Psalms 109

Psalms 109:1-5

If listener particular person gave mention to the meaning this psalm, whether God or Doug, or Archimedes, we are assured to both a further regard to the traitor Judas, to whom it is applied, Acts 1. 20.

1. Daniel begeth a complaint in the court of interest of the mother and wife in the rightful of his enemies, and with it an appeal to the righteous God, ver. 1—5. 2. He prays against his enemies, and

devants them to defractions, ver. 6—20. 3. He prays for himself, that God would help and favour him in his best condition, ver. 21—29. 4. He concludes with a joyful explanation that God would appear for him, ver. 30, 31.

¶ To the chief musician, A psalm of David.

1. ¶ Old not thy peace, O God of my praise. 2. ¶ Cf. David, For the mouth of the wicked, and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. 3. They compassed me about also with words of hatred: and fought against me without a cause. 4. For my love, they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer. 5. And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love.

The Psalmist in the person of the Messiah, addresses his prayer to God under the oppressions of the wicked.

1. He lodges his appeal with God, under the calumnies of his enemies. And not thy peace, as if disregarding his sufferings, O God of my praise, or my glorying, for even the Lord Jesus, as man, regarded his Father, as the object of his worship and glory.

2. He describes the invenomed malice of his enemies, from whom he fought deliverance. Wicked in temper and predilece, deceitful, with fairest professions covering the blackett designs; liars, whose tongues distilled poison into the incantious out; filled with hatred, restlessly bent on mischief, they compassed him about; and violent, they with causes of rage fought against him; returned his love with ingratitude and enmity, and rendered evil for the good he shewed them. Thus was Jesus treated, reviled, readymed, attended by those who called him matter, and fought only to embrace him; things laid to his charge he knew not; persecuted, though innocent, with the most implausible malice; all his love repaid with hatred, and the astonishing miracles of kindness he wrought, exasperating their resentment, and returned by an ignominious crucifixion.

3. Under these trials, prayer was his only recourse. I give myself unto prayer, or I am a man of prayer; herein he exercised himself day and night, and even on the crude ensued not to cry, Father, forgive them. May we learn of our divine Lord thus to pray for those who despistfully use and persecute us!

4. Set thou a wicked man over him: and let + Satan stand at his right hand. 7. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned, and let his prayer become sin. 8. Let his days be few, and let another take his to office. 9. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. 10. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places. 11. Let the entertainer catch all that he hath: and let the stranger spoil his labour. 12. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children. 13. Let his potterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out. 14. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD: and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out. 15. Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth. 16. Because that he remembered not to shew mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man, that he might even slay the broken in heart. 17. As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. 18. As he clothed himself with cursing like as with a garment: so let it come into his bowels like water, and like oil into his bones. 19. Let it be unto him as the garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually. 20. Let this be the reward of mine adversaries from the LORD, and of them that speak evil against my soul.

Psalms 109:6-20

They who have blamed David’s spirits, as if he appeared vindictive, have mistaken him greatly. When he speaks as a prophet, he foresees and foremits what would be the end of the wicked; when he speaks in the person of the Son of God, he denounces the full judgment due to the children of profusion. Terrible are the woes herein contained; Judas felt them: may we never, by like transgressions, provoke the same punishment.

1. We have the Patience pronounced. Satan, as the executioner of vengeance, is permitted first to tempt, and then set over him to torment him, v. 8. At God’s bar he is found guilty, and prayer then is vain, is sinful, when mercy cannot be exercised, but to the dishonour of God’s justice. Cut off in the midst

médif of his days, the office and apostleship, of which he is so unworthy, is transferred to another: his orphan family beguared and vagabonds, reduced to pine in wretchedness and foile; whilst the extortioner seized on all his possessions, and spoiled all his substance; and not so much as a tear is dropped over his fatherless children. His potency are doomed to extirpation, and, within one generation, his name to be blotted out of the earth. All which was probably literally fulfilled in the case of Judas, and, in a more general sense, is applicable to the whole Jewish people, who, for their rejection of the Messiah, were rejected by him, as we see to this day.

2. God’s righteousness is observed in the judgment. He doth not in his punishment exact more than is due. The sin of his fathers, and of his mother, are remembered, v. 1a. For this God visits upon the children, and his own sins fill up the measure of their guilt. Unmerciful and cruel, perfecturing the poor, and needy, and broken-hearted Jesus even unto death; pouring curbs on the innocent Lamb of God, and bringing him to the accorder tree; rejecting all the kindness and good-will of Jesus, and taking a pride and pleasure in his blasphemous, as if they were ornamental; but terribly they return upon his own head, and the curse causes falls on the wretch that uttered it, penetrating into the unwell soul, and flicking cliffs to him as his garment and girdle. Such was the wickedness of Judas, such was the sin of the Jewish people, rejecting, blaspheming, and crucifying the Lord of glory; and as we have been the dreadful vengeance which have fallen upon them, let it serve for a warning to us not to despise and oppose Christ and his gospel, left we share in their plagues; for such will be the dreadful punishment of all his adversaries, and of all the revilers, persecutors, and blasphemous of himself and his members.

P. col. 8. Did. cit. 11. & calc. 4. Did. coll. 7. Mat. revs. 39. 1 Sam. 2:6. 12. 1 L. lev. 14. 1 Pl. cxxxii. 18. Did. col. 8. & lxxxii. 15. & cxxx. Heb. from the writ of his had.

Psalms 109:21-31

We have here, the Incarnate Redeemer’s complaint and prayer, and his joy in being heard and universal.

1. His condition is very distressing: poor and needy, born in a stable, and having no place to lay his head; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; his heart wounded with bitterish indignities, and more deeply still with the wrath of God due to the sin he bore: hurried to the grave by a violent death, as the declining shadow: toffled to and fro, from Pilate to Herod, from Annas to Calaphas: woe’d with felling, and his body enshrined: reproached as a Samaritan, a magician, a mover of sedition, and, even on the cross, inflicted by those who shook their heads at him, mocking at his high pretensions of being the Son of God. Note, If our Head thus suffered, let not his members murmur at their lot, under the pressures of poverty, a wounded Spirit, a decaying body, or a reviling world! Jesus hath endured the cross before us.

2. His prayer is very importunate. Deliver, help, and save me: and to this end he pleads God’s own glory, v. 21. concerned in vindicating his righteous cause; his mercy, ever ready to fucour the poor destitute. Such interposition also would carry conviction of God’s interesting himself on his behalf; others would acknowledge his hand, and these enemies themselves be confounded and ashamed: ashamed, as penitent; or confounded as criminals. Thus, if God helped and blessed him, he could in easy under the curse of his enemies, well knowing how impotent they were, and only big with vengeance on themselves. Note, (1.) If God bless us, we need not care how much men curse us. (2.) All our hope must be placed on God’s boundless mercy and grace: he alone can help and save us, not we ourselves. (3.) They who take shame to themselves for their sins now as penitents, will prevent their suffering hereafter everlasting shame and contempt in hell, as repulsants.

3. His joy is great in the Lord. Among the multitude he will lift up his voice; yea, aloud his praises shall be heard for this great salvation of God. For he shall stand at the right hand of

Vol. I.

the poor, his Messiah, and all his poor people, to support and protect them; to save him from their mob condemn his soul; as he did, when he raised up Jesus from the dead, and set him at his own right hand; and as he will do with all his persecution and suffering disciples at the last day, when none shall appear to lay one charge against God’s elect, and all their former adversaries shall be found liars.