Psalms 120

Psalms 120:1-7

This and the fourteen following psalms are entitled Songs of Degrees, but only so called, is uncertain; a variety of conjectures have been advanced, but they are more conjectures. This psalm, from its affixing to the Fifty-second, is supposed to refer to Deog the Edomite. And herein, 1. He prays to God to deliver him from the misliability assigned him by false and malicious tongues, ver. 1, 2. 2. He elevates the judgments of God against such, ver. 3, 4. 3. He complains of his ill neighbour; that were quarrelious and vexatious, ver. 5-7. In singing this psalm we may comfort ourselves, in reference to the courage of the tongue, when at any time we fall unjustly under the lapse of it, that better than we have inserted by it.

¶ A song of degrees.

David was now an exile from his native country; seeing from the malice of his enemies.

1. He complains of his sad estate, which in prayer he spreads before God, v. 1. In my distress I cried unto the Lord; driven from his home, a stranger in a strange land; and, as his prayer imports, v. 2. maligned, reproached, belied, betrayed. Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips and a deceitful tongue; not his own, for he abhorred the sin, but from other’s, such as Deog and Saul’s couriers, who by Battery, falsehood, and misrepresentation, sought his ruin. Thus was the innocent Lamb of God periscuted, reviled, and false witnesses laid to his charge things that he knew not of. Let it not seem a strange thing to us if our characters, for his name’s sake, suffer under the false and most cruel alpersions; the day of detection for lying lips will come.

2. He acknowledges God’s kind attention to his prayer. He heard me, and disappointed the malice of his enemies; with him we may ever contentedly leave our case.

3. He foresees the miserable end of these men. What shall be given unto thee, or what will it give unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, then false tongue? Did sinners for a moment consider the end of their ways, terrors would take hold of them, Vex. I.

for their decreed position is Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coils of juniper; the wrath of an Almighty God, sharper than arrows in the confidence, and foreching with hercer and more enduring torment than coils of juniper. Note, The everlasting burnings are the deftored place of abode for all who love or make a lie, Rev. xxii. 15.

4. He bemoans his present wretched abode. We is me, that I sojourn in Messiah, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar? among whom he was forced to take refuge, I Sam. xxv. 1. or among rude and idolatrous nations, like these descendants of Japhet and Ithmari; or even in the court of Saul, he found his abode among the wicked courtiers there as infamy as if he had dwelt among the heathen. My soul hath long dwelt with him that hasteth peace; either with Saul, whom no kindness could bend to friendly thoughts of him, or those strangers among whom he sojourned, enemies to the God of peace, and to religion, the only true path of peace. I am for peace, sir, I peace; a man of peace, pursuing it by every means, ready to bow and forbear any thing for the sake of it, and however offended, the first to seek reconciliation: but when I speak, they are for sure, reject every kind overture, and implacable in their malice, fly to arms. Note, (1.) It is a grief to those who love God to be removed from the public ordinance, and they cannot but fight for the courts of the Lord’s house. (2.) Bad company, into which by necessity we may be forced, is a burden to the gracious soul. (3.) Every man of God must be a man of peace; envy, dispute, and fit, are all from hell. (4.) Though others continue inveterate, that must not refrain us from the exercise of Divine charity: this is truly Godlike.