Psalms 57

Psalms 57:6-11

In order to give a pretext for his persecution, it is suggested by some

1. Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O ye congregation? ‘do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of

men? 2. Yea, in heart you work wickedness, ‘you weigh the violence of your hands in the earth. 3. The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. 4. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent; they are like the dead’s adder, ’that shoppeth her ear: 5. Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, ‘charming never is wisely. 6. 1—5. This psalm bears the same title as the former, Alta’chith, for he hoped God would not suffer him to be destroyed by the sentence of unrighteous judges; and in confidence thereof, he, at God’s bar, turns accuser against them. 1. He charges them with deliberate and wilful injustice. Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O ye congregation? The mighty of the land, the judges assembled to deceive the cause of David, but corrupted probably by Saul’s bribes and influence, a Sam. said, 7, and therefore either dumb in his vindication, or active in his condemnation. Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of men? no; the very contrary; preventing justice to the tailless purposes, and though as gods sitting on the seat of magistracy, yet, as sons of men, corrupt, and thoughtless how they must appear before the eternal judge. Yea, in heart you work wickedness, contrive and plot how to execute it, and ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth, pretend to weigh the cause, as if they would act with equity, but make the oppression more infamous to the sufferers, and more intolerable under the cloak of justice. Note, (1.) Oppression by law is the most grievous tyranny. (2.) Good men have often suffered by the partiality of unjust judges. (3.) The heart gives malignity to the sin: falls through sudden temptations are sinful, deliberate wickedness exceeding sinful. 2. The evil of their conduct proceeded from the corruption of their nature, which is the same in all the sons of men, till Divine grace produces a change. The wicked are estranged from the womb, they bring with them into the world a nature alienated from God, and enmity against him; they go astray as soon as they be born, original for being as much a departure from God, as actual, and constantly producing it with the first dawnings of reason; or even before, in the forewordness and disingenu-

cilness that in the earliest infancy appears, speaking lies, as soon as

Psalms 57:8

That every step they took in mischief, like the frail’s motion, might be to their own walls: and lull; and that as the untimely fruit of a woman, they might be either by death carried to the grave, or that secret disappointment might blast their enterprizes, so as never to be ripe for execution. Note, It is well for God’s people his care is over them; did he not restrain the wickedness, or defeat the designs of the earth, such is the inbred enmity of the natural heart against them, it would soon be literally true, that not one godly man was left, that the faithful were perished from the children of men. 2. He forefers their unexpected and terrible destruction. Before your pot can feel the thorns, quick as they finally, and throng as they blaze, more suddenly He, the avenging God, shall take them away as with a whirlwind, whose fury is restless, and this both living, when they are in the midst of life, health, and profiperity, and in his wrath, in such a manner, that they who behold the judgment, shall confess it is the finger of God. Note, When God rises up in displeasure, the most prosperous sinner in the midst of health, youth, and affluence, is hurried to the grave, as the leaf before the tempest. 3. The blefied effects this would produce. The righteous shall rejoice to the God thus glorified, and may his feet in the blood of the wicked, as approving the Divine procedure, Rev. xiv. 20. experimentally confirmed by such interposition of God’s care over his people; whilst every attentive bedholder would be led to reverence and fear before this holy God, acknowledging that there is a God, or, as in the original, that God judge in the earth, the Elohim, the sacred Three. Note, (1.) Though a good man now grieves over every sinner, and pities him, he will appraise God’s justice in his punishment, and in the day of judgment praise God when the smoke of his torment ascendeth. (2.) None ever served God faithfully, but owned the unspeakable comfort and satisfaction which is to be found in the way of righteousness. (3.) There is a God that judgeth the earth: let the sinner tremble, his damnation flumbreth not; let the righteous rejoice, his salvation draweth nigh.