Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 143:1
A Psalm of David. Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, [and] in thy righteousness.
1. At first sight it seems inconsistent that the Psalmist should appeal to Jehovah’s righteousness, and yet ( Psa 143:2) deprecate being put on his trial. But Jehovah’s righteousness here denotes His unvarying conformity to His own character, that absolute perfection of dealing which is the perpetual expression of His unchanging Will. Similarly His faithfulness is the attribute which makes it impossible that He should be false to the covenant which He has made with His servants. And as He has revealed Himself as a God of mercy and forgiveness (Exo 34:5-7), the Psalmist can boldly plead for a merciful answer on the ground of His righteousness and faithfulness. Cp. St John’s words “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins” (1Jn 1:9); Psa 5:8; Psa 31:1.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
1, 2. An appeal for mercy.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear … – See Psa 4:1, note; Psa 5:1, note.
In thy faithfulness answer me – That is, Show thy faithfulness to thy promises. God had made gracious promises to David (compare Ps. 89:19-37), and he now pleads that he would remember those promises, and accomplish in his behalf what he had said he would. God has also made gracious promises to his people, and they may always plead those promises as a reason why they should be heard, and why their prayers should be answered.
And in thy righteousness – Compare Psa 31:1. In thy disposition to do right; to vindicate a righteous cause; to interpose when wrong is done. We, though sinners before God, may feel that our cause is a just one as toward our fellowmen, and, when wronged, we may ask God to interpose, as a righteous God, in our behalf. We cannot, however, ask him to save us on the ground of our righteousness toward him, for we have no such righteousness. See Psa 143:2.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 143:1-12
Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications.
A penitential soul in prayer
I. The reasons urged.
1. A consciousness of moral unrighteousness (verse 2). No man will ever pray rightly until he is made deeply conscious that he has no claims whatever upon the favour of God, and that his necessities, if relieved at all, must be relieved by sovereign mercy alone.
2. A terrible sense of danger (verses 3, 4).
3. An encouraging reminiscence of God (verse 5).
4. An intense craving of the heart (verse 6). There are two figures here indicating the craving of the heart after God. The first is taken from human life. As the suffering child stretches forth its hand to its mother, as the dying patient to his physician, as the drowning man to the rope thrown out for his rescue, so the soul of the penitent stretches out Jim hands to God; he must have Him or die and be lost. God is the necessity of necessities, the Supreme need. Another figure indicating the craving of the heart after God is the longing of the parched earth for fertile showers.
II. The blessings invoked.
1. Soul deliverance (verse 7). This has been provided in Christ.
2. Soul guidance (verse 8). Let the morning dawn on me, and The night of darkness and sorrow depart, and show me the way in which I ought to walk,–the way of rectitude, of safety.
3. Soul loyalty (verse 10).
4. Soul quickening (verse 11). There must be life to struggle for deliverance, life to follow the Divine guidance, to reach the level land of rectitude, and to walk in it. (David Thomas, D. D.)
Prayer illustrated
As an example and illustration of prayer this psalm teaches us–
1. That we should approach God in the full belief that He is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.
2. We should appeal to Him not only as merciful, but also as faithful and righteous.
3. We should come as sinners imploring pardon.
4. Thus coming to God, we should seek comfort by uttering our grief in His presence and casting all our care on Him.
5. We should direct our thoughts from our sorrows to Him before whom we bow, and contemplate His character and former mercies.
6. Encouraged by such contemplation we should with renewed confidence present our petitions.
7. Expecting consolation in the path of obedience alone, we should pray to be enabled to do the will of God.
8. In our prayers we should renew the consecration of ourselves to God, and seek protection, deliverance and salvation as His servants. I am Thine, save me. (Newman Hall, LL. B.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
PSALM CXLIII
The psalmist prays for mercy, and deprecates judgment, 1, 2.
His persecutions, 3.
His earnest prayer for deliverance, 4-9.
Prays for God’s quickening Spirit, 10, 11.
And for the total discomfiture of his adversaries, 12.
NOTES ON PSALM CXLIII
The Hebrew and all the Versions attribute this Psalm to David; and the Vulgate, Septuagint, AEthiopic and Arabic state that it was composed on the rebellion of his son Absalom: nor is there any thing in the Psalm that positively disagrees with this inscription. This is the last of the seven Psalms styled penitential.
Verse 1. In thy faithfulness answer me] Thou hast promised to support me in my difficulties, and, though my children should forsake me, never to withdraw thy loving-kindness from me. See the present unnatural rebellion of my son. Lord, undertake for me!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Whereby thou art inclined and engaged to favour righteous persons and just causes.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. in thy faithfulness . . . and . .. righteousnessor, God’s regard to the claims which He haspermitted His people to make in His covenant.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications,…. With these requests David begins the psalm; for it was to no purpose to pray and were heard; and for which he always appears to be concerned, as every good man will, and not to be heard only, but to be answered, as follows;
in thy faithfulness answer me, [and] in thy righteousness; he does not plead his own faith, with which he believed in God, as rama interprets it; though the prayer of faith is very effectual; but the faithfulness of God to his promises; he had promised to hear, answer, and deliver such as called on him in a time of trouble; and he is faithful that has promised, nor will he suffer his faithfulness to fail; he cannot deny himself; and on this the psalmist relied for an answer, as well as desired and expected it; not on account of his own righteousness, but either on account of the goodness and grace of God, sometimes designed by righteousness, or because of the righteousness of Christ, or for the sake of Christ, the Lord our righteousness; on whose account God is just and faithful to forgive sin, the blessing the psalmist wanted, as appears from Ps 143:2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The poet pleads two motives for the answering of his prayer which are to be found in God Himself, viz., God’s , truthfulness, with which He verifies the truth of His promises, that is to say, His faithfulness to His promises; and His , righteousness, not in a recompensative legal sense, but in an evangelical sense, in accordance with His counsel, i.e., the strictness and earnestness with which He maintains the order of salvation established by His holy love, both against the ungratefully disobedient and against those who insolently despise Him. Having entered into this order of salvation, and within the sphere of it serving Jahve as his God and Lord, the poet is the servant of Jahve. And because the conduct of the God of salvation, ruled by this order of salvation, or His “righteousness” according to its fundamental manifestation, consists in His justifying the sinful man who has no righteousness that he can show corresponding to the divine holiness, but penitently confesses this disorganized relationship, and, eager for salvation, longs for it to be set right again – because of all this, the poet prays that He would not also enter into judgment ( as in Job 9:32; Job 22:4; Job 14:3) with him, that He therefore would let mercy instead of justice have its course with him. For, apart from the fact that even the holiness of the good spirits does not coincide with God’s absolute holiness, and that this defect must still be very far greater in the case of spirit-corporeal man, who has earthiness as the basis of his origin-yea, according to Psa 51:7, man is conceived in sin, so that he is sinful from the point at which he begins to live onward – his life is indissolubly interwoven with sin, no living man possesses a righteousness that avails before God (Job 4:17; Job 9:2; Job 14:3., Job 15:14, and frequently).
(Note: Gerson observes on this point (vid., Thomasius, Dogmatik, iv. 251): I desire the righteousness of pity, which Thou bestowest in the present life, not the judgment of that righteousness which Thou wilt put into operation in the future life – the righteousness which justifies the repentant one.)
With (Psa 143:3) the poet introduces the ground of his petition for an answer, and more particularly for the forgiveness of his guilt. He is persecuted by deadly foes and is already nigh unto death, and that not without transgression of his own, so that consequently his deliverance depends upon the forgiveness of his sins, and will coincide with this. “The enemy persecuteth my soul” is a variation of language taken from Psa 7:6 ( for , as in Psa 78:50, and frequently in the Book of Job, more particularly in the speeches of Elihu). Psa 143:3 also recalls Psa 7:6, but as to the words it sounds like Lam 3:6 (cf. Psa 88:7). (lxx ) are either those for ever dead (the Syriac), after in Jer 51:39, cf. in Ecc 12:5, or those dead time out of mind (Jerome), after in Eze 26:20. The genitive construction admits both senses; the former, however, is rendered more natural by the consideration that glances back to the beginning that seems to have no end: the poet seems to himself like one who is buried alive for ever. In consequence of this hostility which aims at his destruction, the poet feels his spirit within him, and consequently his inmost life, veil itself (the expression is the same as Psa 142:4; Psa 77:4); and in his inward part his heart falls into a state of disturbance ( , a Hithpo. peculiar to the later language), so that it almost ceases to beat. He calls to mind the former days, in which Jahve was manifestly with him; he reflects upon the great redemptive work of God, with all the deeds of might and mercy in which it has hitherto been unfolded; he meditates upon the doing ( , Ben-Naphtali ) of His hands, i.e., the hitherto so wondrously moulded history of himself and of his people. They are echoes out of Psa 77:4-7, Psa 77:12. The contrast which presents itself to the Psalmist in connection with this comparison of his present circumsntaces with the past opens his wounds still deeper, and makes his prayer for help all the more urgent. He stretches forth his hands to God that He may protect and assist him (vid., Hlemann, Bibelstudien, i. 150f.). Like parched land is his soul turned towards Him, – language in which we recognise a bending round of the primary passage Psa 63:2. Instead of it would be , if (Targum ) were not, as it always is, taken up and included in the sequence of the accents.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Complaints and Petitions. | |
A psalm of David.
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. 2 And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified. 3 For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. 4 Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. 5 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. 6 I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.
Here, I. David humbly begs to be heard (v. 1), not as if he questioned it, but he earnestly desired it, and was in care about it, for, having desired it, and was in care about it, for having directed his prayer, he looked up to see how it sped, Hab. ii. 1. He is a suppliant to his God, and he begs that his requests may be granted: Hear my prayer; give ear to my supplications. He is an appellant against his persecutors, and he begs that his case may be brought to hearing and that God will give judgment upon it, in his faithfulness and righteousness, as the Judge of right and wrong. Or, “Answer my petitions in thy faithfulness, according to the promises thou hast made, which thou wilt be just to.” We have no righteousness of our own to plead, and therefore must plead God’s righteousness, the word of promise which he has freely given us and caused us to hope in.
II. He humbly begs not to be proceeded against in strict justice, v. 2. He seems here, if not to correct, yet to explain, his plea (v. 1), Deliver me in thy righteousness; “I mean,” says he, “the righteous promises of the gospel, not the righteous threatenings of the law; if I be answered according to the righteousness of this broken covenant of innocency, I am quite undone;” and therefore, 1. His petition is, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant; do not deal with me in strict justice, as I deserve to be dealt with.” In this prayer we must own ourselves to be God’s servants, bound to obey him, accountable to him, and solicitous to obtain his favour, and we must approve ourselves to him. We must acknowledge that in many instances we have offended him, and have come short of our duty to him, that he might justly enquire into our offences, and proceed against us for them according to law, and that, if he should do so, judgment would certainly go against us; we have nothing to move in arrest or mitigation of it, but execution would be taken out and awarded and then we should be ruined for ever. But we must encourage ourselves with a hope that there is mercy and forgiveness with God, and be earnest with him for the benefit of that mercy. “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for thou hast already entered into judgment with thy Son, and laid upon him the iniquity of us all. Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for thy servant enters into judgment with himself;” and, if we will judge ourselves, we shall not be judged. 2. His plea is, “In thy sight shall no man living be justified upon those terms, for no man can plead innocency nor any righteousness of his own, either that he has not sinned or that he does not deserve to die for his sins; nor that he has any satisfaction of his own to offer;” nay, if God contend with us, we are not able to answer him for one of a thousand,Job 9:3; Job 15:20. David, before he prays for the removal of his trouble, prays for the pardon of his sin, and depends upon mere mercy for it.
III. He complains of the prevalency of his enemies against him (v. 3): “Saul, that great enemy, has persecuted my soul, sought my life, with a restless malice, and has carried the persecution so far that he has already smitten it down to the ground. Though I am not yet under ground, I am struck to the ground, and that is next door to it; he has forced me to dwell in darkness, not only in dark caves, but in dark thoughts and apprehensions, in the clouds of melancholy, as helpless and hopeless as those that have been long dead. Lord, let me find mercy with thee, for I find no mercy with men. They condemn me; but, Lord, do not thou condemn me. Am not I an object of thy compassion, fit to be appeared for; and is not my enemy an object of thy displeasure, fit to be appeared against?”
IV. He bemoans the oppression of his mind, occasioned by his outward troubles (v. 4): Therefore is my spirit overpowered and overwhelmed within me, and I am almost plunged in despair; when without are fightings within are fears, and those fears greater tyrants and oppressors than Saul himself and not so easily out-run. It is sometimes the lot of the best men to have their spirits for a time almost overwhelmed and their hearts desolate, and doubtless it is their infirmity. David was not only a great saint, but a great soldier, and yet even he was sometimes ready to faint in a day of adversity. Howl, fir-trees, if the cedars be shaken.
V. He applies himself to the use of proper means for the relief of his troubled spirit. He had no force to muster up against the oppression of the enemy, but, if he can keep possession of nothing else, he will do what he can to keep possession of his own soul and to preserve his inward peace. In order to this, 1. He looks back, and remembers the days of old (v. 5), God’s former appearances for his afflicted people and for him in particular. It has been often a relief to the people of God in their straits to think of the wonders which their fathers told them of, Psa 77:5; Psa 77:11. 2. He looks round, and takes notice of the works of God in the visible creation, and the providential government of the world: I meditate on all thy works. Many see them, but do not see the footsteps of God’s wisdom, power, and goodness in them, and do not receive the benefit they might by them because they do not meditate upon them; they do not dwell on that copious curious subject, but soon quit it, as if they had exhausted it, when they have scarcely touched upon it. I muse on, or (as some read it) I discourse of, the operation of thy hands, how great, how good, it is! The more we consider the power of God the less we shall fear the face or force of man, Isa 51:12; Isa 51:13. 3. He looks up with earnest desires towards God and his favour (v. 6): “I stretch forth my hands unto thee, as one begging an alms, and big with expectation to receive something great, standing ready to lay hold on it and bid it welcome. My soul thirsteth after thee; it is to thee (so the word is), entire for thee, intent on thee; it is as a thirsty land, which, being parched with excessive heat, gapes for rain; so do I need, so do I crave, the support and refreshment of divine consolations under my afflictions, and nothing else will relieve me.” This is the best course we can take when our spirits are overwhelmed; and justly do those sink under their load who will not take such a ready way as this to ease themselves.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Psalms 143
Penitential Psalm
Scripture v. 1-12:
This is the seventh and last of David’s penitential Psalms , 138-143. Each was offered for himself, as anointed king, and his people Israel. In each he offered petitions to God for relief against oppression from his enemies and asked for God’s forgiveness toward himself and Israel.
Verse 1 asks for the Lord to hear him and give heed to his supplications, on the two-fold ground of God’s righteousness, in all His acts, and His faithfulness to all His promises, to vindicate His people and to judge the unrighteous, 2Samuel ch. 7: Psa 36:5-6.
Verse 2 Intercedes, “And enter not into judgment with thy servant;” David himself, for his many shortcomings, as He might justly do in absolute definitive justice, Job 14:3; Psa 130:3. He added, “For in thy sight, Hab 1:13: (in comparison with your absolute holiness in character) shall no man living be justified,” for none has absolute righteousness, Exo 34:7; Job 4:17; Job 9:2-3; Job 15:14; Job 25:4; 1Ki 8:46; Ecc 7:20; Rom 3:20; Gal 2:16; 1Jn 1:10.
Verses 3,4 add that David’s enemies had: 1) persecuted his soul-life; 2) smitten his life to the ground, in humility; 3) made him reside in darkness, of the cave and sorrow; and 4) made him like those long dead, without usefulness and long forgotten, by most men; He therefore declares that his spirit is crushed and his heart is desolate or empty, La 3:6; Psa 142:3; Psa 127:3; Isa 59:16; Isa 63:5; Dan 8:27.
Verse 5 recounts that David remembered the days of old, adding, “I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands,” being pained that God was so long coming to his rescue now, v. 3; Psa 72:4-7; Psa 92:5.
Verse 6 asserts that, “I stretch forth my hands unto thee,” to be rescued, “my soul thirsteth (continually) after thee, as a thirsty (sun parched and wind blown) land,” Selah … meditate on my desperation call of faith, Psa 88:9; Psa 63:1.
Verses 7, 8 continue asking the Lord to hear speedily (at once) because his spirit was fainting, failing, Gal 6:9; He pled for God
to hide not His face (or turn not away) from him lest he be like those who, “go down into the pit,” beyond hope of relief on this earth, Psa 102:2; Psa 69:17; Psa 39:10. See also Psa 28:1; Psa 88:4.
Verse 8 adds “cause me to know (realize) thy loving-kindness in the morning, and know (recognize) the way wherein I should walk,” conduct myself before you and my people. He concluded, “For in thee do I trust, I lift up my soul unto thee,” for refuge, help, and to praise you, Psa 51:8; Psa 59:16; Psa 46:5; Psa 90:14; 2Sa 23:4; See also Psa 25:1-2; Psa 86:4; Psa 142:3; Psa 5:8; Psa 25:4-5.
Verse 9 appeals “Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies; I flee unto thee to hide me,” in thy refuge, safety, or security, Psa 142:6; Psa 27:5; Psa 31:20.
Verse 10 asks the Lord to “teach me,” I am teachable, “to do thy will, for thou art my God;” I want spiritual guidance he pled. He added, “thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness,” away from the present calamities, Psa 25:4; Mic 4:2; Mat 28:20; Col 1:9-10; Heb 13:21. See also Joh 14:26; Joh 16:13-15; Rom 5:5; Gal 5:22; Eph 4:30; 2Ti 1:14.
Verses 11, 12 ask the Lord to revive David, and bring him out of trouble for His own name (of honor) and righteousness’ sake, Psa 138:7.
Verse 12 adds, “And of (out of) thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy them all that afflict my soul: for I am (exist as) thy servant,” free servant, available to do your will, Psa 18:40; Psa 31:15; Psa 54:5; Psa 116:16.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. Hear my prayer, O Jehovah ! It is evident that the oppression of his enemies must have been extreme, when David laments his case in such earnest and pathetic terms. The introductory words show that the grief he felt was great. His reason for speaking of the justice and faithfulness of God in connection we have shown elsewhere. Under the term justice, or righteousness, we are not to suppose that he speaks of merit, or hire, as some ignorantly imagine, but of that goodness of God which leads him to defend his people. To the same effect does he speak of God’s truth or faithfulness; for the best proof he can give of his faithfulness is in not forsaking those whom he has promised to help. In helping his people he shows himself to be a just and true God, both in not frustrating their expectation, and in so far as he shows in this extension of mercy what his nature is, that David very properly encourages himself in prayer by making mention of both.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
INTRODUCTION
This is the last of what are called the Seven Penitential Psalms. In the Hebrew it has the superscription, A Psalm of David. And in the Septuagint and the Vulgate there is added, When Absalom, his son, pursued him. Yet many expositors regard the Psalm as written in subsequent times, after the manner of David. Thus Delitzsch views it as a later effort to copy after the Davidic Psalm-poetry. And Moll doubts whether such a poet as David would have so copied himself, as would be the case if the Davidic authorship were proved. One might pray in the same language, but would not repeat himself in different poems. Perowne regards the Psalm as having been written after the exile. The spirit and the language, he says, it is true, are not unworthy of David; yet the many passages borrowed from earlier Psalms make it more probable that this Psalm is the work of some later poet. This objection loses sight of the fact that there are many instances of repetitions in Psalms in the earlier portion of the Psalter, which are acknowledged to be those of David, and they do not occasion any difficulty. At all events, the poem, even with the familiarity of its ideas, forms a complete whole, which is worthy of David, and which no critic need on that score hesitate to assign to him. Alexander, Barnes, Hengstenberg, Henry, Wordsworth, and most English commentators, accept the Davidic authorship.
The Psalm, says Perowne, consists of two parts, each of which is of six verses, the conclusion of the first being marked by the Selah. The first portion contains the complaint (Psa. 143:1-6); the second, the prayer founded on that complaint (Psa. 143:7-12).
Homiletically we regard the Psalm as presenting to us The cry of a distressed servant of God (Psa. 143:1-6), and The prayer of a distressed servant of God (Psa. 143:7-12).
THE CRY OF A DISTRESSED SERVANT OF GOD
(Psa. 143:1-6)
In this cry of the troubled poet to the Lord, we have
I. A picture of great distress.
For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life, &c. (Psa. 143:3-4). He was distressed by
1. Malignant outward persecution. The enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have long been dead. The Psalmist, says Moll, evidently means to say that his enemies are intent upon his utter destruction, and that he would remain without deliverance, unless God in mercy were to take up his defence. With what terrible malignity and untiring persistence did Saul persecute David! And how bitterly David suffered from the rebellion of his son Absalom! (2Sa. 15:30.) And the servants of God still suffer from without,from the persecutions of the world (2Ti. 3:12); from the treachery of those whom they had trusted, as David did from Ahithophel; from temporal losses, &c. In the world ye have tribulation.
2. Insupportable inward suffering. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. Thus the poet expresses
(1.) His sore sorrow. My spirit is overwhelmed within me. (See a sketch on Psa. 142:3 a.)
(2.) His painful perplexity. My heart within me is desolate, or rather, is full of amazement, lit., astonies itself; seeks to comprehend the mystery of its sufferings, and is ever beaten back upon itself in its perplexity: such is the full force of the reflexive conjugation here employed.Perowne.
The mystery of suffering is to many minds, and those not the least noble, its most painful element. The experience of the poet was not a solitary or exceptional one. Good men are still liable to outward persecution and inward anguish; they still suffer both in their circumstances and in their souls. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you, &c. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, &c. (Heb. 12:5-11).
II. An exercise indicating great wisdom.
I remember the days of old; I meditate on all Thy works; I muse on the work of Thy hands.
1. The distinguished mental powers exercised.
(1.) Recollection. I remember the days of old. The poet recalled the past; made it live again before his minds eye.
(2.) Meditation. He reflected upon the scenes which recollection reproduced; and thus endeavoured to ascertain their significance, learn their lessons, &c.
2. The great subjects on which these mental powers were exercised.
(1.) The days of old. What a wondrous volume is the past! How marvellous are its revelations! how instructive its contents! how wise its lessons! To this volume the poet turned his attention.
(2.) The doings of God. All Thy works, the work of Thy hands. How vast a theme for meditation is this! and how sublime? how fitted to inspire the soul with confidence and hope! (For a fuller treatment of the hints given under this head, see on Psa. 77:3-6; Psa. 77:11-12; vol. i., pp. 431437.) Now, in all this the Psalmist seems to act with great wisdom. In turning his mind from the restless present to the calm past, and from the cruel doings of his enemies and the sore troubles of his heart to the glorious deeds of ancient date which God had done, he adopted a course calculated to calm his fears, strengthen his faith in God, arouse his courage, and inspire his hope.
III. An appeal of great power.
Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my supplications, &c. This appeal is
1. Directed to the best Being. O Jehovah, hear my prayer, &c. He never turns away His ear from the cry of the troubled heart; He is merciful and gracious; He is able to succour all suffering and needy souls; and His love is as great as His power.
2. For real blessings. He solicits from Jehovah
(1.) Acceptance of his prayer. Hear my prayer, O Jehovah; give ear to my supplications: in Thy faithfulness answer me, and in Thy righteousness. No utterance of man escapes the Divine ear. The Psalmist prays not for a mere hearing, but for a gracious audience, and a favourable answer to his appeal.
(2.) Forgiveness of his sins. And enter not into judgment with. Thy servant; for in Thy sight no man living is righteous. The poet here manifests() His consciousness of sin. He traces his suffering to his sin: the malice of his enemies is the rod of Gods chastisement, calling him to repentance. () His conviction of the Divine holiness. He who appears quite righteous before man, appears sinful before the infinite purity of God. What is man, that he should be clean? &c. (Job. 15:14-16). How can man be justified with God? &c. (Job. 25:4-6). () His belief in the Divine judgment of man. Enter not into judgment, &c. God shall bring every work into judgment, &c. () His earnest desire for Divine forgiveness. The petition that God would not enter into judgment with him implies his longing for mercy and pardon of his sins. Here is a need which is common to all men in this world. Our hope must ever be in the forbearing and forgiving mercy of God.
(3.) Deliverance from his enemies and distresses. This, though not directly expressed in this section of the Psalm, is the great object of the Psalmists appeal to God. Such were the blessings which the distressed poet sought, &c.
3. Enforced by the strongest pleas.
(1.) The sore need of the suppliant (Psa. 143:3-4).
(2.) The relation sustained by the suppliant to God. Thy servant. The phrase, Thy servant, in Psa. 143:2, is not a mere oriental circumlocution for the person speaking, and not merely a term of polite address, as appears from the way in which it is used in Psa. 143:12. The expression, with Thy servant, contains, says Hengstenberg, the grounding of the prayer; with His servants God cannot go into judgment; He chastens them indeed, but He does not give them over to death.
(3.) The revealed character of God. In Thy faithfulness answer me, and in Thy righteousness. The faithfulness of God, says Moll, is His faithfulness to His promises, or the truthfulness of His nature, in conformity with which everything that He has spoken or ordained is reliable and unchangeable. His righteousness is the corresponding course of action by which His ordinances are firmly established and fulfilled in the world, so that there is rendered to every man according to his works. Gods faithfulness and righteousness are thus assured, as in 1Jn. 1:9, and the repenting receive the forgiveness of their sins, but the impenitent, judgment. This is the most powerful plea that we can use with God. He cannot be untrue to His promise or to His character. He cannot deny Himself.
IV. A desire of great fervour.
I stretch forth my hands unto Thee; my soul thirsteth after Thee as a thirsty land. Notice:
1. The Object of his desire. Unto Thee; after Thee. Observe how he binds himself to God alone, cuts off every other hope from his soul, and, in short, makes his very need a chariot wherewith to mount up to God. (On this and on the next point see on Psa. 42:1-2; Psa. 63:1; vol. i. pp. 206, 207, 314.)
2. The fervour of his desire. I stretch forth my hands unto Thee, as the weary child stretches forth its hands to its mother, that on her bosom it may be hushed to rest.Perowne. My soul thirsteth after Thee as a thirsty land. As a parched land, says Hengstenberg, stands related to the rain, so my soul to Thee, and to Thy salvation. And Calvin: In great heat we see the earth cracking and gaping, as though with open mouth she asked for the rain from heaven. So fervently the soul of the poet craved the help and joy of the presence of God.
CONCLUSION.Exhibit the Psalmist in this cry to God in his distress as an example to the servants of God in times of
(1) severe spiritual suffering, and
(2) tribulation from without.
DIVINE JUDGMENT DEPRECATED
(Psa. 143:2)
Let us consider
I. The truths which are here implied.
1. That the Psalmist was conscious of sin. So far as his enemies were concerned he felt that they were persecuting him without cause; he was innocent in relation to them; but in relation to God he felt that he was not innocent. The persecutions of his enemies he regarded as the chastisement of God because of his sins.
2. That the Lord is the Judge of man. The poet regards Him as having authority to enter into judgment with His creatures. This truth is frequently expressed in the Psalms. God is Judge Himself. God is the Judge; He putteth down one, &c. Lift up Thyself, Thou Judge of the earth, &c. The Lord will judge His people, &c.
3. That the Lord is a righteous Judge. He cannot pass by unrepented sin. If sin be not forgiven and forsaken, He will visit with His judgments because of it, and His judgments are true and righteous. He shall judge the world in righteousness; He shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. He shall judge the people righteously. He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with His truth.
II. The petition which is here offered.
Enter not into judgment with Thy servant. This is a petition for
1. Forbearing mercy. It is a request that God will not call him to render a strict account for his offences against Him. If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? We need the forbearance of God, because of our imperfections, omissions, and transgressions.
2. Forgiving mercy. Though not directly expressed, this is sought by implication in this petition. Even a faithful servant of the Lord needs the forgiveness of sins arising from remaining depravity and moral weakness. And it is an encouragement to know that there is forgiveness with Him; with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. He will abundantly pardon. Freely, graciously, and completely He forgives all those who in sincere penitence seek Him.
III. The reasons which are her urged.
With Thy servant; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified. Perowne more correctly translates: For before Thee no man living is righteous. Here are two pleas by which the Psalmist strengthens his petition
1. The universal sinfulness of man. Before Thee no man living is righteous. No one of the race, no matter what his rank, his outward conduct, his gentleness, his amiableness, his kindnessno matter how just and upright he may be towards his fellow-men, he is not righteous before the holy God. Before man we may appear righteous; but not before a Being of infinite holiness. Most clear is the testimony of the Bible on this point. There is no man than sinneth not. There is none that doeth good, no, not one. Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin? There is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Hence if God were swift to judge and strict to punish, all men must perish.
2. The relation of the Psalmist to God. Thy servant. David was a distinguished servant of God, yet he felt that he was a sinner before Him. Even a sincere and faithful servant of God cannot stand before Him in judgment; cannot plead any merits of his own, or appeal to God on the ground of His justice. When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; &c. But when a man can sincerely speak of himself to the Lord as His servant, he has good ground upon which to base his hope of protection and salvation from Him in His mercy. When a man resolves with heart and soul to be and remain a servant of God, God will not forsake him; but where He is, there will also His servant be.
CONCLUSION:
1. If a true servant of God cannot stand before Him in judgment, how shall the wicked appear at His bar? The ungodly are like the chaff which the wind driveth away, &c. (Psa. 1:4-6).
2. Let every man seek an interest in the infinite mercy of God. Let the wicked forsake his way, &c. (Isa. 55:7). Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord, &c. (Jer. 3:12). God is rich in mercy. The Lord is merciful and gracious, &c. (Psa. 103:8-12). Who is a God like unto Thee, that pardoneth iniquity, &c. (Mic. 7:18-19).
THE PRAYER OF A DISTRESSED SERVANT OF GOD
(Psa. 143:7-12)
Notice:
I. The blessings which are here sought.
The Psalmist first solicits the Divine favour in general, and a speedy answer to his prayer: Hear me speedily, O Lord; my spirit faileth: hide not Thy face from me, &c. (Psa. 143:7). He then proceeds to specify certain blessings in particular, and to entreat the Lord to bestow them. He asks for
1. The lovingkindness of God. Cause me to hear Thy lovingkindness in the morning. It is a petition for an early assurance of the mercy of God. Divine lovingkindness is the root of which all other blessings are branchesthe fountain from which all other blessings flow. It is also the crown of all other blessings. Thy lovingkindness is better than life.
2. Deliverance from his distresses.
(1.) From outward enemies. Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies. And of Thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul. Perowne translates: And of Thy lovingkindness cut off mine enemies, and destroy all the adversaries of my soul. On this verse Barnes says, The destruction of the wicked is a favour to the universe; just as the arrest and punishment of a robber or a pirate is a mercy to society, to mankind; just as every prison is a display of mercy as well as of justice.mercy to society at large; justice to the offenders. There is truth in this; but the prayer for the destruction of our enemies is not becoming in the lips of a Christian. I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, &c. (Mat. 5:44-45). Bless them which persecute you, &c. If thine enemy hunger, feed him, &c. Such is the Christian rule. But we may petition God for deliverance from our adversaries.
(2.) From inward sufferings. For Thy righteousness sake bring my soul out of trouble. The poet was in sore distress of soul; he looks to the faithfulness and mercy of God for deliverance from the same. Let the godly in all times of spiritual trial and sorrow direct their prayer to the same gracious Being. Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, &c.
3. Inward and spiritual blessings. In the view of the Psalmist his salvation requires both external deliverances and internal communications of Divine grace. The way of deliverance, says Moll, is to the servant of God no external one, but a way of salvation, which the commandments of God point out, in which the Spirit of God, who is good, is the Guide. So the Psalmist petitions for
(1.) Divine teaching;(.) That he might know the way which God would have him to pursue. Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk. Even the most experienced and holy of men need the direction of God in life. (.) That he might do the will of God. Teach me to do Thy will. Correct knowledge alone cannot save man from sin or suffering; correct conduct must be added thereto. Mere theories, however true and good, never raised a life into sanctity and strength. To do this, theories must be reduced to practiceembodied in life. Most needful and important is the petition, Teach me to do Thy will.
(2.) Divine help. Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. Perowne: Let Thy good Spirit lead me in a plain country, lit., in a level land, or on level ground, where there is no fear of stumbling and falling. Conant translates: Let Thy good Spirit guide me on even ground. The poet desires to be led into a way of safety. It is a request not simply for enlightenment; but for the Holy Spirits help, His guiding, guarding, and strengthening influence. Hengstenbergs note is to the point: Davids proper regard is directed to the obtaining of deliverance, which is the object of all his prayers in the preceding and following verses. But he shows himself throughout deeply penetrated with the conviction, that the foundation of the deliverance is righteousnessthat it never can come, where this foundation is wanting, but that it of necessity must come where this foundation exists. He knew, also, that nothing could be done here by ones own power (Comp., for example, Psalms 19; Psalms 51) Hence he prays here, expanding his views farther, that the Lord would (internally) teach him to do His will, convinced that this first gift must necessarily draw the second in its train, that of salvation; so he prays that the good Spirit of God would make him good, and consequently would guide him upon the path of salvation. The good Spirit works good in those who partake of the gift.
(3.) Divine life. Quicken me, O Lord, for Thy names sake. Here the poet prays for an increase of spiritual life and strength. In the way of the Divine commands there is salvation; and the teaching, the guidance, the life, and the strength which are necessary to tread that way, God alone can bestow. Like the Psalmist, let us seek them from Him.
II. The grounds upon which these blessings are sought.
1. The sore need of the Psalmist. Hear me speedily, O Lord; my spirit faileth; hide not Thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. The pit is the grave. Apart from the help of God, the Psalmist despairs even of life itself. The greatness of his misery is a touching and forcible appeal to the tender and infinite mercy of God.
2. The personal relations of the Psalmist to God.
(1.) Confidence in God. In various ways does the Psalmist give expression to this: For in Thee do I trust. I flee unto Thee to hide me. Margin: Heb.,Hide me with Thee. Perowne: Unto Thee have I fled to hide me; lit., Unto Thee have I hidden (myself). But the phrase is very peculiar, and its meaning doubtful. Conant: With Thee I hide myself. The notions of covering and refuge, says Moll, are united in the intermediate one of hiding. The expression undoubtedly indicates strong confidence. (Comp. Psa. 27:5; Psa. 31:20.) Hengstenberg says admirably, The allusion points in this direction, that God must conceal those who conceal themselves with Him. Could He fail to deliver one who so utterly confided in Him?
(2.) Prayer to God. For I lift up my soul unto Thee. This language denotes earnest desire and confident expectation. Prayer is the ascent of the soul to God. Where the soul is really directed towards God, it is full of seeking for help, and longing for salvation. To lift up the soul to God is to begin the lifting of the entire man out of all need. Could God disregard such a desire, or disappoint such an expectation as this?
(3.) Consecration to God. For Thou art my God; for I am Thy servant. If we have sincerely taken the Lord for our God, and consecrated ourselves to Him as His servants, we may be sure that He will guide and defend us, sustain and save us. (See on Psa. 143:2.)
3. The revealed character of God. The Psalmist pleads
(1.) His righteousness. For Thy righteousness sake, bring my soul out of trouble. (See notes on Psa. 143:1.)
(2.) His grace. And of Thy mercy cut off mine enemies. He pleads that, in the lovingkindness which He had declared to His people, He would interpose for his deliverance.
(3.) His honour. Quicken me, O Lord, for Thy names sake. This is a bold and powerful plea. Moses used it with remarkable results (Exo. 32:11-14; Num. 14:13-20). So also did Joshua: What wilt Thou do unto Thy great name? (Jos. 7:6 seq.) And frequently David urged it with God. Assuredly God will not fail to maintain the honour of His holy name. Thus cogent are the arguments with which the Psalmist entreats God for salvation.
III. The urgency with which these blessings are sought. Hear me speedily, O Lord; my spirit faileth, &c. Perowne translates: Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth, &c. Matters had now come with the Psalmist to an extremity. Where this is the case with the servants of God, there the Divine help cannot be longer withheld. The poet manifests similar urgency in the petition, Cause me to hear Thy lovingkindness in the morning, i.e., soon, speedily. The idea is not that He would wait for another day, but that He would interpose as the very first act,as when one enters on a day.
A prayer like unto this, with such powerful pleas and such urgency of entreaty, is itself a sign of the nearness of the interposition and salvation of the Lord.
A GOOD MANS PRAYER FOR GRACE AND GUIDANCE
(Psa. 143:8)
Value of the Book of Psalms as presenting a test of religious character and experience. Shows what religion iswhat religion can do: what it once was, it always iswhat it has once done, it can always do.
I. David prays for Gods distinguishing favour as a God of grace. Cause me to hear Thy lovingkindness, &c.
1. The blessing itself is very emphatic. Thy lovingkindness. Not Gods general benevolence as it shines in nature; not His general protection as it is seen in Providence; but His special manifestation of mercy as it shines in the covenant of grace. Remember me, O Lord, with the favour of Thy people. Look Thou upon me, and be merciful unto me, as Thou usest to do unto those that love Thy name.
This he desires beyond created goodbeyond his crown as a monarchbeyond his eminent distinction as a man of geniusbeyond his highest estimation as a gifted prophet, he values Gods favour; just as Moses did the goodwill of Him that dwelt in the bush beyond the chief things of the ancient mountains and the precious things of the lasting hills. These desires are common to all the saints. In New Testament phrasethe love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit. Judge of your character by your habitual desires.
2. The period in which it is desired. In the morning. It is sought first in point of timefirst in point of importance. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, &c. In the morning of the day, that we may begin it with God. In the morning of the weekthe Sabbath. In the morning of lifeyouth. In the morning of the resurrection. Cause me: Divine influence needful.
II. For Gods daily guidance as a God of Providence. Cause me to know the way, &c.
1. Prompted by a sense of our weakness and ignorance. How much we need a guide! We have as much need of daily guidance as of daily bread. We cannot get safely through a world of sin and danger without the Presence and Grace of Christ. It is not a matter of indifference to the Christian how he passes through life. Not enough to say, What shall I eat? &c.; but, Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. The soul has wants as well as the body. The Christian has moral interests to secure; he has a race to runa battle to fighta prize to gaina God to glorifya soul to be lost or saved. He is in a world where the great destroyer has his seat. He knows that the interests of others are linked in with his own: cannot stand or fall alone. Hence he prays, Cause me to know, &c.
2. Prompted by knowledge of the character of Christ as a Guide. Wise, powerful, gracious. The Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. Having had large experience of the conduct of sinners.
III. For the constant acceptance of his devotions as a prayer-hearing God.
In Thee do I trust; I lift up my soul unto Thee. This is partly a profession of his daily faith and experience, and partly a plea for the exercise of Gods mercy. In Thee do I trust: Thou wilt not disappoint.
God is a perfect circle of wonders and miracles; a good perfectly adapted to our moral nature. They who know anything of Him are anxious to know more.Samuel Thodey.
DIVINE GUIDANCE
(Psa. 143:8)
Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto Thee.
Life is like a heath with paths stretching in various directions. Many appear pleasant and safe that lead astray. Man is often bewildered. He often chooses wrongly. How important this prayer.
I. This was the prayer of one who felt his need of Divine guidance.
Many will be their own guides. They are self-reliant; like wayward children, or foolish Alpine travellers, forgetting their own ignorance and liability to error. Some are wise; they will not take a step without God. They feel their need of His guiding hand. This sense of need may arise
1. From seeing the errors of others. Men, however, are seldom wise enough to learn from the sorrows that attend the wanderings of others. Second-hand experiences do not teach much.
2. From bitter experiences gained in self-chosen paths. God does not always save us from erroneous ways, but often through them. Our freedom is part of our discipline.
3. From Divine enlightenment. Seldom will a man be humble enough to seek God until he sees what he is by the light of Gods Spirit. Bitter experiences fail to teach us without grace.
II. This was the prayer of one who believed that God had a way marked out for him.
Life is not a pathless wilderness. God has a way laid down for every man. He regards the individual life. Laws are general, but the progress of each life is a speciality. There is a way in which every man should walk.
1. This it true morally. Right is straight, wrong is zigzag. Right is distinct from wrong,a Divine way, clear to those who will see it.
2. This is true intellectually. Truth is the Divine path for the intellect. Truth, as a narrow way, lies often in the midst of the devious windings of error; but they who are guided by God shall not fail to discover it.
3. This is true circumstantially. From the cradle to the grave God has a way for every man. The prayerless miss it; the prayerful find it.
III. This was the prayer of one who believed that God could reveal His way to him.
The days of Divine revelations are not over. There is a spirit in man; and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding. He causes us to know His way
1. By His Holy Spirit. God is nigh to every man. He can act directly upon each mans spirit. He often leads men when they know it not. His saints are often conspicuously guided.
2. By His Word. Its instruct, its revelations enlighten, us examples encourage and warn us.
3. By the incarnate life of His Son. He is the way. Those who follow Him do not walk in darkness.
4. By the force of events. Way after way is hedged up, and only Gods way is left to us. By this God causes us to know the way wherein we should walk.
IV. This was the prayer of one who had placed himself in the right attitude to receive Divine guidance.
Attitude is important. Some are listless, others fanatical, others unbelieving. This was
1. An attitude of expectancy. Faith was stretching out the soul-hands to receive (Psa. 143:6). Every faculty was awake and eager. God would find a receptive nature, a waiting heart.
2. The attitude of ardent desire. Desire had raised the soul out of its ordinay life. It was rising to meet God. It was lifted up to take hold of Him.
3. The attitude of importunate prayer.
He would not be denied the light he sought. He would continue before Him until the mists rolled away, and the Divine path shone out as light in the midst of obscurity. Such an attitude is sure to obtain a knowledge of Gods way.
Learn:
1. To distrust self.
2. To take no step until God makes known His way.
3. For in His way there will be found safely, peace, and ultimately heaven.W. O. LILLEY. From The Homiletic Quarterly.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Psalms 143
DESCRIPTIVE TITLE
Continued Concealment in the Cave: its Griefs and its Gains.
ANALYSIS
Stanza I., Psa. 143:1-2, Remarkable Pleadings and Deprecation. Stanza II., Psa. 143:3-4, How the Trial Tries. Stanza III., Psa. 143:5-6, How the Student Studies. Stanza IV., Psa. 143:7-12, How the Petitioner Perseveres in Prayer.
(Lm.) PsalmBy David.
1
Jehovah hear thou my prayer,
oh give ear unto my supplications,
in thy faithfulness answer me in thy righteousness;
2
And do not enter into judgment with thy servant,
for no one living can appear just before thee.
3
For a foe hath pursued my soul,[846]
[846] Or: person.
hath crushed to the earth my life;
hath made me dwell in dark places
like the ancient dead;[847]
[847] Or: like the dead of (by-gone) ages.
4
And my spirit hath fainted upon me,
in the midst of me astounded is my heart.
5
I have remembered the days of aforetime,
I have talked to myself of all thy doings,[848]
[848] So (pl.) some cod. (w. 1 ear. pr. edn., Aram., Sep., Syr., Vul.)Gn. M.T.: doing (sing.)
on the works[849] of thy hand I soliloquise:
[849] So (pl.) some cod. (w. 3 ear. pr. edns., Aram., Sep., Vul.)Gn. M.T.: work (sing.)
6
I have spread out my hands unto thee,
my soul is like[850] a weary land for thee.
[850] So M.T. Some cod. (w. 7 ear. pr. edns.): inGn.
7
Haste thee answer me Jehovah, my spirit languisheth,
do not hide thy face from me,
or I shall be made like them who are going down into the pit.
8
Let me hear in the morning thy kindness,
for in thee do I trust:
Let me know the way wherein I should walk,
for unto thee have I uplifted my soul.
9
Rescue me from my foes Jehovah!
for thee have I waited.[851]
[851] Or: hopedso Gt. M.T. (obscure).
10
Teach me to do thy pleasure for thou art my God,
let thy good spirit[852] lead me in a level land.[853]
[852] Ml.: Thy spirit a good one.
[853] Some cod. (w. 1 ear. pr. edn.): way. Others (w. Syr.): path. Cp. Psa. 27:11Gn.
11
For the sake of thy name Jehovah wilt thou revive me?
in thy righteousness wilt thou bring forth out of distress my soul?
12
And in thy kindness wilt thou exterminate my foes,
and destroy all the adversaries of my soul:
because I am thy servant.
(Nm.)
PARAPHRASE
Psalms 143
Hear my prayer, O Lord; answer my plea, because You are faithful to Your promises.[854]
[854] Literally, answer me in faithfulness and righteousness.
2 Dont bring me to trial! For as compared with You, no one is perfect.
3 My enemies chased and caught me. They have knocked me to the ground. They force me to live in the darkness like those in the grave.
4 I am losing all hope; I am paralyzed with fear.
5 I remember the glorious miracles You did in days of long ago.
6 I reach out for You. I thirst for You as parched land thirsts for rain.
7 Come quickly, Lord, and answer me, for my depression deepens; dont turn away from me or I shall die.
8 Let me see Your kindness to me in the morning, for I am trusting You. Show me where to walk, for my prayer is sincere.
9 Save me from my enemies, O Lord, I run to You to hide me.
10 Help me to do Your will, for You are my God. Lead me in good paths, for Your Spirit is good.
11 Lord, saving me will bring glory to Your name. Bring me out of all this trouble because You are true to Your promises.
12 And because You are loving and kind to me, cut off all my enemies and destroy those who are trying to harm me; for I am Your servant.
EXPOSITION
This psalm is obviously an advance upon the previous. The psalmist is still dwelling in dark places; but his continued hiding among the rocks leads him to compare himself with the ancient dead, forgotten of their old associates. The protraction of this state of things brings peculiar trials and special exercises of mind. It is one thing to take flight from foes, and put forth those active powers of mind which are roused to meet emergencies as they arise; but quite another thing to remain for some time in banishment. When long-looked-for deliverance is delayed, the most heroic may become impatient; and a more leisurely consideration of the causes and ends of protracted trial may favour an anxious weighing of problems not before pondered. It is evident that David found it so; and, accordingly, this psalm gives tokens of the stress and strain upon his mind; and, amidst the overhanging gloom, freshness of thought is seen in exercise, grappling with old problems in new forms and pondering questions not before considered.
Stanza I. of this psalm urges pleas which have not quite lately come before us; and one, besides, which, when let into Davids living and connected history, may be regarded as newly projected into his experience. In other words, the pleas that Jehovah would be faithful and righteous in delivering his servant, may on reflection be recognised as forms of thought with which the psalter has already made us familiar. Even when blessings sought originate in purest favour, as soon as they are held forth in promises, the holder of the promises may plead with Jehovah to be faithful to his word. And where, as in Davids case in contrast with that of Saul, loyal devotion is regarded as putting Jehovah to the test, to sustain the devotion he himself has called into exercise, even a humble petitioner may wax bold to remind Jehovah of his righteousness, as a reason for not failing to rescue him from trials which fidelity has occasioned. So far we readily recall reflections which make us feel to be on familiar ground.
It is true that the sense of sin which shrinks from the severity of Divine justice is, in like manner, not at all a new concept to the student of the psalter; for this is only the last of a series of penitential psalms. But the point of our present reflection is, that, though last in the order of place in the book, this penitential psalm is probably the first in the order of experience in the life of the psalmistso far as we can judge. David is yet a young man. The great and deplorable sins of his later life have not yet cast their shadows over his soul. But here, in the gloom of the rocks amongst which he is hiding, the seeming delay of Jehovah to deliver him, drives him into himself with such heart-searching as to draw from him the protest, that, when all comes to all, no one living can appear just before a holy and heart-searching God. It is well to note this psychological moving force, in estimating the contribution which the psalter makes to our knowledge of the human soul and Jehovahs general dealings with the consciences of men.
Stanza II. sharply recalls us to the actual world in which David lived. To all appearance, his foe, Saulof whom it would be pedantic not to think in this connectionhas the upper hand of him: it is he who is crushing his life to the earth and driving him to hide in these dark places. At times his courage forsakes him: his mind is bewildered. Was it for this that he had been anointed of Samuel; for this, that the Spirit of Sacred Minstrelsy had so oft and so mightily come upon him?
Stanza III. widens our outlook: it reveals the banished young soldier as a man of meditation. How many of its treasures Sacred History had laid at his feet we know not; but a sufficient selection of them, evidently, to enable him to remember the days of aforetime. Some familiarity with the contents of the Book of Exodus, would warrant him to say to JehovahI have talked to myself of all thy doings; and a similar general knowledge of the story of Genesis, complemented as it must have been by his own open-air observations of nature by day and by night, would naturally prepare him to addOn the works of Thy hands I soliloquise. With oriental proneness to gesture in devotion, and with a shepherds alertness to observe when a land wants water and how barren it is without it,his meditations prompt his prayers as he addsI have spread out my hands unto thee, my soul is like a weary land for thee. Very naturalif the devoutness was there, to awaken his thoughts and unseal his lips.
We may not be too sure that the mysterious word Selah, which our sign
represents, has yet yielded up its secret; but, assuming, as our sign by its form is intended to suggest, that it somehow has practically the effect of at once pointing backwards and forwards, as if to say, These things being so, then note well what follows, we are entitled to note how suggestive is the translation which is now made in the psalm (Cp. Intro., Chap. III., Selah). All, so far, may be regarded as preliminary; but now, with rapid movements of desire, petition follows petition, at the rate of two per verse, to the very end of the psalm,which, therefore, we have not cared to subdivide: Haste thee answer medo not hidelet me hearlet me knowrescueteachleadrevivebring forthexterminatedestroy: each petition being sustained by a cogent reason why it should be granted; and all wound up with the crowning reason, which explains so much: because I am Thy servant. There are several salient points in this volley of petitions: among which should be noted the firm grip taken of facts, for, to all seeming, David and his men were at deaths door; the care with which conduct is placed under Divine directionShall I go further away? remain where I am? or hope shortly to return? Let me know the way wherein I should walk; and the facility with which the psalmists mind ascends to the high level of Divine teaching, which, under the circumstances, cannot mean less thanSo may thy spirit influence my spirit, that my ways, in the whole scope and drift of them, may please thee; and I meanwhile may find the way of Duty to be plain and accessible. For the most startling thing of all, we are by this time measurably prepared: To Davids quick vision, it by this time began plainly to appear, that either he or Saul must be slain. How far he was, by word or deed, from himself moving a finger to slay Saul; how far from tolerating the doing of the deadly deed by others; all this we well know. All the same, as surely as he knew he was Jehovahs servant, and his cause Jehovahs cause, so surely is now borne in upon him the conviction, irresistibly intensified into a prayer: And in Thy kindness wilt thou exterminate my foes, and destroy all the adversaries of my soul, because I am thy servant. Let no man repeat this prayer until he is as sure as David was that no other issue is possible. Nevertheless, let no man shrink from appropriating and administering the spiritual tonic consisting in the assurance, soon to come before us in the most benevolent and sympathetic of Spiritual Songs: Jehovah preserveth all them who love Himbut all the lawless He destroyeth.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1.
In this psalm, David is still hiding in a cave, but he has problems here not before considered. What are they?
2.
There are two concepts in stanza one with which we are familiar and one we have not before considered. Discuss them.
3.
Saul surely seems to have the advantage, mention two or three.
4.
David evidently had a copy of the law of the Lord with him in the cave. What indications are there that this is true?
5.
The word Selah seems to signal the expression of the deepest meaning or purpose of this psalm. Discuss.
6.
There is in this psalm a veritable valley of petitions. List three or four of them.
7.
Davids basic problem was not that he was hiding in a cave, As to his future, what did he need to know?
8.
At this time, it evidently became clear to David that to overcome his foe, what must finally take place?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) Faithfulness . . . righteousness.The first word recalls the covenant promise, the second the faith, expressed so frequently, on which the covenant rested, that the Judge of all the world must do right. St. John founds the appeal for forgiveness on the same pair of Divine qualities (1Jn. 1:9; comp. Psa. 65:5.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1. In thy faithfulness righteousness The “faithfulness” and “righteousness” are conformity to the system of revealed mercy. There is a “righteousness” in taking vengeance, but God is also “faithful and just to forgive” when forgiveness is sought in his appointed way.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Psalms 143
Psa 143:1 (A Psalm of David.) Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
Psa 143:1
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Psa 144:3 Psa 144:3
Psa 8:4, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
Psa 144:11 Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood:
Psa 144:11
Psa 144:12-14 Comments The Purpose of War – In Psa 144:1 God teaches us to make war. Psa 144:12-14 shows us the righteous purpose of war, which is to bring peace and prosperity to a nation.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
A Prayer of Repentance and a Sigh for Mercy.
v. 1. Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my supplications, v. 2. And enter not into judgment with Thy servant, v. 3. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul, v. 4. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me, v. 5. I remember the days of old, v. 6. I stretch forth my hands unto Thee, v. 7. Hear me speedily, O Lord, v. 8. Cause me to hear Thy loving-kindness in the morning, v. 9. Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies; I flee unto Thee to hide me, v. 10. Teach me to do Thy will, v. 11. Quicken me, O Lord, for Thy name’s sake, v. 12. And of Thy mercy,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
ALMOST entirely a psalm of supplication, partly general (Psa 143:1, Psa 143:7), partly special (Psa 143:2, Psa 143:8-12). Psa 143:3-6, however, give the grounds upon which the supplications are made; Psa 143:3, Psa 143:4 describing the psalmist’s wretched condition; and Psa 143:5, Psa 143:6 his behavior under his afflictions. Again, there is no reason to doubt the superscription, which assigns the psalm to David. Almost all the phrases used are found in other Davidical psalms. The composition divides itself into two stanzas of equal length (Psa 143:1-6, and Psa 143:7-12).
Psa 143:1
Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications (comp. Psa 28:2; Psa 39:12; Psa 54:2; Psa 55:1, etc.). In thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. In thy faithfulness to thy promises, since thou hast promised to hear prayer, and in thy mere righteousness, since it is right and just that thou shouldest do so, hearken unto me.
Psa 143:2
And enter not into judgment with thy servant. The psalmist, having touched the point of abstract justice, shrinks from pressing it. He knows that he is not “righteous before God,” and that his life and conduct “cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment” (Art. XII.). He therefore “deprecates a strictly retributive treatment” (Cheyne). For in thy sight shall no man living be justified (comp. Psa 130:3; and see also Job 4:17-19; Job 9:2; Job 15:14; Job 25:4).
Psa 143:3
For the enemy hath persecuted my soul. “The enemy” may be Saul, but is more probably an abstract expressionfor “my enemies” generally. He hath smitten my life down to the ground; or, “crushed my life to the ground”brought me, i.e; very low (comp. Psa 42:6). He hath made me to dwell in darkness (comp. Psa 88:6). As those that have been long dead. I have dwelt in a darkness like that of Sheol; i.e. in gloom and unhappiness (comp. Lam 3:6).
Psa 143:4
Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; or, “faint within me” (see Psa 42:3). My heart within me is desolate (comp. Psa 40:15).
Psa 143:5
I remember the days of old. Still, in the midst of all my troubles, I do not despair”I remember the days of old”the great things which God has done for me in the past (comp. Psa 77:5, Psa 77:10, Psa 77:11). I meditate on all thy works; or, “on all thy doings.” I muse on the work of thy hands (comp. Psa 77:12).
Psa 143:6
I stretch forth my hands unto thee. These recollections draw me to thee, O God, and make me stretch forth my hands in prayer to thee (Psa 141:2), and entreat thee for succor. My soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. As a parched and withered land. seems to look up to heaven and long for rain, so does my soul long for thee, O Lord, “and thy refreshing grace” (comp. Psa 42:1). The “pause-mark,” “selah,” at the end of the verse, at once gives time for secret prayer, and makes a division of the psalm into two parts.
Psa 143:7
Hear me speedily, O Lord. Here the direct supplication of Psa 143:1 is taken up, and pressed. “Hear me, O Lord; and not only hear me, but that speedily. It is a time for haste” (comp. Psa 141:1). My spirit faileth; or, “fainteth” (LXX; ). Hide not thy face from me (comp. Psa 27:9; Psa 69:17; Psa 102:2). Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit (see the comment on Psa 28:1).
Psa 143:8
Cause me to hear thy loving-kindness in the morning; i.e. early, speedily (comp. Psa 46:5; Psa 90:14). For in thee do I trust. His utter trust in God gives him a claim to be beard and helped. Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; i.e. illumine me, so that I may perceive the course which I ought to follow (comp. Psa 5:8, “Make thy way straight before my face”). For I lift up my soul unto thee. Again, a sort of claim seems to be urged, as in clause 2.
Psa 143:9
Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies (comp. Psa 140:1, Psa 140:4; Psa 142:6). I flee unto thee to hide me; literally, to thee I hide myself, but probably with the meaning expressed in the Authorized Version.
Psa 143:10
Teach me to do thy will (comp. Psa 25:4, Psa 25:5; Psa 139:24). For thou art my God. Therefore my Guide and Teacher. Thy spirit is good; i.e. gracious and merciful. Lead ms into the land of uprightness; rather, along a land of smoothness. Some critics unite the last two clauses, and translate, “Let thy good Spirit lead me along a land of smoothness””conduct me,” i.e. over smooth ground, where I need not stumble.
Psa 143:11
Quicken me, O Lord, for thy Name’s sake; i.e. give me fresh spiritual life (setup. Psa 119:25, Psa 119:37, Psa 119:50, Psa 119:88, Psa 119:93, etc.). For thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble. To show how righteous thou art, i.e. how good and gracious.
Psa 143:12
And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies. In thy goodness towards me, remove those enemies whose conduct towards me has been described in Psa 143:3, Psa 143:4. And destroy all them that afflict my soul. This is David’s ordinary prayer with respect to his enemies, whom be counts as God’s adversaries, and the persecutors of faithful Israel (see Psa 5:10; Psa 7:9; Psa 10:15; Psa 28:4, Psa 28:5; Psa 35:4-6, Psa 35:8, etc.). For I am thy servant. Entitled, therefore, to thy special care and protection (comp. Psa 27:9; Psa 69:17; Psa 86:2, Psa 86:4, Psa 86:16; Psa 116:16, etc.).
HOMILETICS
Psa 143:1-12
The soul’s appeal to God.
The groundwork of the psalm is that of great affliction. The psalmist is in very sore trouble; the strongest expressions are used to convey the idea of complete outward disaster and inward dejection (Psa 143:3, Psa 143:4). There is only one respect in which things could be worse than they aredeath itself, and the going down into the dark land of forgetfulness (Psa 143:7). But, as in the preceding psalm, his dire extremity is the very occasion for holy trust in the almighty power and unfailing righteousness of Jehovah. His refuge is in God. Here, indeed, is a strong Rock in which to hide in this dark night of trouble. We have
I. HIS RELIANCE ON ALL THAT HE KNOWS OF God.
1. He remembers what God has been to him and has done/or him and for others in past days; what “doings,” what “works,” what deliverances he wrought in “the days of old” (Psa 143:5). “Thou hast been my help,” etc. (Psa 27:9).
2. He relies on the known character of God; his loving-kindness (Psa 143:8); his faithfulness, his perfect trueness to his word of promise; his righteousness, his constant readiness to reward those who seek him and serve him, and his determination to punish the wicked. These recognized and steadfast attributes of God are to him a strong security. God cannot be inconsistent with himself.
II. HIS CONSCIOUSNESS OF INTEGRITY. The writer would not dare to make his appeal to the Holy One if he himself were living in sin. He knows well that the man who purposes to continue in rebellion against God, or in rejection of his offered mercy, has no ground on which to stand (see Psa 66:18; Psa 1:1-6 :16). Not, indeed, that he claims absolute inerrancy or perfection; he knows that such purity is beyond him (Psa 143:2); but at the same time, he is conscious of moral and spiritual integrity; he is God’s servant (Psa 143:12). The purpose of his heart is toward God and the keeping of his commandments. He intends to walk uprightly and holily before God, to the full height of his strenuous endeavor. His God is the Lord, and no other lord shall have dominion over him.
III. THE FULNESS OF HIS APPEAL
1. He prays God to “quicken” him, to reanimate him, to fill his soul with courage and with hope, that he may play a brave and manly part.
2. He prays for deliverance from his evil estate; for the confusion of his enemies; for restoration to peace and joy (Psa 143:9, Psa 143:11, Psa 143:12).
3. He prays to be led forward in his rectitude, that he may fulfill all God’s holy will concerning him (Psa 143:10). We cannot hope to rise higher than the spirit shown in this devout desire. It is right to wish and to ask, with all filial deference, for recovery from sickness, or for rescue from bondage, or for deliverance from anxiety or poverty; but it is a loftier and worthier aspiration to long to be led by the good Spirit of God into “the land of uprightness,” into a state of lull acquiescence with the will of God, into a spiritual condition in which the doing or the bearing of the will of God is the supreme aim and endeavor of the soul.
IV. HIS EARNESTNESS. (Psa 143:6-8.) There is every indication here of great earnestness of spirit. His soul thirsts for God’s interposition as a parched land for water; he cries for a speedy response to his appeal; he yearns to hear God’s loving-kindness “in the morning,” and “lifts up his soul” unto God. Everything is to the earnest. Lukewarmness is offensive to God, as we learn from the risen Savior. A spasmodic piety, a fitful enthusiasm, will accomplish nothing for ourselves or for the world. It is steadfast purpose and sustained devotion that rises to the high tablelands of exalted worth and abounding fruitfulness.
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY
Psa 143:1-12
The cry of the overwhelmed spirit.
I. ITS CHARACTERISTICS.
1. How earnest it is! The psalmist was not in any light, indifferent, or formal spirit when he uttered this prayer. Its intensity is evident all the way through.
2. And believing. “In thy faithfulness answer me” (Psa 143:1). He believed the promises of God, and claims their fulfillment, expects that what God has promised he will make good. Such expectation is all too rare; and its rarity accounts for the many unanswered prayers over which we mourn.
3. And sincere. “And in thy righteousness” (Psa 143:1). If he had regarded iniquity in his heart, he could not thus have prayed, for he would have known that the Lord would not hear him; but he could appeal to him who was the righteous Searcher of all hearts, that with true heart he prayed. Hence he could appealto the righteousness of God, because “the righteous Lord loveth righteousness, and his countenance doth behold the upright.”
4. Humble. (Psa 143:2.) For whilst he could appeal to God to attest his innocence and sincerity of heart, that did not prove him to be faultless in the sight of God. St. Paul said, “I know nothing against myself; yet am I not hereby justified.” And similar to this is the psalmist’s confession here. He might be, and he was, innocent before men, and sincere in heart toward God; but yet there were many a trangression and fault and failure, the remembrance of which made him pray, “Enter not into judgment,” etc. (Psa 143:2). Such were the characteristics of this prayer, and should be of all prayerindeed, must be, if our prayers are to avail.
II. ITS COMPLAINT. The psalmist tells what his enemies had done against him (Psa 143:3).
1. They had persecuted his soul. He had, no doubt, some outward, present persecution in his thought; but in reading this psalm we may transfer his words to those spiritual persecutions which we often have to suffer at the hands of our great enemy; and, thus applied, the whole psalm answers to all too frequent experience of the people of God today. For the enemy doth by all manner of temptation persecute our soulhe suggests doubt, he stirs up evil thoughts, he assails our faith, he darkens our mind, and in every way seeks to loosen our hold on God.
2. And some have to confess, “He hath smitten my life down to the ground.” There have been periods in the history of God’s servantsthere were in David’swhen the Divine life in them has been all but non-existent, when they could not pray, nor witness for God, nor give him praise, nor render any service of a spiritual kind. They have been terrible seasonsthe enemy hath come in like a flood, and the overwhelmed ones were unable to pray that “the Spirit of the Lord would lift up a standard against him.”
3. And then, in consequence, there has been the “dwelling in darkness, as those that have been long dead.” Oh, the darkness of that time! it was as the gloom of the grave. The soul that the enemy hath so smitten is conscious of his awful loss; that the life of God in him is seemingly gone; and he seems abandoned to the utter corruption of sin! No wonder that his spirit is overwhelmed and his heart desolate (Psa 143:4). How could it be otherwise? He is simply and utterly miserable.
III. THE COMING OF RELIEF.
1. God leads him to remember the days of old. To hunger after those blessed times when God came to his soul, and was his Helper and Deliverer. Full of help are memories like these.
2. Then to “meditate on all thy works.” To see the wisdom, power, and love displayed in them, and so to hope that for him, too, there should be wrought some gracious work of God. As he thus mused, the fire of love and desire and faith would begin to burn, and then his musing thought would take form and action; for:
3. He would stretch forth his hands unto God. His soul was athirst for God, and now forth go his hands in prayer. Yes, relief was coming; for there are its near harbingers, everywhere and always.
IV. THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN TAKEN BY FORCE. (Psa 143:7-12.) What a crowd and rush of prayers, protestations, cries, and pleadings, these verses contain! One after another they come, in hot haste and eagerness that will take no denial. It is a very besiegement of the throne of grace. But the chief burden of all is, not for deliverance from enemies, but for a closer knowledge of God; the consciousness of his favor, the speedy hearing of his loving-kindness; the being made to know the way wherein God would have him walk. Then come prayers that God would teach, would lead, would quicken, and would bring his soul out of trouble. There is prayer for deliverance from calamities; but the great longing is after the doing of God’s will, and the quickening of his soul in righteousness. Prayer helps him in attaining that submissiveness of will which is essential to his gaining that unspeakable blessing on which his heart is set. And in proportion as a man is taught of God, this is the supreme desire of his soul. If he gains this, it matters not much whether the outward calamities go or stay. If God’s face shines upon him, man’s may frown as it will. He has heaven within him, even though hell be outside of and all around him. What can any enemy do unto him, since God is on his side? He has won the kingdom of heaven, and no man can take it from him. Blessed is any sorrow when such reaction as this psalm reveals follows from it ] The light affliction which was for the moment is now working out the “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” The travail of his soul has issued in the glorious birth of the life of the love of God. And this is ever God’s intent in all our sorrows; for this he lets the enemy smite our soul down to the ground, and make us dwell in darkness. He desires that we should flee unto him to hide us. And, blessed be his Name! he ever will; and far more than that will he do.S.C.
Psa 143:7
Becoming like unto them that go down into the pit;
Such was the psalmist’s horrible dread, the extreme terror of his soul.
I. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? The dead were they who went down into the pit.
1. The expression is one of those which mark the intense repulsion with which the Old Testament saints regarded death. Listen to David’s piteous cry, “Oh, spare me that I may recover strength,” etc. (Psa 39:1-13.; cf. also Psa 88:1-7, Psa 88:10-12; Psa 115:16-18; and passim throughout the Old Testament). They regarded the grave with feelings of the deepest gloomas a dark pit, a prison with bars (Job 17:16). See also Hezekiah’s entreaty that he might not die (Isa 38:1-22.). The grave was the land of destruction, of darkness, where they could not praise God nor enjoy his favor; where they would be utterly forgotten; and whence they should never return. Because of its dread associations, our translators have often rendered the Hebrew word into our word “hell,” as in the well-known passage, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all,” etc. But it is the same word as is used by Jacob when he says, “Ye will bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.” The souls of the pious Jews shrank from death with an unutterable repulsion; and hence, when the psalmist here would express the extremity of spiritual distress, he describes it as becoming “like unto them that go down into the pit.” Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel; but those ancient saints had not that light. Contrast St. Paul’s courageous “I am ready to be offered up,” and the mournful moan of the psalmist, “Oh, spare me!” the joy and hope of the gospel with the gloom of the Old Testament (cf. Job 14:1-22. with Joh 14:1-31. and the whole of the New Testament).
2. But, whereforeso it will at once be askedwas this hope withheld from the psalmists and such as they? And we reply that probably one reason was that they might learn, as they did learn, to put all their trust and find all their delight in God. He was to be everything to them; their God and their exceeding Joy; and, when this was so, they could leave to him to determine what their future should be. They were to have, and to teach us to have, a present salvation, and to trust in God for all the rest. And this, in our best moments, is what we do. It is not the thought of the future life that most of all influences the true believer, but the present realization of God. If he has that, it is well with him; but without that, even the hope of the future life waxes dim. What the soul of man wants is a salvation here and now; and it is what we may have, and many have, and all should have, and then the soul will be at rest as to all the future may bring. And to teach this was, we think, one of the reasons why the clear promise of the future life which we enjoy was not given to them. But to return to the text, we inquire
II. WHENCE SUCH DISTRESS OF SOUL AS THE TEXT INDICATES ARISES?
1. Sometimes it is owing to the presence of earthly sorrow, and the cruelty of men. Such was the case, evidently, with the writer of this psalm. “Man’s inhumanity to man” will not seldom smite the “soul down to the ground,” and make the spirit faint. It has done such cruel and cursed work again and again.
2. Delayed answers to prayer. How frequently do these psalms show the terrible strain upon the faith of God’s people which such delayed answers to their prayers has caused (Psa 22:2; Psa 88:9, and parallels)!
3. The sense of sin. (See Psa 32:1-11; Psa 51:1-19.; and the penitential psalms generally; also the publican’s prayer, “God be merciful,” etc.!) Where no relief comes, sometimes, as in the case of Saul and Judas, men have rushed to self-destruction. The agony of this sense of sin is to the soul like that of broken bones to the body (Psa 51:8). Think of what the prodigal’s home-journey must have been, what bitter thoughts must have filled his mind. The conviction of sin has no comfort in itself, though it should lead thereto.
4. And sometimes God lets his beloved ones fall into such deep depression. See our blessed Lord in Gethsemane, and in the darkness on the cross. He knows what such soul-agony means; in this, as in all points, he has been tried like as we are.
III. WHEREFORE IS IT PERMITTED?
1. For the trial and so the strengthening of trust in God. See the Syro-phoenician womanhow her faith was tried! But she stood the test, as the Lord knew she would; and she rose thereafter and because of it to a glorious height of faith, such as even made the Lord himself to marvel, and to pronounce on her a benediction which otherwise she would never have gained. Hence it is that St. James bids us count it all joy when we fall into such trials. They are the opportunity for the soul’s winning the high prizes of the kingdom of God; and when God sends to us such trials, he is but entering us for the glorious contest. Therefore count it all joy!
2. For the working in us of a holy hatred of sin. That is the reason of the Holy Spirit’s convicting work. Burnt children dread the fire; therefore God lets sin burs the sinner.
3. For the helping of others. He who endures trial witnesses for God as none other can. He declares in the face of an unbelieving worldnot to say Churchthat God’s grace is sufficient, and that therewith he can do and bear all things. That testimony is needed, and is fruitful of blessing. It was thus that always and everywhere the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church. What heart-cheer it brings to tempted yet timid souls! See to it that we thus witness for God. It was thus our Lord witnessed.
IV. WHENCE RELIEF COMES. “Hide not thy face from me”so the psalmist prays, and thus plainly declares that what would certainly bring him relief would be the face of God shining upon him. When God thus blesses his servants, then it is that he gives them quietness, and none then can make trouble (Job 34:29); for then, man may be as cruel as he will, the specific answers to our prayers may be delayed as long as God sees fit, the sense of sin will be swallowed up in the certainty of God’s pardoning love, and we are able to say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!”
CONCLUSION.
1. Can God‘s face shine upon us? Not if we are refusing to let go our hold of sin. If we will not renounce that, God’s face cannot shine upon us. Therefore, be now, at once, reconciled to God.
2. Will it shine upon us? Yes, it ever does; though, as with the sun, clouds may obscure its brightness. We patiently wait till the clouds clear. That is what the believer has to do”wait patiently for him.”S.C.
Psa 143:8
The way wherein we should walk.
The tone and language of this psalm lend color to the general belief that it was written by David, and, perhaps, as the LXX. adds, when he was a fugitive from before the rebellion of Absalom. He had very great need of help. He could not plead that he had done no wrong; on the contrary, he virtually confesses that he has (Psa 143:2). But his present distress was very great; and we can well believe that he turned to his accustomed arms of prayer and supplication. His prayers, however, do not seem to have, thus far, much aided him; he is still in desperate straitshis spirit overwhelmed, his heart desolate; he was nigh to becoming “like them that go down into the pit.” And amongst his other troubles, there was this onethat he was in utter perplexity as to the way he should take. He did not know what that way was; and hence he prays, as in this eighth verse. But he feels that if only it were well with his soul, if the life of God there could but be revived, then most of his difficulties would clear away. Now, this perplexity of the psalmist teaches us
I. THERE IS A WAY IN WHICH MEN SHOULD WALK.
1. There are some ways in which a man cannot walk; as e.g. the way which would reverse the past, which would undo or alter that which is past. How much we should like to be able to do this! But it is impossible. What is done cannot be undone: even God cannot make that not to be which has been. Nor can we walk so as to retrace our steps. We cannot put back the clock of life, so as to recall the years that are gone. Forward our path lies; backward we cannot go. What urgency this fact gives to the Preacher’s charge, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for,” etc. (Ecc 9:10)! But:
2. There are some along which we must walk. Those which lead to the grave and to the judgment-seat of God. If death did end all, even then the squanderings of life’s opportunities would be miserable folly and grievous wrong; but when we read and know that “after death the judgment,” then the seriousness and responsibility of life become vastly greaterso great that we cannot over-estimate them. And there is yet another path in which we must walkthat which leads to the formation and fixing of our character. We are forever building up the fabric of characterbuilding in the wood, hay, stubble, or the gold, silver, and precious stones. We are forming habits which are the garment of the soul. No day leaves us without having added its contribution to the final character we shall bear. But:
3. We have to speak of the way in which we should walkthe way we should deliberately choose and decisively prefer and cleave to, as the only right way. There can be no doubt of there being such a way (see Isa 45:5). There is a life-plan for each of us, a definite will of God.
(1) Nature attests this. There, everything from the minutest atom up to the most magnificent star, the drop of water as well as the wide ocean, have each and all of them their course marked out, the way they are to take. Nothing is left to chance or haphazard. Is it likely, then, that man, the highest creation of God, should be sent purposeless and without definite course in the world?
(2) And experience and observation confirm this belief. See the history of Joseph (Gen 45:5-8). And of Moses and many more. We can see how God ordered their lives, and fitted them for the work he had for them to do. And for us there is no joy greater than to know that we are in the way God appoints. All difficulties and sorrows of the way can be borne if we know we are where God would have us be.
4. But man can refuse to walk in this way. How often he does refuse, and turn aside to his own self-chosen way! It seems right to him, but it ends miserably. It must do so. How terrible is this power of choice! Happy the man who has said to God, “Choose thou for me”!
II. THIS WAY IS OFTEN DIFFICULT TO DISCOVER, Who does not know that very often the doing of what is right is far less difficult than the discovering of what the right is? Many causes may contribute to this difficulty. It may be part of God’s discipline for us. Earthly sorrow and trouble may bewilder. The faculty of clear seeing in such cases may not be ours. Self-will may pervert judgment.
III. GOD CAUSES MEN TO KNOW THIS WAY. By angels, visions, pillar of cloud and fire, by dreams, by Urim and Thummim,so in ancient days he guided his people. And he guides them now: his Word, his providence, his Spirit, acting on our minds: reveal his will.
IV. HE DOES THIS FOR THOSE WHO LIFT UP THEIR SOUL UNTO HIM.S.C.
Psa 143:9
I flee unto thee to hide me.
Thus does the psalmist set forth the soul’s swift flight to its sure shelter in God. The man who wrote this psalm was evidently one who had been greatly tried; but when we see the blessed help that has come to myriad souls through the records of his experiences, we are taught thereby one reason at least for the trials of the people of God. Now, here
I. WE HAVE A GOODLY EXAMPLE. That in all our troubles we should flee to God to hide us. Now, in order to this:
1. We must see our need of such shelter. We shall never do as did the psalmist, unless, like him, we see and feel the great danger we are in. Our text is the language of one who realizes his peril. This, in regard to things of the soul, is what so many fail to do. They cannot be got to believe that there is any need wherefore they should trouble themselves. Hence, as in the days of Noah, men went on in their wonted ways, although solemnly and repeatedly warned, until the Flood came and swept them all away. And thus indifferent and unbelieving the mass of men are still. But he who is awakened by God’s grace to the reality of things will clearly see his need of shelter from the guilt of his sin, from its terrible power, and from the cruel oppression of this world’s calamities and sorrows. He sees this, and therefore says, “I flee unto,” etc.
2. He sees also his own weakness. He would not flee if he could fight with any hope of success; or if he knew how to protect himself from the evils which he fears, or had resources of which he could avail himself. But it is because he knows all this is impossible to him, therefore he flees unto God.
3. He has implicit and unlimited confidence in God. He believed that God was both able and willing to save him, and that God would be well pleased that he should flee to him, which he might do if he would. He felt that all would be well with him were he once sheltered within the cleft of the Rock, hidden in the secret place of the Most High. He was quite sure that to betake himself there was his truest wisdom, even as it was his settled resolve.
4. He realizes that his need is urgent. “I flee unto thee,” etc. No time was to be lost; he might not delay having recourse to God. “The Name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.” So would he run into the strong shelter of God.
5. His trust in God is real and active. Thousands of men talk of finding refuge in God, but they never set out to find it. But the psalmist’s religion was a reality to him; he got real blessing and help out of it; he had evidently often found a sure retreat and hiding-place from all evil in God. Ah! how much we lose by not doing the things that we say! by letting professions serve instead of practice! This man actually fled away to God.
II. THE SUGGESTED AND SADLY TOO COMMON CONTRAST, Every word in the text reminds us of the different conduct which is so commonly seen. For example:
1. Many will recommend others to flee unto God; but they never do so themselves. They cannot say, “/flee unto thee.” This is why so many sermons are so ineffectual. The people who hear them feel that the preacher knows nothing experimentally of what he is talking about.
2. Or, if they do not refuse to go, their going is very slow. There is all too little of fleeing unto God. We take things far too easy for that. John the Baptist might preach, “Flee from the wrath to come!” but how few heeded what he said! And so it is still. Men do not believe that there is any need to escape as for their life; and hence, with all leisure, and often listlessness, they proceed in regard to their salvation.
3. And many when in trouble flee away from, rather than unto, God. They plunge into business, into pleasure, into sin; they harden themselves in unbelief; they set themselves defiantly against God.
4. Others flee to all manner of substitutes for God. “Take away her battlements; they are not the Lord’s!” so said the Prophet Jeremiah, concerning the many refuges of lies behind which so many of his countrymen were thinking that they would find shelter. And so still, how many are thinking that in priests and sacraments, in Churches and Creeds, in religious rites and observances, they shall find help, when such help is in God alone!
5. And many will seek from God, not deliverance from spiritual evil, but rather comfort in it. They do not mind the sin so much as its discomfort, and they want God to take that away. If he will do that, they will not mind the evil thing itself. All they want is comfort. But God’s will and way is to sever us from our sin, and to place us where it cannot reach us. This should be our desire, as it was his who wrote this psalm. Then alone are we blessed.
III. OUR SUPREME WISDOM. For to do as is here said is nothing less; we then are wise unto salvation. For:
1. God is honored when we thus flee to him. How did the king in the parable feel when he had made the great supper, and all things were ready, but the invited guests began with one consent to make excuse? And God has provided for all our need. Will he not feel dishonored if we refuse, but glorified if we take what hems offered?
2. And our fellow-men will be encouraged to follow our example. “No man liveth unto himself.” If any one travel truly the road to heaven, he will not want for companionship.
3. We ourselves shall be blessed indeed. Having fled unto God to hide himguilt, sin, sorrow, death, are powerless to really harm him even now; and soon they will be unable to reach him at all. He dwells “in the secret place of the Most High, and abides under,” etc.S.C.
HOMILIES BY R. TUCK
Psa 143:1
Man’s hope in prayer lies in what God is.
Righteousness is, from one point of view, that side of Divine justice which is turned towards good men; hence it comes to mean “beneficence.” There is some good reason for associating this psalm with the experiences of David in the time of Absalom’s rebellion. Delitzsch says, “The psalms of this time of persecution are distinguished from those of the persecution by Saul, by the deep melancholy into which the mourning of the dethroned king was turned by blending with the penitential sorrowfulness of one conscious of his own guilt.” “It is to God’s own character that the appeal is made. It is there first, and not in his own misery, that the sinner finds the great argument why his prayer should be answered.” “Faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1Jn 1:9). The relation between the two terms “faithfulness” and “righteousness” may be thus indicated: Faithfulness is God’s strict keeping of all those covenant terms to which he has pledged himself. Righteousness is his vindication of the oppressed, as is witnessed both by history and by experience.
I. MAN‘S HOPE BASED ON WHAT GOD HAS DONE CANNOT SUFFICE. Because man must take into account all that God has done, and then he is sure to he bewildered. If a man takes out all the manifestly mighty and apparently kind things that God has done, and attempts to base his hope in prayer on them, he is always in danger of having his foundations destroyed by some one who will remind him of things God has done which seem strange and cannot be explained. It is not that God is ever other than himself. It is that man cannot safely read the meaning of all God does; and some of his doings excite in some men doubt and mistrust rather than confidence.
II. MAN‘S HOPE BASED ON WHAT GOD IS WILL ALWAYS SUFFICE. It is true that we can only know what God is by what he says and what he does. But everything depends on our willingness to let these things teach us God himselfteach us what he is. The point may be illustrated by our relations with our fellow-men. In whom is our confidence fully placed? In those of whom we only know what they have done? Nay, it is reserved for those whom we know personally, whose characters have made a profound impression on us. We trust God fully only when we know him worthily.R.T.
Psa 143:2
Prayer cannot be based on man’s rights.
The prayer of a being who had kept his rights can be. We are able to conceive that the prayers of the Lord Jesus Christ were acceptable to God when presented on the ground of his own right to be heard. He never prayed in any other name than his own.
I. MAN HAS, IN A SENSE, LOST HIS RIGHTS. It is necessary to deal with this point carefully. Things are virtually lost when they are undervalued, put aside, and unused. They remain, but are as treasures left in the lumber-room, while the house is filled with other interests. Man has rights in God, rights of prayer, by virtue of his very being and primary relations with God. And these he can never absolutely lose. They are part of himpart of his necessary being. But he may undervalue them, and put them out of consideration, so that they may be virtually lost. He has, therefore, as a practical fact, no rights to plead in prayer. He cannot plead his creation; for he has come to neglect or defy his Creator. He cannot plead his sonship; for he is not offering the obedience of a son. He cannot plead the Divine promises; for he is not meeting the conditions on which the promises depend.
II. MAN HAS, IN FACT, PUT HIS WRONGS IN PLACE OF HIS RIGHTS. And man’s wrong is his willfulness. The dependent being has tried to force himself into independence. The son has become a self-willed prodigal. And now, if man wants to pray, he cannot do it without carrying his wrong into the presence of God; and, whether he knows it or not, that wrong is the pica which alone God can hear. The thoughtful man feels this; it is the fact for every man. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” God would hear a man’s prayers if the man had his rights. He cannot hear when a man only brings his wrongs.
III. MAN MUST, IN ORDER TO PRAY ACCEPTABLY, HAVE HIS RIGHTS RESTORED TO HIM. That is, restored to active power and use. It is an important and suggestive aspect of the redemptive work of Christ, that it is the mastery of man’s self-willed wrong, and the recovery, into active power, of man’s natural rights. Christ is making men what God meant them to be, and what he is; and such men may base prayer on their rights.R.T.
Psa 143:4
Our worst trials are in the sphere of feeling.
“Is desolate;” or, is full of amazement; astonishes itself; seeks to comprehend the mystery of its sufferings, and is ever beaten back upon itself in its perplexity; is dispirited. “How poor a judgment can be formed of a man’s state from the considerations of comfort only!” There are trials which are wholly kept in the physical sphere. There are aches and pains of body, and disabilities of bodily organs, which have no direct connection with sin, and so no bitterness through witnessing conscience; and which arouse no feeling save the simple feeling of enduring. There are trials which have no relation to the outer world of circumstances; they belong wholly to the inner world of feeling.
I. TRIALS THAT KEEP IN THE BODILY SPHERES HAVE MANY RELIEFS. Especially may be noticed those that come by sympathy. Others can understand and estimate these trials. The comfortings they present are kin with the trials. There is no secrecy about these trials; they who suffer under them need not be lonely. And of God it can be said, “He knoweth our frame,” and can be in closest sympathy with us. A grief that we can tell to another is not our worst grief.
II. TRIALS THAT GET INTO THE SPHERE OF FEELING HAVE FEW RELIEFS. SO mysterious is human nature; so complex are the relations of body and mind; so strangely possible is it for a man to live an interior life distinct from bodily conditions and relations,that it is possible for a man to have trials wholly in the sphere of feeling. And these are the worst trials, because for them we can get little or no human sympathy. They put us apart from our fellow-men in loneliness. Our Lord suffered bodily on the cross; but the sufferings in feeling were his real sufferings. Yet even in these worst trials we are not separated from God. Indeed, as these belong to the spirit-region, they belong more especially to the sphere in which God works most freely. When the “heart” is desolate, there is the more need for its filling and comforting with that sense of God which may be so fully realized.R.T.
Psa 143:5, Psa 143:6
God our first Hope and our Last.
The hunger and thirst after righteousness is ultimately a thirst for God. “Observe how he binds himself to God alone, cuts off every other hope from his soul, and, in short, makes his very need a chariot wherewith to mount up to God.” “I remember the days of old;” “I spread forth my hands unto thee.”
I. GOD ALWAYS HAS BEEN OUR HOPE. A good man is here speaking in the name of good men. They can never look back over life, and estimate its scenes of trial and strain, without clearly seeing that their hope was in God, and that God had ever met and satisfied their hope. One thing man has to learn over and over again in the experience of life. It is the untrustworthiness of things and people, and the safe foundation of hope that a man has in God. It is not usually long after a man enters on what may be called a personal experience that he discovers there is no hope to be placed in man. One of the most humiliating and depressing experiences of life is finding our most trusted friend fail us in the hour of need. Then we learn that God is our first and only Hope. Then God does not fail. We may trust him. We find him the “Strength of our heart and our Portion for ever.” That experience is repeated again and again as life unfolds.
II. GOD ALWAYS WILL BE OUR HOPE. Estimate aright the painful experiences through which we may now be passing; times when our life-erections seem to lie in ruins about us; times when trusted friends fail us; times when the outlook before us is dark; times when the sense of loneliness oppresses us, we look to the right hand and to the left, but there is no helper;they are all times in which we are recovering and re-establishing our hope in God. It is well to remember that we always have that. The soul’s deep rest is in him who is “the same yesterday, and today, and for ever;” always the “Friend of the friendless and the faint.” Life rightly viewed is a liberating us from every bond that would keep us from restful, strengthening hope in God.R.T.
Psa 143:8
The fear of not doing right in times of stress.
The people of Israel, on coming to the banks of the Jordan, and facing a time of great strain and difficulty, were called to stop and consider, and estimate their needs, and their sources of strength. They were reminded, “Ye have not passed this way heretofore.” They were even more forcibly reminded, “The living God is among you.” If they responded aright to this call, they would pray the prayer of this text, “Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk.”
I. THE SPIRIT WE OUGHT EVERY DAY TO CHERISH. A man’s heart is revealed in every true prayer that he offers. This prayer shows
(1) a great sense of God’s nearness and personal interest. Contrast the renewed man’s cherished ideas of God, and God’s relations, with those of the unrenewed man.
(2) A true humility under God’s mighty hand; not merely the impression that God is great, but the feeling, too, that we are wholly dependent on him.
(3) A happy trusting of all our interests to God’s care. Power and wisdom do not satisfy reliant, trustful hearts. They find rest only in personal affection, interest, and service. Tenderly beautiful are the words, “Thou knowest, Lord!” when upon the humble, quiet-minded, loving Christian’s lips.
II. THE PRAYER WE OUGHT DAILY TO OFFER. Offer each day anew, and as freshly as if then offered for the first time. The promise comes to us anew every morning, “As thy day so shall thy strength be.”
1. Cause me to see the way. We always walk in twilight; sometimes in utter darkness. “In thy light we shall see light.”
2. Cause me to choose the way. Because even when we know the right, we will not accept it or do it; so we want the Divine strength in our will and decisions.
3. Cause me to understand the claims of the way. For it must be full of duties and responsibilities. He is the truly happy man who can see clearly what God’s work for him is, chooses it for himself, is satisfied with it, and wants to do it.
4. Cause me to meet the claims of the way. We need grace first in order to know the right way, and then grace to act aright in the way. So this prayer covers the whole field of the religious life.R.T.
Psa 143:9
Fleeing from God: fleeing to God.
Literally, “Unto thee have I hidden myself;” or, “my sorrow.”
I. WHAT IS REVEALED BY THE MOOD OF MIND THAT FLEES FROM GOD. That mood is suggested by the experience of Adam, who hid himself from the presence of the Lord, when the holy voice was heard in the garden, when the evening breeze was felt.
1. A mood of dissatisfaction with self is revealed. There is a good sense in which a man may be at peace with himselfsatisfied with himself; feeling no abrupt division between his doing and his sense of right doing. In that state the man loves the thought of God, and cherishes the sense of his nearness. God is kin with him. If a man is dissatisfied with himself, not sure of his own rightness, that man will get away from God, put away the thought of him.
2. A mood of fear is revealed. A man knows how much he is dependent on God, and how closely he is related to God; if he wants to get away from God, he must have some reason to fear what those Divine relations must involve. The fear is based on either
(1) taking up wrong thoughts of God; or
(2) conduct which must offend God. Fear, as alarm that compels a man to hide, reveals cherished sin as exciting fear.
(3) Sometimes it reveals an independence which persists in doing without God. This is the mood which is most hopeless. The man is satisfied with himself on wrong grounds.
II. WHAT IS REVEALED BY THE MOOD OF MIND THAT FLEES TO GOD.
1. A right apprehension of God. Wholly consistent with reverent thought of God is a restful confidence in him. No man apprehends God aright who only knows him as good; he must know that he is good to him. His knowing this is seen in his fleeing to hide in him.
2. A right apprehension of self. This involves cherished assurance of dependence, and absence of all desire to be other than dependent. Only to the dependent soul can God ever reveal himself.
3. A full confidence of safety in the defense of God. That full confidence involves the assurance of safety from perilous self as well as from treacherous foes.R.T.
Psa 143:11, Psa 143:12
Vindications left with God.
“Whatever of human frailty may attach to the desire of vengeance, yet the fact remains that to smite the oppressor of righteousness is a part of ‘the goodness’ of God.” “It is worthy of observation that the psalmist pleads God’s righteousness as the foundation on which he bases his supplication for the deliverance of his soul out of trouble; and God’s loving-kindness or mercy as that on which he grounds his prayer, or his conviction, that God will destroy his enemies.”
I. WHAT A MAN MAY DO WITH HIS ENEMIES. Submit and suffer; or oppose and suffer. A man may take dealing with his enemies into his own hands; and spend his life in seeking opportunities for crushing them and avenging himself. But then one of two things will happen.
(1) He may fail, and bring rum upon himself by his attempts. Or
(2) he may succeed, but only at the cost of his own moral ruin; for he fatally injures his own character by cherishing hateful, revengeful feeling through the long years. Can a man ever safely avenge himself? The answer is an emphatic No. He cannot do it wisely. He cannot help injuring himself in the doing. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves.”
II. WHAT A MAN HAD BETTER DO WITH HIS ENEMIES. Leave them with God. But that may involve keeping the slur upon our reputation. Never mind, God can vindicate us in his own time and way. His own approval of us is the pledge that everybody else will approve of us sooner or later. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” We may always be sure of two things.
(1) In the economy of life punishment works out for the wrong-doer; and
(2) God will surely see that the outworking is not interfered with. But leaving our enemies with God means praying to God about them. Not praying to God against them. Not telling God what we wish him to do with them. Only commending them to his consideration in such a way that we shall be wholly relieved of the burden of dealing with them.R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT
Psa 143:1-12
A complaint and a prayer.
This the last of the penitential psalms. The authorship and occasion of it uncertain. Pervaded by a deep tone of sorrow and anguish and a deep sense of sin. Roughly divided, the first part (Psa 143:1-6) contains the complaint; and the second (Psa 143:7-12), the prayer founded on that complaint.
I. THE COMPLAINT.
1. His enemies overwhelmed with a sense of desolation. (Psa 143:3, Psa 143:4.) “His life was smitten down;” he dwelt as in the darkness of death; his heart was desolate. No friend was left; no protection from the cruel injustice of men. He was as if forsaken of God. All this was the means of revealing the sinfulness and misery of his own heart.
2. The contrast between his past and present experience. (Psa 143:5.) This embittered his anguish and added to the sense of his desolation.
3. He stands as one imploring help. (Psa 143:6.) But to whom, as yet, help has not come. As parched land thirsts for rain, so he pants for the help of God.
II. THE PRAYER. The petitions in Psa 143:7-12 may be thus grouped:
1. Prayer for speedy loving-kindness and direction. (Psa 143:7, Psa 143:8.)
2. For deliverance from enemies and fuller knowledge of God‘s will. (Psa 143:9, Psa 143:10.) And for power to obey that will when thus made known.
3. For new life and deliverance from the sufferings caused by his enemies. (Psa 143:11, Psa 143:12.) A new internal and external lifea complete change.
4. The ground of the several petitions is the personal relation of the psalmist to God. “Thou art my God;” “In thee have I trusted;” “I am thy servant;” etc. Man is God’s child. These the strongest appeals that could be made.S.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Psalms 143.
David prayeth for favour in judgment: he complaineth of his griefs: he strengtheneth his faith by meditation and prayer: he prayeth for grace, for deliverance, for sanctification, and for destruction of his enemies.
A Psalm of David.
Title. mizmor ledavid. This psalm is thought to have been composed by David, when Absalom his son persecuted him; and so it was inscribed in some old Greek copies. It is the last of those stiled penitential psalms.
Psa 143:1. In thy faithfulness answer me That is, “According to the promises which thou hast made to hear, and answer, that is, grant, the petitions of thy servant.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Psalms 143
A Psalm of David
Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications:
In thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
2And enter not into judgment with thy servant;
For in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
3For the enemy hath persecuted my soul;
He hath smitten my life down to the ground;
He hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead.
4Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me;
My heart within me is desolate.
5I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all thy works;
I muse on the work of thy hands.
6I stretch forth my hands unto thee:
My soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.
7Hear me speedily, O Lord; my spirit faileth:
Hide not thy face from me,
Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.
8Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning;
For in thee do I trust:
Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk;
For I lift up my soul unto thee.
9Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies:
I flee unto thee to hide me.
10Teach me to do thy will;
For thou art my God
Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.
11Quicken me, O Lord, for thy names sake:
For thy righteousness sake bring my soul out of trouble.
12And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies,
And destroy all them that afflict my soul:
For I am thy servant.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Contents and Composition.This, the last of the seven penitential Psalms, is in some manuscripts without a superscription. In others there is besides the one above given, the addition: When Absalom his son pursued him. The circumstances of the suppliant as here depicted, agree with this statement. For, surrounded by implacable enemies, who have brought him nigh to death, the servant of God has only Him remaining as his refuge. This Refuge is a sure one, and is ardently desired, and therefore besought in prayer with the fervor of a soul that longs for deliverance. For with all his trust in Gods faithfulness and helpful righteousness, so far as his relation to his enemies is concerned, he has yet a strong feeling of his human sinfulness before God, and therefore a strong need of His pardoning mercy and of guidance through His good Spirit.
These thoughts are characteristic of David, but here and there they appear in a form which might be regarded as a later effort to copy after the Davidic Psalm-poetry (Delitzsch). He who knows David, finds here also that penitent confession to God, that humility, that longing after God, that sure confiding in Him as his refuge, and invocation of His help and deliverance from enemies for the sake of His goodness, that submission to Him, that desire for His holy guidance, that experience of the Lord, and praise inspired by such experience, that confidence in His holy righteousness, and that humble and elevating consciousness of being the servant of the Lord, which are so entirely characteristic of David (Clauss.) This may be granted and yet it be doubted, whether such a poet as David would have so copied himself, as would be the case if the Davidic authorship were proved. One might pray in the same language, but would not repeat himself in different poems. The numerous, reminiscences of other passages of Scripture which are found confirm this supposition.
[The application of this canon to Hebrew poets, and especially to such a one as David, who wrote so much in this style, and who seemed to make his repeated experiences of similar distresses so many occasions of compositions of this nature, is hardly just. Besides, there are many instances of repetitions in Psalms in the earlier portion of the Psalter, which are acknowledged to be those of David, and they do not occasion any difficulty. Of course there is no instance there so striking as this, but they give an indication of what David might accomplish in the way of combining familiar thoughts and images, and setting them in the light of renewed revelations of Gods power and goodness in the midst of his own renewed distress and feeling of weakness. At all events, the poem, even with the familiarity of its ideas, forms a complete whole which is worthy of David, and which no critic need on that score hesitate to assign to him. Hengstenberg again stands alone among recent continental commentators in maintaining the Davidic authorship. Perowne again follows the majority on the other side, and inclines to the view of a late composition. Delitzsch finds in the addition to the title given in some copies of the Septuagint quoted above, confirmation of his favorite idea that most of the Psalms in this group were intended to describe the feelings of David during his flight before Absalom. This is probable enough; but is it probable that any writer at a late period would seek to illustrate by a series of Psalms, this or any other period of Davids life, when it had already been so abundantly illustrated by David himself? Alexander, Wordsworth, and most English commentators hold to the Davidic composition.J. F. M]
Psa 143:1-2. In Thy faithfulness answer me, in Thy righteousness.It does not remain undefined what God is to answer. For in the first place, answering is only another expression for hearing, and, in the next place, the two additions to the request furnish a more definite indication of its meaning. The faithfulness of God is His faithfulness to His promises, or the truthfulness of His nature, in conformity with which everything that He has spoken or ordained is reliable and unchangeable. His righteousness is the corresponding course of action by which His ordinances are firmly established and fulfilled in the world, so that there is rendered to every man according to his works. There is no occasion of thinking here of particular promises, or of 2 Samuel 7. (Hengstenberg); or for changing the notion of righteousness into that of goodness (Kster). Gods faithfulness and righteousness are thus assured, as in 1Jn 1:9, and the repenting receive the forgiveness of their sins, but the impenitent, judgment. From one point of view, therefore, the pious man is righteous, a servant of God; from another, he, as a man, is not perfect like God, but rather needing to be spared in judgment, to receive pardon and mercy. Psa 143:12 shows that in Psa 143:2 also the phrase: Thy servant is not a mere oriental circumlocution for the person speaking (Hupf ), and not merely a term of polite address. The prayer that God might not enter into judgment with him as his Accuser and Judge, (Job 9:32; Job 14:3; Job 22:4 f.; Isa 3:14), has a twofold ground: first, the absence, common to all the living, of perfect righteousness, acceptable before God, (Psa 130:3; Job 4:17; Job 9:2; Job 14:4; Job 15:14; Job 25:4; Rom 3:20); then his own personal and deadly peril, which the suppliant suffers through the persecutions of his enemies, and which he knows to be a Divine judgment upon him for his sins which are not expiated.
Psa 143:3 c. is in the exact words of Lam 3:6. But the expression does not mean: the dead of the world (Septuagint, Luther). [This translation arises from the false adoption of the later Hebrew and Rabbinical usage of lam. See on Psa 89:2.J. F. M.] It refers either to those who died long before, and are placed among those of the olden time, Eze 26:20 (Jerome, Hitzig), or to those who are eternally, for ever dead (Syriac, Hupfeld, Delitzsch), who have an existence without hope, sleep an eternal sleep (Jer 51:39; Jer 51:57) in the gloomy abode of the dead, which remains ever as it is (Ecc 12:5), in contrast to the life which has no end (Dan 12:7). The latter explanation suits the present passage best, for the Psalmist evidently means to say that his enemies are intent upon his utter destruction, and that he would remain without deliverance, unless God in mercy were to take up his defence.
Psa 143:4-8. On this account his distress is so great that he is inwardly overwhelmed with darkness (Psa 77:4; Psa 142:4), and is like a languishing land (Psa 63:2). [Psa 143:6, E. V.: thirsty land, comp. Isa 32:2.] The contrast to former times, with the recollection of Gods dealings then, joined to thoughtful contemplation of the reality of His power as displayed in His works, makes his anguish the more intense, his longing the more consuming, his supplicating cry the more urgent (Psa 27:9; Psa 69:18; Psa 84:3; Psa 102:3). If the help of God should tarry (Psa 143:7) he would become like those that descend to the abyss (Psa 28:1; Psa 88:5). He prays that even the next morning should end the night of his sorrow, and expects an answer to his prayer upon the ground of his trust (Psa 25:1 f.; Psa 86:4). [The mode of expression in Psa 143:6 b. is peculiar. It is literally: my soul (is), like a languishing land for Thee, i.e., my soul languishes for Thee, as a thirsty land for rain. Calvin: In great heat, we see the earth cracking and gaping, as though with open mouth she asked for the rain from heaven.J. F. M.]
Psa 143:9-12. [In Psa 143:9 b., E. V. combines the Septuagint rendering: I fled to Thee, with the notion of the Hebrew word which means here: to cover, hide ones self. The latter was thus assumed to be a pregnant expression, and so translated. But the Septuagint had a false reading: , I fled, which gave rise to misconceptions among the older expositors. Calvin, however, perceived the true construction, for which Hengst., Delitzsch, Ewald, Maurer, Alexander, Perowne, Wordsworth and most recent expositors decide. Delitzsch expresses it thus: ad (apud) te abscondidi (me): To (with) Thee have I hidden (myself). Gen 38:14 affords the most perfect parallel in construction. See further by Dr. Moll.J. F. M.] In Psa 143:9 b. we might be tempted to change , which has been variously explained, into , the idea conveyed by which the ancient translations and expositions directly express. But it is not absolutely necessary, for the notions of covering and refuge are united in the intermediate one of hiding. The way of deliverance is to the servant of God no external one, but a way of salvation, which the commandments of God point out, in which the Spirit of God, who is good (so must we translate literally in ver 10c.), is the Guide. And those who submit to this guidance to fulfil the commandments of God, walk not merely upon a direct or right way (Psa 27:11), but in an even land, i.e., without stumbling or being obstructed in their successful and happy progress. It is therefore quite unnecessary to change into (Hupfeld). [Delitzsch refers to Isa 26:7 as a parallel passage, and remarks that these words, which in Deu 4:43; Jer. 28:41, are a geographical designation, are here applied spiritually. The verbs in Psa 143:11-12 should be rendered by the future: Thou wilt quicken me, etc., not in the imper., as in E. V. With Psa 143:11 comp. Psa 138:7; Psa 25:15; Psa 34:18; with Psa 143:12, Psa 31:17; Psa 18:41; Deu 7:24.J. F. M.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
It is not only the man who is persecuted in the world that is permitted to make God his refuge; the mourning sinner may come to Him also; but he must do so according to the appointed way of salvationGod not only teaches His servants by His word; He guides them also by His Spirit, and helps them to live by His strength.If God goes with us into judgment, we are lost; but if we repent, He delivers us.Gods faithfulness and righteousness are a terror to sinners, but a consolation to the penitent and an assurance of salvation to His pious servants.
Starke: It is no easy matter to pray rightly and so as to obtain an answer. Great and earnest striving are necessary to it.The only ground upon which repenting sinners can with assurance approach Gods throne is His mercy and truth in Christ Jesus.Learn to know the multitude of thy sins and the strict judgment of God, so that thou mayest know His great mercy and pray the more earnestly for forgiveness.Because even pious men sometimes love the darkness rather than the light, God sends them affliction, that the world may become distasteful to them.The examples of the saints of old are at this hour a comfort to afflicted souls and terrifying to their enemies.Thirsting, longing, hoping, and yearning after God are sure indications of a believing soul and of true prayer.When a soul thirsts after Gods favor, it is a sure proof that it is not utterly forsaken by Him.Many pray for a speedy answer, and do not reflect that God must have waited long for their crying.As distress is felt, so also is prayer; it breaks forth all the more strongly, the more distressed the suppliant is in his own eyes.The divine consolation is the sweeter to the soul, the longer it had to wait for it, and the greater its sufferings had been.The favor of God is the most necessary thing for man in this life, and should be the object of his highest concern.There are many false guides who pretend to bear us happily over the journey of life; but he who does not keep close to God as his leader and guide and follow Him in everything, is led astray.The divine deliverance of believers is commonly connected with the destruction of their ungodly enemies.
Franke: When a man resolves with heart and soul to be and remain a servant of God, God will not forsake him; but where He is, there will also His servant be.Diedrich: In all earthly trials we must learn, after all our distress, to know our own hearts better, for only so will suffering draw us to the living God.Taube: In the lasting heat of suffering, true faith will only burn more strongly and be lit up with a brighter glow.The connection of justification and sanctification.
[Matt. Henry: As a thirsty land, which, being parched with excessive heat, gapes for rain, so do I need, so do I crave the support and refreshment of divine consolation under mine afflictions, and nothing else will relieve me.This is the best course we can take when our spirits are overwhelmed; and justly do they sink under their load who do not take such a ready way as this to relieve themselves.Those that have the truth of grace cannot but desire to have the evidence of it.Preservations are pledges of salvation, and those shall find God their hiding-place that by faith make Him so.Bp. Horne (Psa 143:5): While we muse on such instances of His goodness, the reflection is obvious: Is He not still the same gracious God? Will He not do as much for us upon our repentance as He formerly did for others upon theirs? Let us arise and go to our Father.Scott: The believer has not only the faithfulness, but the righteousness of God engaged in his behalf: much more then may he be confident that he has justice on his side in those causes that are pending between him and his persecutors before the supreme Judge.The trembling sinner, who has lately discovered that he cannot stand in judgment before God, need not be discouraged on that account; for the greatest of saints have confessed the same.Barnes: Our hope is in the mercy, not in the justice of God.J. F. M.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
The Psalmist is still at his devotions, pouring out his soul under afflictions, and seeking strength against his enemies.
A Psalm of David.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
It is beautiful to observe, how the holy pleader begs for deliverance upon the footing of God’s righteousness. Jesus, when he stood as the sinner’s surety, did this: and in his name all his people do the same. Act 4:12 . God’s righteousness, as well as God’s grace, becomes the plea, when a soul hath an interest in the Redeemer’s righteousness.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Memorable Days
Psa 143:5
I. ‘I remember the days’ when there were no days; I remember the period before duration was broken up into fragmentary hours and perishable opportunities; my time enables me to go back by spiritual interpretation and ideality into the chambers of the infinite, the eternal presence.
‘I remember the days:’ I have written them down in my book kept in the treasure-house of mine heart; no thief can break through and steal; the days are my own, the history is a gathering of nuggets which I can melt and mint into the current coin which I need for today’s spending. Poor is he who has no yesterday; an atheist he must be who does not live in the days that are gone, and does not so live in them as to appropriate other man’s experience and add it to his own wisdom. We might all be rich; the memory should be a bank, more, it should be a gold mine, it should be a peculiar and an inexhaustible treasure.
The days are very many, we can name but a few of them, but the few should represent the multitude. Our subject is Memorable Days, days that can never be forgotten; days that created a place for themselves in the field of the memory; days of strife and temple-building and triumph and sorrow unutterable; yet all the days accumulate into a day, the many becoming unified, the unity glowing like an altar on the highways of time.
II. Who does not remember what the Psalmist calls in Psa 140:7 the day of battle? Recall the battle as your own; recall the victory as God’s. God appoints the battle, God knows exactly how much fighting is good for us. History is made by fighters; let us always fight in the right spirit, and for the right object, then we shall be in God’s majority, though we may be overturned and over-bourne for a moment, and though it may be said that we were borne down by an overwhelming mediocrity a much better word than majority!
III. Who is there that cannot recall what Nahum in the first chapter and seventh verse of his Burden calls the day of trouble? Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. Poor is the life that has had no trouble day; it is a mean, frivolous, shallow life. Trouble works miracles of sculpture in the countenance and miracles of music in the voice, and gives the hand a new masonry when it shakes some outstretched hand of love. Trouble may have been one of our best friends; it shattered many an idol, it showed just what windows were southward and what windows opened upon the black north. Consult experience; have long conversation with the man whose house has for many a day been in the dark valley; he will help thee, he knows how to pray; his prayer may be brief, but in the power of Christ it reaches heaven and brings back the light you need.
IV. And there is a day called in the Scriptures, notably in 2Co 6:2 , the day of salvation. Jesus Christ used an equivalent expression in the house of Zaccheus; said He, This day is salvation come to this house’; your day was a day of bondage, today is a day of salvation; yesterday you were slaves, today you are free men. Salvation is one of the greatest words in all language; it is as great as love, it is as glorious as light, it is as welcome as rain when the earth has been famishing for want of water.
V. In Ecc 7:1 we read of another day, common day, ‘the day of death’. There is no discharge in that war. You may have company until the last day and the last noon of that day and the last sunset of that day, but after that you must go alone. There are some fifty odd yards of life’s pilgrimage that every pilgrim must walk alone.
VI. There is another day referred to in Gen 32:26 , ‘the day breaketh’; the breaking day, the dawning day, the larger light, the Sabbath day. There is poetry; the very word day-break; it is a poem in a hyphenated word. ‘Till the day break and the shadows flee away:’ we wait for the day! When Paul and his co-voyagers were in Adria, the historian says that they did all that lay in their power, and then they waited for the day; in still more explicit and holy language, they wished for the day. There is liberation in light. There is no gaol so deep and so unbearable as the prison of darkness; we know not what it holds, we cannot tell what loathsome beast may be one stride of our standing-place, we cannot tell but that if we move we shall dash our brains out against some protruding rock. What then do we do? we wish for the light, we wish for the day; one little beam would signify liberty, one laugh of light would signify and herald a festival of joy alive! That is what we want. O ye great poets, sing of the day, repeat your prayer, it suits eloquent lips like yours light! When the Amen of God comes the morning will shine upon the rejoicing and liberated earth.
Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. I. p. 150.
The Soldier’s Rest
Psa 143:7-11
There you have the transition of a soul from the rest which it needed in long conflict and many failures, from the rest, to the energy of a new service. ‘Show me the way that I should walk in.’ ‘Quicken me, O Lord, according to Thy Word.’ We need rest and may claim it at various times. If men will but taste deeply of the fountain of that rest, they will, before they know it, be roused up in new strength to the new service, and so it would be quite well to think of the promises of rest, and the duty of leaning all our weight upon God.
I. The Nature of the Rest. First, then, about the rest itself, which is not a rest of sloth, a rest from toil. It is a rest from the strain of poverty, or the strain of covetousness and ambition. Found in pleasure, in the satisfaction of our desires? No; found in the spirit of contentment. We rest from struggle or from ambition in contentment; we rest from adversity and strife and contention in patience, not by God’s taking away the causes of our unrest, not by His blunting the weapons of our accusers and oppressors, but by the spirit of patience in our hearts, the spirit of Jesus Christ, by which He submitted to the unjust judge, and for us bore our stripes and hung upon the tree. It is our rest from injustice, from tyranny, from adversity, from conflict. Our rest from anxiety, debate, discussion, and doubt is not in the clearing up of the atmosphere in which we view all things, but it is in taking into our hearts the great treasure of a trustful reliance on God, though we see Him not, though He seem to smite us. Rest from distraction is not found in being able to comprise and manage all the objects of our desire, so as to be able to husband our time and forces and gain them all, it is found in returning to the single eye, in submitting every desire to the yoke of Jesus Christ.
II. Peace and Warfare. We find our joy in conflict; the kingdom we come into is no land of milk and honey, no Sabbath place of rest. It is called a kingdom because it is the sphere of activity and influence of a King on His march. We have a peace, but it is the peace of soldiers under the banner of a King in arms. No man liveth to himself but to the Lord, Who needs him for His service. He must live, he must be strong in the Lord, for the needs of others; he must rest for them, he must be revived for them, he must find strength for them, and, dying for them unto sin, he shall live again for them unto righteousness. He shall fight well because he hath rested well for them.
Just take that one word, rest, and find energy; rest, and in your peace find war; rest for others that you may fight for others. It is the corporate nature of your life which makes your rest necessary, which makes your weariness necessary, for it is to teach you to bring your single note into the great chord of life.
Plants Grown Up in Their Youth
XVI
THE MESSIANIC PSALMS AND OTHERS
We commence this chapter by giving a classified list of the Messianic Psalms, as follows:
The Royal Psalms are:
Psa 110 ; Psa 2 ; Psa 72 ; Psa 45 ; Psa 89 ;
The Passion Psalms are:
Psa 22 ; Psa 41 ; Psa 69 ;
The Psalms of the Ideal Man are Psa 8 ; Psa 16 ; Psa 40 ;
The Missionary Psalms are:
Psa 47 ; Psa 65 ; Psa 68 ; Psa 96 ; Psa 100 ; Psa 117 .
The predictions before David of the coming Messiah are, (1) the seed of the woman; (2) the seed of Abraham; (3) the seed of Judah; (4) the seed of David.
The prophecies of history concerning the Messiah are, (1) a prophet like unto Moses; (2) a priest after the order of Melchizedek; (3) a sacrifice which embraces all the sacrificial offerings of the Old Testament; (4) direct references to him as King, as in 2Sa 7:8 ff.
The messianic offices as taught in the psalms are four, viz: (1) The Messiah is presented as Prophet, or Teacher (Psa 40:8 ); (2) as Sacrifice, or an Offering for sin (Psa 40:6 ff.; Heb 10:5 ff.) ; (3) he is presented as Priest (Psa 110:4 ); (4) he is presented as King (Psa 45 ).
The psalms most clearly presenting the Messiah in his various phases and functions are as follows: (1) as the ideal man, or Second Adam (8); (2) as Prophet (Psa 40 ); (3) as Sacrifice (Psa 22 ) ; (4) as King (Psa 45 ) ; (5) as Priest (Psa 110 ) ; (6) in his universal reign (Psa 72 ).
It will be noted that other psalms teach these facts also, but these most clearly set forth the offices as they relate to the Messiah.
The Messiah as a sacrifice is presented in general in Psa 40:6 . His sufferings as such are given in a specific and general way in Psa 22 ; Psa 41 ; Psa 69 . The events of his sufferings in particular are described, beginning with the betrayal of Judas, as follows:
1. Judas betrayed him (Mat 26:14 ) in fulfilment of Psa 41:9 .
2. At the Supper (Mat 26:24 ) Christ said, “The Son of man goeth as it is written of him,” referring to Psa 22 .
3. They sang after the Supper in fulfilment of Psa 22:22 .
4. Piercing his hands and feet, Psa 22:16 .
5. They cast lots for his vesture in fulfilment of Psa 22:18 .
6. Just before the ninth hour the chief priests reviled him (Mat 27:43 ) in fulfilment of Psa 22:8 .
7. At the ninth hour (Mat 27:46 ) he quoted Psa 22:1 .
8. Near his death (Joh 19:28 ) he said, in fulfilment of Psa 69:21 , “I thirst.”
9. At that time they gave him vinegar (Mat 27:48 ) in fulfilment of Psa 69:21 .
10. When he was found dead they did not break his bones (Joh 19:36 ) in fulfilment of Psa 34:20 .
11. He is represented as dead, buried, and raised in Psa 16:10 .
12. His suffering as a substitute is described in Psa 69:9 .
13. The result of his crucifixion to them who crucified him is given in Psa 69:22-23 . Compare Rom 11:9-10 .
The Penitential Psalms are Psa 6 ; Psa 32 ; Psa 38 ; Psa 51 ; Psa 102 ; Psa 130 ; Psa 143 . The occasion of Psa 6 was the grief and penitence of David over Absalom; of Psa 32 was the blessedness of forgiveness after his sin with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah; Psa 38 , David’s reference to his sin with Bathsheba; Psa 51 , David’s penitence and prayer for forgiveness for this sin; Psa 102 , the penitence of the children of Israel on the eve of their return from captivity; Psalm 130, a general penitential psalm; Psa 143 , David’s penitence and prayer when pursued by Absalom.
The Pilgrim Psalms are Psalms 120-134. This section of the psalter is called the “Little Psalter.” These Psalms were collected in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, in troublous times. The author of the central psalm of this collection is Solomon, and he wrote it when he built his Temple. The Davidic Psalms in this collection are Psa 120 ; Psa 122 ; Psa 124 ; Psa 131 ; Psa 132 ; Psa 133 . The others were written during the building of the second Temple. They are called in the Septuagint “Songs of the Steps.”
There are four theories as to the meaning of the titles, “Songs of the Steps,” “Songs of Degrees,” or “Songs of Ascents,” viz:
1. The first theory is that the “Songs of the Steps” means the songs of the fifteen steps from the court of the women to the court of Israel, there being a song for each step.
2. The second theory is that advanced by Luther, which says that they were songs of a higher choir, elevated above, or in an elevated voice.
3. The third theory is that the thought in these psalms advances by degrees.
4. The fourth theory is that they are Pilgrim Psalms, or the songs that they sang while going up to the great feasts.
Certain scriptures give the true idea of these titles, viz: Exo 23:14-17 ; Exo 34:23-24 ; 1Sa 1:3 ; 1Ki 12:27-28 : Psa 122:1-4 ; and the proof of their singing as they went is found in Psa_42:4; 100; and Isa 30:29 . They went, singing these psalms, to the Feasts of the Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. Psa 121 was sung when just in sight of Jerusalem and Psa 122 was sung at the gate. Psa 128 is the description of a good man’s home and a parallel to this psalm in modern literature is Burns’s “Cotter’s Saturday Night.” The pious home makes the nation great.
Psa 133 is a psalm of fellowship. It is one of the finest expressions of the blessings that issue when God’s people dwell together in unity. The reference here is to the anointing of Aaron as high priest and the fragrance of the anointing oil which was used in these anointings. The dew of Hermon represents the blessing of God upon his people when they dwell together in such unity.
Now let us look at the Alphabetical Psalms. An alphabetical psalm is one in which the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are used alphabetically to commence each division. In Psalms 111-112, each clause so begins; in Psa 25 ; Psa 34 ; Psa 145 ; each verse so begins; in Psa 37 each stanza of two verses so begins; in 119 each stanza of eight verses so begins, and each of the eight lines begins with the same letter. In Psa 25 ; 34 37 the order is not so strict; in Psa 9 and Psa 10 there are some traces of this alphabetical order.
David originated these alphabetical psalms and the most complete specimen is Psa 119 , which is an expansion of the latter part of Psa 19 .
A certain group of psalms is called the Hallelujah Psalms. They are so called because the word “Hallelujah” is used at the beginning, or at the ending, and sometimes at both the beginning and the ending. The Hallelujah Psalms are Psalm 111-113; 115-117; 146-150. Psa 117 is a doxology; and Psalms 146-150 were used as anthems. Psa 148 calls on all creation to praise God. Francis of Assisi wrote a hymn based on this psalm in which he called the sun his honorable brother and the cricket his sister. Psa 150 calls for all varieties of instruments. Psalms 113-118 are called the Egyptian Hallel. They were used at the Passover (Psalm 113-114), before the Supper and Psalm 115-118 were sung after the Supper. According to this, Jesus and his disciples sang Psalms 115-118 at the last Passover Supper. These psalms were sung also at the Feasts of Pentecost, Tabernacles, Dedication, and New Moon.
The name of God is delayed long in Psa 114 . Addison said, “That the surprise might be complete.” Then there are some special characteristics of Psa 115 , viz: (1) It was written against idols. Cf. Isa 44:9-20 ; (2) It is antiphonal, the congregation singing Psa 115:1-8 , the choir Psa 115:9-12 , the priests Psa 115:13-15 and the congregation again Psa 115:16-18 . The theme of Psa 116 is love, based on gratitude for a great deliverance, expressed in service. It is appropriate to read at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and Psa 116:15 is especially appropriate for funeral services.
On some special historical occasions certain psalms were sung. Psa 46 was sung by the army of Gustavus Adolphus before the decisive battle of Leipzig, on September 17, 1631.Psa 68 was sung by Cromwell’s army on the occasion of the battle of Dunbar in Scotland.
Certain passages in the Psalms show that the psalm writers approved the offering of Mosaic animal sacrifices. For instance, Psa 118:27 ; Psa 141:2 seem to teach very clearly that they approved the Mosaic sacrifice. But other passages show that these inspired writers estimated spiritual sacrifices as more important and foresaw the abolition of the animal sacrifices. Such passages are Psa 50:7-15 ; Psa 4:5 ; Psa 27:6 ; Psa 40:6 ; Psa 51:16-17 . These scriptures show conclusively that the writers estimated spiritual sacrifices as more important than the Mosaic sacrifices.
QUESTIONS
1. What are the Royal Psalms?
2. What are the Passion Psalms?
3. What are the Psalms of the Ideal Man?
4. What are the Missionary Psalms?
5. What are the predictions before David of the coming Messiah?
6. What are the prophecies of history concerning the Messiah?
7. Give a regular order of thought concerning the messianic offices as taught in the psalms.
8. Which psalms most clearly present the Messiah as (1) the ideal man, or Second Adam, (2) which as Prophet, or Teacher, (3) which as the Sacrifice, (4) which as King, (5) which as Priest, (6) which his universal reign?
9. Concerning the suffering Messiah, or the Messiah as a sacrifice, state the words or facts, verified in the New Testament as fulfilment of prophecy in the psalms. Let the order of the citations follow the order of facts in Christ’s life.
10. Name the Penitential Psalms and show their occasion.
11. What are the Pilgrim Psalms?
12. What is this section of the Psalter called?
13. When and under what conditions were these psalms collected?
14. Who is the author of the central psalm of this collection?
15. What Davidic Psalms are in this collection?
16. When were the others written?
17. What are they called in the Septuagint?
18. What four theories as to the meaning of the titles, “Songs of the Steps,” “Songs of Degrees,” or “Songs of Ascents”?
19. What scriptures give the true idea of these titles?
20. Give proof of their singing as they went.
21. To what feasts did they go singing these Psalms?
22. What was the special use made of Psa 121 and Psa 122 ?
23. Which of these psalms is the description of a good man’s home and what parallel in modern literature?
24. Expound Psa 133 .
25. What is an alphabetical psalm, and what are the several kinds?
26. Who originated these Alphabetical Psalms?
27. What are the most complete specimen?
28. Of what is it an expansion?
29. Why is a certain group of psalms called the Hallelujah Psalms?
30. What are the Hallelujah Psalms?
31. Which of the Hallelujah Psalms was a doxology?
32. Which of these were used as anthems?
33. Which psalm calls on all creation to praise God?
34. Who wrote a hymn based on Psa 148 in which he called the sun his honorable brother and the cricket his sister?
35. Which of these psalms calls for all varieties of instruments?
36. What is the Egyptian Hallel?
37. What is their special use and how were they sung?
38. Then what hymns did Jesus and his disciples sing?
39. At what other feasts was this sung?
40. Why was the name of God delayed so long in Psa 114 ?
41. What are the characteristics of Psa 115 ?
42. What is the theme and special use of Psa 116 ?
43. State some special historical occasions on which certain psalms were sung. Give the psalm for each occasion.
44. Cite passages in the psalms showing that the psalm writers approved the offering of Mosaic animal sacrifices.
45. Cite other passages showing that these inspired writers estimated spiritual sacrifices as more important than the Mosaic sacrifices.
PSALMS
XI
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF PSALMS
According to my usual custom, when taking up the study of a book of the Bible I give at the beginning a list of books as helps to the study of that book. The following books I heartily commend on the Psalms:
1. Sampey’s Syllabus for Old Testament Study . This is especially good on the grouping and outlining of some selected psalms. There are also some valuable suggestions on other features of the book.
2. Kirkpatrick’g commentary, in “Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges,” is an excellent aid in the study of the Psalter.
3. Perowne’s Book of Psalms is a good, scholarly treatise on the Psalms. A special feature of this commentary is the author’s “New Translation” and his notes are very helpful.
4. Spurgeon’s Treasury of David. This is just what the title implies. It is a voluminous, devotional interpretation of the Psalms and helpful to those who have the time for such extensive study of the Psalter.
5. Hengstenburg on the Psalms. This is a fine, scholarly work by one of the greatest of the conservative German scholars.
6. Maclaren on the Psalms, in “The Expositor’s Bible,” is the work of the world’s safest, sanest, and best of all works that have ever been written on the Psalms.
7. Thirtle on the Titles of the Psalms. This is the best on the subject and well worth a careful study.
At this point some definitions are in order. The Hebrew word for psalm means praise. The word in English comes from psalmos , a song of lyrical character, or a song to be sung and accompanied with a lyre. The Psalter is a collection of sacred and inspired songs, composed at different times and by different authors.
The range of time in composition was more than 1,000 years, or from the time of Moses to the time of Ezra. The collection in its present form was arranged probably by Ezra in the fifth century, B.C.
The Jewish classification of Old Testament books was The Law, the Prophets, and the Holy Writings. The Psalms was given the first place in the last group.
They had several names, or titles, of the Psalms. In Hebrew they are called “The Book of Prayers,” or “The Book of Praises.” The Hebrew word thus used means praises. The title of the first two books is found in Psa 72:20 : “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” The title of the whole collection of Psalms in the Septuagint is Biblos Psalman which means the “Book of Psalms.” The title in the Alexandrian Codex is Psalterion which is the name of a stringed instrument, and means “The Psalter.”
The derivation of our English words, “psalms,” “psalter,” and “psaltery,” respectively, is as follows:
1. “Psalms” comes from the Greek word, psalmoi, which is also from psallein , which means to play upon a stringed instrument. Therefore the Psalms are songs played upon stringed instruments, and the word here is used to apply to the whole collection.
2. “Psalter” is of the same origin and means the Book of Psalms and refers also to the whole collection.
3. “Psaltery” is from the word psalterion, which means “a harp,” an instrument, supposed to be in the shape of a triangle or like the delta of the Greek alphabet. See Psa 33:2 ; Psa 71:22 ; Psa 81:2 ; Psa 144:9 .
In our collection there are 150 psalms. In the Septuagint there is one extra. It is regarded as being outside the sacred collection and not inspired. The subject of this extra psalm is “David’s victory over Goliath.” The following is a copy of it: I was small among my brethren, And youngest in my father’s house, I used to feed my father’s sheep. My hands made a harp, My fingers fashioned a Psaltery. And who will declare unto my Lord? He is Lord, he it is who heareth. He it was who sent his angel And took me from my father’s sheep, And anointed me with the oil of his anointing. My brethren were goodly and tall, But the Lord took no pleasure in them. I went forth to meet the Philistine. And he cursed me by his idols But I drew the sword from beside him; I beheaded him and removed reproach from the children of Israel.
It will be noted that this psalm does not have the earmarks of an inspired production. There is not found in it the modesty so characteristic of David, but there is here an evident spirit of boasting and self-praise which is foreign to the Spirit of inspiration.
There is a difference in the numbering of the psalms in our version which follows the Hebrew, and the numbering in the Septuagint. Omitting the extra one in the Septuagint, there is no difference as to the total number. Both have 150 and the same subject matter, but they are not divided alike.
The following scheme shows the division according to our version and also the Septuagint: Psalms 1-8 in the Hebrew equal 1-8 in the Septuagint; 9-10 in the Hebrew combine into 9 in the Septuagint; 11-113 in the Hebrew equal 10-112 in the Septuagint; 114-115 in the Hebrew combine into 113 in the Septuagint; 116 in the Hebrew divides into 114-115 in the Septuagint; 117-146 in the Hebrew equal 116-145 in the Septuagint; 147 in the Hebrew divides into 146-147 in the Septuagint; 148-150 in the Hebrew equal 148-150 in the Septuagint.
The arrangement in the Vulgate is the same as the Septuagint. Also some of the older English versions have this arangement. Another difficulty in numbering perplexes an inexperienced student in turning from one version to another, viz: In the Hebrew often the title is verse I, and sometimes the title embraces verses 1-2.
The book divisions of the Psalter are five books, as follows:
Book I, Psalms 1-41 (41 chapters)
Book II, Psalms 42-72 (31 chapters)
Book III, Psalms 73-89 (17 chapters)
Book IV, Psalms 90-106 (17 chapters)
Book V, Psalms 107-150 (44 chapters)
They are marked by an introduction and a doxology. Psalm I forms an introduction to the whole book; Psa 150 is the doxology for the whole book. The introduction and doxology of each book are the first and last psalms of each division, respectively.
There were smaller collections before the final one, as follows:
Books I and II were by David; Book III, by Hezekiah, and Books IV and V, by Ezra.
Certain principles determined the arrangement of the several psalms in the present collection:
1. David is honored with first place, Book I and II, including Psalms 1-72.
2. They are grouped according to the use of the name of God:
(1) Psalms 1-41 are Jehovah psalms;
(2) Psalms 42-83 are Elohim-psalms;
(3) Psalms 84-150 are Jehovah psalms.
3. Book IV is introduced by the psalm of Moses, which is the first psalm written.
4. Some are arranged as companion psalms, for instance, sometimes two, sometimes three, and sometimes more. Examples: Psa 2 and 3; 22, 23, and 24; 113-118.
5. They were arranged for liturgical purposes, which furnished the psalms for special occasions, such as feasts, etc. We may be sure this arrangement was not accidental. An intelligent study of each case is convincing that it was determined upon rational grounds.
All the psalms have titles but thirty-three, as follows:
In Book I, Psa 1 ; Psa 2 ; Psa 10 ; Psa 33 , (4 are without titles).
In Book II, Psa 43 ; Psa 71 , (2 are without titles).
In Book IV, Psa 91 ; Psa 93 ; Psa 94 ; Psa 95 ; Psa 96 ; Psa 97 ; Psa 104 ; Psa 105 ; Psa 106 , (9 are without titles).
In Book V, Psa 107 ; III; 112; 113; 114; 115; 116; 117; 118; 119; 135; 136; 137; 146; 147; 148; 149; 150, (18 are without titles).
The Talmud calls these psalms that have no title, “Orphan Psalms.” The later Jews supply these titles by taking the nearest preceding author. The lack of titles in Psa 1 ; Psa 2 ; and 10 may be accounted for as follows: Psa 1 is a general introduction to the whole collection and Psa 2 was, perhaps, a part of Psa 1 . Psalms 9-10 were formerly combined into one, therefore Psa 10 has the same title as Psa 9 .
QUESTIONS
1. What books are commended on the Psalms?
2. What is a psalm?
3. What is the Psalter?
4. What is the range of time in composition?
5. When and by whom was the collection in its present form arranged?
6. What the Jewish classification of Old Testament books, and what the position of the Psalter in this classification?
7. What is the Hebrew title of the Psalms?
8. Find the title of the first two books from the books themselves.
9. What is the title of the whole collection of psalms in the Septuagint?
10. What is the title in the Alexandrian Codex?
11. What is the derivation of our English word, “Psalms”, “Psalter”, and “Psaltery,” respectively?
12. How many psalms in our collection?
13. How many psalms in the Septuagint?
14. What about the extra one in the Septuagint?
15. What is the subject of this extra psalm?
16. How does it compare with the Canonical Psalms?
17. What is the difference in the numbering of the psalms in our version which follows the Hebrew, and the numbering in the Septuagint?
18. What is the arrangement in the Vulgate?
19. What other difficulty in numbering which perplexes an inexperienced student in turning from one version to another?
20. What are the book divisions of the Psalter and how are these divisions marked?
21. Were there smaller collections before the final one? If so, what were they?
22. What principles determined the arrangement of the several psalms in the present collection?
23. In what conclusion may we rest concerning this arrangement?
24. How many of the psalms have no titles?
25. What does the Talmud call these psalms that have no titles?
26. How do later Jews supply these titles?
27. How do you account for the lack of titles in Psa 1 ; Psa 2 ; Psa 10 ?
XII
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF PSALMS (CONTINUED)
The following is a list of the items of information gathered from the titles of the psalms:
1. The author: “A Psalm of David” (Psa 37 ).
2. The occasion: “When he fled from Absalom, his son” (Psa 3 ).
3. The nature, or character, of the poem:
(1) Maschil, meaning “instruction,” a didactic poem (Psa 42 ).
(2) Michtam, meaning “gold,” “A Golden Psalm”; this means excellence or mystery (Psa 16 ; 56-60).
4. The occasion of its use: “A Psalm of David for the dedication of the house” (Psa 30 ).
5. Its purpose: “A Psalm of David to bring remembrance” (Psa 38 ; Psa 70 ).
6. Direction for its use: “A Psalm of David for the chief musician” (Psa 4 ).
7. The kind of musical instrument:
(1) Neginoth, meaning to strike a chord, as on stringed instruments (Psa 4 ; Psa 61 ).
(2) Nehiloth, meaning to perforate, as a pipe or flute (Psa 5 ).
(3) Shoshannim, Lilies, which refers probably to cymbals (Psa 45 ; Psa 69 ).
8. A special choir:
(1) Sheminith, the “eighth,” or octave below, as a male choir (Psa 6 ; Psa 12 ).
(2) Alamoth, female choir (Psa 46 ).
(3) Muth-labben, music with virgin voice, to be sung by a choir of boys in the treble (Psa 9 ).
9. The keynote, or tune:
(1) Aijeleth-sharar, “Hind of the morning,” a song to the melody of which this is sung (Psa 22 ).
(2) Al-tashheth, “Destroy thou not,” the beginning of a song the tune of which is sung (Psa 57 ; Psa 58 ; Psa 59 ; Psa 75 ).
(3) Gittith, set to the tune of Gath, perhaps a tune which David brought from Gath (Psa 8 ; Psa 81 ; Psa 84 ).
(4) Jonath-elim-rehokim, “The dove of the distant terebinths,” the commencement of an ode to the air of which this song was to be sung (Psa 56 ).
(5) Leannoth, the name of a tune (Psa 88 ).
(6) Mahalath, an instrument (Psa 53 ); Leonnoth-Mahaloth, to chant to a tune called Mahaloth.
(7) Shiggaion, a song or a hymn.
(8) Shushan-Eduth, “Lily of testimony,” a tune (Psa 60 ). Note some examples: (1) “America,” “Shiloh,” “Auld Lang Syne.” These are the names of songs such as we are familiar with; (2) “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” are examples of sacred hymns.
10. The liturgical use, those noted for the feasts, e.g., the Hallels and Hallelujah Psalms (Psalms 146-150).
11. The destination, as “Song of Ascents” (Psalms 120-134)
12. The direction for the music, such as Selah, which means “Singers, pause”; Higgaion-Selah, to strike a symphony with selah, which means an instrumental interlude (Psa 9:16 ).
The longest and fullest title to any of the psalms is the title to Psa 60 . The items of information from this title are as follows: (1) the author; (2) the chief musician; (3) the historical occasion; (4) the use, or design; (5) the style of poetry; (6) the instrument or style of music.
The parts of these superscriptions which most concern us now are those indicating author, occasion, and date. As to the historic value or trustworthiness of these titles most modern scholars deny that they are a part of the Hebrew text, but the oldest Hebrew text of which we know anything had all of them. This is the text from which the Septuagint was translated. It is much more probable that the author affixed them than later writers. There is no internal evidence in any of the psalms that disproves the correctness of them, but much to confirm. The critics disagree among themselves altogether as to these titles. Hence their testimony cannot consistently be received. Nor can it ever be received until they have at least agreed upon a common ground of opposition.
David is the author of more than half the entire collection, the arrangement of which is as follows:
1. Seventy-three are ascribed to him in the superscriptions.
2. Some of these are but continuations of the preceding ones of a pair, trio, or larger group.
3. Some of the Korahite Psalms are manifestly Davidic.
4. Some not ascribed to him in the titles are attributed to him expressly by New Testament writers.
5. It is not possible to account for some parts of the Psalter without David. The history of his early life as found in Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1and 2 Chronicles, not only shows his remarkable genius for patriotic and sacred songs and music, but also shows his cultivation of that gift in the schools of the prophets. Some of these psalms of the history appear in the Psalter itself. It is plain to all who read these that they are founded on experience, and the experience of no other Hebrew fits the case. These experiences are found in Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles.
As to the attempt of the destructive critics to rob David of his glory in relation to the Psalter by assigning the Maccabean era as the date of composition, I have this to say:
1. This theory has no historical support whatever, and therefore is not to be accepted at all.
2. It has no support in tradition, which weakens the contention of the critics greatly.
3. It has no support from finding any one with the necessary experience for their basis.
4. They can give no reasonable account as to how the titles ever got there.
5. It is psychologically impossible for anyone to have written these 150 psalms in the Maccabean times.
6. Their position is expressly contrary to the testimony of Christ and the apostles. Some of the psalms which they ascribe to the Maccabean Age are attributed to David by Christ himself, who said that David wrote them in the Spirit.
The obvious aim of this criticism and the necessary result if it be Just, is a positive denial of the inspiration of both Testaments.
Other authors are named in the titles, as follows: (1) Asaph, to whom twelve psalms have been assigned: (2) Mosee, Psa 90 ; (3) Solomon, Psa 72 ; Psa 127 ; (4) Heman, Psa 80 ; (5) Ethem, Psa 89 ; (6) A number of the psalms are ascribed to the sons of Korah.
Not all the psalms ascribed to Asaph were composed by one person. History indicates that Asaph’s family presided over the song service for several generations. Some of them were composed by his descendants by the game name. The five general outlines of the whole collection are as follows:
I. By books
1. Psalms 1-41 (41)
2. Psalms 42-72 (31)
3. Psalms 73-89 (17)
4. Psalms 90-106 (17)
5. Psalms 107-150 (44)
II. According to date and authorship
1. The psalm of Moses (Psa 90 )
2. Psalms of David:
(1) The shepherd boy (Psa 8 ; Psa 19 ; Psa 29 ; Psa 23 ).
(2) David when persecuted by Saul (Psa 59 ; Psa 56 ; Psa 34 ; Psa 52 ; Psa 54 ; Psa 57 ; Psa 142 ).
(3) David the King (Psa 101 ; Psa 18 ; Psa 24 ; Psa 2 ; Psa 110 ; Psa 20 ; Psa 20 ; Psa 21 ; Psa 60 ; Psa 51 ; Psa 32 ; Psa 41 ; Psa 55 ; Psa 3:4 ; Psa 64 ; Psa 62 ; Psa 61 ; Psa 27 ).
3. The Asaph Psalms (Psa 50 ; Psa 73 ; Psa 83 ).
4. The Korahite Psalms (Psa 42 ; Psa 43 ; Psa 84 ).
5. The psalms of Solomon (Psa 72 ; Psa 127 ).
6. The psalms of the era of Hezekiah and Isaiah (Psa 46 ; Psa 47 ; Psa 48 )
7. The psalms of the Exile (Psa 74 ; Psa 79 ; Psa 137 ; Psa 102 )
8. The psalms of the Restoration (Psa 85 ; Psa 126 ; Psa 118 ; 146-150)
III. By groups
1. The Jehovistic and Elohistic Psalms:
(1) Psalms 1-41 are Jehovistic;
(2) Psalms 42-83 are Elohistic Psalms;
(3) Psalms 84-150 are Jehovistic.
2. The Penitential Psalms (Psa 6 ; Psa 32 ; Psa 38 ; Psa 51 ; Psa 102 ; Psa 130 ; Psa 143 )
3. The Pilgrim Psalms (Psalms 120-134)
4. The Alphabetical Psalms (Psa 9 ; Psa 10 ; Psa 25 ; Psa 34 ; Psa 37 ; 111:112; Psa 119 ; Psa 145 )
5. The Hallelujah Psalms (Psalms 11-113; 115-117; 146-150; to which may be added Psa 135 ) Psalms 113-118 are called “the Egyptian Hallel”
IV. Doctrines of the Psalms
1. The throne of grace and how to approach it by sacrifice, prayer, and praise.
2. The covenant, the basis of worship.
3. The paradoxical assertions of both innocence & guilt.
4. The pardon of sin and justification.
5. The Messiah.
6. The future life, pro and con.
7. The imprecations.
8. Other doctrines.
V. The New Testament use of the Psalms
1. Direct references and quotations in the New Testament.
2. The allusions to the psalms in the New Testament. Certain experiences of David’s life made very deep impressions on his heart, such as: (1) his peaceful early life; (2) his persecution by Saul; (3) his being crowned king of the people; (4) the bringing up of the ark; (5) his first great sin; (6) Absalom’s rebellion; (7) his second great sin; (8) the great promise made to him in 2Sa 7 ; (9) the feelings of his old age.
We may classify the Davidic Psalms according to these experiences following the order of time, thus:
1. His peaceful early life (Psa 8 ; Psa 19 ; Psa 29 ; Psa 23 )
2. His persecution by Saul (Psa 59 ; Psa 56 ; Psa 34 ; Psa 7 ; Psa 52 ; Psa 120 ; Psa 140 ; Psa 54 ; Psa 57 ; Psa 142 ; Psa 17 ; Psa 18 )
3. Making David King (Psa 27 ; Psa 133 ; Psa 101 )
4. Bringing up the ark (Psa 68 ; Psa 24 ; Psa 132 ; Psa 15 ; Psa 78 ; Psa 96 )
5. His first great sin (Psa 51 ; Psa 32 )
6. Absalom’s rebellion (Psa 41 ; Psa 6 ; Psa 55 ; Psa 109 ; Psa 38 ; Psa 39 ; Psa 3 ; Psa 4 ; Psa 63 ; Psa 42 ; Psa 43 ; Psa 5 ; Psa 62 ; Psa 61 ; Psa 27 )
7. His second great sin (Psa 69 ; Psa 71 ; Psa 102 ; Psa 103 )
8. The great promise made to him in 2Sa 7 (Psa 2 )
9. Feelings of old age (Psa 37 )
The great doctrines of the psalms may be noted as follows: (1) the being and attributes of God; (3) sin, both original and individual; (3) both covenants; (4) the doctrine of justification; (5) concerning the Messiah.
There is a striking analogy between the Pentateuch and the Psalms. The Pentateuch contains five books of law; the Psalms contain five books of heart responses to the law.
It is interesting to note the historic controversies concerning the singing of psalms. These were controversies about singing uninspired songs, in the Middle Ages. The church would not allow anything to be used but psalms.
The history in Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles, and in Ezra and Nehemiah is very valuable toward a proper interpretation of the psalms. These books furnish the historical setting for a great many of the psalms which is very indispensable to their proper interpretation.
Professor James Robertson, in the Poetry and Religion of the Psalms constructs a broad and strong argument in favor of the Davidic Psalms, as follows:
1. The age of David furnished promising soil for the growth of poetry.
2. David’s qualifications for composing the psalms make it highly probable that David is the author of the psalms ascribed to him.
3. The arguments against the possibility of ascribing to David any of the hymns in the Hebrew Psalter rests upon assumptions that are thoroughly antibiblical.
The New Testament makes large use of the psalms and we learn much as to their importance in teaching. There are seventy direct quotations in the New Testament from this book, from which we learn that the Scriptures were used extensively in accord with 2Ti 3:16-17 . There are also eleven references to the psalms in the New Testament from which we learn that the New Testament writers were thoroughly imbued with the spirit and teaching of the psalms. Then there are eight allusions ‘to this book in the New Testament from which we gather that the Psalms was one of the divisions of the Old Testament and that they were used in the early church.
QUESTIONS
1. Give a list of the items of information gathered from the titles of the psalms.
2. What is the longest title to any of the psalms and what the items of this title?
3. What parts of these superscriptions most concern us now?
4. What is the historic value, or trustworthiness of these titles?
5. State the argument showing David’s relation to the psalms.
6. What have you to say of the attempt of the destructive critics to rob David of his glory in relation to the Psalter by assigning the Maccabean era as the date of composition?
7. What the obvious aim of this criticism and the necessary result, if it be just?
8. What other authors are named in the titles?
9. Were all the psalms ascribed to Asaph composed by one person?
10. Give the five general outlines of the whole collection, as follows: I. The outline by books II. The outline according to date and authorship III. The outline by groups IV. The outline of doctrines V. The outline by New Testament quotations or allusions.
11. What experiences of David’s life made very deep impressions on his heart?
12. Classify the Davidic Psalms according to these experiences following the order of time.
13. What the great doctrines of the psalms?
14. What analogy between the Pentateuch and the Psalms?
15. What historic controversies concerning the singing of psalms?
16. Of what value is the history in Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles, and in Ezra and Nehemiah toward a proper interpretation of the psalms?
17. Give Professor James Robertson’s argument in favor of the Davidic authorship of the psalms.
18. What can you say of the New Testament use of the psalms and what do we learn as to their importance in teaching?
19. What can you say of the New Testament references to the psalms, and from the New Testament references what the impression on the New Testament writers?
20. What can you say of the allusions to the psalms in the New Testament?
XVII
THE MESSIAH IN THE PSALMS
A fine text for this chapter is as follows: “All things must be fulfilled which were written in the Psalms concerning me,” Luk 24:44 . I know of no better way to close my brief treatise on the Psalms than to discuss the subject of the Messiah as revealed in this book.
Attention has been called to the threefold division of the Old Testament cited by our Lord, namely, the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (Luk 24:44 ), in all of which were the prophecies relating to himself that “must be fulfilled.” It has been shown just what Old Testament books belong to each of these several divisions. The division called the Psalms included many books, styled Holy Writings, and because the Psalms proper was the first book of the division it gave the name to the whole division.
The object of this discussion is to sketch the psalmist’s outline of the Messiah, or rather, to show how nearly a complete picture of our Lord is foredrawn in this one book. Let us understand however with Paul, that all prophecy is but in part (1Co 13:9 ), and that when we fill in on one canvas all the prophecies concerning the Messiah of all the Old Testament divisions, we are far from having a perfect portrait of our Lord. The present purpose is limited to three things:
1. What the book of the Psalms teaches concerning the Messiah.
2. That the New Testament shall authoritatively specify and expound this teaching.
3. That the many messianic predictions scattered over the book and the specifications thereof over the New Testament may be grouped into an orderly analysis, so that by the adjustment of the scattered parts we may have before us a picture of our Lord as foreseen by the psalmists.
In allowing the New Testament to authoritatively specify and expound the predictive features of the book, I am not unmindful of what the so-called “higher critics” urge against the New Testament quotations from the Old Testament and the use made of them. In this discussion, however, these objections are not considered, for sufficient reasons. There is not space for it. Even at the risk of being misjudged I must just now summarily pass all these objections, dismissing them with a single statement upon which the reader may place his own estimate of value. That statement is that in the days of my own infidelity, before this old method of criticism had its new name, I was quite familiar with the most and certainly the strongest of the objections now classified as higher criticism, and have since patiently re-examined them in their widely conflicting restatements under their modern name, and find my faith in the New Testament method of dealing with the Old Testament in no way shattered, but in every way confirmed. God is his own interpreter. The Old Testament as we now have it was in the hands of our Lord. I understand his apostle to declare, substantially, that “every one of these sacred scriptures is God-inspired and is profitable for teaching us what is right to believe and to do, for convincing us what is wrong in faith or practice, for rectifying the wrong when done, that we may be ready at every point, furnished completely, to do every good work, at the right time, in the right manner, and from the proper motive” (2Ti 3:16-17 ).
This New Testament declares that David was a prophet (Act 2:30 ), that he spake by the Holy Spirit (Act 1:16 ), that when the book speaks the Holy Spirit speaks (Heb 3:7 ), and that all its predictive utterances, as sacred Scripture, “must be fulfilled” (Joh 13:18 ; Act 1:16 ). It is not claimed that David wrote all the psalms, but that all are inspired, and that as he was the chief author, the book goes by his name.
It would be a fine thing to make out two lists, as follows:
1. All of the 150 psalms in order from which the New Testament quotes with messianic application.
2. The New Testament quotations, book by book, i.e., Matthew so many, and then the other books in their order.
We would find in neither of these any order as to time, that is, Psa 1 which forecasts an incident in the coming Messiah’s life does not forecast the first incident of his life. And even the New Testament citations are not in exact order as to time and incident of his life. To get the messianic picture before us, therefore, we must put the scattered parts together in their due relation and order, and so construct our own analysis. That is the prime object of this discussion. It is not claimed that the analysis now presented is perfect. It is too much the result of hasty, offhand work by an exceedingly busy man. It will serve, however, as a temporary working model, which any one may subsequently improve. We come at once to the psalmist’s outline of the Messiah.
1. The necessity for a Saviour. This foreseen necessity is a background of the psalmists’ portrait of the Messiah. The necessity consists in (1) man’s sinfulness; (2) his sin; (3) his inability of wisdom and power to recover himself; (4) the insufficiency of legal, typical sacrifices in securing atonement.
The predicate of Paul’s great argument on justification by faith is the universal depravity and guilt of man. He is everywhere corrupt in nature; everywhere an actual transgressor; everywhere under condemnation. But the scriptural proofs of this depravity and sin the apostle draws mainly from the book of the Psalms. In one paragraph of the letter to the Romans (Rom 3:4-18 ), he cites and groups six passages from six divisions of the Psalms (Psa 5:9 ; Psa 10:7 ; Psa 14:1-3 ; Psa 36:1 ; Psa 51:4-6 ; Psa 140:3 ). These passages abundantly prove man’s sinfulness, or natural depravity, and his universal practice of sin.
The predicate also of the same apostle’s great argument for revelation and salvation by a Redeemer is man’s inability of wisdom and power to re-establish communion with God. In one of his letters to the Corinthians he thus commences his argument: “For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? -For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preach-ing to save them that believe.” He closes this discussion with the broad proposition: “The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God,” and proves it by a citation from Psa 94:11 : “The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”
In like manner our Lord himself pours scorn on human wisdom and strength by twice citing Psa 8 : “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight” (Mat 11:25-26 ). “And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children that were crying in the temple and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?” (Mat 21:15-16 ).
But the necessity for a Saviour as foreseen by the psalmist did not stop at man’s depravity, sin, and helplessness. The Jews were trusting in the sacrifices of their law offered on the smoking altar. The inherent weakness of these offerings, their lack of intrinsic merit, their ultimate abolition, their complete fulfilment and supercession by a glorious antitype were foreseen and foreshown in this wonderful prophetic book: I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices; And thy burnt offerings are continually before me. I will take no bullock out of thy house, Nor he-goat out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, And the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all of the birds of the mountains; And the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; For the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, Or drink the blood of goats? Psa 50:8-13 .
Yet again it speaks in that more striking passage cited in the letter to the Hebrews: “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshipers, once purged should have no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, But a body didst thou prepare for me; In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure: Then said I, Lo, I am come (In the roll of the book it is written of me) To do thy will, O God. Saying above, Sacrifice and offering and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou wouldst not, neither hadst pleasure therein, (the which are offered according to the law), then hath he said, Lo, I am come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second” (Heb 10:1-9 ).
This keen foresight of the temporary character and intrinsic worthlessness of animal sacrifices anticipated similar utterances by the later prophets (Isa 1:10-17 ; Jer 6:20 ; Jer 7:21-23 ; Hos 6:6 ; Amo 5:21 ; Mic 6:6-8 ). Indeed, I may as well state in passing that when the apostle declares, “It is impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins,” he lays down a broad principle, just as applicable to baptism and the Lord’s Supper. With reverence I state the principle: Not even God himself by mere appointment can vest in any ordinance, itself lacking intrinsic merit, the power to take away sin. There can be, therefore, in the nature of the case, no sacramental salvation. This would destroy the justice of God in order to exalt his mercy. Clearly the psalmist foresaw that “truth and mercy must meet together” before “righteousness and peace could kiss each other” (Psa 85:10 ). Thus we find as the dark background of the psalmists’ luminous portrait of the Messiah, the necessity for a Saviour.
2. The nature, extent, and blessedness of the salvation to be wrought by the coming Messiah. In no other prophetic book are the nature, fullness, and blessedness of salvation so clearly seen and so vividly portrayed. Besides others not now enumerated, certainly the psalmists clearly forecast four great elements of salvation:
(1) An atoning sacrifice of intrinsic merit offered once for all (Psa 40:6-8 ; Heb 10:4-10 ).
(2) Regeneration itself consisting of cleansing, renewal, and justification. We hear his impassioned statement of the necessity of regeneration: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts,” followed by his earnest prayer: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me,” and his equally fervent petition: “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psa 51 ). And we hear him again as Paul describes the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputes righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, And whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin Psa 32:1 ; Rom 4:6-8 .
(3) Introduction into the heavenly rest (Psa 95:7-11 ; Heb 3:7-19 ; Heb 4:1-11 ). Here is the antitypical Joshua leading spiritual Israel across the Jordan of death into the heavenly Canaan, the eternal rest that remaineth for the people of God. Here we find creation’s original sabbath eclipsed by redemption’s greater sabbath when the Redeemer “entered his rest, ceasing from his own works as God did from his.”
(4) The recovery of all the universal dominion lost by the first Adam and the securement of all possible dominion which the first Adam never attained (Psa 8:5-6 ; Eph 1:20-22 ; Heb 2:7-9 ; 1Co 15:24-28 ).
What vast extent then and what blessedness in the salvation foreseen by the psalmists, and to be wrought by the Messiah. Atoning sacrifice of intrinsic merit; regeneration by the Holy Spirit; heavenly rest as an eternal inheritance; and universal dominion shared with Christ!
3. The wondrous person of the Messiah in his dual nature, divine and human.
(1) His divinity,
(a) as God: “Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Psa 45:6 and Heb 1:8 ) ;
(b) as creator of the heavens and earth, immutable and eternal: Of old didst thou lay the foundation of the earth; And the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, And thy years shall have no end Psa 102:25-27 quoted with slight changes in Heb 1:10-12 .
(c) As owner of the earth: The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; The world, and they that dwell therein, Psa 24:1 quoted in 1Co 10:26 .
(d) As the Son of God: “Thou art my Son; This day have I begotten thee” Psa 2:7 ; Heb 1:5 .
(e) As David’s Lord: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, Until I make thine enemies thy footstool, Psa 110:1 ; Mat 22:41-46 .
(f) As the object of angelic worship: “And let all the angels of God worship him” Psa 97:7 ; Heb 1:6 .
(g) As the Bread of life: And he rained down manna upon them to eat, And gave them food from heaven Psa 78:24 ; interpreted in Joh 6:31-58 . These are but samples which ascribe deity to the Messiah of the psalmists.
(2) His humanity, (a) As the Son of man, or Son of Adam: Psa 8:4-6 , cited in 1Co 15:24-28 ; Eph 1:20-22 ; Heb 2:7-9 . Compare Luke’s genealogy, Luk 3:23-38 . This is the ideal man, or Second Adam, who regains Paradise Lost, who recovers race dominion, in whose image all his spiritual lineage is begotten. 1Co 15:45-49 . (b) As the Son of David: Psa 18:50 ; Psa 89:4 ; Psa 89:29 ; Psa 89:36 ; Psa 132:11 , cited in Luk 1:32 ; Act 13:22-23 ; Rom 1:3 ; 2Ti 2:8 . Perhaps a better statement of the psalmists’ vision of the wonderful person of the Messiah would be: He saw the uncreated Son, the second person of the trinity, in counsel and compact with the Father, arranging in eternity for the salvation of men: Psa 40:6-8 ; Heb 10:5-7 . Then he saw this Holy One stoop to be the Son of man: Psa 8:4-6 ; Heb 2:7-9 . Then he was the son of David, and then he saw him rise again to be the Son of God: Psa 2:7 ; Rom 1:3-4 .
4. His offices.
(1) As the one atoning sacrifice (Psa 40:6-8 ; Heb 10:5-7 ).
(2) As the great Prophet, or Preacher (Psa 40:9-10 ; Psa 22:22 ; Heb 2:12 ). Even the method of his teaching by parable was foreseen (Psa 78:2 ; Mat 13:35 ). Equally also the grace, wisdom, and power of his teaching. When the psalmist declares that “Grace is poured into thy lips” (Psa 45:2 ), we need not be startled when we read that all the doctors in the Temple who heard him when only a boy “were astonished at his understanding and answers” (Luk 2:47 ); nor that his home people at Nazareth “all bear him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth” (Luk 4:22 ); nor that those of his own country were astonished, and said, “Whence hath this man this wisdom?” (Mat 13:54 ); nor that the Jews in the Temple marveled, saying, “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” (Joh 7:15 ) ; nor that the stern officers of the law found their justification in failure to arrest him in the declaration, “Never man spake like this man” (Joh 7:46 ).
(3) As the king (Psa 2:6 ; Psa 24:7-10 ; Psa 45:1-17 ; Psa 110:1 ; Mat 22:42-46 ; Act 2:33-36 ; 1Co 15:25 ; Eph 1:20 ; Heb 1:13 ).
(4) As the priest (Psa 110:4 ; Heb 5:5-10 ; Heb 7:1-21 ; Heb 10:12-14 ).
(5) As the final judge. The very sentence of expulsion pronounced upon the finally impenitent by the great judge (Mat 25:41 ) is borrowed from the psalmist’s prophetic words (Psa 6:8 ).
5. Incidents of life. The psalmists not only foresaw the necessity for a Saviour; the nature, extent, and blessedness of the salvation; the wonderful human-divine person of the Saviour; the offices to be filled by him in the work of salvation, but also many thrilling details of his work in life, death, resurrection, and exaltation. It is not assumed to cite all these details, but some of the most important are enumerated in order, thus:
(1) The visit, adoration, and gifts of the Magi recorded in Mat 2 are but partial fulfilment of Psa 72:9-10 .
(2) The scripture employed by Satan in the temptation of our Lord (Luk 4:10-11 ) was cited from Psa 91:11-12 and its pertinency not denied.
(3) In accounting for his intense earnestness and the apparently extreme measures adopted by our Lord in his first purification of the Temple (Joh 2:17 ), he cites the messianic zeal predicted in Psa 69:9 .
(4) Alienation from his own family was one of the saddest trials of our Lord’s earthly life. They are slow to understand his mission and to enter into sympathy with him. His self-abnegation and exhaustive toil were regarded by them as evidences of mental aberration, and it seems at one time they were ready to resort to forcible restraint of his freedom) virtually what in our time would be called arrest under a writ of lunacy. While at the last his half-brothers became distinguished preachers of his gospel, for a long while they do not believe on him. And the evidence forces us to the conclusion that his own mother shared with her other sons, in kind though not in degree, the misunderstanding of the supremacy of his mission over family relations. The New Testament record speaks for itself:
Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them. How is it that ye sought me? Knew ye not that I must be in my Father’s house? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them Luk 2:48-51 (R.V.).
And when the wine failed, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. And Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. Joh 2:3-5 (R.V.).
And there come his mother and his brethren; and standing without; they sent unto him, calling him. And a multitude was sitting about him; and they say unto him. Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answereth them, and saith, Who is my mother and my brethren? And looking round on them that sat round about him, he saith, Behold, my mother and my brethren) For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother Mar 3:31-35 (R.V.).
Now the feast of the Jews, the feast of tabernacles, was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may behold thy works which thou doest. For no man doeth anything in secret, and himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou doest these things, manifest thyself to the world. For even his brethren did not believe on him. Jesus therefore saith unto them, My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that its works are evil. Go ye up unto the feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; because my time is not fulfilled. Joh 7:2-9 (R.V.).
These citations from the Revised Version tell their own story. But all that sad story is foreshown in the prophetic psalms. For example: I am become a stranger unto my brethren, And an alien unto my mother’s children. Psa 69:8 .
(5) The triumphal entry into Jerusalem was welcomed by a joyous people shouting a benediction from Psa 118:26 : “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Mat 21:9 ); and the Lord’s lamentation over Jerusalem predicts continued desolation and banishment from his sight until the Jews are ready to repeat that benediction (Mat 23:39 ).
(6) The children’s hosanna in the Temple after its second purgation is declared by our Lord to be a fulfilment of that perfect praise forecast in Psa 8:2 .
(7) The final rejection of our Lord by his own people was also clear in the psalmist’s vision (Psa 118:22 ; Mat 21:42-44 ).
(8) Gethsemane’s baptism of suffering, with its strong crying and tears and prayers was as clear to the psalmist’s prophetic vision as to the evangelist and apostle after it became history (Psa 69:1-4 ; Psa 69:13-20 ; and Mat 26:36-44 ; Heb 5:7 ).
(9) In life-size also before the psalmist was the betrayer of Christ and his doom (Psa 41:9 ; Psa 69:25 ; Psa 109:6-8 ; Joh 13:18 ; Act 1:20 ).
(10) The rage of the people, Jew and Gentile, and the conspiracy of Pilate and Herod are clearly outlined (Psa 2:1-3 ; Act 4:25-27 ).
(11) All the farce of his trial the false accusation, his own marvelous silence; and the inhuman maltreatment to which he was subjected, is foreshown in the prophecy as dramatically as in the history (Mat 26:57-68 ; Mat 27:26-31 ; Psa 27:12 ; Psa 35:15-16 ; Psa 38:3 ; Psa 69:19 ).
The circumstances of his death, many and clear, are distinctly foreseen. He died in the prime of life (Psa 89:45 ; Psa 102:23-24 ). He died by crucifixion (Psa 22:14-17 ; Luk 23 ; 33; Joh 19:23-37 ; Joh 20:27 ). But yet not a bone of his body was broken (Psa 34:20 ; Joh 19:36 ).
The persecution, hatred without a cause, the mockery and insults, are all vividly and dramatically foretold (Psa 22:6-13 ; Psa 35:7 ; Psa 35:12 ; Psa 35:15 ; Psa 35:21 ; Psa 109:25 ).
The parting of his garments and the gambling for his vesture (Psa 22:18 ; Mat 27:35 ).
His intense thirst and the gall and vinegar offered for his drink (Psa 69:21 ; Mat 27:34 ).
In the psalms, too, we hear his prayers for his enemies so remarkably fulfilled in fact (Psa 109:4 ; Luk 23:34 ).
His spiritual death was also before the eye of the psalmist, and the very words which expressed it the psalmist heard. Separation from the Father is spiritual death. The sinner’s substitute must die the sinner’s death, death physical, i.e., separation of soul from body; death spiritual, i.e., separation of the soul from God. The latter is the real death and must precede the former. This death the substitute died when he cried out: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” (Psa 22:1 ; Mat 27:46 ).
Emerging from the darkness of that death, which was the hour of the prince of darkness, the psalmist heard him commend his spirit to the Father (Psa_31:35; Luk 23:46 ) showing that while he died the spiritual death, his soul was not permanently abandoned unto hell (Psa 16:8-10 ; Act 2:25 ) so that while he “tasted death” for every man it was not permanent death (Heb 2:9 ).
With equal clearness the psalmist foresaw his resurrection, his triumph over death and hell, his glorious ascension into heaven, and his exaltation at the right hand of God as King of kings and Lord of lords, as a high Driest forever, as invested with universal sovereignty (Psa 16:8-11 ; Psa 24:7-10 ; Psa 68:18 ; Psa 2:6 ; Psa 111:1-4 ; Psa 8:4-6 ; Act 2:25-36 ; Eph 1:19-23 ; Eph 4:8-10 ).
We see, therefore, brethren, when the scattered parts are put together and adjusted, how nearly complete a portrait of our Lord is put upon the prophetic canvas by this inspired limner, the sweet singer of Israel.
QUESTIONS
1. What is a good text for this chapter?
2. What is the threefold division of the Old Testament as cited by our Lord?
3. What is the last division called and why?
4. What is the object of the discussion in this chapter?
5. To what three things is the purpose limited?
6. What especially qualifies the author to meet the objections of the higher critics to allowing the New Testament usage of the Old Testament to determine its meaning and application?
7. What is the author’s conviction relative to the Scriptures?
8. What is the New Testament testimony on the question of inspiration?
9. What is the author’s suggested plan of approach to the study of the Messiah in the Psalms?
10. What the background of the Psalmist’s portrait of the Messiah and of what does it consist?
11. Give the substance of Paul’s discussion of man’s sinfulness.
12. What is the teaching of Jesus on this point?
13. What is the teaching relative to sacrifices?
14. What the nature, extent, and blessedness of the salvation to be wrought by the coming Messiah and what the four great elements of it as forecast by the psalmist?
15. What is the teaching of the psalms relative to the wondrous person of the Messiah? Discuss.
16. What are the offices of the Messiah according to psalms? Discuss each.
17. Cite the more important events of the Messiah’s life according to the vision of the psalmist.
18. What the circumstances of the Messiah’s death and resurrection as foreseen by the psalmist?
Psa 143:1 A Psalm of David. Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, [and] in thy righteousness.
Ver. 1. Hear my prayer, O Lord ] He prayeth once and again for audience; and would have God to hear him with both ears. Thus he prayed (saith the Greek title of this psalm) when his son Absalom was up in arms against him; and it may seem so, by the next words, De fuga ab Absolom (R. Obad. Gaon).
“A psalm of David.” The following is deeper still: not only none else save Jehovah, but self-abandoned. No righteousness can stand judgment, but here is the righteousness of God by faith. Confidence is in grace. So the godly Jew will feel and say in that day.
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 143:1-4
1Hear my prayer, O Lord,
Give ear to my supplications!
Answer me in Your faithfulness, in Your righteousness!
2And do not enter into judgment with Your servant,
For in Your sight no man living is righteous.
3For the enemy has persecuted my soul;
He has crushed my life to the ground;
He has made me dwell in dark places, like those who have long been dead.
4Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me;
My heart is appalled within me.
Psa 143:1 faithfulness This noun (BDB 53) comes from the verb (BDB 52) which denotes believe, faith, trust, and faithfulness. See Special Topic: Believe, Trust, Faith and Faithfulness in the OT .
A different word (BDB 105, KB 120) in Psa 143:8 b also means trust.
righteousness See Special Topic: Righteousness.
Notice how YHWH is characterized, see Contextual Insights, B. 1.
Psa 143:2 If YHWH counts sin(s), who can stand? All humans are affected by the Fall of Genesis 3 (see Special Topic: The Fall and the notes at Psa 130:3-4 ).
Some rabbis assert that sin begins in Genesis 3 but most in Genesis 6. The rabbis assert the choices of humans as the source of evil (i.e., the two yetzers). Paul affirms Genesis 3 as the source (cf. Rom 1:18 to Rom 3:20; Rom 3:23; Rom 11:32; Gal 3:22). The result is the same, as humans are rebels and need to be forgiven (cf. 1Ki 8:46; Job 4:17; Job 9:2; Job 25:4; Psa 130:3-4; Pro 20:9; Ecc 7:20; Isa 53:6; Rom 5:12-21)!
Psa 143:2 b The UBS Handbook (p. 1151) mentions that this line of poetry, as translated by the LXX, may be alluded to by Paul in Rom 3:20 and Gal 2:16.
Psa 143:3-4 These verses describe in poetic language the feelings of the persecuted psalmist. The imagery is related to the Hebrew concept of Sheol (cf. Job 10:21; Psa 88:5-6; Lam 3:6).
But notice the drastic change that comes in Psa 143:5, when the psalmist reflects on YHWH’s wonderful, gracious acts in the past (i.e., creation, call of the Patriarchs, Israel becoming a nation and occupying the land of promise, etc.).
Psa 143:3 the enemy Note this (Qal participle) is linked to singular verbs. There are two good options.
1. a collective term (plural in Psa 143:9; Psa 143:12)
2. one main enemy
3. a reference to death, the pit, Sheol
Psa 143:4 spirit. . .heart Both of these refer to the person. The first phrase is a repeat of Ps. 142:39, see note there.
The same thought is repeated in Psa 143:7 a.
For spirit see SPECIAL TOPIC: SPIRIT IN THE BIBLE .
For heart see SPECIAL TOPIC: THE HEART .
overwhelmed This is literally faint (BDB 742, KB 814, Hithpael imperfect with waw, cf. Psa 142:3 a). This verb is used with
1. spirit (ruah) – Psa 77:3; Psa 142:3; Psa 143:4
2. heart (leb) – Psa 61:2; Psa 143:4
3. soul (nephesh) – Psa 107:5
Title. A Psalm of David. Same as 140.
LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.
Psa 143:1-12 , another psalm of David.
Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in your faithfulness answer me, and in your righteousness. And enter not into judgment with your servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified ( Psa 143:1-2 ).
God, I don’t want justice for me, only for my enemies. For me I want mercy. No one living can be justified before God. Impossible! “There is none righteous, no, not one” ( Rom 3:10 ). God said, “I looked over the earth and there is none that doeth good. None that seeketh after God.” You say, “That’s pretty general.” Yes, it is. Encompasses all.
For the enemy has persecuted my soul; he has smitten my life down to the ground; he has made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands ( Psa 143:3-5 ).
I remember, I meditate, I muse.
I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsts after thee, as a thirsty land ( Psa 143:6 ).
Here is one of the reasons why David was referred as a man after God’s own heart. Because he was thirsting always after God. Jesus said, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” ( Mat 5:6 ). Here David describes it. “My soul thirsteth after Thee, as a thirsty land.”
Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear thy loving-kindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee ( Psa 143:7-8 ).
And now the prayer: deliver me, teach me, lead me, quicken me.
Deliver me from my enemies: I flee unto thee to hide. Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me in the land of uprightness. And quicken me, O LORD, for thy name’s sake: for thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble ( Psa 143:9-11 ).
And so the prayer. How important. “God, deliver me. And then teach me to do Thy will. Lead me in the right way and quicken me.”
And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant ( Psa 143:12 ). “
Psa 143:1-2. Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
That is, of course, apart from the wondrous system of justification by faith in Jesus Christ, whereby believers are made the righteousness of God in him. Apart from that righteousness, no man living can be justified in the sight of God.
Psa 143:3-4. For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.
Are any of you passing through this trying experience? If so, does it not encourage you to find that somebody else has been this way before you? The road is very rough, but there is a mans footprint there, the footprint of a man whom God greatly loved, even the man after Gods own heart? Ah, dear friends, in those deep sorrows of yours, you are not alone; David has passed this way before you; and, what is better still, Davids Lord has traversed this rough road. In all our afflictions he was afflicted, he was tempted in all points like as we are, so he can most perfectly sympathize with us in all the troubles through which we are called to pass.
Psa 143:5-6. I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.
One of the things which Gods people are in the habit of doing, when they are in deep trouble, is to look back upon their past experience. You may have seen the bargemen on the canal push backwards that they may propel the barge forwards; and, sometimes, we who believe in Jesus Christ have to push backwards, to look back on our past experience in order to derive fresh courage for the present hour of trial. So the psalmist says, I remember the days of old, I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. Yet in Davids day of distress, when he had meditated upon his experiences in the past, that did not satisfy him. He wanted his God, therefore he cried unto the Lord, I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. When the fields have been long dry, because there has been no rain, you see how the earth opens its mouth in great cracks as if it gaped for the rain it so sorely needs, and Davids soul seemed thus gaping with a strong desire after the living God: My soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land.
Psa 143:7-8. Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee.
This is a beautiful prayer, which any one of you might present to the Lord: Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk. You are perplexed as to what you ought to do, you wish to do that which is right, but you are not sure what is right. Yet God can cause you to know the way wherein you should walk; he leadeth the blind by a way that they know not, and in paths which they have not seen. So breathe this prayer to him in the hour of your perplexity,
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
Pilgrim through this barren land:
I am weak, but thou art mighty;
Hold me with thy powerful hand!
Or say with David, Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul unto thee. He seems to say, My soul is like a dead weight which cannot lift itself up; but in the strength which thou dost impart to me, I lift it up, I will not let it lie like a dead log before thee: I lift up my soul unto thee.
Psa 143:9-10. Deliver me, O LORD, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide me. Teach me to do thy will;
This is another most blessed prayer: Teach me to do thy will. Most of us want to have our own will, and to go our own way; but each one who is truly wise prays to the Lord, Teach me to do thy will.
Psa 143:10-11. For thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness. Quicken me, O LORD, for thy names sake: for thy righteousness sake bring my soul out of trouble.
What earnest pleading is this, and how powerful it is! Every word is so fitting that, if I had time to explain it, you would note the force and appropriateness of every syllable that the psalmist here uses.
Psa 143:12. And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.
Psa 143:1-6
Psalms 143
LONGING FOR MERCY IN TIMES OF DISAPPOINTMENT
Psalms 143 is another of the psalms of David. And, as Rawlinson said, “There is no reason to doubt the superscription that ascribes it to him. Rhodes, evidently following current fads among critics, assigned it to post-exilic times, on the basis that, it shows, “Dependence on many other Psalms. Those “other psalms,” however, in by far the greater part, are Davidic; and the “fact” here is that David’s vocabulary in this psalm closely resembles his other writings. Is this not indeed an evidence of Davidic authorship? “Almost all of the phrases here are found in other Davidic psalms.
Behold the dutiful dictum of critics. “If it resembles his known writings, then someone copied and imitated him; if it does not resemble his known writings, then he could not have written it.” If we translate this unreasonable and unprovable rule of current criticism into ordinary language, it simply means, “No matter what the evidence, we deny the ascribed authorship.” There can be no wonder that many sincere scholars have lost confidence in the “shibboleths” of current criticism.
This psalm is listed among the so-called Penitentials, because it exhibits on the psalmist’s part a deep consciousness of sin and the acceptance of the truth that his terrible sorrows may indeed be the divine punishments which his sins deserved.
“This psalm is certainly composed as coming out of the situation of David who was persecuted by Absalom; and it is distinguished from those of the time of Saul’s persecution by the psalmist’s deep melancholy, founded upon the penitential sorrow of David’s consciousness of his own guilt.
Delitzsch added that, “It is on account of this feature that the church has chosen Psalms 143 as the last of the seven Penitentials.
The psalm is naturally divided into two parts, marked by the “Selah” at the end of Psa 143:6.
Psa 143:1-6
“Hear my prayer, O Jehovah; Give ear to my supplications:
In thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
And enter not into judgment with thy servant;
For in thy sight no man living is righteous.
For the enemy hath persecuted my soul;
He hath smitten my life down to the ground:
He hath made me to dwell in dark places,
As those that have been long dead.
Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me;
My heart within me is desolate.
I remember the days of old;
I meditate upon all thy doings;
I muse on the work of thy hands.
I spread forth my hands unto thee:
My soul thirsteth after thee, as a weary land.
Selah”
“In thy faithfulness … in thy righteousness” (Psa 143:1). David does not here plead any merit of his own, but based his plea upon the character of God who would surely keep the wonderful promises made to him through Nathan the prophet. God’s righteousness would not allow him to nullify those great promises.
“Enter not into judgment with thy servant” (Psa 143:2). David had touched the subject of abstract “justice” in his mention of God’s righteousness, but he did not dare to press that, because of the consciousness of his own guilt. “He therefore deprecates a strictly retributive treatment, knowing that his life and conduct cannot endure the severity of God’s judgment,”[6] freely acknowledging that, “No man living is righteous in God’s sight,” including himself, of course, in that confession.
One may well ask, just what was eating David’s heart out here? The answer is found in the Word of God.
“Thus saith Jehovah the God of Israel (to David) … Thou hast smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and thou hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and thou hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thy house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house; and I will give thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor … I will do this thing before all Israel (2Sa 12:7-12).”
Nothing could have any more dramatically reminded David of these words of the Lord spoken to him through Nathan, than did the rebellion of Absalom. Knowing that he himself deserved to die, David nevertheless pleaded for God to spare him, which God, in his mercy assuredly did.
The earnestness of David’s prayer here is seen in the fact of its being offered upon a number of grounds, the first of these (Psa 143:1-2) being simply the grace of a loving and faithful God.
“The enemy hath persecuted … smitten me down … made me to dwell in dark places … (treated me as if I had) been long dead” (Psa 143:3). This is another one of the grounds upon which David founded his prayer, namely, the evil conduct of Absalom his unscrupulous, reprobate son.
“My spirit is overwhelmed … my heart … is desolate” (Psa 143:4). The grounds of his petition here is the very extremity of his own personal condition. Unless God is ready to destroy him, help must come at once.
“I remember … I meditate … I muse” (Psa 143:5). David remembers the promises God had made to him; he mediates upon the marvelous deliverances God has provided for him in the past; he muses upon the fulfilment of the terrible prophecy of the disaster God would raise up against him, “from his own house.” David pleads here that he is disciplined and corrected by God’s dealings with him.
“I spread forth my hands unto thee … my soul thirsteth after thee” (Psa 143:6). The soul-hunger and thirst for God has reached a climax in the heart of David, the very earnestness and eagerness of which are here pleaded as grounds of his petition.
“I spread forth my hands” (Psa 143:6). This refers to a well-know gesture often associated with prayer.
Summarizing the various grounds upon which this great prayer is offered, we have: (1) the unmerited grace and faithfulness of God (Psa 143:1); (2) God’s righteousness to keep his promises (Psa 143:1); (3) the satanic behavior of the enemy (Psa 143:3); (4) the extreme personal need of the petitioner (Psa 143:4); (5) the petitioner’s trust in the God who has so often delivered him (Psa 143:5); and (6) the psalmist’s hungering and thirsting after righteousness (after God) (Psa 143:6). It is the very nature of God to “fill” and “satisfy” those who hunger and thirst for Him (Mat 5:6).
In these principles, one sees the transcending greatness of this remarkable prayer.
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 143:1. The two sides of the divine plan, the human and the divine, are indicated in this verse. They are the faithfulness of man and the righteousness of God. Recognizing both those factors, David offered his supplications to the Lord.
Psa 143:2. This verse means that no man would stand any chance if God were to deal with him according to strict Justice. Only through God’s mercy will he be able to stand.
Psa 143:3. Soul and life are used in the same sense. The darkness refers to the depression that had been thrust upon David by the persecutions of his enemies.
Psa 143:4. Spirit and heart are used in the same sense. The persecutions had been so bitter against David that he did not have the heart to face the situation alone.
Psa 143:5. The pronoun thy refers to the Lord. In the distress of mind under which David labored, he thought back to the happiness of other days. The remembrance of the mighty works of the Lord would give strength and courage to bear up under the present trial.
Psa 143:6. Stretching forth the hands is a gesture of pleading. A thirsty land is one lacking moisture, and is illustrative of a condition lacking the elements of complete encouragement. See Psa 3:2 on the meaning of Selah.
This is the last of the four psalms, and both in respect of the sense of helplessness and of assurance in God, it is more vivid and striking than either of them. So far as human situation is concerned, it is a cry of despair, and a terrible one indeed. The life is smitten, the spirit is overwhelmed, and the whole complaint ends with a statement, My heart within me is desolate. That final word desolate has in it the sob of an unillumined sea. Yet the psalm opens with an earnest cry to Jehovah, and after the declaration of need, it to the end a determined act of faith.
In the situation of complete helplessness the soul prepares for its prayer, and the words which indicate the method of preparation are interesting. I remember … I meditate … I muse. The issue of this is immediately declared, I spread forth my hands unto Thee. The earnestness of the soul is manifested in the urgent petitions which follow. Make haste … hide not Thy face … cause me to hear … cause me to know … deliver me … teach me … quicken me. Personal consecration in this endeavour to lay hold upon the infinite resource is manifest in the affirmations. In Thee do I trust … I life up my soul unto Thee … I flee unto Thee to hide me, and finally I am Thy servant. Through all the urgency and the earnestness there is also manifest an unshaken confidence. Thou art my God is the central word around which all the others gather.
the Cry of the Thirsty Soul
Psa 143:1-12
This psalm falls into four stanzas of three verses each. Complaint, Psa 143:1-3. Though the enemy has resorted to unwarrantable violence, David realized that his past had been by no means immaculate. The holiest have least confidence in themselves, Job 9:3; Php 3:7. Bernard of Clairvaux said: So far from being able to answer for my sins, I cannot answer even for my righteousness. There is no judgment or condemnation for those who are in Christ, because they were judged in Him. Now Gods justice is on our side, 1Jn 1:9.
Depression, Psa 143:4-6. Those capable of the sunny heights are capable of the lowest depths. Memory, meditation, and musing often lead to melancholy. But reach out after God. To thirst for Him is to have Him. To desire is to possess. Entreaty, Psa 143:7-9. Hear me; cause me to hear; cause me to know; deliver me. Docility, Psa 143:10-12 : We can trust ourselves absolutely to be led by Gods Spirit, because He is good and He brings the soul out of trouble into the land of uprightness, Rom 8:14.
Psa 143:8
The text may be said to comprise every other prayer. If God gives His servant to “know the way wherein he should walk,” and strength to walk in it, peace, and order, and liberty, and joy will soon come. Life is a daily difficulty. Think of the number of things that are to be believed, that are to be renounced, that are to be examined, that are to be distinguished in themselves and from other things, that are to be tentatively dealt with, that are to be done, that are to be left undone, that are to be waited for, that are to be suffered. All these are included in the “way wherein we should walk.”
I. Opinions and beliefs. There can be no living way for a man that does not involve these. We are bound to form them, and the point is that there is very great difficulty in forming some of them or in keeping them when we have them. Any one of us, if we will, may be of them that believe to the saving of the soul. How? By bringing the whole case fully and earnestly before God. If we come really to Him, we have solved the difficulty, we have come into the new and living way, and God will make that way more and more plain before our face; whereas if we abide among the exterior things-examining, considering, comparing, putting this opinion against that, and working the whole matter simply as a high intellectual problem, without ever making the last and highest appeal-we have no certainty of a good and true issue.
II. Conduct. In respect of conduct also we find life to be a scene of constant difficulty. Even those who know the way they should go, so far as it consists of beliefs, convictions, principles, find it still in their practice to be a way of continual difficulty. What can we do? We can pray. We can use this text and get the benefits it carries. The solution of all difficulty, be it what it may, is “to lift up the soul to God.” God is the God of peace; and to lift up the soul to Him is to rise out of storm into calm, is to leave the self-made troubles of life beneath us while we mount up on eagles’ wings into His eternal and illimitable tranquillity.
A. Raleigh, From Dawn to the Perfect Day, p. 190.
References: Psa 143:8.-Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 564. Psa 143:9.-Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes: Genesis to Proverbs, p. 169.
Psa 143:10
There are two kinds of active obedience: one which is called negative, which consists in refraining from something because God has commanded us to refrain, but which can still be called active, because it ranges from action, and the other because it lies in the direct doing of what we are ordered.
I. All our obedience has to do with the activities of love. (1) Towards God Himself they are either acts of trustful affection, such as the casting of the soul upon God; or acts of worship and adoration, such as prayer and praise, whether public or private, and the holy sacraments; or work done for the extension of God’s kingdom upon the earth; or any action which is performed simply for the glory of God. All those are instances of active obedience done direct to God. (2) Towards man they are acts of forgiveness; acts of sympathy, either in joy or sorrow; acts of kindness or charity; acts of submission to constituted authority.
II. But to make any of these “active obedience” two things are absolutely necessary. (1) They must have a far end in God Himself; (2) they must not be mere feelings.
III. Notice a few rules for active obedience. (1) Clear away the dust which is always gathering round a command to mystify and confound it. (2) Be sure of your motive. (3) Obey trustingly. (4) There must be alacrity; it is no obedience that does not feel, “I will run in the way of Thy commandments.” (5) Remember that all obedience to God must be like what the Jews were required to give to God: a whole burnt-offering. (6) Your obedience must be your liberty and your joy.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 10th scries, p. 240.
Psa 143:10
Three things David had evidently learned which it would be well for us if we had never forgotten: (1) the kindness of the Spirit; (2) a certain “leading;” (3) that leading into a better, and truer, and more beautiful state of things, which he calls the “land of uprightness.” It was a true principle when David laid the base of everything in the kindness of the Spirit. It was as when we say, “God is love,” and feel that we have got down to the very rock of the foundation of everything. Just so it stands here in its own grand sufficiency, “Thy Spirit is good.” And there was a deep acquaintance with the philosophy of all moral truth when David brought together a Spirit of kindness and a “land of uprightness.” For what other than the Spirit of kindness ever does lead any one into those open fields of truth and honesty?
I. Perhaps we have not sufficiently considered the lovingness of the character of the Third Person in the Holy Trinity. To the minds of many, who still recognise His complete personality, He is as One almost passionless. To some He is associated with the thoughts of reproof and sternness. The chief and highest name of the Holy Spirit is “Comforter,” and not a comforter, as though He were one among many, but exclusively so that whatever comfort there is in all the world dates itself in Him: “the Comforter.” His very title, twice repeated, is “Spirit of love,” and His first-fruit and all His fruits-for each fruit in order is only the expression of the first; it is only the same grace placed in a different combination-“love.”
II. The Holy Ghost is a great Leader. He guides into all truth: truth of thought first, truth of feeling next, truth of action afterwards. His leadings tend to the land of uprightness. And where is that? Truth’s land must be Christ’s land, because Christ is truth; and therefore the Gospel must be “the land of uprightness.”
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 343.
Psa 143:10
The foundations of the religious character which was to be perfected in the mind of Christ were laid in faith in God and in the recognition of the supremacy of the moral law. Through ages and generations the Bible sets before us the slow growth, the unfolding and ripening, of this character, till, after long preparation and many steps, and still with many shortcomings, it became such that when Jesus Christ came it was able and qualified to welcome Him; to recognise, however dimly, His Divine glory; to follow Him; and from strength to strength and grace to grace, to rise to something of His likeness. We have the full birth of religious affection in the Psalms and of religious thought and reason in the Prophets.
I. The Psalms bring before us, in all its fulness and richness, the devotional element of the religious character. They are the first great teachers and patterns of prayer. And they show this side of the religious character not, as hitherto, in outline, but in varied and finished detail, in all its compass and living and spontaneous force.
II. This immense variety of mood, and subject, and occasion, with which reverence and hope are always combined, is the further point in the work of the Book of. Psalms. It is a vast step in the revealing of man to man. It shows what indeed God is to the soul in all its many moods. The soul cannot be alone without Him; He is the centre of attraction to all His creatures, the fountain and the loadstone of all love, high above the highest, yet humbling Himself “to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth.” (1) A profound and immovable belief in God’s righteousness is the faith which dominates the whole Psalter. (2) With this faith in the soul has come the stirring and enlightening conscience. We see in the Psalms how it has learned to look into itself, how it has learned the need of the inward watch, the inward struggle, the inward self-disclosure. (3) But if the Psalms have taught us the language of penitence, what ever equalled before the Day of Pentecost the freedom, the joy, of their worship? In the Book of Psalms we see the growing up in the religious character of these high gifts of the Spirit of God: devotion, worship, self-knowledge.
III. The great and characteristic ideas of the Psalms reappear in the Prophets, but in the Psalms they come in devotion addressed to God; the Prophets turn them back upon men, and expand and develop them in instruction, and encouragement, and rebuke. (1) Ezekiel is emphatically the prophet of the moral significance of the Law and of personal responsibility. (2) In the awful volume of Isaiah, in which thought and imagination are allowed to master the vision of the world, wherein is embodied all that most concerns man in the present and the future, and in which the tremendous severity of judgment mingles so strangely with a gracious and inexpressible sweetness which even still takes us by surprise-through all these Divinely inspired utterances we may trace, with a fulness, and richness, and depth unequalled in the Old Testament, the personal lineaments of one who not only by faith and self-discipline, but also by thought, and reason, and knowledge, had become fitted to be one of the company of that Redeemer whose person, whose coming, whose life of suffering and glory, he was going to foretell, and in whose perfection man was to be made perfect.
R. W. Church, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxviii., p. 129 (see also Preacher’s Monthly, vol. x., p. 201).
References: Psa 143:10.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi., No. 1519; G. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 198; S. Baring-Gould, One Hundred Sermon Sketches, p. 163; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, p. 219; Preacher’s Lantern, vol. i., p. 504.
Psa 143:12
I. What goes to make that Christlike title a “servant”-a servant of God and a servant of man for His sake? It was promised in your first and great covenant in life that you would be always a servant of God; but before you really take your place in God’s household, there must be a special voluntary act on your part, which is your engagement. The first question then is, Have you, by a definite act of your own will, given yourself to God, to be His servant?
II. This done, the next question is, What marks a servant? The proper word would be “slave.” It is the part of a true servant to do anything which his master wishes him to do. He is ready for everything. The reason is that he works from love; and therefore all he does he does with a will, pleasantly, lovingly, faithfully.
III. Does God give His servants wages for what they do? Yes, always. Salvation is not wages; heaven is not wages. Where then are the wages of good works? (1) Very often providences, sometimes happy ones, sometimes bitter ones, but both wages; (2) conscience-a good conscience; (3) growth: more grace, more light, more peace, more faith, and more of the presence of Christ; (4) and in heaven the degrees, higher measures and capacities of glory awarded according to the service done.
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 12th series, p. 61.
Psa 143:12
I. We have nothing to do with the historical sense of these and other like passages; it is not, and cannot be, in their historical and human meaning that the Psalms are the perpetual storehouse of prayer and thanksgiving for the people of God in every age. But the spiritual meaning of these words expresses an eternal truth which we should do ill not to remember. We have enemies; we have those that vex our soul; the Psalmist spoke a language which every one of God’s servants may echo; and these enemies are bringing our soul every day nigh unto hell.
II. These words are of importance, because we see that if we are indolent or slumbering, we have an enemy who is wakeful; that as we hope for the help of God’s Spirit, so we have against us the power of the spirit of evil; that, with a working mysterious indeed and incomprehensible, as is the working of God’s Spirit, no less, yet with a fruit clearly manifest, there is an influence busy in undoing every work of grace in our souls, in driving away every thought of penitence or of love, in instigating every evil desire, in deepening every fit of spiritual slumber. The need which we have of this prayer makes it no less needful that our labour and our watchfulness should be in proportion to it.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 331.
Psalm 143-145
In Psa 143:1-12 the enemy is mentioned again, the enemy who pursued David. For the enemy has persecuted my soul; he has smitten my life down to the ground; he has made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have long been dead. How this again reminds us of the death experience of the pious remnant when the man of sin, the Antichrist will rule in Israels land. Prayer for deliverance follows. Hear me speedily–Hide not Thy face from me–Cause me to hear Thy lovingkindness–Deliver me, O LORD, from mine enemies, I flee unto Thee to hide me!
The next Psalm riseth higher. Faith lays hold on God. Israel, as David did, will look in faith to Him who has the power to deliver His trusting ones. My Goodness, and my Fortress; my high tower and my deliverer; my shield and He in whom I trust; who subdueth the peoples under me (literal translation). They acknowledge before Him their nothingness, days like shadows passing away. We see how this prayer too brings the final days of the age and the coming deliverance by the intervention from above before us. Bow Thy heavens, O LORD, and come down; touch the mountains and they shall smoke. Cast forth lightning, and scatter them. Shoot out Thine arrows, and destroy them. Send Thine hand from above; rid me and deliver me out of the great waters (the great tribulation) from the hands of the strangers (the Gentiles). Whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood (Psa 144:5-8). Then bursts forth the new song which anticipates the answer for this great prayer, the answer which the coming Lord brings to His suffering people, by His manifestation in power and in glory. Psa 144:12-15 anticipate the days of earthly blessings when the King has returned and rules in righteousness.
Psa 145:1-21 is a magnificent outburst of praise. While it is Davids praise, it is also the praise of Him who is the leader of all the praises of His people, the Son of David, our Lord. He is singing praises in the great congregation (Psa 22:25) composed of His redeemed people Israel and the nations of the earth. It is an alphabetical Psalm, all letters of the Hebrew alphabet are given except one, the letter nun. The Numerical Bible gives the following helpful suggestion: I cannot but conclude that the gap is meant to remind us that in fact the fullness of praise is not complete without other voices which are not found here; and that those missing voices are those of the Church and the heavenly saints. In the book of Revelation we have the record of this full praise. See Chapter 5 and the fourfold Hallelujah in the beginning of Chapter 19. In this Psalm we find the celebration of the power of God displayed in judgments and in the deliverance of His people. Here we read likewise of His great lovingkindness in The LORD is gracious and full of compassion; slow to anger and of great mercy. See Exo 34:6-7. He has come to dwell in the midst of His people. The kingdom has come and His saints speak now of the glory of that kingdom. They will talk of His Power. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations. The mercies of the Lord displayed in that coming kingdom are the subject of the praise in Psa 145:14-21. We learn now why this great praise Psalm was preceded by Psalms of distress and prayer. It is in remembrance of the sufferings of His trusting people in the last days, and to magnify the Lord, who alone will save them and that unto the praise of His Name.
thy faithfulness: Psa 31:1, Psa 71:2, 2Sa 7:25, Dan 9:16, 1Jo 1:9
Reciprocal: Neh 13:22 – spare me Psa 27:7 – General Psa 30:10 – Hear Psa 36:10 – and thy Psa 54:5 – cut Psa 64:1 – Hear Psa 143:11 – for thy righteousness’ Luk 22:62 – and wept
The plea of righteousness where Jehovah alone is righteous.
A psalm of David.
This then is the principle of the first psalm here. It is the plea of righteousness in the mouth of faith, which owns that none is righteous except God alone, and which dares to say, in the consciousness of such ill desert, “in Thy faithfulness answer me; in Thy righteousness.” This the Cross makes simple for us now. The Old Testament saint could not of course see this, save dimly through the sacrificial shadows: Israel will see it when they look upon the face of Him whom they have pierced.
1. It is still prayer that we have here, until the closing verses. “Jehovah, hear my prayer; give ear unto my supplications: in Thy faithfulness answer me -in Thy righteousness!” And then follows the confession: “And enter not into judgment with Thy servant: for before Thee shall no living man be justified.”
2. We have then the plow that God has used with them to bring them into the exercises which in the end will be so fruitful. As in the hundred and forty-first psalm we heard them crying as from the mouth of Sheol, so here the psalmist speaks as one among the dwellers in darkness -even those long dead. But he is not indifferent, but his spirit overwhelmed, and his heart desolate; though he carries with him the remembrance of days of old, when God had manifestly wrought, and for Him his soul cried out as a thirsty land for rain.
3. Here then he takes refuge. There is for him no other hope. Did Jehovah hide His face, he would be like one of those going down to the pit. But as one who trusted in Him; he prayed to see early His loving-kindness, and to learn the way also in which to walk. In Jehovah he hid himself, and sought to be taught the will of Him who was his God. The spirit of faith and of obedience always go together.
4. In the last two verses we have the experience anticipated of Jehovah’s intervention. He will act in righteousness -in consistency with His nature and His Name: thus revival and deliverance are confidently looked for. All Israel’s enemies will be destroyed, the nation being owned as Jehovah’s servant in a sense which never could have been before.
Psa 143:1-2. In thy faithfulness According to thy true and faithful promises, made to the penitent who apply to thee for pardon and aid; answer me Grant my earnest request; and in thy righteousness Whereby thou art inclined and engaged by promise to favour righteous persons and just causes. Or, the word, here rendered righteousness, may signify mercy, as it often does; for Gods promises are only conditional, and our sins and frailties are so many, that we have always need of Gods mercy to make us capable of being reputed of the number of those who have complied with the conditions annexed to the promises. And enter not into judgment, &c. As if he had said, When I appeal to thy righteousness, I do not do it under an idea that I can justify myself upon a strict trial at the tribunal of thy justice; for I know, if thou shouldst rigorously examine all the tempers and affections of my heart, and actions of my life, I should certainly be condemned by thee to wrath and punishment; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified That is, according to thy holy and righteous law, and upon the terms of strict justice, without thy indulgence and infinite mercy. Observe well, reader, no man, in order to his justification before God, can plead innocence or his own righteousness; either that he has not sinned, or that he does not deserve to die for his sins; nor must he suppose that he has any satisfaction of his own to offer. Whoever expects to be justified, must look for that inestimable blessing, followed by peace with God, adoption into his family, and a title to life eternal, as an act of pure grace, a free and undeserved gift from the divine mercy, to be conferred upon the penitent and believing, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus: see Rom 3:9-28.
This is the last of the penitential psalms, and is uniformly ascribed to David. It was composed during a period of exile. The LXX and the Vulgate, on the rebellion of Absalom.
Psa 143:10. Thy Spirit is good. The LXX read, Let thy good Spirit lead me into the land of uprightness.
REFLECTIONS.
This psalm was composed also in exile, as appears from his prayer to be led into the land of uprightness: Psa 143:10. These litanies, or pleadings with heaven, are glowing, ardent, and worthy of special notice. David was long pursued by Saul, and sometimes his spirit was overwhelmed with grief. By long pressure the nerves of the understanding become relaxed and inactive; but God revives his saints again.
He prays to be guided in the way in which he ought to walk, for it is not in man to direct his steps. Above all, the psalmist asks for a good frame of mind, that God would quicken and revive his soul for his names sake.
CXLIII. There is no internal argument to justify the LXX title, A Ps. of [or by] David when his son persecuted him. On the contrary, it contains reminiscences of other and those late Psa 143:3 b is borrowed from Lam 3:6, for clearly the author of the latter passage is more vigorous and original than the author of the Ps. The theme is an ordinary one. The Psalmist prays for deliverance from his foes, who have brought him to deaths door, and imprecates vengeance upon them.
But we should notice one or two points important for religious history. The righteousness of God here and in other writers later than Deuteronomy is equivalent to faithfulness, and especially the fidelity with which God delivers and guides His people (cf. Psa 5:8; Psa 31:1; Psa 71:2; Psa 89:16; Psa 119:40). Next, in contrast to the self-complacency which finds frequent expression in the Pss., the Psalmist confesses that no man is just before God (cf. Job 4:17). Finally, the Psalmist prays that Gods good spirit may lead him in the straight path (so read for land, which is meaningless here). God is to teach to His suppliant what His will is, and instruct him how to do it. For this spiritual conception of piety compare thy holy spirit in Psa 51:11. In Psa 143:8 read, Satisfy me with thy loving-kindness.
PSALM 143
The godly man appeals to the Lord to act in righteousness on behalf of his tried and afflicted servant.
(vv. 1-2) The psalmist appeals to the Lord to hear his prayer and act on his behalf in faithfulness and righteousness, while confessing that he cannot stand before God on the ground of his own righteousness.
(vv. 3-6) The next verses present the sorrowful circumstances that call forth the prayer. The godly man is persecuted by the enemy; his life is crushed; his way is dark, and, he himself, forgotten as one long dead.
The inward effect is that his spirit is overwhelmed, and his heart desolate. He remembers the days of old, and meditates upon all God’s works, but finds no relief for his soul. This persecution of the enemy may, indeed, be the chastening of the Lord, allowing him to fall into darkness and desolation of soul in order that he may learn that by no efforts of his own can he be justified. He is shut up to God and His righteousness. Thus, at length, he stretches forth his hands to the Lord as his only hope.
(vv. 7-10) The latter part of the psalm presents his prayer. He sincerely longs for the favour of the Lord’s face, for without the favour he is as one dead. He longs for the loving-kindness of the Lord to bring him out of the darkness of soul into the light of the morning. He desires to know the way in which the Lord would have him to walk; to be delivered from his enemies; to learn God’s will, and to be led into the land of uprightness.
(vv. 11-12) In the closing verses the psalmist uses a threefold plea. First, he pleads the Name of the Lord; second, the righteousness of the Lord; and third, that he is the servant of the Lord. The Lord cannot be indifferent to the glory of His Name; His righteousness cannot overlook the wickedness of man; His mercy cannot be unmindful of the troubles of His servants.
143:1 [A Psalm of David.] Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: {a} in thy faithfulness answer me, [and] in thy {b} righteousness.
(a) That is, as you have promised to be faithful in your promise to all who trust in you.
(b) That is, according to your free goodness, by which you defend your own.
Psalms 143
In this penitential psalm, David prayed for deliverance and guidance. As in the previous psalm, he called out for help against evil adversaries. This psalm, too, is an individual lament.
"The psalm sharply contrasts the righteousness of Yahweh, God’s unconditioned inclination toward Israel, and Israel’s righteousness which will carry no freight in time of trouble. The psalm understands the vast and unbridgeable distinction between the two parties." [Note: Brueggemann, p. 104.]
1. The psalmist’s complaint 143:1-6
David appealed to God to answer his prayer because God is faithful and righteous. Evidently part of David’s suffering sprang from his own sin, since he asked that God not judge him. If He did, no one could stand because everyone is unrighteous. Another source of distress was an enemy who had ground David down so that he felt very depressed as well as afflicted.
Psa 143:1-12
THIS psalms depth of sadness and contrition, blended with yearning trust, recalls the earlier psalms attributed to David. Probably this general resemblance in inwardness and mood is all that is meant by the superscription in calling it “a psalm of David.” Its copious use of quotations and allusions indicate a late date. But there is no warrant for taking the speaker to be the personified Israel. It is clearly divided into two equal halves, as indicated by the Selah, which is not found in Books 4 and 5, except here, and in Psa 140:1-13. The former half (Psa 143:1-6) is complaint; the latter (Psa 143:7-12), petition. Each part may again be regarded as falling into two equal portions, so that the complaint branches out into a plaintive description of the psalmists peril (Psa 143:1-3), and a melancholy disclosure of his feelings (Psa 143:4-6); while the prayer is similarly parted into cries for deliverance (Psa 143:7-9), and for inward enlightenment and help (Psa 143:10-12). But we are not reading a logical treatise, but listening to the cry of a tried spirit, and so need not wonder if the discernible sequence of thought is here and there broken.
The psalmist knows that his affliction is deserved. His enemy could not have hunted and crushed him (Psa 143:3) unless God had been thereby punishing him. His peril has forced home the penitent conviction of his sin, and therefore he must first have matters set right between him and God by Divine forgiveness. His cry for help is not based upon any claims of his own, nor even on his extremity of need, but solely on Gods character, and especially on the twin attributes of Faithfulness and Righteousness. By the latter is not meant the retributive righteousness which gives according to desert, but that by which He maintains the order of salvation established by His holy love. The prayer anticipates St. Johns declaration that God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” That answer in righteousness is as eagerly desired as Gods dealing on the footing of retributive justice is shrunk from. “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant” is not a prayer referring to a future appearance before the Judge of all, but the judgment deprecated is plainly the enmity of men, which, as the next verse complains, is crushing the psalmists life out of him. His cry is for deliverance from it, but he feels that a more precious gift must precede outward deliverance and Gods forgiveness must first be sealed on his soul. The conviction that, when the light of Gods face is turned on the purest life, it reveals dark stains which retributive justice cannot but condemn, is not. in the psalmists mouth, a palliation of his guilt. Rather, it drives him to take his place among the multitude of offenders, and from that lowly position to cry for pardon to the very Judge whose judgment he cannot meet. The blessedness of contrite trust is that it nestles the closer to God, the more it feels its unworthiness. The child hides its face on the mothers bosom when it has done wrong. God is our refuge from God. A little beam of light steals into the penitents darkness, while he calls himself Gods servant, and ventures to plead that relation, though he has done what was unworthy of it, as a reason for pardon. The significant “For” beginning Psa 143:3 shows that the enemys acts were, to the contrite psalmist, those of Gods stern justice. Psa 143:3 a, b, are moulded on Psa 7:5, and c is verbally identical with Lam 3:6. “The dead of long ago” is by some rendered dead forever; but the translation adopted above adds force to the psalmists sad description of himself, by likening him to those forgotten ones away back in the mists of bygone ages.
In Psa 143:4-6 the record of the emotions caused by his peril follows. They begin with the natural gloom. As in Psa 142:3 (with which this has many points of resemblance, possibly indicating identity of author), he describes his “spirit” as swathed in dark robes of melancholy. His heart, too, the centre of personality, was stunned or benumbed, so that it almost ceased to beat. What should a “servant” of Jehovahs, brought to such a pass, do? If he is truly Gods, he will do precisely what this man did. He will compel his thoughts to take another direction, and call Memory in to fight Despair and feed Hope. His own past and Gods past are arguments enough to cheer the most gloom-wrapped sufferer. “A sorrows crown of sorrow” may be “remembering happier things,” but the remembrance will be better used to discrown a sorrow which threatens to lord it over a life. Psa 77:5-6; Psa 77:11-12, has shaped the expressions here. Both the contrast of present misery with past mercy, and the assurances of present help given by that past mercy, move the psalmist to appeal to God, stretching out his hands in entreaty. Psa 63:1 echoes in Psa 143:6 b, the pathos and beauty of which need no elucidation. The very cracks in parched ground are like mouths opened for the delaying rains; so the singers soul was gaping wide in trouble for Gods coming, which would refresh and fertilise. Blessed is that weariness which is directed to Him; it ever brings the showers of grace for which it longs. The construction of Psa 143:6 b is doubtful, and the supplement “thirsteth” (A.V. and R.V.) is possibly better than the “is” given above.
The second half of the psalm is purely petition. Psa 143:7-9 ask especially for outward deliverance. They abound with reminiscences of earlier psalms. “Make haste, answer me” recalls Psa 69:17; “my spirit faints” is like Psa 84:2; “Hide not Thy face from me” is a standing petition, as in Psa 27:9; Psa 102:2, etc., “Lest I become like those who descend into the pit” is exactly reproduced from Psa 28:1. The prayer for the manifestation of Gods lovingkindness in the morning is paralleled in Psa 90:14, and that for illumination as to the way to walk in is like Exo 33:13 Psa 25:4. The plea “To Thee do I lift my soul” is found in Psa 25:1; Psa 86:4.
The plea appended to the petition in Psa 143:9 b is difficult. Literally, the words run, “To Thee have I covered [myself],” which can best be explained as a pregnant construction, equivalent to “I have fled to Thee and hid myself in Thee.” Much divergence exists in the renderings of the clause. But a slight emendation, adopted by Hupfeld and Cheyne from an ancient Jewish commentator, reads the familiar expression, “I have fled for refuge.” Baethgen prefers to read “have waited,” which also requires but a trivial alteration; while Graetz reaches substantially the same result by another way, and would render “I have hope.”
A glance at these three verses of petition as a whole brings out the sequence of the prayers and of their pleas. The deepest longing of the devout soul is for the shining of Gods face, the consciousness of His loving regard, and that not only because it scatters fears and foes, but because it is good to bathe in that sunshine. The next longing is for the dawning of a glad morning, which will bring to a waiting heart sweet whispers of Gods lovingkindness, as shown by outward deliverances. The night of fear has been dark and tearful, but joy comes with the morning. The next need is for guidance in the way in which a man should go, which here must be taken in the lower sense of practical direction, rather than in any higher meaning. That higher meaning follows in Psa 143:10-12; but in Psa 143:8 the suppliant asks to be shown the path by which he can secure deliverance from his foes. That deliverance is the last of his petitions. His pleas are beautiful as examples of the logic of supplication. He begins with his great need. His spirit faints, and he is on the edge of the black pit into which so much brightness and strength have gone down. The margin is slippery and crumbling; his feet are feeble. One Helper alone can hold him up. But his own exceeding need is not all that he pleads. He urges his trust, his fixing of his desires, hopes, and whole self, by a dead lift of faith, on God. That is a reason for Divine help. Anything is possible rather than that such hope should be disappointed. It cannot be that any man, who has fled for sanctuary to the asylum of Gods heart, should be dragged thence and slain before the God whose altar he has vainly clasped.
The last part (Psa 143:10-12) puts foremost the prayer for conformity of will with Gods and, though it closes with recurring prayer for outward deliverance, yet breathes desires for more inward blessings. As in the preceding verses, there are, in these closing ones, many echoes of other psalms. The sequence of petitions and pleas is instructive. To do, not merely to know, Gods will is the condition of all blessedness, and will be the deepest desire of every man who is truly Gods servant. But that obedience of heart and hand must be taught by God, and He regards our taking Him for our God as establishing a claim on Him to give all illumination of heart and all bending of will and all skill of hand which are necessary to make us doers of His will. His teaching is no mere outward communication of knowledge, but an in-breathing of power to discern, and of disposition and ability to perform, what is His will. Psa 143:10 b is best taken as a continuous sentence, embodying a prayer for guidance. The plea on which it rests remains the same, though the statement of it as a separate clause is not adopted in our translation. For the fact that Gods spirit is “good”-i.e., beneficently self-communicative-heartens us to ask, and binds Him to give, all such direction as is needed. This is not a mere repetition of the prayer in Psa 143:8, but transcends it. “A level land” (or, according to a possible suggested emendation, path) is one in which the psalmist can freely walk, unhindered in doing Gods will. His next petition goes deepest of the three, inasmuch as it asks for that new Divine life to be imparted, without which no teaching to do Gods will can be assimilated, and no circumstances, however favourable, will conduce to doing it. He may not have known all the depth which his prayer sounded; but no man who has real desires to conform heart and life to the supreme will of God but must have felt his need of a purer life to be poured into his spirit. As this prayer is deep, so its plea is high. “For Thy names sake” nothing can be pleaded of such force as that. God supremely desires the glory of His name; and, for the sake of men whose blessedness depends on their knowing and loving it, will do nothing that can dim its lustre. His name is the record of His past acts, the disclosure of that in Him which is knowable. That name contains the principles of all His future acts. He will be what He has been. He will magnify His name and the humblest, most tormented soul that can say, “Thou art my God,” may be sure that Divinely given life will throb in it, and that even its lowliness may contribute to the honour of the name.
The hunted psalmist cannot but come back, in the close of his psalm, to his actual circumstances, for earthly needs do clog the souls wings. He unites righteousness and lovingkindness as cooperating powers, as in Psa 143:1 he had united faithfulness and righteousness. And as in the first verses he had blended pleas drawn from Gods character with those drawn from his relation to God, so he ends his petitions with pleading that he is Gods servant, and, as such, a fit object of Gods protection.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Grant’s Numerical Bible Notes and Commentary
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Fuente: Smith’s Writings on 24 Books of the Bible
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary