flatteries or threatenings to the contrary. John Ball,
1632.
Verse 10. "They that know thy name will put their trust in
thee." They can do no otherwise who savingly know God's sweet
attributes, and noble acts for his people. We never trust a man till
we know him, and bad men are better known than trusted. Not so the
Lord; for where his name is ointment poured forth, the virgins love
him, fear him, rejoice in him, and repose upon him. John
Trapp.
Verse 12. "When he maketh inquisition for blood, he
remembereth them." There is a time when God will make inquisition
for innocent blood. The Hebrew word doresh, from
darash, that is here rendered inquisition, signifies
not barely to seek, to search, but to seek, search, and enquire with
all diligence and care imaginable. Oh, there is a time a-coming when
the Lord will make a very diligent and careful search and enquiry
after all the innocent blood of his afflicted and persecuted people,
which persecutors and tyrants have spilt as water upon the ground;
and woe to persecutors when God shall make a more strict, critical,
and careful enquiry after the blood of his people than ever was made
in the inquisition of Spain, where all things are carried with the
greatest diligence, subtlety, secrecy, and severity. O persecutors,
there is a time a-coming, when God will make a strict enquiry after
the blood of Hooper, Bradford, Latimer, Taylor, Ridley, etc. There is
a time a-coming, wherein God will enquire who silenced and suspended
such-and-such ministers, and who stopped the mouths of such-and-such,
and who imprisoned, confined, and banished such-and-such, who were
once burning and shining lights, and who were willing to spend and be
spent that sinners might be saved, and that Christ might be
glorified. There is a time when the Lord will make a very narrow
enquiry into all the actions and practices of ecclesiastical courts,
high commissions, committees, assizes, etc., and deal with
persecutors as they have dealt with his people. Thomas
Brooks.
Verse 12. "When he maketh inquisition for blood, he
remembereth them." There is vox sanguinis, a voice of
blood; and "he that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" It covered
the old world with waters. The earth is filled with cruelty; it was
vox sanguinis that cried, and the heavens heard the earth, and
the windows of heaven opened to let fall judgment and vengeance upon
it. Edward Marbury, 1649.
Verse 12. "When he maketh inquisition for blood," etc.
Though God may seem to wink for a time at the cruelty of violent men,
yet will call them at last to a strict account for all the innocent
blood they have shed, and for their unjust and unmerciful usage of
meek and humble persons; whose cry he never forgets (though he doth
not presently answer it), but takes a fit time to be avenged of their
oppressors. Symon Patrick, D.D., 1626-1707.
Verse 12. "He maketh inquisition for blood." He is so
stirred at this sin, that he will up, search out the authors,
contrivers, and commissioners of this scarlet sin, he will avenge for
blood. William Greenhill.
Verse 12. "He forgetteth not the cry of the humble."
Prayer is a haven to the shipwrecked man, an anchor to them that are
sinking in the waves, a staff to the limbs that totter, a mine of
jewels to the poor, a healer of diseases, and a guardian of health.
Prayer at once secures the continuance of our blessings, and
dissipates the clouds of our calamities. O blessed prayer! thou art
the unwearied conqueror of human woes, the firm foundation of human
happiness, the source of ever-enduring joy, the mother of philosophy.
The man who can pray truly, though languishing in extremest
indigence, is richer than all beside, whilst the wretch who never
bowed the knee, though proudly sitting as monarch of all nations, is
of all men most destitute. Chrysostom.
Verse 14. "That I may show forth all thy praise," etc.
To show forth all God's praise is to enter largely into the
work. An occasional "God, I thank thee," is no fit return for
a perpetual stream of rich benefits. William S. Plumer.
Verse 15. "The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they
made," etc. Whilst they are digging pits for others, there is a
pit a-digging and a grave a-making for themselves. They have a
measure to make up, and a treasure to fill, which at length will be
broken open, which, methinks, should take off them which are set upon
mischief from pleasing themselves in their plots. Alas! they are but
plotting their own ruin, and building a Babel which will fall upon
their own heads. If there were any commendation in plotting, then
that great plotter of plotters, that great engineer, Satan, would go
beyond us all, and take all the credit from us. But let us not envy
Satan and his in their glory. They had need of something to comfort
them. Let them please themselves with their trade. The day is coming
wherein the daughter of Sion shall laugh them to scorn. There will be
a time wherein it shall be said, "Arise, Sion, and thresh." Micah
4:13. And usually the delivery of God's children is joined with the
destruction of his enemies; Saul's death, and David's deliverance;
the Israelites' deliverance, and the Egyptians drowning. The church
and her opposites are like the scales of a balance; when one goes up,
the other goes down. Richard Sibbs.
Verses 15-17. It will much increase the torment of the
damned, in that their torments will be as large and strong as their
understandings and affections, which will cause those violent
passions to be still working. Were their loss never so great, and
their sense of it never so passionate, yet if they could but lose the
use of their memory, those passions would die, and that loss being
forgotten, would little trouble them. But as they cannot lay by their
life and being, though then they would account annihilation a
singular mercy, so neither can they lay aside any part of their
being. Understanding, conscience, affections, memory, must all live
to torment them, which should have helped to their happiness. And as
by these they should have fed upon the love of God, and drawn forth
perpetually the joys of his presence, so by these must they now feed
upon the wrath of God, and draw forth continually the dolours of his
absence. Therefore, never think, that when I say the hardness of
their hearts, and their blindness, dulness, and forgetfulness shall
be removed, that therefore they are more holy and happy than before:
no, but morally more vile, and hereby far more miserable. Oh, how
many times did God by his messengers here call upon them, "Sinners,
consider whither you are going. Do but make a stand awhile, and think
where your way will end, what is the offered glory that you so
carelessly reject: will not this be bitterness in the end?" And yet,
these men would never be brought to consider. But in the latter days,
saith the Lord, they shall perfectly consider it, when they are
ensnared in the work of their own hands, when God hath
arrested them, and judgment is passed upon them, and vengeance is
poured out upon them to the full, then they cannot choose but
consider it, whether they will or no. Now they have no leisure to
consider, nor any room in their memories for the things of another
life. Ah! but then they shall have leisure enough, they shall be
where they shall have nothing else to do but consider it: their
memories shall have no other employment to hinder them; it shall even
be engraven upon the tables of their hearts. God would have the
doctrine of their eternal state to have been written on the posts of
their doors, on their houses, on their hands, and on their hearts: he
would have had them mind it and mention it, as they rise and lie
down, and as they walk abroad, that so it might have gone well with
them at their latter end. And seeing they rejected this counsel of
the Lord, therefore shall it be written always before them in the
place of their thraldom, that which way soever they look they may
still behold it. Richard Baxter.
Verse 16. "The Lord is known by the judgments which he
executeth." Now if the Lord be known by the judgment which he
executeth; then, the judgment which he executeth must be known; it
must be an open judgment; and such are very many of the judgments of
God, they are acted as upon a stage. And I may give you an account in
three particulars why the Lord will sometimes do justice in the place
of beholders, or in the open sight of others. First, that there may
be witnesses enough of what he doth, and so a record of it be kept,
at least in the minds and memories of faithful men for the
generations to come. Secondly, the Lord doth it not only that he may
have witnesses of his justice, but also that his justice and the
proceedings of it, may have an effect and a fruit upon those who did
not feel it, nor fall under it. This was the reason why the Lord
threatened to punish Jerusalem in the sight of the nations. Ezekiel
5:6, 7, 8, 14, 15. . . . . . God would execute judgment in Jerusalem,
a city placed in the midst of the nations, that as the nations had
taken notice of the extraordinary favours, benefits, deliverances,
and salvations which God wrought for Jerusalem, so they might also
take notice of his judgments and sore displeasure against them.
Jerusalem was not seated in some nook, corner, or by-place of the
world, but in the midst of the nations, that both the goodness and
severity of God toward them might be conspicuous. . . . . . . God
lets some sinners suffer, or punisheth them openly, both because he
would have all others take notice that he dislikes what they have
done, as also because he would not have others do the like, lest they
be made like them, both in the matter and manner of their sufferings.
'Tis a favour as well as our duty, to be taught by other men's harms,
and to be instructed by their strokes, to prevent our own . . . . . .
Thirdly, God strikes some wicked men in open view, or in the place of
beholders for the comfort of his own people, and for their
encouragement. Psalm 58:10, 11. "The righteous shall rejoice when he
seeth the vengeance;" not that he shall be glad of the vengeance,
purely as it is a hurt or a suffering to the creature; but the
righteous shall be glad when he seeth the vengeance of God as it is a
fulfilling of the threatening of God against the sin of man, and an
evidence of his own holiness. . . . . . . It is said (Exodus 14:30,
31), that God having overwhelmed the Egyptians in the Red Sea, the
Israelites saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea shore: God did not
suffer the carcases of the Egyptians to sink to the bottom of the
sea, but caused them to lie upon the shore, that the Israelites might
see them; and when Israel saw that dreadful stroke of the Lord upon
the Egyptians, it is said, "The people feared the Lord, and believed
the Lord, and his servant Moses." Thus they were confirmed in their
faith by God's open judgments upon the Egyptians. They were smitten
in the place of the beholders, or in the open sight of others.
Condensed from Joseph Caryl.
Verse 16. "The Lord is known by the judgment which he
executeth;" when he lays his hand upon sinners, saints tremble,
consider his power, majesty, greatness, the nature of his judgments,
and so judge themselves, and remove out of the way whatever may
provoke. . . . . . . As fire begets a splendour round about where it
is, so do the judgments of God set out to the world his glory,