Psalms 118

Section 2. (Psalms 118:1-29; Psalms 119:1-176.)Christ and the New Covenant. We have had in the first section; then; how Israel’s heart is attached to Jehovah, but only on the one side of this, as is plain: for the name of Christ has not yet been uttered. This is supplied in the second section; which gives us now the New Testament side, as it were: Christ being seen as the One who as the chief corner-stone unites together the whole temple of Jehovah’s praise. Accordingly, the 119th psalm shows the heart of Israel fully turned to God according to the terms of the new covenant, -His law written on the heart. The relation of these two passages to one another is striking, if compared with that of Psa 1:1-6; Psalms 2:1-12; which give us, first, the spirit of obedience, the Israelite whose “delight is in the law of Jehovah”; while the second shows us Christ, again as rejected of man; but set as King in Zion; and the happiness of all that put their trust in Him. The one is the dispensational order, and is the same as that of the two sections here; the other is the moral order; for it is Christ who is the “Mediator of the new covenant,” and who, as we look upon Him; changes us into His moral image. The two psalms are in perfect relation therefore to one another, though so different in themselves.

Psalms 118:1-29

The Head of the Corner. The speaker in the first psalm is again one of the remnant of Israel of the latter days, the representative of the nation as wrought in by the Spirit of God; and the psalm itself is throughout prophetic. It has five sections, which are not in general difficult of connection. Any difficulty which we may find will be rather in detail.

1. The perpetual goodness of Jehovah, so constantly and naturally before us in this Deuteronomic book of the Psalms, is again the thesis here. All are exhorted to give Him thanks for this, with the division that we have had elsewhere into Israel, the national witness for Him, -the house of Aaron; the priestly family, and those that fear Jehovah, which would include, at least, those turned to Him from the Gentiles. The separation of the house of Aaron from the rest of the nation would seem still to indicate the sacrificial basis upon which all ever depends for them. There follows the practical expression of His loving-kindness whose name is shown by the constant reiteration of it to be so endeared to them. They called upon Him in strait: in a large place He answered. Way and end are simply enough connected thus; and the simplicity is the sweetness of it. What power is there in the cry of a needy suppliant for Him! As a result the soul becomes bold in its confidence: with Jehovah for him, what is it possible for man -all men -to do? He is among those that help him, their strength and inspiration, and the overthrow of enemies is sure to come.
2. The opposition is now seen in its full extent, according to the prophetic picture of Israel in the last days. It is prefaced with the reiterated assurance of how much better it is to trust in Jehovah than in men of any kind, even the nobles (nedibhim), the men of liberality and frank chivalrous action. All nations had gathered against Israel, only to be cut off by a feeble people sheltered and energized by Jehovah’s Name. Like bees they gather, like a fire of thorns, which burns up fiercely and dies out, they are quenched and gone.
3. Jehovah is then again celebrated as their sanctuary and refuge, -not merely a safe and sure retreat, but where the holiness of His presence is felt and finds response. The psalmist apostrophizes here the vanquished enemy. “Thou hast thrust at me hard, to make me fall; but Jehovah helped me. Jehovah is my strength and psalm: and He is become my salvation.” Thus singing and salvation are now uttering themselves in the tents of the righteous, and it is as at the Red Sea and more marvelously, Jehovah’s right hand that has accomplished all: Jehovah is the “man of war”; “Jehovah’s right hand doeth valiantly.” But there is more for them than external deliverance in all this, even as the sorrow that they had been passing through was the sign and consequence of a spiritual condition which had forced Jehovah into opposition to them. They had had to face death with the terror of God’s wrath in it, as we have seen. Yet He had not given them over to it. The exercise had been profitable for them; the chastening had done its work; and now they would not die, but live. The gates of righteousness could now be opened to them, and they would enter in and give thanks to Jehovah.
4. But even so, this is not all: we are, in fact, only approaching the real and fundamental truth of their condition. The gate of righteousness which they have challenged -the way into Jehovah’s presence -belongs to Himself. He alone it is who can affix the terms of admission, terms which must be set by the demands of His own nature. True: “the righteous shall enter it”: that, in some sort, is easily apprehended; but it only raises the old question, “How shall man be just with God?” And have they -these delivered Israelites -now found the answer? Beautiful it is to see then that in the very next sentence they are speaking of “salvation”: “I will give thanks to Thee, for Thou hast answered me, and become my salvation.” Righteousness with God is indeed the portion of the saved, and only of the saved: it is a gift, and not a work wrought out by us, nor (in the sense in which we are speaking of it) even wrought out in us. While there is, assuredly, a practical righteousness which is wrought out in us, and which is necessarily connected with our capacity to enjoy, and our moral fitness for, the presence of God, it is not any the more the “gate” into His presence. Here the righteousness we need is in Another. Christ is Himself the gate." The purging of sin and the positive value in which we stand are found in One alone who is the Head of blessing. for His people. And thus we can realize to the full the personal element in the language here: “I will give thanks to Thee, for Thou hast answered me, and hast become my salvation.” We naturally ask, however, is not this, perhaps, too evangelic an interpretation of what may be more simply taken? Israel has been in peril from external enemies, the nations that had been gathered against her, and the so absolutely similar words of the 14th verse unmistakably refer to this temporal deliverance. Is there anything more in the present one than the thought of entering into the presence of God now, to thank Him for this decisive overthrow of all their adversaries? This is a question which cannot, I believe, be decided by the words themselves, but only by the connection. And here it is certain that they have been speaking of a “gate” which “belongeth to Jehovah,” and which necessarily implies conditions as to entering into His presence. “This gate” -what can it be? If it be simply their own righteousness, -the righteousness of a people just now threatened with judgment for their sins, -it would seem as if much stress could be hardly laid upon it; and here we naturally look for some reference to how the long tale of sin had been put away. But more than this, the very next verse does undoubtedly refer to Christ, and in such a character as completely to justify the thought that the foundation of the soul in the presence of God is in fact before them: -“A stone which the builders refused is become the Head of the corner.” The Lord Himself and the apostles quote and apply this scripture. Isaiah (28: 16) gives us the direct prophecy: “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation; a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious corner-[stone], a sure foundation.” It is thus a foundation-stone that is in question; and we can read “the head of the corner” in no other way than it is read in Ephesians (Ephesians 2:20), “Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone.” The “chief corner-stone” and the “head of the corner” are the same thing. We are, of course, in Ephesians in the midst of Christian realities, and must take care, in any transference of texts to Jewish themes, to make account of resulting differences: but in the case before us we may find the differences themselves to give instruction. The apostle Paul is speaking of the church of God, which in the Old Testament was a mystery yet hidden. It is this of which he adds: “in whom the whole building fitly framed together groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.” Thus he is speaking of a temple -a Christian one -and of Christ as its foundation. The connection in the psalm enables us to see that here also it is the foundation of a temple that is spoken of. In the gospel of Matthew, where the Lord refers to this text, it is in the temple that He actually is. When He finally leaves it, He calls it no longer God’s but “your house,” and pronounces sentence upon it as such: not one stone would be left upon another (Matthew 23:38; Matthew 24:2). Upon their foundations, who in self-righteousness and unbelief rejected Him, no dwelling-place of God could stand. Israel had thus remained for many generations without that which was their distinctive glory. But they are again to possess it; and the psalm contemplates this blessed time. Christ, hitherto rejected, will then be the foundation upon which the dwelling of God among them will securely rest. When we look at the typical house, even in the wilderness, we are at no loss to understand that the sockets of the boards which were its framework spoke of Him; being made of the silver money of atonement (Exodus 28:27). As its curtained gates also spake of Him; and the beautiful curtains which were the very tabernacle itself. “In Him” the whole structure stood; and ark and mercy-seat, the very place of the Throne, still spake of Him. In this psalm we have no longer the tabernacle, but the solid foundations of the permanent building; but as to its essential meaning there could be no change; and when He declared to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” He spake of the temple of His body (John 2:21). Essentially -in its true spiritual reality -He was the whole thing; and in the psalm here it is as the Risen One, refused of the builders, and His life taken from the earth, but alive again from the dead, with His glorious work accomplished, He is the foundation of Israel’s praise for evermore. We are carried thus far beyond the fact of their merely temporal deliverance, great and marvelous as that must be, and realize the foundation upon which the worshipers stand, and the “gate” which “belongeth to Jehovah,” through which they come into His presence. Not any righteousness of their own is here in question. The once refused and slain; now risen and glorified One is all their joy. “This cometh of Jehovah” is now their cry, “and it is marvelous in our eyes.” So indeed it will be; and the whole “day” will be seen to be of Jehovah’s making. He has brought it all about, the trial and the sorrow which were His only way of blessing for them; and the end now reached its glorious consummation. And now, all hindrance to their blessing being removed, their “Hosanna” (“save now”) can be heard: “Save now, Jehovah, I beseech Thee; I beseech Thee, Jehovah, send now prosperity.” For the time of real and full return of heart to God is now reached, in which that will be accomplished of which the Lord spoke in the hour of His rejection as that which would bring Him to them once again. “Ye shall not see Me henceforth,” He says, “until ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord.” Here we have the decisive word: “Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord” (Jehovah); and this is the indication of their spiritual condition: He had had to say of them: “I have come in my Father’s name, and ye receive Me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” (John 5:43.) For alas, it was against God Himself that they were in hostility: with the desperate implacability of a heart set upon its own lusts, they both saw and hated “Him and His Father.” (John 15:24.) Now that which He had declared they would do, they have done. At the standpoint of the psalm; Antichrist has come in his own name, and been received; but a remnant wrought upon by divine grace has been turned to God; and in these is found the revival of the national life. Theirs is the cry, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah,” and “out of the house of Jehovah” -the sign; as we have seen; of restored favor -they are saluted with blessing. The last part of the verse is evidently a responsive greeting from within, as the worshipers approach Jehovah’s dwelling.
5. The last section is accordingly the joy and homage of those in restored and eternal relationship to God. “Jehovah is the Mighty One”: they have proved Him such; but more, -“He hath given us light.” Hence they fill the courts of His house with sacrifices, even up to the horns of the altar itself. He is their Mighty One, -their God; and they exalt Him. The psalm closes with the refrain of the anthem, heard ever and anon throughout this book: “Give thanks to Jehovah, for He is good: for His loving-kindness endureth for ever.”