Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
David has found peace, and rising from
his knees he begins to sweep his house of the wicked. "Depart from
me, all ye workers of iniquity." The best remedy for us against
an evil man is a long space between us both. "Get ye gone; I can have
no fellowship with you." Repentance is a practical thing. It is not
enough to bemoan the desecration of the temple of the heart, we must
scourge out the buyers and sellers, and overturn the tables of the
money changers. A pardoned sinner will hate the sins which
cost the Saviour his blood. Grace and sin are quarrelsome neighbours,
and one or the other must go to the wall.
"For the Lord hath hear the voice of
my weeping." What a fine Hebraism, and what grand poetry it is in
English! "He hath heard the voice of my weeping." Is there a voice in
weeping? Does weeping speak? In what language doth it utter its
meaning? Why, in that universal tongue which is known and understood
in all the earth, and even in heaven above. When a man weeps, whether
he be a Jew or Gentile, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, it has the
same meaning in it. Weeping is the eloquence of sorrow. It is an
unstammering orator, needing no interpreter, but understood of all.
Is it not sweet to believe that our tears are understood even when
words fail? Let us learn to think of tears as liquid prayers, and of
weeping as a constant dropping of importunate intercession which will
wear its way right surely into the very heart of mercy, despite the
stony difficulties which obstruct the way. My God, I will "weep" when
I cannot plead, for thou hearest the voice of my weeping.
Verse 9. "The Lord hath heard my supplication." The Holy
Spirit had wrought into the Psalmist's mind the confidence that his
prayer was heard. This is frequently the privilege of the saints.
Praying the prayer of faith, they are often infallibly assured that
they have prevailed with God. We read of Luther that, having on one
occasion wrestled hard with God in prayer, he came leaping out of his
closet crying, "Vicimus, vicimus;" that is, We have conquered,
we have prevailed with God." Assured confidence is no idle dream, for
when the Holy Ghost bestows it upon us, we know its reality, and
could not doubt it, even though all men should deride our boldness.
"The Lord will receive my prayer." Here is past experience
used for future encouragement. He hath, he will. Note this, O
believer, and imitate its reasoning.
Verse 10. "Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore vexed."
This is rather a prophecy than an imprecation, it may be read in the
future, "All my enemies shall be ashamed and sore vexed." They
shall return and be ashamed instantaneously, —in a moment;—their
doom shall come upon them suddenly. Death's day is doom's day, and
both are sure and may be sudden. The Romans were wont to say, "The
feet of the avenging Deity are shod with wool." With noiseless
footsteps vengeance nears its victim, and sudden and overwhelming
shall be its destroying stroke. If this were an imprecation, we must
remember that the language of the old dispensation is not that of the
new. We pray for our enemies, not against them. God
have mercy on them, and bring them into the right way.
Thus the Psalm, like those which preceed
it, shews the different estates of the godly and the wicked. O Lord,
let us be numbered with thy people, both now and forever!
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Whole Psalm. David was a man that was often exercised with
sickness and troubles from enemies, and in all the instances almost
that we meet with in the Psalms of these his afflictions, we may
observe the outward occasions of trouble brought him under the
suspicion of God's wrath and his own iniquity; so that he was seldom
sick, or persecuted, but this called on the disquiet of conscience,
and brought his sin to remembrance; as in this Psalm, which was made
on the occasion of his sickness, as appears from verse eight, wherein
he expresseth the vexation of his soul under the apprehension of
God's anger; all his other griefs running into this channel, as
little brooks, losing themselves in a great river, change their name
and nature. He that at first was only concerned for his sickness, is
now wholly concerned with sorrow and smart under the fear and hazard
of his soul's condition; the like we may see in Psalm 38, and many
places more. Richard Gilpin, 1677.
Verse 1. "Rebuke me not." God hath two means by which
he reduceth his children to obedience; his word, by which he rebukes
them; and his rod, by which he chastiseth them. The word precedes,
admonishing them by his servants whom he hath sent in all ages to
call sinners to repentance: of the which David himself saith, "Let
the righteous rebuke me;" and as a father doth first rebuke his
disordered child, so doth the Lord speak to them. But when men
neglect the warnings of his word, then God as a good Father, takes up
the rod and beats them. Our Saviour wakened the three disciples in
the garden three times, but seeing that served not, he told them that
Judas and his band were coming to awaken them whom his own voice
could not waken. A. Symson, 1638.
Verse 1. "Jehovah, rebuke me not in thine anger," etc.
He does not altogether refuse punishment, for that would be
unreasonable; and to be without it, he judged would be more hurtful
than beneficial to him; but what he is afraid of is the wrath of God,
which threatens sinners with ruin and perdition. To anger and
indignation David tacitly opposes fatherly and gentle chastisement,
and this last he was willing to bear. John Calvin, 1509 -
1564.
Verse 1. "O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger."
The anger of the Lord? Oh, dreadful thought!
How can a creature frail as man endure
The tempest of his wrath? Ah, whither flee
To 'scape the punishment he well deserves?
Flee to the cross! the great atonement there
Will shield the sinner, if he supplicate
For pardon with repentence true and deep,
And faith that questions not. Then will the frown
Of anger pass from off the face of God,
Like a black tempest cloud that hides the sun.
Anon.
Verse 1. "Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger," etc.;
that is, do not lay upon me that thou hast threatened in thy law;
where anger is not put for the decree nor the execution, but for the
denouncing. So (Matthew 3:11, and so Hosea 11:9), "I will not execute
the fierceness of mine anger," that is, I will not execute my wrath
as I have declared it. Again, it is said, he executes punishment on
the wicked; he declares it not only, but executeth it, so anger is
put for the execution of anger. Richard Stock, 1641.
Verse 1. "Neither chasten me in thine hot
displeasure."
O keep up life and peace within,
If I must feel thy chastening rod!
Yet kill not me, but kill my sin,
And let me know thou art my God.
O give my soul some sweet foretaste
Of that which I shall shortly see!
Let faith and love cry to the last,
"Come, Lord, I trust myself with thee!"
Richard Baxter, 1615-1691.
Verse 2. "Have mercy upon me, O Lord." To fly and
escape the anger of God, David sees no means in heaven or in earth,
and therefore retires himself to God, even to him that wounded him
that he might heal him. He flies not with Adam to the bush, nor with
Saul to the witch, nor with Jonah to Tarshish; but he appeals from an
angry and just God to a merciful God, and from himself to himself.
The woman who was condemned by King Philip, appealed from Philip
being drunken to Philip being sober. But David appeals from one
virtue, justice, to another, mercy. There may be appellation from the
tribunal of man to the justice-seat of God; but when thou art
indicted before God's justice-seat, whither or to whom wilt thou go
but to himself and his mercy-seat, which is the highest and last
place of appellation? "I have none in heaven but thee, nor in earth
besides thee." . . . . . . David, under the name of mercy,
includeth all things, according to that of Jacob to his brother Esau,
"I have gotten mercy, and therefore I have gotten all things."
Desirest thou any thing at God's hands? Cry for mercy , out of
which fountain all good things will spring to thee. Archibald
Symson.
Verse 2. "For I am weak." Behold what rhetoric he useth
to move God to cure him, "I am weak," an argument taken from
his weakness, which indeed were a weak argument to move any man to
show his favour, but is a strong argument to prevail with God. If a
diseased person would come to a physician, and only lament the
heaviness of his sickness, he would say, God help thee; or an
oppressed person come to a lawyer, and show him the estate of his
action and ask his advice, that is a golden question; or to a
merchant to crave raiment, he will either have present money or a
surety; or a courtier favour, you must have your reward ready in your
hand. But coming before God, the most forcible argument that you can
use is your necessity, poverty, tears, misery, unworthiness, and
confessing them to him, it shall be an open door to furnish you with
all things that he hath. . . . The tears of our misery are forcible
arrows to pierce the heart of our heavenly Father, to deliver us and
pity our hard case. The beggars lay open their sores to the view of
the world, that the more they may move men to pity them. So let us
deplore our miseries to God, that he, with the pitiful Samaritan, at
the sight of our wounds, may help us in due time. Archibald
Symson.
Verse 2. "Heal me," etc. David comes not to take physic
upon wantonness, but because the disease is violent, because the
accidents are vehement; so vehement, so violent, as that it hath
pierced ad ossa , and ad animam , "My bones are vexed,
and my soul is sore troubled," therefore "heal me;" which
is the reason upon which he grounds this second petition, "Heal
me, because my bones are vexed," etc. John Donne.
Verse 2. "My bones are vexed." The Lord can make the
strongest and most insensible part of a man's body sensible of his
wrath when he pleaseth to touch him, for here David's bones are
vexed. David Dickson.
Verse 2. The term "bones" frequently occurs in the
Psalms, and if we examine we shall find it used in three different
senses. (1.) It is sometimes applied literally to our blessed Lord's
human body, to the body which hung upon the cross, as, "They pierced
my hands and my feet; I may tell all my bones," (2.) It has sometimes
also a further reference to his mystical body the church. And then it
denotes all the members of Christ's body that stand firm in the
faith, that cannot be moved by persecutions, or temptations, however
severe, as, "All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee?"