Psa 99:8. Thou answeredst them, &c. Fenwick renders this verse thus:

Them, Lord our God, thou didst accept; Through them thou didst forbear, and mercy grant, Though thy just vengeance had the people seiz’d.
The Hebrew lahem, signifies, for them, or their intercession. Thou wast a forbearing God, though punishing; or, when thou hadst begun to punish the people by sending plagues among them. Agreeably hereto the Chaldee renders it, Thou sparedst thy people, because of them, or for their sakes. That God did so, see Exo 11:10. Num 16:47-48. 1Sa 7:9. Bishop Hare and Houbigant render the latter clause, and didst not punish their deeds. See their notes.

REFLECTIONS.1st, The exaltation of Jesus is the joy of his people and the terror of his enemies.

1. It speaks terror to his enemies. The Lord reigneth, whom men by wicked hands had crucified and slain; but by Divine power arisen from the dead, is set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high; let the people tremble; all the enemies of his kingdom, who will not have him to reign over them, shall feel ere long with terror the rod of his judgment: he sitteth between the cherubims, on his exalted throne, attended by ministering spirits, ready to fulfil his pleasure: let the earth be moved, as when the Jewish civil and ecclesiastical state was dissolved by his righteous vengeance, and as the whole world will be in the day of perdition of the ungodly. Note; Many mock at the terrors of God’s judgments, who will, to their cost, shortly find them awful realities.

2. It is the joy of his people. The Lord is great in Zion, where many of his miracles were wrought, and from whence his gospel went forth, or rather in the spiritual Zion his church, who behold the glory of his person and offices, and enjoy his protection and blessing; and he is high above all people, not only as head of his church, but as God over all, blessed for ever, and therefore are they bound to rejoice in him. Let them praise thy great and terrible name; terrible to his foes, but most lovely to his people: for it is holy, and this it is which renders it a terror to sinners, and so glorious in the eyes of his saints. The king’s strength also loveth judgment; Almighty as he is, his power is never abused to injustice, but righteousness is his delight, and the constant guide of his administration; thou dost establish equity; his laws are all most holy and just; thou executest judgment and righteousness in Jacob, protecting his believing people by his providence, correcting them when they offend, and governing his mediatorial kingdom in the most righteous manner; and for this his subjects are called upon to adore him. Exalt ye the Lord our God with heart and voice, in all the glorious offices he bears, and worship at his footstool with lowly reverence, praising him for all his greatness and glory, and looking up to him for the continual supplies of his power and grace: for he is holy: worthy our highest adoration, and faithful to all his promises, as they will ever find who worship him in spirit and in truth.

2nd, The Lord has been the object of adoration to all his saints of old, and their experience proves him to be the God who heareth and answereth the prayers of his believing people. We have,
1. The names and characters of these most eminent men of God; Moses and Aaron among his priests, Moses having exercised the sacerdotal office till Aaron was appointed thereunto with his brethren, and Samuel among them that call upon his name: these eminent worthies stand distinguished not so much for their station and dignity, to which God advanced them, as for their piety: they called upon the Lord, in every emergence they placed their dependance on God, and found him a never-failing refuge: they kept his testimonies, and the ordinance that he gave them, conscientiously observant of the precepts of his law, and the ceremonies of his worship: and they who thus walk in God’s ways, may expect that in those ways he will meet them, and answer all their petitions.

2. The notice and regard God shewed them. He answered them; granted their requests, and communed with them as a man with his friends. He spake unto them in the cloudy pillar; to Moses and Aaron often, and probably to Samuel also in the frequent visions vouchsafed to him. Thou answeredst them, O Lord, our God, when, as advocates for rebellious Israel, they lifted up their prayer for mercy: thou wast a God that forgavest them, at the intercession of these holy men, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions; making them smart for their sins by their sufferings, though prevailed upon by the prayers of these saints from utterly destroying them. Note; We can never sufficiently value the prayers of good men; they are indeed often branded as the troublers, but are in fact the preservers of the nation.

3. The praise due to God for these mercies. Exalt the Lord our God: as our God, he deserves our love and praise, and our fathers’ mercies are our own, and demand our grateful acknowledgments: and worship at his holy hill; in the church of Christ: for the Lord our God is holy in his nature, in all his works and ways, and to be exalted by all his people according to his adorable perfections.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Perhaps this is particularly added concerning those eminently gracious men, to show us, that notwithstanding the sanctity of their character, they were men of like passions with ourselves. Therefore the sole cause of their acceptance was in Christ. Oh! what a blessed thought of encouragement to every true believer of the Church now! How ought it to beget in saints a solemn reverence for God’s holiness! How ought it to excite humble joy and confidence, that we have Jesus, our Holy One, to approach to an holy God in!

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

Psa 99:8 Thou answeredst them, O LORD our God: thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.

Ver. 8. Thou wast a God, &c. ] A sin pardoning God, Neh 9:17 . So thou wast to them under the law, so thou wilt be to those under the gospel.

Though thou tookest, &c. ] Though Moses might not enter for his unbelief, and Samuel smarted for indulging his sons.

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

Psalms

FORGIVENESS AND RETRIBUTION

Psa 99:8 .

When the prophet Isaiah saw the great vision which called him to service, he heard from the lips of the seraphim around the Throne the threefold ascription of praise: ‘Holy! holy! holy! Lord God of hosts.’ This psalm seems to be an echo of that heavenly chorus, for it is divided into three sections, each of which closes with the refrain, ‘He is holy,’ and each of which sets forth some one aspect or outcome of that divine holiness. In the first part the holiness of His universal dominion is celebrated; in the second, the holiness of His revelations and providences to Israel, His inheritance; in the third, the holiness of His dealings with them that call upon His name, both when He forgives their sins and when He scourges for the sins that He has forgiven.

Two remarks of an expository character will prepare the way for what I have further to say. The first is that the word ‘though’ in my text, which holds together the two statements that it contains, is commentary rather than translation. For the original has the simple ‘and,’ and the difference between the two renderings is this, that ‘though’ implies some real or apparent contrariety between forgiveness and taking vengeance, which makes their co-existence remarkable, whereas ‘and’ lays the two things down side by side. The Psalmist simply declares that they are both there, and puts in no such fine distinction as is represented by the words ‘though,’ or ‘but,’ or ‘yet.’ To me it seems a great deal more eloquent in its simplicity and reticence that he should say, ‘Thou forgavest them and tookest vengeance,’ than that he should say ‘Thou forgavest them though Thou tookest vengeance.’

Then there is another point to be noted, viz. we must not import into that word ‘vengeance,’ when it is applied to divine actions, the notions which cluster round it when it is applied to ours. For in its ordinary use it means retaliation, inflicted at the bidding of personal enmity or passion. But there are no turbid elements of that sort in God. His retribution is a great deal more analogous to the unimpassioned, impersonal action of public law than it is to the ‘wild justice of revenge.’ When we speak of His ‘vengeance’ we simply mean-unless we have dropped into a degrading superstition-the just recompense of reward which divinely dogs all sin. There is one saying in Scripture which puts the whole matter in its true light, ‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,’ saith the Lord; the last clause of which interprets the first. So, then, with these elucidations, we may perhaps see a little more clearly the sequence of the Psalmist’s thought here-God’s forgiveness, and co-existing with that, God’s scourging of the sin which He forgives; and both His forgiveness and the scourging, the efflux and the manifestation of the divine holiness. Now just let us look at these thoughts. Here we have-

I. The adoring contemplation of the divine forgiveness.

I suppose that is almost exclusively a thought due to the historical revelation, through the ages, to Israel, crowned, as well as deepened, by the culmination and perfecting of the eternal revelation of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. I suppose the conception of a forgiving God is the product of the Old and of the New Testament. But familiar as the word is to us, and although the thing that it means is embodied in the creed of Christendom, ‘I believe . . . in the forgiveness of sins,’ I think that a great many of us would be somewhat put to it, if we were called upon to tell definitely and clearly what we mean when we speak of the forgiveness of sins. Many of us, prior to thinking about the matter, would answer ‘the non-infliction or remission of penalty.’ And I am far from denying that that is an element in forgiveness, although it is the lowest and the most external, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament conception of it. But we must rise a great deal higher than that. We are entitled, by our Lord’s teaching, to parallel God’s forgiveness and man’s forgiveness; and so perhaps the best way to understand the perfect type of forgiveness is to look at the imperfect types which we see round us. What, then, do we mean by human forgiveness? It is seen in multitudes of cases where there is no question at all of penalty. Two men get alienated from one another. One of them does something which the other thinks is a sin against friendship or loyalty, and he who is sinned against says, ‘I forgive you.’ That does not mean that he does not inflict a penalty, because there is no penalty in question. Forgiveness is not a matter of conduct, then, primarily, but it is a matter of disposition, of attitude, or, to put it into a shorter word, it is a matter of the heart; and even on the lower level of the human type, we see that remission of penalty may be a part, sometimes is and sometimes is not, but is always the smallest part of it, and a derivative and secondary result of something that went before. An unconscious recognition of this attitude of mind and heart, as being the essential thing in forgiveness, brings about an instance of the process by which two words that originally mean substantially the same thing come to acquire each its special shade of meaning. What I refer to is this-when a judicial sentence on a criminal is remitted, we never hear any one speak about the criminal being ‘forgiven.’ We keep the word ‘pardon,’ in our daily conventional intercourse, for slight offences or for the judicial remission of a sentence. The king pardons a criminal; you never hear about the king ‘forgiving’ a criminal. And that, as I take it, is just because people have been groping after the thought that I am trying to bring out, viz. that the remission of penalty is one thing, and purging the heart of all alienation and hatred is another; and that the latter is forgiveness, whilst the former has to be content with being pardon.

The highest type of forgiveness is the paternal. Every one of us who remembers our childhood, and every one of us who has had children of his own, knows what paternal forgiveness is. It is not when you put away the rod that the little face brightens again and the tears cease to flow, but it is when your face clears, and the child knows that there is no cloud between it and the father, or still more the mother, that forgiveness is realised. The immediate effect of our transgressions is that we, as it were, thereby drop a great, black rock into the stream of the divine love, and the channel is barred by our action; and God’s forgiveness is when, as was the case in another fashion in the Deluge, the floods rise above the tops of the highest hills; and as the good old hymn that has gone out of fashion nowadays, says, over sins:

‘Like the mountains for their size,

The seas of sovereign grace arise.’

When the love of God flows over the black rock, as the incoming tide does over some jagged reef, then, and not merely when the rod is put on the shelf, is forgiveness bestowed and received.

But, as I have said, the remission of penalty is an element in forgiveness. Some people say: ‘It is a very dangerous thing, in the interests of Christian truth, to treat that relation of a loving Father as if it expressed all that God is to men.’ Quite so; God is King as well as Father. There are analogies, both in paternal and regal government, which help us to understand the divine dealings with us; though, of course, in regard to both we must always remember that the analogies are remote and not to be pressed too far. But even in recognising the fact that an integral part of forgiveness is remission of penalty, we come back, by another path, to the same point, that the essence of forgiveness is the uninterrupted flow of love. Remission of penalty;-yes, by all means. But then the question comes, what is the penalty of sin? And I suppose that the deepest answer to that is, separation from God. But if the true New Testament conception of the penalty of sin is the eternal death which is the result of the rending of a man away from the Source of life, then the remission of the penalty is precisely identical with the uninterrupted flow of the divine love. The mists of autumnal mornings drape the sky in gloom, and turn the blessed sun itself into a lurid ball of fire. Sweep away the mists, and its rays again pour out beneficence. The man who sins, piles up, as it were, a cloud-bank between himself and God, and forgiveness, which is the remission of the penalty, is the sweeping away of the cloud-bank, and the pouring out of sunshine upon a darkened heart. So, brethren! the essence of forgiveness is that God shall love me all the same, though I sin against Him.

But now turn, in the next place, to

II. God’s scourging of the sin which He forgives.

Look at the instances in our psalm, ‘Moses and Aaron among His priests. . . . They called upon the Lord and He answered them. Thou wast a God that forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance of their doings.’ Moses dies on Pisgah, Aaron is stripped of his priestly robes by his brother’s hand and left alone amongst the clouds and the eagles, on the solitary summit of the mountain, and yet Moses and Aaron knew themselves forgiven the sins for which they died those lonely deaths. And these are but instances of what is universally true, that the sin which is pardoned is also ‘avenged’ in the sense of having retribution dealt out to it.

I need not dwell upon this at any length, but let me just remind you how there are two provinces of human experience in which this is abundantly true: one, that of outward consequences, and another that of inward consequences. Take, for instance, two men, boon companions, who together have wasted their substance in riotous living. One of them is converted, as we call it, becomes a Christian, knows himself forgiven. The other one is not. Is the one less certain to have a corrugated liver than the other? Will the disease, the pauperism, the ruined position in life, the loss of reputation be any different in the cases of him who is pardoned and of him who is not? No; the two will suffer in a similar fashion, and the different attitude that the one has to the divine love from that which the other has, will not make a hair of difference as to the results that follow. The consequences are none the less divine retribution because they are the result of natural laws, and none the less penal because they are automatically inflicted.

There is another department in which we see the same law working, and that is the inward consequences. A man does change his attitude to his former sins, when he knows that he is pardoned; but the results of these sins will follow all the same, whether he is forgiven or not. Memory will be tarnished, habits will be formed and chain a man, capacities will be forfeited, weaknesses will ensue. The wounds may be healed, but the scars will remain, and when we consider how certainly, and as I said, divinely, such issues dog all manner of transgression, we can understand what the Psalmist meant when, not thinking about a future retribution, but about the present life’s experiences, he said, ‘Thou wast a God that forgavest them, and Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.’ ‘The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing,’ and that will be his case whether he is forgiven, or not forgiven, by the divine love.

So, dear friends! do not let us confound the two things which are so widely separated, the flow of the divine love to us irrespective of our sins, which is the true forgiveness, and the remission of the penalty, the infliction of which may itself be a part of forgiveness. ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,’ and he will reap it whether he has sown darnel and tares and poisonous seeds, of which he is now ashamed, and for which he has received forgiveness, or whether he has not asked nor received it.

Only remember that if we humbly realise the great fact that God has forgiven us, we can, as they say, ‘take our punishment’ in an altogether different spirit and temper, and it comes to be, not judicial penalty, but paternal chastisement, the token of love, and of which we can say that ‘We are judged of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.’

Lastly, my text leads us to think of-

III. Forgiveness and scourging as both issues of holy love.

Some people, in their narrow and altogether superficial view of Christianity, would divide between the two, and say forgiveness comes from God’s love, and scourging comes from His holiness. But this psalm puts the two together, just as we must put together as inseparable from each other the two conceptions of holiness and of love. Now our modern notions of what is meant by the love of God are a great deal too sentimental and gushing and limp. Love is degraded unless there be holiness in it. It becomes immoral good nature, much more than anything that deserves the name of love. A God who is all love, so much so that it makes no difference to Him whether a man is a saint or a sinner, is not a God to be worshipped, and scarcely a God to be admired. He is lower than we, not higher. But His holy love is like a sea of glass mingled with fire; the love being shot all through, as it were, with streams of flame.

This holy love underlies the forgiveness of sins. To forgive may sometimes be profoundly right; it may sometimes be profoundly immoral. A general gaol delivery simply sets the scoundrels free; a universal amnesty is a failure of justice, and a very doubtful benefit. But the forgiveness, which is the issue of holy love, is a means to an end, and the end which it has in view is that, drawn by answering love to a pardoning God, we may be drawn from the sins which alienate us from Him. There is no such sure way of making a man forsake his sins as to give him the assurance that God has forgiven them. ‘Thou shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy sins, when’-I smite? no-’I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done.’ ‘Thou wast a God that forgavest them,’ and in the very act of forgiving, didst draw them from their sins.

That holy love, in like manner, underlies retribution. I have been speaking of retribution mainly as it is seen in the working of natural law. It is none the less God’s act, because it is the operation of the laws which He impressed upon His creation at the beginning. You have weaving machines in your mills that whenever a thread breaks, stop dead. Is it the machine or the maker that is to get the credit of that? God has set us in an order of things wherein, and has given us a nature whereby, automatically, every sin, as it were, stops the loom, and ‘every transgression and disobedience receives its just recompense of reward.’ But men sometimes say ‘that is Nature; that is not God.’ God lies at the back of Nature, and works through Nature. Although Nature is not God, God is Nature. Therefore it is ‘Thou’ that ‘takest vengeance of their inventions.’ Let us, then, remember that retribution is a token of love, meant to drive us from our sins, just as forgiveness is meant to draw us from them. Our Psalmist had come the length of putting these two things together, forgiveness and retribution. We have reached further, and here is the New Testament enlargement and deepening and explanation of the Old Testament thought: ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,’ and in the very act, ‘to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ ‘If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

them = Moses and Aaron.

GOD. Hebrew El. App-4. IV

them . . . their = the People.

tookest vengeance. Compare Num 20:12. Deu 3:26. Psa 106:32, Psa 106:33.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

thou wast: Psa 89:33, Num 14:20, Deu 9:19, Jer 46:28, Zep 3:7

though: Exo 32:2, Exo 32:34, Exo 32:35, Num 11:33, Num 11:34, Num 14:20-34, Num 20:12, Num 20:24, Deu 3:26, Deu 9:20

their inventions: Ecc 7:29, Rom 1:21

Reciprocal: Psa 106:29 – with their Eze 36:9 – General Eze 39:26 – they have borne Rom 1:30 – inventors

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

PARDON WITH PUNISHMENT

Thou wast a God that forgavest them, though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.

Psa 99:8

The truths that lie in the text are these: pardon and retribution are ever united. They spring from one source of holy love, and they ought to become to us the occasions of solemn and thankful praise. Exalt the Lord our God, for He is holy. Thou forgavest them, and didst punish their inventions.

I. Notice, first, that forgiveness is at bottom the undisturbed communication of the love of God to sinful men.We are too apt to think that God pardons men in the fashion in which the sovereign pardons a culprit who has been sentenced to be hanged. Such pardon implies nothing as to the feelings of either the criminal or the monarch. There need neither be pity on the one side nor penitence on the other. The true idea of forgiveness is to be found not in the region of law only, but in the region of love and fatherhood. The forgiveness of God is over and over again set forth in Scripture as being a Fathers forgiveness.

II. Such pardon does necessarily sweep away the one true penalty of sin.The wages of sin is death. What is death? The wrenching away of a dependent soul from God. How is that penalty ended? When the soul is united to God in the threefold bond of trust, love, and obedience. The communication of the love is the barring of the hell.

III. The pardoning mercy of God leaves many penalties un-removed.Forgiveness and punishment both come from the same source, and generally go together. The old statement, Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap, is absolutely true, universally true. The Gospel is not its abrogation. God loves us too well to annihilate the secondary consequences of our transgressions.

IV. Pardoning love so modifies the punishment that it becomes an occasion for solemn thankfulness.Whatever painful consequences of past sin may still linger about our lives or haunt our hearts, we may be sure of two things about them all: that they come from forgiving mercy; that they come for our profit.

Illustration

Every sin, whether of omission or of positive transgression, has serious results on the life of the social organism. No part of the organism can be diseased without affecting other parts. And the social consequences of sin cannot be overtaken. Reformation and restitution may do much, but they cannot do all. Whilst the scars of sin cannot be removed by an outward application, yet by the energising from within of the Spirit of Christ the great and dread disease can be cured. It may be a long work and will require patience, but the results are sure. We shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

Psa 99:8. Thou answeredst them, O Lord Namely, the intercessors before mentioned. Thou forgavest them Either, 1st, Moses and Aaron, who sinned, and whose sins God pardoned, yet so that he punished them with exclusion from the land of Canaan. Or rather, 2d, The people, for whom they prayed; for this forgiving was evidently the effect of Gods answering the prayers of the persons above mentioned; and, therefore, as their prayers, recorded in Scripture, were not for the pardon of their own, but for the pardon of the peoples sins, so this forgiveness granted was for the sins of the people. Though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions This clause limits and explains the former. Thou didst forgive the sins of the people, not absolutely and universally, for thou didst punish them severely, but so far as not to inflict that total and final destruction upon them which they deserved, and thou hadst threatened: see Exo 32:10; Exo 32:14; Exo 32:34.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

99:8 Thou answeredst them, O LORD our God: thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of {e} their inventions.

(e) The more liberally God deals with his people, the more he punishes them who abuse his benefits.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes