Psalm XXXI
To the Chief Musician, A Psahn of David.
1 In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust!
Let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.
2 Bow down thine ear to me; deliver me speedily:
Be thou my strong rock, for an house of defence to save me.
3 For thou art ray rock and my fortress;
Therefore for thy name’s sake lead me, and guide me.
4 Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my
strength.
5 Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord
God of truth.
6 I have hated them that regard lying vanities: but I trust in the Lord.
7 I will be glad and rejoice in thy mercy:
For thou hast considered my trouble. Thou hast known my soul in adversities;
* Tlioliick, and many others, understand “my soul” by ‘’my glory.”
8 And hast not shut me up into the hand of the enemy: thou hast set my
feet in a large room.
9 Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am in trouble:
Mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly. 10 For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing:
My strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones arc consumed. Ill was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours. And a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me.
12 I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.
13 For I have heai’d the slander of many: fear was on every side:
While they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.
14 But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my God.
15 My times are in thy hand!
Deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.
16 Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies’ sake.
17 Let me not be ashamed, 0 Lord; for I have called upon thee: Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave.
18 Let the lying lips be put to silence;
Which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous.
19 Uh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that
fear thee; Which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!
20 Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man: Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.
21 Blessed be the Lord! for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness in
a strong city.
22 For I said in my haste, I am cut off” from before thine eyes I Nevertheless thou heardest the voice of my supplications when 1 cried
unto thee.
23 O love the Lord, all ye his saints:
For the Lord preserveth the faithful, and plentifully rewardcth the proud doer.
24 Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope
in the Lord.
Christ and his The Head and his members are here. The Head said (ver. 8),
nieiiibei’s..
in the hour when He gave up the ghost, “Into thy hands 1 commit my spirit!” And how often have his members taken up his words, from the days of Stephen to Huss, and from the days of Huss to this hour.
Safety in the hands of the living God, and only there, is the The theme, theme of this plaintive Psalm; safety in life as well as in death; safety from the enemies’ snares, and from all adversity, from giief and reproach, from calumny and contempt, from personal despondency as well as from the pressure of outward adversity. David needed his theme, the true David needed it yet more, and his followers will not cease to need it till verse nineteenth be realised in all its vastness.
“0 lioio great is thy goodness, icliich thoic hast laid up for them that fear thee!”
They get at present (like Joseph’s brethren) their ass-loads of the fine wheat from this granary; but they shall yet stand amidst it, and “fear” (Isa. Ix. 8) because of the very immensity of it.
In verse 6, there is an emphatic pronoun, lii, q. d. unlike si.cciai clauses. those who regard lying vanities, /, for my part, trust in the Lord. In verse 8, the “large room” seems to be God’s unbounded love, wide like a plain that stretches fai- beyond our ken. The complaint in verse 1 1 resembles Lament, iv. 15, where the people are represented as treating exiled Israel as a leper, “Depart ye, unclean; depart, depart; touch not” and forcing them to flee away ;* and verse 12 reminds us of Job on his dunghill, inasmuch as the “broken vessel” is just a potsherd, like what he took to scrape himself withal. But verse 22 contains an expression which is worth dwelling upon, as it occurs Patsover-habte. again in Psalm cxvi. 1 1. It is the expression, “In my haste, “•TSni The words, HTSn occur in 2 Sam iv. 4, used of Mephibosheth’s nurse making haste to flee when she heard the evil tidings of Jonathan slain on Gilboa. In Psalm xlviii. 6, the verb is used of the gathered kings making haste to flee away; and in 1 Sam. xxiii. 26, of David making haste to get out of Saul’s way. It is never used of impatience, or heat of spirit, or irritation, or excited temper; it always refers to speedy
* Here Augustine has a note applicable to this hour: “Dice vobis, fratres moi; incipe, quicunque me audit, vivere quomodo Christianus, et vide si non tibi ohjiciatur et a Christianis, sed nomine, non vita, non moribus.’”
t Fry goes far wrong here, speaking of “Hurry of mind, and confusion; and a moment of despair;” Hengstenberg gives it the sense of “rapid flight;” Alexander, “terror;” Horsley, “consternation;” Street, “affright.”
all
108 PSALM XXXI. — THE RIGHTEOUS, THOUGH FORLORN,
movement from one locality to another. But specially it is to be noticed, the cognate word ]iTSrT is used regarding the haste in which they were to eat the passover: thus Exod. xii Jl, “Ye shall eat it in haste;” Deut. xvi, 3, “Thou camest out of the land in haste;” and Isa. lii. 12, foretelling the reverse of this, “Ye shall not go forth in haste.” From all this, we infer that in the passage before us, the reference of the Psalmist is not to anything else than passover-haste. His words are to this effect: “” I said when I was like a passover-man, hastening out of Egypt, i.e., when I felt my condition to be that of one who must make haste to leave a people that had cast him out.” Left in this condition, I was ready to say, “1 am cut off” (ver. 22), even as Israel at the Eed Sea. We come to the same conclusion, if we suppose the Psalmist refer to such circumstances of danger, and almost of despair, as are referred to when the radical word is used in 1 Sam. xxiii. 26. I’nipiietic In verses 17, 18, we hear the prayer of the Head and his
members for the overthrow of the ungodly, the language of which, as well as the reference to the same in verse 20, reminds us irresistibly of words that occur in the prophecy of Enoch, In this Psalm (as Horsley suggests), the voice from the oracle declares their doom to be,
“They shall be motionless in hell!
Let lying lips be put to silence,
Which speak grievous tilings,
Proudly and contemptuously,
Against Ihe righteous.”
In Enoch’s prophecy we find the foundation of his cry; and inasmuch as Enoch’s prophecy was known in the Church in David’s time, would it not comfort the Lord’s saints then, and the Lord himself when He came? —
“Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly
among them. Of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed. And of all their hard speeches Which ungodly sinners have sfpokeii against Him.” (Judc 14.)
To this expected interposition, the response given is in verses 19, 20, “Oh how great is th;/ r/oodness /” wherein we are re-Kiiocli’s l)roi)hecy minded of the Lord’s granary of goodness, or love, and receive a promise of being hid ‘’from the strife 0/ tongues.” Verses 21, 22, contain the grateful acknowledgment —
“Blessed be the Lord I for he has sheicn ine marvellous love!” In a strong ciiy;” (?”. e., bringing me into his fortress).
This “strong city” is a contrast to the “hasty flight” of verse 22, when he thought he must surely perish.
But again, in verse 23, the delivered one speaks; “The Lord keeps the D“‘yD^i faithfulnesses,” i. e., his promises; and then makes reference to the “plentiful reward” of wrath on the wicked at the Lord’s Coming, even as verse 19 told of the abundant reward of His own yet to come. In prospect of that day, his saints are exhorted to persevere (ver. 24); and it is in some measure with a reference to the glory coming that they are called by the name, “Ye that hope in the Lord.” Both now, however in a present evil world, and in the hour of death, and in the end when glory is revealed, the saints are safe, even as was their Head. This is the burden of this song of Zion —
The Righteous, though forlorn, safe and blest in the hand of the living God.