The Pulpit Commentary — Psalms — Volume 2 — Section 341

Vers. 12, 25-27.-Changing self; changing world; unchanging: God. A very favourite contrast with psalmists and poets. I. A CONTRAST BASED ON A FACT. The fact is that man's life iii changeable and brief. 'fhis is true of a man's bodily life, intellectual life, and life of relations. It is impressed on a man in his times of sickness, especially when sickness comes breaking into and breaking up his plans, as in the case of king Hezekiah. Here the psalmist puts the fact int.o two figures-the passing shadow, the quickly withered grass. Precisely the metaphor is taken from the lengthening, that is, the evening shadow, which Rashi thus explains: "When it is the time of evening the shadows lenathen 0 lmt when it is dark they are no longer discernible, but come to an end and go." Th~ figure of the short-lived grass is one of the most familiar in the Bible. It is more atriking in the hot Eastern countries, where blasting winds come, than with us. The contrast is the Divine continuity and persistency. The cedars outlive the storms of many winters, but die at last. They endure through S0'/7Ul generntions, but fall at last. God survives all kinds of winters, and lasts through all generations. The successions of the afflicted have always the Divine Healthy One to whom they can look. They may comfort themselves with the assurance that what he was, he is, and ever wilt be. ll. A CONTRAST DASED ON AN IMAGINATION. Nobody really knows anything about the earth perishing, and the heavens being folded up, though scientific men venture now to calculate the actual number of years that the earth may be expected to last. Ver. 25 is poetry, and based on Eastern knowledge and ideas of the form of earth and heaven. We can imagine all material things changing and passing. We know that nothing created retains its form long. And yet certain things of creation seem per- manent and immovable. We speak of the" everlasting mountains," tht1" solid earth," the "infinite heavens." But think of the mountains shaken down, the earth shifted from its place, and the heavens folded up, and then God is the same, unaffected; nay, he is the supreme force that crumbles the mountains, refashions the earth, and rolls up the heavens that he "spread abroad." God stands in absolute contrast with (1) all our experiences, and (2) with all our imaginations. The flux and reflux cha~acteristic of material things never affect him "whose years are throughout all generat1ons."-R. T. Ver. 16.-God gwrified in fulfilling his promises. The psalmist has evidently in mind the anticipated return of the exiles, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the re-establishment of the Jehovah-worship. By his servants the prophets God had made distinct promises to his people of a return from the Captivity. He had even fixed a precise time, though the date from which the seventy years were to be reckoned was not clearly defined. But seventy years of humiliation is a long time in which to keep up faith and hope. Many were likely to fail under the strain, and to say, "Our way is hid from the Lord, and our judgment is passed over from our God;" " God bath forgotten to be gracious." Better souls, like this psalmist, kept faith in God, Bung in their hope, and were filled with confidence that God would keep bis time, that he did not really tarry, and that he would surely be glorifi.ed, before all men, as the .. Faithful Promiser." L Gon GLORIFIED. IN JLEEPING nIS woBD, " Bath he said, and shall be not do it ? rs. 0111. 1-22.J THE BOOK OF PSALMS. 381