The pleas on which the petitions are grounded are also beautifully wreathed together. First, the psalmist asks to be heard because he is afflicted and poor (compare Psalm xl. 17). Our need is a valid plea with a faithful God. The sense of it drives us to Him; and our recognition of poverty and want must underlie all faithful appeal to Him. The second plea is capable of two interpretations. The psalmist says that he is _Chasid_; and that word is by some commentators taken to mean _one who exercises_, and by others _one who is the subject of, Chesed_--_i.e._, loving-kindness. As has been already remarked on Psalm iv. 3, the passive meaning--_i.e._, one to whom God's loving-kindness is shown--is preferable. Here it is distinctly better than the other. The psalmist is not presenting his own character as a plea, but urging God's gracious relation to him, which, once entered on, pledges God to unchanging continuance in manifesting His loving-kindness. But, though the psalmist does not plead his character, he does, in the subsequent pleas, present his faith, his daily and day-long prayers, and his lifting of his desires, aspirations, and whole self above the trivialities of earth to set them on God. These are valid pleas with Him. It cannot be that trust fixed on Him should be disappointed, nor that cries perpetually rising to His ears should be unanswered, nor that a soul stretching its tendrils heavenward should fail to find the strong stay, round which it can cling and climb. God owns the force of such appeals, and delights to be moved to answer, by the spreading before Him of His servant's faith and longings.
But all the psalmist's other pleas are merged at last in that one contained in ver. 5, where he gazes on the revealed Name of God, and thinks of Him as He had been described of old, and as this suppliant delights to set to his seal that he has found Him to be--good and placable, and rich in loving-kindness. God is His own motive, and Faith can find nothing mightier to urge with God, nor any surer answer to its own doubts to urge with itself, than the unfolding of all that lies in the Name of the Lord. These pleas, like the petitions which they support, are largely echoes of older words. "Afflicted and poor" comes, as just noticed, from Psalm xl. 17. The designation of "one whom God favours" is from Psalm iv. 3. "Unto Thee do I lift up my soul" is taken verbatim from Psalm xxv. 1. The explication of the contents of the Name of the Lord, like the fuller one in ver. 15, is based upon Exod. xxxiv. 6.
Vv. 6-13 may be taken together, as the prayer proper, to which vv. 1-5 are introductory. In them there is, first, a repetition of the cry for help, and of the declaration of need (vv. 6, 7); then a joyful contemplation of God's unapproachable majesty and works, which insure the ultimate recognition of His Name by all nations (vv. 8-10); then a profoundly and tenderly spiritual prayer for guidance and consecration--wants more pressing still than outward deliverance (ver. 11); and, finally, as in so many psalms, anticipatory thanksgivings for deliverance yet future, but conceived of as present by vivid faith.
Echoes of earlier psalms sound through the whole; but the general impression is not that of imitation, but of genuine personal need and devotion. Ver. 7 is like Psalm xvii. 6 and other passages; ver. 8 _a_ is from Exod. xv. 11; ver. 8 _b_ is modelled on Deut. iii. 24; ver. 9, on Psalm xxii. 27; ver. 11 _a_, on Psalm xxvii. 11; ver. 11 _b_, on Psalm xxvi. 3; "Sheol beneath" is from Deut. xxxii. 22. But, withal, there are unity and progress in this cento of citations. The psalmist begins with reiterating his cry that God would hear, and in ver. 7 advances to the assurance that He will. Then in vv. 8-10 he turns from all his other pleas to dwell on his final one (ver. 5) of the Divine character. As, in the former verse, he had rested his calm hope on God's willingness to help, so now he strengthens himself, in assurance of an answer, by the thought of God's unmatched power, the unique majesty of His works and His sole Divinity. Ver. 8 might seem to assert only Jehovah's supremacy above other gods of the heathen; but ver. 10 shows that the psalmist speaks the language of pure Monotheism. Most naturally the prophetic assurance that all nations shall come and worship Him is deduced from His sovereign power and incomparableness. It cannot be that "the nations whom Thou hast made" shall for ever remain ignorant of the hand that made them. Sooner or later that great character shall be seen by all men in its solitary elevation; and universal praise shall correspond to His sole Divinity.