There is an undertone of such felt need even in the confidence of ver. 11; and it becomes dominant from ver. 12 to the end, but not so as to overpower the clear note of trust. The difference between the two parts of the psalm is great, but is not to be exaggerated as if it were contrariety. In the former part thanksgiving for deliverance from dangers recently past predominates; in the latter, petition for deliverance from dangers still threatening: but in both the psalmist is exercising the same confidence; and if in the beginning he hymns the praises of God who brought him out of the pit of destruction, in the end he keeps firm hold of Him as His "Help and Deliverer." Similarly, while in the first portion he celebrates the "purposes which are to usward," in the latter he is certain that, needy as he is, Jehovah has "purposes" of kindness to him. The change of tone is not so complete as to negative the original unity, and surely it is not difficult to imagine a situation in which both halves of the psalm should be appropriate. Are there any deliverances in this perilous and incomplete life so entire and permanent that they leave no room for future perils? Must not prevision of coming dangers accompany thankfulness for past escapes? Our Pharaohs are seldom drowned in the Red Sea, and we do not often see their corpses stretched on the sand. The change of tone, of which so much use is made as against the original unity of the psalm, begins with ver. 12; but that verse has a very strong and beautiful link of connection with the previous part, in the description of besetting evils as innumerable. Both words of ver. 5 are repeated, that for "surpass" or "are more than" in ver. 12 _c_, that for "number" in _a_. The heart that has felt how innumerable are God's thoughts and deeds of love is not utterly reduced to despair, even while it beholds a sea of troubles rolling its white-crested billows shoreward as far as the horizon. The sky stretches beyond them, and the true numberlessness of God's mercies outdoes the great yet really limited range of apparently numberless sins or sorrows, the consequences of sin. "Mine iniquities have overtaken me" like pursuing foes, and every calamity that held him in its grip was a child of a sin of his. Such consciousness of transgression is not inconsistent with "delight in the law of God after the inward man," as Paul found out (Rom. vii. 22, 23), but it sets aside the attempt to make this a directly Messianic psalm. "I am not able to see." Such is the only possible rendering, for there is no justification for translating the simple word by "look up." Either the crowd of surrounding calamities prevent the psalmist from seeing anything but themselves, or, more probably, the failure of vital power accompanying his sorrow dims his vision (Psalm xxxviii. 10).
From ver. 13 onwards Psalm lxx. repeats this psalm, with unimportant verbal differences. The first of these is the omission of "Be pleased" in ver. 13, which binds this second part to the first, and points back to "Thy pleasure" (ver. 8). The prayer for the confusion of enemies closely resembles that in Psalm xxxv., ver. 14 being almost identical with vv. 4 and 26 there, and ver. 15 recalling ver. 21 of that psalm. The prayer that enemies may fail in their designs is consistent with the most Christlike spirit, and nothing more is asked by the psalmist, but the tinge of satisfaction with which he dwells on their discomfiture, however natural, belongs to the less lofty moral standard of his stage of revelation. He uses extraordinarily forcible words to paint their bewilderment and mortification--may they blush, turn pale, be driven back, be as if paralysed with shame at their baffled malice! The prayer for the gladness of God's servants and seekers is like Psalm xxxv. 27. It asks that fruition as complete as the disappointment of the foes may be the lot of those whose desires set towards God, and it is prophecy as well as prayer. Seekers after God ever find Him, and are more joyful in possession than they hoped to be while seeking. He alone never eludes search, nor ever disappoints attainment. They who long for His salvation will receive it; and their reception will fill their hearts so full of blessedness that their lips will not be able to refrain from ever-new outbursts of the old praise, "The Lord be magnified."