Psalms 17

Psalms 17:1-15

An appeal against the enemy: on the ground of the perfection of Christ, the Intercessor for the people. A prayer of David. The sixteenth psalm, then, has shown us the perfect obedience of One who has come into the path of it in love toward the saints, a path which has led Him as far as death itself, but to find through it a way of life, a way into the presence of God, and the eternal joy there. Now in the seventeenth, we have the effect of this, the identification of Christ with His people, making His appeal against the enemy, grounded upon His personal perfection, to avail for them. The psalm, taken by itself, would but obscurely express this, the work of atonement not having as yet been brought out, as later it will be,when immediately the fullness of grace toward others becomes manifest. Here, for the most part, the psalm is apparently an individual appeal, -Christ, who is most surely the Speaker, pleading in His own behalf. In the seventh verse first a plural is introduced, but in such a way as at first sight only to enunciate the general principle under which His individual case would come; and the common rendering (which is a legitimate one) would make this clearly the meaning. After this again all is individual until the eleventh verse, where we find again a plural, “our steps,” but with which, strangely enough, the written text in the Hebrew joins a singular, “they have surrounded me,” though the K’ri (the “spoken” amended text) substitutes “us,” which the modern translations generally accept.* But the Septuagint has preserved the “me,” and gives the first part of the verse quite differently.
Thus there have been evident difficulties with this abrupt plural, -which is found no more to the end of the psalm. If we realize no divine order in the series, we lose the clue by which to penetrate the mystery, or more likely see no mystery. If it be of God, on the other hand, that the seventeenth psalm has its place between the sixteenth and the eighteenth, then these verses acquire special importance, and not only become themselves intelligible, but give light upon the whole character of the psalm. And this is constantly so with the “dark” things of Scripture, which in this very way claim special attention from us: the Spirit of God would by this awaken interest on our part, and never, we may be sure, without some special reward for the search to which it prompts. Nor is there anything of this sort so small but that it may cover a great treasure. When it is seen, by this absolute perfection which He claims unchallenged, Who the Speaker in this psalm is, then the association of others with Him must have very special interest. It has been noticed by others how careful in this particular Scripture is. “My Father and your Father,” the Lord says to His disciples; never our Father": that would really falsify the relationship. So He prays for them, and invites them to watch -but never to pray -with Him. All this is perfect in its place. So in this psalm the cry is single, individual; the perfection is His alone who cries; it is “give ear unto my prayer; incline thine ear unto Me; Thou answerest Me.” But, if the way in which the seventh verse is rendered here be the right one, then the prayer is for the salvation of all who “take refuge” in God, -that is, of all believers. And then even that which seems most individual in the prayer becomes possible to be read in the light of the truth of the identification of the believer with his Representative before God, -of his being “in Christ Jesus.” How this psalm, then, displays the Mediator will be evident. It at once takes its place with the other psalms of this series; and we are able to see in it the love which has manifested itself to men, as well as the strength of their salvation. Christ is not here asking for Himself; but is the great Intercessor in behalf of His people. Let us take it up in detail.

1. The psalm divides into three main parts, the first of which gives the appeal of the Perfect One on the ground of that perfection. He asks, not for mercy but for righteousness, and in entire confidence in God claims Him as Judge in His behalf. He knows Him, -knows that His eyes regard equity. It is One with whom He is not meeting for the first time. The all-searching eyes have been upon Him; and in the silence of the night, when truth, freed from the conflict of the world’s voices, makes itself most clearly heard, God had been with Him; the Light of light, in the presence of which the slightest breath of evil had been a dense and darkening cloud, bad shone down to meet a perfect response. “Thou hast assayed me; Thou findest nothing!” This is the Voice that said on earth: “I do, always the things that please Him”; and there was but One: “my mouth goeth not beyond my thoughts,” is the answer of perfect Truth to perfect Light. Around Him there was only contradiction to all this: “the works of men” He puts all together, making no distinction, giving them no other name but that. “As for the works of men, by the word of Thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the violent,” -the breaker forth: that is the character of men at large: God’s word, God’s will, they persistently break through. Alas, there is nowhere a timid woman, -nowhere the child of a few years, -who could not be characterized in this way. Let us notice how distinctly He affirms the word of God to be His guide and guard. If a perfect moral nature were enough, He had surely that, -“holy” from His very birth. If there were any who might be supposed superior to the need of a “book” to guide, here was One; yet how perfectly he held to, and upheld at all times the “word of Thy lips.” And how great our need, then, of it! How thorough should be our subjection to it! “The word of Thy lips,” -the very utterance of God Himself! It is as if the psalmist would utterly refuse to be hindered by that “human element in inspiration,” of which in the present day we hear so much, from drawing near to Him who would thus draw near, and who cannot be hindered by any creature-limit drawn about Him, from accomplishing His ends. The result of this divinely guided course is a steadfast and unswerving step. To be with God is, of necessity, to have God with us, and to introduce His unchanging character into our ways. Thus the apostle, preaching no “yea and nay,” but a “yea and amen” Christ, can affirm for himself that with him also there is not yea and nay. (2 Corinthians 1:17-19.) Yet though He did not now repent of his previous letter, he had repented. (2 Corinthians 7:8.) Only One has trodden perfectly this perfect path, and “left us an example that we should walk in His steps.”
2. Thus we have had the ground of the appeal. Now we have the nature of the appeal, as a cry for deliverance from the enemy, so commonly before one in these pages. God is invoked as the God of power, and trusted as the God of truth. Answer, He will; and the certainty of this has drawn forth the cry. What confidence, too, may be ours, with the name of Him whom the Father ever heareth by which to draw near to God. Yet it is an appeal to “marvelous loving-kindness,” because of those for whom, as if entirely for Himself, it is made: for it is a prayer for sinners who not in weakness merely but in the consciousness of unworthiness “take refuge” in the mercy as well as the might of God. This is surely no common ground upon which He as well as they are to find acceptance, but far different from that. He does not associate Himself with these suppliants, but prays for them; and then again His voice is heard as for Himself alone. He is not associating Himself with them, so as to say, “Keep us,” but identifying Himself with them, so that He can say, “Keep Me,” -they being covered with the perfection of His beauty, and God to act toward them as to Himself. Such language we shall find elsewhere in the Psalms: words of a Substitute and Representative of His people, -a glory of Christ, to be found, as we surely know, everywhere in Scripture, though here presented in the peculiar manner of the Psalms, a secret for faith to penetrate and possess. For Who is it in the fortieth psalm, who, coming into the world simply to do the will of God, and to offer to Him the one offering, now to take the place of all others, cries out “Mine iniquities have taken hold upon Me”? And Who, as the Trespass-offering in the sixty-ninth psalm, “restoring what He took not away,” says yet again, “My trespasses* are not hid from Thee”? Such things we are forced, if we apply them (as we must) to Christ, to interpret rightly. Yet here we have only that same truth of representation of which substitution is but the result in suffering and sacrifice, -the Cloud-Pillar of ministrant Glory.
   Looked at as the intercession of Christ for His own, -the saints in whom all His delight is, -how tenderly does He speak of them! “Keep Me as the reflection in the eye,” -which is literally, “the little man,” the human figure, “the daughter” or product “of the eye.” It is the image of Himself which God sees, as it were in the eyes of His beloved Son, ever having Himself before them! will He not preserve that? Then He draws near to the Father’s heart for refuge: “hide me in the shadow of Thy wings.” It is the image so familiar to us in the breathings of the Lord’s own heart over Jerusalem; but there love that was refused. “From the wicked that oppress me, -my enemies that with desire [literally, “in soul,” -the seat of desire] encircle me: in their own fat are they closed up,” -shut up in their own luxurious selfishness; and this is the most evident penalty of sin, which even here begins to stiffen and harden the heart into the unchangeableness of eternity: sin being the coffin, the grave, the final prison of the soul! Now you see them in their settled enmity against the “righteous; and here the plural comes in again, as we have seen. The wicked associate the Lord’s people with Himself; or at least hate His reflection in them. What they do to them, they do really therefore to Him. With the savage intensity of bloodhounds they are here seen dogging the steps of their victims; fastening their eyes on them, ready to pull them down to the ground. Their whole figure is just that indeed of a ravenous beast of prey: humanity is lost with the casting off of God, and the beast made to be taken and destroyed is his only likeness.
3. The third part, from an Israelite standpoint, is a very striking one. It contrasts the portion of the saint, now suffering at the hands of the wicked, with that of the wicked at whose hands they suffer, and who, completely under divine control, and used of God for the accomplishment of His purposes, has from His hand a present portion, soon to pass away. Beyond it lies that of faith, with God and eternal. We see that this is not the standpoint of law, which “is not of faith,” (Galatians 3:12), and which distinctly has its blessings in the present, but answers rather to our Lord’s story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:1-31), where the one accepted of God is yet unable to claim anything under law, -is but a beggar (comp. Psalms 37:25), while the man careless of God is the “man of this world.” For the Jewish believer of the period to which these psalms have special reference, in the short crisis of trouble so often brought before us, and with millennial days in immediate prospect, the portion of faith is not necessarily -not even nominally -in heaven; but rather in the scene which the psalm last referred to pictures, when the meek will possess the earth and the wicked be cast out of it. For the Christian the blessing to be enjoyed is, of course, heavenly; and of the Jewish remnant of the future, of whom these psalms speak, many will be slain, and thus find their place with the heavenly instead of the earthly people. These are the martyrs who, in the final visions of the Apocalypse, are seen to join the company of the throned saints of the first resurrection. (Revelation 20:4-6.) This part begins with an urgent cry once more for God to interfere. “Arise, Jehovah, confront him, cast him down: rescue my life from the wicked one, thy sword.” So (rightly, I believe,) the common version. The revised puts “by thy sword”; remanding the older translation to the margin. But there is no preposition in the Hebrew, though that is often the case where we should put one: the sense given by the common version, however, is more in accordance with the context, and gives the fuller thought. If the lawless persecutor be, after all, God’s sword, then how simple for Him to turn it aside! His supremacy is manifest; and this is carried into the next verse, where, however, the same question is raised, shall we say “from men thy hand,” or " by thy hand”? But that their portion is from God there is no question. Acting for Him, although they mean it not, indeed mean nothing less, yet He gives them for their work, as He paid Nebuchadnezzar for his blind service against Tyre. (Ezekiel 29:18-19.) But this is not His grace or in the things that His grace bestows. They are but men of the world, or of time, as I have rendered the word, because the sense of transitoriness inheres in it;* they have their portion in a life that passes away. “Full” they may well be, therefore, for a time, and who shall envy them? though they may leave what is more than they can themselves enjoy, with the brief lives in which to enjoy it, -to their babes.
   The saints’ portion, too, can he expressed in a few words; but who can estimate it aright? “For me, in righteousness shall I behold Thy face; I shall be full, awaking in Thine image.” Here in the first place, that it is Christ’s own voice is evident. The hope before Him is objective and subjective. On the one hand, as come out of His voluntary exile from it, the beholding of the Father’s face in the place of full and supreme manifestation; on the other, His own emerging from all the conditions of manhood in the humiliation in which He had assumed it, so as to be in manhood itself the manifest image and glory of God. We know, indeed, how little of what this implies; but it is the path of His humanity we trace in it, and thus we know that in measure we too are to share it with. Him. Even of man in the old creation it could be said that “he is the image and glory of God.” (1 Corinthians 11:7.) And if this be sadly obscured by the fall, it is, even apart from this, the shadow only of the ultimate purpose of God with regard to man.

And while Christ is its perfect expression, the breadth of this expression must take in all redeemed humanity in some sense. No doubt that here also there are degrees of such glory, -glory celestial and glory terrestrial, as in nature. Thus again God, who is light, is the “Father of lights,” -many-hued and many-toned, in order that the light itself may have more adequate expression. The objective and subjective, while different, are in close connection. “We know that we shall be like Him,” says the beloved apostle; and this is the reason he gives for it, “for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2.) On the other hand, “the world knew Him not,” because morally it had wandered far from Him. Could untruth apprehend the perfect Truth, or Love be understood by what was “enmity against God”? For us, when the long conflict with sin within us shall be over, how wondrous shall be the soul’s vision out of its now undimmed eyes, how shall the “pure in heart” find the blessedness predicted for them, that “they shall see God”! For the Lord, there could, of course, be no change in this respect. The days of His youth were as holy as His manhood; those of His life on earth no less so than His life in heaven. Such limitations, however, there were assumed in His assumption of flesh as made possible a life of faith, nay, the pattern life. Here we know indeed nothing except that of which the word of God assures us, and would be careful in any reasoning at all upon it. Yet we may be sure that whatever were these limitations they would make possible for Him also a looking forward to behold the face of God, as on earth He had not beheld it. Wonder as we may and must, His humanity was in these respects such as ours, “apart from sin.” He abode in it, though divine, subjecting Himself to its conditions, so that He could be really a babe, a child, a man, and then again under the awful shadow of the desertion of the cross! What perfect love -what utter reverence -do we owe Him, for such inconceivable self-humiliation as was this!