Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 68:19
Blessed [be] the Lord, [who] daily loadeth us [with benefits, even] the God of our salvation. Selah.
19. Blessed be the Lord ] We are again reminded of the Song of Deborah, Jdg 5:2; Jdg 5:9.
who daily loadeth us with benefits] Better, as R.V., who daily beareth our burden: or, as Aq., Symm., Jer. and Targ., who daily beareth us. In Isa 46:3-4, the same word is used in the phrase, “O house of Jacob which have been borne by me”: and in Exo 19:4; Deu 1:31; Psa 28:9; the idea, though not the word, is the same. The R.V. marg. Blessed be the Lord day by day: if one oppresseth us, God is our salvation, involves the abandonment of the traditional accentuation, and gives a less satisfactory sense.
even the God of our salvation ] In order to avoid the appearance of a grammatical blunder, the R.V. gives, Even the God who is our salvation. The whole verse might be rendered more exactly and forcibly:
Blessed be the Lord; day by day he beareth our burden:
God is our salvation.
On the position of Selah see note on Psa 68:7.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
19 23. The second part of the Psalm (19 35) begins here. From reviewing the triumphs of God in the past the Psalmist turns to the present and the future. God is an ever-present Saviour; He will take vengeance on the enemies of His people.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits … – literally, day, day; that is, day by day; or, constantly. The words with benefits are not in the original, and they do not convey the true idea of the passage. The word rendered loadeth means to take up; to lift, as a stone, Zec 12:3; to bear, to carry, Isa 46:3. Then it means to take up and place upon a beast of burden; to load, Isa 46:1; Gen 44:13. Hence, it means to impose or lay a burden or a load on one; and the idea here is, Blessed be the Lord God even if he lays a burden on us, and if he does this daily, for he is the God of our salvation. He enables us to bear it; he gives us strength; and finally he delivers us from it. Though, therefore, he constantly lays on us a burden, he as constantly aids us to bear it. He does not leave us. He enables us to triumph in him, and through him; and we have occasion constantly to honor and to praise his name. This accords with the experience of all his people, that however heavy may be the burden laid on them, and however constant their trials, they find him as constant a helper, and they daily have occasion to praise and bless him.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 68:19-28
Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.
God as the Deliverer of His people
I. A liberal dispenser of daily blessings (Psa 68:19). Daily beareth our burden (R.V.). Amongst the many ways in which He helps men to bear their burdens is by kindling within them and keeping burning the lamp of hope. The soul-vessel that is most heavily freighted, and most severely tossed by the tempest is buoyed up by hope. Day by day. When the day comes that God ceases to impart His strength, the man falls under his weight, and is crushed.
II. As the exclusive possessor of means for escaping death (Psa 68:20).
1. God alone has ways by which physical death can be escaped. Enoch; Elijah.
2. God alone has ways by which spiritual death can be escaped. Spiritual death is a thousand times the worst death, it is not the extinction of existence, but the extinction of all that makes existence worth having, and renders it an intolerable curse.
III. As the effectual subduer of persistent enemies (Psa 68:21). He could annihilate His universe by a volition. But the destruction of their enmity is a far more glorious work–a work that requires more time, and that, through Christ, He is prosecuting every day amongst men. Here He literally strikes at the head of His enemies, the spirit of antagonism to Himself. The ruling spirit of a man is the head of his being. It is at this that God strikes in the Gospel. Of the seed of the woman–viz. Christ–it was said, He shall bruise thy head. Christianity aims at the head of the evil, which is the governing disposition.
IV. As the willing repeater of needed interpositions (Psa 68:22; Psa 68:28). Truly, it is an encouraging thought that the great things that God has done for His people He is willing to do again, should they require it. He will take them through seas of trial and sorrow that threaten to swallow them up, put to flight the armies of their enemies, and make the land red with their blood. (Homilist.)
The burden-bearing God
The great objection to the rendering which has become familiar to us all, Who daily loadeth us with benefits, is that these essential words are not in the original, and need to be supplied in order to make out the sense. Whereas, on the other hand, if we adopt the suggested emendation, Who daily beareth our burdens, we get a still more beautiful meaning, which requires no force or addition in order to bring it out.
I. The remarkable and eloquent blending of majesty and condescension. What a thought that is–a God that carries mens loads! People talk much rubbish about the stern Old Testament Deity: is there anything sweeter, greater, more heart-compelling and heart-softening, than such a thought as this? How all the majesty bows itself and declares itself to be enlisted on our side when we think that He that sitteth on the circle of the heavens, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers, is the God that daily beareth our burdens!
II. The deep insight into the heart and ways of God here. He daily beareth our burdens. If there is any meaning in this word at all, it means that He so knits Himself with us as that all which touches us touches Him, that He takes a share in all our pressing duties, and feels the reflection from all our sorrows and pains. We have no impassive God in the heavens, careless of mankind, nor is His settled and changeless and unshaded blessedness of such a sort as that there cannot pass across it–if I may not say a shadow, I may at least say–a ripple from mens pangs and troubles and cares. God, in all our afflictions, is afflicted; and, in simple though profound verity, has that which is most truly represented to men, by calling it a fellow feeling with our infirmities and our sorrows.
III. The remarkable anticipation of the very heart of the Gospel. Ah! it were of small avail to know a God that bore the burden of our sorrows and the load of our duties, if we did not know a God who bore the weight of our sins. For that is the real crushing weight that breaks mens hearts and bows them to the earth. So the New Testament, with its message of a Christ on whom is laid the whole pressure of the worlds sin, is the deepest fulfilment of the great words of my text.
IV. What we should therefore do with our burdens. First, we should cast them on God, and let Him carry them. He cannot unless we do. One sometimes sees a petulant and self-confident little child staggering along with some heavy burden by the parents side, but pushing away the hand that is put out to help it to carry its load. And that is what too many of us do when God says to us, Here, My child, let Me help you, I will take the heavy end of it, and do you take the light one. And, last of all, let us see to it that we render Him praise. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The God of our salvation daily loadeth us with benefits
I. What God is: The God of our salvation. Man is a sinner, and sin exposes him to danger; for the wages of sin is death, and the soul that sinneth it shall die. But there is deliverance from this danger; this is attributed to God.
1. The scheme of salvation originated in God (Joh 3:17).
2. The means of salvation are afforded us by God. God sends us His Gospel, containing good news of salvation; His ministers to declare the way of salvation; He affords us Christian sabbaths, religious ordinances, and various means of grace, in order to promote our salvation.
3. The work of salvation is accomplished in the human soul by Gods immediate agency.
4. The sole glory of our final salvation will endlessly redound to God. In heaven we shall have clearer discoveries of the greatness, extent, and freeness of our salvation (Rev 7:10).
II. What God does for us: He daily loadeth us with benefits.
1. The nature of Gods gift. Benefits, not deserts.
2. Their number. Loadeth.
3. The frequency of their communication. Daily. And these benefits flow to us freely, unsolicited, unimplored, unsought. Seasonably, exactly as we need them. Critics state that it should be read who bears our burdens, or supports us, every day. In the wilderness God bare Israel as a man doth bear his son (Deu 1:31). Or as an eagle bears her young on her wings (Deu 32:11). The promise is (Isa 46:4). We have our cares, and burdens, and anxieties, but God invites us to cast them upon Him (Psa 55:22).
III. What we should do in return. Blessed be the Lord. To bless signifies to extol, exalt, or speak well of a person; and to bless the Lord is to speak good of His name.
1. We should bless the Lord sincerely. Hypocrisy is hateful to God.
2. We should bless the Lord affectionately. Our gratitude should be the effusion of love.
3. We should bless the Lord constantly. I will bless the Lord at all times.
4. We should bless the Lord practically. To say, We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord, while we practically violate His laws, must be abominable in His sight. Let us praise Him not only with our lips but by our lives, etc. (Sketches of Four Hundred Sermons.)
Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death.
The royal prerogative
Whatever may be said of the Old Testament dispensation, one thing is clear; in it the Lord God of Israel is ever most conspicuous. God is in all and over all. Here in our text, universal action and power over us are ascribed to the Lord–the mercies of life and the issues of death.
I. The sovereign prerogative of God. Unto God . . . the issues of death. Kings have been wont to keep the power of life and death in their own hands. The great King of kings does so. He can create and He destroy. This prerogative of life and death is His in a wide sense. It is true of our natural life, and of our spiritual. For we are under the condemnation of the law. But God determines whether the sentence shall be carried out. And in those deaths oft with which Christian experience is familiar, those dyings down of the heart and spirit which are the result of our old nature which still cleaveth to the dust, Gods Spirit can revive us again. And when we come actually to die, not to death but to God shall the issue belong. I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. And the resurrection day will make His words good.
2. He has the right to exercise this prerogative.
3. And He has exercised this prerogative in abundant instances.
4. Then let Him have all the glory of it.
II. The character of the sovereign in whom it is vested. He that is our God is the God of salvation. This name means–
1. That salvation is the most glorious of all His designs.
2. That His most delightful works have been works of salvation.
3. That we live at this moment under the dispensation of mercy. The sword is sheathed, the scales of justice put by.
4. That to those who can call Him our God He is especially and emphatically the God of salvation. We owe it all to Him. Twas He passed by and bid us live.
III. The solemn warning of the Sovereign Lord. A new God has lately been set up, all leniency, gentleness, mildness and indifference in the matter of sin. This God is made of honey or sugar of lead. Justice is not in him, nor the punishment of sin. But it is not so. Our text tells the awful truth to wicked men. God can smite, and ere long He will. The proud may vaunt themselves of their beauty and glory in their strength; their heavy scalp, like that of Absalom, may be their boast, but, as in his case, it may be their ruin. No man is out of the reach of God, and no nation either. Turn ye then, ye that know not God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 19. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us] With benefits is not in the text. Perhaps it would be better to translate the clause thus: “Blessed be Adonai, our Prop day by day, who supports us.” Or, “Blessed be the Lord, who supports us day by day.” Or as the Vulgate, Septuagint, and Arabic: “Blessed be the Lord daily, our God who makes our journey prosperous; even the God of our salvation.” The Syriac, “Blessed be the Lord daily, who hath chosen our inheritance.” The word amas, which we translate to load, signifies to lift, bear up, support, or to bear a burden for another. Hence it would not be going far from the ideal meaning to translate: “Blessed be the Lord day by day, who bears our burdens for us.” But loadeth us with benefits is neither a translation nor meaning.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Who daily loadeth us with benefits; and besides that great and glorious blessing of his ascension which once he wrought for us, he is daily conferring new favours upon us. Heb. who layeth load upon us; which may be understood either,
1. Of the burden of afflictions, for which Gods people have cause to bless God upon many accounts. Or rather,
2. Of mercies and favours, which is more agreeable to the context; wherewith in common speech men are said to be loaded by another when they receive them from him in great abundance.
The God of our salvation; the only Author and Finisher both of our present and of our eternal salvation.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
19-21. God daily and fullysupplies us. The issues or escapes from death are under His control,who is the God that saves us, and destroys His and our enemies.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us [with benefits],…. With all spiritual blessings, with an abundance of grace, as well as with temporal mercies, for which he is, and ought to be, praised day by day: so Aben Ezra and Kimchi supply the text, and suppose the word “blessings” or “goodness” to be wanting; though the words may be rendered, “blessed be the Lord day by day, he will hear us”, or “carry us” o; as a father his child, or a shepherd his lambs; and so he does from the womb, even to hoary hairs; and therefore blessing and praise should be ascribed to him; see Isa 46:3; or “he will put a burden upon us” p; meaning the burden of afflictions: these are of the Lord’s laying upon his people; and he will lay no more upon them than he will enable them to bear; and will, in his own time and way, deliver them from them, and be the author of salvation to them, as follows; and therefore his name is to be praised, 1Co 10:13; the Targum interprets it of the burdensomeness of the law;
“blessed be the Lord every day, he burdens us, adding precepts unto precepts;”
[even] the God of our salvation; the author of temporal, spiritual, and eternal salvation, as Christ is.
Selah; on this word, [See comments on Ps 3:2].
o “portal nos”, Vatablus, Musculus; “bajulat nos”, Cocceius. p “Onus imponit nobis”, Lutherus, Gejerus.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Now begins the second circuit of the hymn. Comforted by the majestic picture of the future that he has beheld, the poet returns to the present, in which Israel is still oppressed, but yet not forsaken by God. The translation follows the accentuation, regular and in accordance with the sense, which has been restored by Baer after Heidenheim, viz., has Zarka , and Olewejored preceded by the sub-distinctive Rebia parvum ; it is therefore: Benedictus Dominator: quotidie bajulat nobis , – with which the Targum, Rashi, and Kimchi agree.
(Note: According to the customary accentuation the second has Mercha or Olewejored, and , Mugrash. But this Mugrash has the position of the accents of the Silluk -member against it; for although it does exceptionally occur that two conjunctives follow Mugrash ( Accentsystem, xvii. 5), yet these cannot in any case be Mahpach sarkatum and Illui.)
, like and , unites the significations to lay a burden upon one (Zec 12:3; Isa 46:1, Isa 46:3), and to carry a burden; with it signifies to lay a burden upon any one, here with to take up a burden for any one and to bear it for him. It is the burden or pressure of the hostile world that is meant, which the Lord day by day helps His church to bear, inasmuch as He is mighty by His strength in her who of herself is so feeble. The divine name , as being the subject of the sentence, is : God is our salvation. The music here again strikes in forte, and the same thought that is emphasized by the music in its turn, is also repeated in Psa 68:21 with heightened expression: God is to us a God , who grants us help in rich abundance. The pluralet. denotes not so much the many single proofs of help, as the riches of rescuing power and grace. In Psa 68:21 corresponds to the ; for it is not to be construed : Jahve’s, the Lord, are the outgoings to death (Bttcher), i.e., He can command that one shall not fall a prey to death. , the parallel word to , signifies, and it is the most natural meaning, the escapings; , evadere , as in 1Sa 14:41; 2Ki 13:5; Ecc 7:18. In Jahve’s power are means of deliverance for death, i.e., even for those who are already abandoned to death. With a joyously assuring inference is drawn from that which God is to Israel. The parallelism of the correctly divided verse shows that here, as in Psa 110:6, signifies caput in the literal sense, and not in the sense of princeps . The hair-covered scalp is mentioned as a token of arrogant strength, and unhumbled and impenitent pride, as in Deu 32:42, and as the Attic koma’n directly signifies to strut along, give one’s self airs. The genitival construction is the same as in Isa 28:1, Isa 32:13. The form of expression refers back to Num 24:17, and so to speak inflects this primary passage very similarly to Jer 48:45. If be an object, then ought also to be a second object (that of the member of the body); the order of the words does not in itself forbid this (cf. Psa 3:8 with Deu 33:11), but would require a different arrangement in order to avoid ambiguities.
In Psa 68:23 the poet hears a divine utterance, or records one that he has heard: “From Bashan will I bring back, I will bring back from the eddies of the sea (from = , to whiz, rattle; to whirl, eddy), i.e., the depths or abysses of the sea.” Whom? When after the destruction of Jerusalem a ship set sail for Rome with a freight of distinguished and well-formed captives before whom was the disgrace of prostitution, they all threw themselves into the sea, comforting themselves with this passage of Scripture ( Gittin 57 b, cf. Echa Rabbathi 66 a). They therefore took Psa 68:23 to be a promise which has Israel as its object;
(Note: So also the Targum, which understands the promise to refer to the restoration of the righteous who have been eaten by wild beasts and drowned in the sea (Midrash: = ); cf. also the things related from the time of the Khaliphs in Jost’s Geschichte des Judenthums, ii. 399, and Grtz’ Gesch. der Juden, v. 347.)
but the clause expressing a purpose, Psa 68:24, and the paraphrase in Amo 9:2., show that the foes of Israel are conceived of as its object. Even if these have hidden themselves in the most out-of-the-way places, God will fetch them back and make His own people the executioners of His justice upon them. The expectation is that the flight of the defeated foes will take a southernly direction, and that they will hide themselves in the primeval forests of Bashan, and still farther southward in the depths of the sea, i.e., of the Dead Sea ( as in Isa 16:8; 2Ch 20:2). Opposite to the hiding in the forests of the mountainous Bashan stands the hiding in the abyss of the sea, as the extreme of remoteness, that which is in itself impossible being assumed as possible. The first member of the clause expressing the purpose, Psa 68:24, becomes more easy and pleasing if we read (lxx, Syriac, and Vulgate, ut intingatur ), according to Psa 58:11. So far as the letters are concerned, the conjecture (from which , according to Chajug’, is transposed), after Isa 63:1, is still more natural (Hitzig): that thy foot may redden itself in blood. This is certainly somewhat tame, and moreover would be better suited to this rendering than . As the text now stands,
(Note: The Gaja of the first closed syllable warns one to make a proper pause upon it, in order that the guttural of the second, so apt to be slurred over, may be distinctly pronounced; cf. , Psa 65:5; , Psa 103:12. So also with the sibilants at the beginning of the second syllable, e.g., , Gen 1:11, in accordance with which, in Gen 14:1; 53:2, we must write .)
is equivalent to (them, viz., the enemies), and is an adverbial clause (setting or plunging thy foot in blood). It is, however, also possible that is used like Arab. machada ( vehementer commovere ): ut concutias s. agites pedem tuam in sanguine. Can it now be that in Psa 68:24 from among the number of the enemies of the one who goes about glorying in his sins, the (cf. Isa 11:4; Hab 3:13, and other passages), is brought prominently forward by ? Hardly so; the absence of ( lambat) cannot be tolerated, cf. 1Ki 21:19; 1Ki 22:38. It is more natural, with Simonis, to refer back to (a word which is usually fem., but sometimes perhaps is masc., Psa 22:16; Pro 26:28); and, since side by side with only occurs anywhere else (Ew. 263, b), to take it in the signification pars ejus ( from = , after the form , , , of the same meaning as , , Psa 63:11), in favour of which Hupfeld also decides.
What is now described in Psa 68:25-28, is not the rejoicing over a victory gained in the immediate past, nor the rejoicing over the earlier deliverance at the Red Sea, but Israel’s joyful celebration when it shall have experienced the avenging and redemptive work of its God and King. According to Psa 77:14; Hab 3:6, appears to be God’s march against the enemy; but what follows shows that the pompa magnifica of God is intended, after He has overcome the enemy. Israel’s festival of victory is looked upon as a triumphal procession of God Himself, the King, who governs in holiness, and has now subjugated and humbled the unholy world; as in Psa 68:18. The rendering “in the sanctuary’ is very natural in this passage, but Exo 15:11; Psa 77:14, are against it. The subject of is all the world, more especially those of the heathen who have escaped the slaughter. The perfect signifies: they have seen, just as , they have occupied the front position. Singers head the procession, after them ( ,
(Note: This , according to B. Nedarim 37 b, is a so-called ( ablatio scribarum), the sopherim (sofrim) who watched over the faithful preservation of the text having removed the reading , so natural according to the sense, here as in Gen 18:5; Gen 24:55; Num 31:2, and marked it as not genuine.)
an adverb as in Gen 22:13; Exo 5:1) players upon citherns and harps ( , participle to ), and on either side virgins with timbrels (Spanish adufe); , apocopated part. Poel with the retension of e (cf. , Psa 107:9), from , to strike the (Arab. duff ). It is a retrospective reference to the song at the Sea, now again come into life, which Miriam and the women of Israel sang amidst the music of timbrels. The deliverance which is now being celebrated is the counterpart of the deliverance out of Egypt. Songs resound as in Psa 68:27, “in gatherings of the congregation (and, so to speak, in full choirs) praise ye Elohim.” ( , Psa 26:12) is the plural to (Psa 22:23), which forms none of its own (cf. post-biblical from ). Psa 68:27 is abridged from , praise ye the Lord, ye who have Israel for your fountainhead. , in accordance with the sense, has Mugrash. Israel is here the name of the patriarch, from whom as from its fountainhead the nation has spread itself abroad; cf. Isa 48:1; Isa 51:1, and as to the syntax , those who descend from thee, Isa 58:12. In the festive assembly all the tribes of Israel are represented by their princes. Two each from the southern and northern tribes are mentioned. Out of Benjamin was Israel’s first king, the first royal victor over the Gentiles; and in Benjamin, according to the promise (Deu 33:12) and according to the accounts of the boundaries (Jos 18:16., Jos 15:7.), lay the sanctuary of Israel. Thus, therefore, the tribe which, according both to order of birth (Gen 43:29.) and also extent of jurisdiction and numbers (1Sa 9:21), was “little,” was honoured beyond the others.
(Note: Tertullian calls the Apostle Paul, with reference to his name and his Benjamitish origin, parvus Benjamin , just as Augustine calls the poetess of the Magnificat, nostra tympanistria .)
Judah, however, came to the throne in the person of David, and became for ever the royal tribe. Zebulun and Naphtali are the tribes highly praised in Deborah’s song of victory (Jdg 5:18, cf. Psa 4:6) on account of their patriotic bravery. , giving no sense when taken from the well-known verb , falls back upon , and is consequently equivalent to (cf. Lam 1:13), subduing or ruling them; according to the sense, equivalent to (1 Kings 5:30; 1Ki 9:23; 2Ch 8:10), like , not “their leader up,” but , Isa 63:11, not = (like , ), which would signify their subduer or their subduers. The verb , elsewhere to subjugate, oppress, hold down by force, Eze 34:4; Lev 25:53, is here used of the peaceful occupation of the leader who maintains the order of a stately and gorgeous procession. For the reference to the enemies, “their subduer,” is without any coherence. But to render the parallel word “their (the enemies’) stoning” (Hengstenberg, Vaihinger, and others, according to Bttcher’s “Proben”), is, to say nothing more, devoid of taste; moreover does not mean to throw stones with a sling, but to stone as a judicial procedure. If we assign to the verb the primary signification congerere, accumulare , after Arab. rajama VIII, and rakama , then signifies their closely compacted band, as Jewish expositors have explained it ( ). Even if we connect with , variegare , or compare the proper name regem = Arab. rajm , socius (Bttcher), we arrive at much the same meaning. Hupfeld’s conjecture is consequently unnecessary.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
19. Blessed be the Lord, etc. David would have us to understand, that in recounting the more particular deliverances which God had wrought, he did not mean to draw our minds away from the fact, that the Church is constantly and at all times indebted for its safety to the Divine care and protection. He adds, Blessed be God daily And he intimates, that deliverances might be expected from him with great abundance of every blessing. Some read, he will load, others, he will carry; (40) but it is of little importance which reading we adopt. He points at the fact, that God extends continued proofs of his kindness to his people, and is unwearied in renewing the instances of it. I read this Lord in the second part of the verse, for the letter ה, he, prefixed in the Hebrew, has often the force of a demonstrative pronoun; and he would point out, as it were with the finger, that God in whom their confidence ought to be placed. So in the next verse, which may be read, this our God is the God of salvation What is here said coincides with the scope of what immediately precedes, and is meant to convey the truth that God protects his Church and people constantly. In saying this God, he administers a check to the tendency in men to have their minds diverted from the one living and true God. The salvation of God is set before the view of all men without exception, but is very properly represented here as something peculiar to the elect, that they may recognize themselves as continually indebted to his preserving care, unlike the wicked, who pervert that which might have proved life into destruction, through their unthankfulness. The Hebrew word in the 20 verse is salvations, in the plural number, to convince us that when death may threaten us in ever so many various forms, God can easily devise the necessary means of preservation, and that we should trust to experience the same mercy again which has been extended to us once. The latter clause of the verse bears the same meaning, where it is said, that to the Lord belong the issues of death Some read, the issues unto death, (41) supposing that the reference is to the ease with which God can avenge and destroy his enemies; but this appears a constrained interpretation. The more natural meaning obviously is, that God has very singular ways, unknown to us, of delivering his people from destruction. (42) He points at a peculiarity in the manner of the Divine deliverances, that God does not generally avert death from his people altogether, but allows them to fall in some measure under its power, and afterwards unexpectedly rescues them from it. This is a truth particularly worthy of our notice, as teaching us to beware of judging by sense in the matter of Divine deliverances. However deep we may have sunk in trouble, it becomes us to trust the power of God, who claims it as his peculiar work to open up a way where man can see none.
(40) “The word עמם, amas, which we translate to load, signifies to lift, bear up, support, or, to bear a burden for another Hence it would not be going far from the ideal meaning to translate, ‘Blessed be the Lord, day by day, who bears our burthens for us.’” — Dr Adam Clarke Boothroyd, on the contrary, asserts, that “as an active verb it signifies ‘to load, to lay a burthen on another,’ but in no instance to bear or support one, 1Kg 12:2.”
(41) The Septuagint has, Τοῦ Κυρίου διέξοδοι τοῦ θανάτου, “To the Lord belong the passages of death,” expressing the ways by which death goes out upon men to destroy them. The Vulgate has, “ exitus mortus,” “the goings out of death;” and the Chaldee Paraphrast, “From before the Lord, death, and the going out of the soul to suffocation, do contend or fight against the wicked.” Hammond follows the LXX. He observed, that the original words “must literally be rendered goings forth to death, and must signify the several plagues and judgments inflicted by God on impenitent enemies, the ways of punishing and destroying the Egyptians and Canaanites, drowning in the sea, killing by the sword, infesting by hornets, etc.; and these are properly to be attributed and imputed to God, as the deliverances of the Israelites, his people, in the former part of the verse; and to this sense the consequents incline, verse 21, ‘Even God shall wound.’ Horsley reads the verse,
“
He that is our God is a God of salvation, And for death are the goings forth of the Lord Jehovah;
“
i. e. ,” says he, “When Jehovah takes the field, deadly is the battle to his enemies.”
(42) Agreeably to this, Hewlett observes, that the “ issues of death mean the many providential escapes and deliverances from death;” and Boothroyd reads,
“
For to Jehovah we owe our escapes from death.”
The Syriac version has, —
“
The Lord God is the Lord of death and of escaping.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(19) The verb, as the italics of the Authorised Version show, is of somewhat indefinite use. It appears to have both an active and passive sense, meaning to lay a burden, or to receive a burden. Here the context seems to require the latter: who daily takes our burden for us, i.e., either the burden of trial or of sin. (Comp. a somewhat similar passage, Psa. 99:8, thou art a God who liftest for us, i.e., as Authorised Version, forgivest us.) But it is quite possible to render, if any put a burden on us, God is our help.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
(19-23) The abrupt transition from the scene of triumph just described to the actual reality of things which the psalmist now for the first time faces, really gives the key to the intention of the poem. It is by Gods favour and might, and not by the sword, that deliverance from the enemies actually threatening the nation is to be expected.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 68:19. Who daily loadeth us Who bears our burdens every day. The verb amas, rendered loadeth, signifies both to take on one’s self, or carry a burden, and to place a burden on another; and hence it is used figuratively for to bear and carry another with tenderness and affection. In this sense it is applied to God himself, to express the constant care that he had taken of his people, and how he had supported them, and taken, as it were, upon himself the burden of their affairs. See Isa 46:3. Deu 1:31.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 610
GRATITUDE TO GOD FOR HIS BENEFITS
Psa 68:19-20. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation! He that is our God is the God of salvation; and unto God the Lord belony the issues from death.
THE service of God is beneficial to the soul, not merely as bringing down a divine blessing upon us, but in that it prepares and attunes the soul for further services. David had been carrying up the ark to Jerusalem, to place it in the sanctuary on Mount Zion. And now, having already celebrated the praises of Jehovah for his dealings with his people in former ages, and for the present ceremony, as typical of the Messiahs exaltation after he should have completed his work on earth; and having deposited the ark in its proper place; he bursts forth into general acknowledgments of Gods mercies to his people, and devout ascriptions of praise to him, for all the wonders of his love.
Now we, Brethren, have been engaged in the holy service of worshipping our God. But shall we be satisfied with that? No: I would have that service to be a preparation for a still further honouring of God, whilst we contemplate with devoutest admiration,
I.
The blessings with which he has loaded us
And here I might expatiate on the temporal benefits which are poured out upon us daily, in the richest abundance; I might enumerate the various comforts that are ministered to us, in all the works both of creation and providence. But the inspired comment which we have on this passage leads our mind to far higher benefits, even to all the blessings of redemption. St. Paul quotes the words before my text, and declares them to have been fulfilled in the ascension of our blessed Lord and Saviour, and in his bestowment of spiritual blessings on his Church [Note: Eph 4:7-8; Eph 4:11-13.].
Let us contemplate, then,
1.
The ordinances of his grace
[This is the first thing mentioned by St. Paul in the passage to which I have referred: He gave gifts unto men: he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ; till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. And is this benefit confined to the apostolic age? If we have not Prophets and Apostles, have we not pastors and teachers? And if we see not thousands converted at a time, do we not still see the Church augmented and edified in the midst of us? Yes: we have the same doctrines preached to us as were delivered in the days of old, and the same blessed effects produced by them: and it becomes us to be duly sensible of this mercy, and to bless our God for it from our inmost souls.]
2.
The gift of his Spirit
[This, you know, was the immediate consequence of our Lords ascension: he poured out his Spirit both on his disciples and on his enemies, on the day of Pentecost; for the instruction of the one, and the conversion of the other. And though we no longer have the Holy Spirit in his miraculous powers, have we not still his enlightening, sanctifying, and comforting energies experienced amongst us? Many, I trust, who are here present, can attest, that the Spirit still accompanies the word, and makes it sharper than any two-edged sword, and effectual for the ends for which God, in his tender mercy, has sent it [Note: Isa 55:10-11.]. Even where it has not yet wrought for the conversion of the soul, it has, in ten thousand instances, striven with us, to bring us to repentance. Perhaps, amongst us all, there is not one who has not felt his motions within him, and heard his gracious whispers, saying, Repent, and turn unto thy God. For this, then, we have also reason to adore our God: for, next to the gift of Gods only dear Son to die for us, is the gift of his Holy Spirit to dwell in us, and to impart unto us all the blessings of salvation.]
3.
The knowledge of his Son
[This has God richly imparted to our souls. Say, Brethren, has not the Lord Jesus Christ been evidently set forth crucified amongst you? You yourselves will bear us witness, that from the very beginning of our ministry we determined to know nothing amongst you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. The dignity of his person, the nature of his work, the suitableness of his offices, the freeness and fulness of his salvation, have been ever exhibited to your view, in order that you might believe in him, and, believing, might have life through his name. This knowledge, in St. Pauls estimation, infinitely exceeded every other; yea, in comparison of it he regarded all other things as dross and dung. Yet is this bestowed on you, in all its clearest evidence, and in all its sanctifying and saving operations.]
4.
The hope of his glory
[By the Gospel which ye hear, not only are life and immortality brought to fight, but they are brought home to your souls as actually attained in Christ Jesus. He is your Forerunner; he is gone to prepare a place for you; and, if only you truly believe in him, you may survey all the glory of heaven, and claim it as your own: for his throne is your throne, his kingdom your kingdom, his glory your glory [Note: Rev 3:21. Luk 22:29. Joh 17:22]. This is the inheritance to which you are begotten; and for which, by the almighty power of God, you are reserved [Note: 1Pe 1:3-5.].
These are some of the benefits with which you are loaded from day to day. Say whether you have not reason to bless God for them, and from your inmost souls to say, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ [Note: Eph 1:3.].]
But, from the gifts, let us, in our contemplations, rise to,
II.
The Author and Giver of them all
He is here described by,
1.
His proper character
[We must not forget that it is the Lord Jesus Christ who ascended to heaven, and who bestows these gifts upon men. In the Scriptures he is continually called a Saviour: but here he is repeatedly, and with very peculiar emphasis, called the God of salvation: He that is our God. is the God of salvation. Now I conceive that, by this appellation, David designed to characterize the Lord Jesus as possessing in himself all the fulness that was necessary for our salvation, and as imparting every distinct blessing with as much zeal and love as if that were the only blessing which he was qualified to bestow. In our unconverted state, we need from God all imaginable patience and forbearance: and, for our comfort, he is declared to be the God of patience [Note: Rom 15:5.]. To turn us completely unto him, we need an abundance of every kind of grace: and he is the God of all grace [Note: 1Pe 5:10.]. In returning to God, we hope to obtain peace: and he is the God of peace [Note: Heb 13:20.]. As the ultimate end of our conversion, we hope to obtain glory: and he is the God of glory [Note: Act 7:2.]. We cannot conceive of any thing which we stand in need of, in order to our complete salvation, but there is all fulness of it treasured up for us in Christ Jesus; and of that fulness we may all receive to the utmost possible extent of our necessities. In truth, the benefits we do receive are only the emanations of love from him, even as the rays of light which every moment proceed from the sun: and if any possess them not, it is not owing to any want of liberality in God, but because they foolishly and wickedly bar their hearts against the admission of his gifts. Ascend then, Brethren, from the gifts to the Giver, and from the streams to the Fountain-head, and see what a fulness there is in him for all the sinners of mankind! and, from blessing your God and Saviour on account of what he has imparted to you, learn to adore and magnify him for what he is in himself, even on account of his own proper character, as the God of salvation.]
2.
His peculiar office
[Unto God the Lord belong the issues from death. And is this also spoken of the Lord Jesus? Hear what Jesus himself, after his ascension, said to the Apostle John: Fear not: I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death [Note: Rev 1:17-18.]. He who is the God of salvation has a perfect control over every enemy; so that none can assault us without his special permission; nor can all the powers of darkness prevail over the least or the meanest of his people. He openeth, and no man shutteth; and he shutteth, and no man openeth. Satan could not assault Job, or even enter into the herd of swine, before he had obtained permission from the Lord: nor can he now prevail to injure us, either in body or in soul, any farther than our infinitely wise and gracious God sees fit to permit. Our Lord has assured us, not only, that no weapon which is formed against us shall prosper, but that the smith himself, who forms the weapon, derives his very existence from him, and subsists alone by his power. Consequently, we have none to fear; and every tongue, whether of men or devils, that shall rise against us in judgment, we shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord; and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord [Note: Isa 54:16-17.].
Contemplate, I pray you, this glorious and all-sufficient Saviour; and there will be no end to your praises, no limit to your adorations and thanksgivings.]
See, Brethren, from hence,
1.
What is the proper employment of a saint on earth
[The ignorant and ungodly world are mostly occupied in ruminating on their troubles, and in casting reflections upon those who are the authors of them. But how much sweeter employment have you, my Brethren! You are surveying your blessings, and almost groaning under the load with which your grateful mind is overwhelmed and oppressed: and, at the same time, you are adoring your Benefactor, and giving him the glory due unto his name. This is a sweet employment. This is worthy of a redeemed soul. O let it be your occupation day and night! and let the incessant language of your hearts be, Bless the Lord, O my soul! and let all that is within me bless his holy name.]
2.
What a preparation the Christians services in this world are for his enjoyments in the world to come!
[What are they doing in heaven? Verily, they have no other employment than thisto recount all the mercies which they have received at Gods hands; and to adore him for all the perfections of his nature, and for all the wonders of his grace. Conceive of a soul just entering into that world of bliss: hear all its acknowledgments: listen to its songs of praise: follow it through all the courts of heaven, and watch it day and night; and you will see, beyond a doubt, that grace is glory begun, and glory is grace consummated ]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Who that contemplates the divine love, especially as manifested in the verse going before, but must break out, with the church, in this short but sweet hymn of praise? The Lord not only gives us benefits, but loads us with them, and this not only now and then, but daily: and He that is our God now, will be our God forever. All the issues of life and death are with him. Oh! let the enemies of our Jesus tremble at these truths, and kiss the Son, lest he be angry; for if his wrath be kindled, yea, but a little, they shall perish. But blessed are all they that put their trust in him. Psa 2:12 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 68:19 Blessed [be] the Lord, [who] daily loadeth us [with benefits, even] the God of our salvation. Selah.
Ver. 19. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us ] sc. With blessings, or with crosses turned into blessings, as being sanctified, and having their properties altered; for of themselves they are fruits of sin, and a piece of the curse. Let us not load him with our iniquities, &c.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
THE BURDEN-BEARING GOD
Psa 68:19
The difference between these two renderings seems to be remarkable, and a person ignorant of any language but our own might find it hard to understand how any one sentence was susceptible of both. But the explanation is extremely simple. The important words in the Authorised Version, ‘with benefits,’ are a supplement, having nothing to represent them in the original. The word translated ‘ loadeth’ in the one rendering and ‘ beareth’ in the other admits of both these meanings with equal ease, and is, in fact, employed in both of them in other places in Scripture. It is clear, I think, that, in this case, at all events, the Revision is an improvement. For the great objection to the rendering which has become familiar to us all, ‘Who daily loadeth us with benefits ,’ is that these essential words are not in the original, and need to be supplied in order to make out the sense. Whereas, on the other hand, if we adopt the suggested emendation, ‘Who daily beareth our burdens,’ we get a still more beautiful meaning, which requires no forced addition in order to bring it out. So, then, I accept that varied form of our text as the one on which I desire to say a few words now.
I. The first thing that strikes me in looking at it is the remarkable and eloquent blending of majesty and condescension.
Oh, dear brethren! if familiarity did not dull the glory of it, what a thought that is-a God that carries men’s loads! People talk much rubbish about the ‘stern Old Testament Deity’; is there anything sweeter, greater, more heart-compelling and heart-softening, than such a thought as this? How all the majesty bows itself, and declares itself to be enlisted on our side, when we think that ‘He that sitteth on the circle of the heavens, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers’ is the God that ‘daily beareth our burdens’!
And that is the tone of the Old Testament throughout, for you will always find braided together in the closest vital unity the representation of these two aspects of the divine nature; and if ever we hear set forth a more than ordinarily magnificent conception of His power and majesty be sure that, if you look, you will find side by side with it a more than ordinarily tender representation of His gentleness and His grace. And if we look deeper, this is not a case of contrast, it is not that there are sharply opposed to each other these two things, the gentleness and the greatness, the condescension and the magnificence, but that the former is the direct result of the latter; and it is just because He is Lord, and has dominion over all, that, therefore, He bears the burdens of all. For the responsibilities of the Creator are in proportion to His greatness, and He that has made man has thereby made it necessary that He should, if they will let Him, be their Burden-bearer and their Servant. The highest must be the lowest, and just because God is high over all, blessed for ever, therefore is He the Supporter and Sustainer of all. So we may learn the true meaning of elevation of all sorts, and from the example of loftiest, may draw the lesson for our more insignificant varieties of height, that the higher we are, the more we are bound to stoop, and that men are then likest God, when their elevation suggests to them responsibility, and when he that is chiefest becomes the servant.
II. So, then, notice next the deep insight into the heart and ways of God here.
‘Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not nigh;
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.’
Notice, too, ‘ daily beareth,’ or, as the Hebrew has it yet more emphatically because more simply, ‘day by day beareth.’ He travels with us, in the greatness of His might and the long-suffering of His unwearied patience, through all our tribulation, and as He has ‘borne and carried’ His people ‘all the days of old,’ so, at each new recurrence of new weights, He is with us still. Like some river that runs by the wayside and ever cheers the traveller on the dusty path with its music, and offers its waters to cool his thirsty lips, so, day by day, in the slow iteration of our lingering sorrows, and in the monotonous recurrence of our habitual duties, there is with us the ever-present help of the Ancient of Days, who measures out daily strength for the daily load, and never sends the one without proffering the other.
III. So, again, notice here the remarkable anticipation of the very heart of the Gospel.
Ah! it were of small avail to know a God that bore the burden of our sorrows and the load of our duties, if we did not know a God who bore the weight of our sins. For that is the real crushing weight that breaks men’s hearts and bows them to the earth. So the New Testament, with its message of a Christ on whom is laid the whole pressure of the world’s sin, is the deepest fulfilment of the great words of my text.
IV. Note, lastly, what we should therefore do with our burdens.
Having thus let Him carry the weight, do not you try to carry it too. As our good old hymn has it- ‘Why should I the burden bear?’ It is a great deal more God’s affair than yours. We have, indeed, in a sense, to carry it. ‘Every man shall bear his own burden.’ The weight of duty is not to be indolently shoved off our shoulders on to His, saying, ‘Let Him do the work.’ We have indeed to carry the weight of sorrow. There is no use in trying to deny its bitterness and its burden, and it would not be well for us that it should be less bitter and less heavy. In many lands the habit prevails, especially amongst the women, of carrying heavy loads on their heads; and all travellers tell us that the practice gives a dignity and a grace to the carriage, and a freedom and a swing to the gait, which nothing else will do. Depend upon it, that so much of our burdens of work and weariness as is left to us, after we have cast them upon Him, is intended to strengthen and ennoble us. But do not let there be the gnawings of anxiety. Do not let there be the self-torment of aimless prognostications of evil. Do not let there be the chewing of the bitter morsel of irrevocable sorrows; but fling all upon God. And remember what the Master has said, and His servant has repeated: ‘Take no anxious care . . . for your heavenly Father knoweth’; ‘Cast your anxiety upon Him, for He careth for you.’
And the last advice that comes from my text is, to see that your tongues are not silent in that great hymn of praise which ought to go up to ‘the Lord that daily beareth our burdens.’ He wants only our trust and our thanks, and is best paid by the praise of our love, and of our heaping still more upon His ever strong and ready arm. Bless the Lord! who beareth our burdens, and see that you give Him yours to bear. Listen to Him who hath said, ‘Come unto Me all ye that . . . are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 68:19-23
19Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden,
The God who is our salvation. Selah.
20God is to us a God of deliverances;
And to God the Lord belong escapes from death.
21Surely God will shatter the head of His enemies,
The hairy crown of him who goes on in his guilty deeds.
22The Lord said, I will bring them back from Bashan.
I will bring them back from the depths of the sea;
23That your foot may shatter them in blood,
The tongue of your dogs may have its portion from your enemies.
Psa 68:19-23 Because Bashan is mentioned in Psa 68:15; Psa 68:22, there must be a connection between the military-oriented strophes of Psa 68:11-14; Psa 68:19-23. There are several obvious truths.
1. God is with Israel
2. God will deliver them from their enemies.
This strophe uses three names for Deity (see SPECIAL TOPIC: NAMES FOR DEITY ).
1. Adonai, Psa 68:19-21
2. El, Psa 68:19 b,20 (twice)
3. YHWH, Psa 68:20
Psa 68:19 who daily bears our burden This may denote
1. YHWH’s constant presence with Israel
2. Israel’s constant need of a savior/salvation/deliverance (spiritually and/or physically, cf. Psa 65:5)
The truth that YHWH carries His own is found in Psa 55:22; Isa 46:4.
Psa 68:20-23 These verses emphasize YHWH’s deliverance of the Israelite army (some died but most were saved). Their enemies may run but they cannot escape (cf. Psa 68:22; Amo 9:1-4).
Psa 68:23 contains idioms of defeat and shame.
1. bathe your feet in blood (cf. Psa 58:10; common idiom in Canaanite literature used of Ba’al and Anath)
2. dogs eat the dead enemy soldiers (cf. 1Ki 21:19; Jer 15:3)
Psa 68:21 the hairy crown This is imagery for a person’s scalp (cf. Deu 32:42). Long hair was an OT symbol of dedication to God (cf. Numbers 6), but here of defeated enemies, possibly referring to their dedication to a pagan god and refusal to acknowledge YHWH.
Psa 68:22 from Bashan It is difficult to know if Bashan (BDB 143, ) should be
1. linked to Psa 68:15 as a geographical location
2. emended to , a Ugaritic root for serpent, which would parallel the depths of the sea in the next line (NEB, cf. Amo 9:3, where the same parallelism occurs with the Hebrew word for serpent). The depths are also linked to the Exodus where YHWH split the sea and Pharaoh’s elite bodyguard drowned (cf. Exo 15:5; Neh 9:11).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
THE GOD. Hebrew El (with Art.) App-4.
of our = “[Who is] our”.
salvation. Some codices, with one early printed edition, Septuagint, and Vulgate, read “salvations” (plural) = our great salvation.
Selah. Connecting the exhortation to bless Jehovah (Psa 68:19) with the reason for it (Psa 68:20). See App-66.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Psa 68:19-20
Psa 68:19-20
BLESSING THE GOD WHO SAVES
“Blessed be the Lord who daily beareth our burden,
Even the God who is our salvation. (Selah)
God is unto us a God of deliverances;
And unto Jehovah the Lord belongeth escape from death.”
“Salvation” (Psa 68:19). That the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is indeed the God of salvation for mankind is the great theme of the Holy Bible in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
“Escape from death” (Psa 68:20). With the exception of Enoch and Elijah, all men who were ever born died; none escaped death, except in the very limited sense of being saved from impending death in a given situation for a period of time. It seems to us that here again, the older versions have the better rendition, “For unto God the Lord belong the issues of death.” (KJV). Why is this better? Because what it says is true, whereas, the American Standard Version and later versions are true only in a limited sense. “The keys of the grave and of death have been put into the hands of the Lord Jesus (Rev 1:18).
Note in Psa 68:20 that dual names for God are used, Jehovah and Elohim, rendered “God our God,” or “Jehovah our Lord,” or “God our Lord.”
E.M. Zerr:
Verse 19. The Lord is the giver of all blessings and in acknowledging the fact we bless the Lord. God not only supplies us with the things needful for the body, but he is the means of our salvation.
Verse 20. Our God is an expression occurring often in the Bible. There were so many false gods advocated by the heathen nations that it was significant for the servants of the true one to designate him by the possessive pronoun. God is the one who has power to give life to the dead.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The Burden-Bearing God
Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden.Psa 68:19.
The occasion of this psalm was the removal of the ark to Zion after it had been returned by the Philistines. Under the figures of a military invasion and occupation and settlement of the land, David represents Jehovah as Leader conquering His enemies, possessing Himself of their land, choosing a city for the seat of His Empire, and advancing in triumphal procession to enter upon His chosen residence. In the passage of the ark, the sign of Gods presence, through the land to the site on Mount Zion, chosen as the religious Metropolis of the world, David sees a repetition in the religious realm of the earlier march into and occupation of the country in the birth-time of the nation. His mind runs back to that first victorious advance of God through the desert at the head of His chosen race; to the entrance of the victorious people into the land of Canaan; to the establishment of Zion as the place of His settled worship; and he sees in this second and more illustrious establishment of Zion as the place of Gods rest not only the security for the blessedness of his own land, but the promise of a universal dominion, of which the fitful gleams of peace and happiness that they had as a nation under the new monarchy formed but a faint and imperfect foreshadowing.
And then, as he thinks of the splendid issue of this Divine occupation of Mount Zion, and the establishment there of the true worship, he breaks forth into a direct ascription of praise to God. He looks back on the long years of the Divine patience and forbearance; on not only the special times of deliverance, but the day-by-day guardianship and sustenance of God, and as he does so he says:
Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden,
Even the God who is our salvation.
In the Authorized Version this verse reads thus: Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, the last two words being in italics, to show that they are not in the original. In point of fact, the Hebrew is equally capable of both interpretations, and may be rendered either, Blessed be the Lord, who daily burdens us, that is, with benefits; or, Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden. The great objection to the rendering which has become familiar to us all, who daily loadeth us with benefits, is that these essential words are not in the original, and need to be supplied in order to make out the sense. Whereas, on the other hand, if we adopt the suggested emendation, who daily beareth our burden, we get a still more beautiful meaning, which requires no forced addition in order to bring it out. There is a still more attractive rendering found in several of the ancient versions: Blessed be the Lord who daily beareth us.
I
The Inevitable Burden
Perhaps the most perplexing element in life is the wide sway of the Inevitable. The area of our freedom of choice is so painfully limited that, though we are turned into a capacious garden, stored with an incalculable wealth of flower and fruit, yet we can do so little ourselves, and are of so little account, that we are fain to despise our inheritance and neglect the care of our flower-beds and the watch of the fruit-trees. The life we contrive for ourselves is unexpectedly broken up or overpressed, till it has none of the shape and little of the beauty we intended; indeed, it sometimes seems little more than a central thoroughfare for the irresistible steeds of fate. The youth descries his far-off goal, and with measureless pluck and brightest hope sets out resolved to reach it, but is tripped up before he has travelled many yards; and though he rises, gains his feet and attempts the herculean task a hundred times, it is to find himself nearer indeed, but only to what is now a receding mark. The man of business builds his barns larger in time for them to be burnt by the desolating fire, or sends his boat to sea to be destroyed by the despotism of the storm. Pettiness and weariness eat the heart out of the life of artist and artisan, patriot and poet, and make existence and toil poor and bitter as the apples of Sodom. Thus life not only has its burdens but, in a true and not ignoble sense, it is itself a burden.
1. There is the awful burden of personal existence. It is a solemn thing to be able to say I. And that carries with it this, that, after all sympathy, after all nestling closeness of affection, after the tenderest exhibition of identity of feeling, and of swift godlike readiness to help, each of us lives alone. Like the inhabitants of the islands of the Greek Archipelago, we are able to wave signals to the next island, and sometimes to send a boat with provisions and succour, but we are parted, with echoing straits between us thrown. Every man, after all, lives alone, and society is like the material things round about us, which are all compressible, because the atoms that compose them are not in actual contact, but separated by slenderer or more substantial films of isolating air. Thus there is even in the sorrows which we can share with our brethren, and in all the burdens which we can help to bear, an element which cannot be imparted. The heart knoweth its own bitterness; and neither stranger nor other intermeddleth with the deepest fountains of its joy.
Dr. McLaren began to feel more keenly the inevitable solitariness of old age, as one by one his contemporaries left him. Reviewing old days in Lancashire, he said on one occasion, There were threeStowell Brown went home; there were twoCharles Williams goneand I am left alone, it is very solitary. Two of his sisters reached ninety years of age and beyond it, but between 1903 and 1906 they, and two brothers-in-law and a sister-in-law, died. Referring to these family losses, he writes: I feel as if we were like shipwrecked sailors clinging to the keel of an upturned boat, and seeing one after another lose their hold and sink. But thank God, we shall rise, and not sink when our hands can no longer grasp the seen. Each departure brings us sensibly more face to face with our soon-coming turn. May the gate open a little as we draw nearer it, and give us some beam of the light within. Let us keep nearer to the Lord of life and we shall be ready for our passing into life.1 [Note: E. T. McLaren, Dr. McLaren of Manchester, 242.]
2. Then again there is the burden of responsibility, which each has to bear for himself. A dozen soldiers may be turned out to make a firing party to shoot the mutineer; and no man knows who fired the shot, but one man did fire it. And although there may have been companions, it was his rifle that carried the bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say, The woman Thou gavest me tempted me, and I did eat. Or we say, My natural appetites, for which I am not responsible, but Thou who madest me art, drew me aside, and I fell; or we may say, It was not I; it was the other. And then there rises up in our hearts a veiled form, and from its majestic lips comes, Thou art the man; and our whole being echoes assentMea, culpa; mea maxima culpaMy fault, my exceeding great fault. No man can bear that burden for me.
Mr. Gladstone sometimes so far yielded to his colleagues as to sanction steps which he thought not the best, and may in this have sometimes erred; yet compromises are unavoidable, for no Cabinet could be kept together if its members did not now and then, in matters not essential, yield to one another. When all the facts of his life come to be known, instances may be disclosed in which he was the victim of his own casuistry or of his deference to Peels maxim that a minister should not avow a change of view until the time has come to give effect to it. But it will also be made clear that he strove to obey his conscience, that he acted with an ever-present sense of his responsibility to the Almighty, and that he was animated by an unselfish enthusiasm for humanity, enlightenment, and freedom.1 [Note: J. Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography, 452.]
3. Closely connected with the burden of responsibility there is anotherthe burden of the inevitable consequences of transgression, not only in the future, when all human bonds of companionship shall be broken, and each man shall give account of himself to God, but here and now. The effects of our evil deeds come back to roost; and they never make a mistake as to where they should alight. If I have sown, I, and no one else, will gather. No sympathy will prevent to-morrows headache after to-nights debauch, and nothing that anybody can do will turn the sleuth hounds off the scent. Though they may be slow-footed, they have sure noses and deep-mouthed fangs. If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it.
While Farrar dared not set limits to the infinite mercy of an all-merciful God and Father, none ever pointed with sterner finger to the ineluctable Nemesis that attends on sin. The man who is sold under sin is dead, morally dead, spiritually dead; and such a man is a ghost, far more awful than the soul which was once in a dead body, for he is a body bearing about with him a dead soul. Better, far, far better for him to have cut off the right hand, or plucked out the right eye, than to have been cast as he has been, now in his lifetimeand as he will be cast until he repents, even beyond the grave, into that Gehenna of aeonian fire! It shall purify him, God grant, in due time; but oh! it shall agonize, because he has made himself, as yet, incapable of any other redemption. So that if any youth have wickedly thought in his heart that God is even such an one as himselfthat he may break with impunity Gods awful commandments, that he may indulge with impunity his own evil lusts, let him recall the sad experience of Solomon, Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Let him remember the stern warning of Isaiah, Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so shall their root be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 1 [Note: R. Farrar, Life of Dean Farrar, 269.]
4. The burdens grow with the growing life of man, so that the more the man has the more he has to carry; the severer the test of what he is in himself, of his conscience and heart, his sympathy and will, his faith and love. The boy strong, agile, without work and without want, is as free from care as a frisky kitten. The man solitary, without friend or home or responsibility, carries all his cares under his hat, and the thinner his life, the less there is of anxiety. But the father of a family is the bond of the house, the support of wife and children, and must bear himself erect under the cares of the home, of business, of parish, and of State. Add life, and you add care. Enlarge your world, and you increase your burdens. All strong emotions, all really great ideas, outleap our individual life, and carry us to the larger, deeper, fuller life of the world. Therefore the greatest life is the most burdened, and the saintliest soul feels the mystery and greatness of human life most of all. To the Greek, life is sunshine and joy; beauty swims in upon the soul; his spirit is glad and he carries no care; but the Hebrew, with his stern, inexorable righteousness, his awful sense of stewardship, his solemn knowledge of a covenant with the Eternal, cries out for deliverance from the taint of guilt and the burden of perplexity; and of all the Hebrews it is the man of widest culture, maturest thought, and loftiest aspiration who exclaims, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this body of death?
Who can tell us of the power which events possesswhether they issue from us, or whether we owe our being to them? Do we attract them, or are we attracted by them? Do we mould them, or do they mould us? Are they always unerring in their course? Why do they come to us like the bee to the hive, like the dove to the cote; and where do they find a resting-place when we are not there to meet them? Whence is it that they come to us; and why are they shaped in our image, as though they were our brothers? Are their workings in the past or in the future; and are the more powerful of them those that are no longer, or those that are not yet? Is it to-day or tomorrow that moulds us? Do we not all spend the greater part of our lives under the shadow of an event that has not yet come to pass? I have noticed the same grave gestures, the footsteps that seemed to tend towards a goal that was all too near, the presentiments that chilled the blood, the fixed, immovable lookI have noticed all these in the men, even, whose end was to come about by accident, the men on whom death would suddenly seize from without. And yet were they as eager as their brethren, who bore the seeds of death within them. Their faces were the same. To them, too, life was fraught with more seriousness than to those who were to live their full span. The same careful, silent watchfulness marked their actions. They had no time to lose; they had to be in readiness at the same hour; so completely had this event, which no prophet could have foretold, become the very life of their life.1 [Note: M. Maeterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, 51.]
Here in our little island-home we bide
Our few brief yearsthe years that we possess.
Beyond, the Infinite on every side
Holds what no man may know, though all may guess.
Earth, that is next to nothing in the sum
Of things createda brief mote in space,
With all her aeons past and yet to come.
How we miscalculate our sizeour place!
Yet are we mendetails of the design,
Set to our course, like circling sun and star;
Mortal, infinitesimal, yet divine
Of that divine which made us what we are.
And yet this world, this microscopic ball,
This cast-up grain of sand upon the shore,
This trivial shred and atom of the ALL,
Is still our Trust, that we must answer for.
A lighthouse in the Infinite, with lamps
That we must trim and feed until we die;
A lonely outpost of the unseen camps
That we must keep, although we know not why.
Maker of all! Enough that Thou hast given
This tempered mind, this brain without a flaw,
Enough for me to strive, as I have striven,
To make them serve their purpose and Thy law.1 [Note: Ada Cambridge, The Hand in the Dark, 12.]
II
The Burden-Bearer
The Psalmist employs here that name of God which most strongly expresses the idea of supremacy and dominion. Rule and dignity are the predominant ideas in the word Lord, as, indeed, the English reader feels in hearing it; and then, side by side with that, there lies the thought that the Highest, the Ruler of all, whose absolute authority stretches over all mankind, stoops to this low and servile office, and becomes the burden-bearer for all the pilgrims who put their trust in Him. This blending together of the two ideas of dignity and condescension to lowly offices of help and furtherance is made even more emphatic if we glance back at the context of the psalm. For there is no place in Scripture in which there is flashed before the mind of the singer a grander picture of the magnificence and the glory of God than that which glitters and flames in the previous verses. The majestic greatness of God described in its earlier part seems purposely intended to heighten our sense of the wonder and blessedness of this God stooping from heaven to take on Himself the burdens which rest on His children on the earth.
And if we look deeper, this is not a case of contrast. It is not that there are sharply opposed to each other these two things, the gentleness and the greatness, the condescension and the magnificence, but that the former is the direct result of the latter; and it is just because He is Lord, and has dominion over all, that, therefore, He bears the burdens of all. For the responsibilities of the Creator are in proportion to His greatness, and He who has made man has thereby made it necessary that He should, if we will let Him, be Burden-bearer and our Servant. The highest must be the lowest, and just because God is high over all, therefore is He the Supporter and Sustainer of all. So we may learn the true meaning of elevation of all sorts, and from the example of the loftiest may draw the lesson for our more insignificant varieties of height, that the higher we are, the more we are bound to stoop, and that men are then likest God, when their elevation suggests to them responsibility, and when he that is chiefest becomes the servant.
1. God takes our burdens upon Himself.There are burdens that men can help us with, but the heaviest burdens are those they cannot touch. The heart knoweth its own bitterness. The burden of a hidden grief, of a besetting sin, of a lifelong trial of disease or of sorrow through the wrong-doing of othersmen may not help much here. But God can and does help. He enters into the very life of those whom He teaches to trust Him. It is not they themselves who do the good things and speak the kind words and think the holy thoughts that go to the upbuilding of their spiritual house. It is God. He worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And so of the care that is cast upon Him. He bears it as He bears the sin. He is in the burdened soul, and so, though the outward and visible trial be unremoved, yet God bears it, for the Divine strength is in the heart. God infuses His own power into the soul, until the downward pressure is no longer felt, and the burden is known to be effectually cast upon the Lord.
The word redemption, all the past which it implies, all the future which it points to, has for me a wonderful charm. I cannot separate the idea of deliverance from the idea of God, or ever think of man as blessed except as he enters into Gods redeeming purpose, and labours to make others free. The bondage of circumstances, of the world, but chiefly of self, has at times seemed to me quite intolerable, the more because it takes away all ones energy to throw it off, and then the difficulty of escaping to God! of asking to have the weight taken away! Oh there is infinite comfort in the thought that He hears all our cries for rescue, and is Himself the Author and Finisher of it.1 [Note: 1 Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 520.]
2. Gods help is continual.He daily beareth our burden. He will not suffer us, if we are guided by His teaching and Spirit, to think of Him as simply transcending our life, living above it, and out of it, and looking on it as from a distance; He assures us that He shares it, is in it, and through and over and under all; in it always; Himself bearing the burdens of it, not now and again, at far-separated intervals and in the special crises of our experience; but dailyBlessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden. It is the monotonous daily pressure of the same weight, in the same wearying way, that slays the hope in us and makes us sigh for the wings of a dove to bear us away to some place of freedom and rest; and it is exactly that daily hour-by-hour burden God Himself carries for us, and with us, and so sustains us and trains us. Like some river that runs by the wayside and ever cheers the traveller on the dusty path with its music, and offers its waters to cool his thirsty lips, so, day by day, in the slow iteration of our lingering sorrows, and in the monotonous recurrence of our habitual duties, there is with us the ever-present help of the Ancient of Days, who measures out daily strength for the daily load, and never sends the one without proffering the other.
In feudal times the peasantry used to build their little cottages beneath the shadow of their lords castle-walls so that in time of need they could easily take refuge within the stronghold, and so that by their very proximity to their masters dwelling he might be reminded that they cast upon him the burden of their safe-keeping. So may we build the frail house of life beneath the shadow of the Almighty, that in the day of sore need we may surely find the way into the secret of His presence.
Never a battle with wrong for the right,
Never a contest that He doth not fight,
Lifting above us His banner so white;
Moment by moment were kept in His sight.
Never a trial and He is not there,
Never a burden that He doth not bear,
Never a sorrow that He doth not share,
Moment by moment were under His care.1 [Note: P. C. Ainsworth, A Thornless World, 159.]
3. God hears our burden by sharing it.A physical burden is one thing, a spiritual another, and there is no such literal transference in the moral realm as to make the spirit oblivious of the existence of such a thing as a burden at all. But in this they are alike, that those who help can help only on condition of themselves undergoing the pressure from which they release others. If you want to relieve any one of trouble, you must bear it yourself. Only so can spiritual release be secured. You give blessing at the price of feeling pain. As has been well said, There is no bearing of a moral burden without feeling it to be a burden. And if God bears our burdens, then the pressure and the pain of them become His. Our trouble becomes His trouble, and our sorrow His sorrow. In all their afflictions he was afflicted.
If any one still insist that it seems irreverence, if not blasphemy, to speak of a suffering God, or to ascribe in any way pain or unhappiness to the Ever-Blessed, then, let me add, it may in some measure meet his difficulty to reflect that all moral suffering contains or carries with it what may be called an element of compensation, in virtue of which it is transmuted into a deeper joy. And if this be so, then surely what we must find in Christ as the God-man is, not a being who stript or emptied Himself of His essential divinity in order to share in the weakness and suffering of humanity, but a manifestation of God in all the plenitude of the Divine Nature; and the whole life of the Man of SorrowsHis earthly lowliness, His mortal weakness, grief, and sorrow, His loneliness and forsakenness, His drinking of the cup of suffering to the very dregs, yea, in His very crucifixion and deathmust be to us the disclosure of an ineffable joy triumphing over sorrow, of a Divine bliss in sacrifice which is the last, highest revelation of the nature of God.1 [Note: John Caird.]
4. It is not the burden, but the burden-bearer, that God sustains.It is not the heavy sorrow, but the bleeding heart that He takes into His strong keeping. And here we may notice the significant rendering of this text found in some of the most ancient versions: Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth us. So we can give God our burden only by giving Him our life. At this point the figure of a burden fails to represent accurately the toil and trouble of life, unless we remember it is a burden that cannot be laid down. It is bound to our shoulders by the cords of many necessities, Divine and human, and the answer to our prayer for help does not come in a loosening of these cords, but in inward refreshment of spirit. So the exhortation to us to cast our burden on the Lord and this promise of His sustaining grace do not speak to us of an occasional expedient to which the more trying experiences of life may drive us, but of the true relation of our life to God day by day.
A father sitting in his study, sent his little boy upstairs to fetch a book that had been forgotten. The boy was long gone, and after a time the father thought he heard the sound of sobbing on the stairs. He went out, and at the top of the staircase he saw his son crying bitterly, with the great book he had tried to lift and carried so far, lying at his feet. Oh, father! the lad cried, I cannot carry it, it is too heavy for me! In a moment the father ran up the stairs, and stooping down, took up both the little lad and the book in his strong arms, and carried them down to the room below. Before he reached it, the childs tears were all dried up, and he was leaning on his fathers arm, the burden and the trouble gone.2 [Note: G. S. Barrett, Musings for Quiet Hours, 29.]
5. When God thus bears our burden the burden itself becomes a blessing.It carries him that carries it. It is like the wings of a bird; it is like the sails of a ship. In many lands the habit prevails, especially amongst the women, of carrying heavy loads on their heads; and all travellers tell us that the practice gives a dignity and a grace to the carriage, and a freedom and a swing to the gait, which nothing else will do. Depend upon it, that so much of our burdens of work and weariness as is left to us, after we have cast them upon Him, is intended to strengthen and ennoble us.
The bearing of God has been likened to a father carrying his child, to an eagle taking her young upon her wings, to the shepherd with the lamb in his bosom. But no shepherd, nor mother-bird, nor human father ever bore as the Lord bears. For He bears from within, as the soul lifts and bears the body. The Lord and His own are one. To me, says he who knew it best, to me to live is Christ. It is not the sight of a visible leader, though the Gospels have made the sight imperishable, it is not the sound of Anothers Voice, though that Voice shall peal to the end of time, that Christians only feel. It is something within themselves; another selfpurer, happier, victorious. Not as a voice or example, futile enough to the dying, but as a new soul, is Christ in men.1 [Note: George Adam Smith.]
The hindrances that baffle or overwhelm us, the small annoyances that rob our days of zest and sweetness, the bodys perpetual chafing tyranny, in all these we are facing universal conditions, and bidden to realize a universal being. An infinitesimal fraction of the burden that God bears is on our shouldersbut we are not bearing it alone. This spiritual toil is no degrading punishment laid on us merely for our sins, but the measure of our sonship. Infinite patience seems often to be all that is asked of us. But patience is Godlikepatience is love submitting, and enduring, transmuting poison to sweetness in the life, as surely as enthusiasm is love conquering and striving, and flowing out towards God and man. Nor can we draw distinctions concerning their relative value to God.2 [Note: May Kendall.]
The bonds that press and fetter,
That chafe the soul and fret her,
What man can know them better,
O brother men, than I?
And yet, my burden bearing,
The five wounds ever wearing,
I too in my despairing
Have seen Him as I say;
Gross darkness all around Him
Enwrapt Him and enwound Him,
O late at night I found Him
And lost Him in the day!
Yet bolder grown and braver
At sight of one to save her
My soul no more shall waver,
With wings no longer furled,
But cut with one decision
From doubt and mens derision
That sweet and vanished vision
Shall follow thro the world.1 [Note: F. W. H. Myers, A Vision.]
Literature
Ainsworth (P. C.), A Thornless World, 154.
Barrett (G. S.), Musings for Quiet Hours, 27.
Clifford (J.), The Secret of Jesus, 57.
Cuyler (T. L.), Stirring the Eagles Nest, 39.
Dix (M.), Christ at the Door of the Heart, 195.
Forbes (J. L.), Gods Measure, 175.
Hamilton (J.), Works, vi. 430.
Jowett (J. H.), Thirsting for the Springs, 41.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Psalms li.cxlv., 93.
Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 145.
Morrison (G. H.), The Afterglow of God, 320.
Neville (W. G.), Sermons, 312.
Raleigh (A.), Quiet Resting-Places, 331.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xlix. (1903), No. 2830.
Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, vi. 145.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ix. (1872), No. 793.
Christian World Pulpit, lii. 74 (T. Jones).
Church of England Pulpit, xxxviii. 195.
Clergymans Magazine, 3rd Ser., ii. (1891) 247 (H. G. Youard).
Literary Churchman, xxxii. (1886) (M. Fuller), 355.
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Blessed: Psa 72:17-19, Psa 103:1-22, Eph 1:3
daily: Psa 32:7, Psa 139:17, Lam 3:23
Reciprocal: Gen 14:20 – blessed Gen 24:27 – Blessed Psa 24:5 – God Psa 27:1 – salvation Psa 62:1 – from Psa 65:5 – O God Psa 88:1 – Lord Psa 119:22 – Remove Isa 17:10 – the God Hab 3:13 – wentest Phi 1:28 – and that Rev 7:10 – Salvation
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 68:19-20. Blessed be the Lord, &c. Having surveyed Gods dispensations of grace and mercy to his church and people, thus manifested in their redemption and salvation, the psalmist is so overcome with gratitude for them, that he thus breaks forth abruptly in praise and thanksgiving; who daily loadeth us with his benefits Who, besides the great and glorious blessing of our redemption, once wrought for us, is daily conferring new favours upon us. So many and so weighty are the gifts of Gods bounty to us, that he may be truly said to load us with them; and so incessant are they, and so unwearied is he in doing us good, that he daily loads us with them, according as the necessity of every day requires. Even the God of our salvation The only author and finisher of our present and of our eternal salvation. He that is our God Who is our Friend, Father, and God in covenant; is the God of salvation He will not put us off with present things for a portion, but he will be the God of our salvation: and what he gives us now, he gives as the God of salvation, pursuant to his great design of bringing us to everlasting happiness. For that only will answer the vast extent of his covenant relation to us as our God. But has he power to complete this salvation? Yes, certainly; for unto the Lord our God belong the issues from death The keys of hell and death are put into the hands of the Lord Jesus, Rev 1:18. He, having made an escape from death itself, in his resurrection, has both authority and power to rescue his followers from the dominion of it, by altering the property of it to them when they die, and giving them a complete victory over it when they shall rise again; for the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
3. The effect of God’s scattering His enemies 68:19-31
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
David moved from a historical review of God’s giving Israel victory to confidence that He would continue to do so daily. Any who resist Yahweh can count on His powerful opposition and their own inevitable defeat. Additional references to victories over Og, the king of Bashan, the crossing of the Red Sea, numerous victories in battle, and the slaying of Jezebel (2Ki 9:33-36) would have encouraged the Israelites further. The same God who gave them success in the past was ready to do so still.