Psalms 60

Psalms 60:1-12

The presence of God with His people after disciplinary dealings. To the chief musician, upon Shushan-eduth: Michtam of David, to teach: when he strove with the Syrians of Mesopotamia, and with the Syrians of Zobah; when Joab returned, and smote of Edom in the valley of salt, twelve thousand.*
The closing psalm of this Michtam series fills very plainly its place as a fifth psalm. It speaks on the one hand of disciplinary dealings of God with His people under which they have suffered, and on the other, of God turning again to be with them; after the discipline has done its work. Again, it is a Deuteronomic psalm, as contemplating restored Israel, like the Israel of the wilderness of old, just ready to enter upon her inheritance in the land, to “divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.” This also shows, as we saw in the last one, how far beyond the immediate occasion which prompted them; these prophetic psalms reach. To “divide Shechem” supposes a new occupancy of the land, such as could not, one would say, at all connect with the Syro-Edomitish war to which the title refers; and such inapplicable things in an inspired composition may well have been permitted expressly to prevent the thought of the immediate application being the whole or the main thing. And this is the case probably with all prophecies. The Spirit of God makes the object which is immediately in view to stand for some object connected with that final consummation, to which as a matter of hope or warning He is constantly directing our attention, -on which all prophetic lines converge. Thus it is that Peter gives us as of primary importance his noted canon of hermeneutics, that “no prophecy of the Scripture is of private” -literally, “its own” -“interpretation.” To detach it from the general body of the prophetic Scripture is necessarily to misread it, and pervert it from its proper place and use. Shushan-eduth, “the lily of testimony,” in the title here, naturally carries us back to the forty-fifth psalm; with its “lilies” -shoshannim. And it is as natural to think of the fourth verse here in explanation of the “testimony”: “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee, that they may stand up because of the truth.” As the forty-fifth psalm also is “a song of the beloved” or “of loves,” so here the fifth verse follows the fourth with the prayer, “that thy beloved ones may be delivered.” Israel is evidently the “lily of testimony”; and it is “among the thorns,” -in tribulation, out of which it is brought in triumph by the power and grace of God. “Michtam of David, to teach,” is surely not difficult to understand, if the character of every michtam was epigrammatic, and to give maxims of faith, worthy to be durably engraved upon the memory. If this be the purport of it also, some special emphasis must be put upon the “teaching” in this case, which would suit well also with the character of this psalm; previously noticed, as a deuteronomic fifth. The psalm has twelve verses, altered from the usual division into 4 x 3 by the shortening of the second section by one verse, which is added to the last one.

1. The first section is the language of conviction on the part of the latter-day remnant, speaking for the nation. They own that in the ruin into which they have been brought, God’s hand has been against them. It is He who has cast them off and scattered them: He has been displeased. They own it, -own, therefore, their guilt, and plead for restoration. The figures of the second verse are those of an earthquake which has rent the land, and with which it is still shaking. An earthquake is a common figure of social convulsions, which, though they come from beneath, are signs of divine displeasure. All the bonds that unite men together have their security in that which unites them to God. Let this be broken through, there must be “breaches” between man and man; the blow which shatters the political fabric coming from below -from the volcanic heavings of fermenting elements that lie everywhere below the surface, the passions of men ready always to discharge themselves, if the repression of the divine hand be removed. “Earthquakes in divers places” the Lord associates with other signs of the approaching end (Matthew 24:7); and the sympathy between man and nature (which has been commonly recognized, but which the occupation with mere material causes leads men to overlook or deny) may well manifest itself in literal outbreaks of this nature. God warns man who will not otherwise hear, by such appeals to his grosser senses; real intelligence would find in them; beyond this, the parables of divine speech. The convulsions of the land the psalmist interprets in their inner meaning. It is the wine of trembling which God has been causing His people to drink. He has given them up to intoxication, to find the strength of a cup sweet enough to the taste at first, in result the confusion of all their faculties.
2. But there is still ground of appeal to God, and that in effect because of His whole nature. His truth and His love abide, and may be the sure confidence of His people in their distress. The psalmist has already uttered that word, “Thy people,” a relationship which for long Israel has had no right to claim. But when they shall accept the punishment for their iniquity, then shall their faithful God be ready with His mercy, as He has promised. For “it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations whither Jehovah thy God hath driven thee, and shalt return unto Jehovah thy God, and shalt obey His voice according to all that I have commanded thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thy heart and with all thy soul, that then Jehovah thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee” (Deuteronomy 30:1-3). Thus and in these circumstances will Israel be able to claim God as their God in the days to which these psalms, as we have seen, look forward. And thus the psalmist can now speak of a “standard” which God has put into the hands of those that fear Him, that they may “up-standard themselves,” as Delitzsch puts it, “because of the truth.” It is hard to express the thought without circumlocution, in English; but the giving them a standard acknowledges them in their corporate relationship, -puts them together, makes of a defeated rabble an army, -and, by His (loin. it, takes them once more as His own. So that now in lifting the standard, they lift themselves up, -they stand up: they are nationalized again, as really the people of God. The last words here, because of truth," are difficult because of their abstract character. The word (qoshet*) occurs only once beside (Psalms 22:21), where it is translated “certainty”; and the Chaldaic form is found twice in Daniel (Daniel 2:47; Daniel 4:37), in both cases rendered “truth.” These passages favor the meaning suggested by the context, that it refers to the absolute fidelity of God to the word He has spoken. His immutable promise is indeed itself a standard under which they may gather with perfect assurance: it is exact, precise truth," as Schultens renders it, “weighed, as it were, in the evenest balance.”
   But truth does not dwell alone, with God. His heart goes with it. So the psalmist has another plea, -an appeal to the other side of the divine nature: ’ that Thy beloved ones may be delivered, save with Thy right hand. and answer me." How good to know that God has a heart; and that, not a Master, but a Father’s arms, welcome the wanderers! It is the same story essentially, whether we read it in the Old Testament or in the New: for God is the same; only in the New Testament the sun has burst through all the clouds. God was always Light: He now is “in the light.”
3. Possession of the land is at once anticipated. “God has spoken in His holiness: I will rejoice; I will divide Shechem; and mete out the valley of Succoth.” God has spoken in His holiness: in His grace to them surely, but grace has brought them into true-hearted subjection to Him; so that it is in holiness He can act for them. Israel is in fact now to be the proclaimer of divine holiness to the ends of the earth. But divine favor towards Israel is inseparably connected with their possession of the land; at once therefore they anticipate this. They are going to divide Shechem on the west of Jordan, and the valley of Succoth on the east side: to take possession of both sides of the river. Only these two places are named; but these imply that all the rest is theirs.

Shechem and Succoth do not indeed at first sight seem like representative places, especially the latter, and yet in some sense they must be: there must be some special suitability in them to express the divine thought as to this repossession of what they had lost before. They are not again to lose it; and notice, to begin with, that they are now in the track of their father Abraham.

Jacob’s name connects itself with both places; but his record in connection with them is one of failure, and has no pleasant memory attaching to it. In Abraham’s case it is far otherwise. Shechem is the first place in which he rests after reaching the land, and there it is that he has the first promise of the land itself. Shechem means “shoulder,” which Issachar afterwards (like the nation hitherto) “bowed, to bear, and became a servant for tribute,” imposed by masters which he had preferred to God. Abraham bows his shoulder to God at the oak Moreh, (“instructor,”) to learn of Him; and to find blessing at His hand. Shechem stands thus for the spirit of obedience, as it was in fact afterward the place at which Israel heard the law, with its blessings and curses, proclaimed when they entered the land under Joshua.

The history soon showed indeed that they knew not the meaning of it; but when they enter the land under the new covenant, it will be with the law written upon their heart. The spirit of obedience will now therefore be fully theirs; so that they will for the first time be able to take complete possession of (or “divide”) Shechem.

How could their tenure of the land under the “new covenant,” and in fulfillment (for the first time really) of the promise given to Abraham there, be better expressed? But what of the “valley of Succoth”? There seems no reference here to the history at all: there is no notice of it except in that part of Jacob’s which seems to be failure throughout. On the other hand, the types speak with the clearest and most beautiful significance. Succoth means “booths” or “tabernacles”; and it is the word used for that “feast of tabernacles” which is the last of Israel’s sacred year, and which, as the commemoration of their wilderness wanderings as ended, by those now in the land, carries them on in figure to those millennial days in which their longer wanderings as strangers among the Gentiles shall be over forever, and their final rest be come. Thus Succoth follows Shechem here in a most beautiful manner, and the two together establish the prophetic meaning of the psalm conclusively. But now the tribes appear as if gathering to enter upon their inheritance. Again, only representative names are given. “Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine Ephraim also is the strength of my head; Judah is my lawgiver.” Four names only are here; and of these Gilead is only part of Manasseh. They must be surely significant, as those preceding them have been seen to be: as, let us rather say, everything in Scripture is. Let us try to learn the significance. Gilead is given by Gesenius as meaning, “hard, rocky”; but there seems, on the other hand, reason for connecting it rather with Jacob’s Galeed (Genesis 31:47), “a heap of witness.” It would be thus in remarkable antithesis with Manasseh, with which it is linked, and which means “forgetting.” A heap of witness is for the very purpose of making forgetfulness impossible. Manasseh as the natural first-born of Joseph we have read elsewhere (Genesis 48:1-22, notes) as the first principle of spiritual “increase.”: “forgetting that which is behind,” says the apostle, “I press on.” But Manasseh has a son, Machir, who is the father of Gilead, and whose name approaches his as closely as possible, meaning “one who recollects,” Spiritually, there is no incongruity with all this contrariety: we forget what is behind in order to keep in remembrance what our goal is; and thus one springs out of the other. “The memorial heap” also, as Fausset well observes, “marked the crisis in Jacob’s life, when he became severed from his Syrian kindred, and henceforth a sojourner in and heir of Canaan.” Gilead it is we have here, and not Machir and then it is to be considered that Gilead is not just Galeed, even though the meaning be identical, as indeed the words are. A heap of witness is that we may not forget, but the tribe-name means forgetting: here, as we have seen, Israel is ending her long history of sin and sorrow, to enter into possession of her glorious future -her home with God. On the one hand, what more natural than the desire to forget so sad a story? And this, too, the God of grace has provided for by the sweet assurance pictured. for Israel in her day of atonement, when the scapegoat bears the sins of the people into a “land cut off.” And this brings once again the new covenant before us, in which God says, “Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.” And many have a difficulty in reconciling this with such a scripture as that which Ecclesiastes ends with, that “God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” This is, of course, the Old Testament: but the New has what is similar, and in express application to Christians: “For we must all appear” -or “be made manifest” -“before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). That this is a very different thing from the judgment of the person “according to his works,” which is the principle of the final judgment at the “great white throne” (Revelation 20:11-12), should be well known to every reader of his Bible now. “He that heareth My word, and believeth on Him that sent Me,” says the Lord, “hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24, Gk.). And the same chapter of Revelation shows that a thousand years before the great white throne those that belong to the first resurrection have found their blessed “part” with Christ, and reign with Him. This has been so often repeated, that I only refer to it in. this place. Scripture never confounds, as many Christians do, the saint with the sinner with regard to judgment to come, nor the “resurrection of life” with the “resurrection of judgment” (John 5:29). Yet there will be a judgment of works for the saint, though not a judgment by works; a review of things done in the body, and proportionate reward or loss, according as the works which “come into judgment” abide or cannot abide that solemn manifestation. Just in this way will the precious blood of Christ be manifested also, in all its saving power, for the believer. Nothing need be hidden, nothing shall be hidden: grace shall be seen in its full glory in the presence of the sins which have stained the best life ever lived among mere men. Reward that might have been may not be, but that which depends upon the work of Christ alone cannot be lost, if that work fail not. All shall be manifested: -to ourselves how great a gain! when the story of our lives shall be fully told, and all God’s ways with us seen in view of our own ways. Then to have the lives of others bared before us as our own lives, and to see the equal yet various dealings of God with all! The wisdom. of all time, -the harvests of all seasons, -the full store garnered up of all that had seemed to be passed away, -who would lose such riches, that once knew their value? Nay, we shall never lose them: nothing passes, nothing is lost in all eternity; our memories will be as deathless as all else: how else could knowledge of redemption itself be left to us? or how could the praises of the redeemed go on without diminution? The psalm does not go beyond time, the earth, and Israel; but the same principles are found in it: Gilead and Manasseh abide together. Divine love will put away their sins in such sort that the sunshine of God’s favor towards them shall never know the shadow of a passing cloud; and yet the lessons of their past shall abide with them ever: the “heap of witness” shall do its blessed work. The psalmist’s voice, representing that of the nation, claims both Gilead and Manasseh. The perfect memory of the one and the forgetfulness of the other, -learned both of Him who unites them in His necessary perfection -shall be found characterizing those who go back into the land to possess it according to the perfect grace of His covenant of promise. This unites itself, moreover, with the present verse in a very striking way: for of what does “the valley of Succoth” speak, but of the past, as looked back upon from the full blessing reached? Succoth, the “booths,” refers to the wilderness-history which is for them now ended; and in these they lived, as it were their life there over again. Their Succoths were, in short, a kind of Gilead for them. “Ephraim also is the strength of my head,” continues the speaker. “Fruitful” Ephraim, with her “myriads” of people, assured her by her prophet-lawgiver, would enable Israel to lift up the head. “As arrows in the hand of a mighty man,” says one of the songs of degrees, “so are children of the youth: happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate.” The blessings on the head of Joseph, enlarged upon both by Jacob and Moses, show how perfectly Ephraim fulfills the name. But the spiritual meaning shines through here also, and will be realized when Israel, redeemed. from the barrenness of her past history, shall bring forth fruit to God. The barrenness of the past has been a fruitful argument only on the lips of scoffers, as the apostle assures them; “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you” (Romans 2:24): a principle of universal application to the barren professor. Conversely, the apostle brings forward the fruitfulness of divine grace in the soul to establish it, and to assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemn us," he urges, “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight” (1 John 3:19-22). Thus every way “Ephraim is the strength of the head.” But “Judah is my ruler;” and this, too, carries us back to Jacob’s blessing. The spirit of worship, of which Judah speaks, is that which alone gives God. Himself His throne among men. How these psalms themselves, which the arrogant folly of a critic like Cheyne would deny to David, show this character -a praise which ever enthrones God! And this is what fits him for his own place on that representative throne, which was, as such, the “throne of Jehovah” (1 Chronicles 29:23). Thus also the “Son of David” who is also David’s Lord, is He whose voice is heard saying, “In the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.” In Him the two thrones come together in a perfect concord, never to be broken. Israel is now in condition to receive, therefore, the full inheritance which she has never yet received. In her most triumphant days, Moab, Edom; the Philistines, lay within what was her territory according to the original promise. The first two, indeed, were expressly spared by their divine Leader, along with Ammon, the other son of Lot, and the lands they then possessed were retained to them. But this was only temporarily; for they never turned to God; and their judgment is denounced upon them by the prophets from Balaam on. “The residue of My people shall spoil them, and the remnant of My people shall possess them,” says the Lord by Zephaniah (2: 9). Amnion is not mentioned here; but Moab, Edom, and Philistia, are; and, first of all, Moab: “Moab is my wash-pot.” When they were just upon the border of the land, at the time of their first entrance, Moab had been the guilty defiler of the people of God. Upon Midian, its ally in this, summary judgment had been executed, as we know; but Moab had escaped at that time. “God,” however, “requireth that which is past,” and the deed of ancient times seems to come here into remembrance. There had, of course, been meanwhile no repentance. Israel, by summary judgment upon the seducer, washes herself clean at last. In fact also, that which Moab seems to answer to passes away from Israel in judgment at this time. If Moab stands, as I doubt not, for mere profession (see Deuteronomy 2:8-23, notes), then we have the express statement of Isaiah to that effect. “And it shall come to pass that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem; when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughter of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning” (Isaiah 4:3-4). How great a defilement indeed is the mere presence of unbelievers in the midst of the people of God! A wonder it is that, even in dead Sardis, a few should be found who had not defiled their garments (Revelation 3:4). And the mere touch of death defiled in Israel. Familiar the word is, (but oh how it requires to be repeated in dull ears today!) “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? and what path hath he that believeth with an unbeliever? . . . wherefore come out from among them, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father to you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18.) Measure the defilement here by the penalty implied, and what must it be in the sight of God? Israel is cleansed now in this respect, and of necessity growing into her inheritance. Edom must next give place. The casting the shoe upon it is the sign of taking forcible possession. Edom; the enemy-brother, yields and is displaced. Typically, the old man yields to the new. And with Edom conquered, Philistia bursts into a cry of pain.

Typically, this is simple: for Philistia, as we have seen in constant and progressive pictures, (Genesis 20:1-18; Genesis 26:1-35, Joshua 13:1-33, Judges 9:1-57, 1 Samuel 17:1-58, 2 Samuel 5:17-25; 2 Samuel 21:15-22 : notes) is the religion of the flesh, which passes away with the “old man’s” judgment. These things would take long to unfold in any proper manner, and scarcely need, for one who has learned the meaning of the scriptures just referred to. They will be found to give one consistent meaning throughout -consistent as truth ever is, and with this consistency on every side, as only truth can be. That Israel is beginning to fill out her divine limits is plain in the letter of it; but this is only the anticipation of faith, as we see by the final section. 4. The sudden drop in the closing part, as a fourth section emphasized in its four verses, need not surprise us. Nor is it needless, this emphasis that is laid upon the human weakness which shuts us up to God for the accomplishment of every hope. It is the creature taking the creature-place, which is, after all, its perfection as such. God is able now on His side to come in and act for us. All is very simple here. The strength of the enemy is first glanced at: Petra, the rock city of Edom, being pre-eminently strong. They must be led into it by One who has the key to its closed door. But He! alas for the breach that has come in there! Yet, this owned, will He not act for them; shut up to Him as they are, in the vanity of all other hope? Surely He will: when did He fail those whom all else had failed? Nay, out of this utter weakness comes our strength; and the apostle is here one with the poor remnant of Israel. Experience shall make good their confidence: -“Through God we shall do valiantly: for He shall tread down our oppressors.” With this, the assurance of faith is complete: the Michtam series of psalms ends.