If Here is a Psalm well worthy to be called, as the margin of King James's Bible translates the Jewish heading, a "golden" Psalm. Golden indeed it is ; it belongs to that Bible within the Bible which the Christian instinct teaches all of us to rediscover for ourselves, and in which the New Testament writers took such keen delight. In childlike faith these holy men of old found their Saviour in the 16th Psalm; and so may we, on the single condition that we do not disregard those laws of the human mind which God Himself made. Childlike faith must in us be coupled with manly reasonableness. The first believers practically re- wrote the Psalter for edification, without thinking of its original meaning ; they took every one of the 150 Psalms into the shrine
of Gospel utterances. We who come after them cannot give this
263
264 A GOODLY HERITAGE
particular proof of our belief in the divinity of the Old Testa- ment revelation. In adapting the Psalms to the needs of edifica- tion, we who desire to consecrate our intellect to Christ must seek counsel of a criticism and an exegesis which are nothing if they are not psychological ; that is, if they are not in full accord- ance with the laws of the human mind.^
^ This Psalm was the last Scripture read by Hugh M'Kail the evening before his execution in the Grassmarket of Edin- burgh. After reading it, he said to his father, and those about him, " If there were anything in this world sadly and unwillingly to be left, it were the reading of the Scriptures. I said, ' I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living.' But this need not make us sad, for where we go, the Lamb is the Book of Scripture, and the light of that city ; and where He is, there is life, even the river of the water of life, and living springs."
A Wealthy Estate.
♦' The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup."
1. The two words which are translated in our version " portion " and " inheritance " are substantially synonymous. The latter of them is used continually in reference to the share of each indi- vidual, or family, or tribe in the partition of the land of Canaan. There is a distinct allusion, therefore, to that partition in the language of our text ; and the two expressions, part or " portion," and "inheritance," are substaotially identical, and really mean just the same as if the single expression had stood : " The Lord is my portion."
^ The " portion of my cup " is a somewhat strange expression. It is found in one of the other Psalms, witli the meaning " fortune," or " destiny," or " sum of circumstances which make up a man's life." There may be, of course, an allusion to the metaphor of a feast here, and God may be set forth as " the portion of my cup," in the sense of being the refreshment and sustenance of a man's soul. But more probably there is merely a prolongation of the earlier metaphor, and the same thought as is contained in the figure of the "inheritance" is expressed here (as in common con- 1 T. K. Cheyue, in The Expositor, 3rd Ser., x, 210.
PSALM XVI. 5, 6 265
versation it is often expressed) by the word "cup" — namely, that which makes up a man's portion in this life. It is used with such a meaning in the well-known words: "My cup runneth over," and in another shape in, " The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it ? " It is the sum of circumstances which make up a man's "fortune." So the double metaphor presents the one thought of God as the true possession of the devout soul.i
2. Each family in Israel by the command of God received its portion by the casting of the lot. The result was not regarded as fortuitous, but as disposed and determined by God Himself. In each case the portion was accepted as a direct Divine gift. It was to be held in inalienable possession through all time. A creditor might establish a claim to temporary possession, but in the fiftieth year it must go back to the original owner. No title, therefore, could be stronger, no claim more sure and per- manent, than that which was thus acquired. In the case of the Psalmist the property acquired and possessed as an inalienable gift was not a fair estate on the productive Israelitish territory, but the great God Himself, to be his own God for ever.
^ Palestine is the England of the East. I think that it is Miss Martineau who says that nothing which she had seen about the world so reminded her of the rolling Yorkshire and Northumberland moors, as the approach to Palestine by Hebron. Certainly it was a remarkable dispensation of the hand of Providence that planted the people whom God meant to be His psalmists for all time, who were to touch that true keynote of the relation of man to man, to nature, and to God, which was to ring through history, in a country singularly fair, glad, fertile, and homelike ; where men could pass from under the shadow of the terror of nature, could lie in her lap, and bask in her smile. Consider for a moment the physical condition of the home where God estabhshed His sons. " For the Lord thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates ; a land of oil olive, and honey ; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it ; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass." " For the land, whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came ^ A. Maclareu, A Year's Miniiiry, IstSer., 207.