Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 16:5
The LORD [is] the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.
5. the portion &c.] Lit. the portion of my share and my cup: i.e. my allotted portion and cup. The word rendered share denotes a portion assigned, whether of land or property or food. The A.V., portion of mine inheritance, implies that Jehovah is compared to the share allotted him in the distribution of the land, a view supported by 5 b, 6; but my cup suggests rather the idea of a portion of food: Jehovah is all that he needs to satisfy hunger and thirst. Comp. Psa 42:2; Joh 6:35; and contrast Psa 11:6.
Thou maintainest my lot ] Lit. thou holdest fast my lot. My welfare is in Thy hand; no man can rob me of it. But the form of the word rendered maintainest is anomalous; and context and parallelism seem to require a further statement of what God is for the Psalmist rather than what He does for him. Hence some critics render, Thou art the possession of my lot.
The language used here reminds us of the Levites, who had no portion or inheritance, but Jehovah was their portion (Num 18:20; Deu 10:9; Deu 18:1). Israel was a nation of priests (Exo 19:6); and spiritually, Jehovah was the portion of Israel (Jer 10:16), and of individual Israelites (Psa 73:26; Psa 119:57; Psa 142:5; Lam 3:24).
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
5, 6. Jehovah is the Psalmist’s portion.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance – In contradistinction from idols. The margin here is, of my part. The word properly means lot, portion, part; and is applicable to the portion of booty or plunder that fell to anyone; or to the portion of land that belonged to anyone in the division of an estate, 2Ki 9:10, 2Ki 9:36-37. The meaning here is, that Yahweh was the being whom the psalmist worshipped as God, and that he sought no possession or comfort which did not proceed from him.
And my cup – The allusion here is to what we drink; and hence, the term is used in the sense of lot or portion. See the notes at Isa 51:17. Compare the notes at Psa 11:6. The idea here is this: The cup that I drink – that cheers, refreshes, and sustains me – is the Lord. I find comfort, refreshment, happiness, in him alone; not in the intoxicating bowl; not in sensual joys; but in God – in his being, perfections, friendship.
Thou maintainest my lot – Thou dost defend my portion, or that which is allotted to me. The reference is to what he specifies in the following verse as his inheritance, and he says that that which was so valuable to him was sustained or preserved by God. He was the portion of his soul; he was the source of all his joy; he maintained or preserved all that was dear to his heart.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 16:5-6
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup.
Mans true treasure in God
I. All true religion consists in deliberately choosing God as my supreme good. Now, how do we possess God? We possess things in one fashion and persons in another. The lowest and most imperfect form of possession is that by which a man simply keeps other people off material good, and asserts the right of disposal of it as he thinks proper. A blind man may have the finest picture that ever was painted; he may call it his, that is to say, nobody else can sell it, but what good is it to him? A lunatic may own a library as big as a Bodleian, but what use is it to him? Does the man that draws the rents of a mountain side, or the poet or painter to whom its cliffs and heather speak far-reaching thoughts, most truly possess it? The highest form of possession, even of creatures, is when they minister to our thought, to our emotion, to our moral and intellectual growth. We possess even things, really, according as we know them and hold communion with them. And when we get up into the region of persons we possess people in the measure in which we understand them, and sympathise with them, and love them. A man that gets the thoughts of a great teacher into his mind, and has his whole being saturated by them, may be said to have made the teacher his own. A friend or a lover owns the heart that he or she loves, and which loves back again; and not otherwise do we possess God. And the ownership must be, from its very nature, reciprocal. And so we read in the Bible, with equal frequency: the Lord is the inheritance of His people, and the people are the inheritance of the Lord. He possesses me, and I possess Him, with reverence be it spoken, by the very same tenure, for whoso loves God has Him, and whom He loves He owns. We have God for ours in the measure in which our minds are actively occupied with thoughts of Him. We know Him. There is a real, adequate knowledge of Him in Jesus Christ; we know God, His character, His heart, His relations to us, His thoughts of good concerning us sufficiently for all intellectual and for all practical purposes. I wish to ask you a plain question. Do you ever think about Him? There is only one way of getting God for yours, and that is by the road of bringing Him into your life by frequent meditation upon His sweetness, and upon the truths that you know about Him. There is no other way by which a spirit can possess a spirit that is not cognisable by sense, except only by the way of thinking about Him to begin with. All else follows that. That is how you hold your dear ones when they go to the other side of the world.
II. This possession is made as sure as God can make it. Thou maintainest my lot. The land, the partition of which amongst the tribes lies at the bottom of the illusive metaphor of my text, was given to them under the sanction of a supernatural defence; and the law of their continuance in it was that they should trust and serve the unseen King. It Was He, according to the theocratic theory of the Old Testament, and not chariots and horses, their own arm and their own sword, that kept them safe, though the enemies on the north and the enemies on the south were big enough to swallow up the little kingdom at a mouthful. And so, says the Psalmist allusively, in a similar manner the Divine Power surrounds the man who takes God for his heritage, and nothing shall take that heritage from him. The lower forms of possession, by which men are called the owners of material possessions, are imperfect, because they are all precarious and temporary. Nothing really belongs to a man if it can be taken from him. What we may lose we can scarcely be said to have. They are mine, they were yours, they will be somebodys else tomorrow. Whilst we have them we do not have them in any deep sense; we cannot retain them, they are not really ours at all. The only thing that is worth calling mine is something that so passes into and saturates the very substance of my soul, that, like a piece of cloth dyed in the grain, as long as two threads hold together the tint will be there. That is how God gives us Himself, and nothing can take that out of a mans soul. He, in the sweetness of His grace, bestows Himself upon man, and guards His own gift, which is Himself, in the heart. He who dwells in God and God in him lives as in the inmost keep and citadel. The noise of battle may rage around the walls, but deep silence and peace are within. The storm may rage round the coasts, but he who has God for his portion dwells in a quiet inland valley where the tempests never come. No outer changes can touch our possession of God. They belong to another region altogether. Other goods may go, but this is held by different tenure. Root yourselves in God, making Him your truest treasure, and nothing can rob you of your wealth. We here in this commercial community see plenty of examples of great fortunes and great businesses melting away like yesterdays snow. Then, too, there is the other thought. He will help us so that no temptations shall have power to make us rob ourselves of our treasure. None can take it from us but ourselves, but we are so weak and surrounded by temptations so strong that we need Him to aid us if we are not to be beguiled by our own treacherous hearts into parting with our treasure. A handful of feeble Jews were nothing against the gigantic might of Assyria, or against the compacted strength of civilised Egypt, but there they stood, on their rocky mountains, defended not by their own strength but by the might of a present God. And so, unfit to cope with the temptations that are round about us as we are, if we cast ourselves upon His power and make Him our supreme delight, nothing shall be able to rob us of that possession and that sweetness.
III. He who thus elects to find his treasure and delight in God is satisfied with his choice. The lines–the measuring cords by which the estate was parted off and determined–the lines are fallen, because they would be thrown, in pleasant places; yea! not as our Bible has it, merely, I have a goodly heritage, putting emphasis on the fact of possession, but the heritage is goodly to me, putting emphasis on the fact of subjective satisfaction with the inheritance that he is to receive. No man that makes the worse choice of earth instead of God ever, in the retrospect, said, I have a goodly heritage. One of the later Roman emperors, who was one of the best of them, said, when he was dying, I have been everything, and it profits me nothing. No creature can satisfy your whole nature. Portions of it may be fed with their appropriate satisfaction, but as long as we feed on the things of earth there will always be part of our nature, like an unfed tiger in a menagerie, growling and grumbling for its prey, whilst its fellows are satisfied for the moment. No man that takes the world for his portion ever said, The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places. For the make of your soul as plainly cries out God! as a fishs fins declare that the sea is its element, or a birds wings mark it out as meant to soar. Man and God fit each other like the two halves of a tally. You will never get rest nor satisfaction, and you will never be able to look to the past with thankfulness, nor into the present with repose, nor into the future with hope, unless you can say, God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever. But oh! if you do, then you have a goodly heritage, a heritage of quiet repose, a heritage of still satisfaction, a heritage which suits, and gratifies, and expands all the powers of a mans nature, and makes him ever capable of larger and larger possessions, of a God who ever gives more than we can receive, that the overplus may draw us to further desire, and the further desire may more fully be satisfied. The one true, pure, abiding joy is to hold fellowship with God and to live in His love. The secret of all our unrest is the going out of our desires after earthly things. They fly forth from our hearts like Noahs dove, and nowhere amid all the weltering flood can find a resting place. The secret of satisfied repose is to set our affections thoroughly on God. Then our wearied hearts, like Noahs dove, will fold their wings and build, and nestle fast by the throne of God. All the happiness of this life, said William Law, is but trying to quench thirst out of golden empty cups. But if we will take the Lord for the portion of our cup we shall never thirst. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The Lord the portion of His people
There are two things intimately connected with each other, and bearing much upon ourselves, which can neither be expressed nor conceived–the extent of human misery, and the depth of human sin. But our text calls us not to measure the extent of human misery, so much as to look at the mercy of God to all them who fear Him; not to let down line and plummet into the abyss of human depravity, but to look upon an exhaustless spring of consolation-the river that maketh glad the city of God, and of which we may drink forever. We have not to listen to the self-upbraidings of those who have chosen wrong; but to describe the happy condition of those who have chosen right. We fearlessly assert that they only are happy who can say, The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance, etc.
I. The character here described.
1. To such a man God is recognised in His real character, sovereign and supreme, the Source of all that is enjoyed here or expected hereafter. Here is the difference between those who serve the Lord and those who serve Him not. There is nothing of good in this world which is not open to the believer as much as to anyone else; all instruments and appliances of happiness are bestowed on him as well as on them. But besides all this he can say, The Lord is the portion, etc. How wretched they who have only this world. 2, But is God your portion? that is the great question. Do you know of any sinking into the grave without God, who have turned away from opportunities which will never return? Think of them, and resolve never to be as they.
II. The distinctive feature of the blessing,–perpetuity. The lot of the believer is to be maintained, no matter how terrible and distressing his circumstances may be. And it is so, But this cannot be said of any worldly lot. Solomon had the worlds best, yet his heart took no rest. Vanity and vexation of spirit is his verdict upon it all. But the wisdom and the power of God uphold the lot in which the believer rejoices. And this is not all a matter of opinion and faith. For the life of the godless will not bear reflection. Hence they hate solitude. But the believer when alone can say, I am not alone, for the Father is with me. And death has lost its sting, and the future brings no fear, for he knows that God will ever maintain his lot. (T. Dale, M. A.)
How to use God
When the soul of man is born at the Cross foot it is born into the inheritance of God; but no soul of man in that first moment of rapture realises all its inheritance, or comprehends what is meant by that gift. But as the years go on, amid the varied teaching of the Holy Spirit and the strain of daily life, the soul begins to press its fence work out and more and more to see God, until in hoary hairs the aged saint, upon the very brink of the other world, is able to feel that though he had all of God in the first moment of his conversion, he never knew ]low much God could be as when the vision of the other world is breaking upon his sight. I want to speak upon how the whole of God is yours, and to teach you how to use God, how to raise harvests from Gods nature for your daily wants, how to find in God the harvests and the vintage and the ore, the jewels, the gold, and all the buried treasures of His nature, and how to take these things which are yours by right, and to make them living, permanent, and blessed realities in your daily experience and life.
1. God is the true portion of the soul. The inheritance is ours by gift. The sun gives itself to the flower to nourish it, and paint it, and feed it; and so the great God, in all the extent of His infinite nature, gives Himself to every soul of man, to become his portion, his inheritance. He gives Himself, but the gift is through birth. When you are regenerate, when you are born again, by the very fact of that supernatural act which has been wrought within your soul you become an heir of God and a joint heir with His Son. But it is not only yours by gift and by birth, it is yours through Christ. And it is by the Holy Ghost. Notice how goodly a heritage it is. Because it is so perfectly adapted to us. Have you ever thought of the perfect adaptation of this earth to man? The macrocosm tallies with the microcosm, the outward with the inward. As the whole nature of man is fitted to the world where God has put him, so is the spirit of man fitted for God, and God for it. Even if there were no revelation of God, by a study of the yearnings of the heart of man, as the heart cries for God, you might formulate the essential features of the being of God: there is such a perfect adaptation between nature and the external world, and there is such a perfect adaptation between the soul and God. It is a goodly portion, because it satisfies us. The unrest of life comes in because you let your desires wander hither and thither like bees over a flower garden. If you would only let God be your portion you would find that rest would hush your soul, and the peace that passeth understanding would settle down upon your life. And it is inexhaustible. There shall never come a time when you and I shall have reached the limit of the fulness of God. And it is secure. The soul that has made God its portion can look upon the unrest of the political world, the strife of man about money, the shattering of colossal fortunes, and the breaking up of great societies secure, because it has found its pasture land, its harvest, its vintage, its ore, in Gods nature, friendship, and presence.
2. How to use it–
(1) Choose it.
(2) Put away out of your life everything that interferes with your enjoyment of God.
(3) Meditate on God.
(4) Appropriate Him. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The Lord the believers portion
It was the speech of Paulinus, when his city was taken by the barbarians, Domine ne excrucier ob anrum et argentum,–Lord, let me not be troubled for my silver and gold which I have lost, for Thou art all things. As Noah, when the whole world was overwhelmed with water, had a fair epitome of it in the ark, having all sorts of beasts and fowls there; so he that in a deluge hath God to be his God hath the original of all mercies. He that enjoyeth the ocean may rejoice though some drops are taken from him. (George Swinnock.)
God the only happy portion.
Some years ago an eminent English noblewoman was studying at our Bible Institute in Chicago. I remember the day she left us. She told these two incidents. She said, One day, over in the home country, I had a letter from a dear friend of mine, a lady, asking me to go at once and see her. I hurried to her home, and as I went up the elegant marble stairway, and saw the costly paintings which lined the walls, I said to myself, I wonder whether all this splendour and wealth make my friend happy. I did not have to wait long to find out. The lady came rushing into the room, dropped into a seat by my side, and told me the misery of her heart. All the honours, all the dignity of her position did not give her joy. A time after this I went to visit a blind woman. She lived in a very poor cottage. It was a rainy day, and the water was dripping through the thatch over her head and gathering in a little pool at her feet. As I went in there, and saw the poverty and the blind eyes, I was driven to turn to the woman and say, Maggie, are you not miserable? She turned those sightless eyes upon me, and said, What, lady,–I miserable! I, the child of a King, inheritor of the mansion He has gone to prepare for me–I miserable? No, lady; I am happy. Wealth had not brought joy to the one; a living faith had brought joy to the other in the midst of her poverty and misfortune. (R. A. Torrey, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 5. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance] The Messiah speaks. Jehovah is the portion of mine inheritance; I seek no earthly good; I desire to do the will of God, and that only. It is God who has given me this lot-to redeem mankind-to have them for mine inheritance. From him I have received the cup of suffering, which I shall drink for their sake, through which I shall impart to them the cup of consolation. He, by the grace of God, has tasted death for every man; and he has instituted the cup of blessing to commemorate his passion and death.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Of mine inheritance, or, of my division, i.e. of that inheritance which God hath mercifully divided or distributed to me, and which I by his grace have chosen for myself. I envy not the vast riches and glory of idolaters, but do heartily rejoice in God as my portion, and desire no better nor no other felicity. God, who hath suffered other nations to walk in their own idolatrous ways, hath granted this favour to me, to know and worship him, the only true God. And as other nations have chosen and do adhere to their false gods, so have I chosen God, and will cleave to him.
And of my cup; the same thing repeated in other words. The portion of my cup, is the portion which is put into my cup, as the ancient manner was in feasts, where each had his portion of meat and of wine allotted to him. See Psa 11:6. The cup oft denotes a mans portion or condition, as Mat 20:22; 26:39.
Thou maintainest my lot, i.e. my inheritance divided to me by lot, as the custom then was, Jos 18:11; Jdg 1:3; q.d. As thou hast given me an excellent lot, having planted me among thine own people, and in that place which thou hast chosen for thy dwelling and worship, so, I doubt not, thou wilt uphold and preserve me there, in spite of all the malicious designs of mine enemies that seek to drive me hence.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5-7. God is the chief good, andsupplies all need (De 10:9).
portion of mine inheritanceand of my cupmay contain an allusion to the daily supply offood, and also to the inheritance of Levi (Deu 18:1;Deu 18:2).
maintainestor, drawestout my lotenlargest it. Ps16:7 carries out this idea more fully.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The Lord [is] the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup,…. This is said by Christ as a priest, and in allusion to the Levitical priests, who had no inheritance in the land of Canaan with their brethren, but the Lord was their part and portion, and their inheritance, Nu 18:20; and it expresses the strong love and affection Christ had for the Lord as his God, the delight and pleasure he had in him, and the satisfaction he had in the enjoyment of him and communion with him, and that it was his meat and drink to serve him, and to do his will; and though his goodness did not extend to him, yet his goodness and happiness as man lay in him: unless the sense should be,
“the Lord is he who gives me the portion of mine inheritance;”
meaning his church and people, all the elect of God, who are Christ’s portion and inheritance, given him by the Father; see De 32:9; And assigns to me my cup, as of blessings, so of sorrows and sufferings, which being measured out, filled up, and put into his hand by his Father, he freely took it, Joh 18:11;
thou maintainest my lot; that is, either his interest in God himself, as his covenant God, which always continued; or the lot of goods, of grace and glory, put into his hands for his people, which always remains; or rather the saints themselves, who, as they are Christ’s portion and inheritance, so they are his lot; in allusion to the land of Canaan, which was divided by lot: these Jehovah took hold of, kept, preserved, and upheld, as the word s signifies; so that they shall never totally and finally fall and perish; and this sense is countenanced by what follows.
s “sustentas”, Musculus, Pagninus, Junius Tremellius, Piscator so Ainsworth; “sustentans”, Montanus, Michaelis; “tenuisti”, Cocceius; “tenendo quasi sustentans”, Gejerus.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
5. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance. Here the Psalmist explains his sentiments more clearly. He shows the reason why he separates himself from idolaters, and resolves to continue in the church of God, why he shuns, with abhorrence, all participation in their errors, and cleaves to the pure worship of God; namely, because he rests in the only true God as his portion. The unhappy restlessness of those blind idolaters (320) whom we see going astray, and running about as if stricken and impelled by madness, is doubtless to be traced to their destitution of the true knowledge of God. All who have not their foundation and trust in God must necessarily be often in a state of irresolution and uncertainty; and those who do not hold the true faith in such a manner as to be guided and governed by it, must be often carried away by the overflowing floods of errors which prevail in the world. (321) This passage teaches us, that none are taught aright in true godliness but those who reckon God alone sufficient for their happiness. David, by calling God the portion of his lot, and his inheritance, and his cup, protests that he is so fully satisfied with him alone, as neither to covet any thing besides him, nor to be excited by any depraved desires. Let us therefore learn, when God offers himself to us, to embrace him with the whole heart, and to seek in him only all the ingredients and the fullness of our happiness. All the superstitions which have ever prevailed in the world have undoubtedly proceeded from this source, that superstitious men have not been contented with possessing God alone. But we do not actually possess him unless “he is the portion of our inheritance;” in other words, unless we are wholly devoted to him, so as no longer to have any desire unfaithfully to depart from him. For this reason, God, when he upbraids the Jews who had wandered from him as apostates, (322) with having run about after idols, addresses them thus, “Let them be thine inheritance, and thy portion.” By these words he shows, that if we do not reckon him alone an all-sufficient portion for us, and if we will have idols along with him, (323) he gives place entirely to them, and lets them have the full possession of our hearts. David here employs three metaphors; he first compares God to an inheritance; secondly, to a cup; and, thirdly, he represents him as He who defends and keeps him in possession of his inheritance. By the first metaphor he alludes to the heritages of the land of Canaan, which we know were divided among the Jews by divine appointment, and the law commanded every one to be content with the portion which had fallen to him. By the word cup is denoted either the revenue of his own proper inheritance, or by synecdoche, ordinary food by which life is sustained, seeing drink is a part of our nourishment. (324) It is as if David had said, God is mine both in respect of property and enjoyment. Nor is the third comparison superfluous. It often happens that rightful owners are put out of their possession because no one defends them. But while God has given himself to us for an inheritance, he has engaged to exercise his power in maintaining us in the safe enjoyment of a good so inconceivably great. It would be of little advantage to us to have once obtained him as ours, if he did not secure our possession of him against the assaults which Satan daily makes upon us. Some explain the third clause as if it had been said, Thou art my ground in which my portion is situated; but this sense appears to me to be cold and unsatisfactory.
(320) “ De ces aveugles d’idolatres.” — Fr.
(321) “ Transportez par les desbordemens impetueux des erreurs qui regnent au monde.” — Fr.
(322) “ Qui s’estoyent destournez de lui comme apostats.” — Fr.
(323) “ Ains que no’vueillions avoir avec lui les idoles.” — Fr.
(324) “ D’autant que le bruvage est une partie de nostre nourriture.” — Fr.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(5) The portion.There is allusion here to the Levitical portion (Num. 18:20): I am thy portion and thine inheritance. The poet, whom we must imagine exiled from his actual inheritance in Canaan, consoles, and more than consoles himself, with the sublime thought that this better part could not be taken away from him. Perowne quotes Savonarolas fine saying, What must not he possess who possesses the possessor of all! and St. Pauls, All things are yours; for ye are Christs, and Christ is Gods; which rather recalls Deu. 32:9, where the correlative truth to Num. 18:20 occurs.
For the figure of the cup, see Psa. 11:6. It had already become a synonym for condition in life.
Thou maintainest.The Hebrew word is peculiar, and causes grammatical difficulties; but the sense is clear. God does not only dispose (cast) the lot of the man in covenant relation to HimHe does that even for unbelieversbut holds it fast in His hand. (See this use of the verb, Amo. 1:5; Amo. 1:8; Pro. 5:5.) At the same time Hitzigs conjecture (tmd for tmkh), is very plausible, Thou art ever my lot.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
5. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance An allusion to the settlement by lot of the land of Canaan among the tribes, and specially to the tribe of Levi, which had no landed estate except the suburbs of their cities, for “Jehovah was his portion.” See Num 18:20; Deu 10:9; and Deu 18:1-2. Jehovah was not only the one who gave him his portion, but he was himself that portion. See notes on Psa 16:2-3; and compare 1Co 3:22-23; Eph 1:11; with note.
My cup See note on Psa 11:6
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
YHWH Maintains His Lot And Destiny (5-6).
‘YHWH is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup,
You maintain my lot.
The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places,
Yes, I have a goodly heritage.’
Rather than drink offerings of blood the psalmist delights in what YHWH has bestowed on him by giving him Himself. YHWH is all to him. It is YHWH of Whom he wants to drink (compare Psa 42:2; Joh 6:35). It is YHWH Who is his portion. And he rejoices in the fact that YHWH has indeed graciously given Himself fully to him. He is the psalmist’s lot, better than his inheritance in the land, He is his all, so that he wants no other. And what is more His faithful God is the One Who maintains that lot for the psalmist by maintaining his position and their relationship constantly. Thus the psalmist can continually delight in YHWH, and that is all he wants to do. It is a goodly heritage, better than any physical inheritance in the land, and means that his lines (the lines marking off his lot) have fallen to him in pleasant places. They have separated him off to God. So to the psalmist YHWH is all.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Psa 16:5. The Lord is the portion, &c. See the note on Psa 11:6. Thou maintainest my lot, means that God had preserved for him the glory to which he was to be exalted in the quality of Messiah. See Psa 2:8. Lot is here put for heritage, in allusion to the division which was made of the land of Canaan by lot. The same allusion is carried on in the next verse; where lines signify the lot or tract of land which it was anciently the custom to divide by lines. The goodly heritage was, first, the glory to which he was advanced by his ascension; and, secondly, the establishment of his kingdom throughout the world.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 513
GOD HIMSELF HIS PEOPLES PORTION
Psa 16:5-7. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons.
THIS psalm is called Michtam, that is, A golden psalm. And a golden psalm it is, whether we interpret it of David, or of Christ. To both it is applicable; to David, as a type of Christ; and to Christ, as so typified. In all the word of God there is not a passage on which greater stress is laid, as establishing beyond a doubt the Messiahship of Jesus; to whom alone the latter part of the psalm can with any truth be literally applied [Note: Act 2:25-31; Act 13:35-37.]. The former part of it, on the contrary, is much more applicable to David himself. The truth is, I apprehend, that David began to write respecting himself; but was overruled and inspired to speak things which he himself did not fully comprehend, and to declare literally respecting the Messiah, what was only in a very lax sense true in relation to himself. This we know to have been the case with the prophets generally: they were inspired to predict the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow, whilst they themselves understood not their own prophecies [Note: 1Pe 1:10-12.]. They spoke of one point which was uppermost in their own minds; and God overruled them to speak in language that was applicable rather to another point, which he had ordained them to foretell. Thus did Caiaphas the high priest, when advising that Jesus should be put to death [Note: Joh 11:49-52.]: and thus did David, in this and several other of his psalms [Note: Ps. 22. 40 and 69.]. We consider the words of our text, together with all that precedes it, as spoken by David respecting himself: and in them we see,
I.
The blessed portion of Gods people
They have God himself for their portion and their inheritance
[There seems, in this expression, some reference to the custom which obtained of sending to different guests, when assembled at a feast, such a portion as the Master of the feast judged expedient [Note: Gen 43:34. 1Sa 1:4-5.]. But the principal allusion evidently is to the division of the land of Canaan by lot, and the assigning to all the different tribes the portion prepared for them. On that occasion the tribe of Levi was distinguished from all the other tribes in this, that whereas all the rest had a distinct and separate inheritance allotted to them, they had none; the Lord himself vouchsafing to be their inheritance [Note: Num 18:20. Deu 18:1-2.]. The sacrifices which from time to time were offered to the Lord were appointed for their support. Now, in allusion to this, David says, The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup. He was not of the tribe of Levi, but of Judah: and therefore respecting him it could be true only in a spiritual and mystical sense: and in that sense it is equally true respecting every believer at this day. We are all a kingdom of priests: and we live altogether upon the great sacrifice, even the flesh of Christ, and the blood of Christ, which were offered for the sins of the whole world. By the very terms of the New Covenant, God, whilst he takes us for his people, gives himself to us as our God [Note: Jer 31:31-33.]: so that all who believe in Jesus may claim him as their God. This, I say, is not the privilege of Prophets and Apostles only, but of every the weakest believer in the Church of God: for we are expressly told, that to as many as received him Jesus gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name [Note: Joh 1:12.]. The very instant they believed in Christ, the relation between God and them was formed, and God became their Father, their Friend, their Portion, their eternal great Reward [Note: Gen 15:1.]. To us then belongs this privilege as well as to David; and with him we may say, O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord [Note: ver. 2.].]
This portion too is secured to them
[Israel in Canaan were surrounded with enemies on every side: but God, who had allotted to every tribe its portion, engaged to maintain their lot. Even when all the males assembled thrice a year at Jerusalem, God undertook to be a Protector of their families and their possessions: and to this hour would they have enjoyed their inheritance, if they had not by their transgressions provoked God to forsake them. But us, who have him for our inheritance, he will not forsake: as he has said, The Lord will not forsake his people; because it hath pleased him to make you his people [Note: 1Sa 12:22.]: and again, I will never leave thee; I will never, never forsake thee [Note: Heb 13:3; Heb 13:6.]. Not but that he will punish us for our transgressions: and so punish, as to make us feel what an evil and bitter thing it is to depart from him: but his loving-kindness will he not utterly take from us, nor suffer his truth to fail [Note: Psa 89:30-35.]. It is not with us as with Israel in Canaan: they were left to forfeit and to lose their lot: but God, in his mercy, engages to preserve our inheritance for us, and us for it [Note: 1Pe 1:5]: and not only never to depart from us, but so to put his fear in our hearts that we may not depart from him [Note: Jer 32:38-40.].
Such then is thy portion, O believer; and such is thy security that it shall be continued to thee.]
And is such the inheritance of all Gods people? We shall not wonder then at,.
II.
The feelings which they have in the contemplation of it
Behold how David expresses,
1.
His delight in it
[All the pious amongst the Israelites would find some reason to be pleased and delighted with the portion that was assigned them. To some their proximity to the sea would be a matter of joy; to others, their pasturage; to others, their rocks and fortresses: so that all in their respective places would say, The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. But how well may they adopt that language who have the Lord for their portion? Tell me, Believer, what else canst thou want? What can add any thing unto thee? What is there which thou dost not find in thy God? If thou possessest ever so great a portion of earthly goods, are they not all as dung and dross in comparison of this? Or, if thou art destitute even as Lazarus himself, is not all sense of indigence lost in the contemplation of thy better wealth? What the worldling has, he holds by a very uncertain tenure, and that only for a moment: but what thou hast is secured to thee by the promise and oath of God, and is to be enjoyed by thee with ever-augmenting zest for ever and ever. Say, Dost thou not, in this survey of thine inheritance, pity those who can rest in any earthly portion? Art thou not ready to weep over those as maniacs, who fancy themselves kings and emperors, whilst they are but little elevated above the beasts, yea, in some respects inferior to them; because they fulfil in a far less degree the true ends of their creation? Well indeed mayest thou exult when thou surveyest thy portion! When thou beholdest the sun and moon and stars, together with this globe whereon thou standest, and callest to mind, that the Maker of them all is thy friend, thy portion, thine inheritance; methinks it is almost strange that the contemplation is not too much for frail mortality to bear. To be lost in wonder, and be swallowed up in ecstasy, is no more than what may be expected of thee from day to day.]
2.
His thankfulness to God for it
[David clearly saw that of himself he would never have chosen such a portion as this. His earthly mind would have been as grovelling as that of others, if God himself had not counselled him, and discovered to him the vanity of all earthly good. Amidst the various trials which he had endured, God had drawn nigh to him; and in the night-seasons of affliction had instructed him, and had revealed himself to him in all his beauty and excellency and glory. Thus he had enabled David to make a fair estimate of the portion offered him, as compared with that which the world around him enjoyed. In this view of the mercy vouchsafed unto him, David says, I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel; my reins also instruct me in the night-seasons. And is it not thus with every believer? Do you not know assuredly, that of yourselves you would never have chosen God for your portion? Are you not well convinced, that you would not have chosen him if he had not chosen you, nor loved him, if he had not first loved you? Did you not even hold out against his counsels for a long time, till he forced conviction on your mind, and made you willing in the day of his power? If you have been kept awake in the night-seasons, and your reins instructed you, till with a compunction you were pricked to the heart; or, if you have been visited with trials that were necessary to wean you from the things of time and sense, do you not bless him for it, and for the instruction which he then sealed upon your mind [Note: Job 33:15-20.]? Yes; and with your whole hearts. You see in what a portion you would have rested, if these means had not been used to bring you to a better mind; and, if they had been a thousand times heavier than they were, you would now account them as unworthy of a thought, in comparison of the blessings, to the possession of which they have introduced you. I hear you adoring God, and saying, I know that in very faithfulness thou didst afflict me: for before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept thy law. Go on, then, blessing and praising God; and never forget that by the grace of God you are what you are.]
To those who possess not this portion, I will give a word of counsel in the name of the Lord
[Survey the portion of the worldling, and see how empty it is. Look back on all that thou hast enjoyed, and see how little solid comfort it has afforded Then survey the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Think what it must be to say of God, O God, thou art my God; and of Christ, Thou art my Friend, and my Beloved Then turn to the Holy Scriptures, and see what counsel God has given thee there: Wherefore do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness [Note: Isa 55:1-2.]. Nothing does God desire more than to give himself to you for a portion, if you will but receive him. He complains, Ye will not come unto me that ye may have life. How often would I have gathered you, and given myself to you, but you would not! Dear Brethren, let God choose your inheritance for you: and he will be as much delighted to enrich your souls, as ever you can be to be enriched by him. Indeed by imparting himself to you, he himself will be enriched: for he regards you as his property, and says of you, The Lords portion is his people, and Jacob is the lot of his inheritance [Note: Deu 32:9.].]
To those who already enjoy this portion, I will offer a word of congratulation
[Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, and the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance [Note: Psa 33:12.]: yes, Happy art thou, O Israel, O people saved by the Lord [Note: Deu 33:29.]. I ask not what you possess, or what you want: if you had empires, they could add nothing to you; and if you want bread to eat, it can take but little from you. Look at Paul and Silas when in prison, and their backs torn with scourges: their situation was to them as the very gate of heaven [Note: Act 16:25.]. So, if only you live nigh to God, and in the near prospect of the eternal world, you also shall be happy under all circumstances whatsoever. Imitate, for once, the worldling who is just about to take possession of his inheritance: with what joy he surveys it, and anticipates the delight which he will experience in the full possession of it! Thus go ye, and survey your inheritance. See the state of those who are now possessed of their entire lot. Behold how they feast in the presence of their God! Think, if you can, what God is to them [Note: Rev 21:4-5.]: and know, that their bliss is yours, in all its fulness, and for ever. Think how you will then bless the Lord for giving you counsel. Live, then, now as persons sensible of their privileges; and say, as ye may well do, The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, and I have a goodly heritage.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
These are very blessed things spoken of, both as they relate to Christ, and to his people in him. Jesus in his human nature, uniformly made Jehovah his portion, and looked unto him to maintain his cause, and carry him safely through his vast undertaking. He not only considered it his meat and his drink to do his Father’s will, but his redeemed he considered a goodly heritage. And what is it to his people but the same? They who have chosen God for their portion, find that portion to be a goodly one, and are fully satisfied with Jesus, for they need no other.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 16:5 The LORD [is] the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.
Ver. 5. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance ] Therefore I have neither need nor mind to run a madding after dumb idols; for he is good original, universal, all sufficient, and satisfactory, proportionable, and fitting to my soul; so that, having him, I am abundantly provided for.
And of my cup
Thou maintainest my lot
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psalms
MAN’S TRUE TREASURE IN GOD
Psa 16:5 – Psa 16:6
We read, in the law which created the priesthood in Israel, that ‘the Lord spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them. I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel’ Num 18:20. Now there is an evident allusion to that remarkable provision in this text. The Psalmist feels that in the deepest sense he has no possession amongst the men who have only possessions upon earth, but that God is the treasure which he grasps in a rapture of devotion and self-abandonment. The priest’s duty is his choice. He will ‘walk by faith and not by sight.’
Are not all Christians priests? and is not the very essence and innermost secret of the religious life this-that the heart turns away from earthly things and deliberately accepts God as its supreme good, and its only portion? These first words of my text contain the essence of all true religion.
The connection between the first clause and the others is closer than many readers perceive. The ‘lot’ which ‘Thou maintainest,’ the ‘pleasant places,’ the ‘goodly heritage,’ all carry on the metaphor, and all refer to God as Himself the portion of the heart that chooses and trusts Him. ‘Thou maintainest my lot’-He who is our inheritance also guards our inheritance, and whosoever has taken God for his possession has a possession as sure as God can make it. ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage’-the heritage that is goodly is God Himself. When a man chooses God for his portion, then, and then only, is he satisfied-’satisfied with favour, and full of the goodness of the Lord.’ Let me try to expand and enforce these thoughts, with the hope that we may catch something of their fervour and their glow.
I. The first thought, then, that comes out of the words before us is this: all true religion has its very heart in deliberately choosing God as my supreme good.
‘The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup.’ The two words which are translated in our version ‘portion’ and ‘inheritance’ are substantially synonymous. The latter of them is used continually in reference to the share of each individual, or family, or tribe in the partition of the land of Canaan. There is a distinct allusion, therefore, to that partition in the language of our text; and the two expressions, part or ‘portion,’ and ‘inheritance,’ are substantially identical, and really mean just the same as if the single expression had stood-’The Lord is my Portion.’
I may just notice in passing that these words are evidently alluded to in the New Testament, in the Epistle to the Colossians, where Paul speaks of God ‘having made us meet for our portion of the inheritance of the saints in light.’
And then the ‘portion of my cup’ is a somewhat strange expression. It is found in one of the other Psalms, with the meaning ‘fortune,’ or ‘destiny,’ or ‘sum of circumstances which make up a man’s life.’ There may be, of course, an allusion to the metaphor of a feast here, and God may be set forth as ‘the portion of my cup,’ in the sense of being the refreshment and sustenance of a man’s soul. But I should rather be disposed to consider that there is merely a prolongation of the earlier metaphor, and that the same thought as is contained in the figure of the ‘inheritance’ is expressed here as in common conversation it is often expressed by the word ‘cup,’ namely, ‘that which makes up a man’s portion in this life.’ It is used with such a meaning in the well-known words, ‘My cup runneth over,’ and in another shape in ‘The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?’ It is the sum of circumstances which make up a man’s ‘fortune.’ So the double metaphor presents the one thought of God as the true possession of the devout soul.
Now, how do we possess God? We possess things in one fashion and persons in another. The lowest and most imperfect form of possession is that by which a man simply keeps other people off material good, and asserts the right of disposal of it as he thinks proper. A blind man may have the finest picture that ever was painted; he may call it his, that is to say, nobody else can sell it, but what good is it to him? A lunatic may own a library as big as the Bodleian, but what use is it to him? Does the man who collects the rents of a mountain-side, or the poet or painter to whom its cliffs and heather speak far-reaching thoughts, most truly possess it? The highest form of possession, even of things, is when they minister to our thought, to our emotion, to our moral and intellectual growth. We possess even them really, according as we know them and hold communion with them. But when we get up into the region of persons, we possess them in the measure in which we understand them, and sympathise with them, and love them. Knowledge, intercourse, sympathy, affection-these are the ways by which men can possess men, and spirits, spirits. A disciple who gets the thoughts of a great teacher into his mind, and has his whole being saturated by them, may be said to have made the teacher his own. A friend or a lover owns the heart that he or she loves, and which loves back again; and not otherwise do we possess God.
Such ownership must be, from its very nature, reciprocal. There must be the two sides to it. And so we read in the Bible, with equal frequency: the Lord is the inheritance of His people, and His people are the inheritance of the Lord. He possesses me, and I possess Him-with reverence be it spoken-by the very same tenure; for whoso loves God has Him, and whom He loves He owns. There is deep and blessed mystery involved in this wonderful prerogative, that the loving, believing heart has God for its possession and indwelling Guest; and people are apt to brush such thoughts aside as mystical. But, like all true Christian mysticism, it is intensely practical.
We have God for ours, first, in the measure in which our minds are actively occupied with thoughts of Him. We have no merely mystical or emotional possession of God to preach. There is a real, adequate knowledge of Him in Jesus Christ. We know God, His character, His heart, His relations to us, His thoughts of good concerning us, sufficiently for all intellectual and for all practical purposes.
I wish to ask you a plain question: Do you ever think about Him? There is only one way of getting God for yours, and that is by bringing Him into your life by frequent meditation upon His sweetness, and upon the truths that you know about Him. There is no other way by which a spirit can possess a spirit, that is not cognisable by sense, except only by the way of thinking about him, to begin with. All else follows that. That is how you hold your dear ones when they go to the other side of the world. That is how you hold God, who dwells on the other side of the stars. There is no way to ‘have’ Him, but through the understanding accepting Him, and keeping firm hold of Him. Men and women that from Monday morning to Saturday night never think of His name-how do they possess God? And professing Christians that never remember Him all the day long-what absurd hypocrisy it is for them to say that God is theirs!
Yours, and never in your mind! When your husband, or your wife, or your child, goes away from home for a week, do you forget them as utterly as you forget God? Do you have them in any sense if they never dwell in the ‘study of your imagination,’ and never fill your thoughts with sweetness and with light?
And so again when the heart turns to Him, and when all the faculties of our being, will, hope, and imagination, and all our affections and all our practical powers, when they all touch Him, each in its proper fashion, then and then only can we in any reasonable and true sense be said to possess God.
Thought, communion, sympathy, affection, moral likeness, practical obedience, these are the way-and not by mystical raptures only-by which, in simple prose fact, it is possible for the finite to grasp the infinite, and for a man to be the owner of God.
Now there is another consideration very necessary to be remembered, and that is that this possession of God involves, and is possible only by, a deliberate act of renunciation. The Levite’s example, that is glanced at in my text, is always our law. You must have no part or inheritance amongst the sons of earth if God is to be your inheritance. Or, to put it into plain words, there must be a giving up of the material and the created if there is to be a possession of the divine and the heavenly. There cannot be two supreme, any more than there can be two pole-stars, one in the north and the other in the south, to both of which a man can be steering. You cannot stand with
‘One foot on land, and one on sea,
To one thing constant never.’
And what is this renunciation? There must be, first of all, a fixed, deliberate, intelligent conviction lying at the foundation of my life that God is best, and that He and He only is my true delight and desire. Then there must be built upon that intelligent conviction that God is best, the deliberate turning away of the heart from these material treasures. Then there must be the willingness to abandon the outward possession of them, if they come in between us and Him. Just as travellers in old days, that went out looking for treasures in the western hemisphere, were glad to empty their ships of their less precious cargo in order to load them with gold, you must get rid of the trifles, and fling these away if ever they so take up your heart that God has no room there. Or rather, perhaps, if the love of God in any real measure, howsoever imperfectly, once gets into a man’s soul, it will work there to expel and edge out the love and regard for earthly things. Just as when the chemist collects oxygen in a vessel filled with water, as it passes into the jar it drives out the water before it; the love of God, if it come into a man’s heart in any real sense, in the measure in which it comes, will deliver him from the love of the world. But between the two there is warfare so internecine and endless that they cannot co-exist: and here, to-day, it is as true as ever it was that if you want to have God for your portion and your inheritance you must be content to have no inheritance amongst your brethren, nor part amongst the sons of earth.
Men and women! are you ready for that renunciation? Are you prepared to say, ‘I know that the sweetness of Thy presence is the truest sweetness that I can taste; and lo! I give up all besides and my own self’?
‘O God of good, the unfathomed Sea!
Who would not yield himself to Thee?’
II. Now let me turn to the next point that is here, viz. that this possession is as sure as God can make it. ‘Thou maintainest my lot.’ Thou art Thyself both my heritage and the guardian of my heritage. He that possesses God, says the text, by implication, is lifted above all fear and chance of change.
The land, the partition of which amongst the tribes lies at the bottom of the allusive metaphor of my text, was given to them under the sanction of a supernatural defence; and the law of their continuance in it was that they should trust and serve the unseen King. It was He, according to the theocratic theory of the Old Testament, and not chariots and horses, their own arm and their own sword, that kept them safe, though the enemies on the north and the enemies on the south were big enough to swallow up the little kingdom at a mouthful.
And so, says the Psalmist allusively, in a similar manner, the Divine Power surrounds the man who chooses God for his heritage, and nothing shall take that heritage from him.
The lower forms of possession, by which men are called the owners of material goods, are imperfect, because they are all precarious and temporary. Nothing really belongs to a man if it can be taken from him. What we may lose we can scarcely be said to have. They are mine, they were yours, they will be somebody else’s to-morrow. Whilst we have them we do not have them in any deep sense; we cannot retain them, they are not really ours at all. The only thing that is worth calling mine is something that so passes into and saturates the very substance of my soul that, like a piece of cloth dyed in the grain, as long as two threads hold together the tint will be there. That is how God gives us Himself, and nothing can take Him out of a man’s soul. He, in the sweetness of His grace, bestows Himself upon man, and guards His own gift in the heart, which is Himself. He who dwells in God and God in him lives as in the inmost keep and citadel. The noise of battle may roar around the walls, but deep silence and peace are within. The storm may rage upon the coasts, but he who has God for his portion dwells in a quiet inland valley where tempests never come. No outer changes can touch our possession of God. They belong to another region altogether. Other goods may go, but this is held by a different tenure. The life of a Christian is lived in two regions: in the one his life has its roots, and its branches extend to the other. In the one there may be whirling storms and branches may toss and snap, whilst in the other, to which the roots go down, may be peace. Root yourselves in God, making Him your truest treasure, and nothing can rob you of your wealth.
We here in this commercial community see many examples of great fortunes and great businesses melting away like yesterday’s snow. And surely the certain alternations of ‘booms’ and bad times might preach to some of you this lesson: Set not your hearts on that which can pass, but make your treasure that which no man can take from you.
Then, too, there is the other thought. God will help us so that no temptations shall have power to make us rob ourselves of our treasure. None can take it from us but ourselves, but we are so weak and surrounded by temptations so strong that we need Him to aid us if we are not to be beguiled by our own treacherous hearts into parting with our highest good. A handful of feeble Jews were nothing against the gigantic might of Assyria, or against the compacted strength of civilised Egypt; but there they stood, on their rocky mountains, defended, not by their own strength, but by the might of a present God. And so, unfit to cope with the temptations round us as we are, if we cast ourselves upon His power and make Him our supreme delight, nothing shall be able to rob us of that possession and that sweetness.
And there is just one last point that I would refer to here on this matter of our stable possession of God. It is very beautiful to observe that this psalm, which, in the language of my text, rises to the very height of spiritual and, in a good sense, mystical devotion, recognising God as the One Good for souls, is also one of the psalms which has the clearest utterance of the faith in immortality. Just after the words of my text we read these others, in which the Old Testament confidence in a life beyond the grave reaches its very climax: ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.’
That connection teaches us that the measure in which a man feels his true possession of God here and now, is the measure in which his faith rises triumphant over the darkness of the grave, and grasps, with unfaltering confidence, the conviction of an immortal life. The more we know that God is our portion and our treasure, the more sure, and calmly sure, we shall be that a thing like death cannot touch a thing like that, that the mere physical fact is far too small and insignificant a fact to have any power in such a region as that; that death can no more affect a man’s relation to God, whom he has learned to love and trust, than you can cut thought or feeling with a knife. The two belong to two different regions. Thus we have here the Old Testament faith in immortality shaping itself out of the Old Testament enjoyment of communion with God, with a present God. And you will find the very same process of thought in that seventy-third psalm, which stands in some respects side by side with this one as attaining the height of mystical devotion, joined with a very clear utterance of the faith in immortality: ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee! Thou wilt guide me with Thy counsel, and afterwards receive me to glory.’
So Death himself cannot touch the heritage of the man whose heritage is the Lord. And his ministry is not to rob us of our treasures as he robs men of all treasures besides for ‘their glory shall not descend after them’, but to give us instead of the ‘earnest of the inheritance’-the bit of turf by which we take possession of the estate-the broad land in all the amplitude of its sweep, into our perpetual possession. ‘Thou maintainest my lot.’ Neither death nor life ‘shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
III. And then the last thought here is that he who thus elects to find his treasure and delight in God is satisfied with his choice. ‘The lines’-the measuring-cord by which the estate was parted off and determined-’are fallen in pleasant places; yea!’-not as our Bible has it, merely ‘I have a goodly heritage,’ putting emphasis on the fact of possession, but-’the heritage is goodly to me ,’ putting emphasis on the fact of subjective satisfaction with it.
I have no time to dwell upon the thoughts that spring from these words. Take them in the barest outline. No man that makes the worse choice of earth instead of God, ever, in the retrospect, said: ‘I have a goodly heritage.’ One of the later Roman Emperors, who was among the best of them, said, when he was dying: ‘I have been everything, and it profits me nothing.’ No creature can satisfy your whole nature. Portions of it may be fed with their appropriate satisfaction, but as long as we feed on the things of earth there will always be part of our being like an unfed tiger in a menagerie, growling for its prey, whilst its fellows are satisfied for the moment. You can no more give your heart rest and blessedness by pitching worldly things into it, than they could fill up Chat Moss, when they made the first Liverpool and Manchester Railway, by throwing in cartloads of earth. The bog swallowed them and was none the nearer being filled.
No man who takes the world for his portion ever said, ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places.’ For the make of your soul as plainly cries out ‘God!’ as a fish’s fins declare that the sea is its element, or a bird’s wings mark it out as meant to soar. Man and God fit each other like the two halves of a tally. You will never get rest nor satisfaction, and you will never be able to look at the past with thankfulness, nor at the present with repose, nor into the future with hope, unless you can say, ‘God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.’ But oh! if you do, then you have a goodly heritage, a heritage of still satisfaction, a heritage which suits, and gratifies, and expands all the powers of a man’s nature, and makes him ever capable of larger and larger possession of a God who ever gives more than we can receive, that the overplus may draw us to further desire, and the further desire may more fully be satisfied.
The one true, pure, abiding joy is to hold fellowship with God and to live in His love. The secret of all our unrest is the going out of our desires after earthly things. They fly forth from our hearts like Noah’s raven, and nowhere amid all the weltering flood can find a resting-place. The secret of satisfied repose is to set our affections thoroughly on God. Then our wearied hearts, like Noah’s dove returning to its rest, will fold their wings and nestle fast by the throne of God. ‘All the happiness of this life,’ said William Law, ‘is but trying to quench thirst out of golden empty cups.’ But if we will take the Lord for ‘the portion of our cup,’ we shall never thirst.
Let me beseech you to choose God in Christ for your supreme good and highest portion; and having chosen, to cleave to your choice. So shall you enter on possession of good that truly shall be yours, even ‘that good part, which shall not be taken away from’ you.
And, lastly, remember that if you would have God, you must take Christ. He is the true Joshua, who puts us in possession of the inheritance. He brings God to you-to your knowledge, to your love, to your will. He brings you to God, making it possible for your poor sinful souls to enter His presence by His blood; and for your spirits to possess that divine Guest. ‘He that hath the Son, hath the Father’; and if you trust your souls to Him who died for you, and cling to Him as your delight and your joy, you will find that both the Father and the Son come to you and make their home in you. Through Christ the Son you will receive power to become sons of God, and ‘if children, then heirs, heirs of God,’ because ‘joint heirs with Christ.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Psa 16:5-6
5The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup;
You support my lot.
6The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me.
Psa 16:5-6 Possibly the drink offering mentioned in Psa 16:4 reminded the psalmist of the idiom of cup, which denoted one’s destiny (cf. Psa 11:6; Psa 23:5; Psa 75:8; Psa 116:13). Usually it has a negative connotation but not here.
The lot alludes to the dividing of the land of Canaan into tribal allocations by Joshua, by lot (cf. Joshua 13-19), which is the prophetic fulfillment of YHWH’s promise to Abraham (cf. Gen 12:1-3). The Levites and Priests inherited only 48 cities (cf. Joshua 20-24). They were said to have the Lord Himself as their inheritance (cf. Num 18:20; Deu 18:1). However, in the Psalms this designation is expanded to all faithful followers (cf. Psa 73:26; Psa 119:57; Psa 142:5; also Lam 3:24).
Psa 16:6 continues this imagery by lines have fallen to me. The psalmist asserts that his inheritance is beautiful (i.e., Jer 3:19).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
portion. Note the four things: portion (Psa 16:5); path, presence, pleasures (Psa 16:11).
maintainest = wilt maintain.
lot. Put by Figure of speech Metonomy (of Cause), App-6, for
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Psalm 16:5-8
Psa 16:5-8
“Jehovah is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup:
Thou maintainest my lot.
The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places;
Yea, I have a goodly heritage.
I will bless Jehovah who hath given me counsel;
Yea, my heart instructeth me in the night seasons.
I have set Jehovah always before me:
Because lie is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.”
The first two verses here are loaded with terminology that is suggestive of the division of the land of Canaan among the tribes of Israel, in which situation it will be remembered that the Levites had no portion except God. They did not inherit the land as did the other tribes.
The Holy One in the focus of this prophecy was another who, like the Levites, had his portion in God. This too excludes the application of the prophecy to David. Certainly the King of Israel was a landed potentate of the first rank; and, in no sense, was his portion “in Jehovah.” His portion also included the kingship over all Palestine.
“Jehovah … hath given me counsel.” The import of this goes far beyond the inspiration evident in David’s writings. Only of Jesus Christ is it possible to be said that “His words are indeed the words of God.” Joh 12:48-50 emphasizes this truth dramatically:
“He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I spake not from myself; but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is the life eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak.”
Nothing of this type of counseling from God was ever either promised or attained on the part of David.
“I have set Jehovah always before me.” This was never done by David, or any other king of Israel; and as Kidner pointed out, “Of the Messiah alone can such words as these be perfectly and literally true. for example, the always of this verse.” The apostle Peter himself confirmed the accuracy of that opinion in Act 2:25, where he quoted Psa 16:8 and through the rest of this Psalm, stating specifically that David said these things concerning Jesus Christ the Messiah.
Many of the errors on the part of commentators reluctant to find any reference here to someone other than David are due to one of the silly rules of radical critics who have postulated the proposition that faith in the resurrection from the dead does not appear in Israel at all until that nation’s contact with Persia, following the Babylonian captivity. This false proposition is mentioned by Alexander Maclaren.
FAITH IN THE RESURRECTION
True belief in the resurrection existed in Israel long prior to any contact of that nation with Persia; and besides that, Persia never had any certain word whatever about the resurrection; and Israel certainly could not have learned anything from Persia, especially anything about the resurrection, of which Persia itself was ignorant.
Here is the proof of the knowledge of the resurrection throughout the whole history of Israel, beginning with the ancestor of all Jews, namely, Abraham.
(1) Abraham would never have lifted the knife to slay Isaac, if he had not truly believed in the power of God to raise the dead (Heb 11:17-19).
(2) Moses, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, and the prophets, Samuel, David, and all the ancient Jewish worthies:
“Subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens, etc. Women received their dead by a resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, THAT THEY MIGHT OBTAIN A BETTER RESURRECTION” (Heb 11:32-34).
These remarkable lines indicate that all of the achievements of ancient Jewish heroes were made possible by their faith in the resurrection of the dead.
(3) Job believed that, even after the worms had destroyed his body that, “In his flesh he should see God,” as clear a prophecy of the resurrection as can be imagined. The genius of George Frederick Handel’s Messiah reaches its glorious climax in that soul-stirring aria regarding the Messiah, that “HE SHALL STAND …” at the latter day upon the earth.
(4) Centuries before Israel had any contact with Persia, Isaiah promised that, “Thy dead shall live; my dead bodies shall arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust. The earth shall cast forth the dead.” (Isa 26:19). (See our comment on this and similar passages in Vol. 1 of our Major Prophets Series.)
(5) The Prophet Daniel prophesied categorically a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked (Dan 12:2).
(6) Isa 25:7 is also a prophecy of the conquest of death, that is, the resurrection. The only veil that was a covering for all the peoples of this earth is death; and this corresponds with the typical and symbolical significance of the veil as “death” standing as the principal demarcation between earth and heaven. See our comment on this in the works mentioned in the paragraph above.
(7) Ezekiel’s chapter on the “Valley of the Dry Bones” is also a portion of the Bible that could never have been written without the general belief of the Hebrew nation in the doctrine of the resurrection.
While it is true that the Old Testament revelation of the doctrine of the Resurrection falls short of the vivid promises of it in the New Testament, those who deny its actual existence in the Old Testament as well must be classified as “untaught” in the word of the Lord.
E.M. Zerr:
Psa 16:5. Portion is from a word that has the sense of allotment or ration. The richest ration anyone could have would be the Lord, and David claimed to have received it. No heir could complain of the manner in which an inheritance was settled if he received such a liberal portion as that.
Psa 16:6. Lines has the same force as portion in the preceding verse. It is defined in Strong’s lexicon thus: “a rope (as twisted), especially a measuring line; by implication a district or inheritance (as measured).” Sometimes when an inheritance of land is being divided one heir may think the line is not drawn in the proper place; that he is being deprived of some of the good land. David used the circumstance as an illustration and said he was satisfied with the places allotted to him. That was because the “boundary line” had been drawn in such a place that his portion included the Lord, the richest spot in the universe.
Psa 16:7. David blessed or praised the Lord for his helpful counsel or instruction. Reins refers to the mind and David meant he could meditate profitably in the night hours on the counsel the Lord had given him in the day. This is the idea expressed in Psa 1:2 and my comments thereon.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
A Goodly Heritage
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup:
Thou maintainest my lot.
The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yea, I have a goodly heritage.Psa 16:5-6.
Written in time of urgent need, this Psalm opens in the form of a prayer, which is, however, shortly changed into a pious meditation. The Psalmist declares that he has vowed allegiance to God, fellowship with the holy, self-severance from idolaters (Psa 16:2-4). Jehovah is his possession, and with such an inheritance he is all contentment (Psa 16:5-6). Jehovah inspires him with wisdom, more especially with moral discrimination; and Jehovah is before him and about him, so that he may confidently expect to show an unswerving front to fortune (Psa 16:7-8). And therefore his heart and soul rejoice; and therefore, too, in spite of present dangers, his whole man has confidence that he shall not be numbered with the inhabitants of Sheol, but shall experience life and happiness, the happiness which God continually showers with liberal hand on those He loves (Psa 16:9-11).
Here is a Psalm well worthy to be called, as the margin of King Jamess Bible translates the Jewish heading, a golden Psalm. Golden indeed it is; it belongs to that Bible within the Bible which the Christian instinct teaches all of us to rediscover for ourselves, and in which the New Testament writers took such keen delight. In childlike faith these holy men of old found their Saviour in the 16th Psalm; and so may we, on the single condition that we do not disregard those laws of the human mind which God Himself made. Childlike faith must in us be coupled with manly reasonableness. The first believers practically rewrote the Psalter for edification, without thinking of its original meaning; they took every one of the 150 Psalms into the shrine of Gospel utterances. We who come after them cannot give this particular proof of our belief in the divinity of the Old Testament revelation. In adapting the Psalms to the needs of edification, we who desire to consecrate our intellect to Christ must seek counsel of a criticism and an exegesis which are nothing if they are not psychological; that is, if they are not in full accordance with the laws of the human mind.1 [Note: T. K. Cheyne, in The Expositor, 3rd Ser., x. 210.]
This Psalm was the last Scripture read by Hugh MKail the evening before his execution in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh. After reading it, he said to his father, and those about him, If there were anything in this world sadly and unwillingly to be left, it were the reading of the Scriptures. I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living. But this need not make us sad, for where we go, the Lamb is the Book of Scripture, and the light of that city; and where He is, there is life, even the river of the water of life, and living springs.
I.
A Wealthy Estate
The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup
1. The two words which are translated in our version portion and inheritance are substantially synonymous. The latter of them is used continually in reference to the share of each individual, or family, or tribe in the partition of the land of Canaan. There is a distinct allusion, therefore, to that partition in the language of our text; and the two expressions, part or portion, and inheritance, are substantially identical, and really mean just the same as if the single expression had stood: The Lord is my portion.
The portion of my cup is a somewhat strange expression. It is found in one of the other Psalms, with the meaning fortune, or destiny, or sum of circumstances which make up a mans life. There may be, of course, an allusion to the metaphor of a feast here, and God may be set forth as the portion of my cup, in the sense of being the refreshment and sustenance of a mans soul. But more probably there is merely a prolongation of the earlier metaphor, and the same thought as is contained in the figure of the inheritance is expressed here (as in common conversation it is often expressed) by the word cupnamely, that which makes up a mans portion in this life. It is used with such a meaning in the well-known words: My cup runneth over, and in another shape in, The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? It is the sum of circumstances which make up a mans fortune. So the double metaphor presents the one thought of God as the true possession of the devout soul.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, A Years Ministry, 1st Ser., 207.]
2. Each family in Israel by the command of God received its portion by the casting of the lot. The result was not regarded as fortuitous, but as disposed and determined by God Himself. In each case the portion was accepted as a direct Divine gift. It was to be held in inalienable possession through all time. A creditor might establish a claim to temporary possession, but in the fiftieth year it must go back to the original owner. No title, therefore, could be stronger, no claim more sure and permanent, than that which was thus acquired. In the case of the Psalmist the property acquired and possessed as an inalienable gift was not a fair estate on the productive Israelitish territory, but the great God Himself, to be his own God for ever.
Palestine is the England of the East. I think that it is Miss Martineau who says that nothing which she had seen about the world so reminded her of the rolling Yorkshire and Northumberland moors, as the approach to Palestine by Hebron. Certainly it was a remarkable dispensation of the hand of Providence that planted the people whom God meant to be His psalmists for all time, who were to touch that true keynote of the relation of man to man, to nature, and to God, which was to ring through history, in a country singularly fair, glad, fertile, and homelike; where men could pass from under the shadow of the terror of nature, could lie in her lap, and bask in her smile. Consider for a moment the physical condition of the home where God established His sons. For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowedest thy seed, and wateredest it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs: but the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven: a land which the Lord thy God careth for; the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year.
The country was small, compact, infinitely broken and varied in outline, full of features, crowded with nooks of beauty, where a man might easily learn to nestle as in a home, and which he might come to love with a passion which would make him a patriot of the Greek, Roman, or German type; in striking contrast to the prevalent tone of Asiatic political life. His home by the spring with the terebinth grown to shadow it, the rich grass in the hollow where the brook was purling by, and gleaned through the verdure; the hills sweeping up behind in a wide amphitheatre of beauty, terraced with vineyards, whose grapes glowed ruddy in the westering sun; broad belts of yellow corn-land on the slopes, and the barns bursting with the garnered spoils of the year; such a home, I sayand there were myriads of such in Palestine in its palmy dayswould make the land seem fair and lovely as it seemed to Moses when he surveyed it from the borders of the waste; a land to love, to fight for, to die for, before it should be pressed by the footsteps of the insolent foe.
It was a land, too, of noble agriculture, tasking mens loftier faculties and powers. Moses speaks with a kind of contempt of the agriculture of Egypt, where the land was watered with the foot, as the garden of herbs. The thing to be chiefly desired in Egypt was that the land should become one vast plain of fertile mud. The country, as it were, tilled itself. The Nile manured it; the husbandman had but to drop his seed into the ooze and was sure of his fruit. But Palestine demanded strenuous labour, test of brain as well as hand, patience, courage, faith. Like the Rhineland or Switzerland, it was matter of constant care and toil to till it; it strained all the faculties, but it repaid the culture with glorious fruit. But the chief point, after all, was the fulness of feature, of points of beauty and interest to which the heart could turn and the memory could cling. It was a land of rich, prodigal variety, of forms around which imagination could play. To live in it, as compared with Egypt or Babylonia, was an education; of all the lands of the East incomparably the fittest to be the home and the training school of a race of hardy, brave, free, and cultivated men. Out of Egypt have I called my son. Palestine, not Egypt, was their goodly home.1 [Note: J. Baldwin Brown.]
3. In the division of the Land of Canaan among the tribes, no part was assigned to the tribe of Levi, because, as was expressly declared, Jehovah would be their portion or share (Num 18:20, the same word which occurs here), and the gifts consecrated to Jehovah the provision for their support (Deu 10:9; Deu 18:1, etc.). That which was true nationally of Levi, was true in its deepest spiritual import of every believing Israelite. What must not he possess, says Savonarola, who possesses the possessor of all? In the words of St. Paul, All things are yours, for ye are Christs, and Christ is Gods.
To have a portion in God is to possess that which includes in itself all created good. The man who is in possession of some great masterpiece in painting or sculpture need not envy others who have only casts or copies of it. The original plate or stereotype is more valuable than any impressions or engravings thrown off from it; and he who owns the former owns that which includes, is capable of producing, all the latter. So, if it be given to any human spirit to know and enjoy God, to be admitted to the fellowship, and have a portion in the very being of the Infinite, then is that spirit possessor of that whereof Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or the World all material and all mental excellenceis but the faint copy, the weak and blurred transcript. Surveying the wonders of creation, or even with the Word of inspiration in his hand, the Christian can say, Glorious though these things be, to me belongs that which is more glorious far. The streams are precious, but I have the Fountain; the vesture is beautiful, but the Wearer is mine; the portrait in its every lineament is lovely, but that Great Original whose beauty it but feebly depicts is my own. God is my portion, the Lord is mine inheritance. To me belongs all actual and all possible good, all created and uncreated beauty, all that eye hath seen or imagination conceived; and more than that, for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them that love himall things and beings, all that life reveals or death conceals, everything within the boundless possibilities of creating wisdom and power, is mine; for God, the Creator and Fountain of all, is mine.1 [Note: John Caird, Aspects of Truth, 211.]
When I lived in the woods of Indiana, I used to hear a great deal of talk about the inflorescence of the prairies in spring. I tried to imagine what it was. I had never seen a prairie, and I was filled with curiosity to see one, especially at that season of the year when the flowers were in bloom, of which I had heard such glowing descriptions. I had to make up some sort of notion respecting them, and I did the best I could. I put my garden alongside of another, and I added several others to these; and then I thought of all the flowers they would contain; but it was a comparatively limited idea that I had in my mind. And I remember very well the morning when I first rode out upon a real rolling prairie. After passing through a piece of woods I struck it. The sun was shining aslantfor it was about nine oclock; the dew was on the grass and on the flowers; and very soon I was out at seaor the effect was the same as if I had been. I could see no timber in any direction. It looked as though the prairie went to a point where the sky touched it, in front, on the right, and on the left. The flowers covered every little swell and hillside. It seemed as if all the flowers in creation had been collected there.
Instead of little bits of flower-beds here and there, there were vast stretches of flowers. Here was a patch of pansies a mile long; there was a patch of tulips two or three miles long; and here was a patch of phlox five or six miles long. Hera were great quantities of one sort of flowers, and there were great quantities of another sort. Further than the eye could reach the ground was covered with flowers. It looked as though the sun had dropped down upon the earth and stained everything with its colours. And it was easy to conceive that if I should go on, and on, and on, if I should travel all day, and to-morrow, and the next day, and next week, I should still find flowers. And oh, what was my garden-conception of a prairie compared with what I took in when I saw one?
You build up your idea of God from the household, from the best persons you know, and from the highest experiences that you have had. You gather together on earth all those conceptions which to you make a heroic, noble, resplendent being, and the sum of these you call God. But how different is the idea which you have of Him now from that which you will have of Him when you see Him as He is!1 [Note: H. W. Beecher.]
Lord, what remains?
When I would count my gains,
I find that Thou hast torn them all away;
And under summer suns I shrink with cold,
Shiver, and faint with hunger, yet behold
My brethren strong and satisfied and gay.
I had a friend
Whose love no time could end:
That friend didst Thou to Thine own bosom take;
For this my loss I see no reparation:
The earth was once my home: a habitation
Of sorrow hast Thou made it for his sake.
I had a dream
Bright as a noontide beam:
I sought for wisdom. Thou didst make its taste
(Which was as spice and honey from the south)
Ashes and gall and wormwood in my mouth.
Was this the fruit I sought with so much haste?
I had a love
(This bitterest did prove);
A mystic light of joy on earth and sky;
Strange fears and hopes; a rainbow tear and smile,
A transient splendour for a little while,
Thensudden darkness: Lord, Thou knowest why.
What have I left?
Of friend, aim, love, bereft;
Stripped bare of everything I counted dear.
What friend have I like that I lost! what call
To action? nay, what love?
Lord, I have all
And more beside, if only Thou art near.1 [Note: Adeline Sergeant.]
4. How can we possess God? We possess things in one fashion and persons in another. The lowest and most imperfect form of possession is that by which a man simply keeps other people off material good, and asserts the right of disposal of it as he thinks proper. A blind man may have the finest picture that ever was painted; he may call it his, that is to say, nobody else can sell it, but what good is it to him? Does the man who draws the rents of a mountain-side, or the poet or painter, to whom its cliffs and heather speak far-reaching thoughts, most truly possess it? The highest form of possession, even of things, is when they minister to our thought, to our emotion, to our moral and intellectual growth. Even them we possess really, only according as we know them and hold communion with them.
But when we get up into the region of persons, we possess them in the measure in which we understand them, and sympathize with them, and love them. Knowledge, intercourse, sympathy, affectionthese are the ways by which men can possess men, and spirits, spirits. A man who gets the thoughts of a great teacher into his mind, and has his whole being saturated by them, may be said to have made the teacher his own. A friend or a lover owns the heart that he or she loves, and which loves back again; and not otherwise do we possess God. We have God for ours first in the measure in which our minds are actively occupied with thoughts of Him. We have no merely mystical or emotional possession of God to preach. There is a real, adequate knowledge of Him in Jesus Christ. We know God, His character, His heart, His relations to us, His thoughts of good concerning us, sufficiently for all intellectual and for all practical purposes.
There is no other way by which a spirit can possess a spirit, that is not cognizable by sense, except only by the way of thinking about Him, to begin with. All else follows that. That is how you hold your dear ones when they go to the other side of the world. When your husband, or your wife, or your child goes away from home for a week, you do not forget them. Do you have them in any sense if they never dwell in the study of your imagination, and never fill your thoughts with sweetness and with light?1 [Note: A. Maclaren, A Years Ministry, 1st Ser., 209.]
The love of Christ which burns in one Christians breast does not become enfeebled if other hearts catch the flame from his, but rather, by contact of congenial elements, glows in each separate heart with a fervour all the more intense. The peace of God may be diffused through the spirits of a multitude which no man can number, and yet each redeemed soul may say of it, It is all my ownnay, better than if all or exclusively his own; for it is a peace, a joy, a happiness, which, by the electric flash of sympathy passing from heart to heart, becomes, by reason of the multitudes who share it, redoubled, multiplied, boundlessly increased to each. Let no man, therefore, in spiritual things, glory in his own or envy anothers good; for to every individual member of Christs Church it may be said, Whatever others have obtained, still the whole, the illimitable all of Truth and Love and Joy is left for you.2 [Note: John Caird, Aspects of Truth, 207.]
God places Himself at the disposal of every one, and it is for us to appropriate Him. The reason why the sun produces in one place geraniums, camellias, azaleas, all forms of exquisite flowers, and does not produce them in another place, is not in the sun. The cause of the difference is in the use to which you put the sun. It shines on the south side of my barn; and what does it produce there? A warm spot, where chickens and cows gather. It shines on the south side of my neighbours barn; and what does it produce there? Flowers and grapes. What is the reason of the difference? Does the sun change? No; but it is put to different uses. It is just the same sun, with just the same vivifie power to all; but its effects are different when it is differently employed.1 [Note: H. W. Beecher.]
5. God can become our portion only when we seek Him as the highest good. Like the Levites we must make Him our all, and renounce all that would compete with Him. There cannot be two supreme, any more than there can be two pole-stars, one in the north, and the other in the south to both of which a man can be steering. You cannot stand with
One foot on land, and one on sea,
To one thing constant never.
If you are going to have God as your supreme good, you must empty your heart of earth and worldly things, or your possession of Him will be all words, and imagination, and hypocrisy. There must be a fixed, deliberate, intelligent conviction lying at the foundation of my life that God is best, and that He and He only is my true delight and desire. Then there must be built upon that intelligent conviction that God is best the deliberate turning away of the heart from these material treasures. And then there must be the willingness to abandon the outward possession of them if they come in between us and Him.
Just as when a chemist collects oxygen in a vessel filled with water, as it passes into the jar it drives out the water before it; so the love of God, if it come into a mans heart in any real sense, in the measure in which it comes, will deliver him from the love of the world.2 [Note: A. Maclaren, A Years Ministry, 1st Ser., 210.]
O love that casts out fear,
O love that casts out sin,
Tarry no more without,
But come and dwell within.
True sunlight of the soul,
Surround me as I go;
So shall my way be safe,
My feet no straying know.
Great love of God, come in,
Well-spring of heavenly peace,
Thou Living Water, come,
Spring up, and never cease.
Love of the living God,
Of Father and of Son,
Love of the Holy Ghost,
Fill Thou each needy one.1 [Note: Horatius Bonar.]
II.
A Secure Tenure
Thou maintainest my lot.
God Himself is the guardian of the estate. The land, the partition of which amongst the tribes lies at the bottom of the allusive metaphor of the text, was given to them under the sanction of a supernatural defence; and the law of their continuance in it was that they should trust and serve the unseen King. It was He, according to the theocratic theory of the Old Testament, and not chariots and horses, their own arm and their own sword, that kept them safe, though the enemies on the north and the enemies on the south were big enough to swallow up the little kingdom at a mouthful. And so, says the Psalmist allusively, in a similar manner, the Divine Power surrounds the man who chooses God for his heritage, and nothing shall take that heritage from him.
1. Our possession is secure, because it enters into the fibre of our being, and becomes part of ourselves. The lower forms of possession, by which men are called the owners of material goods are imperfect, because they are all precarious and temporary. Nothing really belongs to a man if it can be taken from him. What we may lose we can scarcely be said to have. They are mine, they were yours, they will be some other persons to-morrow. Whilst we have them we do not have them in any deep sense; we cannot retain them, they are not really ours at all. The only thing that is worth calling ours is something that so passes into and saturates the very substance of our soul that, like a piece of cloth dyed in the grain, as long as two threads hold together the tint will be there. That is how God gives us Himself, and nothing can take Him out of a mans soul. He, in the sweetness of His grace, bestows Himself upon man, and guards His own gift, in the heart, which is Himself. He who dwells in God and God in him lives as in the inmost keep and citadel. The noise of battle may roar around the walls, but deep silence and peace are within. The storm may rage upon the coasts, but he who has God for his portion dwells in a quiet inland valley where the tempests never come. No outer changes can touch our possession of God. They belong to another region altogether. Other goods may go, but this is held by a different tenure. The life of a Christian is lived in two regions; in the one his life has its roots, and its branches extend to the other. In the one there may be whirling storms and branches may toss and snap, whilst in the other, to which the roots go down, may be peace.
Often we do not learn the depth and riches of Gods love and the sweetness of His presence till other joys vanish out of our hands and other loved presences fade away out of sight. The loss of temporal things seems ofttimes to be necessary to empty our hearts, that they may receive the things that are unseen and eternal. The door is never opened to Him until the souls dead joys are borne out; then, while it stands open, He enters bearing into it joys immortal. How often is it true that the sweeping away of our earthly hopes reveals the glory of our hearts refuge in God! Some one has beautifully said, Our refuges are like the nests of birds: in summer they are hidden among the green leaves, but in winter they are seen among the naked branches. Worldly losses but strip off the foliage and disclose to us our hearts warm nest in the bosom of God.1 [Note: J. E. Miller, The Shining Life.]
2. God will fortify our hearts, so that we may not weakly barter away our possession. None can dispossess us against our wills, but the offers of the world are persistent and alluring, and we need a special defence. This God provides for all who trust Him. He sets up within us an impregnable defence, even His own presence. He is near unto all them that put their trust in Him; no harm shall come to them. We have at once the joy of possession and in the possession safety.
Transfiguration is wrought in human life by the indwelling of Christ. In what measure Christ enters into us, and fills us, and abides in us, depends upon the measure of our surrender to Him. He is ready to fill us and live in us. A perfumer bought an earthenware vase and filled it with attar of roses. The rich perfume entered into the material of the vase, and completely permeated it. Long after it ceased to be used, it still carried the fragrance. Even when it was old and broken, its shattered and worthless fragments retained the sweetness. So it is when the love of God has been shed abroad in a human heart by the Divine Spirit, and the earthly life has been struck through with the life of Christ. It is all Christ; self dies. Christ lives in the soul, and His beauty shines out in the life.1 [Note: J. R. Miller, The Shining Life.]
3. The life which the Psalmist knows to be undying is the continual energy of loving fellowship with God. The death to which this life can never yield is the silence of the land of forgetfulness, where there is no revelation and no praise of God. These two ideas are embodied for the Psalmist under the form of life in this world on the one hand and death and Sheol on the other. Now the religious consciousness can never be satisfied by asserting a noumenal transcendental truth without applying it to actual phenomenal experience. The indissolubleness of the life in God is to the Psalmist a present reality. As such it must approve itself true under the present forms and conditions of his existence, that is, in physical life as contrasted with physical death. In no other way can he conceive the great truth as present and practical. It would be ridiculous for the inspired singer, who possesses an ideal truth in ideal certainty, to pause in the fulness of his faith, and reflect on the empirical fact that, after all, no man escapes death. He knows that he cannot yield to death in the only form in which he fears it, namely, as separation from God; and he conceives this immunity in the only form in which he has any means of conceiving it, namely, as continued physical life. It is true that this persuasion is a paradox. It is true that so high a confidence, so unconditionally expressed, can reign to the exclusion of all doubt and fear only in a moment of highest elevation, and that the same singer, under a sense of sin and weakness, of failing strength and of Gods displeasure, must soon have passed through bitter experiences such as we read of in other Psalmsexperiences far removed from the joyful confidence and energy of the words before us. But so long as the strong sense of full loving communion with God which our Psalm expresses remains undimmed, no doubt can receive entrance. What we call physical impossibilities never had any existence for the faith of the Old Testament, which viewed every physical condition as implicitly obedient to Jehovahs law of righteousness. So long, then, as the Psalmist stands in unfailing fellowship with God he must live, and cannot cease to live. It is only when the sense of sin arises as the consciousness of impeded fellowship with God that there can arise at the same time a sense of uncertainty and limitation in the hope of life.1 [Note: W. Robertson Smith.]
When a river is dry and shallow in the summer-time, you see the rocks that rise within its bed. And they obstruct the stream, and make it chafe, and fret it as it journeys to the ocean. But when the rains have come, and the river is in flood, it covers up the rocks in its great volume, and in the silence of a mighty tide, flows to its last home within the sea. It is not longer than it was before. It is only deeper than it was before. Measure it by miles, it is unchanged. Measure it by volume and how different! So with the life that is the gift of Jesus. It is not longer than Gods immortality. It is only that same river deepened gloriously, till death itself is hidden in the deeps. Knowledge is perfected in open vision; love is crowned in an unbroken fellowship; service at least shall be a thing of beauty, fired by the vision of the God we serve. That is eternal life, and that alone. That is its difference from immortality. That is the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ to the immortal spirit of mankind.2 [Note: G. H. Morrison, The Afterglow of God, 219.]
One lovely summer evening some years ago I received a message that an elder in the church I used to serve was taken suddenly ill. He was a man looked up to and loved by the whole community, but modest and retiring, making no parade of the religion that in reality coloured all his life. When I arrived at his home I found that the hand of death was upon him, and he knew it. Falteringly, and in broken words, for I loved him, I tried to talk to him, and to speak some comforting word. I am glad to see you, he said, and it was good of you to come; and then looking at me with a look of calm resignation on his face, he said, I am not going to live, but I am not afraid to die. No one can do anything for me now. This is a matter between my own soul and God, and I settled it long ago. Then briefly he gave me an outline of his religious life. Every day he contrived, no matter how busy, to spend, in addition to the usual family devotions, a portion of time alone with God. Sometimes this was done in the fields of his farm, at other times in the loft of one of the outhouses, just wherever he happened to be employed, and his own family or servants never knew it. As I said, he made no parade of his religion, and never, as far as I knew, prayed in public; but he lived his religion. He was a hard-working, industrious man all his life, and had not the opportunity of getting much education in his youth. One thing, however, he knew; he knew Christ and lived in daily communion with Him. I left him that night promising to see him again in the morning, but before the morning came he had gone to be with Christ whom he loved and served.1 [Note: H. W. Morrow, Questions Asked and Answered by our Lord, 129.]
Open the door and let in more of that music, the dying man said to his weeping son. Behmen was already hearing the harpers harping with their harps. He was already taking his part in the song they sing in Heaven to Him who loved them and washed them from their sins in His own blood. And now said the blessed Behmen, I go to-day to be with my Redeemer and my King in Paradise, and so died.2 [Note: Alexander Whyte, Jacob Behmen: an Appreciation.]
When He appoints to meet thee, go thou forth;
It matters not
If south or north,
Bleak waste or sunny plot.
Nor think, if haply He thou seekst be late,
He does thee wrong;
To stile or gate
Lean thou thy head, and long!
It may be that to spy thee He is mounting
Upon a tower,
Or in thy counting
Thou hast mistaen the hour.
But, if He come not, neither do thou go
Till Vesper chime;
Belike thou then shalt know
He hath been with thee all the time.1 [Note: T. E. Brown, Old John and other Poems, 244.]
III.
A Satisfied Ambition
The lines are fallen in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.
The man who finds his treasure in God, declares that he is satisfied. The happiness of this mysterious nature of ours is never to be found merely in the possession of Gods gifts, the works of His hand, or the bounties of His providence. The soul can find its true satisfaction only in rising beyond the gifts, and claiming the Giver as its own. When you covet the friendship or love of a fellowman, it does not satisfy you that he bestows upon you only outward giftshis money, his property, his bookswhat cares a loving, longing heart for these? Unless the man gives you something more than these, gives you himself, and becomes yours by the bond of deepest sympathy and affection, the rest are but worthless boons. So is it in the souls relations with God. That after which, as by a mysterious and inborn affinity, every devout spirit yearns, is not Gods gifts and bounties, but Himself. The wealth of worlds would be, to the heart longing after Deity, a miserable substitute for one look of love from the Great Fathers eye. My soul thirsteth for God is the language in which Scripture gives expression to this deep want of our nature, and points to the ineffable satisfaction provided for it,My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God.As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!If a man love me, my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.
1. Animal enjoyment may be pure of its kind, may be part of the constitution of things, but it is brief, exhaustive! But those pleasures which are filled with the spirit, the mind, the heart, are fresh. And what is true of the mind is truer still of the soul. We have a tripartite natureBody, Soul, and Spirit. We may not be able to break it up, and divide it by exact analysis, but there is that which answers to Pauls definition; there is body, soul, and spirit. We feel it. And in the soul there is a region infiniteit can have the very pleasures of God Himself. It can share His nature; it can share His thoughts; it can share His purposes; it can share Plis purity. It can come away from that which is bounded, intellectually, by earths horizon, and it can enter into the region where, in fellowship with God, it shall realize the infinite vision and true rapture of the soul. And this is inexhaustible, because the soul is immortal. The love of Christ is an ever-progressive thingto know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge. That we may be filled with all the fulness of God.
All the happiness of this life is but trying to quench thirst out of golden empty cups.1 [Note: William Law.]
Filled with a grateful, calm content,
My soul sits happy, and she sings;
While all the many, many things
That men call good, and think them so,
That are not mine, and may not be,
My Father doth not give them me
I am content to let them go.
Pass by, gay world, yes, pass thee by,
Nor too much vex me with thy care;
O, restless world, thou art so fair!
See, I have learned this thing of thee;
Thou lookst so little in the light
Which pours upon my inner sight,
And shines from great eternity!
2. In harmony with the great Centre, we will be in harmony with all things in His universe. Nature will serve him who serves her God; and all her varied powers and agencies will rejoice to obey the behests and minister to the welfare of one who is the loved and loving child of their great Master and Lord. The earth will be fulfilling its proper function in yielding us bread, and the heavens in shedding their sweet influences on our path. For us the morning will dawn and the evening descend. For us the winds will blow, earth rest, heavens move, and fountains flow. We shall be able to claim a peculiar property in the works of our Fathers hand, and the bounties of our Fathers providence.
The love of nature, wherever it has existed, has been a faithful and sacred element of human feeling; that is to say, supposing all circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two individuals, the one who loves nature most will be always found to have more faith in God than the other. It is intensely difficult, owing to the confusion and counter influences which always mingle in the data of the problem, to make this abstraction fairly; but so far as we can do it, so far, I boldly assert, the result is constantly the same: the nature-worship will be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power of a Great Spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or controvert; and where that nature-worship is innocently pursued,i.e., with due respect to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, and associated with the higher principles of religion,it becomes the channel of certain sacred truths, which by no other means can be conveyed.1 [Note: Ruskin, Modem Painters (Works, v. 378).]
3. We enter into fellowship with God through Jesus Christ. He is the true Joshua, who puts us in possession of the inheritance. He brings God to usto our knowledge, to our love, to our will. He brings us to God, making it possible for our poor sinful souls to enter His presence by His blood; and for our spirits to possess that Divine Guest. He that hath the Son, hath the Father; and if we trust our souls to Him that died for us, and cling to Him as our delight and our joy, we will find that both the Father and the Son come to us and make Their home in us. Through Christ the Son, we will receive power to become sons of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God, because joint-heirs with Christ.
During the great Durbar at the time of the late Kings coronation, the Maharajah of Nabha did a beautiful action, which illustrates this truth. As he went away after the celebration he paid a great sum into the Treasury, in order that the land on which his encampment had been spread might be free of taxation for ever, for he said: I, the king, have rested here, therefore the land shall be free from burdens for ever. And so to-day the King unfolds before us a wondrous inheritance, a priceless possession, the power that gives us new hope, and sets before us possibilities where we have hitherto found closed doors; and as He offers gifts, for the price paid was beyond mans calculation, He says: The King has lived down here on earth, knowing our temptations, weaknesses, and sorrows; therefore, mans daily, earthly life shall be free from the oppression of the burden for evermore if he will have it.1 [Note: Harrington C. Lees.]
O Christ our All in each, our All in all!
Others have this or that, a love, a friend,
A trusted teacher, a long worked for end:
But what to me were Peter or were Paul
Without Thee? fame or friend if such might be?
Thee wholly will I love, Thee wholly seek,
Follow Thy foot-track, hearken for Thy call.
O Christ mine All in all, my flesh is weak,
A trembling fawning tyrant unto me:
Turn, look upon me, let me hear Thee speak:
Tho bitter billows of Thine utmost sea
Swathe me, and darkness build around its wall,
Yet will I rise, Thou lifting when I fall,
And if Thou hold me fast, yet cleave to Thee.2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]
Literature
Bruce (W. S.), Our Heritage, 143.
Duff (R. S.), Pleasant Places, 11.
Durward (P. C.), Our Protestant Heritage, 1.
Maclaren (A.), A Years Ministry, 1st Ser., 205.
Mayor (J. E. B.), Sermons, 201.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, iv. 193.
Skrine (J. H.), A Goodly Heritage, 2.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, v. (1882) No. 32.
Christian World Pulpit, v. 289 (Baldwin Brown); xxv. 180 (Statham).
Church of England Magazine, xiv. (1843) 80 (Newnham).
Expositors Library; The Psalms, i. 433.
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
The Lord: Psa 73:26, Psa 119:57, Psa 142:5, Deu 32:9, Jer 10:16, Lam 3:24
mine inheritance: Heb. my part
of my: Psa 11:6, Psa 23:5, Psa 116:13, Eph 5:18
thou: Psa 2:6, Psa 9:4, Psa 21:7-12, Psa 61:6, Psa 61:7, Psa 89:4, Psa 89:20-37, Psa 110:1, Psa 110:2, Psa 132:11, Psa 132:17, Psa 132:18, Isa 42:1, Isa 53:12, Act 2:32, Act 5:31, 1Co 15:25
Reciprocal: Gen 15:1 – and thy Num 18:20 – I am thy part Num 34:2 – an inheritance Deu 18:2 – the Lord Jos 14:2 – lot Jos 18:10 – before the Lord Job 22:25 – defence Psa 61:5 – heritage Psa 73:25 – Whom Psa 119:65 – dealt well Psa 119:111 – Thy testimonies Psa 140:6 – I said unto Ecc 6:12 – who knoweth Jer 51:19 – portion Eze 45:1 – shall divide by lot Luk 10:42 – good Luk 15:12 – give Luk 20:38 – a God Gal 4:7 – heir
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 16:5. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance Hebrew, , chelki, of my division, that is, of that portion which God hath mercifully divided, or distributed to me, and which, by his grace, I have chosen for myself. I envy not the vast riches and glory of idolaters, but do heartily rejoice in God as my portion, and desire no better nor any other felicity. God, who hath suffered other nations to walk in their own idolatrous ways, hath granted this favour to me, that I should know, worship, and serve him, the only true God. And as other nations have chosen, and adhere to their false gods, so have I chosen Jehovah, and will cleave to him. And of my cup The portion that is put into my cup, as the ancient manner was in feasts, in which each had his portion of meat and of wine allotted to him: see Psa 11:6. Thus while the carnal part of mankind take the world for their chief good, and place their felicity in the enjoyments of it, every truly pious and spiritual person, like David, will say, The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance, and of my cup. This is the portion I make choice of, and will gladly take up with, how poor soever my condition may be in this world. Let me have the love and favour of God, and be accepted of him: let me have the comfort of communion with him, and satisfaction in the communications of his graces and comforts: let me have an interest in his promises, and a title by promise to everlasting life and happiness in the future state, and I have enough, I need no more, I desire no more, to complete my felicity. Thou maintainest my lot My heritage, in allusion to the land of Canaan, divided by lot. As thou hast given me an excellent lot, having planted me among thy own people, and in that place, which thou hast chosen for thy dwelling, and for the house and ordinances of thy worship, so, I doubt not, thou wilt uphold and preserve me there, in spite of all the malicious designs of mine enemies, that seek to drive me hence. Thus may the true Christian say: Thou, that hast by promise made over thyself to me to be mine, wilt graciously make good what thou hast promised. Thou wilt not leave me nor forsake me, nor put it into the power of mine enemies to rob me of my happiness in communion with thee, while I cleave to thee with full purpose of heart; and while the life I live in the flesh is by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
David spoke with satisfaction of the Lord as something that someone had given him. He compared God to a valuable inheritance passed on to him by his ancestors, and to wine in a cup that brings great joy and satisfaction to the one who drinks it. He also gave God credit for supporting him in his lot in life. The lines marking the boundaries of David’s inheritance (i.e., God’s will) had turned out to be good lines since they prescribed a great inheritance. Compared to a piece of real estate such as the ones given to the Israelite tribes when they entered the Promised Land, David had received a pleasant lot. He viewed his inheritance as a beautiful piece of property. Obviously, he was pleasantly content with God and found great delight in Him.