Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 30:5
For his anger [endureth but] a moment; in his favor [is] life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy [cometh] in the morning.
5. Literally, For a moment in his anger; life in his favour:
which is generally explained to mean, as in R.V. marg.,
For his anger is but for a moment;
His favour is for a life-time:
on the ground that the parallelism requires the contrast between a lifetime and a moment. But this is a maimed and inadequate explanation. The parallelism is (as is often the case) incomplete; life is not the antithesis to a moment but to the adversity which comes in Jehovah’s anger. If the thought of the lines were expanded it would be:
For in his anger is adversity for a moment;
In his favour is life for length of days.
The A.V. may therefore be retained as a tolerable paraphrase. Life carries with it the ideas of light and joy and prosperity. Cp. Psa 16:11; Psa 21:4; Psa 36:9.
weeping &c.] Literally;
Weeping may come in to lodge at even,
But in the morning there is singing.
Sorrow is but the passing wayfarer, who only tarries for the night; with dawn it is transfigured into joy, or joy comes to takes its place. Note the natural and suggestive contrast between the dark night of trouble and the bright morn of rejoicing. Cp. Psa 49:14; Psa 90:14; Psa 143:8; and for the truth expressed by the whole verse, which is a commentary on Exo 34:6-7, see Psa 103:8 ff.; Isa 54:7-8; Mic 7:18; Joh 16:20; and indeed the whole of the O.T. and N.T.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For his anger endureth but a moment – Margin: There is but a moment in his anger. So the Hebrew. That is, his anger endures but a short time, or brief period. The reference here is to the troubles and sorrows through which the psalmist had passed, as compared with his subsequent happiness. Though at the time they might have seemed to be long, yet, as compared with the many mercies of life, with the joy which had succeeded them, and with the hopes now cherished, they seemed to be but for a moment. God, according to the view of the psalmist, is not a Being who cherishes anger; not one who lays it up in his mind; not one who is unwilling to show mercy and kindness: he is a Being who is disposed to be merciful, and though he may be displeased with the conduct of men, yet his displeasure is not cherished and nourished, but passes away with the occasion, and is remembered no more.
In his favor is life – It is his nature to impart life. He spares life; He will give eternal life. It is, in other words, not His nature to inflict death; death is to be traced to something else. Death is not pleasing or gratifying to Him; it is pleasing and gratifying to Him to confer life. His favor secures life; death is an evidence of His displeasure – that is, death is caused by sin leading to His displeasure. If a man has the favor of God, he is sure of life; if not life in this world, yet life in the world to come.
Weeping may endure for a night – Margin: in the evening. So the Hebrew. The word here rendered endure means properly to lodge, to sojourn, as one does for a little time. The idea is, that weeping is like a stranger – a wayfaring person – who lodges for a night only. In other words, sorrow will soon pass away to be succeeded by joy.
But joy cometh in the morning – Margin: singing. The margin expresses the force of the original word. There will be singing, shouting, exultation. That is, if we have the friendship of God, sorrow will always be temporary, and will always be followed by joy. The morning will come; a morning without clouds; a morning when the sources of sorrow will disappear. This often occurs in the present life; it will always occur to the righteous in the life to come. The sorrows of this life are but for a moment, and they will be succeeded by the light and the joy of heaven. Then, if not before, all the sorrows of the present life, however long they may appear to be, will seem to have been but for a moment; weeping, though it may have made life here but one unbroken night, will be followed by one eternal day without a sigh or a tear.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 30:5
In His favour is life.
Life in the favour of God
The return of Gods favour to an afflicted soul is like life from the dead,–nothing is so reviving. All our bliss is bound up in Gods favour; and if we have that, we have an infinite treasure, whatever else we may want.
I. illustrate the sentiment of the text.
1. Our natural life is from Gods favour. In Him we live, move, and have our being; He secures us from innumerable evils; He gives us bread, and water, and clothing, and health, and strength, and intellect.
2. Our spiritual life is from the favour of God.
3. Our eternal life is from the favour of God. By that favour we become entitled to heaven by the merits and righteousness of Christ; by that favour we are meetened for heaven through regeneration and sanctification; by that favour we are brought to heaven, through all the trying pilgrimage of life. O what views will the redeemed spirit have of the favour of God then!
II. some practical reflections.
1. How vain it is to expect happiness from worldly prosperity without the favour of God! What does it avail, if the whole universe smile on a man, if he be under the frown of God?
2. How fearful are the afflictions of life without the favour of God. How keen must be the strokes of the Divine rod to him who views them as the strokes of an enemy.
3. If the favour of God is life, then what vast multitudes are dead. They can find time for their games, sports, recreations, and worldly pursuits; but no time to seek the favour of God and the salvation of their souls! And how inexcusable are such persons. Beggars, when they might be the favourites of heaven; preferring sickness to health, blindness to sight, danger to safety, and the anger to the favour of God.
4. If in Gods favour there is life, what a dreadful place hell must be.
5. If in Gods favour there is life, what a blessed and glorious place must heaven be. (W. Gregory.)
Where is life?
There are many different opinions as to the place of true enjoyment. Some think it is in animal gratifications; others in material possessions; mental acquirements; personal refinements; social positions; and some even in present creature pleasures. The psalmist though it to be in the favour of God. And he was right. Until man is in friendship with God he will never be happy.
I. what sort is it? Not the creative favour of God, which has made us men, not brutes; not His providential favour, which has supplied our various needs–but His saving favour (Eph 2:4-7). That the psalmist had this favour of God in view, is evident from Psa 30:8.
II. through what medium does God exercise his saving favour? Jesus Christ (Joh 17:2; Act 4:12; Rom 3:25-26; 1Jn 5:11). Jesus is to the regeneration of man what the atmosphere is to the fruitfulness of the earth–the medium through which the water of the ocean and the warmth of the sun act with generating power.
III. where is this fact revealed? (Deu 18:15; Deu 18:18; Luk 24:27; Joh 5:39). This invests the Scriptures with indescribable grandeur, inestimable worth, exclusive authority, and final appeal in everything pertaining to human redemption.
IV. To whom is it proclaimed? (Joh 3:16; Luk 2:10; Mat 9:13; Tit 2:11-14). To limit Gospel invitations to a favoured few is unscriptural.
V. what will be had by suitably regarding Gods proclamation of His saving favour? Life. That is, restoration to the moral likeness of God, reinstatement into right relations with God, and introduction into the real friendship of God. Viewed in regard to the law of God, it is called justification (Gal 3:6-14); the character of God, sanctification (Eph 5:25-27); the person of God, fellowship (Joh 17:21; 1Jn 1:3; 1Jn 1:6-7). All living is death which is not in God, nor like Him, nor according to His will.
VI. by what exercise of the mind do we obtain the blessed issues of Gods saving favour? Believing. (W. J. Stuart.)
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.—
Sorrow succeeded by joy
Day and night constitute the sum of human existence; they are emblematical of joy and sorrow. In figurative language, hope and joy are invariably clad in a vesture of light, whilst fear and grief are robed in sable. The language of our text cannot be applied to the trials and afflictions of the ungodly, but we would notice some of those occasions of weeping which may reasonably be expected to terminate in joy. Of this nature are–
I. the tears that flow from conviction of sin and penitential sorrow.
II. The grief that arises from conscious backsliding or from the upbraidings of a tender conscience. There is no feeling more oppressively painful than that of being a conscious traitor: and the anguish of the backslider is closely allied to this. Of whatever nature his sins may be, his profoundest grief will arise from their opposition to the Divine nature. Against Thee, Thee only, etc.
III. Those that arise from the sense of spiritual desertion. There are times when we walk in darkness and have no light, and we receive no communications of grace to raise our drooping spirits. The light of Gods countenance is withdrawn. But this loneliness of soul, this desolation of spirit, shall be removed, and the light shall again shine.
IV. those caused by temporal afflictions, such as loss, bereavement, death. Conclusion.
1. Let the sentiment of the text preserve you from a gloomy despondency.
2. Disarm death of its terrors.
3. Let each individual ask himself, if he be interested in the truth of my text? Will the source of your weeping become a spring of joy? Can you reasonably expect it should be so? It all depends on your being at peace with God. How is it with you? (J. Summers.)
The two guests
There is an obvious antithesis in the first part of this verse, between His anger and His favour. Probably there is a similar antithesis between a moment and life. For, although the word rendered life does not usually mean a lifetime, it may have that signification, and the evident intention of contrast seems to require it here. So, then, the meaning of the first part of my text is, the anger lasts for a moment; the favour lasts for a lifetime. The perpetuity of the one, and the brevity of the other, are the psalmists thought. Then, if we pass to the second part of the text, you will observe that there is there also a double antithesis. Weeping is set over against joy; the night against the morning. And the first of these two contrasts is the more striking if we observe that the word joy means, literally, a joyful shout, so that the voice which was lifted in weeping is conceived of as now being heard in exultant praise. Then, still further, the expression may endure literally means come to lodge. So that Weeping and Joy are personified. Two guests come; one, dark-robed and approaching at the fitting season for such, the night. The other bright, coming with all things fresh and sunny, in the dewy morn. The guest of the night is Weeping; the guest that takes its place in the morning is Gladness. The two clauses, then, of my text suggest substantially the same thought, and that is the persistence of joy and the transitoriness of sorrow. The whole is a loaf out of the psalmists own experience.
I. the proportion of joy and sorrow is as ordinary life. Now is it true–is it not true?–that, if a man rightly regards the proportionate duration of these two diverse elements in his life, he must come to the conclusion that the one is continuous and the other is but transitory? A thunderstorm is very short when measured against the long summer day in which it crashes; and very few days have them. It must be a bad climate where half the days are rainy. But then, man looks before and after, and has the terrible gift that by anticipation and by memory he can prolong the sadness. The proportion of solid matter needed to colour the Irwell is very little in comparison with the whole of the stream. But the current carries it, and half an ounce will stain miles of the turbid stream. Memory and anticipation beat the metal thin, and make it cover an enormous space. And the misery is that, somehow, we have better memories for sad hours than for joyful ones. So it comes to be a piece of very homely, well-worn, and yet always needful, practical counsel to try not to magnify and prolong grief, nor to minimize and abbreviate gladness. We can make our lives, to our own thinking, very much what we will. Courage, cheerfulness, thankfulness, buoyancy, resolution, are all closely connected with a sane estimate of the relative proportions of the bright and the dark in a human life.
II. the inclusion of the moment in the life. I do not know that the psalmist thought of that when he gave utterance to my text, but whether he did it or not, it is true that the moment spent in anger is a part of the life that is spent in the favour. Just as within the circle of a life lies each of its moments, the same principle of inclusion may be applied to the other contrast presented here. For as the moment is a part of the life, the anger is a part of the love. The favour holds the anger within itself, for the true scriptural idea of that terrible expression and terrible fact, the wrath of God, is that it is the necessary aversion of a perfectly pure and holy love from that which does not correspond to itself. So, though sometimes the two may be set against each other, yet at bottom, and in reality, they are one, and the anger is but a mode in which the favour manifests itself. Thus we come to the truth which breathes uniformity and simplicity through all the various methods of the Divine hand, that howsoever He changes and reverses His dealings with us they are one and the same. You may get two diametrically opposite motions out of the same machine. The same power will send one wheel revolving from right to left, and another from left to right, but they are co-operant to grind out at the far end the one product. It is the same revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the suns course and brings declining days and increasing cold. It is the same motion which hurls a comet close to the burning sun, and sends it wandering away out into fields of astronomical space, beyond the ken of telescope, and almost beyond the reach of thought. And so one uniform Divine purpose, the favour which uses the anger, fills the life, and there are no interruptions, howsoever brief, to the steady continuous flow of His outpoured blessings. All is love and favour. Anger is masked love, and sorrow has the same source and mission as joy. It takes all sorts of weathers to make a year, and all tend to the same issue, of ripened harvests and full barns.
III. the conversion of the sorrow into joy. A prince comes to a poor mans hovel, is hospitably received in the darkness, and, being received and welcomed, in the morning slips off the rags and appears as he is. Sorrow is Joy disguised. If it be accepted, if the will submit, if the heart let itself be untwined, that its tendrils may be coiled closer round the heart of God, then the transformation is sure to come, and joy will dawn on those who have done rightly–that is, submissively and thankfully–by their sorrows. It will not be a joy like what the world calls joy–loud-voiced, boisterous, ringing with idiot laughter; but it will be pure, and deep, and sacred, and permanent. A white lily is better than a flaunting peony, and the joy into which sorrow accepted turns is pure and refining and good. But you may say, Ah! there are two kinds of sorrows. There are those that can be cured, and there are those that cannot. What have you got to say to me who have to bleed from an immedicable wound till the end of my life? Well, I have to say this–look beyond earths dim dawns to that morning when the Sun of Righteousness shall arise. If we have to carry a load on an aching back till the end, be sure that when the night, which is far spent, is over, and the day, which is at hand, hath broken, every raindrop will be turned into a flashing rainbow when it is smitten by the level light, and every sorrow rightly borne be represented by a special and particular joy. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Weeping and joy
The following are suggested by this passage.
1. God is love. David inscribed over the portal of his house, His anger is but for a moment, etc. Did he not thus in broken and imperfect symbols speak out this truth of all truths that has been revealed from Calvary and the Ascension Mount, and which has been given to us that we may herald it to the world? Herein is love, not that we loved God, etc. It is in the light of that revelation of love, that we are to read the riddles of our existence. It is in the light of that revelation, and that alone, that the clouds of our forebodings and our despondencies can be put to flight. Gods government of the world, His providential ordering of the whole of the human race and of each individual life is for our everlasting good, and it is in accordance with His own nature of love. In that government nothing is forgotten; in that loving plan no heart has been left desolate. There is no deviation in the path of His intended progress; there is no friction in the Divine workings; for all things work together for good unto them that love God.
2. Another thing suggested by this passage is, that not only is His Divine anger consistent with Divine love, but given the fact that this love of God is love to free beings, to beings who are sinning continually, we may say that anger is absolutely essential to righteous love. God is the eternal righteousness as well as the eternal love. Calvary is the transcendent revelation to the world of the Divine love, but it is also the transcendent revelation of Divine righteousness. Because God is righteous God is angry. He is angry with the wicked, with corruption, impurity, cruelty, selfishness, falsehood, injustice, oppression, envy, hatred, murder, strife. What parent that truly loves his child will let that child flagrantly and persistently sin and not punish him? The rod is often a fitter emblem of love than a kiss.
3. These two visitors, Weeping and Joy, come instrumentally in the hands of God to the homes of a world that is being governed and directed by a righteous love. I do not say that Weeping is the messenger of Gods anger, and that Joy, on the other hand, is the messenger of His love. They are both messengers of His will; they both subserve His redemptive purposes; both of them alike may be messengers of His anger, as both of them alike may be messengers of His love. But although we should regard them as symbolic figures severally of anger and of love, the experiences of human life, when the house is hushed with grief, when the heart is low, followed–as, blessed be God! they are followed–by days of gladness, by giving the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness–all this experience of life should remind us that in the lines along which God is working, the secret principles of His government by that which is good and by that which is painful, through Weeping and through Joy, through this strangely mingled experience of human life, He is slowly working out that great purpose and toward that great end, the eternal good of all His creatures. Gods anger is special treatment for a critical hour; it is the probing of the wound; it is the changing, as it were, of the motive power in the secret nature of the soul; and it is only that we may remember that the Father of Spirits, in subjection to whom we live, is also the Ancient of Days and the Eternal Righteousness. But the Divine anger is transient. Anger will not keep; it is impossible that righteous anger can be kept; it is like the coal dropped hot from the furnace that cools every moment. Such is the anger of a righteous, loving being. It is not hatred and enmity and jealousy, but it is anger, a frown which, when the child sees, passes into a smile of paternal tenderness and love. (R. B. Brindley.)
A lyric of deliverance
I. the dirge of grief–Weeping . . . night. See how sorrow and night are linked. Life is this night.
1. A brief night.
2. A wild night sometimes.
3. A sorrowful night ofttimes.
4. But a night fringed with light, on this side and on that; and so the dirge has its consoling strain.
II. the lyric of deliverance.
Joy . . . morning. See how gladness and light are joined together.
1. In the morning of clearer knowledge.
2. In the morning of purer character.
3. In the morning of eternity. (R. C. Cowel.)
The joy of Easter
The associations we have with Easter are very various, but, for most of us, it represents more than anything else a great revulsion of feeling. The change from Good Friday to Easter Day is much more abrupt than any in the Christian year. It is like the sharp descent from the clear cold air of the Upper Alps into the rich and sunny plains of Italy, and it reminds us of earthly vicissitudes like that of the sovereign, who being imprisoned and expecting immediate execution, is placed by a sudden revolution on the throne of his ancestors. Davids words do not exaggerate the Easter feeling. The words describe the experience of David on more than one occasion. He had known one peril and then great deliverance. And such a morning as the text tells of was that first Resurrection morning for the disciples. We may say they ought not to have been in such heaviness because Jesus had so plainly and repeatedly told them of what would take place. Of His death and resurrection He had told them again and again. And yet, when they saw Him dead upon the Cross they were filled with an almost unimaginable disappointment. How is this to be explained? Human nature is naturally an optimist. Face to face with forecasts of trouble, it resists their reality and their force, it makes the best of them it can. They will not see what they do not wish to see. And so it was with our Lord and His disciples. Hence Peters word, Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee,–as though the prophecy of His Passion had been an utterance of morbid pessimism. And thus it was that when the last tragedy took place it found them unprepared. This was the heaviness which the first disciples had to endure. But what a joy came to them in the morning, as first on one and then on another there fell the rays of the rising Sun of Righteousness I And such a morning it will be when the Christian, having passed the gate of death, attains to a joyful resurrection. And ours will bear the pattern of our Lords. True, for Him there was no such interval between death and resurrection as there must be for us: and for Him there was no corruption, whilst for us there will be. But at length soul and body shall be joined together again and for ever. That the soul survives the body might be inferred from the law of the conservation of force or energy in the physical universe. For is there no energy but that of the substances which are known to chemistry? Are not thought, will, love, truly energies: as much so as any that we can identify with chemical elements? But how and in what shape does this spiritual energy survive? It must be in some form strictly personal, or else our personality ceases to be, and the soul is virtually annihilated. Physical force exists independently of the subject to whose life it belongs. But not so with spiritual force. We have no knowledge of it apart from the person in whom it is found. Therefore if the soul exists at all it must retain its personality. And all this is not mere metaphysic, but it is a practical question for the heart. Who that has loved and lost some dear one does not know how intensely real this question is. And let none think that to be absorbed in the ocean of universal life is something more noble than to retain our personal life. It is not so. There can be no joy in the annihilation of personality. To suppress self is good, but that is quite another thing from the annihilation of personality. Hence the value of the truth of the resurrection of the body, since it asserts so emphatically our enduring personality. And thus all anxieties as to the recognition of friends are set at rest. Joy will come through such recognition, in the morning. Yes, but to whom? To those who have learned the moral and spiritual as well as the physical meaning of the resurrection. There are two nights which hang heavily in the life of men–that of sorrow and that of sin. But through Christ our Lord each of them may be followed by a morning of joy. (Canon Liddon.)
The uninvited stranger and the welcome guest
The picture is a very striking one. In the evening Weeping, like a darkly veiled stranger, enters our dwelling, making all sorrowful by his unwelcome presence, but he comes only to sojourn for a night. In the morning another guest appears–Joy–like a rescuing angel, before whom Weeping disappears.
I. Is the case of the godly, the tearful night of affliction will be followed by the joyful morning of deliverance and Gods returning favour. We have here a figurative allusion to the way in which God had dealt with the psalmist and often deals with His people. His favour had been withdrawn, His displeasure manifested, but it was only for a moment, which moment is contrasted with the whole life gladdened with His smile. How often in the history of the Church have we seen the dark night of affliction succeeded by the bright morning of a glorious and triumphant deliverance! The darkest hour immediately preceding the dawn! For a while God seems to forget His people, to be deaf to their cry: He is only waiting for the set time to deliver; and the moment the fittest, the only fit time arrives, we see the morning succeed the night, and Joy take the place of Weeping. We see precisely the same thing in Gods dealings with individuals. The night of affliction falls upon them, the unwelcome stranger, Weeping, takes up his abode with them, their plans are traversed, their hopes are blighted, their house is rendered desolate. Well! it is their privilege to believe, not only that these painful circumstances will be overruled for good, but that the darkness of afflictions night shall be succeeded by the brightness of a joyful morning. It is so often here, but whether so here or not, it will be so by and by.
II. the tearful night of life will be succeeded by the tearless and eternal day of heaven. We wait for the dawning of that day. We have the beginnings of heavens light and joy, here and now; the promise and earnest of them. We have passed from darkness to light, the Day-spring from on high hath visited us; and though we dwell in the dimness of early dawn, we are the children of the light. We should seek to walk in the light, walk as children of the light. (T. M. Morris.)
The two guests
I. weeping. It is at even that she comes to all our homes. When she enters, we close the shutters, and very often put out the candle, and in the glow of the dying embers on the hearth talk to her a while.
1. Weeping is sure to come to us when the shadow of death rests upon our home. She tells us that there seldom was a home so dark as ours, or a trial so great; that such a loss can never be fully made up; that now we are only just beginning to find out what life is.
2. Weeping comes in times of adversity and anxious care. With pensive countenance and in sad tones she says that Providence is full of mystery, and that in all ages she has known some of the best people who were thus sadly perplexed. She tells us that she well remembers how Asaph long ago used to say (Psa 73:1-2; Psa 73:5; Psa 73:18). She reminds us how David, too, and other saints felt the same burden of mystery, and adds that no one has ever found the solution. She is not surprised that we are troubled; we well might be.
3. Weeping comes in those trying hours when friendships disappoint us and close and tender relationships become strained. She suggests that human nature is, notwithstanding all its professions, selfish and untrustworthy; that the exclamation of the psalmist is, sooner or later, the exclamation of all who have known much of the world and its ways: Put not your trust in princes, etc.
4. Weeping is sure to come to us in the hour of our humiliation and shame. In the dim glimmer of the fire on the hearth she brings to our notice stains on our garment which, she assures us, would look a thousand times worse if we saw them in the proper light–saw them as others see them; and, above all, as God sees them.
II. weeping vanishes out of sight in the grey light of dawn, and joy enters our dwelling. The blinds are drawn up again, the fire is rekindled upon the hearth; and then, in the growing light of day that streams through the window, Joy talks to us a while. We repeat to her what Weeping has told us, and Joy replies that Weeping is a true teacher, that it is her prerogative to utter many a truth which only she can teach, but that she overlooks others none the less important.
1. For instance, that in speaking to us of our bereavement as a loss for which nothing can compensate, she forgot to tell us of the meeting again; of the memory of that dear one which will be to us a life-long inspiration; of the upward direction which such a bereavement should give to our thoughts and aspirations; and of how it may be one of Gods ways of uniting us to Himself by associating His home with ours.
2. Again, Joy reminds us that when Weeping spoke of affliction as being the mystery which has perplexed Gods saints in all the ages, and of how she had heard Asaph say, As for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, etc. (Psa 73:2-13), she forgot to tell us the rest that Asaph said: how that he began the psalm with, Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart; and how that, further on, in speaking of the prosperity of the wicked, he exclaims (verses 16-20 and 25, 26). She forgot to tell you, too, adds Joy, what another psalmist said (Psa 119:67). Yes, continues Joy, Weeping is a good teacher, but she has a poor memory for aught that is joyous; she only remembers the sad.
3. Joy pauses, and then, with a still brighter glow upon her countenance, and a clearer ring in her voice, she continues, And when Weeping spoke to you of your sin, she gave you but half the truth. When she told you that you could never remove the stains of sin which God saw upon your garment, she forgot to say that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth, etc. (D. Davies.)
Sorrow
Among the things on view at the Stanley Exhibition, held in London a few years ago, was a small MS. volume which will always be associated with the memory of an Englishman who went to the Dark Continent not to indulge a love of sport, or travel, or adventure, nor yet in order to make a fortune, but to preach the religion of Jesus Christ. The book was Bishop Hanningtons diary. The handwriting, you may remember, was small and closely written, after the manner of a traveller who must get as much as possible into a small compass. And this was the entry on the last page, the last that the Bishop ever made: I can hear no news, but was held up by Psa 30:1-12., which came with great power. A hyena howled near me last night, smelling sick man, but I hope he is not to have me yet. The date of that entry was October 29, 1885, and it shows how the psalms are full of religious power, fit for every-day use even in our own time. Time and knowledge would fail one to tell of all the saints of God who have been helped by the 30th Psalm. Even at the stake, when the faggots have been piled all about, and fetters have weighted every limb, martyrs for the faith have sung with unfaltering voices its promises of sure and certain hope, and have passed away joyfully with its words upon their lips. One such was John Herwin, who suffered during Alvas persecutions of the Nether-landish Protestants. At the place of execution, writes the chronicler of the time, one gave him his hand and comforted him. Then began he to sing the 30th Psalm; and the 30th Psalm, in spite of interruptions, he sang through from beginning to end. (E. H. Eland, M. A.)
Weeping and Jog
Lo! there comes hitherward, as though making for the door of our house, a dark form. She is slightly bent, but not with age. She has a pale face, her step is languid, like one who has travelled far and is weary; and her tears flow so fast that she cannot wipe them away. Our hearts begin to beat as we watch her coming. Will she pass, or will she stay? I am a pilgrim, quoth she; will you lodge me for the night? I am sad, I am weary, for I go round all the world. There are few houses I do not enter, and in some I make a long stay. You ask me for nay name. I bear it in my countenance: my name is Weeping. You wish to see my credentials? It is sufficient that none have been able to keep me outside a door inside of which I wished to be; and I know that, notwithstanding your beating hearts, you will not be inhospitable; you will take me in. Yes, for a little, to refresh you, to dry your tears if we can; and then to bid you farewell. Nay, I can make no stipulation; I go where I am sent, I depart at the appointed time! And now Weeping has her chamber in the house. And the blinds are drawn down, and hearts are hushed, and feet tread lightly; and, listening all night through, we hear sighs, and sometimes almost sobs, from the chamber where Weeping lies sleepless. And we, too, are sleepless and anxious, and one and another find the tears flowing down their own cheeks as the night goes on; and the house is all full of pain and fear, as the dark thought begins to take shape that she may have come to make a long stay. We are up betimes, for now we are amongst them that watch for the morning. Some flush of it is in file eastern sky, and see, we say to each other, it is beginning to gild yon mountain peaks, and to flow down into the valleys, when, hearing some footsteps approaching–lo! there comes one whose step is elastic, whose form is graceful, who bears the dawn on his countenance, who sheds light around him as he walks. Again our hearts begin to beat, but this time it is with fear that he will not stay. I am a pilgrim, quoth he; I have been long on the road; I can walk through the darkest night and not stumble; I have come to you this morning with the dawn, and I wish to stay. Ah, welcome indeed I if we knew where to give thee room; we have but one guest-chamber, and it is occupied. There came to us last night a poor pilgrim named Weeping, who for the first hours of night sighed and wept so sorely that it seemed as if she were breathing her life away. For the last two hours she seems to have fallen on sleep, for her chamber is silent, and it would be cruel to awake her. Weeping? ah, I know her well. My name is Joy. Weeping and Joy have bad the world between them since the world was made. But, now, look in your room. You will find it empty. I met her an hour ago on the other side of the hill. She told me she had slipped silently away, and that I would be just in time to smile good-morning to you from my bright face, while she went on her way towards the valley of Baca, and the deeper, darker valley of the shadow of death. Weeping will not come here again to-night, and I shall stay, or I shall leave some of the light of my presence to fill the house. We often meet, and always part. But there is a time coming, in the Land of Light, from which I come, when even she will not know how to weep. For the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 5. For his anger endureth but a moment] There is an elegant abruptness in these words in the Hebrew text. This is the literal translation: “For a moment in his anger. Lives in his favour. In the evening weeping may lodge: but in the morning exultation.” So good is God, that he cannot delight in either the depression or ruin of his creatures. When he afflicts, it is for our advantage, that we may be partakers of his holiness, and be not condemned with the world. If he be angry with us, it is but for a moment; but when we have recourse to him, and seek his face, his favour is soon obtained, and there are lives in that favour-the life that now is, and the life that is to come. When weeping comes, it is only to lodge for the evening; but singing will surely come in the morning. This description of God’s slowness to anger, and readiness to save, is given by a man long and deeply acquainted with God as his Judge and as his Father.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
His anger endureth but a moment; commonly the afflictions which he sends upon his people are short, and last but for a few moments of their lives.
In his favour is life; or, life, i.e. our whole life, is in his favour, i.e. he heapeth his favours upon them, for the greatest part of their present lives, and in the next life, which endures for ever; of which the Chaldee paraphrast expounds this place. And indeed without the consideration of eternal life, the difference between the duration of the afflictions and of the happiness of Gods people, were neither so evident nor considerable as David here makes it.
Life is oft put for a long and happy time, as Psa 34:12; 133:3; Pro 3:2; and for an eternal and immortal duration, 2Ti 1:10; Jam 1:12. And in civil affairs estates for life are opposed to those that are but for a short time.
Joy cometh in the morning, i.e. it comes speedily and in due season.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5. Relatively, the longestexperience of divine anger by the pious is momentary. These preciouswords have consoled millions.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For his anger [endureth but] a moment,…. Anger is not properly in God, he being a simple, uncompounded, immovable, and unchangeable being; nor is it ever towards his people in reality, unless anger is distinguished from wrath, and is considered as consistent with his everlasting and invariable love to them; but only in their apprehension, he doing those things which in some respects are similar to those which men do when they are angry; he turns away from them and hides his face, he chides, chastises, and afflicts, and then they conclude he is angry; and when he returns again and takes off his hand, manifests his pardoning love, and comforts them, then they understand it that his anger is turned away from them; for in this improper sense of it, and as his children conceive of it, it is but for a moment, or a very short time: he forsakes them but for a moment, and their light afflictions endure no longer, Isa 54:7;
in his favour [is] life; by which is meant his free love and favour in Christ towards his people; and designs either the duration of it, that it lives and always is, even when he seems to be angry, and that it lasts as long as life does, yea, to all eternity; neither death nor life can separate from it; or the object of it, God delighting not in the death but the life of a sinner; or rather the effects of it, it is what makes the present life to be properly life, and really comfortable; without it men may be said rather to be dead than to live, notwithstanding all enjoyments; and therefore it is better than life, abstracted from it, Ps 63:3; it quickens the soul in a spiritual sense, and makes grace lively; it invigorates faith, encourages hope, and makes love to abound, and it issues in eternal life;
weeping may endure for a night; the allusion is to the time when afflictions are usually most heavy and pressing upon persons, when they most feel them, or, however, are free from diversion, and at leisure to bemoan themselves; and may point at the season of weeping, and cause of it, the night of affliction, or of darkness and desertion, and denotes the short continuance of it; weeping is here represented as a person, and as a lodger, for the word may be rendered “lodge” p; but then it is as a wayfaring man, who continues but for a night; see Isa 17:14;
but joy [cometh] in the morning; alluding to the time when all nature is fresh and gay, when man rises cheerful from his rest, darkness removes, light breaks forth, and the sun rises and sheds its beams, and everything looks pleasant and delightful; moreover, the mercies of God are new every morning, which cause joy, and call for thankfulness; and especially it is a time of joy after weeping and darkness, when the sun of righteousness arises with healing in his wings; as it will be to perfection in the resurrection morn, when the dead in Christ will rise first, and be like to him, and reign with him for evermore.
p “diversetur”, Junius Tremellius, Piscator “lodgeth”, Ainsworth.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
5. For his anger is only for a moment. It is beyond all controversy that life is opposed here to for a moment, and consequently signifies long continuance, or the constant progress of time from day to day. David thus intimates that if God at any time chastise his people, he not only mitigates the rigour of their punishment, but is immediately appeased, and moderates his anger; whereas he prolongs his kindness and favor for a long time. And, as I have already observed, he chose rather to couch his discourse in general terms, than to speak particularly of himself, that the godly might all perceive that this continued manifestation of God’s favor belongs to them. We are hereby taught, however, with how much meekness of spirit, and with what prompt obedience he submitted his back to God’s rod. We know that from the very first bloom of youth, during almost his whole life, he was so tried by a multiplied accumulation of afflictions, that he might have been accounted miserable and wretched above all other men; yet in celebrating the goodness of God, he acknowledges that he had been lightly afflicted only for a short period, and as it were in passing. Now, what inspired him with so great meekness and equanimity of mind was, that he put a greater value upon God’s benefits, and submitted himself more quietly to the endurance of the cross, than the world is accustomed to do. If we are prosperous, we devour God’s blessings without feeling that they are his, or, at least, we indolently allow them to slip away; but if any thing sorrowful or adverse befall us, we immediately complain of his severity, as if he had never dealt kindly and mercifully with us. In short, our own fretfulness and impatience under affliction makes every minute an age; while, on the other hand, our repining and ingratitude lead us to imagine that God’s favor, however long it may be exercised towards us, is but for a moment. It is our own perversity, therefore, in reality, which hinders us from perceiving that God’s anger is but of short duration, While his favor is continued towards us during the whole course of our life. Nor does God in vain so often declare that he is merciful and gracious to a thousand generations, long-suffering, slow to anger, and ready to forgive. And as what he says by the prophet Isaiah has a special reference to the kingdom of Christ, it must be daily fulfilled,
“
For a small moment have I afflicted thee, but with everlasting mercies will I gather thee,” (Isa 54:7.)
Our condition in this world, I confess, involves us in such wretchedness, and we are harassed by such a variety of afflictions, that scarcely a day passes without some trouble or grief. Moreover, amid so many uncertain events, we cannot be otherwise than full of daily anxiety and fear. Whithersoever, therefore, men turn themselves, a labyrinth of evils surrounds them. But however much God may terrify and humble his faithful servants, with manifold signs of his displeasure, he always be-sprinkles them with the sweetness of his favor to moderate and assuage their grief. If they weigh, therefore his anger and his favor in an equal balance, they will always find it verified, that while the former is but for a moment, the latter continues to the end of life; nay, it goes beyond it, for it were a grievous mistake to confine the favor of God within the boundaries of this transitory life. And it is unquestionably certain, (628) that none but those whose minds have been raised above the world by a taste of heavenly life really experience this perpetual and uninterrupted manifestation of the divine favor, which enables them to bear their chastisements with cheerfulness. Paul, accordingly, that he may inspire us with invincible patience, refers to this in 2Co 4:17,
“
For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.”
In the meantime, it is to be observed that God never inflicts such heavy and continued chastisements on his people, without frequently mitigating them, and sweetening their bitterness with some consolation. Whoever, therefore, directs his mind to meditation upon the heavenly life, will never faint under his afflictions, however long continued; and, comparing them with the exceeding great and manifold favors of God towards him, he will put such honor on the latter as to judge that God’s goodness, in his estimation, outweighs his displeasure a hundred-fold. In the second clause, David repeats the same thing figuratively: Weeping will lodge in the evening, and rejoicing shall come in the morning He does not simply mean, that the affliction would be only for one night, but that if the darkness of adversity should fall upon the people of God, as it were, in the evening, or at the setting of the sun, light would soon after arise upon them, to comfort their sorrow-stricken spirits. The amount of David’s instruction is, that were we not too headstrong, we would acknowledge that the Lord, even when he appears to overwhelm us for a time with the darkness of affliction, always seasonably ministers matter of joy, just as the morning arises after the night.
(628) “ Et de faict, c’est un poinct tout resolu.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(5) For his anger.Literally,
For a moment (is) in his anger,
Life in his favour;
In the evening comes to lodge weeping,
But at morning a shout of joy.
Some supply comes to lodge with the last clause, but the image is complete and finer without. It is thoroughly Oriental. Sorrow is the wayfarer who comes to the tent for a nights lodging, but the metaphor of his taking his leave in the morning is not carried on, and we have instead the sudden waking with a cry of joy, sudden as the Eastern dawn, without twilight or preparation. Never was faith in the Divine love more beautifully expressed. (Comp. Isa. 54:7-8.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
5. Night morning The original is very terse and beautiful. In the evening weeping shall lodge with us; in the morning rejoicing. So quickly does infinite Love hasten to our relief! “His anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life.”
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psa 30:5. For his anger endureth but a moment There is but a moment in his anger; life and happiness in his favour: weeping may come to lodge with us in the evening, but singing shall dwell with us in the morning. The accomplishment of God’s promises must, as to the season of it, be left to the disposal of his all-wise providence; and there may be a considerable time, and many afflictions, between the giving of the promise and the performance of it. Good men, however, shall not finally be disappointed; and, though some events may seem to be arguments of his displeasure towards them, yet, as the Psalmist found by his own experience, the duration of his anger is but short; comparatively, but for a moment; but the effects of his favour substantial and durable. His favour is chaiim, lives; i.e. long life, and lasting happiness of life, are the sure effects of it. Weeping may come to lodge with us in the evening. Its stay will be short, like a guest who lodges with us only for a night; but in the morning singing for joy shall return, and abide with us. These are poetical illustrations of the shortness of God’s anger, and the permanent effects of his favour, which the Psalmist further illustrates by his own example.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 542
THE MERCY OF GOD
Psa 30:5. His anger endureth but a moment: in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
IN the title affixed to this psalm, it is called A psalm, or song, at the dedication of the house of David. If we understand this as referring to a dedication of his house on his first entrance upon it [Note: 2Sa 5:11.], there is nothing in the psalm at all suitable to the occasion: but if we refer it to the period of his return to it after the death of Absalom, we shall find a suitableness in it to the circumstances in which he had been placed [Note: 2Sa 20:5.]. He had been driven from his throne at a time when he appeared to be most firmly fixed upon it; and had been in most imminent danger of his life, from the hands of his own favourite, but rebellious son, Absalom. God, however, had mercifully interposed for his deliverance, and had restored him once more in safety to his own house. To purify his house from the pollution it had sustained from Absalom, he dedicated it afresh; and penned this psalm, it should seem, for the occasion. But, as this is a matter of conjecture only, and not of certainty, I shall wave all further allusion to either of the occasions; and take the words of my text simply as expressing a most weighty truth, which is at all times, and under all circumstances, proper for our consideration.
Two things we shall notice from it.
I.
The mercy of God
The mercy of God will be found to be altogether of a boundless extent, whether we consider it,
1.
As existing in his own bosom
[He is indeed angry both at sin itself and at those who commit it: and his anger he will surely manifest against every impenitent transgressor. His wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men [Note: Rom 1:18.]; and it will surely break forth against all the children of disobedience [Note: Eph 5:6.]. Nevertheless, the inflicting of his judgments is a strange act, to which he is utterly averse [Note: Isa 28:21.]. Mercy is the attribute in which he most delights [Note: Mic 7:18.]; and, when he proclaimed his name, it was that by which he most desired to be known: The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin [Note: Exo 34:6-7.]. The whole Scriptures represent him in this view, and declare, with one voice, that he is rich in mercy [Note: Eph 2:4.], and that his mercy is from everlasting to everlasting unto those who fear him [Note: Psa 103:17.].]
2.
As experienced by his people
[Against the impenitent his anger must, of necessity, continue: but, towards the penitent and believing, it is of the shortest possible duration: His anger endureth but for a moment. When Nathan pressed home upon the conscience of David the guilt he had contracted in the matter of Uriah, and had brought him to this acknowledgment, I have sinned against the Lord, the prophet was instantly directed by God to declare, that his iniquity, notwithstanding the enormity of it, was pardoned: The Lord hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die [Note: 2Sa 12:13.]. Had there been any bounds to his mercy, Manasseh could never have found acceptance with him. The wickedness of that monarch exceeded all that one would have supposed a human being was capable of committing: yet was even he pardoned, as soon as he humbled himself before his God [Note: 2Ch 33:12-13.]. And how rapidly the mercy of God flies to the healing of a contrite soul, may be seen, as in numberless other instances, so in the psalm before us: Hear, O Lord, said David, and have mercy upon me: Lord, be thou my helper: and then he immediately adds, Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness [Note: ver. 10, 11. For the further elucidation of this, see Jer 3:12-14; Jer 3:22; Jer 4:1.].]
The whole preceding context, whilst it declares Gods mercy, sets also before us,
II.
Our duty in the contemplation of it
As having experienced mercy, we are called to sing, and praise our God. But, as we are not all in the holy frame of David, and as the text itself suggests views somewhat different from those of joyous exultation, I shall adhere rather to the words before us, and point out our duty, not so much in the contemplation of mercy enjoyed, as of mercy needed and desired.
Though God so delights in the exercise of mercy, yet he requires that we seek it at his hands [Note: Eze 36:37.]. We must seek it,
1.
Supremely
[In his favour is life: and the enjoyment of it must be our one object of pursuit. Not only must all earthly things be as nothing in our estimation, but life itself must be of no value in comparison of it. To have our interest in his favour a matter of doubt, must be as death to our souls: and we must live only to obtain reconciliation with him. What the frame of our minds, in reference to it, should be, we may see in those words of David: I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Hear me speedily, O Lord! my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit! Cause me to hear thy loving-kindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee. Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide me [Note: Psa 143:6-8.].]
2.
Humbly
[Weeping may endure for a night. We should certainly weep and mourn for our sins, as our blessed Lord has told us in his sermon on the mount [Note: Mat 5:4. with Luk 6:20-21.]. And who amongst us has not just ground to weep? Who is there that has not reason to smite upon his breast with grief and shame for his past life, and, like David, to say, I am weary with my groaning: all the night make I my bed to swim: I water my couch with my tears [Note: Psa 6:6.]? This should be the experience of us all: we must sow in tears, if ever we would reap in joy [Note: Psa 126:5.]. Shall this be thought suited to the Mosaic dispensation only? It is not a whit less necessary under the Gospel dispensation: Be afflicted, and mourn and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into heaviness: humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord; and he shall lift you up.]
3.
Confidently
[We should never doubt Gods readiness to accept us, when we return to him. Whether our night of weeping be more or less dark, or of a longer or shorter duration, we should feel assured that a morning of joy shall come, when there shall be given to us beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness [Note: Isa 61:3.]. In the contemplation of Gods mercy as revealed in the Gospel, we should see, that he can be a just God, and yet a Saviour [Note: Isa 45:21.]; yea, that because he is faithful and just, lie will forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness [Note: 1Jn 1:9.]. To the exercise of his mercy He has assigned no limit: and we should assign none. We should be perfectly assured that the blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient to cleanse from all sin [Note: 1Jn 1:7]; that God will cast out none who come to him in his Sons name [Note: Joh 6:37.]; on the contrary, that though our sins have been red like crimson, we shall, through the Redeemers blood, be made white as snow [Note: Isa 1:18.].]
In this view of our subject, I would call your attention to the following obvious and salutary reflections
1.
How deeply to be pitied are the blind impenitent world!
[They will not believe that God is angry with them, or that they have any need to dread his displeasure: and, if we attempt to convince them of their danger, they account us no better than gloomy enthusiasts. But, whether they will believe it or not, Gods eye is upon them for evil; and if they turn not to him in penitence and faith, they shall ere long feel the weight of his avenging arm. Who that should see a multitude of persons enclosed, like Baals priests, and unconscious of their impending fate, would not pity them? Yet here are millions of immortal souls soon to be summoned into the presence of their Judge, and setting at defiance the doom that speedily awaits them: should not rivers of tears run down our eyes for them [Note: Psa 119:136.]? Yes, verily: as our Lord wept over Jerusalem in the view of the destruction that awaited it, and as the Apostle Paul had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart on account of his unbelieving brethren [Note: Rom 9:2.], so should we mourn bitterly for those who will not mourn and be m bitterness for themselves.]
2.
How richly to be congratulated is the weeping penitent!
[His carnal friends perhaps pity him for his weakness, or deride him for his folly. But the angels around the throne are of a very different mind: they, even in the presence of God himself, have an augmentation of their joy from one single spectacle like this [Note: Luk 15:10.]: and God himself is not so intent on the heavenly hosts, but that he spies out such a poor object as this, and looks upon him with complacency and delight [Note: Isa 66:2.]. Is there, then, here present one weeping penitent? I congratulate him, from my inmost sold. My Brother! crowns and kingdoms are of no value in comparison of the blessing conferred on thee. Be content to go on weeping, as long as God shall see fit to keep thee in that state of discipline: but know, that joy is sown for thee; and that, in due season, it shall spring up to an abundant harvest: for thus saith the Lord: He that goeth on his way and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him [Note: Psa 126:6.].]
3.
What praises and thanksgivings are due from the pardoned sinner!
[At present you can have but little conception of the blessings conferred upon you: for you cannot see one thousandth part of your guilt, or conceive one thousandth part of the glory that awaits you: and still less can you comprehend the wonders of love and mercy that have been vouchsafed to you in the gift of Gods only dear Son for your redemption. What indeed you do already know, is abundantly sufficient to fill your souls with unutterable joy, and your lips with incessant praise. But what will be your feelings at the instant of the departure of your soul from this earthly tabernacle, and of its admission into the presence of your God? Then you will see somewhat of the depth of misery from which you have been redeemed, and of the height of glory to which you are exalted; and will behold your Redeemer face to face; and join in all the songs of the redeemed: and look forward to eternity as the duration of your bliss. Surely these things should be ever on your minds: they should make you to be looking for, and hasting unto, the coming of that blessed day. But, suppose that your night of weeping were to continue to the very hour of your dissolution, how short would it appear, when once that morning burst upon your view! Are you not ashamed that you should ever grudge the seed for such a harvest? Will not one hour of that glory be an ample recompence for all the exertions you ever made for the attainment of it? Go on, then, with heaven in your view: and live in the sweet anticipation of the glory that awaits you. Methinks the very prospect of such a morning constitutes its very dawn, and will be to your souls the commencement of heaven upon earth.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 30:5 For his anger [endureth but] a moment; in his favour [is] life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy [cometh] in the morning.
Ver. 5. For his anger endureth but a moment ] Though it lasts all a man’s life; for what is that to eternity? Puncture est quod vivimus et puncto minus. But it soon repenteth the Lord concerning his servants; whom, out of love displeased, he correcteth for a short braid, Isa 54:7-8 1Co 14:17 Isa 26:20 Heb 10:37 . Tantillum, tantillum, adhuc pussillum. Bear up, therefore, faint not, fret not.
Flebile principium melior fortuna sequetur.
If our sorrows be long, they are light; if sharper, the shorter. The sharp north east wind never lasteth three days; nothing violent is permanent.
In his favour is life
Weeping may endure for a night
But joy cometh in the morning
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
THE TWO GUESTS
Psa 30:5
A word or two of exposition is necessary in order to bring out the force of this verse. There is an obvious antithesis in the first part of it, between ‘His anger’ and ‘His favour.’ Probably there is a similar antithesis between a ‘moment’ and ‘life.’ For, although the word rendered ‘life’ does not unusually mean a lifetime it may have that signification, and the evident intention of contrast seems to require it here. So, then, the meaning of the first part of my text is, ‘the anger lasts for a moment; the favour lasts for a lifetime.’ The perpetuity of the one, and the brevity of the other, are the Psalmist’s thought.
Then, if we pass to the second part of the text, you will observe that there is there also a double antithesis. ‘Weeping’ is set over against ‘joy’; the ‘night’ against the ‘morning.’ And the first of these two contrasts is the more striking if we observe that the word ‘joy’ means, literally, ‘a joyful shout,’ so that the voice which was lifted in weeping is conceived of as now being heard in exultant praise. Then, still further, the expression ‘may endure’ literally means ‘may come to lodge.’ So that Weeping and Joy are personified. Two guests come; one, dark-robed and approaching at the fitting season for such, ‘the night.’ The other bright, coming with all things fresh and sunny, in the dewy morn. The guest of the night is Weeping; the guest that takes its place in the morning is Gladness.
The two clauses, then, of my text suggest substantially the same thought, and that is the persistence of joy and the transitoriness of sorrow. The one speaks of the succession of emotions in the man; the other, of the successive aspects of the divine dealings which occasion these. The whole is a leaf out of the Psalmist’s own experience. The psalm commemorates his deliverance from some affliction, probably a sickness. That is long gone past; and the tears that it caused have long since dried up. But this shout of joy of his has lasted all these centuries, and is like to be immortal. Well for us if we can read our life’s story with the same cheery confidence as he did his, and have learned like him to discern what is the temporary and what the permanent element in our experience!
I. Note, first, the proportion of joy and sorrow in an ordinary life.
Now is it true-is it not true?-that if a man rightly regards the proportionate duration of these two diverse elements in his life, he must come to the conclusion that the one is continuous and the other is but transitory? A thunderstorm is very short when measured against the long summer day in which it crashes; and very few days have them. It must be a bad climate where half the days are rainy. If we were to take the chart and prick out upon it the line of our sailing, we should find that the spaces in which the weather was tempestuous were brief and few indeed as compared with those in which it was sunny and calm.
But then, man looks before and after, and has the terrible gift that by anticipation and by memory he can prolong the sadness. The proportion of solid matter needed to colour the Irwell is very little in comparison with the whole of the stream. But the current carries it, and half an ounce will stain miles of the turbid stream. Memory and anticipation beat the metal thin, and make it cover an enormous space. And the misery is that, somehow, we have better memories for sad hours than for joyful ones, and it is easier to get accustomed to ‘blessings,’ as we call them, and to lose the poignancy of their sweetness because they become familiar, than it is to apply the same process to our sorrows, and thus to take the edge off them. The rose’s prickles are felt in the flesh longer than its fragrance lives in the nostrils, or its hue in the eye. Men have long memories for their pains as compared with their remembrance of their sorrows.
So it comes to be a piece of very homely, well-worn, and yet always needful, practical counsel to try not to magnify and prolong grief, nor to minimise and abbreviate gladness. We can make our lives, to our own thinking, very much what we will. We cannot directly regulate our emotions, but we can regulate them, because it is in our own power to determine which aspect of our life we shall by preference contemplate.
Here is a room, for instance, papered with a paper with a dark background and a light pattern on it. Well, you can manoeuvre your eye about so as either to look at the black background-and then it is all black, with only a little accidental white or gilt to relieve it here and there; or you can focus your eye on the white and gold, and then that is the main thing, and the other is background. We can choose, to a large extent, what we shall conceive our lives to be; and so we can very largely modify their real character.
‘There’s nothing either good or bad
But thinking makes it so.’
II. And now consider, secondly, the inclusion of the ‘moment’ in the ‘life.’
Thus we come to the truth which breathes uniformity and simplicity through all the various methods of the divine hand, that howsoever He changes and reverses His dealings with us, they are one and the same. You may get two diametrically opposite motions out of the same machine. The same power will send one wheel revolving from right to left, and another from left to right, but they are co-operant to grind out at the far end the one product. It is the same revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the sun’s course and brings declining days and increasing cold. It is the same motion which hurls a comet close to the burning sun, and sends it wandering away out into fields of astronomical space, beyond the ken of telescope, and almost beyond the reach of thought. And so one uniform divine purpose, the ‘favour’ which uses the ‘anger,’ fills the life, and there are no interruptions, howsoever brief, to the steady continuous flow of His outpoured blessings. All is love and favour. Anger is masked love, and sorrow has the same source and mission as joy. It takes all sorts of weathers to make a year, and all tend to the same issue, of ripened harvests and full barns. O brethren! if we understand that God means something better for us than happiness, even likeness to Himself, we should understand better how our deepest sorrows and bitterest tears, and the wounds that penetrate deepest into our bleeding hearts, all come from the same motive, and are directed to the same end as their most joyful contraries. One thing the Lord desires, that we may be partakers of His holiness, and so we may venture to give an even deeper meaning to the Psalmist’s words than he intended, and recognise that the ‘moment’ is an integral part of the ‘life,’ and the ‘anger’ a mode of the manifestation of the ‘favour.’
III. Lastly, notice the conversion of the sorrow into joy.
Both are true. No human heart, however wounded, continues always to bleed. Some gracious vegetation creeps over the wildest ruin. The roughest edges are smoothed by time. Vitality asserts itself; other interests have a right to be entertained and are entertained. The recuperative powers come into play, and the pang departs and poignancy is softened. The cutting edge gets blunt on even poisoned spears by the gracious influences of time. The nightly guest, Sorrow, slips away, and ere we know, another sits in her place. Some of us try to fight against that merciful process and seem to think that it is a merit to continue, by half artificial means, the first moment of pain, and that it is treason to some dear remembrances to let life have its way, and to-day have its rights. That is to set ourselves against the dealings of God, and to refuse to forgive Him for what His love has done for us.
But the other thought seems to me to be even more beautiful, and probably to be what was in the Psalmist’s mind-viz. the transformation of the evil, Sorrow itself, into the radiant form of Joy. A prince in rags comes to a poor man’s hovel, is hospitably received in the darkness, and being received and welcomed, in the morning slips off his rags and appears as he is. Sorrow is Joy disguised.
If it be accepted, if the will submit, if the heart let itself be untwined, that its tendrils may be coiled closer round the heart of God, then the transformation is sure to come, and joy will dawn on those who have done rightly-that is, submissively and thankfully-by their sorrows. It will not be a joy like what the world calls joy-loud-voiced, boisterous, ringing with idiot laughter; but it will be pure, and deep, and sacred, and permanent. A white lily is fairer than a flaunting peony, and the joy into which sorrow accepted turns is pure and refining and good.
So, brethren! remember that the richest vintages are grown on the rough slopes of the volcano, and lovely flowers blow at the glacier’s edge; and all our troubles, big and little, may be converted into gladnesses if we accept them as God meant them. Only they must be so accepted if they are to be thus changed.
But there may be some hearts recoiling from much that I have said in this sermon, and thinking to themselves, ‘Ah! there are two kinds of sorrows. There are those that can be cured, and there are those that cannot . What have you got to say to me who have to bleed from an immedicable wound till the end of my life?’ Well, I have to say this-look beyond earth’s dim dawns to that morning when ‘the Sun of Righteousness shall arise, to them that love His name, with healing in His wings.’ If we have to carry a load on an aching back till the end, be sure that when the night, which is far spent, is over, and the day which is at hand hath broken, every raindrop will be turned into a flashing rainbow when it is smitten by the level light, and every sorrow rightly borne be represented by a special and particular joy.
Only, brother! if a life is to be spent in His favour, it must be spent in His fear. And if our cares and troubles and sorrows and losses are to be transfigured hereafter, then we must keep very near Jesus Christ, who has promised to us that His joy will remain with us, and that our sorrows shall be turned into joys. If we trust to Him, the voices that have been raised in weeping will be heard in gladness, and earth’s minor will be transposed by the great Master of the music into the key of Heaven’s jubilant praise. If only ‘we look not at the things seen, but at the things which are not seen,’ then ‘our light affliction, which is but for a moment, will work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory’; and the weight will be no burden, but will bear up those who are privileged to bear it.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
endureth, &c. Render “For a moment [is] His anger; for a lifetime [is] His favour”.
endure = lodge
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
The Transience of Sorrow
His anger is but for a moment;
In his favour is life:
Weeping may tarry for the night,
But joy cometh in the morning.Psa 30:5.
There is an obvious antithesis in the first part of the text, between his anger and his favour. Probably there is a similar antithesis between a moment and life. For although the word rendered life does not usually mean a lifetime, it may have that signification, and the evident intention of contrast seems to require it here. So, then, the meaning of the first part of the text is, the anger lasts for a moment; the favour lasts for a lifetime. The perpetuity of the one and the brevity of the other are the Psalmists thought. Then, if we pass to the second part of the text, we observe that there is a double antithesis there also. Weeping is set over against joy; the night against the morning. And the first of these two contrasts is the more striking if we observe that the word joy means, literally, a joyful shout, so that the voice which was lifted in weeping is conceived of as now being heard in exultant praise. Then, still further, the expression may endure literally means come to lodge. So that Weeping and Joy are personified. Two guests comeone, dark-robed and approaching at the fitting season for suchthe night; the other bright, coming with all things fresh and sunny, in the dewy morn. The guest of the night is Weeping; the guest that takes its place in the morning is Gladness.
Thus the two clauses of the text suggest substantially the same thought, and that is the persistence of joy and the transitoriness of sorrow. The one speaks of the succession of emotions in the man; the other, of the successive aspects of the Divine dealings which occasion these. The whole is a leaf out of the Psalmists own experience. The psalm commemorates his deliverance from some affliction, probably a sickness. That is long gone past; and the tears that it caused have long since dried up. But this shout of joy of his has lasted all these centuries, and is like to be immortal.
It was Paget himself who had taught us, years before, through his best-known volume, The Spirit of Discipline, to consider carefully the meanings and contrasts of accidie, and of tristitia, and of the sorrow of the world. I asked him onceit was on a walk over the Col de Chcouri at Courmayeurto expand for me afresh his understanding of the phrase he used to quote from Spinoza: Tristitia est hominis transitio a majore ad minorem perfectionem. He answered gravely and almost in a whisper, I can never understand Spinoza, but I am quite certain he was right there.1 [Note: Archbishop Davidson, in Francis Paget, Bishop of Oxford, xviii.]
I
Seasons of Sorrow
1. Sorrow comes in the night. It comes in the night of worldly reverses. These may not be the worst misfortunes in life, but only those who experience them know their poignancy. It is no small thing to have the savings of a lifetime swept away. Perhaps the storm came, the flood fell, the fire burned, a friend proved false, the crash of plans arrived, a blunder in judgment happenedand the accumulation of years has gone. It represented our toil and tears and thought and love. But it perished in an hour. It promised us happiness and independence in old age. But the promise failed. Tears do not turn dust to diamonds. Riches on wings fly faster from us than to us. To cry over fortune lost is no wiser than for the miller to weep over water that has flowed past.
2. Sorrow becomes our guest in the night of broken health. The powers once were vigorous. We ran to our task. Caution was scorned. Life seemed made to combat. We had the strength of Hercules. But something broke. We came against a stone wall. We reached a limit. Our wings were clipped. Suddenly we discovered that the race must be won by swifter feet than ours. Possibly we complain as a recent prisoner of pain who said, I cannot see why people should be born into a world like this to suffer. Could I have seen my life from the beginning, and had I been consulted as to whether I should live to suffer, I certainly would have chosen never to have been. Possibly we have money; but pain hurts the rich and poor alike. Possibly we are religious; but pain hurts both the infidel and the Christian. Possibly we deny pain or endure it as heroically as Epictetus, the Phrygian philosopher-slave, in the Roman court, who said, when his master with some instrument of torture cruelly twisted his servants leg, If you go on you will break it; and who also said calmly, without expressing any of the anguish he felt when his brutal master did go on, I told you that you would break it. Possibly you despise the old suffering house in which you live as did this same ancient thinker, and define yourself as an ethereal existence staggering under the burden of a corpse. But whatever attitude we sustain towards pain, it wrings the stifled cry from our heart, and our face often feels the burning touch of a tear.
Heine, suffering great physical agony, living in his mattress grave, has given us verse upon verse of sweet sadnesssometimes bitter in harsh complaining against God and man; while James Thomson, in his great poem on London, The City of Dreadful Night, even says that, could he not have made a less miserable world, he would not be God for all His glorya horrible utterance, but yet the answer of a man who has been made heartsick by the poverty and misery of East London, the sight of innumerable children who never know childhood, so soon does life curse them.1 [Note: F. Lynch.]
3. Sorrow comes to tarry with us in the night of bereavement. It may be only for an infant whose beauty was never caught by a camera, and whose innocent feet were too fair to walk other than streets of the city of God. It may be for a friend or a lover who, in the sweet old days, went out of our life and left us for an imperishable treasure only the sacred memories of hours that can never return. After these many years, were a cross-section made of our soul, we feel that the image of that blessed being would be found mirrored thereon. It may be for a mother, whose voice will never again this side the stars call her child; or for a father, whose big, brave life will no more bid us follow the path of virtue. We know that to-day in the little city of the dead, hard by the city of the living, sleeps the dust of our sacred dead, or under other skies they who are dead to us walk forgetful of old ties and obligations. So onward we all go, each bearing his burden of sorrow.
In some instances the Indian mothers literally cry their eyes out; and if you ask a blind woman how she lost her vision, she may answer that it was by weeping too hard for her lost relatives, and dimness of sight is attributed to the same cause. The wailings of an Indian over his lost relative, and especially of a mother over her lost children, are piercing and heart-rending; but it is pleasant to see the contrast in this respect between those who are still ignorant of the Gospel and such as have received it. The Christian converts have now learned to accept their bereavements as from Gods hand in silence and submission, and their mute grief is more impressive than the loud lamentation of the heathen.1 [Note: Bishop W. C. Bompas, Northern Lights on the Bible, 55.]
Scarlet fever in its most virulent form appeared in Carlisle (where Dr. Tait was then Dean), and, of the six little daughters whose presence had brought radiance to the Deanery, the heartbroken parents were called, within the space of a few weeks, to part with all except the infant who had just been born. One by one, between the 10th of March and the 10th of April, they were laid in the single grave in Stanwix Churchyard. The last entry which has been quoted from the diary was dated March 2. The entry which immediately succeeds it is as follows:
Thursday, 8th May 1856.I have not had the heart to make any entry in my journal now for above nine weeks. When last I wrote I had six daughters on earth; now I have one, an infant. O God, Thou hast dealt very mysteriously with us. We have been passing through deep waters: our feet are well-nigh gone. But though Thou slay us, yet will we trust in Thee. They are gone from us, all but my beloved Craufurd and the babe. Thou hast re-claimed the lent jewels. Yet, O Lord, shall I not thank Thee now? I will thank Thee not only for the children Thou hast left to us, but for those Thou hast re-claimed. I thank Thee for the blessing of the last ten years, and for all the sweet memories of their little livesmemories how fragrant with every blissful, happy thought. I thank Thee for the full assurance that each has gone to the arms of the Good Shepherd, whom each loved according to the capacity of her years. I thank Thee for the bright hopes of a happy re-union, when we shall meet to part no more. O Lord, for Jesus Christs sake, comfort our desolate hearts. May we be a united family still in heart through the communion of saintsthrough Jesus Christ our Lord.1 [Note: Life of Archbishop Tait, i. 189.]
4. Sorrow comes in the night of the consciousness of sin. In the dim glimmer of the fire on the hearth the angel of penitence brings to our notice stains on our garment which, she assures us, would look a thousand times worse if we saw them in the proper lightsaw them as others see them, and, above all, as God sees them. She tells us that such marks can never be removed; that there are also upon our countenance ugly scars which will always disfigure it; that it is a hopeless thing when a man has lost his good name; that when that is lost there is nothing worth keeping. She tells us, too, that even those stains which others may not detect God sees; that sin is sin, whether it be secret or open; and that, the wide world over and in every age, the wages of sin is death.
Yearly I till the vale and sow the seed,
But in the furrow rots the golden grain;
My labour is accursed, and all in vain,
The very earth revolteth at my deed.
God saith no man shall slay me, though I plead
Daily for death. He placed this scarlet stain
Here on my brow, and agonizing pain
Gnaws me beneath ityet He gives no heed.
Enoch reproacheth methe guileless lad
With eyes too like that others, long since dead;
Remorse engulfs me in her sanguine flood;
I build this City, else I should go mad;
But, as I work, the frowning walls turn red
And all the towers drip crimson with his blood.2 [Note: Lloyd Mifflin.]
II
The Sojourn of Sorrow
1. Sorrow always comes with a mission. It has a message from God to human life. You may get two diametrically opposite motions out of the same machine. The same power will send one wheel revolving from right to left, and another from left to right, but they are co-operant to grind out at the far end the one product. It is the same revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the suns course and brings declining days and increasing cold. It is the same motion that hurls a comet close to the burning sun and sends it wandering away out into the fields of astronomical space, beyond the ken of telescope, and almost beyond the reach of thought. And so one uniform Divine purpose fills the life, and there are no interruptions, however brief, to the steady, continuous flow of Gods outpoured blessings. All is love and favour. Anger is masked love, and sorrow has the same source and mission as joy. It takes all sorts of weather to make a year, and all tend to the same issue of ripened harvests and full barns.
I grudged not our noble, lovely child, but rather do delight that such a seed should blossom and bear in the kindly and kindred paradise of my God. And why should not I speak of thee, my Edward! seeing it was in the season of thy sickness and death the Lord did reveal in me the knowledge and hope and desire of His Son from heaven? Glorious exchange! He took my son to His own more fatherly bosom, and revealed in my bosom the sure expectation and faith of His own eternal Son! Dear season of my life, ever to be remembered, when I knew the sweetness and fruitfulness of such joy and sorrow!1 [Note: Edward Irving, in Life by Mrs. Olipliant, i. 247.]
We will not complain of Dantes miseries, said Carlyle; had all gone well with him as he wished it, Florence would have had another prosperous Lord Mayor, but the world would have lost the Divina Commedia.
There came to Glasgow, not so long ago, a pianist of an excellent reputation. I read the Heralds criticism on him, and there was one thing in it that I noted specially. The Herald said that he had always been brilliantalways been wonderful as an executantbut now there was a depth of feeling in him that had never been present in his work before. A day or two afterwards, preaching in a suburb, I met a relative of the pianist. And we fell to talk of him, and of the Herald, and of the Heralds criticism on him. And he said to me, Did you notice that? And do you know what was the secret of the change? It was the death of his mother eighteen months ago. He was an only son, unmarried, and he had been simply devoted to his mother. And then she died, and he was left alone, and all the deeps were broken up in him. And now he played as only he can play who knows what life and death are, and what sorrow is.1 [Note: G. H. Morrison, The Afterglow of God, 92.]
The dark brown moulds upturned
By the sharp-pointed plow,
And Ive a lesson learned.
My life is but a field
Stretched out beneath Gods sky,
Some harvest rich to yield.
Where grows the golden grain,
Where faith,where sympathy?
In a furrow cut by pain.2 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 167.]
2. Sorrow tarries only for the night. It takes its departure whenever its mission is fulfilled. A thunder-storm is very short when measured against the long summer day in which it crashes; and very few days have thunder-storms. It must be a bad climate where half the days are rainy. If we were to take a chart and prick out upon it the line of our voyage, we should find that the spaces in which the weather was tempestuous were brief and few indeed as compared with those in which it was sunny and calm.
Referring to the discipline which Gods love makes Him use, David says, For his anger is but for a moment: his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may come in to lodge at even, but joy cometh in the morning. There may be weeping. There shall be joy. Weeping wont stay long. There is a morning coming, always a morning coming, with the sunshine and the chorus of the birds. Loves discipling touch that seems at the moment like anger is only for a moment. (The printer wanted to change that word discipling to disciplining; but Gods tenderness comes to us anew when we realize that disciplining with its sharp edge means the same as discipling, with its softer, warmer touch.) The loving favour is for always, a lifetime of eternal life.3 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 210.]
A tourist writes of stopping at Giesbach to look at the wonders of its waterfalls. The party had to pass over one of the falls on a slender bridge through the drenching water, with the wild torrents dashing beneath. It was a trying experience. But once through, a glorious picture burst upon them. There were rainbows above, beneath, and circling on all sides. So the spray of sorrow falls now, and we may have to walk through floods and pitiless torrents, and all may seem a strange, inexplicable mystery. But there will come a time when we shall have passed through these showers of grief, and when we shall stand amid the splendour of rainbows on the shores of glory. Then we shall understand, and see love in every pang and tear.1 [Note: J. E. Miller, Week-Day Religion, 81.]
From the sunshine of Thy dwelling
Thou hast sent me this new day,
Laden with Thy love excelling,
Tidings of Thy glory telling
To refresh my way.
Good and perfect gifts are lying
Wrapt within its folds of light,
Pledges of a faith undying,
That earths sorrow and its sighing
Will but last a night.2 [Note: G. Matheson, Sacred Songs, 57.]
3. There is a balance of good in the world, using the word good in the lowest sense, that is, looking merely on mans animal life, and regarding him only as a denizen, for a little, of this material world. Men are busy, men are happy; far more happy, at least, than miserable. Some few are miserable utterly; all are more or less unhappy at times, and for a little. Yes! that is just it, just what the text saysfor a little; the dark time is for a moment. The brighter times stretch on, and flow into each other, and go far to fill up the life.
The proportion of solid matter needed to colour the Irwell is very little in comparison with the whole of the stream. But the current carries it, and a trace of dye-stuff will stain miles of the turbid stream. Memory and anticipation beat the metal thin, and make it cover an enormous space. And the misery is that, somehow, we have better memories for sad hours than for joyful ones, and it is easier to get accustomed to blessings, as we call them, and to lose the poignancy of their sweetness because they become familiar, than it is to apply the same process to our sorrows, and thus to take the edge off them. The roses prickles are felt in the flesh longer than its fragrance lives in the nostrils, or its hue in the eye. Men have long memories for their pains as compared with their remembrance of their sorrows.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, The Wearied Christ, 243.]
To her friend Miss Nicholson, whose sympathy brought her much strength and peace, Florence Nightingale wrote in 1846: My imagination is so filled with the misery of this world that the only thing in which to labour brings any return, seems to me helping and sympathizing there; and all that poets sing of the glories of this world appears to me untrue: all the people I see are eaten up with care or poverty or disease. I know that it was God who created the good, and man the evil, which was not the will of God, but the necessary consequence of His leaving freewill to man. I know that misery is the alphabet of fire, in which history, with its warning hand, writes in flaming letters the consequences of Evil (the Kingdom of Man), and that, without its glaring light, we should never see the path into the Kingdom of God, or heed the directing guide-posts.2 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 53.]
III
The Supplanter of Sorrow
1. Joy cometh in the morning. There are two figures presented before us, the dark-robed and the bright-garmented. The one is the guest of the night, the other is the guest of the morning. The verb which occurs in the first clause of the second half of the text is not repeated in the second, and so the words may be taken in two ways. They may either express how Joy, the morning guest, comes, and turns out the evening visitant, or they may suggest how we took Sorrow in when the night fell, to sit by the fireside, but when morning dawnedwho is this sitting in her place, smiling as we look at her? It is Sorrow transfigured, and her name is changed into Joy. Either the substitution or the transformation may be supposed to be in the Psalmists mind. Both are true.
Does not the whole teaching of the Cross say that sorrow and pain alone wake us up to reality, and that trial is a truer refiner of character than pleasure? Of course, this is not our first impression; it needs a revelation to tell it, or at all events to interpret our own experience. You have a proof of that in a childs wonder at the expression, Blessed are they that mourn; for how should a happy, careless child divine such a mystery? Life alone can apply the meaning of these words of Christ, or explain how true they are; for, indeed, they are only subjectively true, deriving their truth not from sorrow and pain in themselves, but from the tempers on which they fall; so that they are not true alwaysto some never true. Yet how deep they are, and how such convictions alone can make this life intelligible or tolerable! That is a blessed faith which feels that there cannot be clouds and gloom for everwhich, ever resting in conviction of what God is, hopes and knows that joy cometh in the morning.1 [Note: Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 281.]
Say not that darkness is the doom of light,
That every sun must sink in nights abyss,
While every golden day declines to this,
To die and pass at evening out of sight.
Say rather that the morning ends the night,
That death must die beneath the daysprings kiss
Whilst dawn the powers of darkness shall dismiss,
And put their dusky armaments to flight.
Man measures life in this wise; first the morn,
And secondly the noontides perfect prime,
And lastly night, when all things fade away:
But God, ere yet the sons of men were born,
Showed forth a better way of marking time
The evening and the morning were the day.2 [Note: Ellen Thornejcroft Fowler, Verses, Wise or Otherwise, 200.]
2. We can anticipate the morning even in our night of sorrow. Even in the midst of the snow and cold and darkness of Arctic regions, the explorers build houses for themselves of the very blocks of ice, and within are warmth and light and comfort and vitality, while around is a dreary waste. There may be two currents in the great ocean; a cold one may set from the Pole and threaten to chill and freeze all life out, but from the Equator there will be a warm one which will more than counterbalance the inrush of the cold. And so it is possible for us, even when things about us are dark and gloomy, and flesh and natural sensibilities all proclaim to us the necessity of sadnessit is possible for us to be aware of a central blessedness, not boisterous, but so grave and calm that the world cannot discriminate between it and sadness, which yet its possessors know to be blessedness unmingled. Left alone, we may have a companion; in our ignorance we may be enlightened; and in the murkiest night of our sorrow we may have, burning cheerily within our hearts, a light unquenchable.
A traveller entered Milan Cathedral at the dawn of day. The sunbeams fell on the eastern windows. Every pane of glass revealed its beauty. The images of apostle, prophet, angel, and Christ were seen in all their glory. The sun swept on to his zenith and then drove his chariot behind the western Alps. As he did so he flung his beams upon the western windows of the great shrine. Then the glories they contained appeared. Not a figure remained without its light. All the richness of colour and symbolism appeared. So the passing of time and the shining of the consolations of faith into a life transform sorrow into joy and gloom into glory.1 [Note: F. Smith, in Homiletic Review, xlix. 224.]
Oh, deem not they are blest alone
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep;
The Power who pities man, hath shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep.
The light of smiles shall fill again
The lids that overflow with tears;
And weary hours of woe and pain
Are promises of happier years.
There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night:
And grief may hide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.2 [Note: W. C. Bryant, Poems, 39.]
Literature
Crosthwait, E. G. S., Heavenward Steps, 78.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, i. 17.
Hutton (R. E.), The Grown of Christ, i. 547.
Ingram (A. F. W.), The Secrets of Strength, 199.
Maclaren (A.), The Wearied Christ, 241.
Raleigh (A.), The Way to the City, 79.
Rawnsley (R. D. B.), Sermons Preached in Country Churches, i. 118; iii. 120.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Morning by Morning, 134.
Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, ii. 255.
Winterbotham (R.), Sermons, 214.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxiii. 233 (H. P. Liddon); xxxv. 314 (R. B. Brindley).
Homiletic Review, xlix. 222 (F. Smith).
Treasury (New York), xxi. 951 (G. B. F. Hallock).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
For: Psa 103:9, Psa 103:17, Isa 26:20, Isa 54:7, Isa 54:8, Isa 57:15, Isa 57:16, 2Co 4:17
his anger: etc. Heb. there is but a moment in his anger
in his: Psa 16:11, Psa 36:7-9, Psa 63:3, Rev 22:1, Rev 22:17
weeping: Psa 6:6-9, Psa 56:8-11, Psa 126:5, Psa 126:6, Isa 38:3-5, Mat 5:4, Joh 16:20-22, 2Co 7:9, 2Co 7:10
for a night: Heb. in the evening
joy: Heb. singing
in the: Psa 46:5, *marg. Psa 59:16, Psa 143:8, Gen 32:24, *marg. Hos 6:3
Reciprocal: Gen 41:51 – forget Deu 30:20 – thy life Est 8:16 – Jews Job 33:26 – and he shall Job 37:23 – he will Psa 30:7 – by thy Psa 30:11 – turned Psa 32:5 – forgavest Psa 49:14 – morning Psa 90:15 – Make Pro 16:15 – his Ecc 3:4 – time to weep Isa 12:1 – though Isa 30:20 – the bread Isa 60:10 – in my wrath Jer 31:16 – Refrain Lam 3:23 – new Lam 3:32 – General 1Co 7:30 – that weep 2Co 7:7 – mourning 1Th 3:8 – we live
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 30:5. His anger endureth for a moment, &c. Hebrew, , regang beappo, chaiim birzono, a moment in his anger; lives in his favour. The duration of his anger is but short; comparatively, but for a moment, but the effects of his favour substantial and durable. Commonly the afflictions which he sends on his people are of short continuance; and last but a small part of their lives: but he heaps his favours upon them for the greatest part of their present lives, and in the next life which endures for ever; of which the Chaldee paraphrast expounds this passage. And, indeed, without the consideration of eternal life, the difference between the duration of the afflictions and of the prosperous and comfortable condition of Gods people, is neither so evident nor so considerable as David here represents it. Weeping may endure for a night Hebrew, In the evening weeping will lodge with us. Its stay will be short, like that of a guest who only lodges with us for a night: but joy cometh in the morning , laboker rinnah, for the morning there is singing: joy comes speedily, and in due season. Thus the Lord says to his church by his prophet, For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee: In a little wrath I hid myself from thee, for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, Isa 54:7-8. If weeping continue for a night, and it be a wearisome night; yet, as sure as the light of the morning returns, after the darkness of the night, so sure will joy and comfort return in a short time, and in due time, to the people of God; for the covenant of grace is as firm as the covenant of the day. This word has often been exactly fulfilled to us: the grievance has soon vanished, and the grief has passed away. The tokens of his displeasure have been removed; he has lifted up the light of his countenance upon us, and the return of his favour has been as life from the dead. In this sense also, in his favour is life; it is the life, or lives of the soul, spiritual life here and eternal life hereafter. These poetical descriptions of the shortness of Gods anger, and the permanent effects of his favour, are further illustrated in the following verses by the psalmists own example.