Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Psalms 62:12
Also unto thee, O Lord, [belongeth] mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.
Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy – Power, indeed, belongs to God Psa 62:11; but this is an attribute to be feared, and while, in one respect, it will inspire confidence, or while it gives us the assurance that God is able to defend us when all else shall fail, yet, unattended by any other attribute, it might produce only apprehension and alarm. What man, weak and sinful man, needs to know is not merely that God has almighty power, but how that power will be wielded, or with what other attributes it is combined; whether it will be put forth to destroy or to save; to kill or to keep alive; to crush or to uphold. Man, therefore, needs the assurance that God is a benevolent Being, as really as that he is a powerful Being; that he is disposed to show mercy; that his power will be put forth in behalf of those who confide in him, and not employed against them. Hence, the attribute of mercy is so essential to a proper conception of God; and hence, the psalm so appropriately closes by a reference to his mercy and compassion.
For thou renderest to every man according to his work – As this stands in our version, it would seem that the psalmist regarded what is here referred to as a manifestation of mercy. Yet the rendering to every man according to his work is an act of justice rather than of mercy. It is probable, therefore, that the word rendered for – ky – does not refer here to either of the attributes mentioned exclusively – either power or mercy – but is to be understood with reference to the general course of argument in the psalm, as adapted to lead to confidence in God. The fact that he is a God who will deal impartially with mankind, or who will regard what is right and proper to be done in view of the characters of mankind, is a reason why they should confide in God – since there could be no just ground of confidence in a Being who is not thus impartial and just. All these combined – power, mercy, equity – constitute a reason why people should confide in God. If either of these were missing in the divine character, man could have no confidence in God. If these things do exist in God, unlimited confidence may be placed in him as having all needful power to save; as being so merciful that sinful people may trust in him; and as being so just and equal in his dealings that all may feel that it is right to repose confidence in a Being by whom all the interests of the universe will be secured. Compare 1Jo 1:9.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Psa 62:12
Also unto Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy.
The mercy of God to miserable sinners His distinguishing attribute
I. Its properties.
1. Free and sovereign.
2. Rich and exceedingly abundant.
3. Effectual.
4. Comprehensive.
5. Perpetual.
II. The proper results of this truth upon ourselves.
1. Let us take care to seek Gods mercy in time.
2. Be encouraged to pray.
3. Let humble believers trust and not be afraid.
4. Thank God for His mercy.
5. Imitate it. (G. Burder, D. D.)
The mercy of God
One is at first sight tempted to amend the psalmists saying, and for mercy to substitute justice. It seems characteristically just, rather than merciful, to render to men according to their works. But let us emphasize this word his. Let us reflect that in what a man does there are elements which others have contributed, and for which others are responsible. It then begins to dawn upon us that some discrimination is possible, and that such discrimination is merciful. When we separate from a mans work that which is not strictly his, but the work of his parents, or his teachers, or of the spirit of his times, even a bad man seems less culpable. Some, but less than all, of the wrong-doing that we see in him was really his. The savage who delights in torturing his prisoners, the persecutor who kindles the fagots for heretics, need the benefit of this discriminating word, his work. Loss of sleep or dyspepsia may induce one to acts of peevishness or moroseness that are not wholly his work. The overworked pointsman who falls asleep causes a catastrophe not all his work. These discriminations society cannot always make and at the same time sufficiently safeguard public interests. But we may be assured that He who only is competent to unravel the complicated web does discriminate, and allots to each man retribution for no more than is strictly his. That there are such discriminations, however beyond our power to draw them truly, gives us a basis for charity in our estimate of those who excite our intensest reprobation. When we see a Nero or a Borgia, and are taxed to account for such an excess of wickedness, we may reasonably think it represents the accumulated contributions of more lives than one, and a responsibility in which more than one has share. Admitting all this, we must equally insist that no man can escape responsibility for the work which is strictly his. One may say, if he will, that man is nine-tenths environment, but one must not cancel the residual fraction for which the responsibility is his. No ship is started on the voyage of life with rudder lashed. In the most ill-starred, storm-crippled life, after all discrimination of the contributing forces which appear in the result, there is a certain remainder due to the free helm in the responsible hand–a work that is his, and a retribution due to that. What we have now to observe further is, that not only is the Divine discrimination merciful, but the retribution is also merciful. What should mercy seek first but to secure men against wreck and loss? And how can it secure them but by securing the moral order in its established lines of cause and consequence? We can do no more merciful thing for ourselves and our neighbours than to give the law of consequences full sweep, in rendering to each according to his work. To interfere, under however good a name, with the necessary trace of a growing character that is supplied by the law of consequences, is not mercy, but murder. For a man to imagine that he can lie, or steal, or scamp his work to his neighbours damage or danger, and escape the evil consequence, or any part of it, is to think the most immoral and dangerous thought. And it is merely helping somebody to think such thoughts–taking down the guard-rail on the path along the edge of the precipice–when we allow a weak sympathy to interfere with the hand that is laying on some guilty back the scourge of just consequence. Is there, then, no place for leniency? May not one say with King Arthur in excusing Sir Bedivere–
A man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time prosper?
Unquestionably; and yet who will gainsay that, as things go, the danger is not of too little leniency, but too much? No doubt it sounds charitable to say, Let him off; he wont do it again. But mercy demands security for that, not only for society, but for the wrong-doer himself. Nature takes this security of us by enforcing her rule, Pay as you go. Plato profoundly remarks, That it is better for a man to be punished than to escape. It saves him from a worse punishment in the degradation of his character. So in Mrs. Wards Marcella, Raeburn says of the homicide Hurd, I believe that if the murderer saw things as they really are, he would himself claim his own death as his best chance, his only chance, in this mysterious universe of self-recovery. To maintain moral worth, to save manhood from degradation, true mercy prefers the sound way to the soft way, and renders to each according to his work. What, then, becomes of the forgiveness of sins? Certainly, no cancelling of the spiritual law, whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Forgiveness works no cut-off of consequences. It merely shifts the train of consequences from a down-grade to an up-grade, from direction toward the outer darkness to the Fathers house. It is the transformation of She consequences which issue from our indestructible past that forgiveness effects. The evil deeds which cannot be annihilated, and whose causative power must abide in our life either for evil or for good, cannot be cancelled by forgiveness, but only converted from a fatal to a vital issue. So the muck-heap, which above ground poisons the air, fertilizes the soil when put underground. The evil that is buried by forgiveness: becomes a source of fruitfulness to the new-sown seeds of better resolution. (J. M. Whiten, Ph. D.)
For Thou renderest to every man according to his work.
The mercy of God seen in judgment
We have no difficulty in accepting the merciful character of God until we enter the realm of retribution and judgment. In the nature of the ease our conclusions must be imperfect, from our meagre knowledge.
I. The general law. God administers in perfect equity the legitimate results of every mans efforts to himself. The term render has the germinal sense of restoring, paying back, or making up the account of–rendering judgment.
1. This law–or method of Gods procedure–is universal in His dominions. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. Material, intellectual, moral. Yet we must not get the idea of law as above the Lawgiver or Executor. Unintelligent power is not a swaying sceptre: Power belongeth unto God.
2. Nor must we think of God as held by any force, aside from His own wisdom, in the production of successive events in the universe: There is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.
II. There are two sides to the tremendous fact of law.
1. The awful side. The side which thrills with its tremendous import–which threatens and yet invites. In its security of the reproduction of human actions. In nature. The fifth reproduction of a grain of wheat is 25,600,000,000 grains. Plant a cottonwood tree beside a stream in western prairies, and soon you will fringe the streams for ten thousand square miles. Memory is a reproductive spring of power as lasting as the soul. Panoramas, words, acts, buried for fifty years, spring from their graves with the bloom of youth upon them. How subtle, majestic and awful this power in moral realms! How large a sum of human life is fashioned by the subtle power of potent influence!
2. The other side of this awful fact of law is a glorious one.
(1) Without it there would be no permanency in the domain of active matter or spirit. Permanency, and the sense of it, is essential to satisfaction in every field of pursuit. We struggle for it in our contest with nature, with the world, with life itself. This underlies our great hope of heaven: it will abide.
(2) Without it there would be no incentive to effort.
(3) Without it there would be no standing and universal warning against sin, or incentive to virtue. The Judgment Day is to test our whole being and doing. The mighty environment of law is to hold our destiny and establish our glory or seal our doom. Sin will generate an awful cyclone. Righteousness will sail into a quiet harbour of eternal placidity and safety.
(4) There seem difficulties. It is hard for us to see and say, at all times, the Judge of the whole earth doeth right, and His mercy is unto childrens children. In the chamber of death, specially of the young. In the wake of the cyclone. But think: it is after the war-cloud has cleared away that we see and feel the glory of results. When we are so infatuated with one department of life as to lose sight of the import of its outcome, it is difficult to see that mercy inspires justice and law. Yet so we teach our children by painful discipline, if necessary. Is it unkind to hold the boy to his books though he squirm and cry? No; the delights to come from acquired mental power lead us in kindness to hold him to toil now. When we judge of Divine administration from the narrow limitations of human judgment. How often, if we only knew, would our tears be turned into smiles! A mother prayed for her sick young son that his life might be spared whether it Was Gods will or not, and he grew up to curse her life and break her heart, Two lessons this life under law should teach us–
1. Faith in God: as an Administrator–Governor–wise, powerful, merciful, good. A personal Friend.
2. Obedience to His commands. How shortsighted the soldier who stops to question the orders from headquarters! (M. D. Collins, D. D.)
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Psa 63:1-11
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Belongeth mercy, or benignity, or readiness to do good. Thou art no less willing than able to defend and preserve all that put their trust in thee.
For; or, therefore; for the following words seem to be either a reason or proof of, or an inference from, the two foregoing properties of God, power and mercy. God is almighty, therefore he can easily subdue and destroy all his and mine ungodly enemies, and recompense unto them all their malicious and wicked practices. He is also mild and merciful, and therefore will pardon good mens failings, and graciously reward me and others of his people according to our integrity.
According to his work; according to the nature and quality, though not according to the proportion, of their works, whether they be good or bad. And this, as he is obliged to do by his holy nature, and by that respect which he oweth to his own glory, so he is able to do it, being omnipotent, and willing to do it to the godly, (which was the only thing that might be doubted, because of their manifold and great corruptions, and imperfections, and miscarriages,) because he is merciful and gracious.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
12. for thou renderestliterally,”that Thou renderest,” &c., connected with “Iheard this,” as the phrase”that power,” &c. [Ps62:11] teaching that by His power He can show both mercy andjustice.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Also unto thee, O Lord, [belongeth] mercy,…. This is the other thing the psalmist had heard, and was assured of, and which encouraged his hope and trust in the Lord; that mercy belonged to him,
Ps 130:7; as appears, not only from the common bounties of his providence, daily bestowed upon his creatures; but from the special gift of his Son, and of all spiritual mercies and blessings in him; from the regeneration of the Lord’s people, the pardon of their sins, and their eternal salvation;
for thou renderest to every man according to his work; and which is a reason proving that both power and mercy belong to God; power in punishing the wicked according to their deserts, and mercy in rewarding the saints, not in a way of merit, or of debt, but of grace. Some interpret the words, as Aben Ezra and Kimchi observe, “though thou renderest”, &c. that is, God is gracious and merciful, though he is also just and righteous in rendering to every man as his work is, whether it be good or evil.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
REFLECTIONS
OH! the blessedness of having a God in covenant to trust in, and that God ever to look up to, and to lean upon, in and through a Mediator, who hath, by his perfect obedience and death, completed the salvation of his people. My soul, art thou so looking to him, so depending upon him, as to make him thine only rock, thine only defense and salvation? Manifest then the firmness of thy trust, in a silent, patient, submissive waiting. Recollect at all times, that the Lord’s time of deliverance is the best time, and learn to say upon every occasion of trial, He will come, he will be found of them that seek him; for the Lord waiteth to be gracious, he hateth putting away, he resteth in his love. I will trust, and not be afraid, for the Lord Jehovah is my strength, and my song; he also is become my salvation.
Oh! ye sons of men, who know not my God, what think ye must be the final issue of despising such great salvation? Oh! think, before it be too late, what a tottering foundation ye rest all your hopes upon? Surely the rock of the ungodly, is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. Oh! kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Psa 62:12 Also unto thee, O Lord, [belongeth] mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.
Ver. 12. Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy ] viz. To set thy power a-work for the good of thy people. And as these two, God’s power and God’s mercy, are the two pillars, the Boaz and the Jachin of every believer, (hence Job Job 42:2 , having spoken his power, he speaketh of his thoughts of peace towards his people) so they are sufficient proofs of the doctrines before delivered, and do evince the truth of that which followeth.
For thou renderest to every man according to his work
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
LORD*. One of the 134 alterations of Jehovah to Adonai by the Sopherim. App-32.
mercy = grace.
Thou renderest, &c. Quoted in Mat 16:27. Rom 2:6. 1Co 3:8. 2Ti 4:14. Rev 2:23; Rev 20:12, Rev 20:13; Rev 22:12.
every man. Hebrew. ‘ish. App-14.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
mercy: Psa 86:15, Psa 103:8, Psa 103:17, Exo 34:6, Exo 34:7, Dan 9:9, Dan 9:18, Mic 7:18
renderest: Job 34:11, Pro 24:12, Jer 32:19, Eze 7:27, Eze 18:30, Eze 33:20, Mat 16:27, Rom 2:6, 1Co 3:8, 2Co 5:10, Eph 6:8, Col 3:25, 1Pe 1:17, Rev 22:12
Reciprocal: 2Sa 3:39 – the Lord 2Ch 6:30 – render Job 33:26 – he will Psa 28:4 – the work Pro 29:26 – ruler’s favour Isa 3:11 – for the reward Isa 59:18 – According Jer 17:10 – even Mar 10:48 – have Luk 18:38 – Jesus Tit 3:5 – according Rev 2:23 – and I will Rev 20:12 – according
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Psa 62:12. Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy Hebrew, , chesed, benignity, beneficence, compassion. Significat id boni, quod gratuito fit: It signifies that good which is done gratuitously. Buxtorf. He is no less willing than able to defend, preserve, and do good to those that trust in him. For he is as truly the best, as he is the greatest of beings, merciful and gracious, yea, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation and good hope. This is a further reason why we should trust in him, and answers the objections of our sinfulness and unworthiness; though we deserve nothing but his wrath, yet we may hope for all good from his mercy, which is over all his works. For, or therefore, thou renderest, &c. For the following words seem to be added, either as a proof of, or an inference from, the two foregoing properties of God, power and mercy. God is almighty, therefore he can easily destroy all his enemies: he is merciful, and therefore will pardon good mens failings, and graciously reward their integrity; according to his work Which, as he is obliged to do, by his own holy nature, so he is able to do it, being omnipotent, and willing to do it to the godly, notwithstanding their manifold infirmities and miscarriages, because he is merciful and gracious. Though God doth not always do this visibly in this world, yet he will do it in the day of final recompense. No service done to him shall go unrewarded; nor any affront given him unpunished, unless repented of. Thus it appears that power and mercy belong to him. If he were not a God of power, there are sinners that would be too high to be punished; and if he were not a God of mercy, there are services too worthless to be rewarded.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
62:12 Also unto thee, O Lord, [belongeth] mercy: for thou {k} renderest to every man according to his work.
(k) So that the wicked will feel your power, and the godly your mercy.