Psalms 86

Section 2. (Psalms 86:1-17; Psalms 87:1-7.)The Servant and the servants. In the second section it is that Christ is seen in His servant-character, the Head in this respect and Lord of many servants taught and inspired of Him to glorify God in the path of obedience. That the saved are, as that, servants, shows, of course, the holiness of salvation; while the Son of God in service is above all that which displays and glorifies God. He is seen in it in unswerving righteousness and glorious holiness, while His love so learned bows and subdues the most stubborn will to Him. Thus it is no difficulty here that we have the Servant and the servants, though in the details of its working out there may be difficulty, which we shall have to consider in its place. The connection of the two psalms now before us with the third book as a whole, and with the subdivision in which we find them is simple enough. The two psalms of the section are (as so commonly where there are just two) in contrast with one another, and in ways which can only be fitly seen as we take them up for separate consideration; but in the first it is clear that we have the Lord owned -Adonai, which is the title of God as such; in the second, we find the Servant owned. In both we have the Servant and the servants; identified in some sense, in others distinguished, as naturally must be the case. Both these, the identification and the distinction; are necessary to bring out His glory who is ever before us in the word of God.

Psalms 86:1-17

Adonai. A prayer of David. The eighty-sixth psalm has, however, peculiar difficulties which we must now consider. As already said, its theme may be said to be Adonai, the Lord. The servant’s path is, of course, the owning of God as such; and Adonai is here found seven times, which of course must have its significance where, as in Scripture, all is significant. The only other psalm in which we find it as often -and indeed, the very same number of times, is the sixty-eighth; but there “God” is found so often (thirty times), and other names of God, as Almighty, Jah, Jehovah, as quite to prevent its having there the same proportionate value. Here Jehovah is found four times, and God only four; a very small number compared with the frequency of these in general. Adonai is then the theme of the speaker: the servant proclaims his Lord. But who, then; is this servant? A glance at the title might seem to give us the answer; indeed, must, one would say, have some significance in this respect. It is “a prayer of David,” imbedded between Korahite psalms, and the only psalm ascribed to him in the third book. We immediately, necessarily, think of David’s more than royal Antitype, and expect to find Christ’s voice throughout the psalm. But here there is at once great and apparently insuperable difficulty. The eleventh verse, as it stands in the Hebrew, “unite my heart to fear Thy Name,” could never have been the prayer of our Lord, whatever His humiliation. The Septuagint, Syriac and Vulgate indeed, by the help of another punctuation, substitute for this, “my heart shall rejoice”: but this is rejected in general, and would only partially relieve the difficulty. The fifth verse bases the confidence of the suppliant towards God on His being “good and ready to forgive,” for which again the Septuagint uses the vaguer term “gentle,” but the verb in Hebrew is always -as far as Scripture is concerned -“to forgive, remit.” The fifteenth verse again seems to take similar ground. Thus it would seem that only indirectly could this be the “prayer of (the antitypical) David” -His as being the fruit of His work in those whom He leads in the path in which He Himself has alone been perfect. But in this way the title may be a necessary supplementary note of interpretation as to the psalm; just as we have seen “on the Gittith” to be to the three psalms to which it is prefixed (Psalms 8:1-9; Psalms 81:1-16; Psalms 84:1-12). Only in this way also does the connection with the next psalm become fully clear, as we shall see.* \

1. In the opening section, the psalmist takes his place with Jehovah as poor and needy, but godly, not unmindful of his creature-relation to Him in whom he believes and whom he serves. This is his plea for help and preservation. The want of originality in the psalm has been noticed by many. “Familiar expressions and phrases from the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets,” says Moll, “loosely connected [?], are found throughout.” “But,” adds Delitzsch, “although for the most part flowing on only in the language of prayer borrowed from earlier periods, this psalm is not without unmistakable significance and beauty.” If, however, it be the expression of a faith which, wherever it is found, brings the soul into this relation to God as the obedient servant of His will, how striking is it that it should be thus a harmony of many voices and of different periods in one connected whole! Its very want of originality is in this way itself in remarkable accordance with what it is intended to convey to us. And the argument that it cannot be really a psalm of David, because “the writer cannot be compared for poetic capability with David,” turns the other way when we think of the spiritual meaning of the harmonizing of such scattered utterances of the people of God by One -the true David -who Himself has trodden in His perfection (“Beginner and Finisher of faith”) the whole of this path! How the apparent blemishes of Scripture, when we see the real meaning of them; become themselves witnesses to its absolute inspiration!
2. In the second section we find the help needed -the education of faith, we may perhaps say, by continual exercise. When God brought His people out of Egypt and into training for the land, He brought them into the wilderness, and made them thus for everything dependent upon Himself: and this is still His way; for these things are our types. So now with the psalmist: grace is needed in answer to calls that go up to Him all the day. And joy in Him one serves is that which alone can give strength for all the daily wear and tear of contact with a world such as this. “Rejoice in the Lord alway” is the apostle’s rule and admonition: and we with our eyes lifted up to Him whom we have learned to call that, have reason indeed for this that the psalmist could not know. The path we are upon is the same path He traveled to the throne; and upon the Throne He is who knows all the need of the way we travel. Apart from this, what a comfort is it to have a path known to be God’s path for us, a path we travel in obedience simply, so that consequences are all His, and He may be trusted for them. The roughest path, if known to be His, can never lack a song. But we are frail indeed, who walk in it. How blessed, then; to have our refuge in One who is “good and ready to forgive, and full of loving-kindness to all that call upon” Him! With this need may be faced, and (if we have faith for it) gloried in; that means constant proving of the living God; and when with trial the assurance increases: “I will call upon Thee: for Thou wilt answer me.”
3. Thus the song arises: the need and its answer both make God alone glorious, and destroy all other trusts, vain as the senseless gods of the heathen. “There is none among the gods like Thee, Lord: and there is nothing like Thy works.” Thus he foresees that of necessity the world must be brought to realize this: “All nations whom Thou hast made shall come and worship before Thee, Lord, and glorify Thy Name.” This is truest prophecy, what the knowledge of God in this practical way ensures. The time has been long protracted indeed; and even yet the end (so long after the prophet’s time) may seem as far off as ever; and yet it shall, it must be, true: the Lord Himself hasten it, as He will.
4. Now we have the path itself with its trials and experiences, in which these principles are practically realized. First of all, the sufficiency for it, which is in God alone: this is but the application of what has been already said; but it is the necessary foundation on which alone a life with God can be based. And our utter dependence upon Him is expressed in the next verse, in which with the full purpose of heart to walk in His truth the psalmist confesses his need, not only of instruction as to the way, the one way which is Jehovah’s, but also of his own deliverance from the infirmity which nevertheless yields so to distraction: “unite my heart,” he says, “to fear Thy Name.” This is indeed what is everywhere the great lack among the people of God. How much of our lives is, not spent in positive evil, but frittered away and lost in countless petty diversions which spoil effectually the positiveness of their testimony for God! How few can say with the apostle, “This one thing I do!” We are on the road -not, at least, intentionally off it -but we stop to chase butterflies among the flowers, and make no serious progress. How Satan must wonder when he sees us turn away from the “kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” when realized as his temptation, and yet yield ourselves with scarce a thought to endless trifles, lighter than the thistle-down which the child spends all his strength for, and we laugh at him. Would we examine our lives carefully in such an interest as this, how should we realize the multitude of needless anxieties, of self-imagined duties, of permitted relaxations, of “innocent” trifles, which incessantly divert us from that in which alone there is profit! How few, perhaps, would care to face such an examination of the day by day unwritten history of their lives! “We must not be legal”: with such an excuse, how we pass over the “little things” which come in everywhere unchallenged by reason of their littleness. “We must not make religion too severe”: and so we take off our armor on the battle-field. “We must not have a morbid conscience”: and so we forget to exercise ourselves, that we may have one void of offence toward God and man. Concentration of purpose is what most of all the devil dreads for us as Christians, and the air is full of whispered plausibilities and lullabies to deprive us of this. Thus Christ Himself as “all” for us is looked at as somewhat not to be too seriously taken; the glorious sunshine is to be helped to be brighter by men’s taper-lights; or carefully shaded from eyes too infirm to enjoy it in its brightness or too continuously. How perfect a lesson there is for us here in the Lord’s words as to the vine-branch and abiding in Him (John 15:1-27)! The branch abides in the vine without intermission: a moment’s intermission would be fatal to it. And “as the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine, no more can ye,” says He, “except ye abide in Me.” But then for what are we to abide in Him? The whole purpose of the vine is fruit; and this is what rules in the ways of the husbandman with it. He prunes unsparingly, that he may have fruit: one might think, to look at him, that he was making but a wreck of the whole plant. What harm in all this wood and leaf that he is paring away? In itself none; and yet in relation to its fruit-bearing, very much. Not the parasites that destroy it from without can do it much more harm than just these fruitless stems and this exuberant foliage.

The precious sap is drawn off by them by which the fruit is to be filled out and perfected; and, if they are spared, not simply will there be less fruit, but (worse than all) the whole character of that which is produced is deteriorated. And so with the toleration of much that is merely evil in its power to draw off and scatter the energies which should be yielding fruit for Him and are not. It is the “one thing I do” that as a principle characterizes the whole man, and marks him out as Christ’s, glorifies Christ in him. It means seriously “Christ is all.” It proclaims Him the sunshine of life, not shadow; and sunshine is what the fruit needs. It says that for progress every moment of life is valuable, saves the life from dilettanteism and superficiality, makes Christ Lord, not casual adviser: no wonder that in the servant’s psalm we should find, as nowhere else in them; this prayer, “Unite my heart to fear Thy Name.” And no wonder that this spirit declares itself directly as the spirit of praise which indeed it is: praise from the whole life. “I will praise Thee, O Lord my God, with my whole heart; and I will glorify Thy Name for ever.” Who doubts that the life of that man of one idea, Paul, was a sunny life? Who can afford to pity him because of its vicissitudes? With his feet fast in the stocks in the inner prison; he will be singing, just at midnight, his praises to God. That life of his began under the glory of an opened heaven, with a vision which shut out all other brightness, and became to him in place of all other. Such a life we perhaps may find in all its fulness nowhere else among mere men: but covet it, we may, and reach out after it, and see how much God will deny us of it; whether, rather, we do not ourselves limit and cut ourselves off from it, by the poorest, saddest, most insane and disastrous form of self-denial that can be found. “With my whole heart,” and “for ever”! These are two things very closely connected: just as the seed that roots itself deeply in the earth becomes the enduring plant. Let the whole soul be thus taken up for God, vantage-ground is not given to the thorns and weeds to spring up and choke the early promise. The voice of experience is heard in the next verse: “For Thy loving-kindness is great towards me; and Thou hast delivered my soul from the nether Sheol.” Thus with confidence can he appeal now to God when the insolent are risen up against him and the assembly of the violent seek after his soul. “They have not,” he says, set Thee before them:" thus they are meet for Divine judgment. 5. The closing section shows the grounds of the soul’s confidence in God as present with him; which are, first of all, in what God Himself is, and then in the relation subsisting with Him. “Thou, Lord, art the Mighty One, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in loving-kindness and truth.” This is God’s own testimony to Himself (Exodus 34:6), upon the giving of the law the second time; but it is the testimony to the grace which came in to modify the law as far as practicable, while the legal element, which could not after all be modified by it so as to be effectual for man’s salvation; is omitted. This shows how faith could penetrate the disguise in which love veiled itself, and find it, even while under the shadows of that dispensation. Here then is its resource and rest. But there is also relationship, though it be not yet the full joyous relationship into which the gospel brings. It is that rather which the whole psalm contemplates: “give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and save” -not Thy son, but -“the son of Thy handmaid.” This was what the law was, typically, the Hagar, who though but the nurse and instructress of the children of God, taught them to call her mother. But faith, that taught the Syrophenician woman to make her argument out of the very term of reproach, and to plead for the crumbs which even the “dogs” might be permitted, teaches the speaker here to urge the very servant position which was his as a child of the dispensation; as it were, -by God’s appointment, not his own. He yet, in the confession of helplessness could fall back upon strength not his own; and find it: not of course to make good a self-righteous claim; but the very opposite: “Turn to me and be gracious unto me: give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and save the son of Thy handmaid.” All is perfect lowliness and self-distrust. But the Lord must appear for him, and appoint him a token for good. It is a necessary result of this position of servant merely, which has in it no absolute assurance of abiding favor (as the servant’s has none, John 8:35), that one in it should be more dependent upon manifest interventions and assurances of an outward character. Our “token for good” is once for all the sign of the cross, and by this we recognize the divine favor towards us. although the living God is of course, as fully to be counted on as ever. The enemies can only recognize the interventions. Jehovah’s “help and comfort” have been provided for us in a manner which makes them as unchangeably to be relied on; as that immutable nature of which it is the expression.