Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 23:6

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

6. Surely ] Or, as R.V. marg., only. Nothing but goodness and mercy shall pursue me. What a contrast to the lot of the wicked man, pursued by the angel of judgment (Psa 35:6), hunted by calamity (Psa 140:11).

And I will dwell ] The text as it stands would mean, and I will return [to dwell] in the house of the Lord. But a comparison of Psa 27:4 leaves no doubt that we should read shibht or regard shabht as an exceptional form for it, and explain, and my dwelling shall be &c. Clearly the words are to be understood figuratively, and not of actual residence within the precincts of the temple. Cp. Psa 36:8.

for ever ] Lit. for length of days. The blessing of long life (Psa 21:4) is crowned by the still greater blessing of the most intimate fellowship with God.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me – God will bestow them upon me. This is the result of what is stated in the previous verses. The effect of Gods merciful dealings with him had been to lead his mind to the assurance that God would always be his shepherd and friend; that He would never leave him to want.

All the days of my life – Through all its changes; in every variety of situation; until I reach its close. Life indeed would end, and he does not venture to conjecture when that would be; but as long as life should continue, he felt confidently assured that everything needful for him would be bestowed upon him. The language is the utterance of a heart overflowing with joy and gratitude in the recollection of the past, and full of glad anticipation (as derived from the experience of the past) in regard to the future.

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever – Margin, as in Hebrew: to length of days. The expression, I think, does not refer to eternity or to heaven, but it is parallel with the former expression All the days of my life; that is, he would dwell in the house of the Lord as long as he lived – with the idea added here, which was not in the former member of the sentence, that his life would be long, or that he hoped and anticipated that he would live long on the earth. The phrase used here, I will dwell in the house of the Lord, is one that is several times employed in the Psalms as indicative of the wish of the psalmist. Thus, in Psa 27:4, One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. Psa 26:8, lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honor dwelleth. Psa 65:4, blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts.

Psa 84:4, blessed are they that dwell in thy house. (Compare also Psa 87:1, Psa 87:3,10). The language here is obviously taken from the employment of those who had their habitation near the tabernacle, and afterward the temple, whose business it was to attend constantly on the service of God, and to minister in his courts. We are not to suppose of David that he anticipated such a residence in or near the tabernacle or the house of God; but the meaning is, that he anticipated and desired a life as if he dwelt there, and as if he was constantly engaged in holy occupations. His life would be spent as if in the constant service of God; his joy and peace in religion would be as if he were always within the immediate dwelling-place of the Most High. This expresses the desire of a true child of God. He wishes to live as if he were always engaged in solemn acts of worship, and occupied in holy things; he desires peace and joy in religion as if he were constantly in the place where God makes his abode, and allowed to partake of his smiles and friendship. In a very important sense it is his privilege so to live even on earth; it will certainly be his privilege so to live in heaven: and, full of grateful exultation and joy, every child of God may adopt this language as his own, and say confidently, Goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life here, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever, for heaven, where God dwells, will be his eternal home.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Psa 23:6

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.

A good mans thoughts in his old age

The Psalm itself consists of two pictures–what we call the shepherd, and what we should not err in calling the king. Both have to do with character, spiritual character, relation to God. They may apply to other things, national or ecclesiastical, but here is their chief intent. The poem supposes the man who speaks to have spiritual life in him, and the good man thus utters his confidence in the protection and in the care of that God under whose loving fatherhood he has been brought on his way. In the second part of the Psalm we have another figure–a different sort of allegory altogether. It refers, perhaps, to a more advanced stage of the Christian life. I call this parable the king. And it reminds us of the certain king who made a marriage supper for his son. It tells of man made a partaker of the Divine nature, and coming into intimate communion with God. And all tells of the richness, variety, and depth of the souls satisfactions in such communion. And then comes the good mans utterance of his subjective feelings after taking this review of life. Reasoning from the past to the future, he says, Because Thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice. By just giving a little turn to the, last expression of the text I see three things–

1. Firm faith. Shall follow me. Goodness and mercy. These are just the two things into which Gods beneficence, generally considered, naturally divides itself. Goodness to creatures; mercy to sinful creatures. An angel is the object of one; man of both. The good man says, I have needed both; I have had both all my days, and surely they shall follow me all my days.

2. There is also the idea of settled purpose. Shall follow me. By daily habits of devotion, by the culture of a child-like faith, by holy familiarity with Divine things, I will seem to myself to be constantly engaged in Gods service.

3. Then comes the assurance of expectation and hope. I will dwell in the house of the Lord. We take the faith and feeling of the man to expand and enlarge, till they embrace the great and ultimate future of the life that is to be, and he says, I feel that I have been led onwards to that. These capacities and affections of mine, the stirring of a spiritual life within me, were never made to find their perfection here. I carry within myself, in my own religious consciousness, a prophecy, an earnest of something greater than the life that now is.

4. Observe the beautifulness and the blessedness of a Christian old age. Age is a thing that may be very beautiful. It is when the hoary head is a crown of glory, being found in the way of righteousness–when there are no marks upon the countenance of extinct volcanoes, dark shadows from wrought-out passions, impressions of darkness and crime, but when the life has been spent for God. It is, if I am not mistaken, Scougal–the author of that little book The Life of God in the Soul of Man–takes a review of life, looks back upon its prominent events, its afflictions and its trials, and upon his inward experience, and ends all by saying, I am this day such and such an age, and I bless God that ever I was born. Voltaire does just the same thing as to the review, but with a totally different result. In one of his books you may find a review of his life. The querulous old man puts together all that he had gone through, finds it dark and disappointing, and concludes by saying, I am this day so and so, and I wish that I had never been born. There is the difference! I thank God, says the one, that ever I was born, because he can take the 23rd Psalm, and in the 23rd Psalm he can read the history of his inward life. And the other man, though he had great ability and great genius, and had a long and wonderful life, which, however, nobody would say, or pretend to say, that he spent it in walking with God, he says, I wish that I had never been born. Poor man!–they smothered him with flowers and killed him with fame–and it came to this! And the last thought is, that the best way to be able to end life with an utterance like this is to begin it well. (Thomas Binney.)

The believers security and confidence

I. To David the events of life were displays of Gods goodness and mercy. To some, in view of Davids life, this seems an exaggeration. Such an opinion must, however, be founded upon either erroneous or defective views of the nature of Gods special providence, or on ignorance and misapprehension of the objects to which that providence is directed. Gods special providence implies that he exercises a controlling influence over all our actions, they being to a certain extent determined as being the necessary effects of mans constitution and circumstances combined, and which God has formed, appointed, and arranged. He has always some definite object in view. If that object be to promote mans happiness, then it will follow that all the events of his life will tend, directly or indirectly, to that end. It is necessary to settle what happiness consists in, or at least what is the test of its existence and degree. In the constitution of things the decree of God has established an immutable connection between happiness and holiness, and that consequently the degree of holiness furnishes a certain test of the degree of happiness. Mans nature is in itself most unholy, entirely alienated from God, and devoted to sense and sin. How are they to be roused from lethargy and really impressed with Divine truths? Calamities and misfortunes are the means God uses. These are well fitted to make the truths of the existence and moral government of God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, really effective truths. No doubt affliction often fails to produce permanent good results, but this fact only aggravates the mans condemnation. Even moral evils and sins may be made instrumental in the promotion of the same great objects. We do not palliate or excuse moral offences on the ground of the good account to which they may be turned, for this would be to act on the principle of the end sanctifying the means. For if a man whose ordinary conduct is respectable has, through the force of hidden corruption, been led into any open and unquestionable violation of morality, it may, by the blessing of God, be made the means of producing a useful and salutary result, by rousing into action natural conscience, by inspiring suspicion and alarm, and by leading to serious conviction. Even to unconverted persons moral transgressions may be of great use in leading them to God.

II. In what circumstances, or by what persons, this statement may be properly made. No one can expect goodness and mercy to follow him save in virtue of Gods promises. It is a fearful doctrine, but clearly stated in Scripture with regard to many individuals of the human race, that, so far from goodness and mercy following them all the days of their life, everything that He gives them seems only the more to estrange them from God and goodness. This is just a statement of a fact; and if such persons believe that the dispensations of Gods providence with reference to them are intended to cause goodness and mercy to follow them all the days of their life, or that they will in fact do so, they are labouring under a fatal delusion. Before, then, any person is entitled to assert, with reference to his own afflictions, that God does everything for the best, and to apply this as a ground of comfort and consolation to himself, he must not only love God, but know and be convinced that God loves him. It is really astonishing to see how very seldom, in a professing Christian country, this question is seriously entertained, and on what slight and trivial grounds men are contented to take it for granted that all is safe with them. No one loves God but a true Christian, because nothing will produce love to God but the belief of the Gospel; and of course, it is the belief of the Gospel that makes a man a Christian. (W. Cunningham, D. D.)

The evidence of things not seen

We cannot–no one can, not the profoundest philosopher tell what life is, but we know that it is fed from without. And the higher the form of existence the more of external help it requires in order to its proper development. See this in plant life, in animal life, in human life. And this last needs most of all. And abundant supply is forthcoming for it, real, wholesome, beautiful satisfaction. In this last verse of the Psalm David gives utterance to a grand assurance and anticipation concerning the life that now is. He should not want. Goodness and mercy would follow him all the days of his life. Hence what could he do but pour out his thankfulness unto the Lord, in the courts of the Lords house, in the presence of all His people? He tells us that goodness and mercy are special marks of Gods dealings with men. Let us think of them.

I. Goodness. Good and God in Anglo-Saxon are the same word. Goodness or Goriness, an element of Gods nature. There is none good but One, said Jesus, that is God. It is simply impossible for Him ever to decree or wish to do anything evil. Ill will or bad purpose on His part is inconceivable.

II. Mercy. This also is characteristic of the Divine relation to man. In giving this emphatic testimony to the nobleness of mercy David does but voice the dearest assurances of the human heart concerning the omnipotence of love. God is good, and therefore He must be merciful. He could not else be good. He has bound Himself by His own promise to be merciful and forgiving. Hence it is said, If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to, etc. No wonder, then, that David felt so secure when thinking of the future. (George Bainton.)

Goodness and mercy

This text refers to the time when Absalom had risen in rebellion, and David had been driven to seek refuge in Mahanaim. Retribution had been following on his track with feet shod with wool, and he was now only reaping what he had sown in an alienated people and a rebellious son. But the light of heaven shone through the darkness in ntis soul, for at the same time he felt himself compassed about with a sense of deliverance. Goodness and mercy were following him to make reparation for his evil days. God gave him back the faith of his childhood. The idea is a beautiful one, the idea of Gods mercy outrunning our necessities; but in our deeper moods we feel we need it to follow us. We need God for our yesterdays as much as for our tomorrows, for our rereward as much as for our leader. Not as an American Indian pursuing his enemy to the death; not like an avenger of blood, in his awful vendetta, on the track of the manslayer: but as a healer of the wounds we have inflicted He comes, to neutralise the consequence of our folly, ignorance, and sin; to separate us from the debasing associations of sin, and to give us a sense of recovered freedom. The consequences of our sins may be transformed into sources of joy and fruitfulness by the precious alchemy of grace. The disappointments of earth may become the appointments of heaven. To us goodness and mercy are no abstract qualities; we have them personified in Gods Son. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)

The goodness of God following man

I. The blessings here anticipated. Goodness and mercy.

1. Goodness. The goodness of God is a most delightful and animating theme; it touches every chord of the Christians heart. How great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for the children of men.

2. Mercy. Pardoning mercy. Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, etc. Protecting mercy. The good man has his difficulties and dangers. Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance, etc. Sustaining mercy. Amid holy enterprises, spiritual conflicts, arduous duties, severe afflictions, trying bereavements, God has sustained His saints. Supplying mercy. My God shall supply all your need out of His riches in glory by Jesus Christ. But we are prone to look on the dark side of His providence, and to ask, with the murmuring Israelites, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness?

II. The manner of its conveyance. Shall follow me. As the mothers eye and hand follow her little one as he makes his first wobbling attempt to toddle alone; as the needle follows the lodestone; as the water out of the rock followed the Israelites through the desert; as the pillar of glory went with them by night and by day: so goodness and mercy shall follow the faithful, in the closet, in the family, in the church, in the world. It shall follow incessantly, supply fully, solace richly, sustain powerfully, pass with him through the Jordan, and enter with him the bright portals of glory. Here we have–

1. The continuance of it. All the days of my life–that is, all my life long–even to the last.

2. The certainty of it. Surely, etc. Hath He promised, and shall He not bring it to pass? As sure as you need it, you shall have it; as sure as you require it, you shall realise it: It shall come seasonably at the best time, in the wisest manner, and from the most unexpected quarter. Its certainty is founded upon the Divine existence; its communication upon Divine veracity; its possession is the fruit of immutable, unwavering, undying love. Surely, etc.

III. The consummation of it. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Conclusion–

1. Learn to be grateful. Beware of sinking into the vortex of selfishness, and burying your mercies in the grave of forgetfulness.

2. Learn to be trustful.

3. Learn to be active. If you have the pledge that goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life, should not those days be spent for the glory of Him–whose you are, and whom you serve? Work while it is day. (John Woodcock.)

Behind and before

The Psalmist is looking at his yesterdays. He is gazing at the panorama of his past life. You know how sometimes we come to a corner of the road in the journey of life which brings the whole of our past way vividly before us. Perhaps we are laid aside by sickness, and in the time of seclusion the memory wanders back and retreads the path of the years. Or maybe we are standing by the open grave of a comrade whose path has run close by our own; our memory tugs us backward, and our past life opens out before us in marvellous clearness and intensity. Or sometimes a little commonplace incident unlocks the doors of the past, and in vivid recollection we pass through all its rooms. Now, when we are compelled to look back at the past of our life, how does it look? Gazed at with unprejudiced vision, with nothing to make us morally colour blind, how does it all appear? To the Psalmist, as he recalled the way he had come, it appeared to be one long unbroken path of failure and sin. His path was marked as the path of a snail or a slug over some tender plant, which leaves behind it the slime of its own passage. The retrospect oppressed him–yesterday became the burden of today. And is not that so with all who seriously think, with all who solemnly estimate the tenour and quality of their days? The retrospect becomes oppressive; they cannot comfortably recount the detailed stories of their lives. There are some whose burden is tomorrow. Their fear and their anxiety centre on the morrow. They want an angel to go before them to prepare their way. But I think that where there is one soul burdened with the fear of tomorrow, there are many burdened with the fear of yesterday. The burden of conscience never comes from tomorrow; it is rolled up from our yesterdays. It is not prospect, but retrospect, that lays the heaviest weight on the heart. And now to a soul so oppressed there comes this beautiful thought of God contained in my text, Goodness and mercy shall follow me. Goodness and mercy shall follow me, shall come on after me and wipe away that slimy track. I think that is a very gracious and inspiring thought. A God in our rear. A Father coming up behind. Goodness and mercy following us. You have seen the sands at a popular watering place cut and dug by a thousand hands and feet, littered with paper and all kinds of refuse, and befouled in a hundred ways. Then rolls up the tide, and the refuse is buried in its bosom, and all the unevennesses are smoothed away. It is even so with those sands of time, the sands of past years, in which we have left the track of our sins; the tidal waves of Divine goodness and mercy roll up, and the, unseemly track may be smoothed away. Goodness and mercy shall follow me. Suppose it had been, Justice shall follow me, avenging justice, cold unsympathetic law. If justice were to follow even the best of us, our hearts would shake with fear. It is not even Righteousness shall follow me, but goodness. There is something rich in the very word. Goodness shall follow me, and mercy. Grapes with the bloom on. Goodness in surpassing sweetness and beauty. Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Can you think of anything fitter in expression, anything that could more tenderly unfold the nature of the God who comes in the rear of our life? I have blotted them out like a thick cloud. Do you see the force of the figure? You are going along the dry and glaring road, and you stir up the dust, and it flies like a thick cloud in your rear. And God says that as we go along the way of life we stir up clouds of sin, and He blots them out. As John Bunyan says, He sprinkles upon it the water of grace, and the dust is laid. Is not this just what we all need? But there is something more than this. Goodness and mercy shall follow me not only to blot out our sins, but to gather up the fragments of our goodness. We want a God in our rear who will pick up the fragments–bits of good resolution, stray thoughts, stray prayers, beginnings of heroism, little kindnesses, all the broken bits of goodness, all the mites, the forgotten jewels–to gather all the fragments so that nothing be lost. Goodness and mercy shall follow me, and shall miss nothing; the God who follows us is like unto a woman, who lost one piece of silver, and who lit a candle and swept the house and sought diligently till she found it. It was this great conception of a good and merciful God in the rear which converted a gloomy retrospect into a glorious hone Our Father is behind us, goodness and mercy follow us; let us leave our yesterdays trustfully to Him. But now in the second part of my text the Psalmist turns himself round from retrospect to prospect. He turns from a contemplation of the past to a contemplation of the future. What is his idea of futurity? I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Well, you say, there is nothing peculiarly glorious or definite about the conception. Stay a little. Before you can estimate the quality of anyones heaven you must know their condition on earth. Our hopes about tomorrow are very largely shaped and coloured by our condition today. Look at the Psalmists position. When this Psalm was composed he was a wanderer, exiled from the peace and blessedness of his own home. All our conceptions of the future are formed in a similar way. No two of us have precisely the same conception. The special bliss we anticipate is shaped out of our special burden now. Go down to our coast and speak to some old fishermans wife,whose husband and sons have all been lost in the deep, and ask her what in her loneliness is her conception of heaven, and would you wonder if to her one of the preeminent glories of the place is this, There shall be no more sea? Go to some invalid who is held by some chronic disease, ask her what is her conception of heaven, and would you wonder if to her one of the great glories of the place is this, There shall be no more pain? And all the anticipations are true. Every mans present need discovers one of the glories of the future. It takes all our different needs to discover the glory and sufficiency of the things prepared for us. We all need this tug of the future, the tug of the days that are to be. We can only get out of the deep ruts of today by the powerful tug of tomorrow. Life grows heavy and stagnant when tomorrow ceases to pull, when the forever has lost its power. Present burdens grow light in the strength of the forever. Present homelessness can be almost cheerfully endured when in its coldness the Psalmist can sing, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. (J. Jowett, M. A.)

Goodness and mercy behind us

The ugly things that are lying in wait for us sometimes, when we are wholly at rest and quiet, like ambuscades towards which, all blindly, gay troopers ride, carolling love ditties or exchanging jests, and are suddenly cut down. How, sometimes, ugly things have lurked in our path, big with sorrow for us, that could have been so easily avoided, and would have been had we only known. But we knew not, we suspected not, and were allowed to go forward lightly, as though we were going to receive a boon instead of a crushing blow. Occasionally, indeed, we are visited and disturbed before some tragic misfortune with an unaccountable anticipation of evil to which we refuse to listen, shaking it off determinedly, and thrusting it from us, and it has seemed to us afterwards as if a guardian angel had been trying to save us, and, striving in vain, had been obliged to leave us to our fate. But in the case of each of us, how close we have often been, doubtless, without perceiving it, to calamities which yet were spared us; that drew very nigh while we heard no sound of their footfall beside us, and all but touching us, passed harmlessly by. And may we not say that goodness and mercy are frequently following us to our salvation from threatening mischief in the truer thoughts, the better feelings, that start up behind our frequent false inclinings, and prevail against them, in the wiser mind that presently awakes to arrest and scatter the foolish; in the wohlesomer heart that rises to check the unhealthy. From what degradation we have been snatched once and again upon the brink of which we were tottering; as we lingered and leaned ready to slide, there was that from within which laid hold on and drew us back. Or suppose that in certain moods of ours, in certain moments of passion or soul relaxation, opportunity had occurred–as with some in like moods and moments it has occurred to their undoing, to their headlong plunge into baseness or crime–how different matters might have been with us today! How much of what would be termed our virtue seems to us, when we reflect, to have been but a providential hindering of our inclination towards, and our ripeness for, what would have been the very opposite of virtue! We have been guarded and hedged in to preservation from ourselves. Can you not say, on looking back, that here and there, in this and that crisis, it was as though God had been our rearward, warding off from us devastation and havoc that threatened? True, every day bears upon it the fruit of yesterdays sowing, yet have we not felt, when enduring the judgment of some previous mistake or misdeed, that the judgment was tempered with mercy–that it is not so severe as it might have been expected to be? Yes, while the iniquities and inequities of the past are laid upon us, we are constrained to acknowledge often that they might well have burdened us more heavily than they do. They are not upon us to the uttermost; there are withholdings–there are abatements, as though a gracious power were keeping them back from us in part. (S. A. Tipple.)

God following His people

That God may follow His people with these many ways, either in respect of–

1. His intention and affection.

2. His assistance and preservation.

3. His concurrence and augmentation.

4. Evidence and manifestation. (O. Sedgwick, B. D.)

The pilgrims rearguard, goodness and mercy

John Condor, afterwards D.D., was born at Wimple, in Cambridgeshire, 3rd June 1714. His grandfather, Richard Condor, kissed him, and with tears in his eyes, said, Who knows what sad days these little eyes are likely to see? Dr. Condor remarked, upon mentioning the above circumstances, These eyes have, for more than sixty years, seen nothing but goodness and mercy follow me and the Churches of Christ even to this day.

Goodness and mercy following to repair

Goodness and mercy pursues to repair the ravages sin has wrought. Nature follows the footsteps of man, and strives to obliterate the ravages she causes. The blasted rocks that have been exposed on the hillside she soon plants with the serf-sown trees and shrubs and hides their deformity. The stone wall which in its newness and rawness looks such a discordant feature in the landscape she subdues by the grey colouring and soft tenderness of her lichens and mosses into beautiful harmony with surrounding scenery. Similarly do goodness and mercy work; but they are now no longer abstract qualities, for they have been personified in the Son of Man.

Goodness and mercy

I. At once these words goodness and mercy attract our attention. It was goodness and mercy that led us first out of the fold, with an aim and object in life. There was goodness and mercy in that shelter from the noontide heat. But low it is goodness and mercy all the days of my life. We owe a good deal to the grace that comes after; the grace that only gives us the wish to do what is right, not only the grace that starts us and helps us in what is right, but also the grace which helps us to finish. Here is that striking characteristic of the love of God Almighty which comes, out in all His dealings with us, namely, its completeness. Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. Creative love, which placed man in the world, did not exhaust the goodness of God towards us: Redemptive love met him when he fell. And as if Redemptive love itself were not sufficient, Sanctifying love came in to fill up where Redemptive love seemed to lack. So it is with each single soul. God completes His work. And, indeed, we all need this following grace, this persistent love of God. Think how much misty and trouble come to us from past sins, attacking the heels of life. How many would faint and fail if Gods grace did not follow them! The glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward (Isa 58:8). Lord, we pray Thee that Thy grace may always prevent and follow us.

II. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. It is your hops and desire, and, please God, it will be your privilege, to dwell much in the house of the Lord. You will have frequently to go there, to plead the great Sacrifice. Day by day you will have to go into the Holy Place to offer the incense. It will be yours to kindle the lamp of a never-ceasing devotion, to place the Eucharistic Shewbread before the Lord. Make your life all temple, all part of the , the sacred enclosure. Enlarge it towards the east, where we look for our Saviours coming. Let it be a life of patient witness for God. Enlarge it towards the west, where the sun of our life is gently dipping towards the grave, in a life of preparedness. Enlarge it towards the north, on the frontier of Satan. Enlarge it towards the sunny south; take in many a piece of ground which is now covered by worldly occupations, business, or pleasure. I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This should be our aim, to attain to the realisation of the life hid with Christ in God; and to this God is separating us off, that our sojourn with Him may be eternal.

III. The house of the Lord forever. The days are coming when God Himself will measure the temple, His house, to see who are His, and who shall dwell in His tabernacle. It is the permanence of heaven that is one of its greatest joys in prospect. It is an abiding place, a mansion. There is no restoring there, no troubling there; no dark misty shade of death to chill the sunlight of the road. (W. C. E. Newbolt, M. A.)

I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.—

The Church as a home

This text simply means, I will have a home in the house of the Lord forever. Whatever temple or church or chapel stands to us for a centre or rallying place of our religions belief and life, we should cherish it as a sort of other home. Churches stand for the common brotherhood of all, and for kindness and helpfulness to all. What should be our relation to these Churches? A home that all value. We know what that means. We dont sit there all our time, but from thence we go forth to toil and struggle in the world. Then we return for lifes innermost peace and friendliness, reposefulness, and renewal. Just so it is when we make the Church into a home–a dwelling place, to use the Psalmists words. Thither we go for the inspiration, fellowship, and renewal of that deeper life in us; thither we go as children gathering about the feet of the Great Father, to feel His presence and to feel it altogether, and thence we go forth to do our busiest and highest part in the world. That is the use of the Church. Not to be always in it. That was the old monkish idea. They desired to make it a permanent sacred enclosure, where Gods saints might live out of the common world and so keep pure amid never-ceasing worship, or as nearly so as might be. But Christ teaches us a nobler idea, the idea of home and of active life in the world, and doing its work and busy in its interests; and religion, with a constant spirit setting up this other home of prayer and worship where we feel together peace, rest, refreshment, a common fellowship to the infinite life, and brotherhood to each other. So we renew life at the best part of it. Is it not true that the busier ones life and the more even its resting times are crowded with great interests, attractions, and engagements, the more is it necessary, in order to give the deeper, inner life a chance, to make a definite time and place for its development among lifes regular engagements and duties? That is what you do by setting yourselves to have a church home. Some people do not know what pleasure there is even in the mere joining with others in the church. It may not be much they may be able to do or to give, but their sympathy, their encouragement openly declared, towards those who are struggling to keep some little church home going, is in itself a help. Anyone who thus joins in that fellowship of religious life gives a certain added strength and cheer to the whole body. Everyone who thus says to some little group of worshippers, I am not much, but such as I am I am with you, helps them more than can be figured in any statistics. Himself!–That is the help I plead for, the help to oneself and the help to ones fellow creatures. Life needs this closer cohesion in its great thoughts and aims, this quiet home coming, as it were, of the single worshipper, this sense of having an anchorage in the midst of the wide, rushing stream of life. (Brooke Herford.)

The Christians dwelling place

This house of the Lord, observe, is on the other side of the valley of the shadow of death; and therefore it is just a description of heaven; and if the character of a shepherd sets forth the conduct of God towards His people while in this world, the character of a monarch sets forth His character towards them in the world to come.

I. The scene referred to. The house of the Lord.

1. Because it is the scene of His familiar glory.

2. Because it is the temple of His worship.

3. As it is the palace of His kingdom.

4. As it is the abode of His family.

II. The assurance expressed by the Psalmist. I will dwell in it.

1. This language implies the assurance, on his part, of the existence of a state of future blessedness. Reason says there must be such a state; conscience says there is such a state. Hence men often lull their conscience; but there it is–they cannot destroy it, and ever and anon conscience speaks like thunder. Like some chemical characters, in certain temperatures they are illegible; but raise the temperature and they appear in all their reality. But apart from these considerations, let us come to the revelation of the Bible. Jesus taught immortality: no one taught it as He did; no one preached it as He preached it. He said, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.

2. The extent of the Psalmists assurance. He says, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. He only sojourned in it here. Man is never satisfied here. There is quite enough here for the satisfaction of the animal; and the mere animal lives here in contentment, and takes its fill of happiness for its little inch of time. But not so man: man is a rational being. If he were a mere intellectual being, and nothing more, then he might dwell here. But man is not a mere intellectual being; he is a moral being, a spiritual being, and therefore he cannot dwell here. But in the house of the Lord, says David, I will dwell forever. I shall have enough there.

3. The Psalmists strong confidence of dwelling there forever. This confidence rests in the promise of God, the finished work of the Redeemer and the sealing of the Holy Ghost. Let this prospect reconcile us in the midst of all affliction, if we be Christians, and let us prepare for that dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. (Joseph E. Beaumont, M. D.)

The earthly and the heavenly sanctuary

I. The Church below. This leads us to speak of the Sabbath, when the church is most resorted to. The solemn setting apart of places for divine worship is not of human device, but possesses all the sanctions which can be derived from the known will of our Creator. And thus when we assemble ourselves in the church we bring ourselves into the position in which God hath declared that by those who seek acquaintance with Himself He shall be found, and we are looking in the channels through which it is especially promised.

II. The Church in heaven. But St. John says there is no temple in heaven. But what does that show but that men will be so changed there that churches such as we have known here will not be needed? You could not draw a richer picture of a regenerated earth than by just supposing such an extension of its Sabbaths as alone would render safe the removal of its churches. (Henry Melvill, B. D.)

Gods house the home of our hearts

Is our Fathers house so unwelcome and dreary a place that there can be any cause for keeping outside as long as the winds are gentle and the skies bright, and only going in when the rain comes and the clouds of night hang heavily in the heavens? Thank God, He does not refuse to let us in when we come to Him as our refuge in time of trouble; but it would surely be a better thing that He should be our dwelling place, the home of our hearts, when our joy is perfect, and not merely the asylum of our wretchedness. (R. W. Dale.)

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Psa 24:1-10

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 6. Goodness and mercy shall follow me] As I pass on through the vale of life, thy goodness and mercy shall follow my every step; as I proceed, so shall they. There seems to be an allusion here to the waters of the rock smitten by the rod of Moses, which followed the Israelites all the way through the wilderness, till they came to the Promised Land. God never leaves his true followers providential mercies gracious influences, and miraculous interferences, shall never be wanting when they are necessary. I will dwell in the house, veshabti, “and I shall RETURN to the house of the Lord,” for ever, leorech yamim, “for length of days.” During the rest of my life, I shall not be separated from God’s house, nor from God’s ordinances; and shall at last dwell with him in glory. These two last verses seem to be the language of a priest returned from captivity to live in the temple, and to serve God the rest of his life.

ANALYSIS OF THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM

The scope of this Psalm is to show the happiness of that man who has God for his protector, and is under his care and tuition.

To illustrate this protection, c., David proposes two allegories: the one of a shepherd the other of a free-hearted man given to hospitality, and entertaining his guests bountifully. It has two parts: the first sets forth, 1. God’s care in providing him with all necessaries, Ps 23:1-4. 2. His liberality in supplying him with all that he needed, Ps 23:5.

The second part shows his confidence in God’s grace, and his thankfulness, Ps 23:6.

I. He begins the first with this position, “God is my shepherd;” and upon it infers, “Therefore I shall not want.” He will do for me what a good shepherd will do for his sheep.

1. He will feed me in green pastures, Ps 23:2.

2. He will there provide for my safety: “He makes me to lie down.”

3. He will provide waters of comfort for me.

4. These waters shall be gently-flowing streams, still waters-not turbulent and violent.

5. He will take care to preserve me in health; if sick, he will restore me.

6. He goes before and leads me, that I may not mistake my way: “He leads me in paths of righteousness,” which is his love; for it is “for his name’s sake.”

7. He restores. If I err and go astray, and walk through the valley of the shadow of death, (for a sheep is a straggling creature,) I will fear no evil: for his rod and staff comfort me; his law and his Gospel both contribute to my correction and support.

Thus, as a good Shepherd, he supplies me with necessaries, that I want nothing: but over and above, as a bountiful Lord, he has furnished me copiously with varieties which may be both for ornament and honour.

1. He has prepared a table for me – and that in the presence of my enemies.

2. He hath anointed my head with oil, to refresh my spirits, and cheer my countenance.

3. And my cup runneth over – with the choicest wine he gladdens my heart.

II. The last verse, 1. Sets out David’s confidence that it shall be no worse with him: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

2. Then he expresses his thankfulness: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” In thy house, among the faithful, I will praise thy name as long as I live.

On each point in this analysis the reader is requested to consult the notes.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Goodness and mercy, i.e. Gods favour, and the blessed and comfortable effects and benefits of it.

Shall follow me; by which emphatical expression he signifies Gods admirable freeness and readiness to do good to his people, and his preventing them with blessings.

All the days of my life; which he justly concludes from the former instances of Gods favour to him because of the unchangeableness of Gods nature, and the stability of his covenant and promises. Whereas I have formerly been driven from Gods house, I rest assured that I shall now constantly enjoy that blessed privilege of serving and enjoying God in his sanctuary, which I prize more than all my dominions

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me,…. Either the free grace, love, favour, and mercy of God in Christ, which endures continually, and is always the same from everlasting to everlasting; or the effects of it; and these either temporal good things, which flow from the goodness and mercy of God, and not the merits of men; and which are in great mercy and loving kindness bestowed on his people, and which follow them: they do not anxiously seek after them; but seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness, these are added to them, they trusting in the Lord, and he caring for them: or spiritual good things, which arise from the mere grace and mercy of God; such as the blessings of the covenant, the sure mercies of David, the discoveries and instances of the love of God, and the provisions of his house, which follow them, being undeserving of them; and even when they have backslidden from the Lord, and in times of distress, when his grace is sufficient for them; and of all this the psalmist had a comfortable assurance, depending upon the promise of God, arguing from the blessings he had already bestowed, and from the constant care he takes of his people, having in view his unchangeableness and faithfulness, the firmness of his covenant, and the irreversibleness of the blessings of it: the words may be rendered “only goodness and mercy”, c. c nothing but mere mercy and kindness for though afflictions do attend the children of God, yet these are in mercy and love; there is no fury in the Lord against them; there is nothing comes in wrath to them, throughout the whole course of their lives; wherefore it is added,

all the days of my life; the mercies of God are new every morning, they continue all the day long; temporal goodness abides as long as life lasts, and ends with it; and spiritual blessings are for ever, they are the gifts of God, which are without repentance;

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever; which may denote his constant attendance on the public worship of God, of which he had been deprived in time past, being driven out from it, but now he enjoyed it, and believed he ever should; or it may design his being a member of the church of God, and a pillar in the house and temple of the Lord, that should never go out; see Re 3:12; or it may regard the assurance he had of dwelling in the house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens, Christ’s Father’s house, in which are many mansions, sure dwellings, and quiet resting places for his people, and that to all eternity. The Targum interprets it of the house of the sanctuary; and Kimchi expounds the whole verse in a petitionary way, “may goodness and mercy”, c.

c “nil nisi”, Junius & Tremellius “certe vel tantum”, Cocceius.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Foes are now pursuing him, but prosperity and favour alone shall pursue him, and therefore drive his present pursuers out of the field. , originally affirmative, here restrictive, belongs only to the subject-notion in its signification nil nisi (Psa 39:6, Psa 39:12; Psa 139:11). The expression is remarkable and without example elsewhere: as good spirits Jahve sends forth and to overtake David’s enemies, and to protect him against them to their shame, and that all his life long (accusative of continuance). We have now no need, in connection with our reference of the Psalm to the persecution under Absolom, either to persuade ourselves that is equivalent to Psa 27:4, or that it is equivalent to . The infinitive is logically inadmissible here, and unheard of with the vowel a instead of i , which would here (cf. on the other hand ) be confusing and arbitrary. Nor can it be shown from Jer 42:10 to be probable that it is contracted from , since in that passage signifies redeundo = rursus . The lxx, certainly, renders it by , as in 1Sa 12:2 by ; but (since so much uncertainty attaches to these translators and their text) we cannot draw a safe inference as to the existing usage of the language, which would, in connection with such a contraction, go out of the province of one verb into that of another, which is not the case with = in 2Sa 22:41. On the contrary we have before us in the present passage a constructio praegnans : “and I shall return ( perf. consec.) in the house of Jahve,” i.e., again, having returned, dwell in the house of Jahve. In itself might also even mean et revertam ad (cf. Psa 7:17; Hos 12:7), like , Psa 24:3, adscendere ad ( in ). But the additional assertion of continuance, (as in Psa 93:5; Lam 5:20, , root , extension, lengthening = length) favours the explanation, that is to be connected with the idea of , which is involved in as a natural consequence.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

6. Surely goodness and mercy. Having recounted the blessings which God had bestowed upon him, he now expresses his undoubted persuasion of the continuance of them to the end of his life. But whence proceeded this confidence, by which he assures himself that the beneficence and mercy of God will accompany him for ever, if it did not arise from the promise by which God is accustomed to season the blessings which he bestows upon true believers, that they may not inconsiderately devour them without having any taste or relish for them? When he said to himself before, that even amidst the darkness of death he would keep his eyes fixed in beholding the providence of God, he sufficiently testified that he did not depend upon outward things, nor measured the grace of God according to the judgment of the flesh, but that even when assistance from every earthly quarter failed him, his faith continued shut up in the word of God. Although, therefore, experience led him to hope well, yet it was principally on the promise by which God confirms his people with respect to the future that he depended. If it is objected that it is presumption for a man to promise himself a continued course of prosperity in this uncertain and changing world, I answer, that David did not speak in this manner with the view of imposing on God a law; but he hoped for such exercise of God’s beneficence towards him as the condition of this world permits, with which he would be contented. He does not say, My cup shall be always full, or, My head shall be always perfumed with oil; but in general he entertains the hope that as the goodness of God never fails, he will be favorable towards him even to the end.

I will dwell in the house of Jehovah. By this concluding sentence he manifestly shows that he does not confine his thoughts to earthly pleasures or comforts; but that the mark at which he aims is fixed in heaven, and to reach this was his great object in all things. It is as if he had said, I do not live for the mere purpose of living, but rather to exercise myself in the fear and service of God, and to make progress daily in all the branches of true godliness. He makes a manifest distinction between himself and ungodly men, who take pleasure only in filling their bellies with luxuriant fare. And not only so, but he also intimates that to live to God is, in his estimation, of so great importance, that he valued all the comforts of the flesh only in proportion as they served to enable him to live to God. He plainly affirms, that the end which he contemplated in all the benefits which God had conferred upon him was, that he might dwell in the house of the Lord. Whence it follows, that when deprived of the enjoyment of this blessing, he made no account of all other things; as if he had said, I would take no pleasure in earthly comforts, unless I at the same time belonged to the flock of God, as he also writes in another place,

“

Happy is that people that is in such a case: yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord,” (Psa 144:15.)

Why did he desire go greatly to frequent the temple, but to offer sacrifices there along with his fellow-worshippers, and to improve by the other exercises of religion in meditation upon the celestial life? It is, therefore, certain that the mind of David, by the aid of the temporal prosperity which he enjoyed, was elevated to the hope of the everlasting inheritance. From this we conclude, that those men are brutish who propose to themselves any other felicity than that which arises from drawing near to God.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(6) I will dwell.As the text stands it must be translated I will return (and abide) in the house of Jehovah.

The house of the Lord can hardly be anything but the Temple; though some commentators treat this even as figurative of membership in the Divine family.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

6. Goodness and mercy From a retrospect of God’s faithful love and care, David gathers assurance of perpetual “goodness and mercy.”

Dwell in the house of the Lord for ever Hebrew, for length of days; for days without number. In Psa 24:4, by another form of speech, he says, “All the days of my life.”

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of YHWH for ever.’

And accompanying the shepherd are His two faithful ‘sheepdogs’, ‘Goodness’’ and ‘Lovingkindness’. Their names reveal the very heart of the Shepherd. For His people are continually trailed by goodness and lovingkindness, on the one hand full provision for their spiritual needs (how much more will your Heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him – Mat 7:11) and on the other fullness of compassion in the way (‘I have loved you with an everlasting love’ – Jer 31:3; ‘in this is love, not that we love Him, but that He loved us, and that He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ – 1Jn 4:10). This ensures that they walk in wholesome ways, where their Shepherd can be found, and where goodness and lovingkindness can be found, and where they can be sure of His tenderness towards them even when they fail.

This indeed is the test of whether they are His sheep. They walk in conjunction with goodness and lovingkindness. Many love the idea of being trailed by lovingkindness, but they are not so sure about goodness. They certainly want to be loved, and they do not mind being average, but they do not want to be good (they speak of such people derisively as do-gooders’). But God is good, and He expects goodness from His people, for He knows that without true goodness they can never be really happy. They are to let their light so shine before men, that they see their good works and glorify their Father Who is in Heaven (Mat 5:16).

‘And I will dwell in the house of YHWH for ever.’ This is not to switch his thoughts directly to the Temple or Tabernacle, even though the latter might be in the background of his thoughts as the sacred Dwellingplace of YHWH. He visualises rather the house of feasting as previously described. It is YHWH’s house where the banquet is ever in progress, comparable, though on a larger scale, with the king’s palace. And there will His people feast with Him for ever, both in this world and the next. (In Israel feasting around the Dwellingplace (Tabernacle) of YHWH was a feature of the major feasts, even for many who could not actually enter the Tabernacle. They too felt that they had ‘entered the house of YHWH’). As the Psalmist says elsewhere, ‘They will be abundantly satisfied with the luxurious provision of Your house, and You will make them drink of the rivers of Your pleasures. For with You is the fountain of life, in Your light shall we see life’ (Psa 36:8-9). ‘For ever.’ It is true that this can mean simply ‘into the distant future’. But that is the point. As in Psalms 16 he cannot visualise a time when he is separated from YHWH. Such a thought seems impossible to him. For in the end he carries within himself the thought of immortality, he has everlastingness in his heart (Isa 57:15; Ecc 3:11 – ‘He has set eternity (‘owlam) in his heart’).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Psa 23:6. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever i.e. “In return to thee for these thy favours and blessings, I will be as constantly in the tabernacle at the hours of divine service, as if it were my ordinary abode.” Thus it is said of Anna the prophetess, that she departed not from the temple, Luk 2:37. Instead of for ever, many render it after the Hebrew leorech yamim to length of days.

REFLECTIONS.The design of God’s word is, to encourage the faith, enliven the hope, and quicken the obedience of his people. In the psalm before us, he appears in a character most amiable and engaging, as feeding the flock of his pasture, whom he bought with his blood. The Lord is my shepherd, may every believer say; mine, because I am his, dearly purchased and tenderly beloved: I shall not want; how can I, when out of his fulness I receive, who is able to do exceeding abundantly for me, above all I can ask or think; and whose love inclines him to supply me according to the exceeding greatness of his power? My body he will feed with food convenient for me, and my soul he will supply according to the riches of his grace. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, where faith feeds upon the great and precious promises of Jesus, ever affording the sweetest repast; and, in his blessed ordinances, finds meat to eat that the world knoweth not of. There he maketh me to lie down,me whom, when a wanderer on the world’s barren mountains, he kindly led to these verdant fields, where now I find a quiet resting-place, lie down with pleasing composure, because of my shepherd’s care, and fear no guilt to embitter my portion, no enemy to disturb my repose. He leadeth me beside the still waters, the waters of Shiloah, that go softly, flowing from the rock of Christ, cooling the thirst which the remembrance of past sin or present temptation causes, and filling the soul with consolations unspeakable and glorious, like the source from whence they flow. He restoreth my soul, when fierce disease or deep decay threatens my ruin; or, when, foolishly wandering from the shepherd’s care, my erring footsteps turn aside, his watchful eye is over me, his tender hand stretched out to save me, to heal the sickness of my soul, to restore the joys that I once was wont to find, and with fresh vigour to refresh my fainting heart. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, points out my way, holds up my goings, and enables me to walk upright before him, in that highway of holiness which leads to eternal glory; for his name’s sake, as an act of unmerited grace and favour, displaying in me a sinner the riches of his glory. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the deepest distresses of afflicting providences, or that unknown dark and dangerous road, at the prospect of which mortality shrinks back, and sense shudders, I will fear no evil; dark as the shadows are spread over it, deep as the valley lies, long and terrible as to nature’s view the road appears, my faith from far discerns the beams of glorious light, my soul dares boldly step into the grave, assured there to find the golden gates of life and immortality. For thou art with me, thou who hast before passed the dreadful shade, shall guide me safely through. Thy rod, under which I have passed, and been sealed, and thy staff of promises; they comfort me, make me more than conqueror over all my fears. O, death, where is thy sting? O, grave, where is thy victory? behold a worm of earth, a sinful worm of earth, braving thy stroke, and triumphing in my fall. Thou preparest a table before me; while here below I sojourn, I want no manner of thing that is good, either for my body or my soul; thy liberal hand opens and fills me with plenteousness, and this even in the presence of mine enemies, who in vain seek to distress or embitter the portion that thou dost bestow: thou anointest my head with oil, that oil of gladness and joy a stranger intermeddleth not with; a joy, the earnest of that bliss above; when, crowned with glory, I shall sit down at thy festal board in heaven; and my cup runneth over with mercies more than I can tell, flowing from the rivers of endless bliss at thy right hand for evermore. Surely goodness and mercy, such as I have already tasted, goodness so beyond all desert, and mercy so free and boundless, shall follow me all the days of my life; like those welcome streams which in the parched desart followed Israel’s camp, so every morning shall new mercies surround me; to-morrow shall be as to-day; yea, much more abundant, deeper and sweeter shall be the stream, the farther on time’s rapid wings I am borne, till, launching forth into the ocean of eternity, my blessedness shall be complete, and I shall be filled with all the fulness of God. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever; dwell there, where, without a vail, irradiation from the eternal Three shall dart unutterable joys into my glorified spirit, transformed into the image of the God whom I behold; and near his throne, high and lifted up, where bright angelic hosts, his train, fill the vast temple with his glory, my happy lot shall be to dwell, to dwell for ever; his love my all-sufficient portion, and my happy labour everlasting praise. Be this, Lord, my wished for rest for ever; here let me dwell, for I have a delight therein!

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Blessed conclusion to a blessed frame of mind, when a soul is well founded in the covenant righteousness of God his Saviour; can look up to God as his Father, Jesus as his never-failing Shepherd, and the Holy Ghost as his Comforter. Jesus and his Holy Spirit have gone before, like the pillar of the cloud, have surrounded, followed, and compassed, us about as a shield; and therefore, in the experience of all that is past, the believer finds confidence for all that is to come. It is Jesus, who is the Alpha; and he is also the Omega. For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory and praise forever and ever, Amen.

REFLECTIONS

HAIL! thou great Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock! May I not humbly look up, and call thee, blessed Jesus, my Shepherd also? Surely thou hast been sent, and appointed, by the Father, to take upon thee the sheepfold of all thy redeemed, whom thou hast purchased with thy blood. And dust thou not gather everyone of them out of their state by nature, before that they are brought within thy fold? Dost thou not go after every wanderer into the mountains, to seek and search them out, whither they have been scattered in the dark and cloudy day? And when thou hast found them, blessed Shepherd, dost thou not lay them on thy shoulders rejoicing? And when thou bringest them home, dost thou not cause thy angels to rejoice with thee over them that were lost? Surely, Lord, thou hast done all this for me; thou didst seek me out, for else never should I have sought thee. Thou hast brought me into the fold of thy church, and never, never shall I want. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou causest thy flock to rest at noon! Yes, thou wilt feed me in wholesome pastures, even thy blessed word, and by thine ordinances; thou wilt cause me to drink of that river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God; thou wilt heal me when diseased; thou wilt bind me up when torn; thou wilt defend me from the lion’s den, and the mountains of leopards; thou wilt clothe me with the garment of thy righteousness; thou wilt separate me from the goats, and the unclean; thou wilt cause me to lie down, with present joy and safety, upon the green pastures of thy glorious person and glorious work, thy covenant righteousness, relations, and characters; and I shall lie down hereafter in thy bosom, where thou puttest the lambs of thy flock. Yes! yes! thou almighty Shepherd, all this, and infinitely more, wilt thou do for me, and in me, and by me, until thou bringest home all thy flock into one fold; when everyone shall pass again under the hand of him that telleth them, to manifest that of them the Father hath given thee none is, or can be lost; that none of thy sheep can perish, nor any pluck them out of thine and thy Father’s hand. And at length, blessed Jesus, thou wilt bring thy whole fold around thyself in glory, where thou wilt lead them to fountains of living waters, and all tears, shall be wiped away from all eyes.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Psa 23:6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Ver. 6. Surely goodness and mercy, &c. ] Utique bonitas et beneficentia, or, as Tremellius hath it, Nihil nisi bonum et benignitas, Nothing but goodness and lovingkindness, &c. This is his good assurance of God’s favour for the future, grounded upon God’s promise; whereby he was well assured that mercy should follow him, though he should be so foolish as to run from it; like as the sun, going down, followeth the passenger that goeth eastward, with his beams.

And I will dwell, &c. ] Devoted to his fear, I will stick to him in life, in death, and after death. Apprehensions of mercy in God must work resolutions of obedience in us.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

mercy = lovingkindness, or grace.

follow = = follow after, or closely. In Hebrew present put for future.

for ever = evermore. Hebrew “to length of days”.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Pursuit and Permanence

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.Psa 23:6.

1. The phrase of the poet, that this wise world is mainly right, has no better illustration than the use it makes of this 23rd Psalm. There is no other form of words which it holds so dear, except perhaps the Lords Prayer; but if that has a superior majesty, this has a deeper tenderness; if one is Divine, the other is perfectly human, and its touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

2. It was probably written by David, not while he was a shepherd-boy, but after an experience of life, and perhaps during the very stress of it. For a shepherd-boy does not sing of flocks and pastures, even if he be a true poet, but of things that he has dreamed yet not seen, imagined but not realized. Hence youthful poetry is of things afar off, while the poetry of men is of things near at hand and close to their lifethe daisies under their feet, and the hills that rise from their doors. The young, when they express themselves, are full of sentimentality; that is, feeling not yet turned into reality under experience; but there is no sentimentality hereonly solid wisdom, won by experience and poured out as feeling. The shepherd-boy becomes a warrior and king; life presses hard on him; he covers it in its widest extremes, tastes all its joy and bitterness; his heart is full and empty; he loves and loves; he is hunted like a partridge and he rules over nations; he digs deep pits for himself into which he falls, but rises out of them and soars to heaven. Davids nature was broad and apparently contradictory, and every phase of his character, every impulse of his heart, had its outward history. Into but few lives was so much life crowded; few have touched it at so many points, for he not only passed through vast changes of fortune, but he had a life of the heart and of the spirit correspondingly vast and various; and so his experience of life may be said to be universal, which cannot be said of Csar or Napoleonmen whose lives outwardly correspond to his. Hence, when some stress of circumstance was heavy upon him and faith rose superior to it, or perchance when the whole lesson of life had been gone over and he grasped its full meaning, he sang this hymn of faith and content.

This Psalm of reminiscence is not simply a leap over intervening years into the first of them, but, starting thence with a metaphor, it is a review of life and an estimate of it; it is an interpretation of life. On looking it over and summing it up, the author states his view of life; his life, indeed, but what man ever had a better right to pronounce on life in general? If life is evil, he certainly ought to have known it. If life is good, he had abundant chance to prove it by tasting it in all its widest variety. We are not to read these words of flowing sweetness as we listen to soothing music, a lullaby in infancy and a death-song in age, but as a judgment on human life. It is Oriental, but it is logical; it is objective, but it goes to the centre; it is simple, but it is universal; it is one life, but it may be all lives. It is not the picture of life as allotted and necessary, but as achieved. Live your life aright and interpret it aright, and see if it is not what you find here.1 [Note: T. T. Munger, The Appeal to Life, 69.]

3. The Psalm now passes from faith and gratitude forward to hope. The preceding part of it contemplates the past mainly; this closing verse contemplates only the future. We see a man going through life with goodness and mercy, like angel-guardians, following him, and home full in view. It supplies an illustration of the way in which experience worketh hope. David has reposed his trust in the Lord, and surrendered himself to His holy and loving will; he has had proof of His faithfulness and mercy and all-sufficiency in the ever-varying circumstances of many years, and so he hopes in Him for the days or years to come; and as a bird sings forth its pleasant song even in the faint noontide from the coolness and greenness of sheltering leaves, his soul sings forth its joyful hope in God. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

This verse coming at the end of the Psalm is full of blessing. It is like the great Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. After the falls of the third verse, after the fears of the fourth, after the temptations of the fifth, still it is goodness and mercy that he has to think of. My song shall be alway of the lovingkindness of the Lord: with my mouth will I ever be shewing thy truth from one generation to another.1 [Note: W. C. E. Newbolt, Penitence and Peace, 142.]

Thou Heart! why dost thou lift thy voice?

The birds are mute; the skies are dark;

Nor doth a living thing rejoice;

Nor doth a living creature hark;

Yet thou art singing in the dark.

How small thou art; how poor and frail;

Thy prime is past; thy friends are chill;

Yet as thou hadst not any ail

Throughout the storm thou liftest still

A praise that winter cannot chill.

Then sang that happy Heart reply:

God lives, God loves, and hears me sing.

How warm, how safe, how glad am I,

In shelter neath His spreading wing,

And there I cannot choose but sing.2 [Note: D. C. Dandridge, Rose Brake.]

I.

The Pursuit

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

1. Goodness and mercy.At once these words, goodness and mercy, attract our attention. It was goodness and mercy that led us first out of the fold, with an aim and object in life. There was goodness and mercy in that shelter from the noontide heat. But now it is goodness and mercy all the days of my life. And we think of grace, which is not only preventing and accompanying, but also subsequent. We owe a great deal to the grace that comes after, the grace that follows us; not only the grace that gives us the wish to do what is right, not only the grace that starts us and helps us in what is right, but also the grace that helps us to finish.

Here is that striking characteristic of the love of God Almighty which comes out in all His dealings with us, namely, its completeness. Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. Creative love, which placed man in the world, did not exhaust the goodness of God towards him: redemptive love met him when he fell. And as if redemptive love itself were not sufficient, sanctifying love came in to fill up where redemptive love seemed to lack. So it is with each single soul. God completes His work.

Perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood that the beauty of Holiness must be in labour as well as in rest. Nay! more, if it may be, in labour; in our strength, rather than in our weakness; and in the choice of what we shall work for through the six days, and may know to be good at their evening time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward or repose. With the multitude that keep holiday, we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to the house of the Lord, and vainly there asked for what we fancied would be mercy; but for the few who labour as their Lord would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow them, all the days of their life; and they shall dwell in the house of the Lordfor ever.1 [Note: Ruskin, Lectures on Art, 96 (Works, xx. 94).]

Ought not we who bear the name of Jesus to ask ourselves whether we are keeping pace in new purposes and answering with devotion Gods summoning gifts and challenging mercies? When the year is old or the year is young, and we think of the passing of life, it is a good thing to ask whether our trees justify the room they take and the nourishment they get in the Masters vineyard. Is your tree standing because it brings forth more fruit? or is it because of the mercy, the hope, the patience, of the Lord who intercedes,Spare it yet another year; it may be it will bear fruit? Let the goodness of God lead us to repentance and a better return in fruitfulness and fidelity for His loving care.2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 36.]

No gloomy foreboding as to a dark and unknown futureno dread of the King of Terrorsno doubts as to his acceptance in Christ, obscured the radiance of his setting sun. In the same letter, written within six weeks of his death, when he was in good health, James Haldane thus affectionately addresses his eldest son in London, as if anticipating that his years (now eighty-three) were numbered: This is the last day of the year, and the last letter I shall write this year. My life has been wonderfully preserved, much beyond the usual course of nature. Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life, and, without the shadow of boasting, I can add, I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. May the blessing of God Almighty rest on you and yours!1 [Note: A. Haldane, The Lives of Robert and James Haldane, 640.]

Enough that blessings undeserved

Have marked my erring track;

That wheresoeer my feet have swerved,

His chastening turned me back;

That more and more a Providence

Of love is understood,

Making the springs of time and sense

Sweet with eternal good;

That death seems but a covered way

Which opens into light,

Wherein no blinded child can stray

Beyond the Fathers sight;

That care and trial seem at last,

Through Memorys sunset air,

Like mountain-ranges overpast;

In purple distance fair

That all the jarring notes of life

Seem blending in a psalm,

And all the angles of its strife

Slow rounding into calm.

And so the shadows fall apart,

And so the west-winds play;

And all the windows of my heart

I open to the day.2 [Note: Whittier, My Psalm.]

2. The Psalmists hope is uttered in a twofold form of speech. First and in general, it is the hope of goodness and mercy; goodness, including all that contributes to our well-being, temporal and spiritual, and satisfies the wants of our nature,not mere cold beneficence that chills us while it aids, but having a heart of lovingkindness; mercy, including all the manifestations of His favour, whether as compassion, forbearance, long-suffering, deliverance, forgiving love, help in time of need, or whatever else may be namedall that it glorifies God to bestow, and blesses us to receive.

There is a touching story of Lord Westbury which Sir William Gull told me. He was dying of a painful disease, and said to Sir William and Sir James Paget, Surely this is, if ever there was, a case for Euthanasia, or the happy despatch. They argued with him that their duty was to preserve life, and on the following day he said, I suppose you are right. I have been thinking over the story of what the Roundhead said when he met the Royalist in heaven. He was surprised at his presence, and asked him how it had come about. The Royalist answered

Between the saddle and the ground

I mercy sought and mercy found.

I suppose you think that might be my case.1 [Note: Sir Algernon West, Recollections, i. 304.]

(1) We may compare Goodness to an angel with a radiant countenance, bright as the sun, ever beaming with smiles that shed gladness all around her. She has a light and buoyant step, and movements musical as the chiming of marriage bells. Flowers grow where she treads, and springs of living water flow to refresh the thirsty ground. She has a full and yet open hand, for while always dispensing her gifts, her store is never exhausted.

We connect her ministry with the brightest times in our history, when all is manifestly going well with us. We see it most clearly in what may be called the summer of the soul, when the sky is bright and the air balmy, and the flowers open their petals to the sun, and the grass grows upon the mountains, and the pastures are covered with flocks, and the valleys with corn. We see her presence in the home, when health and happiness are there, when she covers the table, and makes our slumbers light and refreshing, and sweetens the intercourse of brothers and sisters, and gladdens the hearts of parents with the welfare and well-doing of their children, and endows them all with health and strength.

And if sometimes Goodness veils her brightness and appears in such guise that men may not be conscious of her presence, in what may be called the wintry season of the soul, and there is less radiance on her countenance, and less music in her tread, and an apparently less liberal dispensation of her gifts; even then to the eye of faith her features are the same, and the same blessed ends are promoted by her gentle, holy ministry. There is the same kindness in her heart, although it be not so visibly manifested; the same words of blessing on her lips, although the ear hears them less distinctly; the same expression on her countenance, although it be somewhat veiled; the same benefactions bestowed by her hand, although they be not so sweet to the taste. A stronger faith would see the essential features under the dim disguise, and share in the Psalmists assurance that Goodness as well as Mercy follows all the good mans steps.1 [Note: W. Landels.]

When Jacob looks at the coat of his darling son dedaubed with blood, a horror of great darkness falls upon his mind. He rends his garments. His anguish is pitiful. His hopes are crushed. The light of his life is gone out. He puts on sackcloth, and mourns for his son many days. He refuses to be comforted. He sees nothing before him but a set grey life, and then the dreariness of Sheol. He will follow his son into the darkness. His faith in God is not so grandly steadfast as that of Abraham, who believed that

Even the hour that darkest seemeth

Will His changeless goodness prove.

Men of stronger faith have learned to answer even such questions as, Is this thy sons coat? without rending their garments and refusing to be comforted. Richard Camerons head and hands were carried to his old father, Allen Cameron. Do you know them? asked the cruel men who wished to add grief to the fathers sorrow. And he took them on his knee, and bent over them, and kissed them, and said, I know them! I know them! They are my sons, my dear sons. And then, weeping and yet praising, he went on, It is the Lord! Good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me and mine, but has made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days.2 [Note: J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 94.]

(2) Mercy is closely allied to Goodness, and closely resembles her, as twin sisters frequently resemble each other, although she exercises her ministry chiefly under different circumstances, and in slightly different ways. She is less buoyant and radiant than the other, with more gravity and tenderness of manner. Her eye is tearful, as if she were ever ready to weep with those that weep, and her lips tremulous with pity. She has a noiseless step, and a soft, gentle touch, and a voice that falls like music on the dull ear of sorrow. With whispered consolation on her lips, and a cordial in her hands, her favourite haunts are chambers of sickness, or prison cells, or closets where souls groan in secret under heavy loads of sin and woe; and there, in her mild accents, she bids the guilty be of good cheer because their sins are forgiven, and with her strong though gentle hand lifts the burden from the heavy laden, and with her fragrant ointment tenderly heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds. She is seen more frequently in the shade than in the sunshine, and exercises her ministry most when some darkly brooding sorrow hangs over the individual or the family or the nations heart. When Goodness puts on her veil, and works behind her disguise so that men know her not, then is Mercy often employed most actively in furthering her gracious designs. Her ministries are more specific than those of Goodness, and confined to a more limited sphere, a preparedness of heart being necessary to fit men for receiving them. But withal they are not less spontaneously, or freely, or cheerfully exercised.

The quality of mercy is not strain d,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath.

Unpurchased, oftentimes unsolicited, Mercy pays her visits and impart her benefactions; and those who have profited most by her ministry are sometimes those who never thought of her till they found her by their side.1 [Note: W. Landels.]

I have a very great confidence indeed in the kindness of God towards us. I do believe if we shall find ourselves mistaken on either side in Eternity, it will be in finding God more merciful than we expected.2 [Note: Life of Charles Loring Brace, 83.]

Miss R. having told Dr. Duncan that a young man had said at a meeting that there was not mercy in God from everlastingthere could not be mercy till there was misery, he said, God is unchangeable; mercy is an attribute of God. The man is confounding mercy with the exercise of mercy. There could not be the exercise of mercy till there was misery; but God was always a merciful God. You might as well say that there could not be justice in God till there were creatures towards whom to exercise punitive justice.1 [Note: Memoir of John Duncan, LL.D., 422.]

Silent, alone! The river seeks the sea,

The dewdrop on the rose desires its sun!

Oh, prisoned Soul, shalt thou alone be free?

Shalt thou escape the curse of death and birth

And merge thy sorrows in oblivion?

Thou, thou alone of all the living earth?

Silent, alone! I know when next the dawn

Shall cast its vision through the desert sea

And find me not, the sword that I have drawn

Shall flash between the twilights, and a word

Shall praise what I was not but strove to be,

Saying: Behold the mercy of the Lord.2 [Note: George Cabot Lodge, Poems and Dramas, i. 55.]

3. Goodness and mercy shall follow me. It is a strong word that the Psalmist uses, the strong fierce word pursuethe very word used of the pursuit of the enemy in battle. It is as if Gods love were so eager to find the man that it was determined to run him down. Look! there they are, two blessed and gentle figures, Love and Pity, angels twain, on the heels of every man, running and resolved to find him. And when they find him, and bring him into the quiet tent, as the guest of God, is it any wonder that he longs to dwell there throughout the length of days?

He pursues us with the zeal of a foe, and the love of a Father; pursues us throughout the length of days with a Divine impatience that is never faint and never weary. He is not content to follow us; He pursues us, because He means to find us. Behind the loneliest man is a lovely apparition; nay, no apparition, but angels twain, Goodness and Mercy, shielding and urging him on. Will he not turn round and look at them? For not to smite, but to bless, are the hands uplifted behind him. Had the powers that pursue us not been Goodness and Mercy, they would have slain us long ago, as cumberers of the ground.1 [Note: J. E. McFadyen, The Divine Pursuit, 201.]

When night came the church was packed. Now, beloved friends, said the preacher, if you will turn to the third chapter of John and the sixteenth verse, you will find my text. He preached the most extraordinary sermon from that verse. He did not divide the text into secondly and thirdly and fourthly; he just took the whole verse, and then went through the Bible from Genesis to Kevelation to prove that in all ages God loved the world. I never knew up to that time that God loved us so much. This heart of mine began to thaw out; I could not keep back the tears. It was like news from a far country: I just drank it in. So did the crowded congregation. I tell you there is one thing that draws above everything else in this world, and that is love.2 [Note: The Life of Dwight L. Moody, 127.]

How many unsatisfied hearts there are, tired of their own tired question, Who will show us any good? Nor are they only the hearts which have tried the less pure springs of earthly happiness and rest. Not long ago there died a man eminent in scientific knowledge and achievement, who towards the close of his comparatively brief life was brought back from remote mental wanderings to God in Christ. I refer to the late Mr. George Romanes. He was a man of blameless morals, exemplary in every personal duty; and he seemed constrained, to his own infinite unhappiness, to disbelieve in God. He tried, in this sad condition, to make life satisfactory without Him. He gave himself up fully to his own refined and elevated line of thought and work. He was a diligent and masterly observer and enquirer amidst the mysteries of nature, and a kindly and unselfish man besides. But was he satisfied? Listen to his own avowal: I felt as if I were trying to feed a starving man with light confectionery. It would not do. Nothing would do but the living God. He sought, he felt, he knelt his way back to Him, and he was satisfied at last.3 [Note: Bishop H. C. G. Moule, All in Christ, 204.]

4. The idea of goodness and mercy following a man is exceedingly beautiful and suggestive. There is a phrase in the Bible, with which we are familiar, which speaks of the preventing mercies of God, this word prevent formerly meaning not to hinder, as it does now, but simply to go beforeGods mercies outrunning our necessities, going before them to anticipate and provide for them. It is in this sense that we usually think of the goodness and mercy of God, as going before us to prepare our way and provide for our wants. But in our deeper moods we feel that we need quite as much that goodness and mercy should follow us. Our greatest troubles are ever those which belong to our past, which come from the things that are behind us, which we are striving to forget. Our march through life is like the march of an army through a hostile region. While we are conquering and possessing the present, we are leaving unsubdued enemies, and unconquered fortresses, and old inveterate habits of sin behind us, that will assuredly rise up and trouble us again. Our past is not dead and buried; it is waiting for us in some future ambush of our life.

How precious in such an experience are the words of the text, assuring us that God is following usnot as the American Indian follows upon the trail of his enemy to slay him, not as the avenger of blood follows in his awful vendetta upon the track of the manslayer, but with goodness and mercy! He cries to us as we hasten away from Him in the sullenness and unbelief which sin producesI, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. He can cast our sins behind His back; remove them as far as east is from the west. He can follow us as Jesus followed Peter when he cut off Malchuss ear with the sword, to heal the wounds we have inflicted, to redress the wrongs we have committed, to neutralize the consequences of our folly, ignorance, or sin. He can gather up all our woeful past in His boundless mercy, and enable us as little children to enter His kingdom again. He can separate us from the debasing associations of our sin, give us a sense of recovered freedom and enlargement of heart, and enable us to begin anew, without the disabilities of former days clinging like fetters about our feet and impeding our steps.

The Psalmist does not ask that blessings shall continue to lead him, but that goodness and mercy shall follow him. They are not to be the guides of his life, but the consequences of his life. He is to go his way as well as he can, through the pastures and valleys of experience, and after him there are to follow more goodness and more mercy. Perhaps he is still thinking of the Oriental shepherd in whose name the Psalm began. The Lord, he has said, is my shepherd; and in the East the shepherd goes before, and the sheep hear his voice and follow him. Thus the man who has been blessed of God is to go steadily on, and behind him, like a flock of sheep, will follow the good thoughts and merciful deeds of a better world.

Such is the Psalmists picture of the blessed life. The man who thus goes his way up and down the hills of experience does not have to look behind him to watch for goodness and mercy; they know his voice and follow him. He meets his obstacles and reverses, and as he looks ahead, life may not appear good or merciful; but what he is concerned about is the consequence of his life, and he goes his way bravely to clear the path for goodness and mercy to follow. Says Whittier

The blessings of his quiet life,

Fell round us like the dew,

And kind thoughts where his footsteps pressed

Like fairy blossoms grew.

It was a figure which Jesus Himself liked to use. He did not expect to get much mercy from the world: He prayed that after Him might follow a world of mercy. For their sakes, He said, I sanctify myself; that they also might be sanctified through the truth. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. Here is the self-respecting, rational end of any modern psalm of praise: Thou hast led me through many blessings, among green pastures, and by still waters. I do not ask for more of this quiet peace. I ask for strength to go my way bravely along the path of duty, so that after me it shall be easier to do right and to be merciful, and goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.1 [Note: F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 36.]

I asked my God to go before

To light with signs the unknown shore

And lift the latch of every door;

He said, I follow thee.

I asked Him to prepare my way

By kindling each uncertain ray

And turning darkness into day;

He said, I follow thee.

He bade me linger not till light

Had touched with gold the morning height,

But to begin my course by night,

And day would follow me.

He told me when my hours were dark

To wait not the revealing spark,

But breast the flood in dutys ark,

And peace should follow me.

Therefore, O Lord, at Thy command

I go to seek the unknown land,

Content, though barren be the sand,

If Thou shalt follow me.

I go by night, I go alone,

I sleep upon a couch of stone;

But nightly visions shall atone

If Thou shalt follow me.

I sow the seed in lowly ground,

I sow in faith and hear no sound;

Yet in full months it may be found

That Thou hast followed me.1 [Note: G. Matheson, Sacred Songs, 10.]

There is a mercy which goes before us, and there is a mercy which follows us. The one is the clearing of our own path; the other is the clearing of a path for our brother man. There is an expression, May your path be strewn with flowers! That may mean one or other of two things. It may be the wish that you may be called to tread a flowery way, or it may be the wish that when you tread the thorny way you may leave flowers where you have passed. The latter is the Psalmists aspiration, and it is the nobler aspiration. It is an aspiration which can come only from a restored soul. Any man can desire to be cradled in green pastures and led by quiet waters. But to desire that my life may make the pastures green, to desire that my life may make the waters quietthat is a Divine prayer, a Christlike prayer. There is a prosperity for which every good man is bound to pray. It is finely expressed, I think, in a line of Tennysons Maud

Her feet have touched the meadows, and have left the daisies rosy.

The daisies were not rosy in advance; they became rosy by the feet touching them. It was the footsteps themselves that exerted a transforming power; they created a flowery path for future travellers; goodness and mercy followed them.1 [Note: G. Matheson, Rests by the River, 50.]

5. The hope uttered here has no element of doubt mingling with it. This is indicated by the word surely. Here is not only hope, but the full assurance of it. When our hope rests on an earthly friend, it is necessarily more or less troubled, because our friend may change, his love may grow cold, his power may fail, he may forget us in his own distractions, he may die, or in some one of a thousand ways we may pass out of the sphere within which alone he can help us; but there is no such element of disturbance and unquietness in the hope we repose in God; it is, it has reason to be, assured hope. Instead of surely, some commentators make it onlyonly goodness and mercy shall follow me; just as in the 73rd Psalm they read, God is good and only goodnothing but goodto Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. Nothing but goodness and mercy shall pursue me. What a contrast to the lot of the wicked man, pursued by the angel of judgment (Psa 35:6), hunted by calamity (Psa 140:11).

6. All the days of my life. A continuance of grace and strength is needed every hour till the close. Often is the saint surprised by severe trial even when nearing home, like a vessel which has safely weathered the storms of a voyage and seems past all danger, but is nevertheless wrecked almost in entering port. Above all such fear of failing at last the believers confidence triumphs in the assurance that He whom he has known and trusted will never leave his side.

Grace being an endowment above the strength of nature, what is it else, but young glory? For that the knowledge of the one will lead us by the hand unto the knowledge of the other: as glory is grace in the bloom and fullest vigour, so grace is glory in the bud and first spring-time; the one is holiness begun, the other holiness perfected; the one is the beholding of God darkly, as through a glass, the other, beholding Him face to face.2 [Note: Andrew Wellwood.]

II.

Permanence

I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

1. Not only are Goodness and Mercythese two white-robed messengers of Godto follow us instead of the avenger of blood, but we are to dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. The manslayer who fled to one of the old cities of refuge in Palestine had not only the right of asylum there, safety from the vengeance of the friends of the murdered man, but also the right of citizenship. Though he did not by birth belong to the city to which he fled, and had no possession in it; though his crime had made him an outcast from his own city and inheritance, his very necessity constituted a title to be received as a citizen in the new dwelling-place. And by the merciful provision of the Mosaic law, his very misery and danger raised him from the condition of a stranger and a fugitive, to be an associate with the priests of God in their holiest services.

But great as were the privileges which he enjoyed in the city of refuge, they were only temporary. He was only to dwell there till his case should be investigated by the proper authorities, or at the utmost till the death of the man who happened to be high priest at the time. He must then, if pronounced guilty, be given up to the just doom connected with his crime, or, if found innocent, depart to his own home. But it is not so with the house of the Lord, to which the Psalmist refers. David knew that the sanctuary on Zion would be a secure place of refuge; and often did he long with an intense yearning for its privileges, and contrast the miserable spiritual privations of his exile in the wilderness with the means of grace which he used to enjoy. But even if he had been restored to the sanctuary, he could not have said of it, This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.

At Cadiz, in Spain, above the entrance of the Casa di Misericordia, or House of Refuge, is carved the inscription in the words of the one hundred and thirty-second PsalmThis is my rest: here will I dwell. The ear misses the two familiar words of the Psalm for ever. A friend has told me that as he looked up one day at the inscription and noticed the omission, the Superior, who happened to be near, with a smile explained the reason. This Casa, he said, is the rest of the poorbut not for ever.1 [Note: H. Macmillan, The Mystery of Grace, 148.]

2. David must have looked beyond the earthly sanctuary to the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God; beyond the dark valley of the shadow of death to the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. There alone should he be everlastingly safe and blessed.

We also fled to this house of the Lord for safety in a time of sore distress; and we have found in it the true rest of life. We were driven by stress of trial and danger into it when all other refuge failed us, and we looked on our right hand and viewed, but there were none to know or help us; and now so blessed are we in it that we would not leave it if we could. No sin can accuse us there; no death can snatch us from its joy. Nothing can shake the security, nothing can mar the peace, of those who dwell thus in the house of the Lord. Goodness and mercy have wiped away all the evils of our life, and converted them into good. And neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

3. But the dwelling does not begin when the days of our life are ended; the two are simultaneous, and go on together. There is indeed no termination to the dwelling in Gods house, it reaches into eternity and never ceases; but it begins at present, and runs parallel with our enjoyment of Gods goodness and mercy. It is the one thing that David says elsewhere he desired of the Lord, and would seek after all the days of his life, and that inspired such Psalms as the Sixty-third and Eighty-fourth, which express so wonderfully the souls longing for conscious fellowship with God.

We see the faith and feeling of the man expand and enlarge, till they embrace the great and ultimate future of the life that is to be; and he says, I feel that I have been led onwards to that. These capacities and affections of mine, the stirring of a spiritual life within me, were never made to find their perfection here. I carry within myself, in my own religious consciousness, a prophecy, an earnest of something greater than the life which now is; and I believe that I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever, and that the goodness and the mercy that have followed me hitherto, and which, I believe, will follow me still, shall effloresce and bear fruit in the upper world, in the blessedness which is prepared for the people of God. I believe it! I believe that I shall pass away from the rich satisfactions of the spiritual life here, which, however rich, are still mingled. I am still in the presence of my enemies; and though they do not hurt me or come near me, still they suggest feelings, thoughts, that partake of fear, and occasion a necessity for watchfulness, and for the exercise of duties from which I shall one day be delivered. I shall pass away from the feast here, rich as it is, to a richer and a better; for I shall sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Orto change the figure, and go back to the previous pictureI believe, reasoning from the past and the present to that which is to come, that I shall pass away from this lower scene, these verdant and pleasant pastures, only to find myself, in a higher world, one of that flock of which it is saidFor the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

None other Lamb, none other Name,

None other Hope in heaven or earth or sea,

None other Hiding-place from guilt and shame,

None beside Thee.

My faith burns low, my hope burns low,

Only my hearts desire cries out in me

By the deep thunder of its want and woe,

Cries out to Thee.

Lord, Thou art Life tho I be dead,

Loves Fire Thou art however cold I be:

Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head,

Nor home, but Thee.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]

4. For everliterally, throughout the length of days: what a wonderful phrase! To one who knows God to be the Shepherd of his life, the valley of the deep shadow will only lead from the green pastures and the quiet waters of earth to the pastures more green and the waters more quiet of heaven. For this Jesus of ours has Himself been through the valley of the deepest shadow, and He came out on the other side, and said: Peace be unto you! Shall we not then take heart, as we yield ourselves to the guidance of our Shepherd, who is good and wise and strong, to whom belong the pastures on this side of death and the pastures on that? And so throughout the length of days we shall praise Himall our days in the world that now is, and then in the world everlasting.

Jesus utilizes the great parable of the Family for the last time; and as He had invested Fatherhood and Sonhood with their highest meaning so He now spiritualizes Home. What Marys cottage at Bethany had been to the little company during the Holy Week, with its quiet rest after the daily turmoil of Jerusalem; what some humble house on the shore of Galilee was to St. John, with its associations of Salome; what the great Temple was to the pious Jews, with its Presence of the Eternal, that on the higher scale was Heaven. Jesus availed Himself of a wealth of tender recollections and placed Heaven in the heart of humanity when He said, My Fathers House.

Literature

Binney (T.), in The Pulpit, lxvii. 29.

Burns (J. D.), Memoir and Remains, 308.

Culross (J.), Gods Shepherd Care, 141.

Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 1.

Duff (R. S.), The Song of the Shepherd, 157.

Freeman (J. D.), Life on the Uplands, 113, 131.

Howard (H.), The Shepherd Psalms , 91, 98, 105.

Landels (W.), Until the Day Break, 33.

McFadyen (J. E.), The Divine Pursuit, 201.

Macmillan (H.), The Mystery of Grace, 135.

Matheson (G.), Rests by the River, 50.

Melvill (H.), Fifty Sermons, 31.

Munger (T. T.), The Appeal to Life, 67.

Newbolt (W. C. E.), Penitence and Peace, 142.

Pike (J. K.), Unfailing Goodness and Mercy, 1.

Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, vii. 169.

Stalker (J.), The Psalm of Psalms , 107.

Tipple (S. A.), Sunday Mornings at Norwood, 233.

British Weekly Pulpit, i. 597 (Macmillan).

Christian World Pulpit, xx. 123 (Hammond).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

goodness: Psa 30:11, Psa 30:12, Psa 36:7-10, Psa 103:17, 2Co 1:10, 2Ti 4:18

and I: Psa 16:11, Psa 17:15, Psa 73:24-26, 2Co 5:1, Phi 1:23

for ever: Heb. to length of days, Psa 21:4

Reciprocal: 1Sa 1:22 – and there Psa 15:1 – Lord Psa 27:4 – dwell Psa 40:11 – let thy Psa 61:4 – abide Psa 65:4 – causest Psa 84:4 – Blessed Psa 90:14 – that we Psa 119:65 – dealt well Psa 140:13 – the upright Luk 2:37 – which

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Psa 23:6. Surely goodness and mercy That is, Gods favour, and the blessed and comfortable effects of it; shall follow me Hebrew, , jirdepuni, shall pursue me, by which emphatical expression he signifies Gods wonderful freeness and readiness to do good to his people, and that his blessings not only prevent us, but even pursue them who flee from them, or that they follow us in our journey through life, as the water out of the rock followed the camp of Israel through the wilderness. All the days of my life From the former instances of Gods favour to him, he justly concludes that he would continue to show him favour in a similar way; for nothing can separate us from the love of God, if we do not separate ourselves from it: and the experience we have had of his goodness and mercy, already so often vouchsafed, naturally tends to beget an assurance of their being continued to the end. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever Whereas I have formerly been driven from Gods house, I rest assured that I shall now constantly enjoy that blessed privilege of worshipping and enjoying God in his sanctuary, which I prize more than all my dominions. Davids words here, however, look still further, even to a perfection of bliss in a future state: as if he had said, The divine goodness and mercy having followed me all the days of my life, when that is ended, I shall remove to a better world, to dwell in the house of the Lord for ever, the house of my heavenly Father, in which there are many mansions, where the church of God will constitute one fold, under one shepherd, the fold into which no enemy enters, and from which no friend departs; where the servants of God rest from all their labours, and see a period to all their sorrows; where the voice of praise and thanksgiving is heard continually; where all the faithful, from Adam to his last-born son, shall meet together, to behold the face of Jesus, and to be blessed with the vision of the Almighty; where they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, or any heat. But the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and lead them to living fountains of waters, Rev 7:16-17. Horne.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

23:6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the {g} house of the LORD for ever.

(g) He does not set his happiness in the pleasures of this world, but in the fear and service of God.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

3. The believer’s response 23:6

David realized that God’s good loyal love (Heb. hesed) would pursue him throughout his life. To follow here does not mean to bring up the rear but to pursue vigorously (cf. Psa 83:15). [Note: Kidner, p. 112.] The phrase "goodness and lovingkindness" (NASB) or "goodness and love" (NIV) is a figure of speech (hendiadys) that we could render "good lovingkindness." Dwelling in the Lord’s house (i.e., the sanctuary in Jerusalem) was a picture of enjoying full communion and fellowship with the Lord.

"Yet it is not the place but the vitality of the relationship which transforms." [Note: Brueggemann, p. 156.]

The word translated "dwell" in the Hebrew text implies dwelling after returning there, rather than dwelling already being there. Evidently, David was not in the sanctuary when he composed this psalm, but looked forward to returning to it again and often.

"It is . . . unlikely that Psalms 23 refers to an afterlife in God’s presence, though Psa 23:4; Psa 23:6 in particular have sometimes been so understood. Psa 23:4 refers to the divine shepherd guiding his lamb (the psalmist) through a dangerous dark valley (a symbol for the danger posed by his enemies, cf. Psa 23:5). In Psa 23:6 the psalmist expressed his confidence that he would have access to God’s presence (the ’house of the Lord’ refers to the earthly Tabernacle or Temple; cf. Jdg 19:18; 1Sa 1:7; 1Sa 1:24; 2Sa 12:20; 1Ki 7:12; 1Ki 7:40; 1Ki 7:45; 1Ki 7:51) throughout his lifetime. NIV’s ’forever’ translates a Hebrew phrase (’orek yamim, lit. ’length of days’), which, when used elsewhere of men, usually refers to a lengthy period of time (such as one’s lifetime), not eternity (cf. Deu 30:20; Job 12:12; Psa 91:16; Pro 3:2; Pro 3:16; Lam 5:20). . . .

"While the psalmist may not have been speaking specifically of an afterlife in God’s presence, in the progress of revelation his words come to express such a hope for God’s people, who now understand the full ramifications of the psalm’s affirmation that God protects His own. In the same way the statements in Psa 17:15; Psa 49:15; and Psa 73:24 become, on the lips of a Christian, a testimony of faith in God’s final vindication of the righteous, even beyond the grave." [Note: Chisholm, "A Theology . . .," pp. 287, 288.]

The Lord’s goodness to His people, as seen in His leading and providing for us, should motivate us to appreciate our security in Him and to abide in fellowship with Him. [Note: An excellent brief booklet (61 pages) to give someone in need of the comfort spoken of in this psalm is Haddon Robinson’s, Psalm Twenty-Three. See also Swindoll, pp. 67-82; and Allen, Lord of . . ., pp. 71-86.]

If you anticipate or are presently doing pastoral ministry, try putting your name in the place of the shepherd as you read this psalm. This exercise will help you evaluate your effectiveness.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)