Psalm CXVI
1 I LOVE the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications,
2 Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him
- as long as I live.
3 The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon
me:
I found trouble and sorrow.
4 Then called I upon the name of the Lord; 0 Lord, I beseech thee, deliver
my soul!
5 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.
6 The Lord preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me.
7 Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with
thee.
8 For thou hast delivered my soul from death,
Mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.
9 I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
10 I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afiflicted:
11 I said in my haste, All men are liars.
12 What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?
13 I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.
15 Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
16 O Lord, truly I am thy servant;
I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.
17 I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the
name of the Lord.
19 In the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of thee, 0 Jerusalem. Praise ye the Lord.
If the greatest wonder that eye shall ever see, ear ever hear, The key-note and the heart of man and angel ever conceive, is the sacrifice of God manifest in the flesh, “Deity expended upon human weal!” it need not seem strange to us that the harp of Zion returns again and again and again to this theme. This is the theme before us here, for this Psalm is Christ’s resurrection-song, sung by his own lips in the upper room at the passover, in anticipation of the darkness of Gethsemane and Calvary passing away into glory,
Paul, in 2 Cor. iv. 13, 14, furnishes the key-note — “We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, / believed, and therefore have 1 spoken (Psa. cxvi ] 7), we also believe, and therefore speak.” We, says Paul, go on with our testimony as Jesus did, believing, as he did, that the Father will raise us up at last in glory, though at present we “bear about with us the dying (rrjv vsxuaiv, the nnipH of Psalm cxvi. 15) of the Lord Jesus.”
It has been noticed by Hengstenberg (who beautifully speaks of the speaker here as uttering “thanksgiving with the tear in his eye”), that there is a resemblance to the tone of this Psalm in Hezekiah’s writing, when he had been sick, and was recovered of his sickness (Isa. xxxviii,). It may be that Hezekiah’s case was meant to furnish a living type of the Saviour in some details. It is also most true that in a certain sense and measure, every member of Christ can sing, “i love the Lord,” and say it, too, in the very style of the original writer. “I love! because the Lord has heard” — so transported with joy and love, “as at first to express his affection without declaring its object, thinking all the world must know who is the person intended — like Mary Magdalene, John xx. 15,” (Home). Still it is the Master, rather than the disciples, who speaks here. The Lord Jesus is the true Hezekiah, who alone can appropriate all that is written here, having passed through sorer pangs, and gotten a more real resurrection, than Hezekiah could celebrate when he went up, on the third day, to the house of the Lord. Christ ti.e It is Christ only who can say, in the full sense of the word,
the very first syllable of the Psalm; for the words run in the original thus, “I love! because the Lord has heard my voice, my supplications!”
“/ love!” C^nim, like isrryM, Rev. iii. 17. “I have so done, and d.. 8.. still”).
speaker.
It is not, “I am well pleased that the Lord has heard;” no, it is far more. It is as if he pointed to Deut. vi. 5, “Thou Shalt love the Lord” — ni, HiH’’ n^Hil exclaiming, “I have done so, and ever will” And then, as the proof of this love (not as the cause, comp. Luke vii. 47), he adds, “For see, the Lord has testified to my love by hearing my prayers.” Yes; those tears and strong cries, to which reference is made, Heb, v. 7, were proofs of his love to the Father; and the Father’s hearing and helping was proof of his love to the Son.
“And I will call so long as I live.’” Literally, “during my days,” pl, as in 2 Kings xx. 19, Isa. xxxix. 8 (Hengst.) Is there not an implied reference to his intercession? and does not the phrase remind us of Rom. v. 1 8, “saved by his life,” and of Heb. vii, 16?
Israel might use these words at their paschal table, reckoning Egyptian sorrows and bondage as a kind of tomb, and recalling the flight from Egypt, and the passage through the Red Sea, when all human help had failed. It was like a resurrection — a passage up from the grave. Still, all was but an imperfect shadow of God’s Israel, his beloved Son. The world was his Egypt, his place of bondage, his scene of suffering; and, on the night he left this Egypt’s tasks and bricks for ever, all help of man failed him — not even a disciple offered him sympathy. It was he, therefore — it was he alone — who could so truly sing, as verse 11,
“I said in my haste” {i. e., while hastening from Egypt, like Israel on
the passover night), “All men are liars;” for the term is altogether a passover-night one, ^311. It is not trepidation of mind, it is not irritation, it is not alarm, it is not tumult of soul, that the term indicates; but it is the flight or hasty escape of Israel on that memorable night. See this discussed in Psa. xxxi. 22. The old metre version of Tate and
Brady is right —
“For in mtj flight all hopes of aid
From faithless man were lost.”
Christ and liia
The contents.
348 PSALM ex VI. — THE REDEEMER’S
And so the Targum has “”ipiyD^, “in my fleeing.” Bishop Patrick and some others have noticed this to be the true sense.* These remarks help us to the scope and j)lan of the psalm. The Saviour begins (ver. 1-4) with the Lord and his benefits; then (ver. 5, 6) celebrates some attractive features of his character, “Gracious is Jehovah,” while still he is “righteous” “and our God sheweth mercy,” (Dn^Q.); and this he does by “Keeping the simple,” i. e., those whom Satan might easily beguile. And now he gives a fuller history of his suffering and deliverance (ver. 7), “I was brought low,” and how the Lord permitted not the enemy to triumph over him in the awful hour of his tremendous woe; “He helped me,” (ver. 7, 8). He seems to reveal to us some of the thoughts that upheld him — some of “the joy set before him” that enabled him to endure. They were such as these — paraphrasing the words a little (verses 9, 10, 11) —
“/ sJiall yet walk before Jehovah In the lands {iy1~’i’2) of the living,’’’’ {i. e., the regions of glory, not
the abodes of the dead).” / have full confidence! That is the reason why I Jiave so often declared
my resurrection
Not that I had no temptations to the contrary. I was more afflicted than other men.
“^ (‘’J^^) greatly afflicted.”
Yes; and forsaken too, so that
“I said, in my hastening away,
All men are liars.”
All that is man disappoints expectation (ver. 8); ^O, as in Jer. XV. 18. But now, taking up the drink-offering cup, and pouring it on the altar as a thanksgiving-token-f- (ver. 12, to the end), he looks up to the Lord, and expresses his entire
* Ilorsley gives “in ecstasy of despair,” quite as far from the true meaning as is Barclay’s “agony to fulfil the law,” and Bishop’s Home’s “hurry and trepidation.” But see Psa. xxxi 22.
f Uengstenberg maintains that commentators have no ground at all for saying that there was a cup of thanksgiving at the passover supper. Mede has suggested the alhition to the driak-ofi’cring.
satisfaction in Him, uttering’ thanks, praise, blessing, vows, while looking forward to the results of all, in a people freed and gathered into glory; for this is contained in the oft-repeated words, (equivalent to “Our gathering together in him,” 2 Thess. ii. 1),
“In the presence of all his peopled
This is twice declared (ver. 1 4 and 1 8), in peculiar language —
“/ mil pay my vows to the Lord, Tea, I will in presence of all his people; (or, in presence of — let me do
it — all his people.) Precious fare theyj in the sight of the Lord; Even the death which belongs to his saints.^’ (V^^D^^ nmn)
This last line of the verse is quite peculiar. The word for death is peculiar, corresponding, as we noticed before, to the Greek vixuaig (like nniQri in Psalm lxxix. 11), while it cannot be construed with ■lp “precious,” because of the gender. We may, therefore, connect the “precious” with “his people” (as we find in Psa. lxxii. 14, Isa. xlii 4), and may understand the next clause as a declaration that even such suffering, such death-like pangs, are no proof that Jehovah has forgotten his people — “even in regard to their death-like suffering, they are precious in his eyes.”* Everything that concerns his people is of interest to him, every hair of their head is numbered. With his eye on such a passage as this, well might Paul rapturously exclaim — “All things are yours, the world, life, death!” (1 Cor. iii. 22, 23.) Shall not all this bind me to thee? “I am thy servant.” Who shall separate me from the love of God? Hallelujah. (Ver. 19.) Such is
The Redeemer’s Resurrection-song of Thanksgiving.
There is a simpler way of overcoming the difficulty. It is to take ■1p>
as the noun (neglecting the masoretic pointing), and punctuate it “)p“>,” price,
honour, glory,” as in Joh xxviii. 10, Dan. vii. 14. We might then render the verse, —
“A precious thing in the sight of the Lord
Is the death which befalls his saints.”
Connection
850 PSALM CXVIL — CALL ON THE CONGREGATION FOR PRAISE.