Psalm CIX
To the chief Musician. A Psalm of David.
1 Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise!
2 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 have compassed mc about with words of hatred; And fought against mc 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 hated for my love.
6 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 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 extortioner 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 posterity 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 a garment which covereth him, And for a girdle wherewith he is girded continually.
20 Let this be a reward of mine adversaries from the Lord, And of them that speak evil against my soul.
21 But do thou for me, O God the Lord, for thy name’s sake: Because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.
22 For I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.
23 I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down
as the locust.
24 My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.
25 I became also a reproach unto them: when they looked upon me they
shaked their heads.
26 Help me, O Lord my God: O save me according to thy mercy:
27 That they may know that this is thy hand; that thou, Lord, hast done it.
28 Let them curse, but bless thou:
“When they arise, let them be ashamed; but let thy servant rejoice.
29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame.
And let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.
30 I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth;
Yea, I will praise him among the multitude.
31 For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor, To save him from those that condemn his soul.
S28 PSALM cix. — Messiah’s prayers and praises for
A series of four connected Psalms commences here, beginning with Messiah in his low estate. It is an observation as old as the days of the Fathers, that this Psalm presents to us “The sufferings of Christ,” and the Psalm that succeeds celebrates “The glory that should follow.” We here descend into the Valley of Humiliation, that we may look up from thence to the height of Exaltation. Christ is here enduring the contradiction of sinners, and at last meeting with the traitor. “Etjtu, Brute r is the tone of the complaint. The Fathers called it “the Iscariotic Psalm,” because so specially applied by Peter (Acts i. 16-20) to Judas. We may consider Judas, at the same time, as the virtual head of the Jewish nation in their daring attempt to dethrone the Son of God. The doom pronounced, and the reasons for it, apply to the Jews as a nation, as well as to the leader of the band who took Jesus. In the words of verse 1,
“Hold not thy peace, 0 God of my praise,’’ we hear the Saviour taking up Israel’s manner of addressing Jehovah; for Moses uses it (Deut. x. 21) when expressing the feeling that during all his wilderness journey he had proved Jehovah sufficient for him under sorrow, fear, perplexity, suffering, temptation, and so had ever found reason to praise him. Jeremiah, the weeping Jeremiah, broken in spirit, and meeting with treachery in the house of his friends, could call on Jehovah by the same name (xvii. 14),” Thou art my praise f The Lord Jesus identifies himself with his saints — “in all points tempted like as we are.” Yes, and if at one time he looks up to the Father and says, “Thou art my praise!” thinking of blessings already received, no less does he at another time, as one of us would do when needing more help, speak thus of himself, “/ am prayer,” {vex. 4).
Christ speaks from verses 1-5 as one surrounded by foes, like Shammah amid the Philistines in the field of lentiles (2 Sam. xxiii. 12); then suddenly his eye falls on the leader of the troop, the tallest and most prominent sinner of the many thousands whom he guides to the prey. May we not say that verse 6, so abruptly isolating some one enemy, pointing the finger at him, and bidding the divine thunderbolt fall on ins head, is like the Evangelist’s “While he yet spake, lo! Judas, one of the twelve I” Even as Judas said to those he led on, “That same is he, hold him fast;” so the Son of man says to the Father, “There is he, let him die!”
We consider the terrific utterance of doom, from verse 6 to verse 20, as no other than a copy (if we may so speak) of the Father’s sentence upon the traitor who sold the Beloved Son for thirty pieces of silver. Christ declares it, and consents to it — “Let it be even so”
“Let the wicked one be set over him;
And let Satan stand at his right hand.” (Ver. 6.)
Again, —
“Let his children wandering, wander on, Let them beg, and seek (food)//’om amo7ig the ruins of their own homes.”
And then he says, —
“Let their sins be before the Lord continually, that he may cut off the memory of the sinner from the earth; Because he remembered not to sheto mercy (worse than Gen. xl. 23), But persecuted the poor and needy One; The One that was broken-hearted even unto death.’” (Ver. IG.)
Our Master had this verse in substance on his lips at the very hour when Judas was on his way to Gethsemane to betray him; for Matt. xxvi. 38 tells us that Jesus spake of being “sorrowful UNTO DEATH” which is the form of the expression here, “broken in heart unto death” H/TID/ 1ZD Hlpp. (See on Psa. lxxix. 1 ], for the force of HJl^Q.)
We must not pass verse 18 without remarking that there is an allusion in its tone to Num. v. 21, 22, 24 — the unfaithful wife. Her curse was to penetrate into her bowels; “the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her;” and such a curse comes on unfaithful Judas, who violates his engagement to the Lord, and upon Israel at large also, who have departed from him as a “wife treacherously departeth from her husband,” and have committed adultery against the Bridegroom.
After this manifestation of Jehovah’s abhorrence of all Messiah’s foes, from Judas downward, the Saviour looks again to the Father, committing all to him.
“And thuu, Jehuvah, mi my Lord.’” (Ver. 21.)
To us it is sweet consolation to be able to say, “My Beloved is mine, and I am his!” Was it less so to the Son of man?
“Ad for me, for thy name’s sake /”
Father, glorify thy name! Glorify thyself even in my continued suffering (ver. 22-25). For again he cries,
“For poor and needy am I {ihti, even I whom thou hast ah-eady helped), And my JieaH is wounded within me. Like the declining shadow I go away (night is near), I am tossed to and fro as the locust” (the storm has begun).
Blasts from hell, and from earth, drive me about, as brisk winds do the locusts, seeking to sweep me into the deep.
Once more (vers. 26-28) prayer arises from him who said in verse 4, “/ am jprayer;” and after this, praise. For he sees deliverance on its way, and ends with praise to the “Ood of his praise” (ver. 1) as he began, adoring the grace of Jehovah, who rescues the helpless one, standing at his right hand. And in this “Salvation” is included glory and blessedness, the glory and the blessedness of the kingdom. The harp is soon to sing of this theme in louder notes; and, therefore, it is no more than indicated at the close. What a Psalm! MessiaJis prayers and praises for judgment on Judas and Judas-like men.