kneel down to prayer. George Swinnock.
Verse 3. "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O
Lord."
When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave
To do the like; our bodies but forerun
The spirit's duty: true hearts spread and heave
Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun;
Give him thy first thoughts, then, so shalt thou keep
Him company all day, and in him sleep.
Yet never sleep the sun up; prayer should
Dawn with the day, there are set awful hours
'Twixt heaven and us; the manna was not good
After sun-rising, for day sullies flowers.
Rise to prevent the sun; sleep doth sins glut,
And heaven's gate opens when the world's is shut.
Walk with thy fellow creatures; note the hush
And whisperings amongst them. Not a spring
Or leaf but hath his morning hymn; each bush
And oak doth know I AM—canst thou not sing?
O leave thy cares and follies! Go this way,
And thou art sure to prosper all the day.
Henry Vaughn, 1621-1695.
Verse 3. "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning." "In the
morning shall my prayer prevent thee," said Heman. That is the
fittest time for devotion, you being then fresh in your spirits, and
freest from distractions. Which opportunity for holy duties may fitly
be called the wings of the morning. Edward Reyner,
1658.
Verse 3. "In the morning." "In the days of our
fathers," says Bishop Burnet, "when a person came early to the door
of his neighbour, and desired to speak with the master of the house,
it was as common a thing for the servants to tell him with freedom—
'My master is at prayer,' as it now is to say, 'My master is not up.'"
Verse 3. "In the morning I will direct my prayer unto thee,
and will look up," or, I will marshall my prayer , I will
bring up petition after petition, pleading after pleading, even till
I become like Jacob, a prince with God, till I have won the field and
got the day. Thus the word is applied by a metaphor both to
disputations with men and supplications to God. Further, we may take
the meaning plainly without any strain of rhetoric, Set thy words
in order before me. Method is good in everything, either an
express or covert method. Sometimes it is the best of art to cover
it: in speaking there is a special use of method, for though, as one
said very well (speaking of those who are more curious about method
than serious about matter), "Method never converted any man;"
yet method and the ordering of words is very useful. Our speeches
should not be heaps of words, but words bound up; not a throng of
words, but words set in array, or, as it were, in rank and file.
Joseph Caryl.
Verse 3. "I will direct my prayer unto thee and will look
up." In the words you may observe two things: first, David's
posture in prayer; secondly, his practice after prayer. First, his
posture in prayer, "I will direct my prayer unto thee."
Secondly, his practice after prayer, "And I will look up." The
prophet in these words, makes use of two military words. First, he
would not only pray, but marshall up his prayers, he would put them
in battle array; so much the Hebrew word (Heb.) imports. Secondly,
when he had done this, then he would be as a spy upon his
watch-tower, to see whether he prevailed, whether he got the day or
no; and so much the Hebrew word (Heb) imports. When David had set his
prayers, his petitions, in rank and file, in good array, then he was
resolved he would look abroad, he would look about him to see at what
door God would send in an answer to prayer. He is either a fool or a
madman, he is either very weak or very wicked, that prays and prays
but never looks after his prayers; that shoots many an arrow toward
heaven, but never minds where his arrows alight. Thomas
Brooks.
Verse 3. David would direct his prayer to God and look
up; not down to the world, down to corruption, but up to God what
he would speak. Psalm 85:8. "I will hear what God the Lord will
speak," Let the resolution of the prophet be thine, "I will look unto
the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear
me." Micah 7:7. William Greenhill, 1650.
Verse 3. "I will direct my prayer to thee, and will look
up," that is, I will trade, I will send out my spiritual
commodities, and expect a gainful return; I will make my prayers, and
not give them for lost, but look up for an answer. God will bring man
home by a way contrary to that by which he wandered from him. Man
fell from God by distrust, by having God in suspicion; God will bring
him back by trust, by having good thoughts of him. Oh, how richly
laden might the vessel which thou sendest out come home, wouldst thou
but long and look for its return! George Swinnock.
Verse 3. Faith hath a supporting act after prayer; it supports
the soul to expect a gracious answer: "I will direct my prayer
unto thee, and will look up," or I will look; for what, but for a
return? An unbelieving heart shoots at random, and never minds where
his arrow lights, or what comes of his praying; but faith fills the
soul with expectation. As a merchant, when he casts up his estate, he
counts what he hath sent beyond sea, as well as what he hath in hand;
so doth faith reckon upon what he hath sent to heaven in prayer and
not received, as well as those mercies which he hath received, and
are in hand at present. Now this expectation which faith raiseth in
the soul after prayer, appears in the power that it hath to quiet and
compose the soul in the interim between the sending forth, as I may
say, the ship of prayer, and its return home with its rich lading it
goes for, and it is more or less, according as faith's strength is.
Sometimes faith comes from prayer in triumph, and cries,
Victoria. It gives such a being and existence to the mercy
prayed for in the Christian's soul before any likelihood of it
appears to sense and reason, that the Christian can silence all his
troubled thoughts with the expectation of its coming. Yea, it will
make the Christian disburse his praises for the mercy long before it
is received. . . . . . For want of looking up many a prayer is lost.
If you do not believe, why do you pray? And if you believe, why do
you not expect? By praying you seem to depend on God; by not
expecting, you again renounce your confidence. What is this but to
take his name in vain? O Christian, stand to your prayer in a holy
expectation of what you have begged upon the credit of the promise. .
. . . Mordecai, no doubt, had put up many prayers for Esther, and
therefore he waits at the king's gate, looking what answer God would
in his providence give therunto. Do thou likewise. William
Gurnall.
Verse 4. "Thou art not a God that hath pleasure in
wickedness." As a man that cutteth with a dull knife is the cause
of cutting, but not of the ill-cutting and hacking of the knife—the
knife is the cause of that; or if a man strike upon an instrument
that is out of tune, he is the cause of the sound, but not of the
jarring sound—that is the fault of the untuned strings; or, as a man
riding upon a lame horse, stirs him—the man is the cause of the
motion, but the horse himself of the halting motion: thus God is the
author of every action, but not of the evil of that action—that is
from man. He that makes instruments and tools of iron or other metal,
he maketh not the rust and canker which corrupteth them, that is from
another cause; nor doth that heavenly workman, God Almighty, bring in
sin and iniquity; nor can he be justly blamed if his creatures do
soil and besmear themselves with the foulness of sin, for he made
them good. Spencer's Things New and Old.
Verses 4-6. Here the Lord's alienation from the wicked is
set forth gradually, and seems to rise by six steps. First, he
hath no pleasure in them; secondly, they shall not dwell with
him; thirdly, he casteth them forth, they shall not stand in
his sight; fourthly, his heart turns from them, thou hatest
all the workers of iniquity; fifthly, his hand is turned upon
them, thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing; sixthly, his
spirit rises against them, and is alienated from them, the Lord
will abhor the bloody man. This estrangement is indeed a
strange (yet a certain) punishment to "the workers
of iniquity." These words, "the workers of iniquity," may
be considered two ways. First, as intending (not all degrees of
sinners, or sinners of every degree, but) the highest degree of
sinners, great, and gross sinners, resolved and wilful sinners. Such
as sin industriously, and, as it were, artificially, with skill and
care to get themselves a name, as if they had an ambition to be
accounted workmen that need not to be ashamed of doing that
whereof all ought to be ashamed; these, in strictness of Scripture
sense, are "workers of iniquity." Hence note, notorious
sinners make sin their business, or trade. Though every sin be
a work of iniquity , yet only some sinners are "workers of
iniquity;" and they who are called so, make their calling to sin.
We read of some who love and make a lie. Revelation 22:15. A
lie may be told by those who neither love nor make it; but there are
lie-makers, and they, sure enough, are lovers of a lie. Such
craftsmen in sinning are also described in Psalm 58:2—"Yea, in heart
ye work wickedness; ye weigh the violence of your hands in the
earth." The psalmist doth not say, they had wickedness in their
heart, but they did work it there; the heart is a shop within, an
underground shop; there they did closely contrive, forge, and
hammer out their wicked purposes, and fit them into actions.
Joseph Caryl.
Verse 5. What an astonishing thing is sin, which maketh the
God of love and Father of mercies an enemy to his creatures, and
which could only be purged by the blood of the Son of God! Though all
must believe this who believe the Bible, yet the exceeding sinfulness
of sin is but weakly apprehended by those who have the deepest sense
of it, and will never be fully known in this world. Thomas Adam's
Private Thoughts, 1701-1784.
Verse 5 ( last clause ). "Thou hatest all workers of
iniquity." For what God thinks of sin, see Deuteronomy 7:22;
Proverbs 6:16; Revelation 2:6, 15; where he expresseth his
detestation and hatred of it, from which hatred proceeds all those
direful plagues and judgments thundered from the fiery mouth of his
most holy law against it; nay, not only the work, but worker
also of iniquity becomes the object of his hatred. William
Gurnall.
Verse 5 ( last clause ). "Thou hatest all workers of
iniquity." If God's hatred be against the workers of iniquity,
how great is it against iniquity itself! If a man hates a poisonous
creature, he hates poison much more. The strength of God's hatred is
against sin, and so should we hate sin, and hate it with strength; it
is an abomination unto God, let it be so unto us. Proverbs 6:16-19,