Psalms 119

Psalms 119:1-176

Faith’s testimony to the Word, in love and service. “That which the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin; condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” So the apostle describes for the Christian the efficacy of the grace that has in Christ been shown us. The law could not work in men the obedience it required. The cross, beheld by faith, condemned sin for us, so as to deliver us from it, and implant in our hearts the very principle of obedience, in a faith that worketh by love. And this is the connection between the present psalm and the one preceding it, though Israel and not Christians are before us in them. The law is written on their hearts, according to the promise of the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34); and here all is promise, that is, grace. The longest psalm in the whole book is the utterance of Israel’s heart in praise of the law. We need not wonder to find it to be an alphabetic acrostic, and that of the most regular and perfect kind. There is an eight fold alphabet, this number eight showing what is new, in contrast with the old,* -thus the new covenant number -being stamped upon the whole psalm. Every letter of man’s language now is taken up with the praise of that, which was but an intolerable yoke before.
“The Masora observes that the psalm contains only the one verse, 122,* in which some reference or other to the word of revelation is not found as in all the 175 others, -a many-linked name of synonyms which runs through the whole. In connection with this,” says Delitzsch, “it may also not be merely accidental that the address, Jehovah, occurs 22 times, as Bengel has observed”: though not in regular correspondence with the 22 sections.
There are also just ten synonyms of the law used by the psalmist, and which naturally remind us of the ten commandments of the decalogue, “word, saying; way, path; testimonies, judgments; precepts, statutes; commandment, law.”* And these seem (though this may be disputed) to fall naturally into five pairs, as I have given them.
All this arrangement may seem artificial enough, if we take (as so often done) our knowledge for the measure of what is possible: which in Scripture is hardy enough. On the other hand, commentators have mostly renounced the idea of finding in the psalm any internal connection of thought. Only Delitzsch, so far as I am aware, has attempted a sketch of it, and this has met with little acceptance. Indeed the difficulty must needs be great of discerning links which are throughout moral and experimental, and which unite sentences which have the look of independence and ability to stand alone which these have. The numerical structure may here be expected, if anywhere, to show its worth as a guide to understanding; as the alphabetic arrangement would seem,in fact,to be intended to point out. It was one of the first clues which guided me, a good while since, in this direction; and I may be pardoned in preferring this to the despairing refuge of a help to remembrance, generally urged. The psalmist has thus plainly marked out for us 22 sections. If the last were omitted, the rest would naturally fall into a triple septenary order, suiting well the regularity of structure otherwise; and capable, as I believe, Of satisfactory comparison in this way, numerically and otherwise. The first seven would, then, seem to refer to individual condition; the second to relation to external circumstances; the third to divine holiness -the sanctuary view. Taking now the headings of the sections, as well as I have been able to give them; they would stand thus: —

1. individually. (1) harmonious righteousness. (2) cleansing by the word. (3) realizations. (4) in creature feebleness. (5) but with the God of might. (6) thus overcoming. (7) full rest of heart.
2. in external relations. (1) persistent purpose. (2) things working together for good. (3) recognitions. (4) in trial from man. (5) but with God governing. (6) overcoming in wisdom. (7) complete obedience.
3. in view of divine holiness. (1) the rebellious. (2) deliverance sought from them. (3) sanctuary revelations. (4) in trial from defection. (5) exercises. (6) overcoming in judgment. (7) perfection of the Word. In any full way we cannot compare these yet, and it will be enough, at present, to invite comparison. The last section of all is left out of this table. It plainly cannot be compared, since there is no other 8th section; if it is to stand as such; and there are difficulties as to this, which also must be reserved for after-consideration. Division 1.The individual believer. The first division of the psalm speaks of what the Word is to the individual believer. There is absolutely no mention of others, except twice (verses 21, 23), and by implication once (22), in the first five sections. In the 6th the thought of overcoming brings them in (42, 46), and we find them in the 7th (51, 53); but there is as yet no hint of persecution; save by reproach. In the very next section -the first of the second division -(v. 61) “the cords of the wicked have wrapped him round,” and in ten other verses they are spoken of; his life is continually in his hand; while those that fear God are mentioned five times. In the third division the wicked are mentioned fifteen times; but here he sees them trodden down, and put away like dross. Section 1. (Aleph.)Harmonious righteousness.
4. The theme of the psalm begins, as so often; in its opening verses. The “way” for man is simply the way of Jehovah’s law; and “happiness” is to be perfect in it. How blessed, indeed, just to have abidingly in the soul the consciousness that this only is happiness. To be delivered from the misery of one’s own will, one’s own way, -the very definition of sin (Isaiah 53:6) -how complete a deliverance is this! It is to have the law written upon one’s heart, which is not a natural state but a supernatural, a work of divine grace.

And this law is not merely arbitrary, the expression of authority: it is a “testimony” also, and one to which the awakened conscience responds. In this He is Himself declared: so that to “observe His testimonies” is to “seek Him with the whole heart.” With such all is in accordance with the real nature of things: they do not twist them: “they practise no perversity; they walk in His ways.” Safe, holy, and happy must be “His ways.” 2. Now the soul pours itself out to Him. “Thou halt commanded Thy precepts” -the separate applications of the divine principles -“that they may be kept diligently.” God does not speak positively, and then put up with trifling with what He says. Nor is this in the least what is meant by grace. There is no non-essential in what God has spoken: obedience is always what is essential; obedience to which we can affix limits means for us a wisdom which is above God’s. Nay, it is we who need to be taught wisdom: and for this, therefore, the heart cries out: “Oh that my ways” -my goings in the path -“may be directed to keep Thy statutes: then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all Thy commandments.” And it foresees that His judgments -His decisions in the court of conscience -will so approve His righteousness, that to learn these will produce a spirit of praise in an upright heart. The last verse is an appeal to divine government not to go far away from one who had in heart to keep the divine statutes. Section 2. (Beth.)Cleansing from evil by the Word. The next section is more difficult to put together and find meaning for as a whole; but we are in general (at least) right in seeking this at the beginning of any distinct part of Scripture, where we should put the title, and where God in His goodness hastens, as it were, to meet us with what is a real introduction to all that follows. This is why so often the psalms begin with what is the conclusion, then going back to lead us again toward it. In this case, the power of the Word to cleanse that is, to separate the soul from evil will be the theme of the section; and its two portions seem to harmonize well with this: the first part speaking of its inherent power for this; while the second shows how, in fact, the soul is drawn away and detached from all else by the love that absorbs and takes it up with God.

1. The young man is spoken of, no doubt, because life is strong in him; and the yet untried world full of natural attraction. Here, therefore, is the test-case for the word of God to prove its power; and it is perfectly able to do this, by the light shed by it upon the whole scene, which gives things their true character, by bringing God (who alone is Light) into connection with all. The soul, finding here its attraction; is set truly free, made master of itself and of its circumstances; while it realizes at the same time its dependence and its only safe shelter in the divine strength. Seeking Him with the whole heart, it has yet to pray, “Let me not wander.” But it clasps all the more to its heart the divine sayings, that it may not sin against Him: hiding them there as a possession of which it must not be robbed. And the world is full of robbers, who find its value to them only in its value to those from whom they would snatch it.
2. But now we see the heart in the presence and under the control of God: “Blessed art Thou, Jehovah”; to whom it turns with its consciousness of ignorance and its yearning desire, -“teach me Thy statutes.” Already, however, he has been speaking of what he knew, declaring God’s judgments, the decisions He had given as to good and evil, right and wrong, and that faithfully, -holding back nothing. And how great a matter is this, for keeping a clean path, -the confession of God in all things, the committing one’s self fully to all that He has made known as of Himself! The attitude of indecision tempts the assault of evil, while, God not being honored in it, He cannot honor one who is ashamed of Him. Joy in what is confessed thus goes with a true confession; and thus it follows here: “I have rejoiced in the way of Thy testimonies, as much as in all riches.” The mind, too, naturally employs itself upon that which the heart enjoys. God’s precepts are meditated on; and His paths regarded. The section closes with the renewed experience of a joy in His statutes which is a sure preservative against a bad memory: “I delight myself in Thy statutes: I do not forget thy word.” Section 3. (Gimel.)Realizations. The third section speaks of realization by the soul of what God’s word is, and of what things are as seen in the light of that word. Essentially, this is sanctification; because holiness is “holiness of truth.” (Ephesians 4:24, marg.) Eternity reveals time: the presence of God all things as good or evil; and the world is then seen as a place of continual conflict from which no man can withdraw himself. This gives the second part of the section here.
3. We are wholly dependent upon God for ability to realize things in this way. Naturally, man “walks in a vain show, and disquiets himself in vain.” True life begins for us in the bountiful grace of God, and is manifested in the keeping of His word; and the same energy which acts to bring us into this must still operate to retain us there. But in this way what marvelous things become known to us, and with eyes fully awake what glories may be revealed! It is simple that here we have the language of prayer. Nothing is more needed than the constant sense of dependence. And how touching is the plea of the 19th verse,which reminds us not so much (as it is usually taken) of man’s transience on earth, as the divine care for the stranger-guest in Israel, as the provisions of the law manifest it. We are apt to judge things rather by the narrow and sectarian spirit actually manifested by the nation in its later history than by the precepts of the inspired lawgiver. Yet, separated as they were by the law itself from the abominations to which the nations in their departure from God had given themselves up, He had placed them upon the very lines of intercourse between these nations, and at the throbbing centre of the world’s traffic. Here was their mountain fastness in which the Word that was entrusted to them was to be maintained for the blessing of the whole human race; and here, in the presence of all the powers of the world, so frank an asylum was offered to the one who sought it, that a mere fugitive slave escaping there was sheltered and free to find his home under the protection of the Lord God of Israel, and no man might deliver him up. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16.) Israel themselves had known the “the heart of a stranger” by bitter experience, and God declared Himself to them as One that “loveth the stranger in giving Him food and raiment.” They are exhorted, “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19.) Nay, they were taught still to account themselves as strangers, even in their land, and to prove to themselves that love of His to strangers of which He speaks: “The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is Mine: for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.” (Leviticus 25:23.) This seems to be the key to the language in the psalm here: “I am a sojourner [or stranger] in the land.” The Israelite, even if home-born, might still say that He was thus, in frailty and dependence, entertained by God. Still more would these Israelites, brought home at last from all their wanderings, realize this. If the land had been their own; they would have lost it; but God could not forfeit His right to it, nor to put into it whomsover He might see fit. And for these, coming back from their long alienation; as prodigals to learn afresh the ways of Him whose grace now welcomed them, effectual indeed would be the plea: “hide not Thy commandments from me.” As guests of His they will find a portion worthy of Him, -their lodging, food, and raiment, as His grace will give it; and His commands as their sweet enfranchisement from the ways of sin.
4. Thus the eyes open to the reality of things. Evil and good are seen in the sharp antagonism which exists between them. And, the eye affecting the heart, the soul breaks with the longing it has after those judgments of God which penetrate to the heart of things and make clear the essential, necessary opposition. It is no mere cold, colorless discrimination that is reached by this passionate longing after His mind, nor does the fervor of this spirit exhaust itself by its intensity, but abides “at all times.” God abides the same, and communion with Him; if real, forms His character within us. God is not coldly right: He is “a consuming fire.” His patience is not slowness of heart, but the pleading (if we may say so) of His love with men until all hope is over.

Then the “wrath of the Lamb” will manifest itself, not pitiless, but not restrained by pity. The Lamb will be still the Lamb, and thus will such wrath be terrible indeed. He sees it already taking effect: “Thou hast rebuked the proud”: the creature exalting itself above its place, -against Him who has ordained it its place; “they are cursed who go astray from Thy commandments.” And then; suffering from the opposition of a world which has turned its back on God, the speaker pleads: “Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept Thy testimonies.” “Testimonies” are to fact and truth: and God’s facts will assert themselves as that, and His truth will manifest itself at last, beyond all controversy. Then; at least, will reproach and contempt pass from those who have identified themselves with that which will be seen in its true character. And this may take place sooner than the inevitable time in which it surely shall. Meanwhile present reproach helps of itself to test and free from suspicion the soul that through it all makes the divine statutes its occupation and delight. And with this the section ends, -the expression of unfeigned joy and confidence in that which is realized to be true and the living word of unfailing wisdom: “Thy testimonies are my delight, -my counsellors.” Section 4. (Daleth.)In creature feebleness. We have, now another kind of realization -experience of a sorrowful kind, but most needful, that of the weakness of the creature, not in another but in one’s self. This is the necessary complement of the truth that all power is of God. Only that this is realized now, not merely as what is necessary to the creature, what would be as true of an angel as a man; but in the moral collapse of a fallen being. This is more before us in the first part here,which begins with the confession of a soul cleaving to the dust; while in the second confidence is expressed though in dependence, and a steadfast course is contemplated, spite of -rather because all rests so absolutely upon God.

1. The soul, though the dweller in a dust-formed tenement,cleaves to the dust only because fallen. Out of the consciousness of this, the psalmist cries for the power of God to energize it according to the gracious promises of the Word. He has bared before God his whole practical condition; and has the consciousness of being answered by Him. But He longs to know more His statutes, and the whole way in which His precepts lead. There He is satisfied that he will find the wondrous works of God for fruitful meditation: in truth what glories may be realized in the path ordained of God!

If an Israelite could say so, how much more we! We dull the prospect by unbelief, and shut ourselves out of it by a path self-chosen, and shut ourselves in to the dull, common lives we live, alas, so much. This is because we will, not because God will have it. And yet this path with God is ordained for the abasement of all human pride, and the valley of humiliation lies in it. “My soul melteth for heaviness,” he cries; but then there is pledged strength to meet him: “make me to arise, according to Thy word.” Exercised by the sense of frailty, he seeks also to have removed from him the way of falsehood, and that God would graciously grant him (according to the character of the psalm throughout) His authoritative law. 2. For He can speak of having chosen the way of truth, of setting God’s judgments before him; and that not in momentary resolve, but cleaving to His testimonies: and thus can confidently plead not to be put to shame. In truth it is impossible to one who does this, that he ever should be. So the soul assures itself; gathers up its strength, and contemplates the way opening up before it; yet in perfect conviction at the same time of the feebleness of all human faculties in the realization of the divine: -of entire dependence therefore upon God in all things: “I will run the way of Thy commandments when Thou shalt enlarge my heart.” Section 5. (He.)But with the God of might. Accordingly the next section is in every verse a prayer. The soul is with God, where the language of faith, in a place of constant need, becomes naturally that of prayer. This is not strange to us in Christianity, nor unsuitable to its joyous spirit of praise. “Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) are precepts which the apostle puts in the closest possible conjunction.

1. For enlightenment and supporting power the psalmist cries therefore here to the One with whom he goes. He must be taught the way of His statutes. He looks for this as meaning to walk in it,and to walk in it without any mental reservation; which is, indeed, the utter contrary of obedience, and the leaven of unbelief which (wherever found) will leaven all the life. will keep it unto the end," says the psalmist; or “to the heel,” -the lowest and least noticed part. “Give me discernment,” he says again in his earnestness, “and I shall keep Thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart”: these two things, the “whole heart” and “unto the end,” go naturally together. And again he affirms in the next verse: “therein is my delight.” Thus slavery there is none: he who is constrained by his affections is the freest man possible; and so it is here. But the power of the world is felt, and the feebleness to resist temptation. He who has judged the world in general knows but too well how specific forms of it nevertheless may appeal to us, in which the characters of the world have not been recognized, -and how much cleaves to us, to which we would not cleave. Here God’s “testimonies” have their place, as such: which bring in the revealing sunshine, never capable of gilding a thing that is evil. Yet he says, “Incline my heart,” on the one side, and on the other “turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity.” He has his heart inclined, when he says, incline it. He is turning away his eyes when he prays to have it done. But so conscious is he of the infirmity that cleaves to him, and so desirous to be wholly right with God, that he can only find rest for his heart in this perfect Will and Wisdom to which he commits himself: “quicken me,” he supplicates, “in Thy way.” The last three verses seem to depend upon the first two here; and the whole to express the need and craving of that light from the holy presence of God Himself which shall dispel all darkness and prevent the shadows of a dead world wrecked by sin from intruding on and deceiving the possessors of what is really life.
2. The second part is still an appeal, but in a different way: namely, that God would as a living God confirm His Word by His deed,and thus gloriously answer to the faith of His people. It is one of the glories of Scripture to touch in so many ways the whole state of things by which we are surrounded. Prophecy fulfilling shows it to be the voice of Him who is Lord of all circumstances and generations. Then history in it we find to be also prophecy, taking its place with other types and shadows of the future thus. Its moral judgments, too, appeal not merely to the conscience but also to the experience of all men and times.

While again there are special promises which bring Him still nearer to the individual and into the most secluded lives. Naturally this comes into the experience of these psalms throughout; and here is the very place to find it spoken of, -in the fifth section of this great experimental psalm: here then we find it. “Establish Thy saying to Thy servant” would thus be a prayer for the fulfillment of specific promise; where the state of the pleader may be brought forward as not (at least) barring the claim of faith. “Devoted” is perhaps too strong a word to insert, where the text has only the preposition;* but it needs only to be noted as inserted, to escape this difficulty.
The next verse, by the reason given; “for Thy judgments are good,” would show that the reproach mentioned would have to do with some apparent nonfulfillment of these judgments in God’s governmental ways among men. And such reproaches are being often cast upon the Lord’s people: “Where is now their God?” (Psalms 115:2.) But the heart of the psalmist realizes the goodness of these “judgments,” -the decisions as to good and evil, which in the day of God’s long-suffering His dealings with men do not always seem to affirm. Under the Old Testament dispensation; this was necessarily a much greater enigma than since the cross; and it is the occasion of much of the misapprehension of the friends of Job. With the enemies of the believer it is always a favorite reproach against him. But the third verse takes a ground which seems clearer and surer. How can God but answer the longing of a heart after His precepts, where the clog of earth is felt and pleaded against? And the appeal is more confident, proportionally, however lowly it may be in its very nature: “quicken me in Thy righteousness.” Section 6. (Vau.)There are but two prayers in the sixth section; upon the answer to which all the rest of it hangs. The number (6) is that of overcoming; and this is clearly and prominently the thought in verses 42, 45, and 46. We need not wonder that in a world whose course is contrary to God, overcoming should have a marked place in divine testimony. Christ Himself was the great Overcomer; and for all who have faith in Him; the “victory that overcometh the world” is in their “faith.” (1 John 5:4.) One of Israel’s tribes, that of Naphtali, as we have seen at length elsewhere (Joshua 19:32-39, notes), speaks typically of this aspect of the Christian as an overcomer. The epistles to the seven churches in Asia speak loudly as in trumpet-calls to him as that, all through the present period.

1. The first part here grounds all its assurance upon Jehovah’s sufficiency; and this abides the same throughout all ages. Our claim upon it, through the work of Christ, has been indeed established, enlarged, and handed over to us in its completeness, since the Mediator of the New Covenant, by the blood of the Covenant, entered heaven itself and sat down there for us; but in all ages the assurance of the saint has been in the unchanging faithfulness of the Eternal God. For the psalmist it was the “saying of God,” the “word of God,” the “word of truth,” upon which he rested; and for us today it is the same. For him also, that word revealed Jehovah’s “loving-kindness,” and a pledged “salvation,” for which he waited; and so do we wait today. But we have a salvation wrought out by Another for us, as to which we can say, in a sense no Israelite could, “He hath saved us”: and with this the Person of the Redeemer has come into view, and God Himself been revealed to us in Him; as otherwise He never could be.

The poverty of the Psalms in these respects, when they express, not what prophetically refers to Christ Himself, but the experiences and knowledge of an Israelite of that day, strikes one painfully indeed. We, in the midst of the full glory of divine revelation now, what instruments of praise should our hearts be! May our gracious God awaken their full music! The soul of the psalmist leans upon the promise of God while it waits for a salvation which is yet future; and it gathers confidence from the Word in which it trusts, to answer the reproaches of the enemy. God’s word he realizes to be the “word of truth,” and prays that it may not be taken utterly out of his mouth, weak as he may be in standing for it: for he waits in hope for His judgments to manifest themselves. 2. The consequences are developed in the second part, which result from the realized sufficiency of Jehovah and His word. And the first, for one upon whose heart the law is written; is the joy of continuous, uninterrupted obedience to it. “For ever and aye,” he says with enthusiasm. Oh for our “easy yoke” to be accepted in like manner! For him it is easy: “I will walk at liberty,” he says: it is freedom to walk in ways that approve themselves to the heart, -are the choice of it; and this is our blessedness, whose “rule” is not the law, but the “new creation in Christ Jesus,” the perfect and heavenly walk of the “Second Man.” The opposition of the world is realized, but without alarm. He will speak of God’s testimonies before kings, and not be ashamed; and will delight himself in His commandments which he has loved. These things, I think, go together. The former is an exemplification of the latter: while the boldness of the confession of the truth maintains the joy of it also in the heart. So it ever is. The last verse shows this delight more and more increasing, the hands (or palms) lifted up showing, as in prayer, the longing and fervor of the soul, as it implies also the realization of the depths and mysteries of that blessed Word, upon which it meditates therefore continually. Section 7. (Zayin.)Full rest of heart. The division of the eight verses in each section hitherto has been into five and three, the order of which, however, may be reversed. This first five is in the present one again divided, so that the whole psalm presents a 2, 3, 3 structure. It is not easy always to characterize a seventh division. “Completion,” for which it stands, necessarily implies “rest,” because the thing is ended: the only way in which such a thought can be applied to God. The last verse here unites clearly the thoughts of accomplishment and satisfaction: “This has been mine, that I have kept Thy precepts,” reminds us of the apostle’s similar utterance, “I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.” There is but one prayer in the section; and that about a promise now to be fulfilled, for which he is looking, and has looked. All the rest is review of the past, and that in peace of heart. Thus the heading of the section is justified in itself, and justifies its numerical place.

1. The word has been to him a word of promise, -a comforting, energizing, vivifying word. How good is it to realize it in this character! What a fullness of promise to us is there, in fact, in the word of God; and how this testifies to us of the wondrous grace Of God that so displays itself! “No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.” “They that fear the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good.” How more than sufficient -how divine are such assurances! True, there is affliction in fact,and much of it. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” But these are either the necessary chastenings of love; because even the “righteous” are that so inconstantly; or else they are the results of what the world is in its opposition to God, and will be found to be gain in the day of account. All this will be seen then, and should be realized now, to require no abatement from the exact truth of the Word. Nay, it is in the affliction that faith grows and is established, and its energizing character is found. The Word is living and life-giving; while it tests and searches us out, as with a divine search-warrant, clothed with an authority beyond any of earth, to which all earthly authority must give way. What a Word is this!
2. Yet the opposition to it is everywhere and none the less manifest. Wherever it goes it stirs up, just by its demand for righteousness and goodness, the innate resistance of the heart to good and God. So here the psalmist testifies to the derision of men that he had encountered. These were the proud, who would not suffer its rebuke. Their character revealed what was that of their opposition; and he had not declined from the law on account of it.

He had read history to purpose, and remembered God’s judgments of old. It was the same God now; and so he comforted himself: while, as he reflected on this falling away of man from God, indignation (“burning heat”) possessed him. Well it might, indeed: for what has man’s history been! Read it in the masses of heathenism today; and in the condition of the foremost of the so-called Christian populations. 3. He reverts to what the Word has done for him and is to him; and now he can give as to this a precious testimony. God’s statutes, against which men have been thus rebelling, why, they have made his life music. In the house of his sojournings, -in the place of frailty, mortality, and strangership, -they have brought out of it, not merely “songs,” as in our common version; but “psalms”; -melody, and melody to God, and to which the whole creation is in profound subtle, harmonious accompaniment. How entrancing is a “Psalm of Life” so realized! Then it will bear the soberest thought. “In the night,” when earth lies in shadow, “visions of God” have been at all times most realized; then “I remembered Thy Name,” he says, “and have kept Thy law.” So he finds what more and more those who have it prove to be a substantial possession: “this has been mine, that I have kept Thy precepts.” By and by “the righteousnesses of the saints” will deck them even at the marriage of the Lamb; although those pure white robes will acquire their lustre only as “washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:14; Revelation 19:8, Gk.) Here, then; the first division of the psalm ends. Division 2.The Believer, in external relationships. The second division, as has been already noticed, deals more with external surroundings, the circumstances and persons favorable or adverse. This, of course, will be seen, not in all the verses, but in special, leading, dominant ones, with which the others are connected, and around which they group themselves. The apparent independency of the verses has been remarked before also, and indeed by every one who has commented on them. Nor can one by any means always prove the connection to be such as is here represented. That which is most natural and most fruitful will necessarily most commend itself to us; but it is upon the numerical structure that we must principally depend for the discovery of this, as it will then also be large confirmation of it. The spiritual result will speak to the spiritual mind. Section 1. (Cheth.)Persistent purpose.

1. In the first section we have, naturally, the introduction to the whole. In the first part you see the man himself; in the second, his enemies and his associates. The thing emphasized as to man is what is needed to make him master of his circumstances, that persistent purpose of heart which delivers from the temptations which ensnare and carry away the unstable. Here he begins with reaffirming what he has said just before, that his portion, what he has for himself, in contrast with the name, power, or substance of which others might boast, is to be a keeper of Jehovah’s words. And this truly brings a great revenue. Here one finds that for which His word is pledged, a favor better than life, and every way worthy as an object of pursuit with the whole heart. This had been to the psalmist also the fruit of his coming to himself. He had thought upon his own ways, a sad enough but profitable contemplation. Thus with clear understanding of what he was turning from, he turned, not his eyes merely, but his feet unto those divine “testimonies,” which ever appear more self-evidencing as there is self-judgment as to the paths that lead away from them. So he came then to realize what is indeed reality.
2. He can now speak of having followed with prompt, unhesitating decision; the new path thus found. But here, too, is the opposition of the wicked, manifested in snares set to entangle his feet; spite of which he has gone on his way unhindered. And in the night his heart would run over with a praise which he had to rise up to express, on account of the righteousness of divine judgments, -the perfect moral way in which every question received its settlement through these. With those that feared Jehovah he took his place. Oneness of mind drew these together, as it necessarily will do; and a man becomes known by the company he keeps. Associations are also a part of the ways by which we approve ourselves or not to God, and are insisted on, as we know, at the very threshold of the whole book. (Psalms 1:1.) In close walking with those that fear the Lord, the experiences and joys of each become a common blessing of all. They are multiplied in being shared together. And “the earth is full of Jehovah’s loving-kindness,” who makes all things work together for good to His own. This looks on to what we find in the next section, -one of those connecting links which are so frequent in the Psalms. The joy of this loving-kindness realized in the soul becomes in it a fervent desire to be taught His statutes. Section 2. (Teth.)Things working together for good. The working together of all things for good is the theme of the next section. Good and evil in this checkered scene are thus seen to be in harmony; and the work of the enemy is even made, spite of itself, to be a minister of the good. These are in fact the two divisions of this section.
3. The psalmist approves thoroughly, in looking back, Jehovah’s faithfulness in his case. He has been truly the covenant-God, and has dealt well, and only well, with His servant: according to His word so freely pledged to him. Faith responds fully to this on his part, owning the need of divine teaching, and which implies much more than the lesson-book, for scholars whose unaptness is so much a moral condition. The rod has been surely among the “all things” working good to all the people of God; and so he who speaks here has found it. “Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now I have kept Thy saying.”
4. But this may have only to do with physical evil; the deeper question is the moral evil, and the second part of the section takes up this. In Eden man’s perfection was to abide in good where evil was not, and to be a stranger to this altogether. Now, on the contrary, it is in having the “senses exercised to discern between good and evil”; both being before him. (Hebrews 5:14.) The presence of evil around is therefore permitted with this end in view; and in ourselves we come into nearer contact with it,and learn to hate it with corresponding energy. In all this we find One over all who is good and does good; whose acts are truly accordant with His nature. Joy indeed is it, then; to be taught His statutes, which enlighten the conscience and preserve moral vision. In the darkness of the cave the organ of sight is well known to atrophy from mere disuse. The psalmist is suffering from the slander of men; whose character is clearly to be seen as the proud: men that have a spirit of rebellion against restraint, literally, that boil up, like water. The mere subjection of the heart to God rouses the opposition of such, who traduce what they have no mind to imitate. In answer to which he affirms his whole-hearted observance of the precepts of Jehovah. But their heart is as fat as grease; the grossness of their nature hindering all right affections: “for me,” he says, “I delight in Thy law.” And the very affliction through which he has passed has been serviceable to him in making him learn more deeply the character of those statutes, from the violation of which he has himself suffered. How certainly we learn in this way all must be aware. In result, the law of Jehovah’s mouth has acquired for him a value beyond that of earthly riches: it is his real possession. Section 3. (Jod.)Recognitions. The theme of the third section of the second division much resembles that of the first, which we have considered. Yet there is a difference; and that according to the respective characters of the divisions themselves. It is for this reason that “recognitions” seems a more suited title here than “realizations.” The soul is more upon the outlook. Circumstances and men are more before it: and these both for and against, -the brotherhood of faith upon the one hand, and the adversaries on the other. The first part, I take it, gives us certain foundations or broad facts which are clearly recognizable; the second, reckonings of faith which deal with the future rather than the present, and in which confidence takes the form of prayer.
5. The basis-fact here is that of a Creator-God, who cannot therefore but be for the work of His hands. His hands have made us, and not rudely; but fashioned us so as to be witnesses of His handiwork. He must design; then, to have His creature filling the place for which He made him; and will surely not deny the understanding necessary to this. This is an argument which the 139th psalm dwells upon at large, and which the New Testament for the Christian puts in the strongest possible way. Here we can speak of new creation, and of the word of God as that by which He has begotten us to Himself. No fear that He may deny it to us. To us it is as milk to a new-born babe -the one necessity of its nature. Of new birth the Old Testament did not yet speak; but men had need of it none the less, and came thus into a communion which, though not yet marked off externally from the mass, was necessarily distinguished by the characteristics of the new spiritual life which had been received. And this is the second basis-fact here. As the first touched the centre of the circle, -ascertained the whence of relationship, though not with the clearness of present knowledge, so the second defines the circumference, the with whom, the family. And they recognize one another also, as belonging to a company known even then as a family of faith. So the psalmist says here: “they that fear Thee are glad when they see me,” -there is a joyful glance of recognition. And here is the mark by which they recognize: “because I have waited in hope on Thy word.” But there is a third thing now; and this assures us of a Living Presence, not simply at the beginning or in the past, but abiding throughout human history, faithful to His own nature, which is holy, and to His people in His dealings with them. “I know, Jehovah, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.” Thus, in these three things, God, His people, and the relationship between them, are all recognized; and His word is authoritative over them; their joyful confidence, and that to which His acts at all times are found correspondent.
6. The psalmist now pours out his heart to God, whom he knows, and who is so necessary to him. He prays that His loving-kindness may be his comfort, according to His promise to him. For God has pledged Himself to His people: it has not sufficed Him to say “Ye know me, and that I cannot err or do wrong; and let this be enough for you.” We are too frail, too dim-sighted, too little able to anticipate His ways, for this to satisfy us, or to satisfy Him as to us. Divine love has therefore pledged itself to us, made its covenant with man; and swears, if His word is not enough: “that by two immutable things” -“His word and His oath” -“we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” (Hebrews 6:17-18.) We may have “boldness,” therefore, in coming to what is characterized for us as a “throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), to find help for all the way which is His way for us. For any other way we could neither expect nor rightly desire it. Thus the force of “according to Thy word unto Thy servant” here. For prayer is crippled, confidence as to it gone, if our wills are struggling in it against God’s will. And this is the argument of the next verse also: “For Thy law is my delight.” His tender mercies, therefore, can be freely shown; so necessary as they are for life itself in a woad of conflict, -so necessary for the invigoration of spiritual life. This brings him to the conflict: and he prays that the proud, the independent asserters of their own will, may be ashamed: their own will proving itself in his case to be mere perversity and falsehood; while for him the divine precepts were his meditation. Thus would God’s holiness be manifested in the presence of those who feared Him, and who would have in him -in God’s ways with him -experimental proof of this, to which they might turn,with His testimonies in their hand thus fully corroborated. Nor can it be in haughtiness on his own side that he claims this. Nay, he has need of the mercy of God to be shown to himself also, that his heart may be made perfect in His statutes, that be himself may not be ashamed. Section 4. (Caph.)In trial from man. The fourth section speaks of the trial from man, which had reached almost the extreme point. The first part, of his integrity under it; the second, of the persecution itself, on account of which’ the psalmist appeals to God. Throughout, His faithful word is that to which he cleaves and which is his support,while yet the hand of God has not interposed to put an end to the trial.
7. In the extreme of necessity, his soul fainting for the deliverance which can be from God alone, His word is that upon which in hope he waits. Plenty of comfort there, which yet necessitates a living God to make it good. For this it fearlessly pledges Him; but the pledge sometimes seems long in being redeemed. Hence the room for exercise, which after all is not against faith, -which supposes it, and in it finds its only means of existence: for faith has to do with that which is not seen. The pressure has been great, however: he has been dried up, like a skin bottle in the smoke, while yet he has not by all this been made to forget Jehovah’s statutes.
8. But he feels the briefness of his days, and pleads for the judgment which is needed for the fulfillment to Israel of their earthly promises. When shall that time be? Here the prophecies of those times and seasons, which from us are hidden as to definite fulfillment (Acts 1:7), in the present Christian gap of time, will open up to them abundant comfort (Daniel 12:4; Daniel 12:9). Meanwhile the pits of the proud yawn before them, unchecked by Jewish law. The psalmist thinks of those commandments which in their maintenance of righteousness necessarily imply a God who will be faithful to the righteous, so that he can plead them as if they were promises -“faithful commandments.” And to these he, too, has striven to be faithful: he seeks therefore his sanctuary shelter from those that persecute him wrongfully. Almost consumed upon earth, he has not forsaken the divine precepts; for which yet he realizes his need of quickening, that he may keep the testimonies of His mouth. Section 5. (Lamed.)But with God who governs. As generally in a fifth section, now, after the pressure of trial has been felt in its bitterness, the joyful sense of the supremacy of God rises in fresh power upon the soul. God rules, when winds and waves are at their worst; and His word, upon which alone we can rest amid the confusion; is that which is law everywhere, while by the sense of its glorious perfection it attaches the soul to Him with an indissoluble bond. These are the two parts that are found here.
9. In the heavens above His word stands firm for ever, as illustrated, no doubt, by the stars that roll in their circuits, the sun and the moon that keep their ordered path. The earth, too, is established, -in relation, I suppose, to the sea, in which the foundations of the dry land are, spite of the restless warfare of the sea upon them; fixed abidingly. There they all remain; servants of God in their several spheres, a permanent condition of things, amid all the apparent susceptibility to change, showing everywhere the impress of a governing hand. In the soul God’s law likewise proves its sustaining power, acting in a very different way, yet so as to manifest the divine virtue that is in it. As law it brings in the assertion of sovereignty to which the conscience responds with its homage, and the heart with its delight. Thus then, spite of the felt disorder, God is; and the soul is cheered and energized, and that which has done this remains in its unique effect, impossible to be forgotten. One lives by it to God.2. This introduces the second part, the psalmist turning to Him who is thus made known with the declaration of his devotion and of his need. It is not merely a cry forced from him by outward distress: “I have sought,” he says, “Thy precepts.” And this, though the wicked had desired and plotted for his destruction; clearly for his adherence to them: “I attend unto Thy testimonies.” Then his whole heart opens out. He has looked out upon all human perfection and seen in every particular how limited it is. Easy enough to find everywhere an end in this way; but to the word of God, controlling him as his commandment, he has found none: “it is exceeding broad”: like space itself it has no boundary-wall; but it has an infinite fullness, not an emptiness, -an infinite speech, and not a silence. It is the speech of God. Section 6. (Mem.)Overcoming in wisdom. He proceeds to show how this word of God, itself so supreme, has lifted him up by its inherent power into a supreme place among men. It is divine knowledge that he gets by it, beyond the capacity of any man at his best. Nay, man’s wisdom is so opposed to God’s that the gaining of this knowledge is a true “overcoming,” the sifting and analyzing and separation of true from false, always with a moral interest also, or, to say better, a spiritual. “Wisdom” has necessarily always this character in her, as the “fool” is he who “hath said in his heart, There is no God.”
10. The psalmist begins by once more expressing his delight in the law: it gives him constant occupation: “all the day.” Let us remember that it is one who can speak so, who can tell us of the wisdom it has communicated to him. We shall not, perhaps, get the same results without some similar devotion to it; and yet the estimate has no touch of exaggeration in it. If it be God’s word, what can all the wisdom outside it be, compared with that? In the perfect knowledge of our need, -with perfect love and perfect ability to meet it, -what must we say, even in anticipation of inquiry, such a book must be? Yet, must we not fear that there are few who give it even now the day and night study which the psalmist gave to his so much smaller and poorer Bible? Let us listen; then; to his account of the result, with the remembrance of the almost unspeakable difference in our minds. It is of the law in the main he speaks; and though we must not limit that, wherever we hear of it, just to the ten commandments, or even to the Mosaic institutions as a whole, yet it is plain that it is in fact largely of this that he is thinking here. “Law,” “commandments,” “keeping” God’s “precepts,” “refraining the feet,” show this quite clearly; and it is spiritual ethics with which he is, at least, very largely concerned. To make this evangelical, we have only to remember that the Mosaic law had very definite teaching as to what sin was before God, and of the impossibility of a sinner approaching Him without the blood of atonement. This, too, was ethics, if it was much more. It was this in the highest sense; and there would be none, except it were an ethics of despair, without it. But an ethics of despair is really none. Enemies the psalmist has, and that on account of the law of his God; but this makes him wiser than all of them. Necessarily; if “iniquity” is, as Scripture calls it, “vanity,” and ignorance of God is “folly,” and the government of the world is one that makes for righteousness. Thus the enemies of the righteous can neither understand God, nor the world, nor the men they have to deal with; and even the hearts of their fellows, and their own hearts, are most unreliable quantities: “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know” them? But more than this: the testimonies of God being his meditation; he is wiser than all his teachers. And notable it is how rapidly the mind awakens and is strengthened and enlarged under the influence of Scripture. The countries in possession of an “open Bible” may be traced by the comparative intellectual gain in other directions, as is well known; and yet even this does not give a just idea of the Bible in its power as the true educator of the human race. For, alas, where the heart is not possessed by it for God, men refuse submission to the light itself, and thus in the places of greatest enlightenment there is yet an undercurrent at least of opposition to it. Nay, more, among those who are genuinely converted by it, how few receive the word of God in the whole-hearted manner of the psalmist here! It is not too much to say that for most Christians even; the blank pages of their Bibles are more numerous than the full ones; the sun is half darkened by the spots upon it. Received fully, whole-heartedly, unreservedly, -allowed to do all the work of which it is capable, -mind, heart, conscience alike submitted to its restorative, invigorating,divinely quickening influence, what equal development would there not be of every human faculty! what light shed upon Nature, history, every question of right interest possible to man! Take all the men of special gift, the aptest to receive, the most fitted to communicate knowledge, yet uncontrolled by Scripture in what they affirm, -after all, the poor man uneducated otherwise, cleaving only to the Word, may truly and unaffectedly say with the psalmist, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for Thy testimonies are my meditation.” So with the “elders,” the men of long experience: clearly this is all too limited, in duration; in sphere of application; in inherent capacity, to be put for a moment in comparison with the knowledge derivable from the word of God. But notice all through, how there is insisted on the practical nature of its requirements as to the condition of all such knowledge being imparted: “I discern more than the elders, because I keep Thy precepts.” And he closes all this with “I have refrained my feet from every evil way: that I may keep Thy word.”
11. And now we see the character of this “overcoming” from another side: the attractive and separative power of the Word, moving the affections as well as regulating the walk. One of the first necessities for which is the assurance of that direct contact in the Word between God and the soul which the next verse expresses: “I have not departed from Thy judgments: for Thou hast taught me.” Here is the simple “book,” become the divine “oracle”: God has indeed spoken in it; what an inexpressible joy to have heard the voice of God! God speaking! and to me! How the heart is moved by it! “How sweet are Thy sayings to my taste! sweeter than honey to my mouth!” And this attraction is necessary repulsion from the opposite pole: “through Thy precepts I get discernment: therefore I hate every false way.” All this is so simple as to require no comment. Section 7. (Nun.)Complete obedience in view of all circumstances. The seventh section carries this out to full obedience in spirit, though with the consciousness of much infirmity and constant need of God. It seems to divide, exactly as the seventh of the first division, into 2,3,3; the ordinary five verses of the larger part being again divided, precisely as there.
12. We have first the steadfast purpose of heart which underlies all true obedience. And this is based upon the consciousness of what the Word is, -a light shining amid the darkness of the world, and which reveals the footpath, sure if narrow, through it. The path is not dark, if the world is; and the wayfarer resolvedly undertakes it: he will keep the judgments of righteousness, the decisions of God as to good and evil which largely (but not wholly) define his way.
13. The opposition of man brings him into continual peril: affliction which has but too much power over him. He realizes and pleads his need of divine energy, which has been pledged to him, indeed, so that he can reckon upon it. Thus he can bring the free-will offerings of his mouth, the recognition of help given; and still pray to be taught Jehovah’s judgments. And through the peril he passes, not distracted into forgetfulness of that which abides in its supremacy over him; the law of his God.
14. He advances further, to speak of more positive attainment. The snare of the wicked had not made him swerve from the path of divine precept. Yea,his whole portion; his chosen inheritance was the testimonies of God. They were the rejoicing of his heart, which he had inclined to perform them for ever, -“to the end,” or thoroughly, without reserve. Division 3.In contemplation of divine holiness. The third division seems to emphasize the holiness of God. The enemies are looked at more as the enemies of God than personally such, and the exercises have correspondingly their character less with regard to external trouble: in this respect the third division returns toward the first. Section 1. (Samech.)The rebellious. In the first section; accordingly, the rebellious are looked at in their character and conduct, as abhorrent to God and man. The righteous turn from them; and God puts them away in judgment from the earth; and this is, roughly, the two parts of the psalm.
15. “I hate the double-minded,” begins the psalmist; “and I love Thy law.” His own integrity of heart cannot abide the wavering of those who at one moment are for Jehovah, at another for Baal; who have therefore no true conviction, but in the conflict of opinion follow only their own wills. For himself his heart is in the path of obedience; and more, he has the experience of what it is to have Jehovah his hiding-place and shield, -a living God making Himself known in the day of trial, so that His word becomes his confidence. From evil-doers his path necessarily separates; for he is set to keep the commandments of his God.
16. He turns to Him in the consciousness of dependence,with the word pledged to him; which makes him hope in it, and beseeching Him that it may not leave him to be ashamed. Confident he is that he is secure who is upheld by God; and this safety he would use to run unhindered continually in the path of His will. From his shelter he looks out to see the judgment fall upon all that go astray from the path: for their laxity -“letting fall,” like the string of a deceitful bow -is falsehood: not failure where the heart may yet be right. Thus God treats them; not as silver which may yet have to be purified from dross, but as dross itself and nothing else. The psalmist sees and approves this judgment, and so clings the more to those testimonies which deliver from the way of destruction; while his flesh trembles with awe at the holiness of God, and he is afraid as he realizes His righteous judgments. Section 2. (Ayin.)Deliverance sought from them.
17. Yet he is in fact still among the enemies of God’s way, and who are therefore necessarily also the enemies of His people; and he seeks deliverance from these on the ground of that very righteousness. He has himself followed it; and he prays therefore not to be left in the hand of his oppressors. May He, the righteous One, be as that, surety for good to one who is His servant, and not permit the oppression of the proud, who because of pride refuse the servant’s place. God’s pledged word he has, but His salvation lingers, and in distress his eyes fail for longing for it.
18. He pleads the servant’s place that he has taken, that he may be dealt with in divine love, and taught His statutes. For he is His servant, and as such needs and may urge that he needs, discernment to know the testimonies that he has to maintain amid a state of daring rebellion which speaks for the time being come for Jehovah’s own intervention. But this disorder only makes him realize the more the value of those commandments which are more to him than the wealth of much and purest gold. For here all is pure, -every precept,whatever it concerns; and every false way is exposed to reprobation. Section 3. (Pe.)Sanctuary-revelations. In the third section the psalmist turns to speak more of the joy in Jehovah’s testimonies that he has found, of the revelation that they have been to him. All his heart is awake with longing after God Himself, to whom His word brings, as its power is known; and thus this is a true sanctuary portion; although it be more longed for than enjoyed. Yet the door is opening, has partially opened, and the inner light is already breaking out.
19. Wonderful are the testimonies of God, which by their glorious character win the soul to their obedience. Light breaks out as the Word is opened up; and even the simple acquire by it the faculty of discernment. The heart is drawn out in longings which are not lawless, but the very contrary: “I longed for Thy commandments.” Thus the Word as an educator makes no monsters. It does not develop the intellect, while leaving the heart and conscience unaffected; but the whole man grows in beautiful correspondence of all parts to one another.
20. The soul thus wrought upon becomes a seeker after God, in the apprehension of constant grace which is shown to all who love His name, -that is, the manifestation of Himself; for that is what His name is. Such an one realizes what the liberty is of walking in God’s ways, and the miserable bondage which results from any iniquity having dominion over one. From man; too, he seeks to be free, in order to keep the divine precepts. Above all, to walk in the sunshine of God’s face, as one brought near, and there to be taught His statutes. There it is that the awful horror of sin is felt, with the longing after men who know not its deformity: “Mine eyes run down with streams of water, because they keep not Thy law.” Section 4. (Tsaddi.)The trial from defection. The last verse contains in it, as not uncommonly, the theme very much of the following section. In it we have the trial of spirit from the defection around, along with that abiding sense of preciousness of the Word itself, which is what makes the defection so full of anguish.
21. Jehovah’s word is what Jehovah is: if He is righteous, so are His judgments. And so too are His testimonies, of whatever nature: He cannot be aught but a faithful witness, in whatever it has pleased Him to give any testimony. Here, as he thinks of it, the psalmist’s zeal breaks out: it consumes him as the altar-flame the sacrifice; as with Christ in the temple, where He flames out in a testimony against the evil, which puts Him in opposition to the heads of the people, identified with the wickedness that was then in power. It is not with the psalmist that men are his adversaries merely, but “because mine adversaries have forgotten Thy words.” That leads him back to think of the Word, how pure it is, and how he loves it. Little he is, it is true -he who has this spirit is ever little -and despised, for so has the mass got away from God that they can afford to despise such feeble opposition: yet he clings with all this to that which links his feebleness with the Lord of all: “I have not forgotten Thy precepts.”
22. And faith affirms, amid the confusion in which all might seem buried, Jehovah’s righteousness to be eternal righteousness, and His law truth which must always then abide truth. Trouble and anguish possess him, as he thinks of the madness of the adversaries; but this does not bring even the shadow of a summer cloud over those commandments which are his delight. Again he affirms: “the righteousness of Thy testimonies is eternal”; and he only needs himself to be sustained of God in ability to discern their blessedness, the bringing into that life which is alone true life: “by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall men live.” Section 5. (Koph.)Exercises. The next section is more difficult to characterize; but as a fifth it seems to speak of exercise: not, in the first part at least, so much from the difficulties and trials of the way, as over the word of God itself. that healthful exercise which would that we all knew more of. In the second part the enmity of the wicked is spoken of, though briefly; and the soul comforts itself in Jehovah being near.
23. The psalmist calls with his whole heart upon Jehovah, earnestly professing his purpose of obedience. Where this is found, it naturally and necessarily leads to exercise over the Word: it is the foundation of it. The path is not so simple that we can find it without God; nor is it meant to be; but then we find Him our companion in it. The suppliant needs salvation also: he does not say from what; indeed, from how many things, the hindrances which so constantly present themselves to obedience, but which are helps to faith as everything is that casts us upon God. The Word with all this gets a large place with him, just as surely as God gets His.

He is up before the dawn; crying out to God, yet with hopeful expectancy which the Word had wrought in him. Nay, before the night-watches he is awake, meditating on God’s sayings, testing his knowledge; finding continually indeed the drag of nature on him, for which he has to betake himself to Jehovah’s loving-kindness for quickening energy, to discern what is of Him; according to His unfailing judgment. 2. He is not allowed to do this undisturbed. The wicked are near, and threatening mischief; enemies in heart and will to that which occupies him. But Jehovah too is near, the Rock upon which all these waves break in vain. The truth abides: nothing can alter that; and this His commandments are. Yea, His testimonies have of old been known as for ever fixed upon His own immutable foundations. Section 6. (Resh.)Overcoming in judgment. The sixth section has as its keynote the prayer of the second verse, “Plead my cause,” -in order to which the psalmist spreads it before God. The wicked cannot hope for deliverance; but he doubts not to stand in the judgment he invites, which, of course, is not at all as to any absolute righteousness, but only as to integrity of heart amid much weakness and many adversaries.

1. The affliction that he is in makes him seek for deliverance, and thus -because the wicked cannot hope for it -appeal for the taking up of his cause; yea, that Jehovah, who fully knows, would Himself plead it. He has not forgotten. Jehovah’s law, though he owns at the outset the need that he has of the impartation of living energy from Him; who has pledged Himself to him for such need. Utter weakness then on his part is recognized: he needs not to hide it: but he is not among the wicked who seek not the divine statutes.
2. He casts himself, therefore, afresh upon Jehovah’s tender mercies for this living power, for a life according to the judgments of His truth and holiness. His adversaries are many, but they have not perverted him from the path of His testimonies, from the recognition of things according to His declaration of them. Nay, he had beheld with grief the faithlessness of those who kept not these sayings. And he invites Jehovah Himself to behold how he loves His precepts, whatever the backwardness of nature for which, the third time, he beseeches that he may know His quickening power. But as to the ways of God, these his whole heart embraces. The whole of His word is truth, and every one of His righteous judgments -judgments which have their foundation in His own nature -abide as He Himself. Section 7. (Schin.)Perfection of the Word. The seventh section naturally gives us now the perfection of that which has been the psalmist’s theme all through, the word of God. The first and larger part views it in its peerless supremacy in whatever way it is contemplated. The second sets the seal to it of heartfelt subjection. The affirmation is of little value which lacks this element of true witness.
3. He has realized the opposition to God’s word in the high places of the earth. Princes had persecuted him without cause beside, but his heart stands in awe of that in which God Himself has spoken to his conscience. His heart also has responded to it, so that it has become to him like the rich and varied booty of the soldier. But more, his moral estimate of it is similar: it is the holiness of truth that attracts him in it, as he hates the falsehood which it also hates. Constantly through the day does it lift up his heart in praise, because of the judgments which he realizes to be those of divine righteousness, and which he finds in the government of God illustrated and enforced. For “great peace have they who love thy law,” and their path is free from the stumbling-blocks over which others fall.
4. This word has been wrought into his practical life. The salvation which it assures of he has waited for in hope; its commandments he has obeyed; loving exceedingly the testimonies that it gives; keeping its precepts as being manifested in all things to Him before whom he walked. Unspeakable blessedness to walk thus in the Eternal Light of that glorious Presence before we enter the joy of the presence-chamber itself. Division 4. (Tau.)Jacob in his trouble. The twenty-one sections of the psalm fall then; plainly, into three equal and parallel series of seven sections each, which together would seem to complete the subject naturally, and leave room for nothing more. But in fact we find another section; which, of course, is necessary also for the completion of the alphabetic arrangement. What, then; is its place, in connection with what has gone before? Is it an eighth section of the third division? or is it by itself a fourth division of the psalms? There can be no doubt, when we have examined it, that it is a fourth division. Its structure is clearly different from that of any of the former sections. Each of these we have found to divide into 3+5 or 5+3; or else, as in the seventh of both the first and second divisions, the first five verses are again divided into 2 3. Here, on the other hand, the eight verses can only divide as 4+4; the last part being evidently a fourfold prayer, or plea for salvation. The last verse of the whole in no wise suggests an eighth section. It is, as a whole, a descent from and not a continuation of the last one. The number 4 seems suited to and stamped on it throughout; even the acrostic letter here, the Tau, standing for 400 in the Hebrew notation. The drop in the character of what we find here is thus accounted for. Looking more closely into it, it is evident that, as a fourfold plea for salvation it occupies the latter half: the former one is, in fact, a promise or vow to the Lord in the event of deliverance. And as this cannot be the King (as in the sixty-first psalm) whose vows are before us,we naturally think of Israel. Looked at in this way, the meaning of the whole comes clearly into view. This final section is in reality an appendix to the psalm; in which we have indicated the reference of it to Israel in the tribulation of the latter days predicted as to them. This is, as we know, their spiritual birthtime as a nation; when they come into the new covenant. There is no difficulty, therefore. in the application; and this section is practically. whatever else, an inspired note as to the “times and seasons” to which the psalm relates.
5. The first part is, as already intimated, Israel’s vow in their distress, -a vow, not like that of the old covenant, made in self-righteousness at Sinai, the covenant so quickly broken, though the patience of God might long endure with them. Here all is based upon what God is looked to to work for them and in them, so that they may step into their predestined place, and be the witnesses of His grace and salvation to the ends of the earth. They promise no legal obedience, but only to declare this; which prophecy has of old assured us that they will do. All this, therefore, is quite accordant with a new covenant blessing. Their cry goes up to Jehovah for light to break out from His word for them: no true knowledge could there be but through the Word, by which they are quickened also that they may have it. They plead the promise also of deliverance; and when delivered and taught His statutes, their lips shall pour forth praise. So, indeed, they shall. The last verse here implies, I think, their testimony to the nations, and that is what its numerical place points out. Their tongue shall speak aloud of God’s saying, and the world shall hear it.
6. The second part gives their plea for God’s salvation. This is, first, that they have chosen Jehovah’s precepts: a plea already allowed in Deuteronomy 30:1-3. The second is their longing for His salvation. They are not ignorant of their need, and they seek no more to other saviours. The third is the praise that shall result: and God acts for the glory of His own great Name: being in this most gracious.

That Jehovah would dwell among the praises of His people was a joy in the heart of the dying Saviour, and what that precious death was designed to accomplish (Psalms 22:3, notes). Lastly, they put before God the misery which wrought in the heart of the Good Shepherd, according to His own appealing picture (Luke 15:1-32): gone astray like a lost sheep, they ask Him the Shepherd to seek them out, already touched by the grace which has wrought in them to put into their hearts that desire for His commandments in which they come back to their first plea in which the promise in Deuteronomy applies plainly to them. Here their plea ends; and in the “songs of degrees” which directly follow,we shall find the divine answer to it.