed. The hundred and twenty-sixth Psalm is conceived in a somewhat similar strain. In the latter portion of this Psalm (from v. 8) the present misery is forgotten in the drawing of a glorious future. The prayer has been uttered; the storm of the soul is hushed; in quietness and resignation the Psalmist sets himself to hear what God will say, and the Divine answer is given, not in form, but in substance, in vs. 9-12. It is a glowing prophecy of Messianic times, most naturally connecting itself with the hopes which the return from Babylon had kindled afresh, and well fitted to enable those who heard it to triumph over the gloom and despondency of the present.
Mr. Plumptre, who holds that all the Korahite Psalms belong to the time of Hezekiah, thinks that this Psalm refers to the Assyrian invasion. He reminds us that the language of Isaiah in reference to that invasion is, that “the cities shall be wasted without inhabitant,” that “the Lord shall remove men far away” (Isa. 6: 11, 12); that he speaks not only of “the remnant of Israel,” “the remnant of Jacob” as returning (10: 29), but in terms hardly less strong, at the very crisis of Sennacherib’s invasion, of “the remnant that is escaped of the house of Judah” (37: 32). After the overthrow of Sennacherib, and when the alliance of Hezekiah was courted by Babylon, there would be ample opportunities for many of those who had been carried into exile to return to the land of their fathers. “The vision of mercy and truth, righteousness and peace, is the same with the Psalmist as with the prophet.” It may be added, he remarks, that the prayer, “Turn us, O God of our salvation” (v. 4), is identical with the ever-recurring burden of Psalm 80, which clearly refers to the captivity of “Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh,” i.e., of “Jacob” rather than of “Judah.” P.
TITLE. To the Chief Musician. To (or by) the Sons of Korah. A Psalm. On the ground of former benefits, the Church prays for deliverance from present evils (vs. 1-7), and joyfully anticipates a favorable answer (vs. 8-13). There is nothing in the title, or the Psalm itself, to determine its date or confine its application to any particular historical occasion. It seems to be appropriate to every case in which the fulfilment of the promise (Lev. 26: 3-13) was suspended or withheld. A.
1-4. The Psalmist dwells upon the Lord’s favor to the chosen land, which he had shewed in a thousand ways. God’s past doings are prophetic of what he will do; hence the encouraging argument: “Thou hast been favorable unto Thy land,” therefore deal graciously with it again. Many a time had foes been baffled, pestilence stayed, famine averted, and deliverance vouchsafed, because of the Lord’s favor; that same favorable regard is therefore again invoked. With an immutable God this is powerful reasoning. S.
6. Wilt Thou not return (and) quicken us, (and) shall (not) Thy people rejoice in Thee? “Wilt Thou not revisit us in mercy, raise us from the dead or dying state in which we now are, and give us, as Thy people, fresh occasion to rejoice in our relation to Thee, and in our union and communion with Thee?” A.
Rejoice in Thee. Not in any earthly blessings, even when they are vouchsafed; not in corn, or wine, or oil; not in the fatness of the earth or the dew of heaven; but in Him who giveth all these things; who giveth more than all these—Himself. P.—When God changeth the cheer of His people, their joy should not be in the gift, but in the Giver. Dickson.—It is the most natural thing for the people of God to rejoice in God. God is the fountain of joy, and whom should He fill with it but His people? And whom should His people breathe it into again but Him? This posture God delights to have them in; this posture they delight to be in. John Pennington.
7. Thy mercy. It is not merely of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, but all is mercy, from first to last; mercy that met us by the way; mercy that looked upon us in our misery; mercy that washed us from our sins in His own blood; mercy that covered our nakedness and clad us in His own robe of righteousness; mercy that led and guided us by the way, and mercy that will never leave nor forsake us till mercy has wrought its perfect work in the eternal salvation of our souls through Jesus Christ. Bouchier.
8. I will hear; or, “let me hear.” Having uttered his sorrows and his prayer for better days, he would now place himself in the attitude of calm and quiet expectation. Like Habakkuk, he will betake him to his watchtower, and wait to hear what the Lord will speak. P.
A good life and a well-governed conversation doth not fear the voice of God; the word of God is the light which God hath set up in His Church, to guide her feet in the ways of peace.
They that do evil hate the light; the children of the light resort to it, and call upon God. Marbury.—The Christian knows that the Lord Christ is speaking to him, when he reads His Word, with as absolute a knowledge as when he hears father, mother, wife, or child speaking to him. Ruskin put the whole of it in a line when he said that “No syllable of the great Book was ever yet to be understood but by a deed.” The Bible will never be destroyed so long as there is a right act done, and act of righteousness, to make its meaning clear—never till the Lord Christ is dumb, and the Holy Spirit dead. No man will ever know that the Scriptures are the Word of God till he knows it by Christian experience, and so knowing it, all kind of controversy is no more to him than the snow-storm beating against the window-panes, as he kneels amid his family to thank God for its sweet promises, pure truths, the blessed Christ, and the glorious salvation which it has brought to him and to his children. Interior.
He will speak peace to His people, and to His saints. There are a people in the world who are God’s people, set apart for Him, subject to Him, and who shall be saved by Him. All His people are His saints, sanctified by His grace and devoted to His glory; these may sometimes want peace, when without are fightings and within are fears; but, sooner or later, God will speak peace to them; if He do not command outward peace, yet He will suggest inward peace; speaking that to their hearts by His Spirit which He has spoken to their ears by His Word and ministers, and making them to hear joy and gladness. H.
Peace; that is God’s great word, which in fact sums up and comprises all else, peace with him declared to all who are His beloved, the objects of His loving-kindness (see on 16:10) having the privileges of their covenant relation to Him. P.—An upright heart will not be satisfied without hearing God speak peace by His Spirit. And for this he will pray and wait and hearken, and when God speaks peace, there comes such sweetness with it and such discovery of His love, as lays a powerful influence on the soul not to turn again to folly. This peace is an humbling, melting peace, which brings humiliation to the soul as well as joy; but this never happens when men speak peace to themselves. John Berridge.
Only determine, “I will hear what God the Lord will speak,” and “He will speak peace.” God never disappoints a really attentive hearer. God has always something to say to us. We only miss it either because we do not believe that He is going to speak, or because we are not quiet enough. This is frequently the reason of a sickness or a deep sorrow. God has something to say to us. He makes a calm, He settles the rush of life, that He may speak. Peace, the peace of Christ, is a delicate plant. Do not expose it. Do not trifle with it, but lay it up in your heart’s closest affections. Watch it. Deal tenderly with it. It is your life. The expression, “turn again to folly,” may mean one of three things. Either all sin is folly, or you may understand by it the particular sin of those who return to the vanities of the world, or you may take it to imply that a relapse into what is wrong has such a distorting influence on the mind, and so perverts the judgment and darkens the intellect, that both by natural consequence and judicial retribution the condition of a person who goes on in sin after the strivings of the Holy Ghost and after the manifestations of God’s peace becomes emphatically “folly.” J. V.
But let them not turn again to folly. The death of sin is mostly a gradual process, a thing going on for a long time, and not beginning or ending in one sharp, single struggle. Yet neither is it true that it goes on quite evenly. On the contrary, it has its sharper seasons and its gentler ones. It has times when it destroys much of the principle of sin within us; it has times also when it does little more than hold its ground, and the struggle seems suspended. The process of the death of sin has in it nothing horrible, nothing exciting; the imagination may not be struck by it; and yet it is of an interest really far deeper than the death of the body, and an interest which we may all presently realize. It works quietly and invisibly to the eyes of others, but most perceptibly and most truly to him who is undergoing it. Many struggle successfully against one marked fault, but fly back from the prospect of having to overcome a whole sinful nature and having to become made anew after God’s image. So it is but too often, but so it is not always. Let us suppose that we bear the sight of our general sinfulness not with a cowardly despair, but with a Christian resolution; then indeed begins the struggle which may be truly called the death of folly. T. Arnold.
9. Glory, i.e.,** the manifested presence of God tabernacling visibly among them, as of old. This hope was destined to have its fulfilment, but in a better and a higher sense, when He who was the brightness of the Father’s glory tabernacled in human flesh, and men “beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the
Father.” P.—What land the true Church of Christ, the saints and they that fear God, do dwell in, there doth glory dwell; there God, there Christ by His Spirit bringing righteousness and salvation to such a society is glorious; and for His presence the people are glorious; and the land glorious above all other lands whatsoever. Dickson.
10-12. We must take the passage as poetry, genuine and beautiful poetry. These abstract qualities are personified; they take on the forms and the spirit, too, of life. The drift of thought here is of commerce between heaven and earth, transactions between the God above and His children below. God will speak peace to His people. His salvation is nigh to His hearers. Truth is thought of as springing up like other things that grow out of the earth; while righteousness looks down lovingly from heaven. The Lord gives the good; the land and man receive it. C.
10. Mercy and truth have met (together); righteousness and peace have kissed (each other). By truth, we are to understand the truth of God’s promises, the Divine veracity. The same combination with grace or mercy occurs in Psalms 25:10; 40:10; 57:3; 61:7 and 89:14. Righteousness, considered as the gift of God, justification, whether judicial or providential. Peace, immunity from all disturbing causes, which implies prosperity of every kind. Have met, in a peaceable and friendly manner, an idea still more strongly expressed by the kiss of reconciliation or affection in the last clause. A.
Vs. 10-13 are a fourfold picture of how heaven and earth ought to blend and harmonize. In the tenth verse we have the heavenly twin sisters, and the earthly pair that corresponds. Mercy and truth, two radiant angels, like virgins in some solemn choric dance, linked hand in hand, issue from the sanctuary and move among the dim haunts of men, making “a sunshine in a shady place;” and to them there come forth, linked in a sweet embrace, another pair, whose lives depend on the lives of their elder and heavenly sisters, righteousness and peace. In man’s experience righteousness and peace cannot be rent apart. Righteousness and her twin sister Peace only come in the measure in which the mercy and the truth of God are received into thankful hearts. A. M.
The four virtues here mentioned are, as Calvin remarks, the four cardinal virtues of Christ’s kingdom. Where these reign among men, there must be true and perfect felicity. P.—Mercy and truth are apparently irreconcilable. Righteousness and peace seem to be unattainable through sin. These meet and mutually embrace in the salvation of God. The work of the Redeemer and the work of the Sanctifier can alone explain this. Mercy is the moving cause; truth, the means of salvation. Righteousness magnifies the law, of which peace is the legal consequence. M.—Mercy and peace are on one side; truth and righteousness on the other. Truth requires righteousness; mercy calls for peace. They meet together on the way; one going to make inquisition for sin, the other to plead for reconciliation. Having met, their differences on certain considerations, not here particularly mentioned, are adjusted; and their mutual claims are blended together in one common interest; on which peace and righteousness immediately embrace. Thus, righteousness is given to truth, and peace is given to mercy. Now, where did these meet? In Christ Jesus. When were they reconciled? When He poured out His life on Calvary. A. Clarke.
These four Divine attributes parted at the fall of Adam, and met again at the birth of Christ. Mercy was ever inclined to serve man, and peace could not be his enemy; but truth exacted the performance of God’s threat, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die;” and righteousness could not but give to every one his due. Jehovah must be true in all His ways, and righteous in all His works. Now, there is no religion upon earth, except the Christian, which can satisfy the demands of all these claimants, and restore a union between them; which can show how God’s Word can be true, and His work just, and the sinner, notwithstanding, find mercy and obtain peace. A God incarnate reconciled all things in heaven and earth. When Christ appeared in our nature, all the four parties met again, in perfect harmony: Truth ran to Mercy, and embraced her; Righteousness to Peace, and kissed her. Bishop Horne.—And not only was this the only way for the consistence of these two, justice and mercy, but take each of them severally, and they could not have been in so full lustre as in this. God’s just hatred of sin did, out of doubt, appear more in punishing His own only-begotten Son for it, than if the whole race of mankind had suffered for it eternally. Again, it raises the notion of mercy to the highest, that sin is not only forgiven us, but for this end God’s own co-eternal Son is given to us, and for us. Consider what He is, and what we are; He the Son of His love, and we enemies. Therefore it is emphatically expressed in the words, He Himself bare our sins. God so loved the world, that love amounts to this much, that it was so great as to give His Son. But how great that is cannot be uttered. In this, says the apostle, God commendeth His love to us, sets it off to the highest, gives us the richest and strongest evidence of it. Leighton.
“Without shedding of blood is no remission;” and a soul taught of God is content that it should be so. Such a soul sees a grandeur in God’s law, and a lustre in God’s justice and truth, and much as it may covet pardon, thankful as it might be for a right to heaven, it would not wish to steal into heaven, nor receive a pardon which made God a liar. Ah no! let God be true though all mankind should perish; let the law be magnified, though the avenging bolt should fire the universe. And to such a soul it is relief unspeakable when it sees “mercy and truth meeting together, righteousness and peace embracing each other;” when it learns that for the remission of sin blood has been already shed, a blood which cleanseth from all sin, even the precious blood of God’s own Son, as of a Lamb without blemish. Hamilton.
In the mystery of Christ’s incarnation, who was God as well as man, in the humiliation of His life, and in His death upon the cross, we behold the most stupendous instance of compassion; while at the same moment the law of God received more honor than it could have done by the obedience and death of any or of all His creatures. Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. In this dispensation of His grace He has reached so far beyond our highest hopes that, if we love Him, we may be assured that He will with it freely give us all things. Access to God is now opened at all times, and from all places; and to such as sincerely ask it, He has promised His Spirit to teach them to pray, and to help their infirmities. The sacrifice of Christ has rendered it just for Him to forgive sin; and whenever we are led to repent of and to forsake it, even the righteousness of God is declared in the pardon of it. R. Hall.
The justice and truth of God are as clearly revealed as His goodness and mercy. They must not be thrown into opposition, but must forever co-exist. And if mercy be ever displayed, it will be in such a way as shall hold up justice and holiness with undiminished and equal splendor. This is, indeed, the key to the whole Gospel, which is none other than a device of infinite wisdom to repair the evils of the fall, and thus show forth all the commingling prefections of God in magnificent and adorable harmony. All hues blend with consummate beauty in the rainbow around the throne. To effect this harmony was the intention of the most extraordinary transaction in the earth’s history—namely, that He who made it died upon it. Love, boundless love, stayed the hand of justice, held the bolt of fiery retribution, and interposed itself between the descending edge and our condemned souls. If God were all justice, and He is as truly just as loving, no redemption had been possible. If God had been all love, and He is as truly loving as He is just, no redemption had been necessary. But because He is both justice and mercy, and because justice demanded satisfaction, and mercy pleaded for remission, “Righteousness and peace kissed each other;” and love hung on the arm of paternal severity, while wisdom pointed out a method to reconcile both. J. W. A.
11. Truth from the earth is springing, and righteousness from heaven looks down. The truth of God’s promise may be seen, as it were, springing from the earth in its abundant fruits, and His rectitude, or faithfulness to His engagements, looking down from heaven in the rain and sunshine. By this bold and beautiful conception, the certainty of God’s providential care is expressed more strongly than it could be by any mere didactic statement. The beauty of the image in the last clause is heightened by the use of a verb which originally means to lean or bend over, for the purpose of gazing down upon a lower object. A.—The meaning appears to be, the result of God’s faithfulness to His covenant of grace will be abundance of the fruits of righteousness; in the outward sense, temporal prosperity; in the inner sense (which if not present to the Psalmist’s mind is involved in the Divine promise), the spiritual gifts and graces which belong to the kingdom of God. Cook.
Promises which lie unfulfilled, like buried seeds, shall spring up and yield harvests of joy; and men renewed by grace shall learn to be true to one another and their God, and abhor the falsehood which they loved before. “And righteousness shall look down from heaven,” as if it gazed down upon a penitent people, whom it could not have looked upon before without an indignation which would have been fatal to them. This is a delicious scene. Earth yielding flowers of truth, and heaven shining with stars of holiness; the spheres echoing to each other, or being mirrors of each other’s beauties. “Earth carpeted with truth and canopied with righteousness” shall be a nether heaven. When God looks down in grace, man sends his heart upward in obedience. S.
In the eleventh verse, “Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look
down from heaven,” we have God responding to man’s truth. Man’s truth shall begin to grow and blossom in answer, as it were, to God’s truth that came down upon it. Righteousness shall look down from heaven, not in its judicial aspect merely, but as the perfect moral purity that belongs to the Divine nature, which shall bend down a loving eye upon the men beneath and mark the springings of any imperfect good and thankfulness in our hearts.