Psalms 103

Psalms 103:1-22

The praise of the restored people. [A psalm] of David.

1. There follows now the praise of the restored people. The psalmist calls upon his soul with all its powers to praise Jehovah, the eternal, unchangeable and covenant-God. Love manifesting itself in “all His benefits” awakes the soul to praise Him, while it realizes amid all its joy the weakness and inconstancy of the creature, of which in contrast with His faithfulness it has had such abundant proof: “forget not all His benefits.”
2. Jehovah is celebrated, first of all, in the salvation which He has effected for them. He is Saviour altogether: of the whole man, body and soul alike. Israel’s experience in the day contemplated will include in the fullest way that of bodily healing, such as accompanied the Lord’s ministry in her midst, miracles which are called therefore in the epistle to the Hebrews “powers of the world to come” (Hebrews 6:5), -more strictly, “of the coming age.” The bodily condition will then be the fitting sign of the spiritual, in a world from which the curse upon the ground even will be removed. Nationally and individually, their life is now redeemed from destruction; and more, they find, more completely than Abraham their father, a renewal of youth. “As the days of a tree shall be the days of My people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands” (Isaiah 65:22). Then the oppressed find a Judge of unfailing righteousness: the character in which Israel’s King is so often represented; -the tender assurance of how the pitiful eyes of the Almighty have been fastened upon human misery and wrong all the time that He endured it; as the prophet says with regard to Israel (Isaiah 63:9), “afflicted in all their affliction.” Now has come the time of interference and of setting right -the revelation of the God in whom men have not believed. Yet these are ways long since in fact declared: “He made known His ways unto Moses, His doings unto the children of Israel.” The people saw what was outward; to him with whom God spake face to face, the inner principle was declared. Nor must we imagine that this was law merely. All Deuteronomy is witness of how far beyond this Israel’s law-giver was made to see; and the final prophecy and song with which this closes, clearly declare the ruin of man under law, the sovereign goodness which comes in at last for him. Thus the song of Moses will be the fitting accompaniment of the song of the Lamb in the mouth of the victorious multitude who stand, in the day to come, by the crystal sea (Revelation 15:3).
3. Now we have Jehovah Himself put before us: “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in loving-kindness”; and this is how in fact He declared Himself to Moses (the cross-shadow of the law only being removed from it,) that “He can by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:6-7). Nay, “He will not perpetually contend, nor will He keep in mind for ever.” They have proved this now in their history, and can say, “He has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us after our iniquities.” Thus He has manifested Himself, and glorified Himself before their eyes.
4. They expand this, therefore, in the fourth section; in which His mercy in view of the frailty of the creature is dwelt upon, and in eight verses traced as far as the new covenant, in the blessings of which they are now rejoicing. Supreme is He in mercy: high as the heavens are above the earth. East is no farther from the west than He has removed their transgressions from them. Nay, as a father’s tender mercy toward his children, such is His tender mercy toward those that fear Him. Then we are assured of the fount of infinite pity in Him who remembers that we are but dust; though under His government it is that man’s days can find their image in the flower of the field, which, if the wind roughly passes over it, is gone for ever out of its place. “But Jehovah’s loving-kindness is from everlasting to everlasting upon those that fear Him; and His righteousness unto children’s children: to those that keep His covenant, and to those that remember His precepts to do them.” This should not sound legal: it is a principle that grace does not set aside, -which it would not be grace, in fact, to set aside. Grace affirms and fulfills it; for “sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law but under grace.” And thus the “covenant” here cannot be either the covenant of law which only “worketh wrath,” but must be that which as Abraham’s covenant makes them true children of Abraham; and which was given four hundred and thirty years before the law came in. Faith links men with this covenant, whether Jew or Gentile, and those who keep it are the circumcised in heart. So only can we understand the utterance here, and realize the joyous assurance that rings through it. The “new covenant” is but the re-statement more fully, and in more precise application to the nation of Israel, of the old “covenant of promise” which God gave to Abraham; and in this direction apparently the numerical finger points. The grace and blessing here are both eternal.
5. Nothing remains, therefore, but the eternal praise to Him whom all His ways become, and to join with all intelligences, all His hosts -the forces that with sun and moon and storm and earthquake, do still His pleasure -while all His works, all created things in all places of His dominion; bless Him. Yea, “bless Jehovah, O my soul.”