Psalm XI

To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.

1 IN the Lord put I my trust: — how say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to

your mountain?

2 For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon

the string, That they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.

3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

4 The Lord is in his holy temple! the Lord’s throne is in heaven: His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the children of men.

5 The Lord trieth the righteous.

But the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.

6 Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, — fire and brimstone, and an horrible

tempest:
This shall be the portion of their cup.

7 For the righteous Lord loveth righteousness; his countenance doth behold the upright.

The tone and The combatants at the Lake Thrasymene are said to have been

Psalm. SO engrossed with the conflict, that neither party perceived the

convulsions of nature that shook the ground —

“An earthquake reeled unheedingly away,
None felt stern nature rocking at his feet.”

From a nobler cause, it is thus with the soldiers of the Lamb. They believe, and, therefore, make no haste; nay, they can scarcely be said to feel earth’s convulsions as other men, because their eager hope presses forward to the issue at the advent of the Lord.

“In the Lord I have put my trust: — how say ye to my soul, Flee, sparrows, to your hill.” (Sneeringly referring to Zion-hill. Eorsley)

They have taken up their position, and who shall ever drive them from it? They refer to a two-fold ground of alarm presented to their thoughts by the foe.

“For lo! the wicked bend their bow, They place their arrow upon the string To shoot privily at the upright in heart. For (^3) the foimdations are destroyed! The righteous, what can he do?” The enemy may thus array his terrors, as if the Lord’s host were a partridge on the mountains. (1 Sam. xxvi. 20.) There is a sneer at Mount Zion, in ver. 1 it has been suggested; but the words may as well mean, they have their secure resort, their Zoar mountain (Gen. xix. 17), on which they shall stand and see the rain of “snares, fire, and brimstone” on these men of Sodom (ver. 6); their Judean mountain, where they shall be safe when the abomination of desolation appears (Matt. xxiv. 16). It is this — the Lord himself. Though all the pillars of social and religious order were destroyed, still — “The Lord is in his holy temple; The Lord’s throne is in heaven t”

The enemy has not reached up to this fortress; he has not shaken this sure defence.* On the other hand, the Lord is preparing to make a sortie in behalf of his own. He is surveying, in preparation for this burst of judgment.

“His eyes behold” — Nay, more, he is in the position of one who contracts his eyebrows and fixes his eyelids in order to discern accurately the mark he aims at;

“His eyelids try the children of men.
The Lord tneth the righteous”

And the result is interposition in behalf of his own; for in the trial he discovers the difference between the principles of the two hostile parties, and now makes it known: —

“The wicked, and him that loveth violence, his soul hateih. Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire, and brimstone: And an horrible tempest (a wrath-wind) shall be thepmiion of their cup.’’’

All that came upon Sodom and Gomorrah shall be realized at the Lord’s appearing “in flaming fire,” (2 Thess. i. 8). At the very time, perhaps, when men imagine they have got the righteous in their snares, the Lord comes and his net is spread over them; his “STiare” suddenly starts up (Luke xxi. 35) and they are taken; caught unexpectedly in a net whose meshes they can never break; seized by the hands of the living God, and doomed to “the vengeance of eternal fire,” as the “portion of their cup.” It is the measured, just, and due amount of wrath for their sins; for it is called a cup-portion,

* “Shall the pillars be brangled,” says Leighton somewhere, “because of the swarms of flies upon tbcm?”

PSALM XI. — FAITH UNDER APPARENT DISASTER.

“Ne quid praeter modum atque mensuram, vel in ipsis peccatorum suppliciis per divinam providentiam fieri arbitremur.” (August.) All this proceeds from the rectitude of Jehovah’s character: —

“For righteous is the Lord; he loveth righteousness; His countenance doth behold the upright.’” His righteousness sees it meet thus to visit the ungodly with a Sodom-doom; and on the other hand, to look with favour on his Abrahams at Mamre, and no longer “hide himself,” as in Psalm X, 4. It is somewhat remarkable that in ver. 7 the Hebrew uses the plural for “His countenance.” Critics are content to call this use of iD’’]3Z), “their countenance,” by the name pluralis majestatis; and to say that it may express perfection, or greatness, in Him of whom it is used. But if we admit of a reference to the Trinity in Gen. i. 26, why not here? The countenance of the Godhead — Godhead in all its fulness — each person of the Godhead — shall give a look of delighted approval. “With a countenance full of paternal affection he beholds them in the midst of their sorrows, until, admitted through mercy to the glory from which he excludes the wicked, they behold that countenance which has always beheld them.” (Home.)

Our Lord might sicg this Psalm at Bethany on such occasions as that mentioned in Luke xiii. 81, 32, when they came and said, “Get thee out hence, for Herod will kill thee.” And he has left it for us, that we may use it, as no doubt David used it when it was first given to the Church, in times of danger and threatening. Dr AUix would apply it specially to the Church after she fled into the wilderness; comparing ver. 2, with Rev. xiii. ] 4. It applies with almost equal fulness to all these cases, and yet also to an individual believer’s case when tempted, like that good man who said, “Sirs, it is a great thing - to believe that there is a God!” It exhibits to us —

The Righteous One’s faith under apparent disaster.