Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 119:19
I [am] a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
19. a stranger ] A sojourner ( ger), or alien residing under protection in a country not his own, needs to be instructed in the law of the land that he may not offend against it. Such a ‘sojourner’ is the Psalmist upon earth, and therefore he prays God, the Lord of the earth, to impart to him a full knowledge of his obligations. The further thought may be implied that as his residence is only temporary, he would fain make the best use of life which may be short. Cp. Psa 39:12, note.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
I am a stranger in the earth – A wayfaring man; a pilgrim; a so-journer; a man whose permanent home is not in this world. The word is applicable to one who belongs to another country, and who is now merely passing through a foreign land, or sojourning there for a time. Compare the notes at Heb 11:13. The home of the child of God is heaven. Here he is in a strange – a foreign – land. He is to abide here but for a little time, and then to pass on to his eternal habitation.
Hide not thy commandments from me – Make me to know them; keep them continually before me. In this strange land, away from my home, let me have the comfort of feeling that thy commands are ever with me to guide me; thy promises to comfort me. The feeling is that of one in a strange land who would desire, if possible, to keep up constant communications with his home – his family, his friends, his kindred there. On earth, the place of our sojourning – of our pilgrimage – the friend of God desires to have constant contact with heaven, his final home; not to be left to the desolate feeling that he is cut off from all contact with that world where he is forever to dwell.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 119:19
I am a stranger in the earth: hide not Thy commandments from me.
Songs for the way
(with verse 54):–Two cries ascend from the human heart to God–the cry of the lorn spirit for its Father, and the cry of icy after the Father has been found. A sad life, astir with perplexities, hedged in by shadows, utters its natural longings in the words, I am a stranger in the earth, etc. The same life, emerging from the shadow, with Gods light shining on its path, exclaims, Thy statutes have been my songs, etc. Taken together, these words set forth our condition as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and Gods bountiful provision for meeting that condition in Christ.
I. The fact that we are strangers is forced upon us by our ignorance. Apart from revelation, we know almost nothing of the world we live in, and absolutely nothing of its Lord. In every age, and to every thinking soul, arise the great questions, Who sent me into this earth? Why am I here? Whither am I going? The Gospel is Gods answer to this cry. It is the revelation of the light which is behind sun and stars. What sun and star, what hill and stream cannot disclose of themselves, their Maker has disclosed in Christ. He reveals Himself in Christ as our Father. By His Spirit He says to each of us, My child. He puts the faith and assurance of His fatherhood into our hearts. And this great truth of His fatherhood becomes the first round of the song which He has given to cheer us in the house of our pilgrimage.
II. OUR sins still more than our ignorance have put this sense of strangeness into our hearts, and the marks of it upon our countenance. When the soul awakens to spiritual consciousness, and finds itself in the presence of this great truth of the fatherhood of God, the first fact which confronts it is a sense of farness from the Father. It is Gods mercy that He has not left us to rest in this depth of strangeness. He has made a way for us in Christ:–the new and living way by the blood. Christ dying for sinners, coming near to the lost to bring them near to God:–this is the light which God has kindled for all strangeness between the soul and God, the light which, touching the heart of the sinner, dissipates his estrangement and fills him with thankfulness and song.
III. Another proof that we are strangers is the estrangement we find among men. Think of the conflicts, oppressions, misunderstandings among the inhabitants of the earth at any moment; think of hatreds so fierce and vital that only bloodshed can express their fury; whole races in subjection to other races over large sweeps of the globe, and during many generations; sectarian and selfish policies of nations, of the pride and isolation of classes; narrownesses and spites and arrogances of society, of the evil-speaking and backbiting and talebearing, and the hot and sullen tempers of men; quarrels and contests and ambitions which make up such a sum of the general sum of life:–these are the footprints of the stranger. Christ comes to us with the olive branch in His hand, as the great uniter and binder together. One is your Father. He carries it up into the region occupied by thinkers and men of science, and down to the lowest levels of active and suffering life. He comes with the grand purpose of binding those who receive that word into a holy and abiding fellowship. Out from the contending and shifting crowd He calls a people for Himself, baptizes them with His own Spirit, inspires them with His truth, builds them into a holy nation, and rules over them as King.
IV. The last and saddest mark of the stranger upon us is death. If we are all to die, if there is nothing beyond the grave, then, indeed, we are strangers in the earth; we are without a home or a fatherland. If there had been no light for this shadow, how great our misery should be! There could be no hope of an immortal fellowship for society, or of an immortal life for individual men. But, blessed be God! He has not hidden the future from His child. A home awaits us beyond the grave. A new life blooms for us in the very presence of God. Our torn and suffering earthly existence is to be crowned with glory and immortality in the world of the risen dead. (A. Macleod, D. D.)
I am a stranger on the earth
There is something very affecting in this expression. It is emphatically repeated, at long intervals, in the Scriptures. (Psa 39:12; 1Ch 29:15; Gen 23:4; Heb 11:13.) The emotion which the very phrase excites, running down from the earliest times to the present generation, shows that it refers to something permanent in human nature. Plato felt it when he tried to prove, from the nature of the souls operations, that it was but a mysterious visitor from some pre-existent state. A modern author felt it when he described men as ships passing each other on the ocean, and hailing each other in vain for directions on the way. Very shallow must have been our experience, very lightly must we have pondered our condition, if we too have never felt it, and responded to the declaration, I am a stranger on the earth. The world is beautiful and glorious: it lies around us, as one has said, like a bright sea, with boundless fluctuations. But we are not at home in it. We are lost and bewildered amid is splendours. We are unsafe amid its wasting forces. We are but little versed in its capacious stores. Our hold upon it is faint and transient. So, across the gulf of past ages, we enter into eager sympathy with those old believers who confessed that they too were strangers; and we would seek with them a city which hath foundations. But my object is not only to verify the feeling indicated in the text, but to show the deliverance offered us in our religion, from everything in the feeling that is painful or sad. By the terrors of doubt that cloud the prospect of the unspiritual, I would warn–by the satisfaction of Christian hope, I would win you, vitally to embrace the peculiarity of the Gospel, in the ties of fellowship it offers you, not only with the living and present, but with the unseen beings of another world–no longer the dim, shadowy, flitting, uncertain phantoms they were to the pagan faith–with the saints, truly worthy that name, elder and younger, in the household of God. As the New Testament is true, this association is offered us. Death, terrifier of the world, stands back to let the light stream through his gloomy house, and reveal the holy and happy assembly. Sorrow bends aside her head, so as not to obstruct the inspiring vision. Sickness lifts from the couch her heavy eyes, to catch a glimpse of it. What refinement! What elevation! What generosity and joy! What motive and impulse! There, alive, appear to us the good departed, whom we have known here below, and those we have not known; the celebrated in the calendar, and the uncanonized, as worthy as they; those whose names stand as monumental exemplars on She page of the Bible, with names no less pure, written only in the Lambs book of life;–and we strangers on the earth, in these crumbling garments of clay, are invited to be fellow-citizens with them all. But there are conditions. We must give up our selfishness, and every shape of sin. We must leave behind our spiritual sloth and our sensual excess. So live, says our subject to us, cultivate such sympathies with the departed wise and good, that, when the body goes to mingle with theirs in the dust, the soul may meet theirs in the heavens, not as an alien and a stranger, but as a fellow-citizen and a friend. (C. A. Barrel.)
Good men strangers upon earth
I. The petition. The psalmist does neither plead by this form of language that God would reveal a new system of precepts to him, which he had never before made known, nor that these already revealed should be expressed in plainer terms; but he prays for grace to improve them, and To apply them to practice, that he might see the proper use of his knowledge; for the internal illumination of Gods Holy Spirit to render the external revelation of the Word profitable to his soul; for the practical saving knowledge of his duty in opposition to mere speculation. Now, God is said to hide this knowledge from us, when He doth not actually impart it; and the psalmist here means, by negative expressions, the very same thing which he speaks in positive terms in verse 18.
II. The argument the psalmist makes use of to enforce his petition; I am a stranger in the earth. Consider the several respects in which good men may be styled strangers in the earth.
1. In respect of their heavenly extraction; they are natives and citizens of heaven.
2. In respect of their inheritance. The children of this world have their portion in the things of this life only. But the resting-place of saints is not in this world; it remains, it waits them.
3. In respect of their affections and desires. As their treasure is in heaven, their hearts are there. No characters can be more unlike, nor tempers more strange, than these are to earthly minds. Their ends, their motives, their principles, their employments are contrary to one another.
III. Conclusion.
1. Let us learn, as strangers upon earth, to keep a close correspondence with heaven, to live near to God, much in the exercise of prayer, under a lively sense of our own necessities, and with believing views of Divine grace to direct and uphold us; otherwise, it will be no wonder if, instead of coming well to our journeys end, mischief befall us by the way.
2. Let us never satisfy ourselves with the knowledge without the practice of our duty.
3. We should meddle as little with the world as may be.
4. We should live indifferent to the pains and pleasures of this world.
5. We should accustom our minds to look forward to our latter end.
6. We should learn to be kind and hospitable to all mankind, as all are strangers in the earth in some respects; and our common lot is a powerful inducement to offices of kindness. (W. Beat.)
Human pilgrimage
I. I am as a stranger in the earth because of the impermanence of my position. Here we have no continuing city.
II. I am as a stranger in the earth because of my life and language. If there be but a slight difference between the Christian and the secularist, it is because the Christian has not been transformed by the renewing of his mind, for though bearing a new name he carries an old nature. We instantly detect a foreigner by so small a sign as an accent or a posture; and the Christian is known to men of the world by a glance or tone, by a frown or smile. This should be the Christians business as a stranger–to operate as the light, not as the lightning–to master men by attraction, and not by reprobation.
III. I am a stranger in the earth because of the perils to which i am exposed. The adventurous explorer feels that he is in constant danger. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The strangers prayer
I. A remarkable confession.
1. A stranger is absent from home.
2. A stranger has no fixed residence where he is liable to remove, he looks for changes, and meets them without surprise.
3. A stranger feels no particular interest in the place through which he passes, or in the events which transpire around him: he is not wholly unaffected by them; yet many things which concern a resident are of little or no consequence to a traveller: his home is elsewhere, and his main business lies in another quarter.
4. A stranger forms no intimate connection with the society among whom he is cast. He converses with them; he shows to all civility and respect; but as a stranger he never thinks of close alliance and lasting friendship.
5. A stranger reckons on inconveniences, and prepares to meet them. If he cannot have things altogether to his mind, he submits: if he be treated with neglect, it gives him not much concern: direct affronts do not deeply affect him–he is but a stranger, and he looks forward to home as the seat of comfort, and the place of rest.
II. An appropriate prayer.
1. The Word of God is the strangers best companion.
2. It is his kindest comforter. It makes up for all he needs, and supports under all he endures.
III. Conclusion.
1. The delusion of ungodly men. They are strangers on the earth in regard to the fluctuations that await them, but too much at home in the temper of their minds. What awful surprise will such feel when the summons of departure comes! Go they must, however reluctant, however unprepared!
2. The importance of a right spirit in professors of religion. And what is this, but a spirit of abstraction from a polluting world, of holy indifference to its fascinating smiles, and of noble superiority to its forbidding frowns? (T. Kidd.)
A stranger in the earth
I. An estimate of life. The Christian is a stranger in the earth, because he is conscious of an intense longing for a land of greater purity and perfect rest. His principles also may appear strange to others.
II. A sure solace in life.
1. Gods commandments his solace, because they told him–
(1) What to be.
(2) What to do.
(3) Where to go.
(4) What to avoid.
2. They were revealed,
(1) By the Spirit speaking in the soul,
(2) By the Word of truth,
(3) By the openings out of prudential dealings. God is always going before us.
III. Conclusion.
1. We need not think of ourselves as such strangers, that we are to despise the ordinary joys of life or beauties of the world.
2. We must not try to find our permanent home in this world. We could not if we would. Abraham and David recognized this (Gen 23:4; 1Ch 29:15).
3. We should increase daily in our appreciation of Gods commandments. (Homiletic Magazine.)
Strangers in the earth
This language may be looked upon in two aspects:
I. As expressing a necessary fact in mans earthly history. Stranger in the earth. Two ideas here:
(1) Ignorance. A stranger in a neighbourhood is ignorant of it.
(2) Unsettledness. No abiding city.
II. As expressing a virtuous fact in mans earthly history. A desire to be guided by Gods commandments. Hide not, etc. These are necessary to guide through the labyrinthian path of life. (Homilist.)
A stranger in the earth
When a child is born, it is spoken of sometimes under the designation of a little stranger! A stranger, indeed! come from far. From the presence, and touch, and being of God! And going–into the immensities again–into, and through all the unreckonable ages of duration.
I. The stranger. Such, in regard to earth, and this human life altogether here, is he who makes the confession and breathes the prayer which these words express. He does not belong to this place. He is, consciously, intentionally, and earnestly passing through. In the ordinary sense, no doubt, he is as much of the earth as any other; yet has he, truly, a higher nativity, for he is born from above. Let him show that he is, by living as a citizen of the higher land. Let him be in spiritual life a true patriot. Let him be loyal to the kingdom that claims his soul, that has his name registered in its book of life, and that will one day–if he be really of it–call forth its mighty, shining multitudes to receive him and his brethren with acclamations of delight. Let him be a stranger in the earth, and then it will not only be possible to believe, but it will be impossible not to believe, that he justly claims citizenship in the higher country. A principle, an instinct, a habit of reserve, will be found running through the whole of life on the earthly side of it with the stranger. As for instance:
1. Reserve in secular occupation: in what we call the business of life. Will a man find fittest preparation for calmness, and nobleness, and purity in the everlasting kingdom by giving all his actual energies, and all his time in this world, to these earthly, transient things? It must be the better part to aim high, to look far, to disengage ourselves not only from what would corrupt and injure, but from what would over-occupy and thus insensibly degrade and betray us, and in the serene and lofty spirit of the stranger, to do our duties, and pass through our days.
2. Reserve in pleasure. A pleasure-loving soul never can be unselfish, magnanimous, serene, brave, pure. It is therefore one of the Christians daily lessons to teach himself effectually how to use this world as not abusing it; i.e. how to extract from present things all fair and honest enjoyment, without allowing selfishness and mere appetite so to touch and transmute them in the process that the enjoyment shall have in it some admixture of baser elements, and be no longer the thing which the Divine beneficence provides for mans hunger and thirst.
3. This principle of reserve must run through the whole of life.
(1) There are many who would freely allow that it is rightly applied to business and to pleasure, but who have no idea that the application of it is as legitimate and as necessary within and through all the darker spheres of human life–those of pain, and trouble, and sorrow. But this is so. For these things, just like their opposites, are temporal and evanescent. They belong to the fashion of this world which passeth away. Weep, then, but dry thy tears. Mourn, but be comforted. The great to-morrow will soon be here, whence you will look back, and be ashamed that you made so roach fret and moan in this little yesterday.
(2) Nor must we fail to apply the principle and cultivate the habit of reserve even in the sphere of highest duty. Underneath all outward, upward manifestation lies the steady purpose–One thing I do. But in holding to this one purpose and secret law of our life we are subject to many changes, disappointments, reverses. Rather we are subject to a higher will, the faultless, loving will of our heavenly leader, who shapes His own perfect plan and builds it out of the toils and conflicts, the triumphs and reverses, of His servants; and to that will we ought to be always ready to bow. We ought to plan, and purpose, and will our very best, and throw all our heart and strength into our work, and yet have some reserve, and stand ready for some otter issue. The fruit may be as good as the flower is fair, or the blossom may go up as dust. No matter. I lose nothing if my purpose is true and my will is loyal. My harvest in such case is not really loath–it is only postponed.
II. The prayer, as we cannot but see, is perfectly suited to the condition which has thus been described. A stranger–here but for a little, and yet morally beginning the great hereafter. Never continuing in one stay, and yet ever possessing one being, and developing and settling that being into character. Passing through a fleeting life, and yet, at every step, gathering and carrying forward what must be the elements of the endless life to come–what need there is of light, direction, sacred influence, so that the passage through this world, which must be swift, may also be prosperous, the traveller finding not merely the supply of momentary needs as they arise, but extracting nourishment out of the vanishing scenes of life as they vanish, for the life everlasting. Gods commandments revealed and brought home to the heart will yield, plentifully, all that can be needed in the pilgrim state. In one way or other they touch all the chances and hazards of the journey, and all the requirements of the traveller, while they all combine to make one supreme influence of preparation for what will come when the earthly journey is over. And will not God hear such a prayer, offered in such circumstances, and with such consciousness? Can there he the doubt of a moment about this? (A Raleigh, D. D.)
Strangers, but not homeless
Dr. South has made the striking observation that one world is enough for one man, and God has given us the choice between this and the heavenly. We cannot reign princes in both, or hold one in one hand and the other in the other. If strangers and pilgrims here we shall be at home in the other, and vice versa. (E. P. Thwing.)
Sense of pilgrimage state Jewish national trait
The Jews never seem to lose sight of the fact that they were descendants of pilgrim forefathers. In the most brilliant periods of their history they still regard the life of the moving patriarchs as a type of their own. The confession of Abraham as he stood asking from the children of Heth a place for his dead, that he was a stranger and a sojourner, finds an echo in the prayer of David as he consecrates the treasures that had been offered for the building of the temple. We are strangers and sojourners as all our fathers were. The same characteristic view of life is heard again in the prayer of Hezekiah, when he compares his life to a shepherds tent. Peter, who was a true type of his race, exhorts as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. The same refrain surges back from the Epistle to the Hebrews, We have here no continuing city. Now large numbers of men feel themselves aliens because they have no stake in the soil and land is unequally distributed. But this was not the ease with the twelve tribes to whom Canaan was apportioned by lot. Attachment to the soil became a passion of unrivalled fervour, even in those who had not been schooled into a lover-like devotion to the fatherland by years spent in bondage in an alien land, and yet in spite of this Jewish feeling the rational temper seems to have been ever haunted with a sense of the forlorn loneliness of life. (T. G. Selby.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 19. I am a stranger in the earth] In the land. Being obliged to wander about from place to place, I am like a stranger even in my own country. If it refer to the captives in Babylon, it may mean that they felt themselves there as in a state of exile; for, although they had been seventy years in it, they still felt it as a strange land, because they considered Palestine their home.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Stranger, or sojourner. I am not here as in my home, but as a pilgrim travelling homeward in a strange land; which calls for thy pity and help. That law of nature, which thou hast planted in all mens minds, teacheth them to show humanity to strangers, and to direct travellers; much more may this be expected from thee.
Thy commandments; which are my chief support and guide in my pilgrimage.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
I [am] a stranger in the earth,…. As all his fathers were, and all the saints are; not to divine and spiritual things; to God, and communion with him; to Christ, and the knowledge of him; to the Spirit, and his operations in their hearts; to their own hearts, and the plague of them; to the Gospel, and its truths; nor to the people of God, and fellowship with them: but to the world, among whom they are, not being known, valued, and respected by them; and they also behaving as strangers to the world, having no fellowship with them in their sinful works; as also not being natives here, but belonging to another city and country, an heavenly one; see 1Ch 29:15;
hide not thy commandments from me; the doctrines of the Gospel, the word which God has commanded to a thousand generations; which is pure, and enlightens the eyes, and so needful to strangers in their pilgrimage, Ps 19:8; which God sometimes hides from the wise and prudent, and which the psalmist here deprecates with respect to himself, Mt 11:25. Or the precepts of the world may be meant, which are a light to the feet, and a lamp to the paths, a good direction to travellers and strangers in the way: David, being such an one, prayed that these might not be hid from him, but be showed unto him; that he might know his way, and not go out of it; but walk as a child of light, wisely and circumspectly.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
19 I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
Here we have, 1. The acknowledgment which David makes of his own condition: I am a stranger in the earth. We all are so, and all good people confess themselves to be so; for heaven is their home, and the world is but their inn, the land of their pilgrimage. David was a man that knew as much of the world, and was as well known in it, as most men. God built him a house, established his throne; strangers submitted to him, and people that he had not known served him; he had a name like the names of the great men, and yet he calls himself a stranger. We are all strangers on earth and must so account ourselves. 2. The request he makes to God thereupon: Hide not thy commandments from me. He means more: “Lord, show thy commandments to me; let me never know the want of the word of God, but, as long as I live, give me to be growing in my acquaintance with it. I am a stranger, and therefore stand in need of a guide, a guard, a companion, a comforter; let me have thy commandments always in view, for they will be all this to me, all that a poor stranger can desire. I am a stranger here, and must be gone shortly; by thy commandments let me be prepared for my removal hence.”
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
19. I am a stranger on the earth. It is proper to inquire into the reason for his calling himself a sojourner and stranger in the world. The great concern of the unholy and worldly is to spend their life here easily and quietly; but those who know that they have their journey to pursue, and have their inheritance reserved for them in heaven, are not engrossed nor entangled with these perishable things, but aspire after that place to which they are invited. The meaning may be thus summed up: “Lord, since I must pass quickly through the earth, what will become of me if I am deprived of the doctrine of thy law?” We learn from these words from what point we must commence our journey, if we would go on our way cheerfully unto God.
Besides, God is said to conceal his commandments from those whose eyes he does not open, because, not being endued with spiritual vision, in seeing they see not, so that what is before their eyes is hid from them. And, to demonstrate that he does not present his request in a careless manner, the prophet adds, that his affection for the law is most intense; for it is no common ardor which is expressed by him in the following language, My soul is rent with the desire it hath at all times unto thy judgments. As the man who may concentrate all his thoughts on one point with such intensity as almost to deprive him of the power of perception, may be said to be the victim of his intemperate zeal, so the prophet declares the energy of his mind to be paralyzed and exhausted by his ardent love for the law. (405) The clause, at all times, is meant to express his perseverance; for it may occasionally happen that a man may apply himself with great ardor to the study of the heavenly doctrine; but it is only temporary-his zeal soon vanishes away. Steadfastness is therefore necessary, lest, through weariness, we become faint in our minds.
(405) “Every intense exertion of mind has an influence, if it be long continued, to exhaust and impair the faculties in some degree. Such an effect is here alluded to; the close and assiduous attention which the Psalmist had paid, and the exertion of strong desire which he had exercised, produced the feeling which he here speaks of. He is also to be regarded as using the language of poetry, which admits of stronger colouring than prosaic description.” — Walford.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(19) I am a stranger.A comparison of Psa. 119:54 with Gen. 47:9 (comp. Psa. 39:12) shows that the general transitory condition of life, and not any particular circumstance of the psalmists history is in view. Human intelligence does not suffice to fathom the will of God. The mortal is a stranger on the earth; both time and strength are wanting to attain to knowledge which only Divine wisdom can teach.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 119:19 I [am] a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
Ver. 19. I am a stranger in the earth ] And therefore apt to lose my way, without a guide; I shall surely else be wildered and lost.
Hide not thy commandments from me
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
A STRANGER IN THE EARTH
Psa 119:19
There is something very remarkable in the variety-in-monotony of this, the longest of the psalms. Though it be the longest it is in one sense the simplest, inasmuch as there is but one thought in it, beaten out into all manner of forms and based upon all various considerations. It reminds one of the great violinist who out of one string managed to bring such music and melody.
The one thought is the infinite preciousness of God’s law, by which, of course, is not meant the written record of that law which lies in Scripture, but the utterances of God’s law in any form, by which men may receive it. You will find that that wider signification of the word ‘law,’ ‘commandment,’ ‘statute,’ is essential to the understanding of every portion of this psalm.
And now these two petitions which I have put together base the prayer, which they both offer, in slightly varied form ‘Teach me Thy statutes,’ or ‘Hide not Thy commandments from me,’ upon two diverse considerations, which, taken in conjunction, are extremely interesting.
The two facts on which the one petition rests, are like two great piers on two opposite sides of a river, each of which holds one end of the arch. ‘The earth is full of Thy mercy’; ay! but ‘I am a stranger upon the earth.’ These two things are both true, and from each of them, and still more from both of them taken together, rises up this petition. Let us look then at the facts, and then at the prayer that is built upon them.
Take first that thought of the rejoicing earth, full of God’s mercy as some cup is full of rich wine, or as the flowers in the morning are filled with dew. The Bible does not look at the external world, the material universe, from a scientific point of view, nor does it look at it from a poetical point of view, but from a simply religious one. Nothing that modern science has taught us to say about the world in the least affects this principle which the Psalmist lays down, that it is all full of God’s mercy. The thought is intended to exclude man and man’s ways and all connected with him, as we shall see presently, but the Psalmist looks out upon the earth and all the rest of its inhabitants, and he is sure of two things: one, that God’s direct act is at work in it all, so as that every creature that lives, and everything that is, lives and is because God is there, and working there; and next, that everything about us is the object of loving thoughts of God’s; and has, as it were, some reflection of God’s smile cast across it like the light of flowers upon the grass. Spring days with life ‘re-orient out of dust,’ and the annual miracle beginning again all round, with the birds in the trees, that even dwellers in towns can hear singing as if their hearts would burst for very mirth and hopefulness, the blossoms beginning to push above the frosty ground, and the life breaking out of the branches that were stiff and dry all through the winter, proclaim the same truth as the Psalmist was contemplating when he spoke thus. He looks all round, and everywhere sees the signature of a loving divine Hand.
The earth is full to brimming of Thy mercy. It takes faith to see that; it takes a deeper and a firmer hold of the thought of a present God than most men have, to feel that. For the most of us, the world has got to be very empty of God now. We hear rather the creaking of the wheels of a great machine, or see the workings of a blind, impersonal force. But I believe that all that is precious and good in the growth of knowledge since the old days when this Psalmist wrote may be joyfully accepted by us, and deep down below all we may see the deeper, larger truth of the living purpose and will of God Himself. And I know no reason why twentieth-century men, full to the fingertips of modern scientific thought, may not say as heartily as the old Psalmist said, ‘The earth, O Lord! is full of Thy mercy.’
But then there is another side to all this. Amidst all this sunny play of gladness, and apocalypse of blessing, there stands one exception. Hearken to the other word of my texts, ‘I am a stranger upon the earth.’ Man is out of joint with the great whole, out of harmony with the music, the only hungry one at the feast. All other creatures are admirably adapted for the place they fill, and the place they fill is sufficient for them. But I stand here, knowing that I do not belong to this goodly fellowship, feeling that I am an exception to the rule. As Colonel Gardiner said, ‘I looked at the dog, and I wished that I was a dog.’ Ah! many another man has felt, Why is it that whilst every creature, the motes that dance in the sunbeam, and the minutest living things, however insignificant, are all filled to the very brim of their capacity-why is it that I, the roof and crown of things, stand here, a sad and solitary stranger, having made acquaintance with grief; having learned what they know not, the burden of toil and care, cursed with forecast and anticipation, saddened by memory, torn by desires? ‘We look before and after, and pine for what is not.’ All other beings fit their place, and their place fits them like a glove upon a fair hand, but I stand here ‘a stranger upon the earth.’ And the more I feel, or at least the more I am convinced that it is full of God’s mercy, the more I feel that there is something else which I need to make me, in my fashion, as really and as completely blessed as the lowest of His creatures.
The Psalmist tells us what that something more is: ‘I am a stranger upon the earth; hide not Thy commandments from me.’ That is my food, that is what I need; that is the one thing that will make our souls feel at rest, that we shall have not merely a Bible in our hands, but the will of God, the knowledge and the love of the will of God, in our hearts. When we can say ‘I delight to do Thy will, and my whole being seeks to lay itself beneath the mould of Thine impressing purpose, and to be shaped accordingly’; Oh! then, then the care and the toil and the sorrow and the restlessness and the sense of transiency, all change. Some of them pass away altogether; those of them that survive are transfigured from darkness to glory. Just as some gloomy cliff, impending over the plain, when the rising sun smites upon it, is changed into a rosy and golden glory, so the frowning peaks that look down upon us, are all transmuted and glorified, when once the light of God’s recognised will falls upon them.
‘All is right that seems most wrong,
If it be His sweet will.’
Oh, dear friends! we shall be cursed with restlessness and ‘weighed upon with sore distress’; and a fleeting world will, by its very fleetingness, be a misery to us, until we have learned to yield our wills to God, and to drink in His law as the joy and the rejoicing of our hearts. A stranger upon the earth needs the statutes of the Lord, he needs no more, and then they will be as the Psalmist says in another place, ‘his song in the house of his pilgrimage.’
But the first of our two texts suggests further to us the certainty that this petition shall not be in vain. If the thought, ‘I am a stranger in the earth,’ teaches us our need of God’s commandments, the thought, ‘the earth is full of Thy mercies,’ assures us that we shall get what we need.
Surely it is not going to be the case that we only are to be left hungry when all other creatures sit at His table and feast there. Surely He who knows what each living thing requires, and opens His hand, and satisfies their desires, is not going to leave the nobler famishing of an immortal soul uncared for.
Surely if all through the universe besides, we see that the measure of a creature’s capacity is the measure of God’s gift to it, there is not going to be, there need not be, any disproportion between what we require and what we possess. Surely if His ear can hear and translate, and His loving hand can open to satisfy, the croaking of the young raven when it cries, He will neither mistake nor neglect the voice of a man’s heart, when it is asking what is so in accordance with His will as that He should let him know and love His statutes.
It is not meant to be the case that we lie in the middle of His creation, the one exception to the universal law, like Gideon’s fleece, dry and dusty, while every poor bit of bush and grass round about is soaked with His dew. If ‘the earth is full of Thy mercy,’ Thou thereby hast pledged Thyself that my heart shall be full of Thy law and Thy grace, if I desire it.
And so, dear brethren! whilst the one of these twin considerations should send us to our knees, the other should hearten and wing our prayers. And if, on the one hand, we feel that to bring us up to the level of the poorest of His creatures, we need a firm grasp and a hearty love of His law deep in our spirits, on the other hand, the fact that the feeblest and the poorest of His creatures is saturated and soaked with as much of God’s goodness as it can suck in, may make us quite sure that our souls will not vainly pant after Him in a ‘dry and thirsty land where no water is.’ ‘The earth, O Lord! is full of Thy mercy.’ Am I to be empty of the highest mercy, the knowledge of Thy will? Never! never!
And so, ‘Say not, Who shall ascend up into the heavens? say not, Who shall pass over the sea to bring Thy law near, that we may hear and do it? Behold! the word is very nigh thee.’ The law, the will of God, and the power to perform it are braided together, in inextricable union, in Jesus Christ Himself; and the prayer of my psalm most deeply understood, turns itself all into this:-Give me Christ, more of the knowledge of Him who is my law and Thine uttered will; more of the love of Him whom to love is to be at home everywhere, and to be filled with Thy mercy; more of the likeness to Him whom to imitate is holiness; whom to resemble is perfection. ‘The earth is full of Thy mercy.’ ‘The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, full of grace and truth.’ And of that fulness can all we receive. Then will we be strangers here no longer; and our hearts will be replenished with a better mercy than all the universe beside is capable of containing.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
stranger = foreigner sojourning.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
a stranger: Psa 39:12, Gen 47:9, 1Ch 29:15, 2Co 5:6, Heb 11:13-16, 1Pe 2:11
hide: Psa 119:10, Job 39:17, Isa 63:17, Luk 9:45, Luk 24:45
Reciprocal: Gen 23:4 – stranger Exo 2:22 – for he said Lev 25:23 – for ye are Psa 119:7 – when Psa 119:45 – for I seek Psa 119:125 – that I
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 119:19-20. I am a stranger in the earth Or, a sojourner. I am not here as in my home, but as a pilgrim travelling homeward in a strange land: a condition which calls for thy pity and help: see note on Psa 39:12. Hide not thy commandments from me Which are my chief support and guide in my pilgrimage, My soul breaketh, &c. Fainteth, as the soul frequently does, when a thing vehemently desired is denied or delayed. Or, as is rendered by some, my soul is taken up, or wholly employed, in longing for, or in love to, thy judgments. The whole stream of its desires runs in this channel. I shall think myself quite broken and undone, if I want the word of God to conduct and comfort me.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
119:19 I [am] a {b} stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
(b) Seeing man’s life in this world is only a passage, what should become of him, if your word were not his guide?