Ps. cxvi. 1 — 7. I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice, and my supplications. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore ivill I call upon him as long as I live. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord; 0 Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Gracious is the Lord, and righteous ; yea, our God is merciful ! The Lord preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me. Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul ; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully luith thee.
The
THE abruptness of this psalm shews, that it was the fruit of much previous meditation : the writer of it had been " musing in his heart, till at last the fire kindled, and he spake with his tongue." It begins, " I love :" and, though our Translators had not supplied the deficiency, there would have remained no doubt on the mind of the Reader, who it was that was the object of the Psalmist's regard. The fact is, that nothing so endears the Deity to the souls of men as answers to prayer ; nor does any thing so encourage sinners to address him with unwearied importunity. The two first verses of the psalm are a kind of sum- mary of the whole; setting forth in few words what he afterwards expatiates upon more at length : but though we shall, on this account, pass them over in our discussion, we shall not be unmindful of the resolution contained in them, but shall conclude our subject with commending it to your most serious attention.
The points which now call for our notice are,
I. The troubles he had endured —
[We know not for certain what these were; but we are sure, that the psalm was written after the ark had been brought up to Mount Zion, and the worship of God had been permanently settled at Jerusalem ^ : and therefore we apprehend, that it was written on occasion of David's deliverance from some overwhelming distress both of body and mind, resembling that specified in the sixth psalm ^ The terms used in our text might indeed be interpreted of death only ; because the word " hell " often means nothing more than the grave : but we rather think that terrors of conscience, on account of his sin committed in the matter of Uriah, had given a tenfold poignancy to the fear of death, and that his experience was similar to that described in the 25th Psalm, where he says, " The troubles of my heart are enlarged ; O bring thou me out of my distresses ! Look upon mine affliction and my pain ; B.wdi forgive all my sins^ .'"
But whatever was the precise occasion of David's sorrows, it is manifest, that, sooner or later, we must all be brought into a situation wherein his language will be exactly suitable to us. " The sorrows of death" will shortly " encompass us," and " the pains of hell," if we have not previously obtained a sense of reconciliation with God, will '^get hold upon us;'* and, in the contemplation of an approaching eternity, " we shall find
trouble
• ver. 18, ]C). " Ps. vi. 2, 3. *= Ps. xxv. 17, 18.