Psalms 9

Subdivision 2. (Psalms 9:1-20; Psalms 10:1-18; Psalms 11:1-7; Psalms 12:1-8; Psalms 13:1-6; Psalms 14:1-7; Psalms 15:1-5.)The remnant in relation to the enemy and the transgressors in Israel. In the second subdivision of the first book, upon which now we enter, we find not Christ but Antichrist, though not indeed explicitly as that, but as the enemy of God and man; and in Israel the persecutor of the righteous the lawless one. There are also other and outside enemies from the goyim, the Gentiles, -Antichrist, the false Messiah being a Jew, and owned by the apostate mass as King of the Jews. These things, forming the circumstances of the last days before the coming of the Son of man, and in the midst of which the remnant whose sorrows and whose faith we have been listening to are found, -are not entered into in detail as yet: they will be more and more developed as we go on with the book. We have only here the broad lights and shadows of the picture, -the time, as we have seen, of Jacob’s trouble, ended by full and abiding deliverance. Meanwhile faith is exercised; and we have these exercises, in which also to a greater or less extent, every generation of God’s saints has shared, and into which, therefore, all may enter. Their character is distinct from that of the last series: the question is that of the power and prevalence of evil upon earth, and of the oppression practised; but although the soul may cry, “How long wilt Thou forget?” it does not dread, as before, the anger of God. Conscience is not now ploughed up as it was before, and the sense of relationship to God is not perplexed. Section 1. (Psalms 9:1-20; Psalms 10:1-18.)The theme: The Supreme, and the Lawless One. There are but two sections in this subdivision: the first giving the theme, the second the exercises; and this last, we may notice, is again a series of five psalms. The first section has but two psalms, which in the Septuagint and Vulgate are united together, as in a real way they are by an alphabetic arrangement which, though irregular and even defective, can be distinctly traced, and which runs through them both, -Psalms 9:1-20 ending with the first half of the alphabet, while Psalms 10:1-18, with a significant omission, carries it to the end. This does not show that they are one psalm, however, nor are they: the subjects are different, though so closely connected: two parts of one theme. The alphabetic character of the two psalms being admitted, as it generally is, the irregularity of structure, as well as the absence of at least seven out of the twenty-two letters, should be accounted for in order to any full rendering. The doctrine of verbal inspiration, with all that it implies, cannot allow us to lose sight even of letters, when these are brought before us so prominently as they are in this case. Mind -the divine mind -must be realized as governing everywhere, if we would consistently maintain this: if we do not look for it, the loss will be our own; and how great a loss! Yet interpretation after this manner has scarcely as yet been even an ideal; and attempts to realize it have to meet all that indifference and unbelief, supported by the long habit of neglect, can urge against them. For this reason we feel constrained to look the more closely at the problem presented here, -a problem which manifestly makes more intricate that of numerical structure, -if it be not, on the other hand, really a divine help toward intelligence: any way a test for it of the severest character. The ordinary psalms are severe enough: the verses here not the mere artificial human device which in the prose books we have examined we had to disregard in the very interest of the sense, and to which no one attaches any importance.

Here, on the contrary, no one has any doubt as to there being, quite as much as in most poetry of our own day, a reality to be taken account of. In ordinary versification, indeed, this is but a question of style: the verses are only, to an extent quite uncertain and irregular, a division of the subject. On the other hand, in Scripture, where the human hand has been overruled -guided better than it knew -by the divine Spirit, we cannot be permitted such a refuge from inquiry. Numerical structure, it would seem, must account for the division of verses, in the same way that it accounts for the larger divisions of the books the larger and smaller having, of course, proportional importance, but still all of them having some importance. At least this is the question we have set out to seek answer to, with the conviction beforehand, such as animates the microscopist in his explorations into nature, that there is meaning to be found. In these two psalms alone there will thus be thirty-eight divisions, with the addition of those represented by the letters, which amount to fifteen larger ones. Besides this, the very gaps in the alphabet will probably furnish more; while even so the primary divisions, largest of all, are not thus reached. It will be found that there are, as given in our analysis above, fifty-seven divisions to be accounted for and put into meaning, -all these to be united into one consistent whole, which itself fills its own significant place, as one seventy-fifth part of the book of psalms. Certainly, if this be done, if even it be defectively, with any appearance of success, one can only account for it by the fact of the divine inspiration of the psalmist, as one writing much better than he knew, which was, as we know well, only the ordinary manner of the prophet. (1 Peter 1:12.) The defective and irregular character of the alphabetic structure has naturally elicited some effort to explain it on the part of a few, who have thought so small a matter to be worth their while. Thus one commentator writes: “These two psalms manifestly constitute one alphabetical composition, comprising twenty-two stanzas, each a quartet, according to the number and order of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; of these twenty-two stanzas, seventeen now remain. Five stanzas, equivalent to twenty lines, are now wanting. To supply this deficiency, there are thirteen lines, equivalent to three stanzas and one line, which cannot now be arranged in the psalm, because their initial letters correspond not with the missing stanzas. Whenever Hebrew manuscripts shall be brought to light, by their various readings enabling us to insert these lines in their proper place, there will still remain a deficit of seven lines to constitute and complete the missing quartets. It would seem that this division of this alphabetical composition into two psalms was intentional, to conceal the alphabetical arrangement, and to blind men to the deficiency of these seven lines, and to the misplacing of the thirteen lines above. No such division exists in the LXX. or Vulgate versions. Of the 718 Hebrew MSS. and Editions of the Psalms collated by Kennicott and De Rossi, and of the ancient versions, none afford light or authority for the correction of the irregularities, transpositions and deficiencies of this alphabetical psalm.” Thus, according to this writer, the psalm, or psalms, here have got somehow into a disorder, which would seem hopeless, and which copyists, in their hopelessness (it is to be presumed), have striven to cover up. This is hardly to be believed. Such disorder, in an alphabetic psalm of all others, would have been easily detected, and, at the first, quite easily set right. It is impossible to suppose that such wholesale error should have corrupted all other manuscripts and versions; and if we could think it, the question of the Hebrew text today would be indeed a serious one. Nor upon the face of these psalms does there appear any answering confusion of meaning to correspond with such an hypothesis. All is supposition merely, founded upon another supposition as baseless -that the alphabetic structure must have been intended to have perfect regularity; but this is not found completely in some other of the acrostic psalms. May not the irregularity be itself designed? True, if it be only a (questionable) taste that has given this form to the psalms, -if it be but a help to memory, or even have, as Moll suggests, “symbolic reference to their completeness and wholeness, since only instructive poems and psalms of lamentation present this alphabetic arrangement,” -then it seems impossible to see reason for a disturbance of that regularity which alone would suit such ideas. Nor can one well understand why no more psalms than these should take this form, nor why these specially; nor indeed why a psalm of lamentation should require such completeness or wholeness at all. But we have already seen, in Psalms 5:1-12, how the breaking in upon the ordinary symmetry of the 4 x 3 arrangement there can have thorough and spiritual significance. And why not equally the disturbance here? It is surely natural to see in the alphabetic arrangement a symbol of order impressed by a governing mind. A numerical structure by itself expresses this; and an alphabetic one, making use of all the elements of human speech, seems as if it were indeed intended to make that order vocal. Whatever else it may express, it is at least competent to express this. Now, if we consider the subject of these two psalms as already briefly intimated, and as we shall more fully have before us as we go through them in detail, both the relation of this structure to them, and the reason of its partial derangement also, come at once into the light. The subject is the crisis of Israel’s history and the world’s: a time in which the conflict of evil with good will have risen to its height, when all foundations may seem to be destroyed, and yet when shortly will be demonstrated, as never before, how thoroughly under divine control all is. The convulsion will be found but the throes and travail of a childbirth, out of which a new Israel and a new world will issue. Thus the general order and control of the alphabetic arrangement, broken in upon (as to its expression) in the gap of six letters which seem to be fallen out near the beginning of the tenth psalm, but then once more coming into sight and maintained to the end. So the structure vindicates itself, and is in perfect harmony with the contents all through; and examine this more minutely, -put it more fully to the proof, -it will abide the proof, awl still more incontestably reveal the design that is in it. For notice where this apparently structureless gap occurs: not in the ninth psalm, throughout which the reign of the Most High is celebrated, but, as already said, near the beginning of the tenth, where the man of sin is described. As soon as the description is ended, and the appeal begins afresh, “Arise, Jehovah!” the alphabetic structure is resumed. It is this wicked one who seems for a time to resist the government of God, and prevail even against the Most High; but this cannot be really so, -soon and finally his power is gone, and the clouds too from around the everlasting Throne, and Jehovah is, as He has always been, the Eternal and Unchangeable. Six letters here have dropped out; but in this fact -in the number here -is there not again significance? For what does this number symbolize but just evil risen to its height, and yet limited and controlled by God? and what number then would be just so right as this is to convey the exact truth of what is here, -the needed corrective of the unbelief which the rampant energy of evil must provoke? We see then that the psalm is as it should be, and that its irregularity as well as its regularity are alike of God. Is there not pardonable a little enthusiasm over the possession of such a revelation from God with its seal upon its front, as thus has come to us? The Lord arouse His people to understand aright the portion He has given them!

Psalms 9:1-20

The throne of righteousness. To the chief musician. Upon Muth-labben. A psalm of David. We come now then to the consideration of these psalms in detail. The ninth has for its subject the contemplation of that throne of righteousness which the earth has so long desired to see and found not. Christ as the King of righteousness has been refused, and the world has sought all kinds of substitutes for Him in vain. It must be but in vain! Yet the “desire of all nations” shall come, and shall be found in Him. He shall be “King of kings and Lord of lords.” The inscription is considered a difficult one, and has had, as usual in such cases, many interpretations. Muth-labben means most naturally, however, and is most commonly taken to be, “Death for the son.” Remembering the Egyptian oppression out of which Moses and the people of Israel as a whole were saved, and which God remembered against Egypt on the passover night of their deliverance, -and remembering, too, that here we have the final and worst tribulation of the same people Israel, when out of the bitterest persecution they shall be delivered, -there is no great difficulty in the application of the inscription in this way. So taken it confirms from another side the meaning of the psalm.

1. The psalm begins with an outburst of praise to the Most High -that millennial name of God with which the seventh psalm ended. Israel’s tongue is loosed, the whole heart united in this praise. It is Jehovah, the covenant God, the Living and Unchangeable, who is now manifested as this, whose wondrous, works have made Him known, and these as being the means of their own deliverance, and with their new-opened mouth, Israel will declare. David the Israelite has long since led, and still leads, in such strains as these; and Christ, the anti-type of David, will lead “in the midst of the assembly,” in the days to come. The speaker repeats, confirms, and amplifies the song of praise. It is God Himself in whom he rejoices, and whom His works make known; it is His name which he celebrates in psalms. This is indeed the joy of joys, that, as is not the case with changeful man, what He has done is the real manifestation of Himself, His nature, -and that is what His “Name” implies. Thus we can know Him better than we can know ourselves: for the heart of man, “who can know it?” What a joy indeed, to have Him manifestly reigning -Christ the perfect expression of what He is, and Christ upon the throne!
2. Deliverance from the enemy is what now their hearts are full of: righteous deliverance for the righteous, as the seventh psalm has declared it as far as the oppressor is concerned: he has no claim that the divine government can recognize. There is efficient power, and when the work of deliverance begins, it is fully accomplished: when the enemies turn back, they stumble and perish, for God is there. Israel can now say, “Thou hast maintained my right and my cause;” and it is One who plainly sits upon the throne who does so. Nor is this deliverance local merely. It connects itself with the judgment of the earth, and the destruction of the wicked out of it: even their name is blotted out and disappears; and this involves a moral change of the face of the world, which makes haste in this way to forget them. More than this, the desolations wrought by the reign of evil are over: the “times of restitution” are come, -summer and fruitage for all the earth, with quiet rest under the care of the good Shepherd. For He it is who reigns, and the iron rod has destroyed those only who destroy the earth.
3. Jehovah dwells in Zion, and His rule has all the character of divine beneficence. Man is no longer a stranger and an exile from God. The earth returned to her orbit circles round her central sun. (a) It is the rule of the Eternal: while other kingdoms arise and fall, this endures: “Jehovah abideth forever.” No danger of a failure in the succession; no uncertainty from transmission through many hands: the glorious Priest-King never resigns or forfeits His throne to others; He is Himself the dynasty, and its character will never change: He “establisheth His throne for judgment; and He shall judge the world in righteousness, He shall give judgment in uprightness to the races of men.” Thus there is no fear either of the clashing of party interests or of national prejudices, or of aught else. One King is King to all, ministering incorruptible justice to all alike. Rule is now true service, and the oppressed is secure of a ready hearing in the one ever-accessible court of appeal. He is their refuge, their sanctuary, -“a stronghold in seasons of strait.” This is no theory merely: there is no contradiction between the ideal and the real. It is known by experience, affirmed by the consciousness of all His people: for “they that know Thy Name will trust in Thee: for Thou, Jehovah, haft not forsaken them that seek Thee.” (b) Israel is naturally the witness of all this in her own experience, and by her deliverance will “tell out His deeds among the peoples” -the nations brought at last to be His own. The persecution even to death of the chosen nation He has now remembered: their cry has come up into His ears. Now He dwells in Zion, and forever; the wings that long since would have sheltered them, are now stretched over them, -at rest in the love that has drawn them nigh.
4. After all this -strangely as it seems, no doubt, -we have the actual cry of distress; and to the end of the psalm, though there are outbursts of triumphant anticipation, the deliverance contemplated is seen not to be really come as yet. And this character of the psalm we shall find repeated in many future ones. The realization of faith comes first, and then the actual circumstances are seen, out of which faith looks to the fulfillment of precious promises, which are indeed as sure as if fulfilled. The stand-point of the psalm is thus that of those for whom it has been specially prepared, and their faith is strengthened by such Spirit-inspired glimpses as we have had into the then so near future, the bright fulfillment of the longings and prayers of successive generations of saints, who died with its light-glow in their faces. And this hope too is ours, with its brightness only intensified by the fact that ours too are heavenly promises, and that as “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ” we are to see and rejoice in the earth’s bridal-glory, when the Bridegroom-King shall be “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Our interest in these things is not likely to be spoiled by the fact of fuller entrance than Israel herself into this ineffable joy. Here then we have the experience of Jacob’s hour of trial once again, the cry -though with the confidence begotten of previous anticipations -from the very “gates of death.” Yet they expect to change this yawning shadow for the “gates of the daughter of Zion,” and to praise Jehovah there, exulting in His salvation -not surely a mere temporal deliverance. We have seen already (Psalms 6:1-10) what death is linked with in their minds; and corresponding with this is the meaning of deliverance from it for the hearts of these worshipers -a praise that shall be led of Messiah Himself.
5. Thus again faith descries the future from its firm ground in the prophetic word, and rehearses the righteous ways of divine government in quite a similar manner to the seventh psalm. These things need the emphasis of repetition for men’s careless ears. The nations sink into a pit their own hands have prepared, and are taken in the net they have hid for their own entanglement. And this is Jehovah’s judgment, the unswerving ways by which Jehovah is made known. Higgaion: here is “meditation” for those who do not refuse it: let them “ponder it in their own hearts upon their beds, and be still.” And “the wicked are turned into Sheol, -all the nations that forget God.” This is still, of course, the judgment of the world that is in question: final it is, as far as the world goes, but yet not the full eternal judgment which the New Testament reveals. For this, Sheol or hades must deliver up its dead, (held by it only as prisoners for the assize,) and the “resurrection of judgment” introduce them to “the great white throne” for discriminating sentence. (Revelation 20:1-15.) This we have not here, nor generally in the Old Testament. Death -what we ordinarily call that -is, as we see it everywhere, the legal penalty, though still with the shadow of divine wrath therefore in it. It is here the doom of “outer darkness,” outside the day of earth’s festival and joy; the doom of those who “forget God;” and thus we understand the cry of the sixth psalm, though there in the lips of those to whom forgetfulness of God is the misery they dread: “for in death there is no remembrance of Thee; in Sheol who shall give Thee thanks?” It is the doom of those who have chosen to forget God, but as contemplated by those with whom, according to the well-understood parallelism here, to “remember” is to “give Him thanks.” Alas, it is the portion they have chosen they will have -aye, and must have, because they have chosen it, not because He has chosen it for them. From so awful a thought as this He has interposed his oath to save us: “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth: therefore turn yourselves and live ye.”
6. The psalm concludes with prayer, mingled with the assurance which he who prays whispers to his heart. Frail man, thrusting himself across the path of the almighty purpose! what must be the end? God’s people may be indeed the “needy,” and with no spirit of self-assertion, scarcely turning as the worm upon the foot of him that treads on it -the “meek.” Aye, but it is because, not their despair, but their “expectation” quiets them. “My soul, wait thou upon God,” is the reminder with which they control themselves. Shall they be forgotten perpetually, though for a time it seem so? shall such expectation come to naught? shall they who have no hope but in God be disappointed by Him? No: it is impossible to entertain the thought. And so out of that conviction comes the cry — “Arise, Jehovah! let not frail man be (thus) strong!” has not his success reached already the ordained bound? “let the nations be judged before Thy face!” They have forgotten Thee, and so can boast themselves: let Thy presence convict them of their folly, and rebuke the vain pretension; “put them in fear, Jehovah! that the nations may know themselves to be frail men!” Thus the psalm ends. Though irregular in its construction, the alphabetic arrangement only lacks one letter, so far as it goes, which is just half-way through the alphabet. Thus, instead of eleven letters, there are ten -the psalm clinging, indeed, to what this number indicates -human responsibility and recompense; while the omitted letter, daleth, standing for the number 4, which speaks of creature weakness and failure, may find in this the reason of its omission from a psalm which throughout so strongly emphasizes the indefectible righteousness of the divine government. Reason will certainly be found everywhere for every “jot and tittle” of the inspired word which we are considering. Believing research will find that every claim that has been made for it on that score fails only in feebleness of statement, not in excess.