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Psalm One
Hundred and Two
Psalm 102
Chapter Contents
A sorrowful complaint of great afflictions. (1-11)
Encouragement by expecting the performances of God's promises to his church.
(12-22) The unchangeableness of God. (23-28)
Commentary on Psalm 102:1-11
(Read Psalm 102:1-11)
The whole word of God is of use to direct us in prayer;
but here, is often elsewhere, the Holy Ghost has put words into our mouths.
Here is a prayer put into the hands of the afflicted; let them present it to
God. Even good men may be almost overwhelmed with afflictions. It is our duty
and interest to pray; and it is comfort to an afflicted spirit to unburden
itself, by a humble representation of its griefs. We must say, Blessed be the
name of the Lord, who both gives and takes away. The psalmist looked upon
himself as a dying man; My days are like a shadow.
Commentary on Psalm 102:12-22
(Read Psalm 102:12-22)
We are dying creatures, but God is an everlasting God,
the protector of his church; we may be confident that it will not be neglected.
When we consider our own vileness, our darkness and deadness, and the manifold
defects in our prayers, we have cause to fear that they will not be received in
heaven; but we are here assured of the contrary, for we have an Advocate with
the Father, and are under grace, not under the law. Redemption is the subject
of praise in the Christian church; and that great work is described by the
temporal deliverance and restoration of Israel. Look down upon us, Lord Jesus;
and bring us into the glorious liberty of thy children, that we may bless and
praise thy name.
Commentary on Psalm 102:23-28
(Read Psalm 102:23-28)
Bodily distempers soon weaken our strength, then what can
we expect but that our months should be cut off in the midst; and what should
we do but provide accordingly? We must own God's hand in it; and must reconcile
this to his love, for often those that have used their strength well, have it weakened;
and those who, as we think, can very ill be spared, have their days shortened.
It is very comfortable, in reference to all the changes and dangers of the
church, to remember that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for
ever. And in reference to the death of our bodies, and the removal of friends,
to remember that God is an everlasting God. Do not let us overlook the
assurance this psalm contains of a happy end to all the believer's trials.
Though all things are changing, dying, perishing, like a vesture folding up and
hastening to decay, yet Jesus lives, and thus all is secure, for he hath said,
Because I live ye shall live also.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Psalms》
Psalm 102
Verse 3
[3] For
my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.
An hearth — An
hearth is heated or burnt by the coals which are laid upon it.
Verse 5
[5] By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin.
Skin — My
flesh being quite consumed.
Verse 6
[6] I am
like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert.
A pelican — Is
a solitary and mournful bird.
Verse 9
[9] For
I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping,
Bread —
The sense is, dust and ashes are as familiar to me as the eating of my bread; I
cover my head with them; I sit, yea, lie down in them, as mourners often did.
Verse 10
[10] Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast lifted me up,
and cast me down.
Lifted me — As
a man lifts up a thing as high as he can, that he may cast it to the ground
with greater force.
Verse 12
[12] But
thou, O LORD, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.
Remembrance —
Thy name, Jehovah, which is called by this very word, God's remembrance, or
memorial, and that unto all generations, Exodus 3:15.
Verse 13
[13] Thou
shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set
time, is come.
The set time —
The end of those seventy years which thou hast fixed.
Verse 18
[18] This
shall be written for the generation to come: and the people which shall be
created shall praise the LORD.
This —
This wonderful deliverance shall be carefully recorded by thy people.
Verse 19
[19] For
he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the LORD
behold the earth;
Looked —
From heaven.
Verse 20
[20] To
hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death;
To loose — To
release his poor captives out of Babylon, and from the chains of sin and
eternal destruction.
Verse 21
[21] To
declare the name of the LORD in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem;
To declare —
That they might publish the name and praises of God in his church.
Verse 22
[22] When
the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the LORD.
When —
When the Gentiles shall gather themselves to the Jews, and join with them in
the worship of the true God.
Verse 23
[23] He
weakened my strength in the way; he shortened my days.
He — God.
The way — In
the midst of the course of our lives. Some think the psalmist here speaks of
the whole commonwealth as of one man, and of its continuance, as of the life of
one man.
Verse 24
[24] I
said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are
throughout all generations.
I said — Do
not wholly destroy thy people Israel.
In the midst —
Before they come to a full possession of thy promises and especially of that
fundamental promise of the Messiah.
Thy years —
Though we die, yet thou art the everlasting God.
Verse 26
[26] They
shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a
garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:
Perish — As
to their present nature and use.
Verse 28
[28] The
children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established
before thee.
Continue —
Though the heavens and earth perish, yet we rest assured that our children, and
their children after them, shall enjoy an happy restitution to, and settlement
in their own land.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on Psalms》
Exposition
Explanatory Notes and
Quaint Sayings
Hints to the Village
Preacher
Other Works
TITLE. A prayer of
the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the
Lord. This Psalm is a prayer far more in spirit than in words. The formal
petitions are few, but a strong stream of supplication runs from beginning to
end, and like an under-current, finds its way heavenward through the moanings
of grief and confessions of faith which make up the major part of the Psalm. It
is a prayer of the afflicted, or of "a sufferer, "and it bears the
marks of its parent age; as it is recorded of Jabez that "his mother bore
him with sorrow, "so may we say of this Psalm; yet as Rachel's Benoni, or
child of sorrow, was also her Benjamin, or son of her right hand, so is this
Psalm as eminently expressive of consolation as of desolation. It is scarcely
correct to call it a penitential Psalm, for the sorrow of it is rather of one
suffering than sinning. It has its own bitterness, and it is not the same as
that of the Fifty-first. The sufferer is afflicted more for others than for
himself, more for Zion and the house of the Lord, than for his own house. When
he is overwhelmed, or sorely troubled, and depressed. The best of men are not
always able to stem the torrent of sorrow. Even when Jesus is on board, the
vessel may fill with water and begin to sink. And poureth out his complaint
before the LORD. When a cup is overwhelmed or turned bottom over, all that is
in it is naturally poured out; great trouble removes the heart from all reserve
and causes the soul to flow out without restraint; it is well when that which
is in the soul is such as may be poured out in the presence of God, and this is
only the case where the heart has been renewed by divine grace. The word
rendered "complaint" has in it none of the idea of fault-finding or
repining, but should rather be rendered "moaning, "—the expression of
pain, not of rebellion. To help the memory we will call this Psalm THE
PATRIOT'S PLAINT.
SUBJECT. This is a
patriot's lament over his country's distress. He arrays himself in the griefs
of his nation as in a garment of sackcloth, and casts her dust and ashes upon
his head as the ensigns and causes of his sorrow. He has his own private woes
and personal enemies, he is moreover sore afflicted in body by sickness, but
the miseries of his people cause him a far more bitter anguish, and this he
pours out in an earnest, pathetic lamentation. Not, however, without hope does
the patriot mourn; he has faith in God, and looks for the resurrection of the
nation through the omnipotent favour of the Lord; this causes him to walk among
the ruins of Jerusalem, and to say with hopeful spirit, "No, Zion, thou
shalt never perish. Thy sun is not set for ever; brighter days are in store for
thee." It is in vain to enquire into the precise point of Israel's history
which thus stirred a patriot's soul, for many a time was the land oppressed,
and at any of her sad seasons this song and prayer would have been a most
natural and appropriate utterance.
DIVISION. In the first
part of the Psalm, Ps 102:1-11, the moaning monopolizes every verse, the
lamentation is unceasing, sorrow rules the hour. The second portion, from Ps
102:12-28, has a vision of better things, a view of the gracious Lord, and his
eternal existence, and care for his people, and therefore it is interspersed
with sunlight as well as shaded by the cloud, and it ends up right gloriously
with calm confidence for the future, and sweet restfulness in the Lord. The
whole composition may be compared to a day which, opening with wind and rain,
clears up at noon and is warm with the sun, continues fine, with intervening
showers, and finally closes with a brilliant sunset.
EXPOSITION
Verse
1. Hear my prayer, O LORD. Or O JEHOVAH. Sincere supplicants
are not content with praying for praying's sake, they desire really to reach
the ear and heart of the great God. It is a great relief in time of distress to
acquaint others with our trouble, we are eased by their hearing our
lamentation, but it is the sweetest solace of all to have God himself as a
sympathizing listener to our plaint. That he is such is no dream or fiction,
but an assured fact. It would be the direst of all our woes if we could be
indisputably convinced that with God there is neither hearing nor answering; he
who could argue us into so dreary a belief would do us no better service than
if he had read us our death-warrants. Better die than be denied the mercy-seat.
As well be atheists at once as believe in an unhearing, unfeeling God. And let
my cry come unto thee. When sorrow rises to such a height that words become too
weak a medium of expression, and prayer is intensified into a cry, then the
heart is even more urgent to have audience with the Lord. If our cries do not
enter within the veil, and reach to the living God, we may as well cease from
prayer at once, for it is idle to cry to the winds; but, blessed be God, the
philosophy which suggests such a hideous idea is disproved by the facts of
every day experience, since thousands of the saints can declare, "Verily,
God hath heard us."
Verse
2. Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble.
Do not seem as if thou didst not see me, or wouldst not own me. Smile now at
any rate. Reserve thy frowns for other times when I can bear them better, if,
indeed, I can ever bear them; but now in my heavy distress, favour me with
looks of compassion. Incline thine ear unto me. Bow thy greatness to my
weakness. If because of sin thy face is turned away, at least let me have a
side view of thee, lend me thine ear if I may not see thine eye. Turn thyself
to me again if, my sin has turned thee away, give to thine ear an inclination
to my prayers. In the day when I call answer me speedily. Because the case is
urgent, and my soul little able to wait. We may ask to have answers to prayer
as soon as possible, but we may not complain of the Lord if he should think it
more wise to delay. We have permission to request and to use importunity, but
no right to dictate or to be petulant. If it be important that the deliverance
should arrive at once, we are quite right in making an early time a point of
our entreaty, for God is as willing to grant us a favour now as to-morrow, and
he is not slack concerning his promise. It is a proverb concerning favours from
human hands, that "he gives twice who gives quickly, "because a gift
is enhanced in value by arriving in a time of urgent necessity; and we may be
sure that our heavenly Patron will grant us the best gifts in the best manner,
granting us grace to help in time of need. When answers come upon the heels of
our prayers they are all the more striking, more consoling, and more
encouraging. In these two verses the psalmist has gathered up a variety of
expressions all to the same effect; in them all he entreats an audience and
answer of the Lord, and the whole may be regarded as a sort of preface to the
prayer which follows.
Verse
3. For my days are consumed like smoke. My grief has made
life unsubstantial to me, I seem to be but a puff of vapour which has nothing
in it, and is soon dissipated. The metaphor is very admirably chosen, for, to
the unhappy, life seems not merely to be frail, but to be surrounded by so much
that is darkening, defiling, blinding, and depressing, that, sitting down in
despair, they compare themselves to men wandering in a dense fog, and
themselves so dried up thereby that they are little better than pillars of
smoke. When our days have neither light of joy nor fire of energy in them, but
become as a smoking flax which dies out ignobly in darkness, then have we cause
enough to appeal to the Lord that he would not utterly quench us. And my bones
are burned as an hearth. He became as dry as the hearth on which a wood fire
has burned out, or as spent ashes in which scarcely a trace of fire can be
found. His soul was ready to be blown away as smoke, and his body seemed likely
to remain as the bare hearth when the last comforting ember is quenched. How
often has our piety appeared to us to be in this condition! We have had to
question its reality, and fear that it never was anything more than a smoke; we
have had the most convincing evidence of its weakness, for we could not derive
even the smallest comfort from it, any more than a chilled traveller can derive
from the cold hearth on which a fire had burned long ago. Soul-trouble
experienced in our own heart will help us to interpret the language here
employed; and church-troubles may help us also, if unhappily we have been
called to endure them. The psalmist was moved to grief by a view of national
calamities, and these so wrought upon his patriotic soul that he was wasted
with anxiety, his spirits were dried up, and his very life was ready to expire.
There is hope for any country which owns such a son; no nation can die while
true hearts are ready to die for it.
Verse
4. My heart is smitten, like a plant parched by the fierce
heat of a tropical sun, and withered like grass, which dries up when
once the scythe has laid it low. The psalmist's heart was as a wilted, withered
flower, a burned up mass of what once was verdure. His energy, beauty,
freshness, and joy, were utterly gone, through the wasting influence of his
anguish. So that I forget to eat my bread, or "because I forget to eat my
bread." Grief often destroys the appetite, and the neglect of food tends
further to injure the constitution and create a yet deeper sinking of spirit.
As the smitten flower no longer drinks in the dew, or draws up nutriment from
the soil, so a heart parched with intense grief often refuses consolation for
itself and nourishment for the bodily frame, and descends at a doubly rapid
rate into weakness, despondency, and dismay. The case here described is by no
means rare, we have frequently met with individuals so disordered by sorrow
that their memory has failed them even upon such pressing matters as their
meals, and we must confess that we have passed through the same condition
ourselves. One sharp pang has filled the soul, monopolized the mind, and driven
everything else into the background, so that such common matters as eating and
drinking have been utterly despised, and the appointed hours of refreshment
have gone by unheeded, leaving no manifest faintness of body, but an increased
weariness of heart.
Verse
5. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my
skin. He became emaciated with sorrow. He had groaned himself down to a
living skeleton, and so in his bodily appearance was the more like the
smoke-dried, withered, burnt-up things to which he had previously compared
himself. It will be a very long time before the distresses of the church of God
make some Christians shrivel into anatomies, but this good man was so moved
with sympathy for Zion's ills that he was wasted down to skin and bone.
Verse
6. I am like a pelican of the wilderness, a mournful and even
hideous object, the very image of desolation. I am like an owl of the desert;
loving solitude, moping among ruins, hooting discordantly. The Psalmist likens
himself to two birds which were commonly used as emblems of gloom and
wretchedness; on other occasions he had been as the eagle, but the griefs of
his people had pulled him down, the brightness was gone from his eye, and the
beauty from his person; he seemed to himself to be as a melancholy bird sitting
among the fallen palaces and prostrate temples of his native land. Should not
we also lament when the ways of Zion mourn and her strength languishes? Were
there more of this holy sorrow we should soon see the Lord returning to build
up his church. It is ill for men to be playing the peacock with worldly pride
when the ills of the times should make them as mournful as the pelican; and it
is a terrible thing to see men flocking like vultures to devour the prey of a
decaying church, when they ought rather to be lamenting among her ruins like
the owl.
Verse
7. I watch, and am like a sparrow alone upon the house top: I
keep a solitary vigil as the lone sentry of my nation; my fellows are too
selfish, too careless to care for the beloved land, and so like a bird which
sits alone on the housetop, I keep up a sad watch over my country. The Psalmist
compared himself to a bird,—a bird when it has lost its mate or its young, or
is for some other reason made to mope alone in a solitary place. Probably he
did not refer to the cheerful sparrow of our own land, but if he did, the
illustration would not be out of place, for the sparrow is happy in company,
and if it were alone, the sole one of its species in the neighbourhood, there
can be little doubt that it would become very miserable, and sit and pine away.
He who has felt himself to be so weak and inconsiderable as to have no more
power over his times than a sparrow over a city, has also, when bowed down with
despondency concerning the evils of the age, sat himself down in utter
wretchedness to lament the ills which he could not heal. Christians of an
earnest, watchful kind often find themselves among those who have no sympathy
with them; even in the church they look in vain for kindred spirits; then do
they persevere in their prayers and labours, but feel themselves to be as
lonely as the poor bird which looks from the ridge of the roof, and meets with
no friendly greeting from any of its kind.
Verse
8. Mine enemies reproach me all the day. Their rage was
unrelenting and unceasing, and vented itself in taunts and insults, the
Psalmist's patriotism and his griefs were both made the subjects of their
sport. Pointing to the sad estate of his people they would ask him, "Where
is your God?" and exult over him because their false gods were in the
ascendant. Reproach cuts like a razor, and when it is continued from hour to
hour, and repeated all the day and every day, it makes life itself undesirable.
And they that are mad against me are sworn against me. They were so furious
that they bound themselves by oath to destroy him, and used his name as their
usual execration, a word to curse by, the synonym of abhorrence and contempt.
What with inward sorrows and outward persecutions he was in as ill a plight as
may well be conceived.
Verse
9. For I have eaten ashes like bread. He had so frequently
cast ashes upon his head in token of mourning, that they had mixed with his
ordinary food, and grated between his teeth when he ate his daily bread. One
while he forgot to eat, and then the fit changed, and he ate with such a hunger
that even ashes were devoured. Grief has strange moods and tenses. And mingled
my drink with weeping. His drink became as nauseous as his meat, for copious
showers of tears had made it brackish. This is a telling description of
all-saturating, all-embittering sadness,—and this was the portion of one of the
best of men, and that for no fault of his own, but because of his love to the
Lord's people. If we, too, are called to mourn, let us not be amazed by the
fiery trial as though some strange thing had happened unto us. Both in meat and
drink we have sinned; it is not therefore wonderful if in both we are made to
mourn.
Verse
10. Because of thine indignation and thy wrath: for thou hast
lifted me up and cast me down. A sense of the divine wrath which had been
manifested in the overthrow of the chosen nation and their sad captivity led
the Psalmist into the greatest distress. He felt like a sere leaf caught up by
a hurricane and carried right away, or the spray of the sea which is dashed
upwards that it may be scattered and dissolved. Our translation gives the idea
of a vessel uplifted in order that it may be dashed to the earth with all the
greater violence and the more completely broken in pieces; or to change the
figure, it reminds us of a wrestler whom his opponent catches up that he may
give him a more desperate fall. The first interpretation which we have given
is, however, more fully in accordance with the original, and sets forth the
utter helplessness which the writer felt, and the sense of overpowering terror
which bore him along in a rush of tumultuous grief which he could not
withstand.
Verse
11. My days are like a shadow that declineth. His days were
but a shadow at best, but now they seem to be like a shadow which was passing
away. A shadow is unsubstantial enough, how feeble a thing must a declining
shadow be? No expression could more forcibly set forth his extreme feebleness.
And I am withered like grass. He was like grass, blasted by a parching wind, or
cut down with a scythe, and then left to be dried up by the burning heat of the
sun. There are times when through depression of spirit a man feels as if all
life were gone from him, and existence had become merely a breathing death.
Heart-break has a marvellously withering influence over our entire system; our
flesh at its best is but as grass, and when it is wounded with sharp sorrows,
its beauty fades, and it becomes a shrivelled, dried, uncomely thing.
Verse
12. Now the writer's mind is turned away from his personal and
relative troubles to the true source of all consolation, namely, the Lord
himself, and his gracious purposes towards his own people. But thou, O Lord,
shalt endure for ever. I perish, but thou wilt not, my nation has become almost
extinct, but thou art altogether unchanged. The original has the word "sit,
"—"thou, Jehovah, to eternity shalt sit:" that is to say, thou
reignest on, thy throne is still secure even when thy chosen city lies in
ruins, and thy peculiar people are carried into captivity. The sovereignty of
God in all things is an unfailing ground for consolation; he rules and reigns
whatever happens, and therefore all is well.
Firm
as his throne his promise stands,
And he can well secure,
What I have committed to his hands.
Till the decisive hour.
And
thy rememberance unto all generations. Men will forget me, but as for thee, O
God, the constant tokens of thy presence will keep the race of man in mind of
thee from age to age. What God is now he always will be, that which our
forefathers told us of the Lord we find to be true at this present time, and what
our experience enables us to record will be confirmed by our children and their
children's children. All things else are vanishing like smoke, and withering
like grass, but over all the one eternal, immutable light shines on, and will
shine on when all these shadows have declined into nothingness.
Verse
13. Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion. He firmly
believed and boldly prophesied that apparent inaction on God's part would turn
to effective working. Others might remain sluggish in the matter, but the Lord
would most surely bestir himself. Zion had been chosen of old, highly favoured,
gloriously inhabited, and wondrously preserved, and therefore by the memory of
her past mercies it was certain that mercy would again be showed to her. God
will not always leave his church in a low condition; he may for a while hide
himself from her in chastisement, to make her see her nakedness and poverty
apart from himself, but in love he must return to her, and stand up in her
defence, to work her welfare. For the time to favour her, yea, the set time, is
come. Divine decree has appointed a season for blessing the church, and when
that period has arrived, blessed she shall be. There was an appointed time for
the Jews in Babylon, and when the weeks were fulfilled, no bolts nor bars could
longer imprison the ransomed of the Lord. When the time came for the walls to
rise stone by stone, no Tobiah or Sanballat could stay the work, for the Lord
himself had arisen, and who can restrain the hand of the Almighty? When God's
own time is come, neither Rome, nor the devil, nor persecutors, nor atheists,
can prevent the kingdom of Christ from extending its bounds. It is God's work
to do it;—he must "arise"; he will do it, but he has his own
appointed season; and meanwhile we must, with holy anxiety and believing
expectation, wait upon him.
Verse
14. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the
dust thereof. They delight in her so greatly that even her rubbish is dear
to them. It was a good omen for Jerusalem when the captives began to feel a
home-sickness, and began to sigh after her. We may expect the modern Jews to be
restored to their own land when the love of their country begins to sway them,
and casts out the love of gain. To the church of God no token can be more full
of hope than to see the members thereof deeply interested in all that concerns
her; no prosperity is likely to rest upon a church when carelessness about
ordinances, enterprises, and services is manifest; but when even the least and
lowest matter connected with the Lord's work is carefully attended to, we may
be sure that tne set time to favour Zion is come. The poorest church member,
the most grievous backslider, the most ignorant convert, should be precious in
our sight, because forming a part, although possibly a very feeble part, of the
new Jerusalem. If we do not care about the prosperity of the church to which we
belong, need we wonder if the blessing of the Lord is withheld?
Verse
15. So the heathen shall fear the name of the LORD. Mercy
within the church is soon perceived by those without. When a candle is lit in
the house, it shines through the window. When Zion rejoices in her God, the
heathen been to reverence his name, for they hear of the wonders of his power,
and are impressed thereby. And all the kings of the earth thy glory. The
restoration of Jerusalem was a marvel among the princes who heard of it, and
its ultimate resurrection in days yet to come will be one of the prodigies of
history. A church quickened by divine power is so striking an object in current
history that it cannot escape notice, rulers cannot ignore it, it affects the
Legislature, and forces from the great ones of the earth a recognition of the
divine working. Oh that we might see in our days such a revival of religion
that our senators and princes might be compelled to pay homage to the Lord, and
own his glorious grace. This cannot be till the saints are better edified, and
more fully builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.
Internal prosperity is the true source of the church's external influence.
Verse
16. When the LORD shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his
glory. As kings display their skill and power and wealth in the erection of
their capitals, so would the Lord reveal the splendour of his attributes in the
restoration of Zion, and so will he now glorify himself in the edification of
his church. Never is the Lord more honourable in the eyes of his saints than
when he prospers the church. To add converts to her, to train these for holy
service, to instruct, illuminate, and sanctify the brotherhood, to bind all
together in the bonds of Christian love, and to fill the whole body with the
energy of the Holy Spirit—this is to build up Zion. Other builders do but puff
her up, and their wood, hay, and stubble come to an end almost as rapidly as it
was heaped together; but what the Lord builds is surely and well done, and
redounds to his glory. Truly, when we see the church in a low state, and mark
the folly, helplessness, and indifference of those who profess to be her
builders; and, on the other hand, the energy, craft, and influence of those
opposed to her, we are fully prepared to own that it will be a glorious work of
omnipotent grace should she ever rise to her pristine grandeur and purity.
Verse
17. He will regard the prayer of the destitute. Only the
poorest of the people were left to sigh and cry among the ruins of the beloved
city; as for the rest, they were strangers in a strange land, and far away from
the holy place, yet the prayers of the captives and the forlorn offscourings of
the land would be heard of the Lord, who does not hear men because of the
amount of money they possess, or the breadth of the acres which they call their
own, but in mercy listens most readily to the cry of the greatest need. And not
despise their prayer. When great kings are building their palaces it is not
reasonable to expect them to turn aside and listen to every beggar who pleads
with them, yet when the Lord builds up Zion, and appears in his robes of glory,
he makes a point of listening to every petition of the poor and needy. He will
not treat their pleas with contempt; he will incline his ear to hear, his heart
to consider, and his hand to help. What comfort is here for those who account
themselves to be utterly destitute; their abject want is here met with a most
condescending promise. It is worth while to be destitute to be thus assured of
the divine regard.
Verse
18. This shall be written for the generation to come. A note
shall be made of it, for there will be destitute ones in future
generations,—"the poor shall never cease out of the land, "—and it
will make glad their eyes to read the story of the Lord's mercy to the needy in
former times. Registers of divine kindness ought to be made and preserved; we
write dcwn in history the calamities of nations,—wars, famines, pestilences,
and earthquakes are recorded; how much rather then should we set up memorials
of the Lord's lovingkindness! Those who have in their own souls endured
spiritual destitution, and have been delivered out of it, cannot forget it;
they are bound to tell others of it, and especially to instruct their children
in the goodness of the Lord. And the people which shall be created shall praise
the LORD. The Psalmist here intends to say that the rebuilding of Jerusalem
would be a fact in history for which the Lord would be praised from age to age.
Revivals of religion not only cause great joy to those who are immediately
concerned in them, but they give encouragement and delight to the people of God
long after, and are indeed perpetual incentives to adoration throughout the
church of God. This verse teaches us that we ought to have an eye to posterity,
and especially should we endeavour to perpetuate the memory of God's love to
his church and to his poor people, so that young people as they grow up may
know that the Lord God of their fathers is good and full of compassion. Sad as
the Psalmist was when he wrote the dreary portions of this complaint, he was
not so absorbed in his own sorrow, or so distracted by the national calamity,
as to forget the claims of coming generations; this, indeed, is a clear proof
that he was not without hope for his people, for he who is making arrangements
for the good of a future generation has not yet despaired of his nation. The
praise of God should be the great object of all that we do, and to secure him a
revenue of glory both from the present and the future is the noblest aim of
intelligent beings.
Verses
19-20. For he hath looked down from the heights of his sanctuary,
or "leaned from the high place of his holiness," from heaven did the
LORD behold the earth, looking out like a watcher from his tower. What was the
object of this leaning lrom the battlements of heaven? Why this intent gaze
upon the race of men? The answer is full of astounding mercy; the Lord does not
look upon mankind to note their grandees, and observe the doings of their
nobles, but to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed
to death. Now the groans of those in prison so far from being musical are
very horrible to hear, yet God bends to hear them: those who are bound for
death are usually ill company, yet Jehovah deigns to stoop from his greatness
to relieve their extreme distress and break their chains. This he does by
providential rescues, by restoring health to the dying, and by finding food for
the famishing: and spiritually this deed of grace is accomplished by sovereign
grace, which delivers us by pardon from the sentence of sin, and by the
sweetness of the promise from the deadly despair which a sense of sin had
created within us. Well may those of us praise the Lord who were once the
children of death, but are now brought into the glorious liberty of the
children of God. The Jews in captivity were in Haman's time appointed to death,
but their God found a way of escape for them, and they joyfully kept the feast
of Purim in memorial thereof; let fill souls that have been set free from the
crafty malice of the old dragon with even greater gratitude magnify the Lord of
infinite compassion.
Verse
21. To declare the name of the LORD in Zion, and his praise in
Jerusalem. Great mercy displayed to those greatly in need of it, is the
plainest method of revealing the attributes of the Most High. Actions speak
more loudly than words; deeds of grace are a revelation even more impressive
than the most tender promises. Jerusalem restored, the church re-edified,
desponding souls encouraged, and all other manifestations of Jehovah's power to
bless, are so many manifestoes and proclamations put up upon the walls of Zion
to publish the character and glory of the great God. Every day's experience
should be to us a new gazette of love, a court circular from heaven, a daily
despatch from the headquarters of grace. We are bound to inform our fellow
Christians of all this, making them helpers in our praise, as they hear of the
goodness which we have experienced. While God's mercies speak so eloquently, we
ought not to be dumb. To communicate to others what God has done for us personally
and for the church at large is so evidently our duty, that we ought not to need
urging to fulfil it. God has ever an eye to the glory of his grace in all that
he does, and we ought not wilfully to defraud him of the revenue of his praise.
Verse
22. When the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to
serve the Lord. The great work of restoring ruined Zion is to be spoken of
in those golden ages when the heathen nations shall be converted unto God; even
those glorious times will not be able to despise that grand event, which, like
the passage of Israel through the Red Sea, will never be eclipsed and never
cease to awaken the enthusiasm of the cliosen people. Happy will the day be
when all nations shall unite in the sole worship of Jehovah, then shall the
histories of the olden times be read with adoring wonder, and the hand of the
Lord shall be seen as having ever rested upon the sacramental host of his
elect: then shall shouts of exulting praise ascend to heaven in honour of him
who loosed the captives, delivered the condemned, raised up the desolations of
ages, and made out of stones and rubbish a temple for his worship.
Verse
23. He weakened my strength in the way. Here the Psalmist
comes down again to the mournful string, and pours forth his personal
complaint. His sorrow had cast down his spirit, and even caused weakness in his
bodily frame, so that he was like a pilgrim who limped along the road, and was
ready to lie down and die. He shortened my days. Though he had bright hopes for
Jerusalem, he feared that he should have departed this life long before those
visions had become realities; he felt that he was pining away and would be a
shortlived man. Perhaps this may be our lot, and it will materially help us to
be content with it, if we are persuaded that the grandest of all interests is
safe, and the good old cause secure in the hands of the Lord.
Verse
24. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days.
He betook himself to prayer. What better remedy is there for hcart-sickness and
depression? We may lawfully ask for recovery from sickness and may hope to be
heard. Good men should not dread death, but they are not forbidden to love
life: for many reasons the man who has the best hope of heaven may nevertheless
think it desirable to continue here a little longer, for the sake of his
family, his work, the church of God, and even the glory of God itself. Some
read the passage, "Take me not up, "let me not ascend like
disappearing smoke, do not whirl me away like Elijah in a chariot of fire, for
as yet I have only seen half my days, and that a sorrowful half; give me to
live till the blustering morning shall have softened into a bright afternoon of
happier existence. Thy years are throughout all generations. Thou livest, Lord;
let me live also. A fulness of existence is with thee, let me partake therein.
Note the contrast between himself pining and ready to expire, and his God
living on in the fulness of strength for ever and ever; this contrast is full
of consolatory power to the man whose heart is stayed upon the Lord. Blessed be
his name, he faileth not, and, therefore, our hope shall not fail us, neither
will we despair for ourselves or for his church.
Verse
25. Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth.
Creation is no new work with God, and therefore to "create Jerusalem a
praise in the earth" will not be difficult to him. Long ere the holy city
was laid in ruins the Lord made a world out of nothing, and it will be no
labour to him to raise the walls from their heaps and replace the stones in
their courses. We can neither continue our own existence nor give being to
others; but the Lord not only is, but he is the Maker of all things that are;
hence, when our affairs are at the very lowest ebb we are not at all despairing,
because the Almighty and Eternal Lord can yet restore us. And the heavens are
the work of thine hands. Thou canst therefore not merely lay the foundations of
Zion, but complete its roof, even as thou hast arched in the world with its
ceiling of blue; the loftiest stories of thine earthly palace shall be piled on
high without difficulty when thou dost undertake the building thereof, since
thou art architect of the stars, and the spheres in which they move. When a
great labour is to be performed it is eminently reassuring to contemplate the
power of him who has undertaken to accomplish it; and when our own strength is
exhausted it is supremely cheering to see the unfailing energy which is still
engaged on our behalf.
Verse
26. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. The power which
made them shall dissolve them, even as the city of thy love was destroyed at
thy command; yet neither the ruined city nor the ruined earth can make a change
in thee, reverse thy purpose, or diminish thy glory. Thou standest when all
things fall. Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou
change them, and they shall be changed. Time impairs all things, the
fashion becomes obsolete and passes away. The visible creation, which is like
the garment of the invisible God, is waxing old and wearing out, and our great
King is not so poor that he must always wear the same robes; he will ere long
fold up the worlds and put them aside as worn out vestures, and he will array
himself in new attire, making a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness. How readily will all this be done. "Thou shalt change them
and they shall be changed; "as in the creation so in the restoration,
omnipotence shall work its way without hindrance.
Verse
27. But thou art the same, or, "thou art he." As a
man remains the same when he has changed his clothing, so is the Lord evermore
the unchanging One, though his works in creation may be changed, and the
operations of his providence may vary. When heaven and earth shall flee away
from the dread presence of the great Judge, he will be unaltered by the
terrible confusion, and the world in conflagration will effect no change in
him; even so, the Psalmist remembered that when Israel was vanquished, her
capital destroyed, and her temple levelled with the ground, her God remained
the same self-existent, all-sufficient being, and would restore his people,
even as he will restore the heavens and the earth, bestowing at the same time a
new glory never known before. The doctrine of the immutability of God should be
more considered than it is, for the neglect of it tinges the theology of many
religious teachers, and makes them utter many things of which they would have
seen the absurdity long ago if they had remembered the divine declaration,
"I am God, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not
consumed." And thy years shall have no end. God lives on, no decay can
happen to him, or destruction overtake him. What a joy is this! We may lose our
dearest earthly friends, but not our heavenly Friend. Men's days are often
suddenly cut short, and at the longest they are but few, but the years of the
right hand of the Most High cannot be counted, for they have neither first nor
last, beginning nor end. O my soul, rejoice thou in the Lord always, since he
is always the same.
Verse
28. The children of thy servants shall continue. The Psalmist
had early in the psalm looked forward to a future generation, and here he
speaks with confidence that such a race would arise and be preserved and
blessed of God. Some read it as a prayer, "let the sons of thy servants
abide." Any way, it is full of good cheer to us; we may plead for the
Lord's favour to our seed, and we may expect that the cause of God and truth
will revive in future generations. Let us hope that those who are to succeed us
will not be so stubborn, unbelieving and erring as we have been. If the church
has been minished and brought low by the lukewarmness of the present race, let
us entreat the Lord to raise up a better order of men, whose zeal and obedience
shall win and hold a long prosperity. May our own dear ones be among the better
generation who shall continue in the Lord's ways, obedient to the end. And
their seed shall be established before thee. God does not neglect the children
of his servants. It is the rule that Abraham's Isaac should be the Lord's, that
Isaac's Jacob should be beloved of the Most High, and that Jacob's Joseph
should find favour in the sight of God. Grace is not hereditary, yet God loves
to be served by the same family time out of mind, even as many great landowners
feel a pleasure in having the same families as tenants upon their estates from
generation to generation. Here is Zion's hope, her sons will build her up, her
offspring will restore her former glories. We may, therefore, not only for our
own sakes, but also out of love to the church of God, daily pray that our sons
and daughters may be saved, and kept by divine grace even unto the
end,—established before the Lord. We have thus passed through the cloud, and in
the next psalm we shall bask in the sunshine. Such is the chequered experience
of the believer. Paul in the seventh of Romans cries and groans, and then in
the eighth rejoices and leaps for joy; and so, from the moaning of the hundred
and second psalm, we now advance to the songs and dancing of the hundred and
third, blessing the Lord that, "though weeping may endure for a night, joy
cometh in the morning."
EXPLANATORY
NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
TITLE. A prayer,
etc. The prayer following is longer than others. When Satan, the Law-Adversary,
doth extend his pleas against us, it is meet that we should enlarge our counter
pleas for our own souls; as the powers of darkness do lengthen aud multiply
their wrestlings, so must we our counter wrestlings of prayer. Eph 6:12,18. Thomas
Cobbet, 1667.
Title. When he...
poureth out, etc. Here we have the manner of the church's prayer suitable
to her extremity illustrated by a simile taken from a vessel overcharged with
new wine or strong liquor, that bursts for vent. Oh the heart-bursting cries
she sends out all the day! Here is no lazy, slothful, lip labour, stinted forms
of prayer, no empty sounds of verbal expressions, which can never procure her a
comfortable answer from her God, or the least ease to her burdened soul; but
poured-out prayers as Hannah, 1Sa 1:15, and Jeremy, La 2:12,
pressed forth with vehemence of spirit and heart pangs of inward grief: thus
the Lord deals with his church and people; ere he pour out cups of consolation
they must pour out tears in great measure. Finiens Canus Vove.
Title.
This
is the mourner's prayer when he is faint,
And to the Eternal Father breathes his plaint. John Keble.
Whole
Psalm. The psalm has been attributed to Daniel, to Jeremiah,
to Nehemiah, or to some of the other prophets who flourished
during the time of the captivity. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has
applied Ps 102:25-27 to our Lord, and the perpetuity of his kingdom. Adam
Clarke.
Whole
Psalm. I doubt whether, without apostolic teaching, any of us would have
had the boldness to understand it; for in many respects it is the most
remarkable of all the Psalms—the Psalm of "THE AFFLICTED ONE"—while
his soul is overwhelmed within him in great affliction, and sorrow, and anxious
fear. Adolph Saphir, in "Expository Lectures on the Epistle to the
Hebrews."
Verse
1. Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee.
When, at any time we see the beggars, or poor folks, that are pained and
grieved with hunger and cold, lying in the streets of cities and towns, full of
sores, we are somewhat moved inwardly with pity and mercy; but if we our own
selves attend and give ear to their wailings, cryings, and lamentable noises
that they make, we should be much more stirred to show our pity and mercy on
them; for no man else can show the grief of the sick and sore persons, so well
and in so pathetic a manner as he himself. Therefore, since the miserable
crying and wailing of those that suffer bodily pain and misery can prevail so
much upon the hearts of mortal creatures; I doubt not, Good Lord, but thou, who
art all merciful, must needs be inclined to exercise thy mercy, if my
sorrowful cry and petition may come unto thine ears, or into thy
presence. John Fisher (1459-1535) in "A Treatise concerning the
fruitful Sayings of David, "1714.
Verse
1. My prayer. His own, and not another's; not what was
composed for him, but composed by him; which came out of his own heart, and out
of unfeigned lips, and expressed under a feeling sense of his own wants and
troubles; and though dictated and inwrought in his heart by the Spirit of God,
yet, being put up by him in faith and fervency, it is called his own, and which
he desires might be heard. John Gill.
Verse
1. My cry. Lest my praying should not prevail, behold, O God,
I raise it to a cry; and crying, I may say, is the greatest bell in all the
ring of praying: for louder than crying I cannot pray. O, then, if not my
prayer, at least let my cry come unto thee. If I be not heard when I
cry, I shall cry for not being heard; and if heard when I cry, I shall cry to
be heard yet more; and so whether heard or not heard, I shall cry still, and
God grant I may cry still; so thou be pleased, O God, to "hear my prayer,
"and to "let my cry come unto thee." Sir R. Baker.
Verses
1-2. This language is the language of godly sorrow, of faith, of
tribulation, and of anxious hope: of faith, for the devout suppliant
lifts up his heart and voice to heaven, "as seeing him who is invisible,
"(Heb 11:27) and entreats him to hear his prayer and listen to his crying:
of tribulation, for he describes himself as enduring affliction, and
unwilling to lose the countenance of the Lord in his time of his trouble: of
anxious hope, for he seems to expect, in the midst of his groaning, that
his prayers, like those of Cornelius, will "go up for a memorial before
God" who will hear him, "and that right soon." Charles
Oxenden, in "Sermons on the Seven Penitential Psalms," 1838.
Verses
1-2. The Lord suffereth his babbling children to speak to him in their
own form of speech, (albeit the terms which they use be not fitted for his
spiritual, invisible, and incomprehensible majesty); such as are, "Hear
me, ""hide not thy face, ""incline thine ear to me, "and
such like other speeches. David Dickson.
Verses
1-2. Note, David sent his prayer as a sacred ambassador to God. Now
there are four things requisite to make an embassy prosperous. The ambassador
must be regarded with favourable eye: he must be heard with a ready ear: he
must speedily return when his demands are conceded. These four things David as
a suppliant asks from God his King. Le Blanc.
Verse
2. Incline thine ear unto me. The great exhaustion of the
affiicted one is hinted at: so worn out is he, that he is hardly able to cry
any more, but with a faint voice only feebly mutters, like a weak sick man,
whose voice if we would catch, we must incline the ear. Martin Geier.
Verse
3. Consumed like smoke, would be better read, "pass away
as in smoke, "as if they disappeared into smoke and ashes. Burned
as an hearth, is not a felicitous translation, for a "hearth"
should be incombustible. Better "burned as a faggot, "as any fuel.
The sentiment, My days waste away to nothing, turn to no good account, are
lost. Henry Cowles.
Verse
3. My days are consumed like smoke; or, as Hebrew, literally,
"in (into) smoke." The very same expression which David in Ps
37:20 had used of "the enemies of the Lord:" "They shall consume
into smoke" (compare Ps 68:2). Hereby the ideal sufferer virtually
complains that the lot of the wicked befalls him, though being righteous (Ps
101:1-8). A. R. Fausset.
Verse
3. My days are consumed like smoke. As the smoke is a vapour
proceeding from the fire, yet hath no heat in it: so my days are come from the
torrid zone of youth into the region of cold and age; and as the smoke seems a
thick substance for the present, but presently vanisheth into air; so my days
made as great shew at first as if they would never have been spent; but now,
alas, are wasted and leave me scarce a being. As the smoke is fuliginous and dark,
and affords no pleasure to look upon it; so my days are all black and in
mourning; no joy nor pleasure to be taken in them. And as the smoke ascends
indeed, but by ascending wastes itself and comes to nothing: so my days are
wasted in growing, are diminished in increasing; their plenty hath made a
scarcity, and the more they have been the fewer they are. And how, indeed, can
my days choose but be consumed as smoke, when my bones are burned as an hearth?
for as when the hearth is burned there can be made no more fire upon it; so,
when my bones, which are as the hearth upon which my fire of life is made, come
once to be burned; how can any more fire of life be made upon them? and when no
fire can be made, what will remain but only smoke? Sir R. Baker.
Verse
3. As an hearth. Or, as a trivet, or, gridiron;so
the Targum: or, as a frying-pan: so the Arabic version. John Gill.
Verse
4. My heart is smitten and withered like grass. The metaphor
here is taken from grass, cut down in the meadow. It is first "smitten"
with the scythe, and then "withered" by the sun. Thus
the Jews were smitten with the judgments of God; and they are now withered
under the fire of the Chaldeans. Adam Clarke.
Verse
4. I forget to eat my bread. I have heard of some that have
forgotten their own names, but I never heard of any that forget to eat his
meat; for there is a certain prompter called hunger that will make a man to
remember his meat in spite of his teeth. And yet it is true, when the heart is
blasted and withered like grass, such a forgetfulness of necessity will follow.
Is it that the withering of the heart is the prime cause of sorrow; at least
cause of the prime sorrow; and immoderate sorrow is the mother of stupidity,
stupifying and benumbing the animal faculties, that neither the understanding
nor the memory can execute their functions? Or is it, that sorrow is so
intentire to that it sorrows for, that it cannot intent to think anything else?
Or is it, that nature makes account, that to feed in sorrow were to feed
sorrow, and therefore thinks best to forbear all eating? Or is it, that as
sorrow draws moisture from the brain and fills the eyes with water; so it draws
a like juice from other parts, which fills the stomach instead of meat? However
it be, it shews a wonderful operation that is in sorrow; to make not only the
stomach to refuse its meat, but to make the brain forget the stomach, between
whom there is so natural a sympathy and so near a correspondence. But as the
vigour of the heart breeds plenty of spirits, which convey to all the parts,
gives everyone a natural appetite; so when the heart is blasted and withered
like grass, and that there is no more any rigour in it, the spirits are
presently at a stand, and then no marvel if the stomach lose its appetite, and
forget to eat bread. Sir R. Baker.
Verse
4. I forget to eat my bread. When grief hath thus dejected
the spirits, the man has no appetite for that food which is to recruit and
elevate them. Ahab, smitten with one kind of grief, David with another, and
Daniel with a third, all forgot, or refused, to eat their bread. 1Ki 21:4; 2Sa
12:16; Da 10:3. Such natural companions are mourning and fasting. Samuel
Burder.
Verse
5. My bones cleave to my skin. When the bones cleave to the
skin, both are near cleaving to the dust. Joseph Caryl.
Verse
5. That grief readily causes the body to pine away is very well
known. It is related of Cardinal Wolsey, by an eye-witness, that when he heard
that his master's favour was turned from him, he was wrung with such an agony
of grief, which continued a whole night, that in the morning his face was
dwindled away into half its usual dimensions.
Verse
6. I am like a pelican of the wilderness. The Kaath was a
bird of solitude that was to be found in the "wilderness, "i.e.,
far from the habitations of man. This is one of the characteristics of the
pelican, which loves not the neighbourhood of human beings, and is fond of
resulting to broad, uncultivated lands, where it will not be disturbed. In them
it makes its nest and hatches its young, and to them it retires after feeding,
in order to digest in quiet the ample meal which it has made. Mr. Tristram well
suggests that the metaphor of the Psalmist may allude to the habit common to
the pelican and its kin, of sitting motionless for hours after it has gorged
itself with food, its head sunk on its shoulders, and its bill resting on its
breast. J.G. Wood.
Verse
6. A pelican of the wilderness. Here only at Hulet
have I seen the pelican of the wilderness, as David calls it. I once had one of
them shot just below this place, and, as it was merely wounded in the wing, I
had a good opportunity to study its character. It was certainly the most
sombre, austere bird I ever saw. It gave one the blues merely to look at it.
David could find no more expressive type of solitude and melancholy by which to
illustrate his own sad state. It seemed as large as a half-grown donkey, and
when fairly settled on its stout legs, it looked like one. The pelican is never
seen but in these unfrequented solitudes. W.M. Thomson.
Verse
6. Consider that thou needest not complain, like Elijah, that thou
art left alone, seeing the best of God's saints in all ages have
smarted in the same kind—instance in David:indeed sometimes he boasts
how he "lay in green pastures, and was led by still waters; "but
after he bemoans that he "sinks in deep mire, where there was no
standing." What is become of those green pastures? parched up with the
drought. Where are those still waters troubled with the tempest of affliction.
The same David compares himself to an "owl, "and in the next
Psalm resembles himself to an "eagle." Do two fowls fly of
more different kind? The one the scorn, the other the sovereign;the
one the slowest, the other the swiftest;the one the most sharp-sighted,
the other the most dim-eyed of all birds. Wonder not, then, to find in
thyself sudden and strange alterations. It fared thus with all God's servants
in their agonies of temptation; and be confident thereof, though now run
aground with grief, in due time thou shalt be all afloat with comfort. Thomas
Fuller.
Verse
6. Owl. Some kind of owl, it is thought, is intended by the
Hebrew word cos, translated "little owl" in Le 11:17;
De 14:16, where it is mentioned amongst the unclean birds. It occurs also in Ps
102:6. I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of ruined
places (A. V., "desert"). The Hebrew word cos means a
"cup" in some passages of Scripture, from a root meaning to
"receive, "to "hide, "or "bring together"; hence
the pelican, "the cup, "or "pouch-bird, "has been suggested
as the bird intended. In this case the verse in the Psalm would be rendered
thus: "I am become like a pelican in the wilderness, even as the
pouch-bird in the desert places." But the fact that both the pelican and
the cos are enumerated in the list of birds to be avoided as food is
against this theory, unless the word changed its meaning in the Psalmist's
time, which is improbable. The expression cos "of ruined
places" looks very much as if some owl were denoted. The Arabic definitely
applies a kindred expression as one of the names of an owl, viz., um
elcharab, i.e. "mother of ruins." The Septuagint gives
nukkktikorax as the meaning of cos;and we know from Aristotle that the
Greek word was a synonym of wtov, evidently, from his description of the bird,
one of the cared owls. Dr. Tristram is disposed to refer the cos to the
little Athene Persica, the most common of all the owls in Psalestine,
the representative of the A noetua of Southern Europe. The Arabs call
this bird "boomah, "from his note; he is described "as a
grotesque and comical-looking little bird, familiar and yet cautious; never
moving unnecessarily, but remaining glued to his perch, unless he has good
reason for believing that he has been aetected, and twisting and turning his head
instead of his eyes to watch what is going on." He is to be found amongst
rocks in the wadys or trees by the water-side, in olive yards, in the tombs and
on the ruins, on the sandy mounds of Beersheba, and on "the spray-beaten
fragments of Tyre, where his low wailing noto is sure to be heard at sunset,
and himself seen bowing and keeping time to his own music." W.
Houghton, in "Cassell's Biblical Educator, "1874,
Verse
6. Owl of the desert.
Save
that from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
—Thomas Gray (1716-1771).
Verse
7. I watch. During the hours allotted to sleep "I
wake, " like a little bird which sits solitary on the house-top, while
all beneath enjoy the sleep which he giveth to his beloved. Alfred
Edersheim.
Verse
7. A sparrow alone upon the house-top. When one of them has
lost its mate—a matter of every-day occurrence—he will sit on the house-top
alone, and lament by the hour his sad bereavement. W. M. Thomson.
Verse
7. I am as a sparrow alone, etc. It is evident that the
"sparrow alone and melancholy upon the house-tops" cannot be the
lively, gregarious sparrow which assembles in such numbers on these favourite
feeding-places the house-tops of the East. We must therefore look for
some other bird, and naturalists are now agreed that we may accept the Blue
Thrush (Petrocossyphus cyaneus) as the particular tzippor, or small bird,
which sits alone on the house-tops. The colour of this bird is a dark blue,
whence it derives its popular name. Its habits exactly correspond with the idea
of solitude and melancholy. The Blue Thrushes never assemble in flocks, and it
is very rare to see more than a pair together. It is fond of sitting on the tops
of houses, uttering its note, which, however agreeable to itself, is monotonous
and melancholy to human ear. J.G. Wood, in "Bible Animals."
Verse
7. A sparrow. Most readers are struck with the incongruity of
the image, as it appears in our version, intended by the Psalmist to express a
condition of distress and desolation. The sparrow is found, indeed, all over
the East, in connection with houses, as it is with ourselves; but it is
everywhere one of the most social of birds, cheerful to impertinence; and
mischievously disposed, instead of being retiring in its habits, and melancholy
in its demeanour. The word, in the original, is a general term for all the
small birds, insectivorous and frugivirous, denominated clean, and that might
be eaten according to the law, the thrushes, larks, wagtails, finches, as well
as sparrows. It seems to be, indeed, a mere imitation of their common note,
like the one which we have in the word "chirrup." Most critics are,
therefore, content with the rendering, "solitary bird, "or
"solitary little bird." But this is very unsatisfactory. It does not
identify the species: and there is every probability that there must have been
a particular bird which the Psalmist, writing at the close of the Babylonish
captivity, had in his eye, corresponding to his representation of it, and
illustrative of his isolated condition. Such there is at the present day, of
common occurrence in Southern Europe and Western Asia. Its history is very
little known to the world, and its existence has hitherto escaped the notice of
all biblical commentators. Remarkably enough, the bird is commonly, but
erroneously, called a sparrow, for it is a real thrush in size, in shape, in
habits, and in song. It differs singularly from the rest of the tribe, throughout
all the East, by a marked preference for sitting solitary upon the habitation
of man. It never associates with any other, and only at one season with its own
mate; and even then it is often seen quite alone upon the house-top, where it
warbles its sweet and plaintive strains, and continues its song, moving from
roof to roof. America has its solitary thrush, of another species, and of
somewhat different habits. The dark solitary cane and myrtle swamps of the
southern states are there the favourite haunts of the recluse bird; and the
more dense and gloomy these are the more certainly is it to be found flitting
in them.—"The Biblical Treasury".
Verse
7. Alone. But little do men perceive what solitude is, and
how far it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery
of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love. The Latin
adage meeteth it a little: "magna civitas, magno solitudo; "because
in a great town friends are scattered, so that there is not that fellowship,
for the most part, which is in less neighbourhoods; but we may go further, and
affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true
friends, without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense
also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit
for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. Francis
Bacon.
Verse
7. Alone. See the reason why people in trouble love
solitariness. They are full of sorrow; and sorrow, if it have taken deep root,
is naturally reserved, and flies all conversation. Grief is a thing that is
very silent and private. Those people that are very talkative and clamorous in
their sorrows, are never very sorrowful. Some are apt to wonder, why
melancholy people delight to be so much alone, and I will tell you the
reason of it. 1. Because the disordered humours of their bodies alter their
temper, their humours, and their inclinations, that they are no more the
same that they used to be; their very distemper is averse to what is joyous
and diverting; and they that wonder at them may as wisely wonder why they will
be diseased, which they would not be if the knew how to help it; but the
Disease of Melancholy is so obstinate, and so unknown to all but those who have
it, that nothing but the power of God can totally overthrow it, and I know no
other cure for it. 2. Another reason why they choose to be alone is,
because people do not generally mind what they say, nor believe them,
but rather deride them, which they do not use so cruelly to do with those that
are in other distempers; and no man is to be blamed for avoiding society, when
it does not afford the common credit to his words that is due to the rest of
men. But, 3, Another, and the principal reason why people in trouble and
sadness choose to be alone is, because they generally apprehend themselves
singled out to be the marks of God's peculiar displeasure, and they are
often by their sharp afflictions a terror to themselves, and a wonder to
others. It even breaks their hearts to see how low they are fallen, how
oppressed, that were once as easy, as pleasant, as full of hope as others are,
Job 6:21: "Ye see my casting down, and are afraid." Ps 71:7. "I
am as a wonder unto many." And it is usually unpleasant to others to be
with them. Ps 88:18: "Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine
acquaintance into darkness." And though it was not so with the friends of
Job, to see a man whom they had once known happy, to be so miserable; one whom
they had seen so very prosperous, to be so very poor, in such sorry, forlorn
circumstances, did greatly affect them; he, poor man, was changed, they knew
him not, Job 2:12-13, "And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and
knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his
mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. So they sat down
with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word
unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great." As the prophet represents
one under spiritual and great afflictions, "That he sitteth alone, and
keepeth silence, " La 3:28. Timothy Rogers (1660-1729), in "A
Discourse on Trouble of Mind, and the Disease of Melancholy."
Verse
8. Mine enemies reproach me. It is true what Plutarch writes,
that men are more touched with reproaches than with other injuries; affliction,
too, gives a keener edge to calumny, for the afflicted are more fitting objects
of pity than of mockery. Mollerus.
Verse
8. Mine enemies reproach me, etc. If I be where they are they
rail at me to my face; and if I be not amongst them they revile me behind my
back; and they do it not by starts and fits, that might give me some breathing
time; but they are spitting their poison all the day long; and not
single and one by one, that might leave hope of resisting; but they make
combinations, and enter leagues against me; and to make their leagues the
stronger, and less subject to dissolving, they bind themselves by oath, and
take the sacrament upon it. And now sum up all these miseries and afflictions;
begin with my fasting; then take my groaning; then add my watching; then the
shame of being wondered at in company; then the discomfort of sitting
disconsolate alone; and, lastly, add to these the spite and malice of my enemies;
and what marvel, then, if these miseries joined all together make me altogether
miserable; what marvel if I be nothing but skin and bone, when no flesh that
were wise would ever stay upon a body to endure such misery. Sir R. Baker.
Verse
8 (last clause). Swearing by one, means, to make his name a
by-word of execration, or an example of cursing. (Isa 65:15; Je 29:22 42:18). Carl
Bernard Moll, in Lange's Commentary.
Verse
9. I have eaten ashes like bread. Though the bread indeed be
strange, yet not so strange as this,—that having complained before of
forgetting to eat his bread, he should now on a sudden fall to eating of
ashes like bread. For had he not been better to have forgotten it still,
unless it had been more worth remembering? For there is not in nature so unfit
a thing to eat as ashes;it is worse than Nebuchadnezzar's grass. Sir
R. Baker.
Verse
9. I have mingled my drink with weeping. If you think his
bread to be bad, you will find his drink to be worse; for he mingles his
drink with tears: and what are tears, but brinish and salt humours? and is
brine a fit liquor to quench one's thirst? May we not say here, the remedy is
worse than the disease? for were it not better to endure any thirst, than to
seek to quench it with such drink? Is it not a pitiful thing to have no drink
to put in the stomach, but that which is drawn out of the eyes? and yet whose
case is any better? No man certainly commits sin, but with a design of
pleasure; but sin will not be so committed; for whosoever commit sin, let them
be sure at some time or other to find a thousand times more trouble about it
than ever they found pleasure in it. For all sin is a kind of surfeit, and
there is no way to keep it from being mortal but by this strict diet of eating
ashes like bread and mingling his drink with tears. O my soul, if these be
works of repentance in David, where shall we find a penitent in the world
besides himself? To talk of repentance is obvious in everyone's mouth; but
where is any that eats ashes like bread, and mingles his drink with tears? Sir
R. Baker.
Verse
10. For thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down. Thou hast
lifted me up of a great height, in that thou madest me like unto thine image,
touching my reasonable soul, and hast given me power, by thy grace, to inherit
the everlasting joys of heaven, both body and soul, if I did live here after
thy commandments. What greater gift canst thou give me, Lord, than to have the
fruition of thee that art all in all things? How canst thou lift me higher than
to eternal beatitude? But then, alas, thou hast letten me fall down again, for
thou hast joined my noble soul with an earthly, heavy, and a frail body; the
weight and burden thereof draweth down my mind and heart from the consideration
of thy goodness, and from well doing, unto all kinds of vices, and to the
regarding of temporal things according to his nature. The earthly mansion
keepeth down the understanding. Thus setting me up, as it were, above the wind,
thou hast given me a very great fall (Job 30:22). I am in creation above all
other kind of earthly creatures, and almost equal with angels; but being in
this estate thou hast knit a knot thereto, that for breaking the least of thy
commandments I shall suffer damnation. So that without thy continual mercy and
help I am in worse case herein than any brute beast, whose life or soul dieth
with the body. Sir Anthony Cope (1551).
Verse
10. For thou hast lifted me up and cast me down. That is that
I might fall with greater poise. Significatur gravissima collisio. Here
the prophet accuseth not God of cruelty, but bewaileth his own misery. Miserum
est fusisse felicem, it is no small unhappiness to have been happy. John
Trapp.
Verse
11 (first clause). My days (my term of life) are as the
lengthened shade, the lengthening shade of evening, that shows the near
approach of night. The comparison, though not strictly expressed, is
beautifully suggestive of the thought intended. Thomas J. Conant.
Verse
11 (last clause). The and I, in the Hebrew, stands in
designed contrast to "But thou, "Ps 102:12. A. R. Fausset.
Verse
13. Thou shalt arise, and have mercy, etc. Tu miserebere,
"Thou shalt, "as the Shunamite to the prophet, catching hold on
his feet, though Gehazi thrust her away, Vivit Dominus, "As the
Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, I will not let thee go; "and, as
Jacob to the angel, when he had wrestled the whole night with him, Non
dimittam, I will not let thee loose till I have a blessing from thee. From
"A Sermon at Paules Crosse on behalfe of Paules Church, March 26,
1620. By the B. of London" John King.
Verse
13. The set time. There is a certain set time for God's great
actions. He lets the powers of darkness have their hour, and God will take his
hour. He hath a set time for the discovery of his mercy, and he will not stay a
jot beyond it. What is this time? Ps 102:9, etc. When they "eat ashes like
bread, and mingle their drink with weeping; "when they are most humble,
and when the servants of God have moral affection to the church; when their
humble and ardent affections are strong, even to the ruin and rubbish of it;
when they have a mighty desire and longing for the reparation of it, as the
Jews in captivity had for the very dust of the temple: Ps 102:14: "For thy
servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof." "For"
there notes it to be a reason why the set time was judged by them to be come.
That is God's set time when the church is most believing, most humble, most
affectionate to God's interest in it, and most sincere. Without faith we are
not fit to desire mercy, without humility we are not fit to receive it, without
affection we are not fit to value it, without sincerity we are not fit to
improve it. Times of extremity contribute to the growth and exercise of these
qualifications. Stephen Charnock.
Verse
14. For thy servants take pleasure in her stones. That is,
they are still attached to her, and regard her with extreme affection, although
in ruins. Jerusalem itself affords at this day a touching illustration of this
passage. There is reason to believe that a considerable portion of the lower
part of the walls which enclose the present mosque of Omar, which occupies
the site of the ancient Jewish temple, are the same, or at least the southern,
western, and eastern sides are the same as those of Solomon's temple. At one
part where the remains of this old wall are the most considerable and of the
most massive character—where two courses of masonry, composed of massive blocks
of stone, rising to the height of thirty feet—is what is called the Wailing Place
of the Jews. "Here, "says Dr. Olin, "at the foot of the wall, is
an open place paved with flags, where the Jews assemble every Friday, and in
small numbers on other days, for the purpose of praying and bewailing the
desolations of their holy places. Neither the Jews nor Christians are allowed
to enter the Haram, which is consecrated to Mohammedan worship, and this part
of the wall is the nearest approach they can make to what they regard as the
precise spot within the forbidden enclosure upon which the ancient temple
stood. They keep the pavement swept with great care, and take off their shoes,
as on holy ground. Standing or kneeling with their faces towards the ancient
wall, they gaze in silence upon its venerable stones, or pour forth their
complaints in half-suppressed, though audible tones. This, to me, was always a
most affecting sight, and I repeated my visit to this interesting spot to enjoy
and sympathise with the melancholy yet pleasing spectacle. The poor people
sometimes sobbed aloud, and still found tears to pour out for the desolations
of their `beautiful house.' `If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand
forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof
of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.'" Kitto's
Pictorial Bible.
Verse
16. When the LORD shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his
glory. So sincere is God to his people, that he gives his own glory in
hostage to them for their security; his own robes of glory are locked up in
their prosperity and salvation: he will not, indeed he cannot, present himself
in all his magnificence and royalty, till he hath made up his intended thoughts
of mercy to his people; he is pleased to prorogue the time of his appearing in
all his glory to the world till he hath actually accomplished their
deliverance, that he and they may come forth together in their glory on the
same day: "When the LORD shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his
glory." The sun is ever glorious in the most cloudy day, but appears not
so till it hath scattered the clouds that muffle it up from the sight of the
lower world: God is glorious when the world sees him not: but his declarative
glory then appears, when the glory of his mercy, truth and faithfulness break
forth in his people's salvation. Now, what shame must this cover thy face with,
O Christian, if thou shouldst not sincerely aim at thy God's glory, who loves
thee, yea, all his children so dearly, as to ship his own glory and your
happiness in one bottom, that he cannot now lose the one, and save the other! William
Gumall.
Verse
16. When the LORD shall build up Zion, he shall appear in his
glory. There are two reasons why the Lord appears thus glorious in this
work rather than in any other. First, because it is a work that infinitely
pleaseth him. Men choose to appear in their clothes and behaviour suitable to
the work that they are to be employed in: the woman of Tekoah must feign
herself to be a mourner when she goes on a mournful message; and David, when he
goes on a doleful journey, covers his face, and puts on mourning apparel; but
when Solomon is to be crowned, he goes in all his royalty; and a bride adorns
herself gloriously when she is to be married: verily so doth the Lord, when he
goes about a work he takes no pleasure in, he puts on his mourning apparel, he
covers himself with a cloud and the heavens with blackness; when he is to do a
strange work of judgment, then he mourns, "How shall I give thee up
Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how
shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are
kindled together." Ho 11:8. But the building of Zion doth infinitely
please him, because Zion is as the apple of his eye to him; he bought Zion at a
dear rate, with his own blood; he lays Zion in his bosom, he is ravished with
Zion, Zion is his love, his dove, his fair one; he hath chosen Zion, and loves
the gates of it, better than all the palaces of Jacob; and being so pleasing to
him, no marvel if he put on all his glorious apparel when he is to adorn and
build up Zion. And, secondly, it is because all the glory that he looks for to
eternity must arise out of this one work of building Zion; this one work shall
be the only monument of his glory to eternity: this goodly world, this heaven
and earth, that you see and enjoy the use of, is set up only as a shop, as a
workshop, to stand only for a week, for six or seven thousand years, ("a
thousand years is with the Lord but as a day"); and when his work is done he
will throw this piece of clay down again, and out of this he looks for no other
glory than from a cabul, a land of dirt, or a shepherd's cottage, or a
gourd which springs up in a night and withers in a day; but this piece he sets
up for a higher end, to be the eternal mansion of his holiness and honour; this
is his metropolis, his temple, his house where his fire and furnace is,
his court, his glorious high throne, and therefore his glory is much concerned
in this work. When Nebuchadnezzar would have a city for the honour of his
kingdom, and the glory of his majesty, he will make it a stately piece. Solomon
made all his kingdom very rich and glorious, but he made his court, and
especially his throne, another manner of thing, so stately that the like was
not to be seen in any other kingdom; and therefore no wonder though he appear
in his glory in building up of that, which we may boldly say must be one day
made as glorious as his wisdom can contrive, and his power bring to pass. Stephen
Marshall, in a Sermon preached to the Right Honourable the House of Peers,
entitled "God's Master-Piece," 1645.
Verses
16.-17. Shall build—shall appear—will regard—and will not despise.
These futures, in the original, are all present; buildeth—appeareth—regardeth—and
despiseth not. The Psalmist, in his confidence of the event, speaks of it
as doing. Samuel Horsley.
Verse
17. He will regard the prayer of the destitute, etc. The
persons are here called "the destitute." The Hebrew word which
is here translated "destitute" doth properly signify myrica, a
low shrub, humiles myrica, low shrubs that grow in wildernesses, some
think they were juniper shrubs, some a kind of wild tamaris, but
a base wild shrub that grew nowhere but in a desolate forlorn place; and
sometimes the word in the text is used to signify the deserts of Arabia, the
sandy desert place of Arabia, which was a miserable wilderness. Now when this
word is applied to men, it always means such as were forsaken men, despised
men; such men as are stripped of all that is comfortable to them: either they
never had children, or else their children are taken away from them, and all
comforts banished, and themselves left utterly forlorn, like the barren heath
ih a desolate howling wilderness. These are the people of whom my text speaks, that
the Lord will regard the prayer of "the destitute; "and this
was now the state of the Church of God when they offered up this prayer, and
yet by faith did foretell that God would grant such a glorious answer. . . .
This is also a lesson of singular comfort to every afflicted soul, to assure
them their prayers and supplications are tenderly regarded before God. I have
often observed such poor forsaken ones, who in their own eyes are brought very
low, that of all other people they are most desirous to beg and obtain the
prayers of their friends, when they see any that hath gifts, and peace, and
cheerfulness of spirit, and liberty, and abilities to perform duties, O how
glad they are to get such a man's prayers I "I beseech you, will you pray
for me, will you please to remember me at the throne of grace, "whereas,
in truth, if we could give a right judgment, all such woudd rather desire the poor,
and the desolate, to be mediators for them; for, certainly,
whomsoever God neglects, he will listen to the cry of those that are forsaken
and destitute. And therefore, O thou afflicted and tossed with tempests, who
thinkest thou art wholly rejected by the Lord, continue to pour out thy soul to
him; thou hast a faithful promise from him to be rewarded: he will regard the
prayer of the destitute. Stephen Marshall, in a Sermon entitled "The
Strong Helper," 1645.
Verse
17. He will regard the prayer of the destitute. It is worthy
of observation that he ascribes the redemption and restoration of the people to
the prayers of the faithful. That is truly a free gift, and dependent wholly
upon the divine mercy, and yet God himself often attributes it to our prayers,
to stir us up and render us the more active in the pursuit of prayer. Mollerus.
Verse
17. The prayer of the destitute. A man that is destitute knows
how to pray. He needs not any instructor. His miseries indoctrinate him
wonderfully in the art of offering prayer. Let us know ourselves destitute,
that we may know how to pray; destitute of strength, of wisdom, of due influence,
of true happiness, of proper faith, of thorough consecration, of the knowledge
of the Scriptures, of righteousness. These words introduce and stand in
immediate connection with a prophecy of glorious things to be witnessed in the
latter times. We profess to be eager for the accomplishment of those marvellous
things; but are we offering the prayer of the destitute? On the contrary, is
not the Church at large too much like the church at Laodicea? Will not a just
interpretation of many of its acts and ways bring forth the words, "I am
rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing?" And do not its
prayers meet with this reproachful answer, "Thou art wretched, and
miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, and knowest it not. Thy temporal
affluence implies not spiritual affluence. Thy spiritual condition is inversely
as the worldly prosperity that has turned thy head. I counsel thee to buy of me
gold tried in the fire. Give all thy trashy gold—trashy while it is with
thee—give it to my poor; and I will give thee true gold, namely, a sense of thy
misery and meanness; a longing for grace, pubity, usefulness; a love of thy
fellow-men; and my love shed abroad in thy heart." George Bowen.
Verse
17. Not despise their prayer. How many in every place (who
have served the Lord in this great work) hath prayer helped at a dead lift?
Prayer hath hitherto saved the kingdom. I remember a proud boast of our
enemies, when we had lost Bristol and the Vies, they then sent
abroad even into other kingdoms a triumphant paper, wherein they concluded all
was now subdued to them, and among many other confident expressions, there was
one to this purpose, Nil restat superare Regem, etc., which might be
construed two ways; either thus,—There remains nothing for the King to conquer,
but only the prayers of a few fanatic people;or thus,—There is nothing
left to conquer the King, but the prayers of a few fanatic people:
everything else was lost, all was now their own. And indeed we were then in a
very low condition. Our strongholds taken, our armies melted away, our hearts
generally failing us for fear, multitudes flying out of the kingdom, and many
deserting the cause as desperate, making their peace at Oxford;nothing
almost left us but preces et lachrymae; but blessed be God, prayer
was not conquered;they have found it the hardest wall to climb, the
strongest brigade to overthrow; it hath hitherto preserved us, it hath raised
up unexpected helps, and brought many unhoped for successes and deliverances.
Let us therefore, under God, set the crown upon the head of prayer. Ye nobles
and worthies, be ye all content to have it so; it will wrong none of you in
your deserved praise; God and man will give you your due. Many of you have
done worthily, but prayer surpasses you all: and this is no new thing,
prayer hath always had the pre-eminence in the building of Zion. God hath
reserved several works for several men and several ages; but in all ages and
among all men, prayer hath been the chiefest instrument, especially in the
building up of Zion. Stephen Marshall.
Verse
17. Not despise their prayer. He will, then, give ear to the
suits of the poor, and not reject their supplications. But who will believe
this? Is it likely that when God is in his glory, he will attend to such mean
things as hearkening to the poor? Can it stand with the honour of his glory to
stand reading petitions, and specially of men that come in forma pauperis?
scarce credible indeed with men, who, raised in honour, keep a distance from
the poor and count it a degree of falling to look downwards: but credible
enough with God, who counts it his glory to regard the inglorious; and being
the Most High, yet looks as low as to the lowest, and favours them most who are
most despised. And this did Christ after his transfiguration, when he had
appeared in his glory; he then shewed acts of greatest humility; he then washed
the disciples' feet; and made Peter as much wonder to see his humbleness, as he
had done before to see his glory. Sir R. Baker.
Verse
18. Shall praise the LORD. The people whom God in mercy brings
from a low and mean condition, are the people from whom God promises to receive
praise and glory. Indeed, such is the selfishness of our corrupt nature, that
if we are anything, or do anything, we are prone to forget God, and sacrifice
to our own nets, and burn incense to our own yarn; inasmuch, that whenever God
finds a people who shall either trust in him, or praise him, it must be
"an afflicted and poor people, "(Zep 3:11-13; Ps 22:22-25), or a
people brought from such an estate: free grace is even most valued by such a
people. And if you look all the Scripture over, you will find that all the
praises and songs of deliverance that have been made to God have proceeded from
a people that have thus judged of themselves, as those that were brought to
nothing; but God in mercy had brought them back again from the gates of death,
and usually until they had such apprehensions of themselves they never gave
unto God the glory due unto his name. Stephen Marshall.
Verse
18. Expositors observe upon this text, that this redeemed Church
takes no thought concerning themselves, about their own ease,
pleasure, wealth, gain, or anything else which might accrue unto themselves
by this deliverance, to make their own life easy or sweet; but their thoughts
and studies are wholly laid out, how the present and succeeding generations
should give all glory to God for it. . . . There are three special reasons why
this should be the great work of the Lord's saved and rescued people, and why
indeed they can do no other than study thus to exalt him.
1.
One is, because they well know that the Lord hath reserved nothing to himself
but only his glory; the benefits he gives to them; all the sweetness and honey
that can be found in them he gives them leave to suck out; but his glory and
his praise is his own, and that which he hath wholly reserved; of that he is
jealous, lest it should either be denied, eclipsed, diminished, or any the
least violation offered to it in any kind. All God's people know this of him,
and therefore they cannot but endeavour to preserve it for him.
2.
Secondly, besides, they know, as God is jealous in that point, so it is all the
work that he hath appointed them to do; he hath therefore separated them to
himself out of all nations of the world, to be his peculiar ones for this very
end, that they might give him all the glory and praise of his mercy. "I
have( said God) created him, formed, and made him for my
glory." Isa 43:7. This is the law of his new creation, which is as powerful
in them as the law of nature, or the first creation, is in the rest of his
works. And therefore with a holy and spiritual naturalness (if I may so call
it) the hearts of all the saints are carried to give God the glory, as really
as the stones are carried to the centre, or the fire to fly upwards: this is
fixed in their hearts, the work of grace hath moulded them to it, that they can
do no other but endeavour to exalt God, it being the very end why their
spiritual life and all their other privileges are conferred upon them.
3.
Yea, thirdly, they know their own interests are much concerned in God's glory,
they never are losers by it: if in any work of God he want his praise, they
will want their comfort; but if God be a gainer, they shall certainly be no
losers. Whatever is poured upon the head of Christ—what ointment soever of
praise or glory, it will in a due proportion fall down to the skirts of his
garments; nor is there any other way to have any sweetness, comfort, praise, or
glory to be derived unto themselves, but by giving all unto him to whom alone
it belongeth, and then although he will never give away his glory—the glory of
being the fountain, the first, supreme, original giver of all
good; yet they shall have the glory of instruments, and of fellow workers with
him, which is a glory and praise sufficient. Stephen Marshall.
Verse
18 (first clause). Calvin translates thus,—This shall be
registered for the generations to come; and observes,—"The Psalmist
intimates, that this will be a memorable work of God, the praise of which shall
be handed down to succeeding ages. Many things are worthy of praise, which are
soon forgotten; but the prophet distinguishes between the salvation of the
Church, for which he makes supplication, and common benefits. By the word register
he means that the history of this would be worthy of having a place in the
public records, that the remembrance of it might be transmitted to future
generations."
Verse
18. This shall be written. Nothing is more tenacious than
man's, memory when he suffers an injury; nothing more lax if a benefit is
conferred. For this reason God desires lest his gifts should fall out of mind,
to have them committed to writing. Le Blanc.
Verse
20. To hear the groaning of the prisoner. God takes notice not
only of the prayers of his afflicted people, which are the language of grace;
but even of their groans, which are the language of nature. Matthew Henry.
Verse
20. Appointed unto death. Who, in their captivity, are
experiencing so much affliction, that it is manifest their cruel enemies are
desirous of destroying them utterly; or, at least, of bringing them into such a
low and pitiable state, as to blot out their name from among the nations of the
earth. William Keatinge Clay.
Verse
24. 0 my God. The leaving out one word in a will may mar the
estate and disappoint all a man's hopes; the want of this one word, my
(God) is the wicked man's loss of heaven, and the dagger which will pierce his
heart in hell to all eternity. The degree of satisfaction in any good is
according to the degree of our union to it, (hence our delight is greater in
food than in clothes, and the saint's joy is greater in God in the other world
than in this, because the union is nearer;)but where there is no property there
is no union, therefore no complacency. The pronoun my is as much worth
to the soul as the boundless portion. All our comfort is locked up in that
private cabinet. Wine in the glass doth not cheer the heart, but taken down
Into the body. The property of the Psalmist's in God was the mouth whereby he
fed on those dainties which did so exceedingly delight him. No love potion was
ever so effectual as this pronoun. When God saith to the soul, as Ahab to
Benhadad "Behold, I am thine, and all that I have, "who can tell how
the heart leaps for joy in, and expires almost in desires after him upon such
news! Others, like strangers, may behold his honour and excellencies, but this
saint only, like the wife, enjoyeth him. Luther saith, Much religion lieth in
pronouns. All our consolation, indeed, consisteth in this pronoun. It is the
cup which holdeth all our cordial waters. I will undertake as bad as the devil
is, he shall give the whole world, were it in his power, more freely than ever
he offered it to Christ for his worship, for leave from God to pronounce those
two words. MY GOD. All the joys of the believer are hung upon this one string;
break that asunder, and all is lost. I have sometimes thought how David rolls
it as a lump of sugar under his tongue, as one loth to lose its sweetness too
soon: "I will love thee, O LORD, my strength, my buckler, and the horn of
my salvation, and my high tower, "Ps 18:1-2. This pronoun is the door at
which the King of saints entereth into our hearts, with his whole train of
delights and comforts. George Swinnock.
Verse
24. Take me not away, is more exactly, Take me not up,
with possible reference to the case of Elijah, "taken up." Henry
Cowles.
Verse
24. Take me not away in the midst of my days. The word is, "Let
me not ascend in the midst of my days, "that is, before I have
measured the usual course of life. Thus, to ascend is the same as to
be cut off;death cuts off the best from this world, and then they ascend to
a better. The word ascend is conceived to have in it a double allusion;
first, to corn which is taken up by the hand of the reaper, and then laid down
on the stubble. Secondly, unto the light of a candle, which as the candle
spends, or as that which is the food of the fire is spending, ascends, and at
last goes out and vanisheth. Joseph Caryl.
Verse
24. Thy years are throughout all generations. The Psalmist
says of Christ, "Thy years are throughout all generations, "
Ps 102:24; which Psalm the apostle quoteth of him, Heb 1:10. Let us trace his
existence punctually through all times. Let us go from point to point, and see
how in particulars the Scriptures accord with it. The first joint of time we
will begin that chronology of his existence withal is that instant afore he was
to come into the world.
First, We find him
to have existed just afore he came into the world, the instance of his
conception, Heb 10:5, in these words, "Wherefore when he comes into the
world, says he, A body hast thou prepared me." Heb 10:7, "Lo, I come
to do thy will, O God." Here is a person distinct from God the Father, a me,
an I, distinct also from that human nature he was to assume, which he
terms a "body prepared."... Therefore besides and afore that human
nature there was a divine person that existed, that was not of this world, but
that came into it, "when he cometh into the world, he says, "etc., to
become a part of it, and be manifested in it.
Secondly, We find him
to have existed afore John the Baptist, though John was conceived and born some
months afore him. I note these several joints of time because the Scripture
notes them, and hath set a special mark upon them: Joh 1:15. "John bare
witness of him, "and cried, saying, "This was he of whom I spake, He
that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me." This
priority of existence is that which John doth specially give witness to. And it
is priority in existence, for he allegeth it as a reason why he was preferred
afore him; "for he was before me."
Thirdly, We find him
existing when all the prophets wrote and spake, 1Pe 1:11. The Spirit of Christ
is said to have been in all the prophets, even as Paul, who came after Christ,
also speaks, "You seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, "2Co 13:3.
And therefore he himself, whose Spirit it was, or whom he sent, must needs
exist as a person sending him.
Fourthly, We find him
existing in Moses' time, both because it was he that was tempted in the
wilderness, "Neither let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted, and
were destroyed of serpents, " 1Co 10:9; and it was Christ that was the
person said to be tempted by them, as well as now by us, as the word kai
"as they also, "evidently shows. And it points to that angel that was
sent with them, Ex 23:20-21, in whom the name of God was, and who as God had
the power of pardoning sins, Ex 23:21. See also Ac 7:35, Heb 12:26.
Fifthly, We find him
existing in and afore Abraham's time: "Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Before Abraham was, I am, "Joh 8:58.
Sixthly, We find him
existing in the days of Noah, 1Pe 3:19. He says of Christ, that he was
"put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit." He
evidently distinguisheth of two natures, his divine and human, even as Ro 1:3-4
and elsewhere; and then declares how by that divine nature, which he terms
"Spirit, "in which he was existent in Noah's times, he went and
preached to those of the old world, whose souls are now in prison in hell.
These words, "in Spirit, "are not put to signify the subject of
vivification; for such neither his soul nor Godhead could be said to be, for
that is not quickened which was not dead; but for the principal and cause of
his vivification, which his soul was not, but his Godhead was. And besides by
his Spirit is not meant his soul, for that then must be supposed to have
preached to souls in hell (where these are affirmed to be). Now, there is no
preaching where there is no capacity of faith. But his meaning is, that those
persons that lived in Noah's time, and were preached unto, their souls and
spirits were now, when this was written, spirits in prison, that is, in hell.
And therefore he also adds this word "sometimes": who were sometimes
disobedient in Noah's days. These words give us to understand that this
preaching was performed by Noah ministerially, yet by Christ in Noah; who
according to his divine person was extant, and went with him, as with Moses,
and the church in the wilderness, and preached unto them.
Seventhly, He was extant
at the beginning of the world, "In the beginning was the Word." In
which words, there being no predicate or attribute affirmed of this word, the
sentence or affirmation is terminated or ended merely with his existence:
"he was, "and he was then, "in the beginning." He says not
that he was made in the beginning, but that "he was in the
beginning." And it is in the beginning absolutely, without any limitation.
And therefore Moses's beginning, Ge 1:1, is meant, as also the words after
show, "All was made by him that was made; "and, Ge 1:10, the world he
came into was made by him. And as from the beginning is usually taken from the
first times or infancy of the world; so then, when God began to create, then
was our Christ. And this here is set in opposition (Joh 1:14) unto the time of
his being made flesh, lest that should have been thought his beginning. And
unto this accords that of Heb 1:10, where, speaking of Christ, out of Ps
102:24, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth;
so as to be sure he existed then. But further, in Ps 102:24, it runs thus, Thy
years are throughout all generations. We have run, you see, through all
generations since the creation, and have found his years throughout them all.
And yet lest that should be taken only of the generations of this world, he
adds (as Rivet expounds it), Before thou laidst the foundation of the earth.
Eighthly, So then we
come to this, that he hath been before the creation, yea, from everlasting.
But,
Ninthly, If you would have his eternity yet more express, see Heb 7:3,
where mentioning Melchisedec, Christ's type, he renders him to have been his
type in this—"Without father, without mother, without descent, having
neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God;
abideth a priest continually." Where his meaning is to declare that, look
what Melchisedec was typice, or umbraiter, in a shadow, that our
Christ was really and substantially.
Lastly, Add to this
that in Mic 5:2, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that
is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from
everlasting; "where he evidently speaks of two births Christ had, under
the metaphor of going forth: one as man at Bethlehem in the fulness of time,
the other as Son of God from everlasting. As Son of God, his goings forth (that
is, his birth) are from everlasting. And it is termed, "goings forth,
"in the plural; because it is actus continuus, and hath been every
moment continued from everlasting. As the sun begets light and beams every
moment, so God doth his Son. So then we have two everlastings attributed
to Christ's person; one to come, Heb 1:10, and another past, here in Mic 5:2.
And so as of God himself it is said, Ps 90:2, "From everlasting to
everlasting thou art God, "so also of Christ. Condensed from T. Goodwin's
Treatise on "The Knowledge of God the Father, and his Son Jesus
Christ."
Verse
25. Earth. Heavens. He names here the most stable parts of the
world, and the most beautiful parts of the creation, those that are freest from
corruptibility and change, to illustrate thereby the immutability of God, that
though the heavens and earth have a prerogative of fixedness above other parts
of the world, and the creatures that reside below, the heavens remain the same
as they were created, and the centre of the earth retains its fixedness, and
are as beautiful and fresh in their age as they were in their youth many years
ago, notwithstanding the change of the elements, fire and water being often
turned into air, so that there may remain but little of that air which was
first created, by reason of the continual transmutation; yet this firmness of
the earth and heavens is not to be regarded in comparison of the unmoveableness
and fixedness of the being of God. As their beauty comes short of the glory of
his being, so doth their firmness come short of his stability. Stephen
Charnock.
Verse
26. The shall perish. The greater the cirruption, the vaster
the destruction. Some think that the fiery deluge shall ascend no higher than
did the watery. It may be the earth shall be burned, that is the worst
guest at the table, the common sewer of all other creatures, but shall the
heavens pass away? It may be the airy heaven; but shall the starry heaven where
God hath printed such figures of his glory? Yes, caelum, elementurn, terra,
when ignis ubique ferox ruptis regnabit habenis. The former deluge is
called the world's winter, the next the world's summer. The one was with a cold
and moist element, the other shall be with an element hot and dry. But what
then shall become of the saints? They shall be delivered out of all; walking
like those three servants in the midst of that great furnace, the burning
world, and not be scorched, because there is one among them to deliver them,
"the Son of God, "Da 3:25, their Redeemer. But shall all quite
perish? No, there is rather a mutation than an abolition of their substance. Thou
shalt change them, and they shall be changed, not abolished. The
concupiscence shall pass, not the essence; the form, not the nature. In the
altering of an old garment, we destroy it not, but trim it, refresh it, and
make it seem new. They pass, they do not perish; the dross is purged, the metal
stays. The corrupt quality shall be renewed, and all things restored to that
original beauty wherein they were created. "The end of all things is at
hand, "1Pe 4:7: an end of us, an end of our days, an end of our ways, and
end of our thoughts. If a man could say as Job's messenger, I alone am escaped,
it were somewhat; or might find an ark with Noah. But there is no ark to defend
them from that heat, but only the bosom of Jesus Christ. Thomas Adams.
Verse
26. Like a garment. The whole creation is as a garment,
wherein the Lord shows his power clothed unto men; whence in particular he is
said to clothe himself with light as with a garment. And in it is the hiding of
his power. Hid it is, as a man is hid with a garment; not that he should not be
seen at all, but that he should not be seen perfectly and as he is. It shows
the man, and he is known by it; but also it hides him, that he is not perfectly
or fully seen. So are the works of creation unto God, he so far makes them his
garment or clothing as in them to give out some instances of his power and
wisdom; but he is also hid in them, in that by them no creature can come to the
full and perfect knowledge of him. Now, when this work shall cease, and God
shall unclothe or unveil all his glory to his saints, and they shall know him
perfectly, see him as he is, so far as a created nature is capable of that
comprehension, then will he lay them aside and fold them up, at least as to
that use, as easily as a man lays aside a garment that he will wear or use no
more. This lies in the metaphor. John Owen.
Verse
27. Thou art the same. The essence of God, with all the
perfections of his nature, are pronounced the same, without any variation from
eternity to eternity. So that the text doth not only assert the eternal
duration of God, but his immutability in that duration; his eternity is
signified in that expression, "thou shalt endure; "his immutability
in this, "thou art the same." To endure, argues indeed this
immutability as well as eternity; for what endures is not changed, and what is
changed doth not endure. "But thou art the same, "awx xta,
doth more fully signify it. He could not be the same if he could be changed
into any other thing than what he is. The Psalmist therefore puts, not thou hast
been or shall be, but thou art the same, without any
alteration; thou art the same, that is, the same God, the same in essence and
nature, the same in will and purpose, thou dost change all other things as thou
pleaseth; but thou art immutable in every respect, and receivest no shadow of
change, thought never so light and small. The Psalmist here alludes to the name
Jehovah, I am, and doth not only ascribe immutability to God, but
exclude everything else from partaking in that perfection. Stephen Charnock.
Verse
28. The children of thy servants shall continue. In what sense
is "children" taken? Either the children of their flesh, or of
their faith. Some say the children of the same faith with the godly teachers
and servants of the Lord, begotten by them to God, as noting the perpetuity of
the church, who shall in every age bring forth children to God. It is the
comfort of God's people to see a young brood growing up to continue his
remembrance in the world, that when they die religion shall not die with them,
nor the succession of the church be interrupted. This sense is not altogether
incongruous; but rather I think the children of their body are here intended;
it being a blessing often promised: see Ps 103:17. "The mercy of the LORD
is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his
righteousness unto children's children." "Shall continue;
""shall be established." In what sense is it spoken? Some
think only pro more faederis, according to the fashion of that covenant
which the people of God were then under, when eternity was but more darkly
revealed and shadowed out, either by long life, or the continuance of their
name in their posterity, which was a kind of literal immortality. Clearly such
a kind of regard is had, as appeareth by that which you find in Ps 37:28. "The
LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for
ever." How? since they die as others do: mark the antithesis, and that
will explain it. "They are preserved for ever: but the seed of the
wicked shall be cut off." They are preserved in their posterity.
Children are but the parents multiplied, and the parent continued, it is nodosa
aeternitas;when the father's life is run out to the last, there is a knot
tied, and the line is still continued by the child. I confess, temporal
blessings, such as long life, and the promise of a happy posterity, are more
visible in the eye of that dispensation of the covenant; but yet God still
taketh care for the children of his people, and many promises run that way that
belong to the gospel-administration, and still God's service is the surest way
to establish a family, as sin is the ready way to root it out. And if it doth
not always fall out accordingly, yet for the most part it doth; and we are no
competent judges of God's dispensations in this kind, because we see Providence
by pieces, and have not the skill to set them together; but at the day of
judgment, when the whole contexture of God's dealings is laid before us we
shall clearly understand how the children of his servants continue, and their
seed is established. Thomas Manton.
Verse
28. O the folly of the world, that seeks to make perpetuities to
their houses by devises in the law, which may perhaps reach to continue their
estates, but can it reach to continue their seed? It may entail lands to their
heirs, but can it entail heirs to their lands? No, God knows! This is a
perpetuity of only God's making, a privilege of only God's servants: for The
children of his servants shall continue, and theiv seed shall be established
before him; but that any others shall continue is no part of David's
warrant. Sir R. Baker.
HINTS TO THE
VILLAGE PREACHER
TITLE.
1.
Afflicted men may pray.
2.
Afflicted men should pray even when overhelmed.
3.
Afflicted men can pray—for what is wanted is a pouring out of their complaint,
not an oratorical display.
4.
Afflicted men are accepted in prayer—for this prayer is placed on record.
Verses
1-2. Five steps to the mercy-seat. The Psalmist prays for,
1.
Audience: "Hear my prayer."
2. Access: "Let my cry come before thee."
3. Unveiling: "Hide not thy face."
4. An intent ear: "Incline thine ear."
5. Answer. C. Davis.
Verses
1, 17, 19-20. An interesting discourse may be founded upon these passages.
1.
The Lord entreated to hear—Ps 102:1.
2. The Promise given that he will hear—Ps 102:17.
3. The Record that the Lord has heard—Ps 102:19-20.
Verse
2.
1.
Prayer in trouble is most needed.
2. Prayer in trouble is most heeded.
3. Prayer in trouble is most speeded: "Answer me speedily."
Or,
1.
Prayer in trouble: "In the day, "etc.
2.
The prayer of trouble: "Hide not thy face; "not remove the trial, but
be with me in it. A fiery furnace is a paradise when God is with us there. G.
R.
Verse
2 (first elause). He deprecates the loss of the divine
countenance when under trouble.
1.
That would intensify it a thousandfold.
2. That would deprive him of strength to bear the trouble.
3. That would prevent his acting so as to glorify God in the trouble.
4. That might injure the result of the trouble.
Verse
2 (last clause).
1.
We often need to be answered speedily.
2. God can so answer.
3. God has so answered.
4. God has promised so to answer.
Verses
3-11.
1.
The causes of grief. (a) The brevity of life. Ps 102:3. (b) Bodily pain. Ps
102:3. (c) Dejection of spirit. Ps 102:4- 5. (d) Solitariness. Ps 102:6-7. (e)
Reproach. Ps 102:8. (f) Humiliation. Ps 102:9. (g) The hidings of God's
countenance. Ps 102:10. (h) Wasting away. Ps 102:11.
2.
The eloquence of grief. (a) The brevit of life is as vanishing
"smoke." (b) Bodily pain is fire in the bones. (c) Dejection of
spirit is "withered grass." Who can eat when the heart is sad? (d)
Solitariness is like "The pelican in the wilderness, the owl in the
desert, and the sparrow upon the housetop." (e) Reproach is being
surrounded by madmen—"they that are mad." (f) Humiliation is
"eating ashes like bread, "and "drinking tears." (g) The
hidings of God's countenance is lifting up in order to be cast down. (h)
Wasting away is a shadow declining and grass withering. G. R.
Verse
4. Unbelieving sorrow makes us forget to use proper means for our
support.
1.
We forget the promises.
2.
Forget the past and its expcriences.
3.
Forget the Lord Jesus, our life.
4.
Forget the everlasting love of God. This leads to weakness, faintness, etc.,
and is to be avoided.
Verse
6. This as a text, together with Ps 103:5, makes an interesting
contrast, and gives scope for much experimental teaching.
Verse
7. The evils and benefits of solitude; when it may be sought, and
when it becomes a folly. Or, the mournful watcher—alone, outside the pale of
communion, insignificant, wishful for fellowship, set apart to watch.
Verse
9. The sorrows of the saints—their number, bitterness, sources,
correctives, influences, and consolations.
Verse
10.
1.
The trial of trials—thine indignation and thy wrath.
2.
The aggravation of that trial—former favour, "thou hast lifted me up,
"etc.
3.
The best behaviour under it: see Ps 102:9, 12-13.
Verse
l0 (last cause). The prosperity of a church or an individual
often followed by declension; worldly aggrandisement frequently succeeded by
affliction; great joy in the Lord very generally succeeded by trial.
Verses
11-12. I and Thou, or the notable contrast.
1. I:
my days are like a shadow, (a) Because it is unsubstantial; because it partakes
of the nature of the darkness which is to absorb it; because the longer it
becomes the briefer its continuance. (b) I am like grass cut down by the
scythe; scorched by drought.
2. Thou.
Lord. Ever enduring. Ever memorable. Ever the study of passing generations of
men. C. D.
Verse
13.
1.
Zion often needs restoration. It needs "mercy."
2.
Its restoration is certain: "Thou shalt arise," etc.
3.
The seasons of its restoration are determined. There is a "time" to
favour her; a "set" time.
4.
Intimations of those coming seasons are often given "The time, the set
time, is come." G. R.
Verses
13-14.
1.
Visitation expected.
2.
Predestination relied upon.
3.
Evidence observed.
4.
Enquiry suggested—Do we take pleasure in her stones? etc.
Verses
13-14. The interest of the Lord's people in the concerns of Zion one of
the surest signs of her returning prosperity.
Verse
15. The inward prosperity of the church essential to her power in the
world.
Verse
16. God is Zion's purchaser, architect, builder, inhabitant, Lord.
1.
Zion built up. Conversions frequent; confessions numerous; union firm;
edification solid; missions extended.
2.
God glorified. In its very foundation; by its ministry; by difficulties and
enemies; by poor workers, and poor materials; and even by our failures.
3.
Hope excited. Because we may expect the Lord to glorify himself.
4.
Inquiry suggested. Am I concerned, as built, or building? not merely
doctrinally, but experimentally?
Verse
17.
1.
The destitute pray.
2.
They pray most.
4.
They pray best.
4.
They pray most effectually. Or the surest way to succeed in prayer is to pray
as the destitute; show the reason of this.
Verse
18.
1.
A memorial.
2. A magnificat. W. Durban.
Verses
18-21.
1.
Misery in extremis.
2. Divinity observant.
3. Deity actively assisting.
4. Glory consequently published.
Verses
19-22.
1.
The notice which God takes of the world, Ps 102:19. (a) The place from which he
beholds it: "from heaven, " not from an earthly point of view. (b)
The character in which he beholds it; "from the height of his sanctuary,
"from the mercy-seat.
2.
What attracts his notice most in the world. The groaning of the prisoner and of
those appointed to death.
3.
The purpose for which he notices them. "To loose, " etc.;" to
declare," etc. (a) For human comfort. (b) For his own glory.
4.
When his notice is thus fixed upon the earth. "When, " etc., Ps
102:22. G. R.
Verse
23. For the sick.
1.
Submission—The Lord sent the trial—"He weakeneth," etc.
2.
Service—exonerated from some work, he now requires of me patience, earnestness,
etc.
3.
Preparation—for going home.
4.
Prayer—for others to occupy my place.
5.
Expectation—I shall soon be in heaven, now that my days are shortened.
Verse
24.
1. The
prayer. "Take me not away, "etc. (a) Not in the midst of life, is
the prayer of some. (b) Not in the midst of worldly prosperity is the prayer of
many, for the sake of those dependent upon them. (c) Not in the midst of
spiritual growth, is the prayer of not a few: "Oh spare me, that I may
recover strength, "etc. (d) Not in the midst of Christian work and
usefulness, is the prayer of others.
2. The
plea. "Thy years, "etc.; years are plentiful with thee, therefore
to give me longer days will be an easy gift—and thine own are throughout all
generations. G. R.
Verse
25-27.
1.
The unchangeableness of God amidst past changes: "of old," etc. (a)
He was the same before as after he had laid the foundations of the earth. (b)
He was the same after as before.
2.
The unchangeableness of God amidst future changes. "They shall
perish," etc. (a) The same before they perish as after. (b) After as
before.
3.
The unchangeableness of God in the past and the future. "Thou art the
same," etc. G. R.
Verse
26-27.
1.
How far God may change—only in his garments, or outward manifestations of
creation and providence.
2.
Wherein he cannot change—his nature, attributes, covenant, love, etc.
3.
The comfortable truths which may be safely inferred, or which gather support
from this fact.
Verse
26-27.
1.
The material universe of God. (a) No more to him than a garment to the wearer.
(b) Ever waxing old, but he the same. (c) Soon to be changed and left to
perish, but of his years no end.
2.
Our relation to each (a) Let us never love the dress more than the wearer. (b)
Nor trust more in the changeful than in the abiding. (c) Nor live for that
which will die out.
Verse
28. The true apostolical succession.
1.
There always will be saints.
2.
They will frequently be the seed of the saints after the flesh.
3.
They will always be the spiritual seed of the godly, for God converts one by
means of another.
4.
We should order our efforts with an eye to the church's future.
WORKS UPON THE
HUNDRED AND SECOND PSALM
BISHOP
FISHER'S Treatise on the Penitential Psalms. (See "Treasury of
David, "Vol. II., pg 114.) There is an edition in 12mo., printed in the
year MDCCXIV., besides those referred to as above.
In "Meditations
on Twenty select Psalms, by Sir SIR ANTHONY COPE, Chamberlain to Queen
Katherine Parr. Reprinted from the edition of 1547; ...By WILLIAM H. COPE. M.A.
1848, "there is a Meditation on this Psalm.
Meditations
and Disquisitions upon the Seven Psalms of David, commonly called the
Penitentiall Psalmes, By Sir RICHARD BAKER, Knight. 1639. pg 139-180.
Zion's
Joy in her King Coming in his Glory. Wherein the estate of the
Poore distressed Church of the Gentiles (travailing in the Wildernesse towards
the new Jerusalem of the Jewes) in her utmost extremities, and height of her
Joyes, is lively delineated; In some Meditations upon that Propheticall Psalme
102, wherein the sense is opened, and many difficult places of Scripture
inlightned by a harmony, and consent of the Scriptures. Delightfull and
profitable to be read in these times of the Churches troubles, and much longed
for restauration and deliverance. By FINIENS CANUS VOVE. Compiled in Exile, and
lately now revised and somewhat augmented as the weight of the Subject and the
revolution of the times required... 1643. 4to.
In "Sermons
on the Seven Penitential Psalms, Preached during Lent, 1838," by the
Rev. CHARLES OXENDON, there is an Exposition of this Psalm.
── C.H. Spurgeon《The Treasury of David》