{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_21872/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_21872","id":"gutenberg_21872","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21872","summary":null,"tags":["Bible. Psalms -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.","Category: Biographies","Category: Psychiatry/Psychology","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity","David, King of Israel"],"text":"Produced by Colin Bell, Thomas Strong and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n{Transcriber's Note: Obvious typos, printing errors and mis-spellings\n  have been corrected, but spellings have not been modernized. Footnotes\n  follow immediately the paragraph in which they are noted. In Chapter\n  XV, eighth paragraph, second last line, \"His\" changed to \"his\" in the\n  sentence \"Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes waking\" to agree\n  with the author's obvious reference to David rather than to God.}\n\n\n            =The Household Library of Exposition.=\n\n\n                      THE LIFE OF DAVID\n                 AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS.\n\n\n\n\n                            THE\n                        LIFE OF DAVID\n                 AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS.\n\n\n                            BY\n\n\n                  ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.\n\n\n                      _NINTH EDITION._\n\n\n                         =London:=\n                   HODDER AND STOUGHTON\n                   27, PATERNOSTER ROW\n\n\n                          MCMIII\n\n\n_Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London_\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                   PAGE\n\n    I. INTRODUCTION,                                                 1\n   II. EARLY DAYS,                                                  14\n   III. EARLY DAYS--_continued_,                                    31\n    IV. THE EXILE,                                                  49\n     V. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                     70\n    VI. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                     86\n   VII. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                    110\n  VIII. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                    130\n    IX. THE KING,                                                  144\n     X. THE KING--_continued_,                                     157\n    XI. THE KING--_continued_,                                     174\n   XII. THE KING--_continued_,                                     185\n  XIII. THE TEARS OF THE PENITENT,                                 205\n   XIV. CHASTISEMENTS,                                             232\n    XV. THE SONGS OF THE FUGITIVE,                                 245\n        INDEX,                                                     262\n        WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR,                                  263\n        BIBLE CLASS EXPOSITIONS,                                   264\n        THE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF EXPOSITION,                       265\n\n\n\n\nI.--INTRODUCTION.\n\n\nPerhaps the most striking characteristic of the life of David is its\nromantic variety of circumstances. What a many-coloured career that was\nwhich began amidst the pastoral solitudes of Bethlehem, and ended in the\nchamber where the dying ears heard the blare of the trumpets that\nannounced the accession of Bathsheba's son! He passes through the most\nsharply contrasted conditions, and from each gathers some fresh fitness\nfor his great work of giving voice and form to all the phases of devout\nfeeling. The early shepherd life deeply influenced his character, and\nhas left its traces on many a line of his psalms.\n\n  \"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;\n   His daily teachers had been woods and rills;\n   The silence that is in the starry sky,\n   The sleep that is among the lonely hills.\"\n\nAnd then, in strange contrast with the meditative quiet and lowly duties\nof these first years, came the crowded vicissitudes of the tempestuous\ncourse through which he reached his throne--court minstrel, companion\nand friend of a king, idol of the people, champion of the armies of\nGod--and in his sudden elevation keeping the gracious sweetness of his\nlowlier, and perhaps happier days. The scene changes with startling\nsuddenness to the desert. He is \"hunted like a partridge upon the\nmountains,\" a fugitive and half a freebooter, taking service at foreign\ncourts, and lurking on the frontiers with a band of outlaws recruited\nfrom the \"dangerous classes\" of Israel. Like Dante and many more, he has\nto learn the weariness of the exile's lot--how hard his fare, how\nhomeless his heart, how cold the courtesies of aliens, how unslumbering\nthe suspicions which watch the refugee who fights on the side of his\n\"natural enemies.\" One more swift transition and he is on the throne,\nfor long years victorious, prosperous, and beloved.\n\n  \"Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place\n   The wisdom which adversity had bred,\"\n\ntill suddenly he is plunged into the mire, and falsifies all his past,\nand ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heart\nand the prosperity of his kingdom. Thenceforward trouble is never far\naway; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness of\nhis great fault, as well as by hatred and rebellion and murder in his\nfamily, and discontent and alienation in his kingdom.\n\nNone of the great men of Scripture pass through a course of so many\nchanges; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of them\nwere so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, by\nsuch heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. Like his\ngreat Son and Lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be \"in all\npoints tempted like as we are,\" that his words may be fitted for the\nsolace and strength of the whole world. Poets \"learn in suffering what\nthey teach in song.\" These quick transitions of fortune, and this wide\nexperience, are the many-coloured threads from which the rich web of his\npsalms is woven.\n\nAnd while the life is singularly varied, the character is also\nsingularly full and versatile. In this respect, too, he is most unlike\nthe other leading figures of Old Testament history. Contrast him, for\nexample, with the stern majesty of Moses, austere and simple as the\ntables of stone; or with the unvarying tone in the gaunt strength of\nElijah. These and the other mighty men in Israel are like the ruder\ninstruments of music--the trumpet of Sinai, with its one prolonged note.\nDavid is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of\nGod murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of\ntriumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies of\nall devout emotions.\n\nThe man had his faults--grave enough. Let it be remembered that no one\nhas judged them more rigorously than himself. The critics who have\ndelighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; and\ntheir indictment has been little more than the quotation of his own\nconfession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by\nthe delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of\noccasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile\nand war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times\nbreak from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affection\nbecame, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an unworthy\nson.\n\nBut when all this is admitted, there remains a wonderfully rich, lovable\ncharacter. He is the very ideal of a minstrel hero, such as the legends\nof the East especially love to paint. The shepherd's staff or sling, the\nsword, the sceptre, and the lyre are equally familiar to his hands. That\nunion of the soldier and the poet gives the life a peculiar charm, and\nis very strikingly brought out in that chapter of the book of Samuel (2\nSam. xxiii.) which begins, \"These be the last words of David,\" and after\ngiving the swan-song of him whom it calls \"the sweet psalmist of\nIsrael,\" passes immediately to the other side of the dual character,\nwith, \"These be the names of the mighty men whom David had.\"\n\nThus, on the one side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all its\ncapacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulous\nmobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-like\nwonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, its\nsimplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings \"after worlds half\nrealized,\" its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. He was made to\nbe the inspired poet of the religious affections.\n\nAnd, on the other side, we see the greatest qualities of a military\nleader of the antique type, in which personal daring and a strong arm\ncount for more than strategic skill. He dashes at Goliath with an\nenthusiasm of youthful courage and faith. While still in the earliest\nbloom of his manhood, at the head of his wild band of outlaws, he shows\nhimself sagacious, full of resource, prudent in counsel, and swift as\nlightning in act; frank and generous, bold and gentle, cheery in defeat,\ncalm in peril, patient in privations and ready to share them with his\nmen, modest and self-restrained in victory, chivalrous to his foes, ever\nwatchful, ever hopeful--a born leader and king of men.\n\nThe basis of all was a profound, joyous trust in his Shepherd God, an\nardour of personal love to Him, such as had never before been expressed,\nif it had ever found place, in Israel. That trust \"opened his mouth to\nshow forth\" God's praise, and strengthened his \"fingers to fight.\" He\nhas told us himself what was his habitual temper, and how it was\nsustained: \"I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my\nright hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my\nglory rejoiceth.\" (Psa. xvi. 8, 9.)\n\nThus endowed, he moved among men with that irresistible fascination\nwhich only the greatest exercise. From the day when he stole like a\nsunbeam into the darkened chamber where Saul wrestled with the evil\nspirit, he bows all hearts that come under his spell. The women of\nIsrael chant his name with song and timbrel, the daughter of Saul\nconfesses her love unasked, the noble soul of Jonathan cleaves to him,\nthe rude outlaws in his little army peril their lives to gratify his\nlonging for a draught from the well where he had watered his father's\nflocks; the priests let him take the consecrated bread, and trust him\nwith Goliath's sword, from behind the altar; his lofty courtesy wins the\nheart of Abigail; the very king of the Philistines tells him that he is\n\"good in his sight as an angel of God;\" the unhappy Saul's last word to\nhim is a blessing; six hundred men of Gath forsake home and country to\nfollow his fortunes when he returns from exile; and even in the dark\nclose of his reign, though sin and self-indulgence, and neglect of his\nkingly duties, had weakened his subjects' loyalty, his flight before\nAbsalom is brightened by instances of passionate devotion which no\ncommon character could have evoked; and even then his people are ready\nto die for him, and in their affectionate pride call him \"the light of\nIsrael.\" It was a prophetic instinct which made Jesse call his youngest\nboy by a name apparently before unused--David, \"Beloved.\"\n\nThe Spirit of God, acting through these great natural gifts, and using\nthis diversified experience of life, originated in him a new form of\ninspiration. The Law was the revelation of the mind, and, in some\nmeasure, of the heart, of God to man. The Psalm is the echo of the law,\nthe return current set in motion by the outflow of the Divine will, the\nresponse of the heart of man to the manifested God. There had, indeed,\nbeen traces of hymns before David. There were the burst of triumph which\nthe daughters of Israel sang, with timbrel and dance, over Pharaoh and\nhis host; the prayer of Moses the man of God (Psa. xc.), so archaic in\nits tone, bearing in every line the impress of the weary wilderness and\nthe law of death; the song of the dying lawgiver (Deut. xxxii.); the\npassionate paean of Deborah; and some few briefer fragments. But,\npractically, the Psalm began with David; and though many hands struck\nthe harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, he\nremains emphatically \"the sweet psalmist of Israel.\"\n\nThe psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a marked\nsimilarity of manner. Their characteristics have been well summed up as\n\"creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form and\nmovement, antique but lucid style;\"[A] to which may be added the\nintensity of their devotion, the passion of Divine love that glows in\nthem all. They correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life as\ngiven in the historical books. The early shepherd days, the manifold\nsorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, the\ntriumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikingly\nin the latter, all reappear in the psalms. The illusions, indeed, are\nfor the most part general rather than special, as is natural. His words\nare thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials of\nother lives. But it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the\nallusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them with\nany precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutually\nillustrative. Much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed,\nand much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that\nscore have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process\nsufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness\nof many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as\nthrowing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made in\nsome degree in this volume.\n\n[A] Delitzsch, Kommentar, u. d. Psalter II. 376.\n\nIt will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the Davidic\npsalms in general. Can we tell which are David's? The Psalter, as is\ngenerally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from some\nidea that it corresponded with the Pentateuch. These five books are\nmarked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. The first\nportion consists of Psa. i.-xli.; the second of Psa. xlii.-lxxii; the\nthird of Psa. lxxiii.-lxxxix; the fourth of Psa. xc.-cvi.; and the fifth\nof Psa. cvii.-cl. The psalms attributed to David are unequally\ndistributed through these five books. There are seventy-three in all,\nand they run thus:--In the first book there are thirty-seven; so that\nif we regard psalms i. and ii. as a kind of double introduction, a\nfrontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the first\nbook proper only two which are not regarded as David's. The second book\nhas a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. The\nthird book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen,\neight of which (cxxxviii.-cxlv.) occur almost at the close. The\nintention is obvious--to throw the Davidic psalms as much as possible\ntogether in the first two books. And the inference is not unnatural that\nthese may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwards\nadded the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms of\nDavid, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at the\nend, so as to round off the whole.\n\nBe that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of the\nPsalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' names\nare at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided the\norder of the collection in the grouping not only of Davidic psalms, but\nalso of those attributed to the sons of Korah (xlii.-xlix.) and to Asaph\n(lxxiii.-lxxxiii.)\n\nThe question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotly\ndebated. The balance of modern opinion is decidedly against their\ngenuineness. As in greater matters, so here \"the higher criticism\" comes\nto the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, and\non very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective of\nthese ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. The extreme\nform of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of Ewald, who\nhas devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with all\nhis equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and has\ncome to the conclusion that we have but eleven of David's psalms,--which\nis surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method which\nhas attained it.\n\nThese editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by such\nconsiderations as these: The Septuagint translators found them, and did\nnot understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explain\nthem; the Book of Chronicles throws no light upon them; they are very\nrare in the two last books of the Psalter (Delitzsch, ii. 393). In some\ncases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there is\nnothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which they\nare appended; while very frequently they throw a flood of light upon\nthese, and all but prove their trustworthiness by their appropriateness.\nThey are not authoritative, but they merit respectful consideration,\nand, as Dr. Perowne puts it in his valuable work on the Psalms, stand on\na par with the subscriptions to the Epistles in the New Testament.\nRegarding them thus, and yet examining the psalms to which they are\nprefixed, there seem to be about forty-five which we may attribute with\nsome confidence to David, and with these we shall be concerned in this\nbook.\n\n\n\n\nII.--EARLY DAYS\n\n\nThe life of David is naturally divided into epochs, of which we may\navail ourselves for the more ready arrangement of our material. These\nare--his early years up to his escape from the court of Saul, his exile,\nthe prosperous beginning of his reign, his sin and penitence, his flight\nbefore Absalom's rebellion, and the darkened end.\n\nWe have but faint incidental traces of his life up to his anointing by\nSamuel, with which the narrative in the historical books opens. But\nperhaps the fact that the story begins with that consecration to office,\nis of more value than the missing biography of his childhood could have\nbeen. It teaches us the point of view from which Scripture regards its\ngreatest names--as nothing, except in so far as they are God's\ninstruments. Hence its carelessness, notwithstanding that so much of it\nis history, of all that merely illustrates the personal character of\nits heroes. Hence, too, the clearness with which, notwithstanding that\nindifference, the living men are set before us--the image cut with half\na dozen strokes of the chisel.\n\nWe do not know the age of David when Samuel appeared in the little\nvillage with the horn of sacred oil in his hand. The only approximation\nto it is furnished by the fact, that he was thirty at the beginning of\nhis reign. (2 Sam. v. 4.) If we take into account that his exile must\nhave lasted for a very considerable period (one portion of it, his\nsecond flight to the Philistines, was sixteen months, 1 Sam. xxvii.\n7),--that the previous residence at the court of Saul must have been\nlong enough to give time for his gradual rise to popularity, and\nthereafter for the gradual development of the king's insane\nhatred,--that further back still there was an indefinite period, between\nthe fight with Goliath, and the first visit as a minstrel-physician to\nthe palace, which was spent at Bethlehem, and that that visit itself\ncannot have been very brief, since in its course he became very dear and\nfamiliar to Saul,--it will not seem that all these events could be\ncrowded into less than some twelve or fifteen years, or that he could\nhave been more than a lad of some sixteen years of age when Samuel's\nhand smoothed the sacred oil on his clustering curls.\n\nHow life had gone with him till then, we can easily gather from the\nnarrative of Scripture. His father's household seems to have been one in\nwhich modest frugality ruled. There is no trace of Jesse having\nservants; his youngest child does menial work; the present which he\nsends to his king when David goes to court was simple, and such as a man\nin humble life would give--an ass load of bread, one skin of wine, and\none kid--his flocks were small--\"a few sheep.\" It would appear as if\nprosperity had not smiled on the family since the days of Jesse's\ngrandfather, Boaz, that \"mighty man of wealth.\" David's place in the\nhousehold does not seem to have been a happy one. His father scarcely\nreckoned him amongst his sons, and answers Samuel's question, if the\nseven burly husbandmen whom he has seen are all his children, with a\ntrace of contempt as he remembers that there is another, \"and, behold,\nhe keepeth the sheep.\" Of his mother we hear but once, and that\nincidentally, for a moment, long after. His brothers had no love for\nhim, and do not appear to have shared either his heart or his fortunes.\nThe boy evidently had the usual fate of souls like his, to grow up in\nuncongenial circumstances, little understood and less sympathised with\nby the common-place people round them, and thrown back therefore all the\nmore decisively upon themselves. The process sours and spoils some, but\nit is the making of more--and where, as in this case, the nature is\nthrown back upon God, and not on its own morbid operation, strength\ncomes from repression, and sweetness from endurance. He may have\nreceived some instruction in one of Samuel's schools for the prophets,\nbut we are left in entire ignorance of what outward helps to unfold\nitself were given to his budding life.\n\nWhatever others he had, no doubt those which are emphasized in the Bible\nstory were the chief, namely, his occupation and the many gifts which it\nbrought to him. The limbs, \"like hinds' feet,\" the sinewy arms which\n\"broke a bow of steel,\" the precision with which he used the sling, the\nagility which \"leaped over a rampart,\" the health that glowed in his\n\"ruddy\" face, were the least of his obligations to the breezy uplands,\nwhere he kept his father's sheep. His early life taught him courage,\nwhen he \"smote the lion\" and laid hold by his ugly muzzle of the bear\nthat \"rose against him,\" rearing itself upright for the fatal hug.\nSolitude and familiarity with nature helped to nurture the poetical side\nof his character, and to strengthen that meditative habit which blends\nso strangely with his impetuous activity, and which for the most part\nkept tumults and toils from invading his central soul. They threw him\nback on God who peopled the solitude and spoke in all nature. Besides\nthis, he acquired in the sheepcote lessons which he practised on the\nthrone, that rule means service, and that the shepherd of men holds his\noffice in order that he may protect and guide. And in the lowly\nassociations of his humble home, he learned the life of the people,\ntheir simple joys, their unconspicuous toils, their unnoticed sorrows--a\npriceless piece of knowledge both for the poet and for the king.\n\nA breach in all the tranquil habits of this modest life was made by\nSamuel's astonishing errand. The story is told with wonderful\npicturesqueness and dramatic force. The minute account of the successive\nrejections of his brothers, Samuel's question and Jesse's answer, and\nthen the pause of idle waiting till the messenger goes and returns,\nheighten the expectation with which we look for his appearance. And then\nwhat a sweet young face is lovingly painted for us! \"He was ruddy, and\nwithal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to\" (1 Sam. xvi.\n12)--of fair complexion, with golden hair, which is rare among these\nswarthy, black-locked easterns, with lovely eyes (for that is the\nmeaning of the words which the English Bible renders \"of a beautiful\ncountenance\"), large and liquid as become a poet. So he stood before the\nold prophet, and with swelling heart and reverent awe received the holy\nchrism. In silence, as it would seem, Samuel anointed him. Whether the\nsecret of his high destiny was imparted to him then, or left to be\ndisclosed in future years, is not told. But at all events, whether with\nfull understanding of what was before him or no, he must have been\nconscious of a call that would carry him far away from the pastures and\nolive yards of the little hamlet and of a new Spirit stirring in him\nfrom that day forward.\n\nThis sudden change in all the outlook of his life must have given new\nmaterials for thought when he went back to his humble task.\nResponsibility, or the prospect of it, makes lads into men very quickly.\nGraver meditations, humbler consciousness of weakness, a firmer trust in\nGod who had laid the burden upon him, would do in days the work of\nyears. And the necessity for bidding back the visions of the future in\norder to do faithfully the obscure duties of the present, would add\nself-control and patience, not usually the graces of youth. How swiftly\nhe matured is singularly shown in the next recorded incident--his\nsummons to the court of Saul, by the character of him drawn by the\ncourtier who recommends him to the king. He speaks of David in words\nmore suitable to a man of established renown than to a stripling. He is\nminstrel and warrior, \"cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man,\"\nand \"skilled in speech (already eloquent), and fair in form, and the\nLord is with him.\" (1 Sam. xvi. 18.) So quickly had the new\ncircumstances and the energy of the Spirit of God, like tropical\nsunshine, ripened his soul.\n\nThat first visit to the court was but an episode in his life, however\nhelpful to his growth it may have been. It would give him the knowledge\nof new scenes, widen his experience, and prepare him for the future. But\nit cannot have been of very long duration. Possibly his harp lost its\npower over Saul's gloomy spirit, when he had become familiar with its\nnotes. For whatever reason, he returned to his father's house, and\ngladly exchanged the favour at court, which might have seemed to a\nmerely ambitious man the first step towards fulfilling the prophecy of\nSamuel's anointing, for the freedom of the pastoral solitudes about\nBethlehem. There he remained, living to outward seeming as in the quiet\ndays before these two great earthquakes in his life, but with deeper\nthoughts and new power, with broader experience, and a wider horizon,\nuntil the hour when he was finally wrenched from his seclusion, and\nflung into the whirlpool of his public career.\n\nThere are none of David's psalms which can be with any certainty\nreferred to this first period of his life; but it has left deep traces\non many of them. The allusions to natural scenery and the frequent\nreferences to varying aspects of the shepherd's life are specimens of\nthese. One characteristic of the poetic temperament is the faithful\nremembrance and cherishing of early days. How fondly he recalled them is\nshown in that most pathetic incident of his longing, as a weary exile,\nfor one draught of water from the well at Bethlehem--where in the dear\nold times he had so often led his flocks.\n\nBut though we cannot say confidently that we have any psalms prior to\nhis first exile, there are several which, whatever their date may be,\nare echoes of his thoughts in these first days. This is especially the\ncase in regard to the group which describe varying aspects of\nnature--viz., Psalms xix., viii., xxix. They are unlike his later psalms\nin the almost entire absence of personal references, or of any trace of\npressing cares, or of signs of a varied experience of human life. In\ntheir self-forgetful contemplation of nature, in their silence about\nsorrow, in their tranquil beauty, they resemble the youthful works of\nmany a poet whose later verse throbs with quivering consciousness of\nlife's agonies, or wrestles strongly with life's problems. They may not\nunnaturally be regarded as the outpouring of a young heart at leisure\nfrom itself, and from pain, far from men and very near God. The fresh\nmountain air of Bethlehem blows through them, and the dew of life's\nquiet morning is on them. The early experience supplied their materials,\nwhatever was the date of their composition; and in them we can see what\nhis inward life was in these budding years. The gaze of child-like\nwonder and awe upon the blazing brightness of the noonday, and on the\nmighty heaven with all its stars, the deep voice with which all creation\nspoke of God, the great thoughts of the dignity of man (thoughts ever\nwelcome to lofty youthful souls), the gleaming of an inward light\nbrighter than all suns, the consciousness of mysteries of weakness which\nmay become miracles of sin in one's own heart, the assurance of close\nrelation to God as His anointed and His servant, the cry for help and\nguidance--all this is what we should expect David to have thought and\nfelt as he wandered among the hills, alone with God; and this is what\nthese psalms give us.\n\nCommon to them all is the peculiar manner of looking upon nature, so\nuniform in David's psalms, so unlike more modern descriptive poetry. He\ncan smite out a picture in a phrase, but he does not care to paint\nlandscapes. He feels the deep analogies between man and his\ndwelling-place, but he does not care to lend to nature a shadowy life,\nthe reflection of our own. Creation is to him neither a subject for\npoetical description, nor for scientific examination. It is nothing but\nthe garment of God, the apocalypse of the heavenly. And common to them\nall is also the swift transition from the outward facts which reveal\nGod, to the spiritual world, where His presence is, if it were possible,\nyet more needful, and His operations yet mightier. And common to them\nall is a certain rush of full thought and joyous power, which is again a\ncharacteristic of youthful work, and is unlike the elegiac tenderness\nand pathos of David's later hymns.\n\nThe nineteenth Psalm paints for us the glory of the heavens by day, as\nthe eighth by night. The former gathers up the impressions of many a\nfresh morning when the solitary shepherd-boy watched the sun rising over\nthe mountains of Moab, which close the eastern view from the hills above\nBethlehem. The sacred silence of dawn, the deeper hush of night, have\nvoice for his ear. \"No speech! and no words! unheard is their voice.\"\nBut yet, \"in all the earth goeth forth their line,[B] and in the end of\nthe habitable world their sayings.\" The heavens and the firmament, the\nlinked chorus of day and night, are heralds of God's glory, with silent\nspeech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. And as he looks, there\nleaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northern\nlands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom from the\nbridal chamber, like some athlete impatient for the course. How the joy\nof morning and its new vigour throb in the words! And then he watches\nthe strong runner climbing the heavens till the fierce heat beats down\ninto the deep cleft of the Jordan, and all the treeless southern hills,\nas they slope towards the desert, lie bare and blazing beneath the\nbeams.\n\n[B] Their boundary, _i.e._, their territory, or the region through which\ntheir witness extends. Others render \"their chord,\" or sound (LXX.\nEwald, etc.)\n\nThe sudden transition from the revelation of God in nature to His voice\nin the law, has seemed to many critics unaccountable, except on the\nsupposition that this psalm is made up of two fragments, put together by\na later compiler; and some of them have even gone so far as to maintain\nthat \"the feeling which saw God revealed in the law did not arise till\nthe time of Josiah.\"[C] But such a hypothesis is not required to explain\neither the sudden transition or the difference in style and rhythm\nbetween the two parts of the psalm, which unquestionably exists. The\nturn from the outer world to the better light of God's word, is most\nnatural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the difference\nof style and measure gives emphasis to the contrast. There is also an\nobvious connection between the two parts, inasmuch as the law is\ndescribed by epithets, which in part hint at its being a brighter sun,\nenlightening the eyes.\n\n[C] \"Psalms chronologically arranged\"--following Ewald.\n\nThe Word which declares the will of the Lord is better than the heavens\nwhich tell His glory. The abundance of synonyms for that word show how\nfamiliar to his thoughts it was. To him it is \"the law,\" \"the\ntestimonies\" by which God witnesses of Himself and of man: \"the\nstatutes,\" the fixed settled ordinances; that which teaches \"the fear of\nGod,\" the \"judgments\" or utterances of His mind on human conduct. They\nare \"perfect, firm, right, clean, pure,\"--like that spotless\nsun--\"eternal, true.\" \"They quicken, make wise, enlighten,\" even as the\nlight of the lower world. His heart prizes them \"more than gold,\" of\nwhich in his simple life he knew so little; more than \"the honey,\" which\nhe had often seen dropping from \"the comb\" in the pastures of the\nwilderness.\n\nAnd then the twofold contemplation rises into the loftier region of\nprayer. He feels that there are dark depths in his soul, gloomier pits\nthan any into which the noontide sun shines. He speaks as one who is\nconscious of dormant evils, which life has not yet evolved, and his\nprayer is more directed towards the future than the past, and is thus\nvery unlike the tone of the later psalms, that wail out penitence and\nplead for pardon. \"Errors,\" or weaknesses,--\"faults\" unknown to\nhimself,--\"high-handed sins,\"[D]--such is the climax of the evils from\nwhich he prays for deliverance. He knows himself \"Thy servant\" (2 Sam.\nvii. 5, 8; Psa. lxxviii. 70)--an epithet which may refer to his\nconsecration to God's work by Samuel's anointing. He needs not only a\nGod who sets His glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is made\nknown, but one who will touch his spirit,--not merely a Maker, but a\npardoning God; and his faith reaches its highest point as his song\ncloses with the sacred name of the covenant Jehovah, repeated for the\nseventh time, and invoked in one final aspiration of a trustful heart,\nas \"my Rock, and my Redeemer.\"\n\n[D] The form of the word would make \"reckless men\" a more natural\ntranslation; but probably the context requires a third, more aggravated\nsort of sin.\n\nThe eighth psalm is a companion picture, a night-piece, which, like the\nformer, speaks of many an hour of lonely brooding below the heavens,\nwhether its composition fall within this early period or no. The\nprophetic and doctrinal value of the psalms is not our main subject in\nthe present volume, so that we have to touch but very lightly on this\ngrand hymn. What does it show us of the singer? We see him, like other\nshepherds on the same hills, long after \"keeping watch over his flocks\nby night,\" and overwhelmed by all the magnificence of an eastern sky,\nwith its lambent lights. So bright, so changeless, so far,--how great\nthey are, how small the boy that gazes up so wistfully. Are they gods,\nas all but his own nation believed? No,--\"the work of Thy fingers,\"\n\"which Thou hast ordained.\" The consciousness of God as their Maker\ndelivers from the temptation of confounding bigness with greatness, and\nwakes into new energy that awful sense of personality which towers above\nall the stars. He is a babe and suckling--is that a trace of the early\ncomposition of the psalm?--still he knows that out of his lips, already\nbeginning to break into song, and out of the lips of his fellows, God\nperfects praise. There speaks the sweet singer of Israel, prizing as the\ngreatest of God's gifts his growing faculty, and counting his God-given\nwords as nobler than the voice of \"night unto night.\" God's fingers made\nthese, but God's own breath is in him. God ordained them, but God visits\nhim. The description of man's dignity and dominion indicates how\nfamiliar David was with the story in Genesis. It may perhaps also,\nbesides all the large prophetic truths which it contains, have some\nspecial reference to his own earlier experience. It is at least worth\nnoting that he speaks of the dignity of man as kingly, like that which\nwas dawning on himself, and that the picture has no shadows either of\nsorrow or of sin,--a fact which may point to his younger days, when\nlofty thoughts of the greatness of the soul are ever natural and when in\nhis case the afflictions and crimes that make their presence felt in\nall his later works had not fallen upon him. Perhaps, too, it may not be\naltogether fanciful to suppose that we may see the shepherd-boy\nsurrounded by his flocks, and the wild creatures that prowled about the\nfold, and the birds asleep in their coverts beneath the moonlight, in\nhis enumeration of the subjects of his first and happiest kingdom, where\nhe ruled far away from men and sorrow, seeing God everywhere, and\nlearning to perfect praise from his youthful lips.\n\n\n\n\nIII.--EARLY DAYS--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\nIn addition to the psalms already considered, which are devoted to the\ndevout contemplation of nature, and stand in close connection with\nDavid's early days, there still remains one universally admitted to be\nhis. The twenty-ninth psalm, like both the preceding, has to do with the\nglory of God as revealed in the heavens, and with earth only as the\nrecipient of skyey influences; but while these breathed the profoundest\ntranquillity, as they watched the silent splendour of the sun, and the\npeace of moonlight shed upon a sleeping world, this is all tumult and\nnoise. It is a highly elaborate and vivid picture of a thunderstorm,\nsuch as must often have broken over the shepherd-psalmist as he crouched\nunder some shelf of limestone, and gathered his trembling charge about\nhim. Its very structure reproduces in sound an echo of the rolling peals\nreverberating among the hills.\n\nThere is first an invocation, in the highest strain of devout poetry,\ncalling upon the \"sons of God,\" the angels who dwell above the lower\nsky, and who see from above the slow gathering of the storm-clouds, to\nascribe to Jehovah the glory of His name--His character as set forth in\nthe tempest. They are to cast themselves before Him \"in holy attire,\" as\npriests of the heavenly sanctuary. Their silent and expectant worship is\nlike the brooding stillness before the storm. We feel the waiting hush\nin heaven and earth.\n\nThen the tempest breaks. It crashes and leaps through the short\nsentences, each like the clap of the near thunder.\n\n  _a._  The voice of Jehovah (is) on the waters.\n        The God of glory thunders.\n         _Jehovah (is) on many waters._\n        The voice of Jehovah in strength!\n        The voice of Jehovah in majesty!\n\n  _b._  The voice of Jehovah rending the cedars!\n         _And Jehovah rends the cedars of Lebanon_,\n        And makes them leap like a calf;\n        Lebanon and Sirion like a young buffalo\n        The voice of Jehovah hewing flashes of fire!\n\n  _c._  The voice of Jehovah shakes the desert,\n         _Jehovah shakes the Kadesh desert_.\n\n        The voice of Jehovah makes the hinds writhe\n        And scathes the woods--and in His temple--\n        --All in it (are) saying, \"Glory.\"\n\nSeven times the roar shakes the world. The voice of the seven thunders\nis the voice of Jehovah. In the short clauses, with their uniform\nstructure, the pause between, and the recurrence of the same initial\nwords, we hear the successive peals, the silence that parts them, and\nthe monotony of their unvaried sound. Thrice we have the reverberation\nrolling through the sky or among the hills, imitated by clauses which\nrepeat previous ones, as indicated by the italics, and one forked flame\nblazes out in the brief, lightning-like sentence, \"The voice of Jehovah\n(is) hewing flashes of fire,\" which wonderfully gives the impression of\ntheir streaming fiercely forth, as if cloven from some solid block of\nfire, their swift course, and their instantaneous extinction.\n\nThe range and effects of the storm, too, are vividly painted. It is\nfirst \"on the waters,\" which may possibly mean the Mediterranean, but\nmore probably, \"the waters that are above the firmament,\" and so depicts\nthe clouds as gathering high in air. Then it comes down with a crash on\nthe northern mountains, splintering the gnarled cedars, and making\nLebanon rock with all its woods--leaping across the deep valley of\nCoelo-Syria, and smiting Hermon (for which Sirion is a Sidonian name),\nthe crest of the Anti Lebanon, till it reels. Onward it sweeps--or\nrather, perhaps, it is all around the psalmist; and even while he hears\nthe voice rolling from the furthest north, the extreme south echoes the\nroar. The awful voice shakes[E] the wilderness, as it booms across its\nlevel surface. As far south as Kadesh (probably Petra) the tremor\nspreads, and away in the forests of Edom the wild creatures in their\nterror slip their calves, and the oaks are scathed and stripped of their\nleafy honours. And all the while, like a mighty diapason sounding on\nthrough the tumult, the voice of the sons of God in the heavenly temple\nis heard proclaiming \"Glory!\"\n\n[E] Delitzsch would render \"whirls in circles\"--a picturesque allusion\nto the sand pillars which accompany storms in the desert.\n\nThe psalm closes with lofty words of confidence, built on the story of\nthe past, as well as on the contemplation of the present. \"Jehovah sat\nthroned for (_i.e._, to send on earth) the flood\" which once drowned\nthe world of old. \"Jehovah will sit throned, a King for ever.\" That\nancient judgment spoke of His power over all the forces of nature, in\ntheir most terrible form. So now and for ever, all are His servants, and\neffect His purposes. Then, as the tempest rolls away, spent and\ntransient, the sunshine streams out anew from the softened blue over a\nfreshened world, and every raindrop on the leaves twinkles into diamond\nlight, and the end of the psalm is like the after brightness; and the\ntranquil low voice of its last words is like the songs of the birds\nagain as the departing storm growls low and faint on the horizon. \"The\nLord will bless His people with peace.\"\n\nThus, then, nature spoke to this young heart. The silence was vocal; the\ndarkness, bright; the tumult, order--and all was the revelation of a\npresent God. It is told of one of our great writers that, when a child,\nhe was found lying on a hill-side during a thunderstorm, and at each\nflash clapping his hands and shouting, unconscious of danger, and\nstirred to ecstasy. David, too, felt all the poetic elevation, and\nnatural awe, in the presence of the crashing storm; but he felt\nsomething more. To him the thunder was not a power to tremble before,\nnot a mere subject for poetic contemplation. Still less was it\nsomething, the like of which could be rubbed out of glass and silk, and\nwhich he had done with when he knew its laws. No increase of knowledge\ntouching the laws of physical phenomena in the least affects the point\nof view which these Nature-psalms take. David said, \"God makes and moves\nall things.\" We may be able to complete the sentence by a clause which\ntells something of the methods of His operation. But that is only a\nparenthesis after all, and the old truth remains widened, not overthrown\nby it. The psalmist knew that all being and action had their origin in\nGod. He saw the last links of the chain, and knew that it was rivetted\nto the throne of God, though the intermediate links were unseen; and\neven the fact that there were any was not present to his mind. We know\nsomething of these; but the first and the last of the series to him, are\nthe first and the last to us also. To us as to him, the silent splendour\nof noonday speaks of God, and the nightly heavens pour the soft radiance\nof His \"excellent name over all the earth.\" The tempest is His voice,\nand the wildest commotions in nature and among men break in obedient\nwaves around His pillared throne.\n\n  \"Well roars the storm to those who hear\n   A deeper voice across the storm!\"\n\nThere still remains one other psalm which may be used as illustrating\nthe early life of David. The Twenty-third psalm is coloured throughout\nby the remembrances of his youthful occupation, even if its actual\ncomposition is of a later date. Some critics, indeed, think that the\nmention in the last verse of \"the house of the Lord\" compels the\nsupposition of an origin subsequent to the building of the Temple; but\nthe phrase in question need not have anything to do with tabernacle or\ntemple, and is most naturally accounted for by the preceding image of\nGod as the Host who feasts His servants at His table. There are no other\nnotes of time in the psalm, unless, with some commentators, we see an\nallusion in that image of the furnished table to the seasonable\nhospitality of the Gileadite chieftains during David's flight before\nAbsalom (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29)--a reference which appears prosaic and\nflat. The absence of traces of distress and sorrow--so constantly\npresent in the later songs--may be urged with some force in favour of\nthe early date; and if we follow one of the most valuable commentators\n(Hupfeld) in translating all the verbs as futures, and so make the whole\na hymn of hope, we seem almost obliged to suppose that we have here the\nutterance of a youthful spirit, which ventured to look forward, because\nit first looked upward. In any case, the psalm is a transcript of\nthoughts that had been born and cherished in many a meditative hour\namong the lonely hills of Bethlehem. It is the echo of the shepherd\nlife. We see in it the incessant care, the love to his helpless charge,\nwhich was expressed in and deepened by all his toil for them. He had to\nthink for their simplicity, to fight for their defencelessness, to find\ntheir pasture, to guard them while they lay amid the fresh grass;\nsometimes to use his staff in order to force their heedlessness with\nloving violence past tempting perils; sometimes to guide them through\ngloomy gorges, where they huddled close at his heels; sometimes to smite\nthe lion and the bear that prowled about the fold--but all was for their\ngood and meant their comfort. And thus he has learned, in preparation\nfor his own kingdom, the inmost meaning of pre-eminence among men--and,\nmore precious lesson still, thus he has learned the very heart of God.\nLong before, Jacob had spoken of Him as the \"Shepherd of Israel;\" but it\nwas reserved for David to bring that sweet and wonderful name into\ncloser relations with the single soul; and, with that peculiar\nenthusiasm of personal reliance, and recognition of God's love to the\nindividual which stamps all his psalms, to say \"The Lord is my\nShepherd.\" These dumb companions of his, in their docility to his\nguidance, and absolute trust in his care, had taught him the secret of\npeace in helplessness, of patience in ignorance. The green strips of\nmeadow-land where the clear waters brought life, the wearied flocks\nsheltered from the mid-day heat, the quiet course of the little stream,\nthe refreshment of the sheep by rest and pasture, the smooth paths which\nhe tried to choose for them, the rocky defiles through which they had to\npass, the rod in his hand that guided, and chastised, and defended, and\nwas never lifted in anger,--all these, the familiar sights of his youth,\npass before us as we read; and to us too, in our widely different social\nstate, have become the undying emblems of the highest care and the\nwisest love. The psalm witnesses how close to the youthful heart the\nconsciousness of God must have been, which could thus transform and\nglorify the little things which were so familiar. We can feel, in a kind\nof lazy play of sentiment, the fitness of the shepherd's life to suggest\nthoughts of God--because it is not our life. But it needs both a\nmeditative habit and a devout heart to feel that the trivialities of our\nown daily tasks speak to us of Him. The heavens touch the earth on the\nhorizon of our vision, but it always seems furthest to the sky from the\nspot where we stand. To the psalmist, however,--as in higher ways to his\nSon and Lord,--all things around him were full of God; and as the\nmajesties of nature, so the trivialities of man's works--shepherds and\nfishermen--were solemn with deep meanings and shadows of the heavenly.\nWith such lofty thoughts he fed his youth.\n\nThe psalm, too, breathes the very spirit of sunny confidence and of\nperfect rest in God. We have referred to the absence of traces of\nsorrow, and to the predominant tone of hopefulness, as possibly\nfavouring the supposition of an early origin. But it matters little\nwhether they were young eyes which looked so courageously into the\nunknown future, or whether we have here the more solemn and weighty\nhopes of age, which can have few hopes at all, unless they be rooted in\nGod. The spirit expressed in the psalm is so thoroughly David's, that in\nhis younger days, before it was worn with responsibilities and sorrows,\nit must have been especially strong. We may therefore fairly take the\ntone of this song of the Shepherd God as expressing the characteristic\nof his godliness in the happy early years. In his solitude he was glad.\nOne happy thought fills the spirit; one simple emotion thrills the\nchords of his harp. No doubts, or griefs, or remorse throw their shadows\nupon him. He is conscious of dependence, but he is above want and fear.\nHe does not ask, he has--he possesses God, and is at rest in Him. He is\nsatisfied with that fruition which blesseth all who hunger for God, and\nis the highest form of communion with Him. As the present has no\nlongings, the future has no terrors. All the horizon is clear, all the\nwinds are still, the ocean at rest, \"and birds of peace sit brooding on\nthe charmed wave.\" If there be foes, God holds them back. If there lie\nfar off among the hills any valley of darkness, its black portals cast\nno gloom over him, and will not when he enters. God is his Shepherd,\nand, by another image, God is his Host. The life which in one aspect, by\nreason of its continual change, and occupation with outward things, may\nbe compared to the journeyings of a flock, is in another aspect, by\nreason of its inward union with the stability of God, like sitting ever\nat the table which His hand has spread as for a royal banquet, where the\noil of gladness glistens on every head, and the full cup of Divine\npleasure is in every hand. For all the outward and pilgrimage aspect,\nthe psalmist knows that only Goodness and Mercy--these two white-robed\nmessengers of God--will follow his steps, however long may be the term\nof the days of his yet young life; for all the inward, he is sure that,\nin calm, unbroken fellowship, he will dwell in the house of God, and\nthat when the twin angels who fed and guided him all his young life long\nhave finished their charge, and the days of his journeyings are ended,\nthere stretches beyond a still closer union with his heavenly Friend,\nwhich will be perfected in His true house \"for ever.\" We look in vain\nfor another example, even in David's psalms, of such perfect, restful\ntrust in God. These clear notes are perhaps the purest utterance ever\ngiven of \"the peace of God which passeth all understanding.\"\n\nSuch were the thoughts and hopes of the lad who kept his father's sheep\nat Bethlehem. He lived a life of lofty thoughts and lowly duties. He\nheard the voice of God amidst the silence of the hills, and the earliest\nnotes of his harp echoed the deep tones. He learned courage as well as\ntenderness from his daily tasks, and patience from the contrast between\nthem and the high vocation which Samuel's mysterious anointing had\nopened before him. If we remember how disturbing an influence the\nconsciousness of it might have wrought in a soul less filled with God,\nwe may perhaps accept as probably correct the superscription which\nrefers one sweet, simple psalm to him, and may venture to suppose that\nit expresses the contentment, undazzled by visions of coming greatness,\nthat calmed his heart. \"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes\nlofty; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too\nhigh for me. Surely I have smoothed and quieted my soul: like a weanling\non his mother's (breast), like a weanling is my soul within me.\" (Psa.\ncxxxi.) So lying in God's arms, and content to be folded in His embrace,\nwithout seeking anything beyond, he is tranquil in his lowly lot.\n\nIt does not fall within our province to follow the course of the\nfamiliar narrative through the picturesque events that led him to fame\nand position at court. The double character of minstrel and warrior, to\nwhich we have already referred, is remarkably brought out in his double\nintroduction to Saul, once as soothing the king's gloomy spirit with the\nharmonies of his shepherd's harp, once as bringing down the boasting\ngiant of Gath with his shepherd's sling. On the first occasion his\nresidence in the palace seems to have been ended by Saul's temporary\nrecovery. He returns to Bethlehem for an indefinite time, and then\nleaves it and all its peaceful tasks for ever. The dramatic story of the\nduel with Goliath needs no second telling. His arrival at the very\ncrisis of the war, the eager courage with which he leaves his baggage in\nthe hands of the guard and runs down the valley to the ranks of the\narmy, the busy hum of talk among the Israelites, the rankling jealousy\nof his brother that curdles into bitter jeers, the modest courage with\nwhich he offers himself as champion, the youthful enthusiasm of brave\ntrust in \"the Lord, that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and\nout of the paw of the bear;\" the wonderfully vivid picture of the young\nhero with his shepherd staff in one hand, his sling in the other, and\nthe rude wallet by his side, which had carried his simple meal, and now\nheld the smooth stone from the brook that ran between the armies in the\nbottom of the little valley--the blustering braggadocio of the big\nchampion, the boy's devout confidence in \"the name of the Lord of\nhosts;\" the swift brevity of the narrative of the actual fight, which in\nits hurrying clauses seems to reproduce the light-footed eagerness of\nthe young champion, or the rapid whizz of the stone ere it crashed into\nthe thick forehead; the prostrate bulk of the dead giant prone upon the\nearth, and the conqueror, slight and agile, hewing off the huge head\nwith Goliath's own useless sword;--all these incidents, so full of\ncharacter, so antique in manner, so weighty with lessons of the\nimpotence of strength that is merely material, and the power of a living\nenthusiasm of faith in God, may, for our present purposes, be passed\nwith a mere glance. One observation may, however, be allowed. After the\nvictory, Saul is represented as not knowing who David was, and as\nsending Abner to find out where he comes from. Abner, too, professes\nentire ignorance; and when David appears before the king, \"with the head\nof the Philistine in his hand,\" he is asked, \"Whose son art thou, young\nman?\" It has been thought that here we have an irreconcilable\ncontradiction with previous narratives, according to which there was\nclose intimacy between him and the king, who \"loved him greatly,\" and\ngave him an office of trust about his person. Suppositions of\n\"dislocation of the narrative,\" the careless adoption by the compiler of\ntwo separate legends, and the like, have been freely indulged in. But it\nmay at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seeming\ndiscrepancy, that when Saul had passed out of his moody madness it is\nnot wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred in\nhis paroxysm. It is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon that\na man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during his\nmental aberration. And as for Abner's profession of ignorance, an\nincipient jealousy of this stripling hero may naturally have made the\n\"captain of the host\" willing to keep the king as ignorant as he could\nconcerning a probable formidable rival. There is no need to suppose he\nwas really ignorant, but only that it suited him to say that he was.\n\nWith this earliest deed of heroism the peaceful private days are closed,\nand a new epoch of court favour and growing popularity begins. The\nimpression which the whole story leaves upon one is well summed up in a\npsalm which the Septuagint adds to the Psalter. It is not found in the\nHebrew, and has no pretension to be David's work; but, as a _resume_ of\nthe salient points of his early life, it may fitly end our\nconsiderations of this first epoch.\n\n\"This is the autograph psalm of David, and beyond the number (_i.e._, of\nthe psalms in the Psalter), when he fought the single fight with\nGoliath:--\n\n\"(1.) I was little among my brethren, and the youngest in the house of\nmy father: I kept the flock of my father. (2.) My hands made a pipe, my\nfingers tuned a psaltery. (3.) And who shall tell it to my Lord? He is\nthe Lord, He shall hear me. (4.) He sent His angel (messenger), and\ntook me from the flocks of my father, and anointed me with the oil of\nHis anointing. (5.) But my brethren were fair and large, and in them the\nLord took not pleasure. (6.) I went out to meet the Philistine, and he\ncursed me by his idols. (7.) But I, drawing his sword, beheaded him, and\ntook away reproach from the children of Israel.\"\n\n\n\n\nIV.--THE EXILE.\n\n\nDavid's first years at the court of Saul in Gibeah do not appear to have\nproduced any psalms which still survive.\n\n  \"The sweetest songs are those\n   Which tell of saddest thought.\"\n\nIt was natural, then, that a period full of novelty and of prosperous\nactivity, very unlike the quiet days at Bethlehem, should rather\naccumulate materials for future use than be fruitful in actual\nproduction. The old life shut to behind him for ever, like some\nenchanted door in a hill-side, and an unexplored land lay beckoning\nbefore. The new was widening his experience, but it had to be mastered,\nto be assimilated by meditation before it became vocal.\n\nThe bare facts of this section are familiar and soon told. There is\nfirst a period in which he is trusted by Saul, who sets him in high\ncommand, with the approbation not only of the people, but even of the\nofficial classes. But a new dynasty resting on military pre-eminence\ncannot afford to let a successful soldier stand on the steps of the\nthrone; and the shrill chant of the women out of all the cities of\nIsrael, which even in Saul's hearing answered the praises of his prowess\nwith a louder acclaim for David's victories, startled the king for the\nfirst time with a revelation of the national feeling. His unslumbering\nsuspicion \"eyed David from that day.\" Rage and terror threw him again\ninto the gripe of his evil spirit, and in his paroxysm he flings his\nheavy spear, the symbol of his royalty, at the lithe harper, with fierce\nvows of murder. The failure of his attempt to kill David seems to have\naggravated his dread of him as bearing a charm which won all hearts and\naverted all dangers. A second stage is marked not only by Saul's growing\nfear, but by David's new position. He is removed from court, and put in\na subordinate command, which only extends his popularity, and brings him\ninto more immediate contact with the mass of the people. \"All Israel and\nJudah loved David, because he went out and came in before them.\" Then\nfollows the offer of Saul's elder daughter in marriage, in the hope that\nby playing upon his gratitude and his religious feeling, he might be\nurged to some piece of rash bravery that would end him without scandal.\nSome new caprice of Saul's, however, leads him to insult David by\nbreaking his pledge at the last moment, and giving the promised bride to\nanother. Jonathan's heart was not the only one in Saul's household that\nyielded to his spell. The younger Michal had been cherishing his image\nin secret, and now tells her love. Her father returns to his original\npurpose, with the strange mixture of tenacity and capricious\nchangefulness that marks his character, and again attempts, by demanding\na grotesquely savage dowry, to secure David's destruction. But that\nscheme, too, fails; and he becomes a member of the royal house.\n\nThis third stage is marked by Saul's deepening panic hatred, which has\nnow become a fixed idea. All his attempts have only strengthened David's\nposition, and he looks on his irresistible advance with a nameless awe.\nHe calls, with a madman's folly, on Jonathan and on all his servants to\nkill him; and then, when his son appeals to him, his old better nature\ncomes over him, and with a great oath he vows that David shall not be\nslain. For a short time David returns to Gibeah, and resumes his former\nrelations with Saul, but a new victory over the Philistines rouses the\nslumbering jealousy. Again the \"evil spirit\" is upon him, and the great\njavelin is flung with blind fury, and sticks quivering in the wall. It\nis night, and David flies to his house. A stealthy band of assassins\nfrom the palace surround the house with orders to prevent all egress,\nand, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynical\nshamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. Michal,\nwho, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proud\ngodlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest parts\nof her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in these\nearly days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened by\nlove, the crouching murderers, and with rapid promptitude urges\nimmediate flight. Her hands let him down from the window--the house\nbeing probably on the wall. Her ready wit dresses up one of those\nmysterious teraphim (which appear to have had some connection with\nidolatry or magic, and which are strange pieces of furniture for\nDavid's house), and lays it in the bed to deceive the messengers, and so\ngain a little more time before pursuit began. \"So David fled and\nescaped, and came to Samuel to Ramah,\" and thus ended his life at court.\n\nGlancing over this narrative, one or two points come prominently forth.\nThe worth of these events to David must have lain chiefly in the\nabundant additions made to his experience of life, which ripened his\nnature, and developed new powers. The meditative life of the sheepfold\nis followed by the crowded court and camp. Strenuous work, familiarity\nwith men, constant vicissitude, take the place of placid thought, of\ncalm seclusion, of tranquil days that knew no changes but the\nalternation of sun and stars, storm and brightness, green pastures and\ndusty paths. He learned the real world, with its hate and effort, its\nhollow fame and its whispering calumnies. Many illusions no doubt faded,\nbut the light that had shone in his solitude still burned before him for\nhis guide, and a deeper trust in his Shepherd God was rooted in his soul\nby all the shocks of varying fortune. The passage from the visions of\nyouth and the solitary resolves of early and uninterrupted piety to the\nnaked realities of a wicked world, and the stern self-control of manly\ngodliness, is ever painful and perilous. Thank God! it may be made clear\ngain, as it was by this young hero psalmist.\n\nDavid's calm indifference to outward circumstances affecting himself, is\nvery strikingly expressed in his conduct. Partly from his poetic\ntemperament, partly from his sweet natural unselfishness, and chiefly\nfrom his living trust in God, he accepts whatever happens with\nequanimity, and makes no effort to alter it. He originates nothing.\nProsperity comes unsought, and dangers unfeared. He does not ask for\nJonathan's love, or the people's favour, or the women's songs, or Saul's\ndaughter. If Saul gives him command he takes it, and does his work. If\nSaul flings his javelin at him, he simply springs aside and lets it\nwhizz past. If his high position is taken from him, he is quite content\nwith a lower. If a royal alliance is offered, he accepts it; if it is\nwithdrawn, he is not ruffled; if renewed, he is still willing. If a busy\nweb of intrigue is woven round him, he takes no notice. If\nreconciliation is proposed, he cheerfully goes back to the palace. If\nhis life is threatened he goes home. He will not stir to escape but for\nthe urgency of his wife. So well had he already begun to learn the\nworthlessness of life's trifles. So thoroughly does he practice his own\nprecept, \"Fret not thyself because of evil-doers;\" \"rest in the Lord,\nand wait patiently for Him.\" (Psa. xxxvii. 1, 7.)\n\nThis section gives also a remarkable impression of the irresistible\ngrowth of his popularity and influence. The silent energy of the Divine\npurpose presses his fortunes onward with a motion slow and inevitable as\nthat of a glacier. The steadfast flow circles unchecked round, or rises\nvictorious over all hindrances. Efforts to ruin, to degrade, to\nkill--one and all fail. Terror and hate, suspicion and jealousy, only\nbring him nearer the goal. A clause which comes in thrice in the course\nof one chapter, expresses this fated advance. In the first stage of his\ncourt life, we read, \"David prospered\" (1 Sam. xviii. 5, margin), and\nagain with increased emphasis it is told as the result of the efforts to\ncrush him, that, \"He prospered in all his ways, and the Lord was with\nhim\" (verse 14), and yet again, in spite of Saul's having \"become his\nenemy continually,\" he \"prospered more than all the servants of Saul\"\n(verse 30). He moves onward as stars in their courses move, obeying the\nequable impulse of the calm and conquering will of God.\n\nThe familiar Scripture antithesis, which naturally finds its clearest\nutterance in the words of the last inspired writer--namely, the eternal\nopposition of Light and Darkness, Love and Hate, Life and Death, is\nbrought into sharpest relief by the juxtaposition and contrast of David\nand Saul. This is the key to the story. The two men are not more unlike\nin person than in spirit. We think of the one with his ruddy beauty and\nchangeful eyes, and lithe slight form, and of the other gaunt and black,\nhis giant strength weakened, and his \"goodly\" face scarred with the\nlightnings of his passions--and as they look so they are. The one full\nof joyous energy, the other devoured by gloom; the one going in and out\namong the people and winning universal love, the other sitting moody and\nself-absorbed behind his palace walls; the one bringing sweet clear\ntones of trustful praise from his harp, the other shaking his huge spear\nin his madness; the one ready for action and prosperous in it all, the\nother paralyzed, shrinking from all work, and leaving the conduct of\nthe war to the servant whom he feared; the one conscious of the Divine\npresence making him strong and calm, the other writhing in the gripe of\nhis evil spirit, and either foaming in fury, or stiffened into torpor;\nthe one steadily growing in power and favour with God and man, the other\nsinking in deeper mire, and wrapped about with thickening mists as he\nmoves to his doom. The tragic pathos of these two lives in their fateful\nantagonism is the embodiment of that awful alternative of life and\ndeath, blessing and cursing, which it was the very aim of Judaism to\nstamp ineffaceably on the conscience.\n\nDavid's flight begins a period to which a large number of his psalms are\nreferred. We may call them \"The Songs of the Outlaw.\" The titles in the\npsalter connect several with specific events during his persecution by\nSaul, and besides these, there are others which have marked\ncharacteristics in common, and may therefore be regarded as belonging to\nthe same time. The bulk of the former class are found in the second book\nof the psalter (Ps. xlii.-lxxii.), which has been arranged with some\ncare. There are first eight Korahite psalms, and one of Asaph's; then a\ngroup of fifteen Davidic (li.-lxv.), followed by two anonymous; then\nthree more of David's (lxviii.-lxx.), followed by one anonymous and the\nwell-known prayer \"for Solomon.\" Now it is worth notice that the group\nof fifteen psalms ascribed to David is as nearly as possible divided in\nhalves, eight having inscriptions which give a specific date of\ncomposition, and seven having no such detail. There has also been some\nattempt at arranging the psalms of these two classes alternately, but\nthat has not been accurately carried out. These facts show that the\ntitles are at all events as old as the compilation of the second book of\nthe psalter, and were regarded as accurate then. Several points about\nthe complete book of psalms as we have it, seem to indicate that these\ntwo first books were an older nucleus, which was in existence long prior\nto the present collection--and if so, the date of the titles must be\ncarried back a very long way indeed, and with a proportionate increase\nof authority.\n\nOf the eight psalms in the second book having titles with specific\ndates, five (Ps. lii., liv., lvi., lvii., lix.) are assigned to the\nperiod of the Sauline persecution, and, as it would appear, with\naccuracy. There is a general similarity of tone in them all, as well as\nconsiderable parallelisms of expression, favourite phrases and\nmetaphors, which are favourable to the hypothesis of a nearly\ncotemporaneous date. They are all in what, to use a phrase from another\nart, we may call David's earlier manner. For instance, in all the\npsalmist is surrounded by enemies. They would \"swallow him up\" (lvi. 1,\n2; lvii. 3). They \"oppress\" him (liv. 3; lvi. 1). One of their weapons\nis calumny, which seems from the frequent references to have much moved\nthe psalmist. Their tongues are razors (lii. 2), or swords (lvii. 4;\nlix. 7; lxiv. 3). They seem to him like crouching beasts ready to spring\nupon harmless prey (lvi. 6; lvii. 6; lix. 3); they are \"lions\" (lvii.\n4), dogs (lix. 6, 14). He is conscious of nothing which he has done to\nprovoke this storm of hatred (lix. 3; lxiv. 4.) The \"strength\" of God is\nhis hope (liv. 1; lix. 9, 17). He is sure that retribution will fall\nupon the enemies (lii. 5; liv. 5; lvi. 7; lvii. 6; lix. 8-15; lxiv. 7,\n8). He vows and knows that psalms of deliverance will yet succeed these\nplaintive cries (lii. 9; liv. 7; lvi. 12; lvii. 7-11; lix. 16, 17).\n\nWe also find a considerable number of psalms in the first book of the\npsalter which present the same features, and may therefore probably be\nclassed with these as belonging to the time of his exile. Such for\ninstance are the seventh and thirty-fourth, which have both inscriptions\nreferring them to this period, with others which we shall have to\nconsider presently. The imagery of the preceding group reappears in\nthem. His enemies are lions (vii. 2; xvii. 12; xxii. 13; xxxv. 17); dogs\n(xxii. 16); bulls (xxii. 12). Pitfalls and snares are in his path (vii.\n15; xxxi. 4; xxxv. 7). He passionately protests his innocence, and the\nkindliness of his heart to his wanton foes (vii. 3-5; xvii. 3, 4); whom\nhe has helped and sorrowed over in their sickness (xxxv. 13, 14)--a\nreference, perhaps, to his solacing Saul in his paroxysms with the music\nof his harp. He dwells on retribution with vehemence (vii. 11-16; xi.\n5-7; xxxi. 23; xxxv. 8), and on his own deliverance with confidence.\n\nThese general characteristics accurately correspond with the\ncircumstances of David during the years of his wanderings. The scenery\nand life of the desert colours the metaphors which describe his enemies\nas wild beasts; himself as a poor hunted creature amongst pits and\nsnares; or as a timid bird flying to the safe crags, and God as his\nRock. Their strong assertions of innocence accord with the historical\nindications of Saul's gratuitous hatred, and appear to distinguish the\npsalms of this period from those of Absalom's revolt, in which the\nremembrance of his great sin was too deep to permit of any such claims.\nIn like manner the prophecies of the enemies' destruction are too\ntriumphant to suit that later time of exile, when the father's heart\nyearned with misplaced tenderness over his worthless son, and nearly\nbroke with unkingly sorrow for the rebel's death. Their confidence in\nGod, too, has in it a ring of joyousness in peril which corresponds with\nthe buoyant faith that went with him through all the desperate\nadventures and hairbreadth escapes of the Sauline persecution. If then\nwe may, with some confidence, read these psalms in connection with that\nperiod, what a noble portraiture of a brave, devout soul looks out upon\nus from them. We see him in the first flush of his manhood--somewhere\nabout five-and-twenty years old--fronting perils of which he is fully\nconscious, with calm strength and an enthusiasm of trust that lifts his\nspirit above them all, into a region of fellowship with God which no\ntumult can invade, and which no remembrance of black transgression\ntroubled and stained. His harp is his solace in his wanderings; and\nwhile plaintive notes are flung from its strings, as is needful for the\ndeepest harmonies of praise here, every wailing tone melts into clear\nringing notes of glad affiance in the \"God of his mercy.\"\n\nDistinct references to the specific events of his wanderings are,\nundoubtedly, rare in them, though even these are more obvious than has\nbeen sometimes carelessly assumed. Their infrequency and comparative\nvagueness has been alleged against the accuracy of the inscriptions\nwhich allocate certain psalms to particular occasions. But in so far as\nit is true that these allusions are rare and inexact, the fact is surely\nrather in favour of than against the correctness of the titles. For if\nthese are not suggested by obvious references in the psalms to which\nthey are affixed, by what can they have been suggested but by a\ntradition considerably older than the compilation of the psalter?\nBesides, the analogy of all other poetry would lead us to expect\nprecisely what we find in these psalms--general and not detailed\nallusions to the writer's circumstances. The poetic imagination does not\nreproduce the bald prosaic facts which have set it in motion, but the\necho of them broken up and etherealised. It broods over them till life\nstirs, and the winged creature bursts from them to sing and soar.\n\nIf we accept the title as accurate, the fifty-ninth psalm is the first\nof these Songs of the Outlaw. It refers to the time \"when Saul sent, and\nthey watched the house to kill him.\" Those critics who reject this date,\nwhich they do on very weak grounds, lose themselves in a chaos of\nassumptions as to the occasion of the psalm. The Chaldean invasion, the\nassaults in the time of Nehemiah, and the era of the Maccabees, are\nalleged with equal confidence and equal groundlessness. \"We believe that\nit is most advisable to adhere to the title, and most scientific to\nignore these hypotheses built on nothing.\" (Delitzsch.)\n\nIt is a devotional and poetic commentary on the story in Samuel. There\nwe get the bare facts of the assassins prowling by night round David's\nhouse; of Michal's warning; of her ready-witted trick to gain time, and\nof his hasty flight to Samuel at Ramah. In the narrative David is, as\nusual at this period, passive and silent; but when we turn to the psalm,\nwe learn the tone of his mind as the peril bursts upon him, and all the\nvulgar craft and fear fades from before his lofty enthusiasm of faith.\n\nThe psalm begins abruptly with a passionate cry for help, which is\nrepeated four times, thus bringing most vividly before us the extremity\nof the danger and the persistency of the suppliant's trust. The peculiar\ntenderness and closeness of his relation to his heavenly Friend, which\nis so characteristic of David's psalms, and which they were almost the\nfirst to express, breathes through the name by which he invokes help,\n\"my God.\" The enemies are painted in words which accurately correspond\nwith the history, and which by their variety reveal how formidable they\nwere to the psalmist. They \"lie in wait (literally weave plots) for my\nlife.\" They are \"workers of iniquity,\" \"men of blood,\" insolent or\nviolent (\"mighty\" in English version). He asserts his innocence, as ever\nin these Sauline psalms, and appeals to God in confirmation, \"not for my\ntransgressions, nor for my sins, O Lord.\" He sees these eager tools of\nroyal malice hurrying to their congenial work: \"they run and prepare\nthemselves.\" And then, rising high above all encompassing evils, he\ngrasps at the throne of God in a cry, which gains additional force when\nwe remember that the would-be murderers compassed his house in the\nnight. \"Awake to meet me, and behold;\" as if he had said, \"In the\ndarkness do Thou see; at midnight sleep not Thou.\" The prayer is\ncontinued in words which heap together with unwonted abundance the\nDivine names, in each of which lie an appeal to God and a pillar of\nfaith. As Jehovah, the self-existent Fountain of timeless Being; as the\nGod of Hosts, the Commander of all the embattled powers of the universe,\nwhether they be spiritual or material; as the GOD of Israel, who calls\nthat people His, and has become theirs--he stirs up the strength of God\nto \"awake to visit all the heathen,\"--a prayer which has been supposed\nto compel the reference of the whole psalm to the assaults of Gentile\nnations, but which may be taken as an anticipation on David's lips of\nthe truth that, \"They are not all Israel which are of Israel.\" After a\nterrible petition--\"Be not merciful to any secret plotters of\nevil\"--there is a pause (Selah) to be filled, as it would appear, by\nsome chords on the harp, or the blare of the trumpets, thus giving time\nto dwell on the previous petitions.\n\nBut still the thought of the foe haunts him, and he falls again to the\nlower level of painting their assembling round his house, and their\nwhispers as they take their stand. It would appear that the watch had\nbeen kept up for more than one night. How he flings his growing scorn of\nthem into the sarcastic words, \"They return at evening; they growl like\na dog, and compass the city\" (or \"go their rounds in the city\"). One\nsees them stealing through the darkness, like the troops of vicious curs\nthat infest Eastern cities, and hears their smothered threatenings as\nthey crouch in the shadow of the unlighted streets. Then growing bolder,\nas the night deepens and sleep falls on the silent houses: \"Behold they\npour out with their mouth, swords (are) in their lips, for 'who hears'?\"\nIn magnificent contrast with these skulking murderers fancying\nthemselves unseen and unheard, David's faith rends the heaven, and, with\na daring image which is copied in a much later psalm (ii. 4), shows God\ngazing on them with Divine scorn which breaks in laughter and mockery. A\nbrief verse, which recurs at the end of the psalm, closes the first\nportion of the psalm with a calm expression of untroubled trust, in\nbeautiful contrast with the peril and tumult of soul, out of which it\nrises steadfast and ethereal, like a rainbow spanning a cataract. A\nslight error appears to have crept into the Hebrew text, which can be\neasily corrected from the parallel verse at the end, and then the quiet\nconfident words are--\n\n  \"My strength! upon Thee will I wait,\n   For God is my fortress!\"\n\nThe second portion is an intensification of the first; pouring out a\nterrible prayer for exemplary retribution on his enemies; asking that no\nspeedy destruction may befall them, but that God would first of all\n\"make them reel\" by the blow of His might; would then fling them\nprostrate; would make their pride and fierce words a net to snare them;\nand then, at last, would bring them to nothing in the hot flames of His\nwrath--that the world may know that He is king. The picture of the\nprowling dogs recurs with deepened scorn and firmer confidence that\nthey will hunt for their prey in vain.\n\n  \"And they return at evening; they growl like a dog,\n   And compass the city.\n   They--they prowl about for food\n   If (or, since) they are not satisfied, they spend the night (in the\n      search.)\"\n\nThere is almost a smile on his face as he thinks of their hunting about\nfor him, like hungry hounds snuffing for their meal in the kennels, and\ngrowling now in disappointment--while he is safe beyond their reach. And\nthe psalm ends with a glad burst of confidence, and a vow of praise very\ncharacteristic on his lips--\n\n  \"But I--I will sing Thy power,\n   And shout aloud, in the morning, Thy mercy,\n   For Thou hast been a fortress for me.\n   And a refuge in the day of my trouble.\n   My strength! unto Thee will I harp,\n   For God is my fortress--the God of my mercy.\"\n\nThrice he repeats the vow of praise. His harp was his companion in his\nflight, and even in the midst of peril the poet's nature appears which\nregards all life as materials for song, and the devout spirit appears\nwhich regards all trial as occasions for praise. He has calmed his own\nspirit, as he had done Saul's, by his song, and by prayer has swung\nhimself clear above fightings and fears. The refrain, which occurs twice\nin the psalm, witnesses to the growth of his faith even while he sings.\nAt first he could only say in patient expectance, \"My strength! I will\nwait upon thee, for God is my fortress.\" But at the end his mood is\nhigher, his soul has caught fire as it revolves, and his last words are\na triumphant amplification of his earlier trust: \"My strength! unto thee\nwill I sing with the harp--for God is my fortress--the God of my\nmercy.\"\n\n\n\n\nV.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\n\"So David fled, and escaped and came to Samuel to Ramah, and told him\nall that Saul had done unto him. And he and Samuel went and dwelt in\nNaioth\" (1 Sam. xix. 18)--or, as the word probably means, in the\ncollection of students' dwellings, inhabited by the sons of the\nprophets, where possibly there may have been some kind of right of\nsanctuary. Driven thence by Saul's following him, and having had one\nlast sorrowful hour of Jonathan's companionship--the last but one on\nearth--he fled to Nob, whither the ark had been carried after the\ndestruction of Shiloh. The story of his flight had not reached the\nsolitary little town among the hills, and he is received with the honour\ndue to the king's son-in-law. He pleads urgent secret business for Saul\nas a reason for his appearance with a slender retinue, and unarmed; and\nthe priest, after some feeble scruples, supplies the handful of hungry\nfugitives with the shewbread. But David's quick eye caught a swarthy\nface peering at him from some enclosure of the simple forest sanctuary,\nand as he recognised Doeg the Edomite, Saul's savage herdsman, a cold\nforeboding of evil crept over his heart, and made him demand arms from\nthe peaceful priest. The lonely tabernacle was guarded by its own\nsanctity, and no weapons were there, except one trophy which was of good\nomen to David--Goliath's sword. He eagerly accepts the matchless weapon\nwhich his hand had clutched on that day of danger and deliverance, and\nthus armed, lest Doeg should try to bar his flight, he hurries from the\npursuit which he knew that the Edomite's malignant tongue would soon\nbring after him. The tragical end of the unsuspecting priest's kindness\nbrings out the furious irrational suspicion and cruelty of Saul. He\nrages at his servants as leagued with David in words which have a most\ndreary sound of utter loneliness sighing through all their fierce folly:\n\"All of you have conspired against me; there is none of you that is\nsorry for me\" (1 Sam. xxii. 8.) Doeg is forward to curry favour by\ntelling his tale, and so tells it as to suppress the priest's ignorance\nof David's flight, and to represent him as aiding and comforting the\nrebel knowingly. Then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit,\nand the whole priestly population of Nob are summoned before him, loaded\nwith bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, and\nhis guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiers\nshrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild blood\nof Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doeg\ncrowns his baseness by slaying--with the help of his herdsmen, no\ndoubt--\"on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear an ephod,\"\nand utterly extirpating every living thing from the defenceless little\ncity.\n\nOne psalm, the fifty-second, is referred by its inscription to this\nperiod, but the correspondence between the history and the tone of the\npsalm is doubtful. It is a vehement rebuke and a prophecy of destruction\ndirected against an enemy, whose hostility was expressed in \"devouring\nwords.\" The portrait does not apply very accurately to the Doeg of the\nhistorical books, inasmuch as it describes the psalmist's enemy as \"a\nmighty man,\"--or rather as \"a hero,\" and as trusting \"in the abundance\nof his riches,\"--and makes the point of the reproach against him that\nhe is a confirmed liar. But the dastardly deed of blood may be covertly\nalluded to in the bitterly sarcastic \"hero\"--as if he had said, \"O brave\nwarrior, who dost display thy prowess in murdering unarmed priests and\nwomen?\" And Doeg's story to Saul was a lie in so far as it gave the\nimpression of the priests' complicity with David, and thereby caused\ntheir deaths on a false charge. The other features of the description\nare not contrary to the narrative, and most of them are in obvious\nharmony with it. The psalm, then, may be taken as showing how deeply\nDavid's soul was stirred by the tragedy. He pours out broken words of\nhot and righteous indignation:\n\n  \"Destructions doth thy tongue devise,\n   Like a razor whetted--O thou worker of deceit.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  \"Thou lovest all words that devour:[F] O thou deceitful tongue!\"\n\n[F] Literally, \"words of swallowing up.\"\n\nHe prophesies the destruction of the cruel liar, and the exultation of\nthe righteous when he falls, in words which do indeed belong to the old\ncovenant of retribution, and yet convey an eternal truth which modern\nsentimentalism finds very shocking, but which is witnessed over and\nover again in the relief that fills the heart of nations and of\nindividuals when evil men fade: \"When the wicked perish, there is\nshouting\"--\n\n  \"Also God shall smite thee down for ever,\n   Will draw thee out,[G] and carry thee away from the tent,\n   And root thee out of the land of the living;\n   And the righteous shall see and fear,\n   And over him shall they laugh.\"\n\nIn confident security he opposes his own happy fellowship with God to\nthis dark tragedy of retribution:\n\n  \"But I--(I am) like a green olive tree in the house of God.\"\n\n[G] The full force of the word is, \"will pluck out as a glowing ember\nfrom a hearth\" (Delitzsch).\n\nThe enemy was to be \"rooted out;\" the psalmist is to flourish by\nderivation of life and vigour from God. If Robinson's conjecture that\nNob was on the Mount of Olives were correct (which is very doubtful),\nthe allusion here would gain appropriateness. As the olives grew all\nround the humble forest sanctuary, and were in some sort hallowed by the\nshrine which they encompassed, so the soul grows and is safe in loving\nfellowship with God. Be that as it may, the words express the outlaw's\nserene confidence that he is safe beneath the sheltering mercy of God,\nand re-echo the hopes of his earlier psalm, \"I will dwell in the house\nof the Lord for ever.\" The stormy indignation of the earlier verses\npasses away into calm peace and patient waiting in praise and trust:\n\n  \"I will praise Thee for ever, for Thou hast done (it),\n   And wait on Thy name in the presence of Thy beloved, for it is good.\"\n\nHunted from Nob, David with a small company struck across the country in\na southwesterly direction, keeping to the safety of the tangled\nmountains, till, from the western side of the hills of Judah, he looked\ndown upon the broad green plain of Philistia. Behind him was a mad\ntyrant, in front the uncircumcised enemies of his country and his God.\nHis condition was desperate, and he had recourse to desperate measures.\nThat nearest Philistine city, some ten miles off, on which he looked\ndown from his height, was Gath; the glen where he had killed its\nchampion was close beside him,--every foot of ground was familiar by\nmany a foray and many a fight. It was a dangerous resource to trust\nhimself in Gath, with Goliath's sword dangling in his belt. But he may\nhave hoped that he was not known by person, or may have thought that\nSaul's famous commander would be a welcome guest, as a banished man, at\nthe Philistine court. So he made the plunge, and took refuge in\nGoliath's city. Discovery soon came, and in the most ominous form. It\nwas an ugly sign that the servants of Achish should be quoting the words\nof the chant of victory which extolled him as the slayer of their\ncountryman. Vengeance for his death was but too likely to come next. The\ndoubts of his identity seem to have lasted for some little time, and to\nhave been at first privately communicated to the king. They somehow\nreached David, and awoke his watchful attention, as well as his fear.\nThe depth of his alarm and his ready resource are shown by his degrading\ntrick of assumed madness--certainly the least heroic action of his life.\nWhat a picture of a furious madman is the description of his conduct\nwhen Achish's servants came to arrest him. He \"twisted himself about in\ntheir hands\" in the feigned contortions of possession; he drummed on the\nleaves of the gate,[H] and \"let his spittle run down into his beard.\"\n(1 Sam. xxi. 13.) Israelitish quickness gets the better of Philistine\nstupidity, as it had been used to do from Sampson's time onwards, and\nthe dull-witted king falls into the trap, and laughs away the suspicions\nwith a clumsy joke at his servants' expense about more madmen being the\nlast thing he was short of. A hasty flight from Philistine territory\nended this episode.\n\n[H] The Septuagint appears to have followed a different reading here\nfrom that of our present Hebrew text, and the change adds a very\npicturesque clause to the description. A madman would be more likely to\nhammer than to \"scrabble\" on the great double-leaved gate.\n\nThe fifty-sixth psalm, which is referred by its title to this period,\nseems at first sight to be in strange contrast with the impressions\ndrawn from the narrative, but on a closer examination is found to\nconfirm the correctness of the reference by its contents. The terrified\nfugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot in\nthe hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enough\nto hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. The\npsalm is far in advance of the conduct--is it so unusual a circumstance\nas to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith and\nsubmission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? Instead of taking\nthe contrast between the words and the acts as a proof that this psalm\nis wrongly ascribed to the period in question, let us rather be thankful\nfor another instance that imperfect faith may be genuine, and that if we\ncannot rise to the height of unwavering fortitude, God accepts a\ntremulous trust fighting against mortal terror, and grasping with a\nfeeble hand the word of God, and the memory of all his past\ndeliverances. It is precisely this conflict of faith and fear which the\npsalm sets before us. It falls into three portions, the first and second\nof which are closed by a kind of refrain (vers. 4, 10, 11)--a structure\nwhich is characteristic of several of these Sauline persecution psalms\n(_e.g._, lvii. 5, 11; lix. 9, 17). The first part of each of these two\nportions is a vivid description of his danger, from which he rises to\nthe faith expressed in the closing words. The repetition of the same\nthoughts in both is not to be regarded as a cold artifice of\ncomposition, but as the true expression of the current of his thoughts.\nHe sees his enemies about him, ready to swallow him up--\"there be many\nfighting against me disdainfully\"[I] (ver. 2). Whilst the terror creeps\nround his heart (\"he was sore afraid,\" 1 Sam. xxi. 12), he rouses\nhimself to trust, as he says, in words which express most emphatically\nthe co-existence of the two, and carry a precious lesson of the reality\nof even an interrupted faith, streaked with many a black line of doubt\nand dread.\n\n[I] Literally, \"loftily.\" Can there be any allusion to the giant stature\nof Goliath's relations in Gath? We hear of four men \"born to the giant\nin Gath,\" who were killed in David's wars. (2 Sam. xxi. 22.)\n\n  \"(In) the day (that) I am afraid--I trust on Thee.\"\n\nAnd then he breaks into the utterance of praise and confidence--to which\nhe has climbed by the ladder of prayer.\n\n  \"In God I praise His word,\n   In God I trust, I do not fear:--\n   What shall flesh do to me?\"\n\nHow profoundly these words set forth the object of his trust, as being\nnot merely the promise of God--which in David's case may be the specific\npromise conveyed by his designation to the throne--but the God who\npromises, the inmost nature of that confidence as being a living union\nwith God, the power of it as grappling with his dread, and enabling him\nnow to say, \"I do _not_ fear.\"\n\nBut again he falls from this height; another surge of fear breaks over\nhim, and almost washes him from his rock. His foes, with ceaseless\nmalice, arrest his words; they skulk in ambush, they dog his heels, they\nlong for his life. The crowded clauses portray the extremity of the\nperil and the singer's agitation. His soul is still heaving with the\nground swell of the storm, though the blasts come more fitfully, and are\ndying into calm. He is not so afraid but that he can turn to God; he\nturns to Him because he is afraid, like the disciples in later days, who\nhad so much of terror that they must awake their Master, but so much of\ntrust that His awaking was enough. He pleads with God, as in former\npsalms, against his enemies, in words which go far beyond the occasion,\nand connect his own deliverance with the judgments of God over the whole\nearth. He plaintively recalls his homelessness and his sorrows in words\nwhich exhibit the characteristic blending of hope and pain, and which\nare beautifully in accordance with the date assigned to the psalm. \"My\nwanderings dost Thou, even Thou, number.\" He is not alone in these\nweary flights from Gibeah to Ramah, from Ramah to Nob, from Nob to Gath,\nfrom Gath he knows not whither. One friend goes with him through them\nall. And as the water-skin was a necessary part of a traveller's\nequipment, the mention of his wanderings suggests the bold and tender\nmetaphor of the next clause, \"Put my tears in Thy bottle,\"--a prayer for\nthat very remembrance of his sorrows, in the existence of which he\nimmediately declares his confidence--\"Are they not in Thy book?\" The\ntrue office of faithful communion with God is to ask for, and to\nappropriate, the blessings which in the very act become ours. He knows\nthat his cry will scatter his foes, for God is for him. And thus once\nagain he has risen to the height of confidence where for a moment his\nfeet have been already planted, and again--but this time with even\nfuller emphasis, expressed by an amplification which introduces for the\nonly time in the psalm the mighty covenant name--he breaks into his\ntriumphant strain--\n\n  \"In God I praise the Word;\n   In JEHOVAH I praise the Word:\n   In God I trust, I do not fear:--\n   What shall man do to me?\"\n\nAnd from this mood of trustful expectation he does not again decline.\nPrayer has brought its chiefest blessing--the peace that passeth\nunderstanding. The foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusively\nby faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praise\nfor deliverance, as if it had been already achieved--\n\n  \"Thou hast delivered my life from death,\n   (Hast Thou) not (delivered) my feet from falling,\n   That I may walk before God in the light of the living?\"\n\nHe already reckons himself safe; his question is not an expression of\ndoubt, but of assurance; and he sees the purpose of all God's dealings\nwith him to be that the activities of life may all be conducted in the\nhappy consciousness of _His_ eye who is at once Guardian and Judge of\nHis children. How far above his fears and lies has this hero and saint\nrisen by the power of supplication and the music of his psalm!\n\nDavid naturally fled into Israelitish territory from Gath. The exact\nlocality of the cave Adullam, where we next find him, is doubtful; but\nseveral strong reasons occur for rejecting the monkish tradition which\nplaces it away to the east, in one of the wild wadies which run down\nfrom Bethlehem to the Dead Sea. We should expect it to be much more\naccessible by a hasty march from Gath. Obviously it would be convenient\nfor him to hang about the frontier of Philistia and Israel, that he\nmight quickly cross the line from one to the other, as dangers appeared.\nFurther, the city of Adullam is frequently mentioned, and always in\nconnections which fix its site as on the margin of the great plain of\nPhilistia, and not far from Gath. (2 Chron. xi. 7, etc.) There is no\nreason to suppose that the cave of Adullam was in a totally different\ndistrict from the city. The hills of Dan and Judah, which break sharply\ndown into the plain within a few miles of Gath, are full of \"extensive\nexcavations,\" and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold,\nwhere he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look down\nover the vast sweep of the rich Philistine country. Gath lay at his\nfeet, close by was the valley where he had killed Goliath, the scenes of\nSamson's exploits were all about him. Thither fled to him his whole\nfamily, from fear, no doubt, of Saul's revenge falling on them; and\nthere he gathers his band of four hundred desperate men, whom poverty\nand misery, and probably the king's growing tyranny, drove to flight.\nThey were wild, rough soldiers, according to the picturesque\ndescription, \"whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as\nswift as the roes upon the mountains.\" They were not freebooters, but\nseem to have acted as a kind of frontier-guard against southern Bedouins\nand western Philistines for the sheep-farmers of the border whom Saul's\ngovernment was too weak to protect. In this desultory warfare, and in\neluding the pursuit of Saul, against whom it is to be observed David\nnever employed any weapon but flight, several years were passed. The\neffect of such life on his spiritual nature was to deepen his\nunconditional dependence on God; by the alternations of heat and cold,\nfear and hope, danger and safety, to temper his soul and make it\nflexible, tough and bright as steel. It evolved the qualities of a\nleader of men; teaching him command and forbearance, promptitude and\npatience, valour and gentleness. It won for him a name as the defender\nof the nation, as Nabal's servant said of him and his men, \"They were a\nwall unto us, both by night and by day\" (1 Sam. xxv. 16). And it\ngathered round him a force of men devoted to him by the enthusiastic\nattachment bred from long years of common dangers, and the hearty\nfriendships of many a march by day, and nightly encampment round the\nglimmering watchfires, beneath the lucid stars.\n\n\n\n\nVI.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\nWe have one psalm which the title connects with the beginning of David's\nstay at Adullam,--the thirty-fourth. The supposition that it dates from\nthat period throws great force into many parts of it, and gives a unity\nto what is else apparently fragmentary and disconnected. Unlike those\nalready considered, which were pure soliloquies, this is full of\nexhortation and counsel, as would naturally be the case if it were\nwritten when friends and followers began to gather to his standard. It\nreads like a long sigh of relief at escape from a danger just past; its\nburden is to tell of God's deliverance, and to urge to trust in Him. How\nperfectly this tone corresponds to the circumstances immediately after\nhis escape from Gath to Adullam need not be more than pointed out. The\ndangers which he had dreaded and the cry to God which he had sent forth\nare still present to his mind, and echo through his song, like a\nsubtly-touched chord of sadness, which appears for a moment, and is\ndrowned in the waves of some triumphant music.\n\n  \"I sought the Lord, and He heard me,\n   And from all my alarms He delivered me.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n  This afflicted (man) cried, and Jehovah heard,\n  And from all his troubles He saved him.\"\n\nAnd the \"local colouring\" of the psalm corresponds too with the\ncircumstances of Adullam. How appropriate, for instance, does the form\nin which the Divine protection is proclaimed become, when we think of\nthe little band bivouacking among the cliffs, \"The angel of the Lord\nencampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.\" Like his\ngreat ancestor, he is met in his desert flight by heavenly guards, \"and\nhe calls the name of that place Mahanaim\" (that is, \"two camps\"), as\ndiscerning gathered round his own feeble company the ethereal weapons of\nan encircling host of the warriors of God, through whose impenetrable\nranks his foes must pierce before they can reach him. From Samson's time\nwe read of lions in this district (Judges xiv. 8, 9), and we may\nrecognise another image as suggested by their growls heard among the\nravines, and their gaunt forms prowling near the cave. \"The young lions\ndo lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want\nany good\" (ver. 10).\n\nAnd then he passes to earnest instructions and exhortations, which\nderive appositeness from regarding them as a proclamation to his men of\nthe principles on which his camp is to be governed. \"Come, ye children,\nhearken unto me.\" He regards himself as charged with guiding them to\ngodliness: \"I will teach you the fear of the Lord.\" With some\nremembrance, perhaps, of his deception at Gath, he warns them to \"keep\"\ntheir \"tongues from evil\" and their \"lips from speaking guile.\" They are\nnot to be in love with warfare, but, even with their swords in their\nhands, are to \"seek peace, and pursue it.\" On these exhortations follow\njoyous assurances of God's watchful eye fixed upon the righteous, and\nHis ear open to their cry; of deliverance for his suppliants, whatsoever\nhardship and trouble they may have to wade through; of a guardianship\nwhich \"keepeth all the bones\" of the righteous, so that neither the\nblows of the foe nor the perils of the crags should break them,--all\ncrowned with the contrast ever present to David's mind, and having a\npersonal reference to his enemies and to himself:\n\n  \"Evil shall slay the wicked,\n   And the haters of the righteous shall suffer penalty.\n   Jehovah redeems the life of His servants,\n   And no penalty shall any suffer who trust in Him.\"\n\nSuch were the counsels and teachings of the young leader to his little\nband,--noble \"general orders\" from a commander at the beginning of a\ncampaign!\n\nWe venture to refer the twenty-seventh psalm also to this period. It is\ngenerally supposed, indeed, by those commentators who admit its Davidic\nauthorship, to belong to the time of Absalom's rebellion. The main\nreason for throwing it so late is the reference in ver. 4 to dwelling in\nthe house of the Lord and inquiring in His temple.[J] This is supposed\nto require a date subsequent to David's bringing up of the ark to\nJerusalem, and placing it in a temporary sanctuary. But whilst longing\nfor the sanctuary is no doubt characteristic of the psalms of the later\nwanderings, it is by no means necessary to suppose that in the present\ncase that desire, which David represents as the longing of his life, was\na desire for mere bodily presence in a material temple. Indeed, the very\nlanguage seems to forbid such an interpretation. Surely the desire for\nan abode in the house of the Lord--which was his one wish, which he\nlonged to have continuous throughout all the days of his life, which was\nto surround him with a privacy of protection in trouble, and to be as\nthe munitions of rocks about him--was something else than a morbid\ndesire for an impossible seclusion in the tabernacle,--a desire fitter\nfor some sickly mediaeval monarch who buried his foolish head and faint\nheart in a monastery than for God's Anointed. We have seen an earlier\ngerm of the same desire in the twenty-third psalm, the words of which\nare referred to here; and the interpretation of the one is the\ninterpretation of the other. The psalmist breathes his longing for the\nDivine fellowship, which shall be at once vision, and guidance, and\nhidden life in distress, and stability, and victory, and shall break\ninto music of perpetual praise.\n\n[J] \"The fourth verse in its present form _must_ have been written after\nthe temple was built.\"--\"The Psalms chronologically arranged,\" p.\n68--following Ewald, in whose imperious criticism that same naked \"must\nhave been,\" works wonders.\n\nIf, then, we are not obliged by the words in question to adopt the\nlater date, there is much in the psalm which strikingly corresponds with\nthe earlier, and throws beautiful illustration on the psalmist's mood at\nthis period. One such allusion we venture to suppose in the words (ver.\n2),\n\n  \"When the wicked came against me to devour my flesh,\n   My enemies and my foes,--they stumbled and fell;\"\n\nwhich have been usually taken as a mere general expression, without any\nallusion to a specific event. But there was one incident in David's life\nwhich had been forced upon his remembrance by his recent peril at\nGath--his duel with Goliath, which exactly meets the very peculiar\nlanguage here. The psalm employs the same word as the narrative, which\ntells how the Philistine \"arose, and came, and drew near to David.\" The\nbraggart boast, \"I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and the\nbeasts of the fields,\" is echoed in the singular phrase of the psalm;\nand the emphatic, rapid picture, \"they stumbled and fell,\" is at once a\nreminiscence of the hour when the stone crashed through the thick\nforehead, \"and he fell upon his face to the earth;\" and also a reference\nto an earlier triumph in Israel's history, celebrated with fierce\nexultation in the wild chant whom rolls the words like a sweet morsel\nunder the tongue, as it tells of Sisera--\n\n  \"Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay;\n   Between her feet he bowed, he fell;\n   Where he bowed, there he fell down dead.\"\n\nAnother autobiographical reference in the psalm has been disputed on\ninsufficient grounds:\n\n  \"For my father and my mother forsake me,\n   And Jehovah takes me up.\" (Ver. 10.)\n\nIt is, at all events, a remarkable coincidence that the only mention of\nhis parents after the earliest chapters of his life falls in precisely\nwith this period of the history, and is such as might have suggested\nthese words. We read (1 Sam. xxii. 3, 4) that he once ventured all the\nway from Adullam to Moab to beg an asylum from Saul's indiscriminate\nfury for his father and mother, who were no doubt too old to share his\nperils, as the rest of his family did. Having prepared a kindly welcome\nfor them, perhaps on the strength of the blood of Ruth the Moabitess in\nJesse's veins, he returned to Bethlehem, brought the old couple away,\nand guarded them safely to their refuge. It is surely most natural to\nsuppose that the psalm is the lyrical echo of that event, and most\npathetic to conceive of the psalmist as thinking of the happy home at\nBethlehem now deserted, his brothers lurking with him among the rocks,\nand his parents exiles in heathen lands. Tears fill his eyes, but he\nlifts them to a Father that is never parted from him, and feels that he\nis no more orphaned nor homeless.\n\nThe psalm is remarkable for the abrupt transition of feeling which\ncleaves it into two parts; one (vers. 1-6) full of jubilant hope and\nenthusiastic faith, the other (vers. 7-14) a lowly cry for help. There\nis no need to suppose, with some critics, that we have here two\nindependent hymns bound together in error. He must have little knowledge\nof the fluctuations of the devout life who is surprised to find so swift\na passage from confidence to conscious weakness. Whilst the usual order\nin the psalms, as the usual order in good men's experience, is that\nprayer for deliverance precedes praise and triumph, true communion with\nGod is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on God,\nand realizing the mysteries of beauty in His secret place, ere it drops\nto earth. The lark sings as it descends from the \"privacy of glorious\nlight\" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more\nplaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps a\nnobler effect of faith to begin with God and hymn the victory as if\nalready won, than to begin with trouble and to call for deliverance. But\nwith whichever we commence, the prayer of earth must include both; and\nso long as we are weak, and God our strength, its elements must be\n\"supplication and thanksgiving.\" The prayer of our psalm bends round\nagain to its beginning, and after the plaintive cry for help breaks once\nmore into confidence (vers. 13, 14). The psalmist shudders as he thinks\nwhat ruin would have befallen him if he had not trusted in God, and\nleaves the unfinished sentence,--as a man looking down into some fearful\ngulf starts back and covers his eyes, before he has well seen the bottom\nof the abyss.\n\n  \"If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord\n     in the land of the living!\"\n\nThen rejoicing to remember how even by his feeble trust he has been\nsaved, he stirs up himself to a firmer faith, in words which are\nthemselves an exercise of faith, as well as an incitement to it:\n\n  \"Wait on Jehovah!\n   Courage! and let thy heart be strong!\n   Yea! wait on Jehovah!\"\n\nHere is the true highest type of a troubled soul's fellowship with God,\nwhen the black fear and consciousness of weakness is inclosed in a\ngolden ring of happy trust. Let the name of our God be first upon our\nlips, and the call to our wayward hearts to wait on Him be last, and\nthen we may between think of our loneliness, and feebleness, and foes,\nand fears, without losing our hold of our Father's hand.\n\nDavid in his rocky eyrie was joyful, because he began with God. It was a\nman in real peril who said, \"The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom\nshall I fear?\" It was at a critical pause in his fortunes, when he knew\nnot yet whether Saul's malice was implacable, that he said, \"Though war\nshould rise against me, in this will I be confident.\" It was in\nthankfulness for the safe hiding-place among the dark caverns of the\nhills that he celebrated the dwelling of the soul in God with words\ncoloured by his circumstances, \"In the secret of His tabernacle shall\nHe hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock.\" It was with Philistia at\nhis feet before and Saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphant\nconfidence was sure that \"Now shall mine head be lifted up above mine\nenemies round about me.\" It was in weakness, not expelled even by such\njoyous faith, that he plaintively besought God's mercy, and laid before\nHis mercy-seat as the mightiest plea His own inviting words, \"Seek ye My\nface,\" and His servant's humble response, \"Thy face, Lord, will I seek.\"\nTogether, these made it impossible that that Face, the beams of which\nare light and salvation, should be averted. God's past comes to his lips\nas a plea for a present consistent with it and with His own mighty name.\n\"Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my\nsalvation.\" His loneliness, his ignorance of his road, and the enemies\nwho watch him, and, like a later Saul, \"breathe out cruelty\" (see Acts\nix. 1), become to him in his believing petitions, not grounds of fear,\nbut arguments with God; and having thus mastered all that was\ndistressful in his lot, by making it all the basis of his cry for help,\nhe rises again to hope, and stirs up himself to lay hold on God, to be\nstrong and bold, because his expectation is from Him. A noble picture of\na steadfast soul; steadfast not because of absence of fears and reasons\nfor fear, but because of presence of God and faith in Him.\n\nHaving abandoned Adullam, by the advice of the prophet Gad, who from\nthis time appears to have been a companion till the end of his reign (2\nSam. xxiv. 11), and who subsequently became his biographer (1 Chron.\nxxix. 29), he took refuge, as outlaws have ever been wont to do, in the\nwoods. In his forest retreat, somewhere among the now treeless hills of\nJudah, he heard of a plundering raid made by the Philistines on one of\nthe unhappy border towns. The marauders had broken in upon the mirth of\nthe threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year's\nharvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral\nfoes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as\nhe was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirred\nto action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little band\nbursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recaptures\nthe cattle which like moss troopers they were driving homewards from\nthe ruined farmsteads, and routs them with great slaughter. But the\ncowardly townspeople of Keilah had less gratitude than fear; and the\nking's banished son-in-law was too dangerous a guest, even though he was\nof their own tribe, and had delivered them from the enemy. Saul, who had\nnot stirred from his moody seclusion to beat back invasion, summoned a\nhasty muster, in the hope of catching David in the little city, like a\nfox in his earth: and the cowardly citizens meditated saving their homes\nby surrendering their champion. David and his six hundred saved\nthemselves by a rapid flight, and, as it would appear, by breaking up\ninto detachments. \"They went whithersoever they could go\" (1 Sam. xxiii.\n13); whilst David, with some handful, made his way to the inhospitable\nwilderness which stretches from the hills of Judah to the shores of the\nDead Sea, and skulked there in \"lurking places\" among the crags and\ntangled underwood. With fierce perseverance \"Saul sought him every day,\nbut God delivered him not into his hand.\" One breath of love, fragrant\nand strength-giving, was wafted to his fainting heart, when Jonathan\nfound his way where Saul could not come, and the two friends met once\nmore. In the woodland solitudes they plighted their faith again, and the\nbeautiful unselfishness of Jonathan is wonderfully set forth in his\nwords, \"Thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee;\"\nwhile an awful glimpse is given into that mystery of a godless will\nconsciously resisting the inevitable, when there is added, \"and that\nalso Saul, my father, knoweth.\" In such resistance the king's son has no\npart, for it is pointedly noticed that he returned to his house.\nTreachery, and that from the men of his own tribe, again dogs David's\nsteps. The people of Ziph, a small place on the edge of the southern\ndesert, betray his haunt to Saul. The king receives the intelligence\nwith a burst of thanks, in which furious jealousy and perverted\nreligion, and a sense of utter loneliness and misery, and a strange\nself-pity, are mingled most pathetically and terribly: \"Blessed be ye of\nthe Lord, for ye have compassion on me!\" He sends them away to mark down\nhis prey; and when they have tracked him to his lair, he follows with\nhis force and posts them round the hill where David and his handful\nlurk. The little band try to escape, but they are surrounded and\napparently lost. At the very moment when the trap is just going to\nclose, a sudden messenger, \"fiery red with haste,\" rushes into Saul's\narmy with news of a formidable invasion: \"Haste thee and come; for the\nPhilistines have spread themselves upon the land!\" So the eager hand,\nready to smite and crush, is plucked back; and the hour of deepest\ndistress is the hour of deliverance.\n\nAt some period in this lowest ebb of David's fortunes, we have one short\npsalm, very simple and sad (liv.) It bears the title, \"When the Ziphims\ncame and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?\" and may\nprobably be referred to the former of the two betrayals by the men of\nZiph. The very extremity of peril has made the psalmist still and quiet.\nThe sore need has shortened his prayer. He is too sure that God hears to\nuse many words; for it is distrust, not faith, which makes us besiege\nHis throne with much speaking. He is confident as ever; but one feels\nthat there is a certain self-restraint and air of depression over the\nbrief petitions, which indicate the depth of his distress and the\nuneasiness of protracted anxiety. Two notes only sound from his harp:\none a plaintive cry for help; the other, thanksgiving for deliverance as\nalready achieved. The two are bound together by the recurrence in each\nof \"the name\" of GOD, which is at once the source of his salvation and\nthe theme of his praise. We have only to read the lowly petitions to\nfeel that they speak of a spirit somewhat weighed down by danger, and\nrelaxed from the loftier mood of triumphant trust.\n\n  (1) O God, by Thy name save me,\n      And in Thy strength do judgment for me\n\n  (2) O God, hear my prayer,\n      Give ear to the words of my mouth.\n\n  (3) For strangers are risen against me,\n      And tyrants seek my life.\n      They set not God before them.\n\nThe enemies are called \"strangers;\" but, as we have seen in the first of\nthese songs of the exile, it is not necessary, therefore, to suppose\nthat they were not Israelites. The Ziphites were men of Judah like\nhimself; and there is bitter emphasis as well as a gleam of insight into\nthe spiritual character of the true Israel in calling them foreigners.\nThe other name, oppressors, or violent men, or, as we have rendered it,\ntyrants, corresponds too accurately with the character of Saul in his\nlater years, to leave much doubt that it is pointed at him. If so, the\nsoftening of the harsh description by the use of the plural is in\nbeautiful accordance with the forgiving leniency which runs through all\nDavid's conduct to him. Hard words about Saul himself do not occur in\nthe psalms. His counsellors, his spies, the liars who calumniated David\nto him, and for their own ends played upon his suspicious nature,--the\ntools who took care that the cruel designs suggested by themselves\nshould be carried out, kindle David's wrath, but it scarcely ever lights\non the unhappy monarch whom he loved with all-enduring charity while he\nlived, and mourned with magnificent eulogy when he died. The allusion is\nmade all the more probable, because of the verbal correspondence with\nthe narrative which records that \"Saul was come out to seek his life\" (1\nSam. xxiii. 15.)\n\nA chord or two from the harp permits the mind to dwell on the thought of\nthe foes, and prepares for the second part of this psalm. In it\nthanksgiving and confidence flow from the petitions of the former\nportion. But the praise is not so jubilant, nor the trust so\nvictorious, as we have seen them. \"The peace of God\" has come in answer\nto prayer, but it is somewhat subdued:\n\n  \"Behold, God is my helper;\n   The Lord is the supporter of my life.\"\n\nThe foes sought his life, but, as the historical book gives the\nantithesis, \"Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into\nhis hand.\" The rendering of the English version, \"The Lord is with them\nthat uphold my soul,\" is literally accurate, but does not convey the\nmeaning of the Hebrew idiom. God is not regarded as one among many\nhelpers, but as alone the supporter or upholder of his life. Believing\nthat, the psalmist, of course, believes as a consequence that his\nenemies will be smitten with evil for their evil. The prophetic lip of\nfaith calls things that are not as though they were. In the midst of his\ndangers he looks forward to songs of deliverance and glad sacrifices of\npraise; and the psalm closes with words that approach the more fervid\nutterances we have already heard, as if his song had raised his own\nspirit above its fears:\n\n  (6) With willinghood will I sacrifice unto Thee.\n      I will praise Thy name for it is good.\n\n\n  (7) For from all distress it has delivered me.\n      And on my enemies will mine eye see (my desire)\n\nThe name--the revealed character of God--was the storehouse of all the\nsaving energies to which he appealed in verse 1. It is the theme of his\npraise when the deliverance shall have come. It is almost regarded here\nas equivalent to the Divine personality--it is good, _it_ has delivered\nhim. Thus, we may say that this brief psalm gives us as the single\nthought of a devout soul in trouble, the name of the Lord, and teaches\nby its simple pathos how the contemplation of God as He has made Himself\nknown, should underlie every cry for help and crown every thanksgiving;\nwhilst it may assure us that whosoever seeks for the salvation of that\nmighty name may, even in the midst of trouble, rejoice as in an\naccomplished deliverance. And all such thoughts should be held with a\nfaith at least as firm as the ancient psalmist's, by us to whom the\n\"name\" of the Lord is \"declared\" by Him who is the full revelation of\nGod, and the storehouse of all blessings and help to his \"brethren.\"\n(Heb. ii. 12.)\n\nA little plain of some mile or so in breadth slopes gently down towards\nthe Dead Sea about the centre of its western shore. It is girdled round\nby savage cliffs, which, on the northern side, jut out in a bold\nheadland to the water's edge. At either extremity is a stream flowing\ndown a deep glen choked with luxurious vegetation; great fig-trees,\ncanes, and maiden-hair ferns covering the rocks. High up on the hills\nforming its western boundary a fountain sparkles into light, and falls\nto the flat below in long slender threads. Some grey weathered stones\nmark the site of a city that was old when Abraham wandered in the land.\nTraces of the palm forests which, as its name indicates, were cleared\nfor its site (Hazezon Tamar, The palm-tree clearing) have been found,\nencrusted with limestone, in the warm, damp gullies, and ruined terraces\nfor vineyards can be traced on the bare hill-sides. But the fertility of\nDavid's time is gone, and the precious streams nourish only a jungle\nhaunted by leopard and ibex. This is the fountain and plain of Engedi\n(the fount of the wild goat), a spot which wants but industry and care\nto make it a little paradise. Here David fled from the neighbouring\nwilderness, attracted no doubt by the safety of the deep gorges and\nrugged hills, as well as by the abundance of water in the fountain and\nthe streams. The picturesque and touching episode of his meeting with\nSaul has made the place for ever memorable. There are many excavations\nin the rocks about the fountain, which may have been the cave--black as\nnight to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare of\nsunlight upon limestone, but holding a glimmering twilight to one\nlooking outwards with eyes accustomed to the gloom--in the innermost\nrecesses of which David lay hid while Saul tarried in its mouth. The\nnarrative gives a graphic picture of the hurried colloquy among the\nlittle band, when summary revenge was thus unexpectedly put within their\ngrasp. The fierce retainers whispered their suggestion that it would be\n\"tempting providence\" to let such an opportunity escape; but the nobler\nnature of David knows no personal animosity, and in these earliest days\nis flecked by no cruelty nor lust of blood. He cannot, however, resist\nthe temptation of showing his power and almost parading his forbearance\nby stealing through the darkness and cutting away the end of Saul's long\nrobe. It was little compared with what he could as easily have\ndone--smite him to the heart as he crouched there defenceless. But it\nwas a coarse practical jest, conveying a rude insult, and the quickly\nreturning nobleness of his nature made him ashamed of it, as soon as he\nhad clambered back with his trophy. He felt that the sanctity of Saul's\noffice as the anointed of the Lord should have saved him from the gibe.\nThe king goes his way all unawares, and, as it would seem, had not\nregained his men, when David, leaving his band (very much out of temper\nno doubt at his foolish nicety), yields to a gush of ancient friendship\nand calls loudly after him, risking discovery and capture in his\ngenerous emotion. The pathetic conversation which ensued is eminently\ncharacteristic of both men, so tragically connected and born to work woe\nto one another. David's remonstrance (1 Sam. xxiv. 9-15) is full of\nnobleness, of wounded affection surviving still, of conscious rectitude,\nof solemn devout appeal to the judgment of God. He has no words of\nreproach for Saul, no weak upbraidings, no sullen anger, no repaying\nhate with hate. He almost pleads with the unhappy king, and yet there is\nnothing undignified or feeble in his tone. The whole is full of\ncorrespondences, often of verbal identity, with the psalms which we\nassign to this period. The calumnies which he so often complains of in\nthese are the subject of his first words to Saul, whom he regards as\nhaving had his heart poisoned by lies: \"Wherefore hearest thou men's\nwords, saying, Behold! David seeketh thy hurt.\" He asserts absolute\ninnocence of anything that warranted the king's hostility, just as he\ndoes so decisively in the psalms. \"There is neither evil nor\ntransgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee.\" As in\nthem he so often compares himself to some wild creature pursued like the\ngoats in the cliffs of Engedi, so he tells Saul, \"Thou huntest my life\nto take it.\" And his appeal from earth's slanders, and misconceptions,\nand cruelties, to the perfect tribunal of God, is couched in language,\nevery clause of which may be found in his psalms. \"The Lord, therefore,\nbe judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause,\nand deliver me out of thy hand.\"\n\nThe unhappy Saul again breaks into a passion of tears. With that sudden\nflashing out into vehement emotion so characteristic of him, and so\nsignificant of his enfeebled self-control, he recognises David's\ngenerous forbearance and its contrast to his own conduct. For a moment,\nat all events, he sees, as by a lightning flash, the mad hopelessness of\nthe black road he is treading in resisting the decree that has made his\nrival king--and he binds him by an oath to spare his house when he sits\non the throne. The picture moves awful thoughts and gentle pity for the\npoor scathed soul writhing in its hopelessness and dwelling in a great\nsolitude of fear, but out of which stray gleams of ancient nobleness\nstill break;--and so the doomed man goes back to his gloomy seclusion at\nGibeah, and David to the free life of the mountains and the wilderness.\n\n\n\n\nVII.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\nThere are many echoes of this period of Engedi in the Psalms. Perhaps\nthe most distinctly audible of these are to be found in the seventh\npsalm, which is all but universally recognised as David's, even Ewald\nconcurring in the general consent. It is an irregular ode--for such is\nthe meaning of Shiggaion in the title, and by its broken rhythms and\nabrupt transitions testifies to the emotion of its author. The occasion\nof it is said to be \"the words of Cush the Benjamite.\" As this is a\npeculiar name for an Israelite, it has been supposed to be an\nallegorical designation for some historical person, expressive of his\ncharacter. We might render it \"the negro.\" The Jewish commentators have\ntaken it to refer to Saul himself, but the bitter tone of the psalm, so\nunlike David's lingering forbearance to the man whom he never ceased to\nlove, is against that supposition. Shimei the Benjamite, whose foul\ntongue cursed him in rabid rage, as he fled before Absalom, has also\nbeen thought of, but the points of correspondence with the earlier date\nare too numerous to make that reference tenable. It seems better to\nsuppose that Cush \"the black\" was one of Saul's tribe, who had been\nconspicuous among the calumniators of whom we have seen David\ncomplaining to the king. And if so, there is no period in the Sauline\npersecution into which the psalm will fit so naturally as the present.\nIts main thoughts are precisely those which he poured out so\npassionately in his eager appeal when he and Saul stood face to face on\nthe solitary hill side. They are couched in the higher strain of poetry\nindeed, but that is the only difference; whilst there are several verbal\ncoincidences, and at least one reference to the story, which seem to fix\nthe date with considerable certainty.\n\nIn it we see the psalmist's soul surging with the ground swell of strong\nemotion, which breaks into successive waves of varied feeling--first\n(vers. 1, 2) terror blended with trust, the enemy pictured, as so\nfrequently in these early psalms, as a lion who tears the flesh and\nbreaks the bones of his prey--and the refuge in God described by a\ngraphic word very frequent also in the cotemporaneous psalms (xi. 1;\nlvii. 1, etc.). Then with a quick turn comes the passionate protestation\nof his innocence, in hurried words, broken by feeling, and indignantly\nturning away from the slanders which he will not speak of more\ndefinitely than calling them \"this.\"\n\n  (3) Jehovah, my God! if I have done this--\n      If there be iniquity in my hands--\n\n  (4) If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me--\n      Yea, I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy--\n\n  (5) May the enemy pursue my soul and capture it,\n      And trample down to the earth my life,\n      And my glory in the dust may he lay!\n\nHow remarkably all this agrees with his words to Saul, \"There is neither\nevil nor transgression in my hand, ... yet thou huntest my soul to take\nit\" (1 Sam. xxiv. 11); and how forcible becomes the singular reiteration\nin the narrative, of the phrase \"my hand,\" which occurs six times in\nfour verses. The peculiarly abrupt introduction in ver. 4 of the clause,\n\"I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy,\" which completely\ndislocates the grammatical structure, is best accounted for by\nsupposing that David's mind is still full of the temptation to stain\nhis hands with Saul's blood, and is vividly conscious of the effort\nwhich he had had to make to overcome it. And the solemn invocation of\ndestruction which he dares to address to Jehovah his God includes the\nfamiliar figure of himself as a fugitive before the hunters, which is\nfound in the words already quoted, and which here as there stands in\nimmediate connection with his assertion of clean hands.\n\nThen follows, with another abrupt turn, a vehement cry to God to judge\nhis cause; his own individual case melts into the thought of a\nworld-wide judgment, which is painted with grand power with three or\nfour broad rapid strokes.\n\n  (6) Awake for me--Thou hast commanded judgment.\n\n  (7) Let the assembly of the nations stand round Thee,\n      And above it return Thou up on high.\n\n  (8) Jehovah will judge the nations.\n      Judge me, O Jehovah, according to my righteousness and mine\n       integrity in me!\n\nEach smaller act of God's judgment is connected with the final\nworld-judgment, is a prophecy of it, is one in principle therewith; and\nHe, who at the last will be known as the universal Judge of all,\ncertainly cannot leave His servants' cause unredressed nor their cry\nunheard till then. The psalmist is led by his own history to realize\nmore intensely that truth of a Divine manifestation for judicial\npurposes to the whole world, and his prophetic lip paints its\nsolemnities as the surest pledge of his own deliverance. He sees the\ngathered nations standing hushed before the Judge, and the Victor God at\nthe close of the solemn act ascending up on high where He was before,\nabove the heads of the mighty crowd (Psalm lxviii. 19). In the faith of\nthis vision, and because God will judge the nations, he invokes for\nhimself the anticipation of that final triumph of good over evil, and\nasks to be dealt with according to his righteousness. Nothing but the\nmost hopeless determination to find difficulties could make a difficulty\nof such words. David is not speaking of his whole character or life, but\nof his conduct in one specific matter, namely, in his relation to Saul.\nThe righteous integrity which he calls God to vindicate is not general\nsinlessness nor inward conformity with the law of God, but his\nblamelessness in all his conduct to his gratuitous foe. His prayer that\nGod would judge him is distinctly equivalent to his often repeated cry\nfor deliverance, which should, as by a Divine arbitration, decide the\ndebate between Saul and him. The whole passage in the psalm, with all\nits lyrical abruptness and lofty imagery, is the expression of the very\nsame thought which we find so prominent in his words to Saul, already\nquoted, concerning God's judging between them and delivering David out\nof Saul's hand. The parallel is instructive, not only as the prose\nrendering of the poetry in the psalm, explaining it beyond the\npossibility of misunderstanding, but also as strongly confirmatory of\nthe date which we have assigned to the latter. It is so improbable as to\nbe almost inconceivable that the abrupt disconnected themes of the psalm\nshould echo so precisely the _whole_ of the arguments used in the\nremonstrance of the historical books, and should besides present verbal\nresemblances and historical allusions to these, unless it be of the same\nperiod, and therefore an inlet into the mind of the fugitive as he\nlurked among the rugged cliffs by \"the fountain of the wild goat.\"\n\nIn that aspect the remainder of the psalm is very striking and\nsignificant. We have two main thoughts in it--that of God as punishing\nevil in this life, and that of the self-destruction inherent in all sin;\nand these are expressed with such extraordinary energy as to attest at\nonce the profound emotion of the psalmist, and his familiarity with such\nideas during his days of persecution. It is noticeable, too, that the\nlanguage is carefully divested of all personal reference; he has risen\nto the contemplation of a great law of the Divine government, and at\nthat elevation the enemies whose calumnies and cruelties had driven him\nto God fade into insignificance.\n\nWith what magnificent boldness he paints God the Judge arraying Himself\nin His armour of destruction!\n\n  (11) God is a righteous Judge,\n       And a God (who is) angry every day.\n\n  (12) If he (_i.e._, the evil-doer) turn not, He whets His sword,\n       His bow He has bent, and made it ready.\n\n  (13) And for him He has prepared weapons of death,\n       His arrows He has made blazing darts.\n\nSurely there is nothing grander in any poetry than this tremendous\nimage, smitten out with so few strokes of the chisel, and as true as it\nis grand. The representation applies to the facts of life, of which as\ndirected by a present Providence, and not of any future retribution,\nDavid is here thinking. Among these facts is chastisement falling upon\nobstinate antagonism to God. Modern ways of thinking shrink from such\nrepresentations; but the whole history of the world teems with\nconfirmation of their truth--only what David calls the flaming arrows of\nGod, men call \"the natural consequences of evil.\" The later revelation\nof God in Christ brings into greater prominence the disciplinary\ncharacter of all punishment here, but bates no jot of the intensity with\nwhich the earlier revelation grasped the truth of God as a righteous\nJudge in eternal opposition to, and aversion from, evil.\n\nWith that solemn picture flaming before his inward eye, the\nprophet-psalmist turns to gaze on the evil-doer who has to bear the\nbrunt of these weapons of light. Summoning us to look with him by a\n\"Behold!\" he tells his fate in an image of frequent occurrence in the\npsalms of this period, and very natural in the lips of a man wandering\nin the desert among wild creatures, and stumbling sometimes into the\ntraps dug for them: \"He has dug a hole and hollowed it out, and he falls\ninto the pitfall he is making.\" The crumbling soil in which he digs\nmakes his footing on the edge more precarious with every spadeful that\nhe throws out, and at last, while he is hard at work, in he tumbles. It\nis the conviction spoken in the proverbs of all nations, expressed here\nby David in a figure drawn from life--the conviction that all sin digs\nits own grave and is self-destructive. The psalm does not proclaim the\nyet deeper truth that this automatic action, by which sin sets in motion\nits own punishment, has a disciplinary purpose, so that the arrows of\nGod wound for healing, and His armour is really girded on for, even\nwhile it seems to be against, the sufferer. But it would not be\ndifficult to show that that truth underlies the whole Old Testament\ndoctrine of retribution, and is obvious in many of David's psalms. In\nthe present one the deliverance of the hunted prey is contemplated as\nthe end of the baffled trapper's fall into his own snare, and beyond\nthat the psalmist's thoughts do not travel. His own safety, the\ncertainty that his appeal to God's judgment will not be in vain, fill\nhis mind; and without following the fate of his enemy further, he closes\nthis song of tumultuous and varied emotion with calm confidence and a\nvow of thanksgiving for a deliverance which is already as good as\naccomplished:\n\n  (17) I will give thanks to Jehovah according to His righteousness,\n       And I will sing the name of Jehovah, Most High.\n\nWe have still another psalm (lvii.) which is perhaps best referred to\nthis period. According to the title, it belongs to the time when David\n\"fled from Saul in the cave.\" This may, of course, apply to either\nAdullam or Engedi, and there is nothing decisive to be alleged for\neither; yet one or two resemblances to psalm vii. incline the balance to\nthe latter period.\n\nThese resemblances are the designation of his enemies as lions (vii. 2;\nlvii. 4); the image of their falling into their own trap (vii. 15; lvii.\n6); the use of the phrase \"my honour\" or \"glory\" for \"my soul\" (vii. 5;\nlvii. 8--the same word in the original); the name of God as \"Most High\"\n(vii. 17; lvii. 2), an expression which only occurs twice besides in the\nDavidic psalms (ix. 2; xxi. 7); the parallelism in sense between the\npetition which forms the centre and the close of the one, \"Be Thou\nexalted, O God, above the heavens\" (lvii. 5, 11), and that which is the\nmost emphatic desire of the other, \"Arise, O Lord, awake, ... lift up\nThyself for me\" (vii. 6). Another correspondence, not preserved in our\nEnglish version, is the employment in both of a rare poetical word,\nwhich originally means \"to complete,\" and so comes naturally to have the\nsecondary significations of \"to perfect\" and \"to put an end to.\" The\nword in question only occurs five times in the Old Testament, and always\nin psalms. Four of these are in hymns ascribed to David, of which two\nare (lvii. 2), \"The God that _performeth_ all things for me,\" and (vii.\n9), \"Let the wickedness of the wicked _come to an end_.\" The use of the\nsame peculiar word in two such dissimilar connections seems to show that\nit was, as we say, \"running in his head\" at the time, and is, perhaps, a\nstronger presumption of the cotemporaneousness of both psalms than its\nemployment in both with the same application would have been.\n\nCharacteristic of these early psalms is the occurrence of a refrain\n(compare lvi. and lix.) which in the present instance closes both of\nthe portions of which the hymn consists. The former of these (1-5)\nbreathes prayerful trust, from which it passes to describe the\nencompassing dangers; the second reverses this order, and beginning with\nthe dangers and distress, rises to ringing gladness and triumph, as\nthough the victory were already won. The psalmist's confident cleaving\nof soul to God is expressed (ver. 1) by an image that may be connected\nwith his circumstances at Engedi: \"In Thee has my soul taken refuge.\"\nThe English version is correct as regards the sense, though it\nobliterates the beautiful metaphor by its rendering \"trusteth.\" The\nliteral meaning of the verb is \"to flee to a refuge,\" and its employment\nhere may be due to the poetical play of the imagination, which likens\nhis secure retreat among the everlasting hills to the safe hiding-place\nwhich his spirit found in God his habitation. A similar analogy appears\nin the earliest use of the expression, which may have been floating in\nthe psalmist's memory, and which occurs in the ancient song of Moses\n(Deut. xxxii.). The scenery of the forty years' wanderings remarkably\ncolours that ode, and explains the frequent recurrence in it of the name\nof God as \"the Rock.\" We have false gods, too, spoken of in it, as,\n\"Their rock in whom they took refuge,\" where the metaphor appears in its\ncompleteness (ver. 37). Our psalm goes on with words which contain a\nfurther allusion to another part of the same venerable hymn, \"And in the\nshadow of Thy wings will I take refuge,\" which remind us of the grand\nimage in it of God's care over Israel, as of the eagle bearing her\neaglets on her mighty pinions (ver. 11), and point onwards to the still\nmore wonderful saying in which all that was terrible and stern in the\nolder figure is softened into tenderness, and instead of the fierce\naffection of the mother eagle, the hen gathering her chickens under her\nwings becomes the type of the brooding love and more than maternal\nsolicitude of God in Christ. Nor can we forget that the only other\ninstance of the figure before David's psalms is in the exquisite idyl\nwhich tells of the sweet heroism of David's ancestress, Ruth, on whose\ngentle and homeless head was pronounced the benediction, \"A full reward\nbe given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come\nto trust\" (Ruth ii. 12). We may perhaps also see in this clause an\nextension of the simile which unquestionably lies in the verb, and may\nthink of the strong \"sides of the cave,\" arching above the fugitive like\na gigantic pair of wings beneath which he nestles warm and dry, while\nthe short-lived storm roars among the rocks--a type of that broad pinion\nwhich is his true defence till threatening evils be overpast. In the\npast he has sheltered his soul in God, but no past act of faith can\navail for present distresses. It must be perpetually renewed. The past\ndeliverances should make the present confidence more easy; and the true\nuse of all earlier exercises of trust is to prepare for the resolve that\nwe will still rely on the help we have so often proved. \"I have trusted\nin Thee\" should ever be followed by \"And in the shadow of Thy wings will\nI trust.\"\n\nThe psalmist goes on to fulfil his resolve. He takes refuge by prayer in\nGod, whose absolute elevation above all creatures and circumstances is\nthe ground of his hope, whose faithful might will accomplish its design,\nand complete His servant's lot. \"I will call to God Most High; to God\nwho perfects (His purpose) for me.\" And then assured hope gleams upon\nhis soul, and though the storm-clouds hang low and black as ever, they\nare touched with light. \"He will send from heaven and save me.\" But even\nwhile this happy certainty dawns upon him, the contending fears, which\never lurk hard by faith, reassert their power, and burst in, breaking\nthe flow of the sentence, which by its harsh construction indicates the\nsudden irruption of disturbing thoughts. \"He that would swallow me up\nreproaches (me).\" With this two-worded cry of pain--prolonged by the\nvery unusual occurrence, in the middle of a verse, of the \"Selah,\" which\nis probably a musical direction for the accompaniment--a billow of\nterror breaks over his soul; but its force is soon spent, and the hope,\nabove which for a moment it had rolled, rises from the broken spray like\nsome pillared light round which the surges dash in vain. \"God shall send\nforth His mercy and His truth\"--those two white-robed messengers who\ndraw nigh to all who call on Him. Then follows in broken words, the true\nrendering of which is matter of considerable doubt, a renewed picture of\nhis danger:\n\n  (4) (With) my soul--among lions will I lie down.\n      Devourers are the sons of men;\n      Their teeth a spear and arrows,\n      And their tongue a sharp sword\n\nThe psalmist seems to have broken off the construction, and instead of\nfinishing the sentence as he began it, to have substituted the first\nperson for the third, which ought to have followed \"my soul.\" This\nfragmentary construction expresses agitation of spirit. It may be a\nquestion whether the \"lions\" in the first clause are to be regarded as a\ndescription of his enemies, who are next spoken of without metaphor as\nsons of men who devour (or who \"breathe out fire\"), and whose words are\ncutting and wounding as spear and sword. The analogy of the other psalms\nof this period favours such an understanding of the words. But, on the\nother hand, the reference preferred by Delitzsch and others gives great\nbeauty. According to that interpretation, the fugitive among the savage\ncliffs prepares himself for his nightly slumbers in calm confidence, and\nlays himself down there in the cave, while the wild beasts, whose haunt\nit may have been, prowl without, feeling himself safer among them than\namong the more ferocious \"sons of men,\" whose hatred has a sharper tooth\nthan even theirs. And then this portion of the psalm closes with the\nrefrain, \"Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let Thy glory be\nabove all the earth.\" A prayer that God would show forth His power, and\nexalt His name by delivering His servant. What lofty conviction that his\ncause was God's cause, that the Divine honour was concerned in his\nsafety, that he was a chosen instrument to make known God's praise over\nall the world!--and what self-forgetfulness in that, even whilst he\nprays for his own deliverance, he thinks of it rather as the magnifying\nof God, than as it affects himself personally!\n\nThe second part continues the closing strain of the former, and\ndescribes the plots of his foes in the familiar metaphor of the pit,\ninto which they fall themselves. The contemplation of this divine\nNemesis on evil-doers leads up to the grand burst of thanksgiving with\nwhich the psalm closes--\n\n  (7) Fixed is my heart, O God! fixed my heart!\n      I will sing and strike the harp.[K]\n\n  (8) Awake, my glory! awake psaltery and harp![L]\n      I will awake the dawn.\n\n[K] Properly, \"sing with a musical accompaniment.\"\n\n[L] Two kinds of stringed instrument, the difference between which is\nvery obscure.\n\nIf the former part may be regarded as the evening song of confidence,\nthis is the morning hymn of thankfulness. He lay down in peace among\nlions; he awakes to praise. He calls upon his soul to shake off slumber;\nhe invokes the chords of his harp to arouse from its chamber the\nsleeping dawn. Like a mightier than himself, he will rise a great while\nbefore day, and the clear notes of the rude lyre, his companion in all\nhis wanderings, will summon the morning to add its silent speech to His\npraise. But a still loftier thought inspires him. This hunted solitary\nnot only knows that his deliverance is certain, but he has already the\nconsciousness of a world-wide vocation, and anticipates that the story\nof his sorrow and his trust, with the music of his psalms, belong to the\nworld, and will flow over the barriers of his own generation and of his\nown land into the whole earth--\n\n   (9) I will praise Thee among the peoples, O Lord,\n       I will strike the harp to Thee among the nations.\n\n  (10) For great unto the heavens is Thy mercy,\n       And to the clouds Thy truth.\n\nThese two mighty messengers of God, whose coming he was sure of (ver.\n3), will show themselves in his deliverance, boundless and filling all\nthe creation. They shall be the theme of his world-wide praise. And\nthen with the repetition of the refrain the psalm comes round again to\nsupplication, and dies into silent waiting before God till He shall be\npleased to answer. Thus triumphant were the hopes of the lonely fugitive\nskulking in the wilderness; such bright visions peopled the waste\nplaces, and made the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.\n\nThe cxlii. is also, according to the title, one of the cave-psalms. But\nconsiderable doubt attaches to the whole group of so-called Davidic\ncompositions in the last book of the psalter (p. 138-144), from their\nplace, and from the fact that there are just seven of them, as well as\nin some cases from their style and character. They are more probably\nlater hymns in David's manner. The one in question corresponds in tone\nwith the psalms which we have been considering. It breathes the same\nprofound consciousness of desolation and loneliness: \"My spirit is\ndarkened within me;\" \"Refuge fails me, no man cares for my soul.\" It\nglows with the same ardour of personal trust in and love to God which\nspring from his very loneliness and helplessness: \"I cry unto Thee, O\nJehovah! I say Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the\nliving.\" It triumphs with the same confidence, and with the same\nconviction that his deliverance concerns all the righteous: \"They shall\n_crown themselves in me_, for Thou hast dealt bountifully with me;\" for\nsuch would appear to be the true meaning of the word rendered in our\nversion \"compass me about;\" the idea being that the mercy of God to the\npsalmist would become a source of festal gladness to all His servants,\nwho would bind the story of God's bounty to him upon their brows like a\ncoronal for a banquet.\n\n\n\n\nVIII.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\nAs our purpose in this volume is not a complete biography, it will not\nbe necessary to dwell on the subsequent portions of the exile, inasmuch\nas there is little reference to these in the psalms. We must pass over\neven that exquisite episode of Abigail, whose graceful presence and\n\"most subtle flow of silver-paced counsel\" soothed David's ruffled\nspirit, and led him captive at once as in a silken leash. The glimpse of\nold-world ways in the story, the rough mirth of the shearers, the hint\nof the kind of black mail by which David's little force was provided,\nthe snarling humour and garrulous crustiness of Nabal, David's fierce\nblaze of hot wrath, the tribute of the shepherds to the kindliness and\nhonour of the outlaws, the rustic procession, with the gracious lady\nlast of all, the stately courtesy of the meeting, her calm wise\nwords--not flattery, yet full of predictions of prosperity most pleasant\nto hear from such lips; not rebuke, yet setting in the strongest light\nhow unworthy of God's anointed personal vengeance was; not servile, but\nyet recognising in delicate touches his absolute power over her; not\nabject, and yet full of supplication,--the quick response of David's\nfrank nature and susceptible heart, which sweeps away all his wrath; the\nbudding germ of love, which makes him break into benedictions on her and\nher wisdom, and thankfulness that he had been kept back from \"hurting\n_thee_,\" and the dramatic close in their happy union,--all make up one\nof the most charming of the many wonderful idyls of Scripture, all\nfragrant with the breath of love, and fresh with undying youth. The\nstory lives--alas! how much longer do words endure than the poor earthly\naffections which they record!\n\nAfter a second betrayal by the men of Ziph, and a second meeting with\nSaul--their last--in which the doomed man parts from him with blessing\nand predictions of victory on his unwilling lips, David seems to have\nbeen driven to desperation by his endless skulking in dens and caves,\nand to have seen no hope of continuing much longer to maintain himself\non the frontier and to elude Saul's vigilance. Possibly others than\nNabal grudged to pay him for the volunteer police which he kept up on\nbehalf of the pastoral districts exposed to the wild desert tribes. At\nall events he once more made a plunge into Philistine territory, and\noffers himself and his men to the service of the King of Gath. On the\noffer being accepted, the little town of Ziklag was allotted to them,\nand became their home for a year and four months.\n\nTo this period of comparative security one psalm has been supposed to\nbelong--the xxxi., which, in tone and in certain expressions,\ncorresponds very well with the circumstances. There are many\nsimilarities in it with the others of the same period which we have\nalready considered--such, for instance, as the figure of God his rock\n(ver. 3), the net which his enemies have laid for him (ver. 4), the\nallusions to their calumnies and slanders (vers. 13, 18), his safe\nconcealment in God (ver. 20: compare xxvii. 5; lvii. 1; xvii. 8, etc.),\nand the close verbal resemblance of ver. 24 with the closing words of\npsalm xxvii. The reference, however, which has been taken as pointing to\nDavid's position in Ziklag is that contained in the somewhat remarkable\nwords (ver. 21): \"Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me His\nmarvellous loving-kindness in a strong city.\" Of course, the expression\nmay be purely a graphic figure for the walls and defences of the Divine\nprotection, as, indeed, it is usually understood to be. But the general\nidea of the encompassing shelter of God has just been set forth in the\nmagnificent imagery of the previous verse as the tabernacle, the secret\nof His presence in which He hides and guards His servants. And the\nfurther language of the phrase in question, introduced as it is by a\nrapturous burst of blessing and praise, seems so emphatic and peculiar\nas to make not unnatural the supposition of a historical basis in some\nevent which had recently happened to the psalmist.\n\nNo period of the life will so well correspond to such a requirement as\nthe sixteen months of his stay in Ziklag, during which he was completely\nfree from fear of Saul, and stood high in favour with the King of Gath,\nin whose territory he had found a refuge. We may well believe that to\nthe hunted exile, so long accustomed to a life of constant alarms and\nhurried flight, the quiet of a settled home was very sweet, and that\nbehind the rude fortifications of the little town in the southern\nwilderness there seemed security, which made a wonderful contrast to\ntheir defenceless lairs and lurking-places among the rocks. Their eyes\nwould lose their watchful restlessness, and it would be possible to lay\naside their weapons, to gather their households about them, and, though\nthey were in a foreign land, still to feel something of the bliss of\npeaceful habitudes and tranquil use and wont healing their broken lives.\nNo wonder, then, that such thankful praise should break from the\nleader's lips! No wonder that he should regard this abode in a fortified\ncity as the result of a miracle of Divine mercy! He describes the\ntremulous despondency which had preceded this marvel of loving-kindness\nin language which at once recalls the wave of hopelessness which swept\nacross his soul after his final interview with Saul, and which led to\nhis flight into Philistine territory, \"And David said in his heart, I\nshall now perish one day by the hand of Saul\" (1 Sam. xxvii. 1). How\ncompletely this corresponds with the psalm, allowance being made for the\ndifference between poetry and prose, when he describes the thoughts\nwhich had shaded his soul just before the happy peace of the strong\ncity--\"I said in my haste,[M] I am cut off from before Thine eyes;\nnevertheless Thou heardest the voice of my supplication\" (ver. 22). And\nrising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience to\nthe great truths concerning God's care of His children, the discovery of\nwhich was to him even more precious than his personal safety, he breaks\nforth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of his\nconsciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole household\nof God--\n\n  (23) O love Jehovah, all ye beloved of Him!\n       The faithful doth Jehovah preserve,\n       And plentifully repayeth the proud-doer.\n\n  (24) Courage! and let your heart be strong,\n       All ye that wait for Jehovah!\n\n[M] Confusion (Perowne), distrust (Delitzsch), anguish (Ewald),\ntrepidation (Calvin). The word literally means to sway backwards and\nforwards, and hence to be agitated by any emotion, principally by fear;\nand then, perhaps, to flee in terror.\n\nThe glow of personal attachment to Jehovah which kindles in the trustful\nwords is eminently characteristic. It anticipates the final teaching of\nthe New Testament in bringing all the relations between God and the\ndevout soul down to the one bond of love. \"We love Him because He first\nloved us,\" says John. And David has the same discernment that the basis\nof all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of God, and that the\nonly response which that seeking love requires is the awaking of the\necho of its own Divine voice in our hearts. Love begets love; love seeks\nlove; love rests in love. Our faith _corresponds_ to His faithfulness,\nour obedience to His command, our reverence to His majesty; but our love\n_resembles_ His, from which it draws its life. So the one exhortation is\n\"love the Lord,\" and the ground of it lies in that name--\"His\nbeloved\"--those to whom He shows His loving-kindness (ver. 21).\n\nThe closing words remind us of the last verse of psalm xxvii. They are\ndistinctly quoted from it, with the variation that there the heartening\nto courage was addressed to his own soul, and here to \"all who wait on\nthe Lord.\" The resemblance confirms the reference of both psalms to the\nsame epoch, while the difference suits the change in his circumstances\nfrom a period of comparative danger, such as his stay at Adullam, to one\nof greater security, like his residence in Ziklag. The same persons who\nwere called to love the Lord because they were participant of His\nloving-kindness, are now called to courage and manly firmness of soul\nbecause their hope is fixed on Jehovah. The progress of thought is\nsignificant and obvious. Love to God, resting on consciousness of His\nlove to us, is the true armour. \"There is no fear in love.\" The heart\nfilled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters,\nwhile the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grinding\ncollision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry sea\nof life. Love, too, is the condition of hope. The patience and\nexpectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the\nsweetness of the former. Of these fair sisters, Love is the elder as the\ngreater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which Hope\nforges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experience\nsupplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance;\nand she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, and\nclear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. To\nlove the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. So\nhad the psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous years\nof exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on\nhis lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external\nsecurity, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. Not\nin vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to his\nfeet from their stormy waves. Not in vain will ours be to us, if we\nlearn the lesson which he here would divide with all those \"that wait on\nthe Lord.\"\n\nOur limits prevent the further examination of the remaining psalms of\nthis period. It is the less necessary, inasmuch as those which have been\nalready considered fairly represent the whole. The xi., xiii., xvii.,\nxxii., xxv., and lxiv. may, with varying probability, be considered as\nbelonging to the Sauline persecution. To this list some critics would\nadd the xl. and lxix., but on very uncertain grounds. But if we exclude\nthem, the others have a strong family likeness, not only with each\nother, but with those which have been presented to the reader. The\nimagery of the wilderness, which has become so familiar to us,\ncontinually reappears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares,\nthe hunted psalmist like a timid bird among the hills; the protestation\nof innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked,\nthe confidence that their own devices will come down on their heads, the\nintense yearning of soul after God--are all repeated in these psalms.\nSingle metaphors and peculiar phrases which we have already met with\nrecur--as, for instance, \"the shadow of Thy wings\" (xvii. 8, lvii. 1),\nand the singular phrase rendered in our version, \"show Thy marvellous\nloving-kindness\" (xvii. 7, xxxi. 21), which is found only here. In one\nof these psalms (xxxv. 13) there seems to be a reference to his earliest\ndays at the court, and to the depth of loving sympathy with Saul's\ndarkened spirit, which he learned to cherish, as he stood before him to\nsoothe him with the ordered harmonies of harp and voice. The words are\nso definite that they appear to refer to some historic occasion:\n\n  And as for me--in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth,\n  With fasting I humbled my soul,\n  And my prayer into my own bosom returned.\n\nSo truly did he feel for him who is now his foe. The outward marks of\nmourning became the natural expression of his feelings. Such is plainly\nthe meaning of the two former clauses, as well as of the following\nverse. As the whole is a description of the outward signs of grief, it\nseems better to understand the last of these three clauses as a picture\nof the bent head sunk on the bosom even while he prayed,[N] than to\nbreak the connection by referring it either to the requital of hate for\nhis sympathy,[O] or to the purity of his prayer, which was such that he\ncould desire nothing more for himself.[P] He goes on with the\nenumeration of the signs of sorrow: \"As if (he had been) a friend, a\nbrother to me, I went,\"--walking slowly, like a man absorbed in sorrow:\n\"as one who laments a mother, in mourning garments I bowed\ndown,\"--walking with a weary, heavy stoop, like one crushed by a\nmother's death, with the garb of woe. Thus faithfully had he loved, and\ntruly wept for the noble ruined soul which, blinded by passion and\npoisoned by lies, had turned to be his enemy. And that same love clung\nby him to the last, as it ever does with great and good men, who learn\nof God to suffer long and be kind, to bear all things, and hope all\nthings.\n\n[N] So Ewald and Delitzsch.\n\n[O] Hupfeld.\n\n[P] Perowne.\n\nOf these psalms the xxii. is remarkable. In it David's personal\nexperience seems to afford only the starting-point for a purely\nMessianic prophecy, which embraces many particulars that far transcend\nanything recorded of his sorrows. The impossibility of finding\noccurrences in his life corresponding to such traits as tortured limbs\nand burning thirst, pierced hands and parted garments, has driven some\ncritics to the hypothesis that we have here a psalm of the exile\ndescribing either actual sufferings inflicted on some unknown confessor\nin Babylon, or in figurative language the calamities of Israel there.\nBut the Davidic origin is confirmed by many obvious points of\nresemblance with the psalms which are indisputably his, and especially\nwith those of the Sauline period, while the difficulty of finding\nhistorical facts answering to the emphatic language is evaded, not met,\nby either assuming that such facts existed in some life which has left\nno trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which sound\nwonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. Of course, if we\nbelieve that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighter\nthan the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. But, unless we\nhave a foregone conclusion of that sort to blind us, we shall see in\nthis psalm a clear example of the prophecy of a suffering Messiah. In\nmost of the other psalms where David speaks of his sorrows we have only\na typical foreshadowing of Christ. But in this, and in such others as\nlxix. and cix. (if these are David's), we have type changing into\nprophecy, and the person of the psalmist fading away before the image\nwhich, by occasion of his own griefs, rose vast, and solemn, and distant\nbefore his prophet gaze,--the image of One who should be perfectly all\nwhich he was in partial measure, the anointed of God, the utterer of His\nname to His brethren, the King of Israel,--and whose path to His\ndominion should be thickly strewn with solitary sorrow, and reproach,\nand agony, to whose far more exceeding weight of woe all his affliction\nwas light as a feather, and transitory as a moment. And when the\npsalmist had learned that lesson, besides all the others of trust and\npatience which his wanderings taught him, his schooling was nearly over,\nhe was almost ready for a new discipline; and the slowly-evolving\nrevelation of God's purposes, which by his sorrows had unfolded more\ndistinctly than before \"the sufferings of the Messiah,\" was ripening for\nthe unveiling, in his Kinghood, of \"the glory that should follow.\"\n\n\n\n\nIX.--THE KING.\n\n\nWe have now to turn and see the sudden change of fortune which lifted\nthe exile to a throne. The heavy cloud which had brooded so long over\nthe doomed king broke in lightning crash on the disastrous field of\nGilboa. Where is there a sadder and more solemn story of the fate of a\nsoul which makes shipwreck \"of faith and of a good conscience,\" than\nthat awful page which tells how, godless, wretched, mad with despair and\nmeasureless pride, he flung himself on his bloody sword, and died a\nsuicide's death, with sons and armour-bearer and all his men, a ghastly\ncourt of corpses, laid round him? He had once been brave, modest, and\nkind, full of noble purposes and generous affections--and he ended so.\nInto what doleful regions of hate and darkness may self-will drag a\nsoul, when once the reins fall loose from a slackened hand! And what a\npathetic beam of struggling light gleams through heavy clouds, in the\ngrateful exploit of the men of Jabesh, who remembered how he had once\nsaved them, while yet he could care and dare for his kingdom, and\nperilled their lives to bear the poor headless corpse to its rude\nresting-place!\n\nThe news is received by the fugitive at Ziklag in striking and\ncharacteristic fashion. He first flames out in fierce wrath upon the\nlying Amalekite, who had hurried with the tidings and sought favour by\nfalsely representing that he had killed the king on the field. A short\nshrift and a bloody end were his. And then the wrath melts into\nmourning. Forgetting the mad hatred and wild struggles of that poor\nsoul, and his own wrongs, remembering only the friendship and nobleness\nof his earlier days, he casts over the mangled corpses of Saul and\nJonathan the mantle of his sweet elegy, and bathes them with the healing\nwaters of his unstinted praise and undying love. Not till these two\noffices of justice and affection had been performed, does he remember\nhimself and the change in his own position which had been effected. He\nhad never thought of Saul as standing between him and the kingdom; the\nfirst feeling on his death was not, as it would have been with a less\ndevout and less generous heart, a flush of gladness at the thought of\nthe empty throne, but a sharp pang of pain from the sense of an empty\nheart. And even when he begins to look forward to his own new course,\nthere is that same remarkable passiveness which we have observed\nalready. His first step is to \"inquire of the Lord, saying, Shall I go\nup to any of the cities of Judah?\" (2 Sam. ii. 1). He will do nothing in\nthis crisis of his fortunes, when all which had been so long a hope\nseemed to be rapidly becoming a fact, until his Shepherd shall lead him.\nRapid and impetuous as he was by nature, schooled to swift decisions,\nfollowed by still swifter action, knowing that a blow struck at once,\nwhile all was chaos and despair at home, might set him on the throne, he\nholds nature and policy and the impatience of his people in check to\nhear what God will say. So fully did he fulfil the vow of his early\npsalm, \"My strength! upon thee will I wait\" (lix. 9).\n\nWe can fancy the glad march to the ancient Hebron, where the great\nfathers of the nation lay in their rock-hewn tombs. Even before the\ndeath of Saul, David's strength had been rapidly increasing, by a\nconstant stream of fugitives from the confusion and misery into which\nthe kingdom had fallen. Even Benjamin, Saul's own tribe, sent him some\nof its famous archers--a sinister omen of the king's waning fortunes;\nthe hardy half-independent men of Manasseh and Gad, from the pastoral\nuplands on the east of Jordan, \"whose faces,\" according to the vivid\ndescription of the chronicler (1 Chron. xii. 8), \"were like the faces of\nlions, and were as swift as roes upon the mountains,\" sought his\nstandard; and from his own kinsmen of Judah recruits \"day by day came to\nDavid to help him, until it was a great host like the host of God.\" With\nsuch forces, it would have been child's play to have subdued any\nscattered troops of the former dynasty which might still have been in a\ncondition to keep the field. But he made no attempt of the sort; and\neven when he came to Hebron he took no measures to advance any claims to\nthe crown. The language of the history seems rather to imply a\ndisbanding of his army, or at least their settling down to domestic life\nin the villages round Hebron, without a thought of winning the kingdom\nby arms. And his elevation to the partial monarchy which he at first\npossessed was the spontaneous act of \"the men of Judah,\" who come to him\nand anoint him king over Judah.\n\nThe limits of his territory are substantially those of the kingdom over\nwhich his descendants ruled after Jeroboam's revolt, thus indicating the\nexistence of a natural \"line of cleavage\" between north and south. The\ngeographical position of Benjamin finally attached it to the latter\nmonarchy; but for the present, the wish to retain the supremacy which it\nhad had while the king was one of the tribe, made it the nucleus of a\nfeeble and lingering opposition to David, headed by Saul's cousin Abner,\nand rallying round his incompetent son Ishbosheth.[Q] The chronology of\nthis period is obscure. David reigned in Hebron seven years and a half,\nand as Ishbosheth's phantom sovereignty only occupied two of these\nyears, and those evidently the last, it would appear almost as if the\nPhilistines had held the country, with the exception of Judah, in such\nforce that no rival cared to claim the dangerous dignity, and that five\nyears passed before the invaders were so far cleared out as to leave\nleisure for civil war.\n\n[Q] The Canaanitish worship of Baal seems to have lingered in Saul's\nfamily. One of his grand-uncles was named Baal (1 Chron. ix. 36); his\nson was really called Eshbaal (Fire of Baal), which was contemptuously\nconverted into Ishbosheth (Man of Shame). So also Mephibosheth was\nproperly Meribbaal (Fighter for Baal).\n\nThe summary narrative of these seven years presents the still youthful\nking in a very lovable light. The same temper which had marked his first\nacts after Saul's death is strikingly brought out (2 Sam. ii.-iv.) He\nseems to have left the conduct of the war altogether to Joab, as if he\nshrank from striking a single blow for his own advancement. When he does\ninterfere, it is on the side of peace, to curb and chastise ferocious\nvengeance and dastardly assassination. The incidents recorded all go to\nmake up a picture of rare generosity, of patient waiting for God to\nfulfil His purposes, of longing that the miserable strife between the\ntribes of God's inheritance should end. He sends grateful messages to\nJabesh-Gilead; he will not begin the conflict with the insurgents. The\nonly actual fight recorded is provoked by Abner, and managed with\nunwonted mildness by Joab. The list of his children born in Hebron is\ninserted in the very heart of the story of the insurrection, a token of\nthe quiet domestic life of peaceful joys and cares which he lived while\nthe storm was raging without. Eagerly, and without suspicion, he\nwelcomes Abner's advances towards reconciliation. He falls for a moment\nto the level of his times, and yields to a strong temptation, in making\nthe restoration of his long-lost wife Michal the condition of further\nnegotiations--a demand which was strictly just, no doubt, but for which\nlittle more can be said. The generosity of his nature and the ideal\npurity of his love, which that incident shadows, shine out again in his\nindignation at Joab's murder of Abner, though he was too meek to avenge\nit. There is no more beautiful picture in his life than that of his\nfollowing the bier where lay the bloody corpse of the man who had been\nhis enemy ever since he had known him, and sealing the reconciliation\nwhich Death ever makes in noble souls, by the pathetic dirge he chanted\nover Abner's grave. We have a glimpse of his people's unbounded\nconfidence in him, given incidentally when we are told that his sorrow\npleased them, \"as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people.\" We\nhave a glimpse of the feebleness of his new monarchy as against the\nfierce soldier who had done so much to make it, in his acknowledgment\nthat he was yet weak, being but recently anointed king, and that these\nvehement sons of Zeruiah were too strong for him; and we have a\nremarkable trace of connection with the psalms, in the closing words\nwith which he invokes on Joab the vengeance which he as yet felt himself\nunable to execute: \"The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to\nhis wickedness.\"\n\nThe only other incident recorded of his reign in Hebron is his execution\nof summary justice upon the murderers of the poor puppet-king\nIshbosheth, upon whose death, following so closely that of Abner, the\nwhole resistance to David's power collapses. There had never been any\nreal popular opposition. His enemies are emphatically named as \"the\nhouse of Saul,\" and we find Abner himself admitting that \"the elders of\nIsrael\" wanted David as king (2 Sam. iii. 17), so that when he was gone,\nit is two Benjamites who give the _coup-de-grace_ to Ishbosheth, and end\nthe whole shadowy rival power. Immediately the rulers of all the tribes\ncome up to Hebron, with the tender of the crown. They offer it on the\ntriple grounds of kinship, of his military service even in Saul's reign,\nand of the Divine promise of the throne. A solemn pact was made, and\nDavid was anointed in Hebron, a king by Divine right, but also a\nconstitutional monarch chosen by popular election, and limited in his\npowers.\n\nThe first result of his new strength is the capture of the old\nhill-fortress of the Jebusites, the city of Melchizedek, which had\nfrowned down upon Israel unsubdued till now, and whose inhabitants\ntrusted so absolutely in its natural strength that their answer to the\ndemand for surrender was the jeer, \"Thou wilt not come hither, but the\nblind and lame will drive thee away.\" This time David does not leave the\nwar to others. For the first time for seven years we read, \"_The king_\nand his men went to Jerusalem.\" Established there as his capital, he\nreigns for some ten years with unbroken prosperity over a loyal and\nloving people, with this for the summary of the whole period, \"David\nwent on and grew great, and the Lord God of Hosts was with him\" (2 Sam.\nv. 10). These years are marked by three principal events--the bringing\nup of the ark to the city of David, the promise by Nathan of the\nperpetual dominion of his house, and the unbroken flow of victories over\nthe surrounding nations. These are the salient points of the narrative\nin the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. v.-viii.), and are all abundantly\nillustrated by the psalms. We shall have next then to consider \"The\nSongs of the King.\"\n\nHow did the fugitive bear his sudden change of fortune? What were his\nthoughts when at last the dignity which he had ever expected and never\nsought was his? The answer is ready to our hand in that grand psalm (Ps.\nxviii.) which he \"spake in the day that the Lord delivered him from all\nhis enemies, and from the hand of Saul.\" The language of this\nsuperscription seems to connect the psalm with the period of internal\nand external repose which preceded and prompted David's \"purpose to\nbuild an house for the Lord\" (2 Sam. vii.) The same thankfulness which\nglows so brightly in the psalm stimulated that desire, and the emphatic\nreference to the mercy promised by God to \"his seed for evermore,\" which\ncloses the hymn, points perhaps to the definite promise of the\nperpetuity of the kingdom to his descendants, which was God's answer to\nthe same desire. But whether the psalm belongs to the years of the\npartial sovereignty at Hebron, or to those of the complete dominion at\nJerusalem, it cannot be later than the second of these two dates; and\nwhatever may have been the time of its composition, the feelings which\nit expresses are those of the first freshness of thankful praise when he\nwas firmly settled in the kingdom. Some critics would throw it onwards\nto the very close of his life. But this has little in its favour beyond\nthe fact that the author of the Book of Samuel has placed his version of\nthe psalm among the records of David's last days. There is, however,\nnothing to show that that position is due to chronological\nconsiderations. The victories over heathen nations which are supposed to\nbe referred to in the psalm, and are relied on by the advocates of later\ndate, really point to the earlier, which was the time of his most\nbrilliant conquests. And the marked assertions of his own purity, as\nwell as the triumphant tone of the whole, neither of which\ncharacteristics corresponds to the sad and shaded years after his great\nfall, point in the same direction. On the whole, then, we may fairly\ntake this psalm as belonging to the bright beginning of the monarchy,\nand as showing us how well the king remembered the vows which the exile\nhad mingled with his tears.\n\nIt is one long outpouring of rapturous thankfulness and triumphant\nadoration, which streams from a full heart in buoyant waves of song.\nNowhere else, even in the psalms--and if not there, certainly nowhere\nelse--is there such a continuous tide of unmingled praise, such\nmagnificence of imagery, such passion of love to the delivering God,\nsuch joyous energy of conquering trust. It throbs throughout with the\nlife blood of devotion. The strong flame, white with its very ardour,\nquivers with its own intensity as it steadily rises heavenward. All the\nterrors, and pains, and dangers of the weary years--the black fuel for\nthe ruddy glow--melt into warmth too great for smoke, too equable to\nblaze. The plaintive notes that had so often wailed from his harp, sad\nas if the night wind had been wandering among its chords, have all led\nup to this rushing burst of full-toned gladness. The very blessedness of\nheaven is anticipated, when sorrows gone by are understood and seen in\ntheir connection with the joy to which they have led, and are felt to\nbe the theme for deepest thankfulness. Thank God that, for the\nconsolation of the whole world, we have this hymn of praise from the\nsame lips which said, \"My life is spent with grief, and my years with\nsighing.\" \"We have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very\npitiful and of tender mercy.\" The tremulous minors of trustful sorrow\nshall swell into rapturous praise; and he who, compassed with foes,\ncries upon God, will, here or yonder, sing this song \"unto the Lord, in\nthe day that the Lord delivers him from the hand of all his enemies.\"\n\n\n\n\nX.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\nIn our last chapter we have seen that the key-note of \"The Songs of the\nKing\" may be said to be struck in Psalm xviii. Its complete analysis\nwould carry us far beyond our limits. We can but glance at some of the\nmore prominent points of the psalm.\n\nThe first clause strikes the key-note. \"I love Thee, O Jehovah, my\nstrength.\" That personal attachment to God, which is so characteristic\nof David's religion, can no longer be pent up in silence, but gushes\nforth like some imprisoned stream, broad and full even from its\nwell-head. The common word for \"love\" is too weak for him, and he bends\nto his use another, never elsewhere employed to express man's emotions\ntowards God, the intensity of which is but feebly expressed by some such\nperiphrasis as, \"From my heart do I love Thee.\" The same exalted feeling\nis wonderfully set forth by the loving accumulation of Divine names\nwhich follow, as if he would heap together in one great pile all the\nrich experiences of that God, unnamed after all names, which he had\ngarnered up in his distresses and deliverances. They tell so much as the\npoor vehicle of words can tell, what his Shepherd in the heavens had\nbeen to him. They are the treasures which he has brought back from his\nexile; and they most pathetically point to the songs of that time. He\nhad called on God by these names when it was hard to believe in their\nreality, and now he repeats them all in his glad hour of fruition, for\ntoken that they who in their extremity trust in the name of the Lord\nwill one day have the truth of faith transformed into truth of\nexperience. \"Jehovah, my rock and my fortress,\" reminds us of his cry in\nZiklag, \"Thou art my rock and my fortress\" (xxxi. 3), and of the \"hold\"\n(the same word) of Adullam in which he had lain secure. \"My deliverer\"\nechoes many a sigh in the past, now changed into music of praise. \"My\nrock\" (a different word from that in a preceding clause), \"in whom I\ntake refuge,\" recalls the prayer, \"Be Thou my rock of strength\" (xxxi.\n2), and his former effort of confidence, when, in the midst of\ncalamities, he said, \"My soul takes refuge in Thee\" (lvii. 1.) \"My\nshield\" carries us back to the ancient promise, fresh after so many\ncenturies, and fulfilled anew in every age, \"Fear not, Abram, I am thy\nshield,\" and to his own trustful words at a time when trust was\ndifficult, \"My shield is upon God\" (vii. 10). \"My high tower,\" the last\nof this glowing series, links on to the hope breathed in the first song\nof his exile, \"God is my defence\" (the same expression); \"Thou hast been\nmy defence in the day of trouble\" (lix. 9, 16). And then he sums up his\nwhole past in one general sentence, which tells his habitual resource in\nhis troubles, and the blessed help which he has ever found, \"I call on\nJehovah, who is worthy to be praised;[R] and from my enemies am I saved\"\n(verse 3).\n\n[R] The old English word \"the worshipful\" comes near the form and\nmeaning of the phrase.\n\nNo comment can heighten, and no translation can adequately represent,\nwhile none can altogether destroy the unapproachable magnificence of the\ndescription which follows, of the majestic coming forth of God in answer\nto his cry. It stands at the very highest point, even when compared with\nthe other sublime passages of a like kind in Scripture. How\npathetically he paints his sore need in metaphors which again bring to\nmind the songs of the outlaw:--\n\n  The snares of death compassed me,\n  And floods of destruction made me afraid;\n  The snares of Sheol surrounded me,\n  The toils of death surprised me.\n\nAs he so often likened himself to some wild creature in the nets, so\nhere Death, the hunter, has cast his fatal cords about him, and they are\nready suddenly to close on the unsuspecting prey. Or, varying the image,\nhe is sinking in black waters, which are designated by a difficult\nphrase (literally, \"streams of Belial,\" or worthlessness), which is most\nprobably rendered as above (so Ewald, Hupfeld). In this dire extremity\none thing alone is left him. He is snared, but he has his voice free to\ncry with, and a God to cry to. He is all but sinking, but he can still\nshriek (so one of the words might be rendered) \"like some strong swimmer\nin his agony.\" And it is enough. That one loud call for help rises, like\nsome slender pillar of incense-smoke, straight into the palace temple of\nGod--and, as he says, with a meaning which our version obscures, \"My cry\nbefore Him came into His ears.\" The prayer that springs from a living\nconsciousness of being in God's presence, even when nearest to\nperishing, is the prayer that He hears. The cry is a poor, thin,\nsolitary voice, unheard on earth, though shrill enough to rise to\nheaven; the answer shakes creation. One man in his extremity can put in\nmotion all the magnificence of God. Overwhelming is the contrast between\nthe cause and the effect. And marvellous as the greatness, so also is\nthe swiftness of the answer. A moment suffices--and then! Even whilst he\ncries, the rocking earth and the quivering foundations of the hills are\nconscious that the Lord comes from afar for his help. The majestic\nself-revelation of God as the deliverer has for its occasion the\npsalmist's cry of distress, and for its issue, \"He drew me out of many\nwaters.\" All the splendour flames out because a poor man prays, and all\nthe upheaval of earth and the artillery of heaven has simply this for\nits end, that a poor man may be delivered. The paradox of prayer never\nfound a more bold expression than in this triumphant utterance, of the\ninsignificant occasion for, and the equally insignificant result sought\nby, the exercise of the energy of Omnipotence.\n\nThe Divine deliverance is set forth under the familiar image of the\ncoming of God in a tempest. Before it bursts, and simultaneous with the\nprayer, the \"earth rocks and quivers,\" the sunless \"pillars of the hills\nreel and rock to and fro,\" as if conscious of the gathering wrath which\nbegins to flame far off in the highest heavens. There has been no\nforth-putting yet of the Divine power. It is but accumulating its fiery\nenergy, and already the solid framework of the world trembles,\nanticipating the coming crash. The firmest things shake, the loftiest\nbow before His wrath. \"There went up smoke out of his nostrils, and fire\nout of his mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it.\" This kindling\nanger, expressed by these tremendous metaphors, is conceived of as the\npreparation in \"His temple\" for the earthly manifestation of delivering\nvengeance. It is like some distant thunder-cloud which grows on the\nhorizon into ominous blackness, and seems to be filling its\nashen-coloured depths with store of lightnings. Then the piled-up terror\nbegins to move, and, drawing nearer, pours out an avalanche of gloom\nseamed with fire. First the storm-cloud descends, hanging lower and\nlower in the sky. And whose foot is that which is planted upon its heavy\nmass, thick and frowning enough to be the veil of God?\n\n  \"He bowed the heavens, and came down,\n   And blackness of cloud was under His feet.\"\n\nThen the sudden rush of wind which heralds the lightning breaks the\nawful silence:--\n\n  And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly,\n  Yea, He swept along upon the wings of the wind.\n\nThe cherubs bear, as in a chariot, the throned God, and the swift\npinions of the storm bear the cherubs. But He that sits upon the throne,\nabove material forces and the highest creatures, is unseen. The\npsalmist's imagination stops at its base, nor dares to gaze into that\nlight above; and the silence is more impressive than all words. Instead\nof pagan attempts at a likeness of God, we have next painted, with equal\ndescriptive accuracy, poetic force, and theological truth, the pitchy\nblackness which hides Him. In the gloom of its depths He makes His\n\"secret place\" His \"tent.\" It is \"darkness of waters,\" that is, darkness\nfrom which streams out the thunder-rain; it is \"thick clouds of the\nskies;\" or perhaps the expression should be rendered, \"heavy masses of\nclouds.\" Then comes the crash of the tempest. The brightness that lies\ncloser around Him, and lives in the heart of the blackness, flames\nforth, parting the thick clouds--and through the awful rent hail and\ncoals of fire are flung down on the trembling earth. The grand\ndescription may be rendered in two ways: either that adopted in our\nversion, \"At the brightness that was before Him His thick clouds\npassed--hailstones and coals of fire;\" or, \"Through His thick clouds\nthere passed hailstones and coals of fire.\" The former of these is the\nmore dramatic; the broken construction expresses more vividly the fierce\nsuddenness of the lightning blaze and of the down-rush of the hail, and\nis confirmed by the repetition of the same words in the same\nconstruction in the next verse. That verse describes another burst of\nthe tempest--the deep roll of the thunder along the skies is the voice\nof Jehovah, and again the lightning tears through the clouds, and the\nhail streams down. With what profound truth all this destructive power\nis represented as coming from the brightness of God--that \"glory\" which\nin its own nature is light, but in its contact with finite and sinful\ncreatures must needs become darkness, rent asunder by lightning! What\nlessons as to the root and the essential nature of all punitive acts of\nGod cluster round such words! and how calm and blessed the faith which\ncan pierce even the thickest mass \"that veileth Love!\"--to see the light\nat the centre, even though the circumference be brooding thunder-clouds\ntorn by sudden fires. Then comes the purpose of all this apocalypse of\nDivine magnificence. The fiery arrows scatter the psalmist's enemies.\nThe waters in which he had well nigh drowned are dried up before the hot\nbreath of His anger. \"That dread voice\" speaks \"which shrinks their\nstreams.\" And amid the blaze of tempest, the rocking earth, and the\nfailing floods, His arm is thrust forth from above, and draws His\nservant from many waters. As one in later times, \"he was afraid, and\nbeginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me; and immediately He\nstretched forth His hand and caught him.\"\n\nA calmer tone follows, as the psalmist recounts without metaphor his\ndeliverance, and reiterates the same assertion of his innocence which\nwe have already found so frequently in the previous psalms (vers.\n17-24). Rising from his personal experience to the broad and lofty\nthoughts of God which that experience had taught him, as it does all who\nprize life chiefly as a means of knowing Him, he proclaims the solemn\ntruth, that in the exercise of a righteous retribution, and by the very\nnecessity of our moral nature, God appears to man what man is to God:\nloving to the loving, upright to the upright, pure to the pure, and\nfroward to the froward. Our thoughts of God are shaped by our moral\ncharacter; the capacity of perceiving depends on sympathy. \"Unless the\neye were light, how could it see the sun?\" The self-revelation of God in\nHis providence, of which only the psalm speaks, is modified according to\nour moral character, being full of love to those who love, being harsh\nand antagonistic to those who set themselves in opposition to it. There\nis a higher law of grace, whereby the sinfulness of man but draws forth\nthe tenderness of a father's pardoning pity; and the brightest\nrevelation of His love is made to froward prodigals. But that is not in\nthe psalmist's view here, nor does it interfere with the law of\nretribution in its own sphere.\n\nThe purely personal tone is again resumed, and continued unbroken to the\nclose. In the former portion David was passive, except for the voice of\nprayer, and God's arm alone was his deliverance. In the latter half he\nis active, the conquering king, whose arm is strengthened for victory by\nGod. This difference may possibly suggest the reference of the former\nhalf to the Sauline persecution, when, as we have seen, the exile ever\nshrunk from avenging himself; and of the latter to the early years of\nhis monarchy, which, as we shall see, were characterized by much\nsuccessful military activity; and if so, the date of the psalm would\nmost naturally be taken to be the close of his victorious campaigns,\nwhen \"the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about\" (2\nSam. vii. 1). Be that as it may, the latter portion of the psalm shows\nus the soldier king tracing all his past victories to God alone, and\nbuilding upon them the confidence of a world-wide dominion. The point at\nwhich memory passes into hope is difficult to determine, and great\nvariety of opinion prevails on the matter among commentators. It is\nperhaps best to follow many of the older versions, and the valuable\nexposition of Hupfeld, in regarding the whole section from ver. 37 of\nour translation as the expression of the trust which past experience had\nwrought. We shall then have two periods in the second half of the\npsalm--the past victories won by God's help (vers. 31-36), the coming\ntriumphs of which these are the pledge (vers. 37-end).\n\nIn the former there shine out not only David's habitual consciousness of\ndependence on and aid from God, but also a very striking picture of his\nphysical qualifications for a military leader. He is girded with bodily\nstrength, swift and sure of foot like a deer, able to scale the crags\nwhere his foes fortified themselves like the wild antelopes he had so\noften seen bounding among the dizzy ledges of the cliffs in the\nwilderness; his hands are trained for war, and his sinewy arms can bend\nthe great bow of brass. But these capacities are gifts, and not they,\nbut their Giver, have made him victorious. Looking back upon all his\npast, this is its summing up:--\n\n  \"Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation,\n   And Thy right hand hath holden me up,\n   And Thy lowliness hath made me great.\"\n\nGod's strength, God's buckler, God's supporting hand, God's\ncondescension, by which He bows down to look upon and help the feeble,\nwith the humble showing Himself humble--these have been his weapons, and\nfrom these has come his victory.\n\nAnd because of these, he looks forward to a future like the past, but\nmore glorious still, thereby teaching us how the unchanging faithfulness\nof our God should encourage us to take all the blessings which we have\nreceived as but the earnest of what is yet to come. He sees himself\npursuing his enemies, and smiting them to the ground. The fierce light\nof battle blazes through the rapid sentences which paint the panic\nflight, and the swift pursuit, the vain shrieks to man and God for\nsuccour, and the utter annihilation of the foe:--\n\n  (42) \"And I will pound them like dust before the wind,\n        Like street-filth will I empty them out.\"\n\nThen he gives utterance to the consciousness that his kingdom is\ndestined to extend far beyond the limits of Israel, in words which, like\nso many of the prophecies, may be translated in the present tense, but\nare obviously future in signification--the prophet placing himself in\nimagination in the midst of the time of which he speaks:--\n\n  (43) \"Thou deliverest me from the strivings of the people (_i.e._,\n          Israel),\n        Thou makest me head of the heathen;\n        People whom I knew not serve me.\n\n  (44)  At the hearing of the ear they obey me.\n        The sons of the stranger feign obedience to me.\n\n  (45)  The sons of the stranger fade away,\n        They come trembling from their hiding-places.\"\n\nThe rebellion which weakened his early reign is subdued, and beyond the\nbounds of his own people his dominion spreads. Strange tribes submit to\nthe very sound of his name, and crouch before him in extorted and\npretended submission. The words are literally \"lie unto me,\" descriptive\nof the profuse professions of loyalty characteristic of conquered\norientals. Their power withers before him like a gathered flower before\na hot wind, and the fugitives creep trembling out of their holes where\nthey have hid themselves.\n\nAgain he recurs to the one thought which flows like a river of light\nthrough all the psalm--that all his help is in God. The names which he\nlovingly heaped together at the beginning are in part echoed in the\nclose. \"The Lord liveth, and blessed is my rock, and the God of my\nsalvation is exalted.\" His deliverances have taught him to know a living\nGod, swift to hear, active to help, in whom he lives, who has magnified\nHis own name in that He has saved His servant. And as that blessed\nconviction is the sum of all his experience, so one glad vow expresses\nall his resolves, and thrills with the expectation which he had\ncherished even in his lonely exile, that the music of his psalm would\none day echo through all the world. With lofty consciousness of his new\ndignity, and with lowly sense that it is God's gift, he emphatically\nnames himself _His_ king, _His_ anointed, taking, as it were, his crown\nfrom his brows and laying it on the altar. With prophetic eye he looks\nonward, and sees the throne to which he had been led by a series of\nmiracles enduring for ever, and the mercy of God sustaining the dominion\nof his house through all generations:--\n\n  (49) \"Therefore will I give thanks to Thee among the nations, O\n         Jehovah,\n        And to Thy name will I strike the harp:\n\n  (50)  Who maketh great the deliverances of His king\n        And executeth mercy for His anointed,\n        For David and his seed for evermore.\"\n\nAnd what were his purposes for the future? Here is his answer, in a\npsalm which has been with considerable appropriateness regarded as a\nkind of manifesto of the principles which he intended should\ncharacterize his reign (Psa. ci.): \"I will walk within my house with a\nperfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.\" For\nhimself, he begins his reign with noble self-restraint, not meaning to\nmake it a region of indulgence, but feeling that there is a law above\nhis will, of which he is only the servant, and knowing that if his\npeople and his public life are to be what they should be, his own\npersonal and domestic life must be pure. As for his court and his\nministers, he will make a clean sweep of the vermin who swarm and sting\nand buzz about a throne. The froward, the wicked, privy slanderers,\nproud hearts, crafty plotters, liars, and evil-doers he will not\nsuffer--but \"mine eyes shall be upon the faithful in the land; he that\nwalketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me.\" He is fired with ambition,\nsuch as has brightened the beginning of many a reign which has darkened\nto cruelty and crime, to make his kingdom some faint image of God's, and\nto bring the actual Israel into conformity with its ancient Magna\nCharta, \"Ye shall be to me a holy nation.\" And so, not knowing perhaps\nhow hard a task he planned, and little dreaming of his own sore fall, he\ngrasps the sword, resolved to use it for the terror of evil-doers, and\nvows, \"I will early destroy all the wicked in the land, that I may cut\noff all wicked doers from the city of the Lord.\" Such was his\n\"proclamation against vice and immorality\" on his accession to his\nthrone.\n\n\n\n\nXI.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\nThe years thus well begun are, in the historical books, characterized\nmainly by three events, namely, the bringing up of the ark to the newly\nwon city of David, Nathan's prophecy of the perpetual dominion of his\nhouse, and his victories over the surrounding nations. These three\nhinges of the narrative are all abundantly illustrated in the psalms.\n\nAs to the first, we have relics of the joyful ceremonial connected with\nit in two psalms, the fifteenth and twenty-fourth, which are singularly\nalike not only in substance but in manner, both being thrown into a\nhighly dramatic form by question and answer. This peculiarity, as we\nshall see, is one of the links of connection which unite them with the\nhistory as given in the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. vi.). From that record we\nlearn that David's first thought after he was firmly seated as king over\nall Israel, was the enthronement in his recently-captured city of the\nlong-forgotten ark. That venerable symbol of the presence of the true\nKing had passed through many vicissitudes since the days when it had\nbeen carried round the walls of Jericho. Superstitiously borne into\nbattle, as if it were a mere magic palladium, by men whose hearts were\nnot right with God, the presence which they had invoked became their\nruin, and Israel was shattered, and \"the ark of God taken,\" on the fatal\nfield of Aphek. It had been carried in triumph through Philistine\ncities, and sent back in dismay. It had been welcomed with gladness by\nthe villagers of Bethshemesh, who lifted their eyes from their harvest\nwork, and saw it borne up the glen from the Philistine plain. Their rude\ncuriosity was signally punished, \"and the men of Bethshemesh said, Who\nis able to stand before this holy Lord God, and to whom shall He go up\nfrom us?\" It had been removed to the forest seclusion of Kirjath-jearim\n(the city of the woods), and there bestowed in the house of Abinadab\n\"upon the hill,\" where it lay neglected and forgotten for about seventy\nyears. During Saul's reign they \"inquired not at it,\" and, indeed, the\nwhole worship of Jehovah seems to have been decaying. David set himself\nto reorganize the public service of God, arranged a staff of priests and\nLevites, with disciplined choir and orchestra (1 Chron. xv.), and then\nproceeded with representatives of the whole nation to bring up the ark\nfrom its woodland hiding-place. But again death turned gladness into\ndread, and Uzzah's fate silenced the joyous songs, \"and David was afraid\nof the Lord that day, and said, How shall the ark of God come unto me?\"\nThe dangerous honour fell on the house of Obed-edom; and only after the\nblessing which followed its three months' stay there, did he venture to\ncarry out his purpose. The story of the actual removal of the ark to the\ncity of David with glad ceremonial need not be repeated here; nor the\nmocking gibes of Michal who had once loved him so fondly. Probably she\nbitterly resented her violent separation from the household joys that\nhad grown up about her in her second home; probably the woman who had\nhad teraphim among her furniture cared nothing for the ark of God;\nprobably, as she grew older, her character had hardened in its lines,\nand become like her father's in its measureless pride, and in its\nhalf-dread, half-hatred of David--and all these motives together pour\ntheir venom into her sarcasm. Taunts provoke taunts; the husband feels\nthat the wife is in heart a partisan of the fallen house of her father,\nand a despiser of the Lord and of His worship; her words hiss with\nscorn, his flame with anger and rebuke--and so these two that had been\nso tender in the old days part for ever. The one doubtful act that\nstained his accession was quickly avenged. Better for both that she had\nnever been rent from that feeble, loving husband that followed her\nweeping, and was driven back by a single word, flung at him by Abner as\nif he had been a dog at their heels! (2 Sam. iii. 16).\n\nThe gladness and triumph, the awe, and the memories of victory which\nclustered round the dread symbol of the presence of the Lord of Hosts,\nare wonderfully expressed in the choral twenty-fourth psalm. It is\ndivided into two portions, which Ewald regards as being originally two\nindependent compositions. They are, however, obviously connected both in\nform and substance. In each we have question and answer, as in psalm\nxv., which belongs to the same period. The first half replies to the\nquestion, \"Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand\nin His holy place?\"--an echo of the terror-struck exclamation of the\npeople of Bethshemesh, already quoted. The answer is a description of\nthe _men who dwell with God_. The second half deals with the correlative\ninquiry, \"Who is the King of Glory?\" and describes the _God who comes to\ndwell with men_. It corresponds in substance, though not in form, with\nDavid's thought when Uzzah died, in so far as it regards God as drawing\nnear to the worshippers, rather than the worshippers drawing near to\nHim. Both portions are united by a real internal connection, in that\nthey set forth the mutual approach of God and man which leads to\ncommunion, and thus constitute the two halves of an inseparable whole.\n\nMost expositors recognise a choral structure in the psalm, as in several\nothers of this date, as would be natural at the time of the\nreorganization of the public musical service. Probably we may gain the\nkey to its form by supposing it to be a processional hymn, of which the\nfirst half was to be sung during the ascent to the city of David, and\nthe second while standing before the gates. We have then to fancy the\nlong line of worshippers climbing the rocky steep hill-side to the\nancient fortress so recently won, the Levites bearing the ark, and the\nglad multitude streaming along behind them.\n\nFirst there swells forth from all the singers the triumphant\nproclamation of God's universal sovereignty, \"The earth is the Lord's\nand the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For He\nhath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.\" It is\nvery noteworthy that such a thought should precede the declaration of\nHis special dwelling in Zion. It guards that belief from the abuses to\nwhich it was of course liable--the superstitions, the narrowness, the\ncontempt of all the rest of the world as God-deserted, which are its\nperversion in sensuous natures. If Israel came to fancy that God\nbelonged to them, and that there was only one sacred place in all the\nworld, it was not for want of clear utterances to the contrary, which\nbecame more emphatic with each fresh step in the development of the\nspecializing system under which they lived. The very ground of their\npeculiar relation to God had been declared, in the hour of constituting\nit to be--\"all the earth is Mine\" (Exod. xix. 5). So now, when the\nsymbol of His presence is to have a local habitation in the centre of\nthe national life, the psalmist lays for the foundation of his song the\ngreat truth, that the Divine presence is concentrated in Israel, but not\nconfined there, and concentrated in order that it may be diffused. The\nglory that lights the bare top of Zion lies on all the hills; and He who\ndwells between the cherubim dwells in all the world, which His continual\npresence fills with its fulness, and upholds above the floods.\n\nThen, as they climb, a single voice perhaps chants the solemn question,\n\"Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in the place\nof His holiness?\"\n\nAnd the full-toned answer portrays the men who shall dwell with God, in\nwords which begin indeed with stringent demands for absolute purity, but\nwonderfully change in tone as they advance, into gracious assurances,\nand the clearest vision that the moral nature which fits for God's\npresence is God's gift. \"The clean-handed, and pure-hearted, who has not\nlifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully;\" there is the\neternal law which nothing can ever alter, that to abide with God a man\nmust be like God--the law of the new covenant as of the old, \"Blessed\nare the pure in heart, for they shall see God.\" But this requirement,\nimpossible of fulfilment, is not all. If it were, the climbing\nprocession might stop. But up and up they rise, and once again the song\nbursts forth in deeper and more hopeful words, \"He shall _receive_ the\nblessing from Jehovah, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.\"\nThen that righteousness, which he who honestly attempts to comply with\nsuch requirements will soon find that he does not possess, is to be\nreceived from above, not elaborated from within; is a gift from God, not\na product of man's toils. God will make us pure, that we may dwell with\nHim. Nor is this all. The condition of receiving such a gift has been\nalready partially set forth in the preceding clause, which seems to\nrequire righteousness to be possessed as the preliminary to receiving\nit. The paradox which thus results is inseparable from the stage of\nreligious knowledge attained under the Mosaic Law. But the last words of\nthe answer go far beyond it, and proclaim the special truth of the\ngospel, that the righteousness which fits for dwelling with God is given\non the simple condition of _seeking_ Him. To this designation of the\ntrue worshippers is appended somewhat abruptly the one word \"Jacob,\"\nwhich need neither be rendered as in the English version as an\ninvocation, nor as in the margin, with an unnecessary and improbable\nsupplement, \"O God of Jacob;\" but is best regarded as in apposition with\nthe other descriptive clauses, and declaring, as we have found David\ndoing already in previous psalms, that the characters portrayed in them,\nand these only, constituted the true Israel.\n\n  This is the generation of them that seek Him,\n  That seek Thy face--(this is) Jacob.\n\nAnd so the first question is answered, \"Who are the men who dwell with\nGod?\"--The pure, who receive righteousness, who seek Him, the true\nIsrael.\n\nAnd now the procession has reached the front of the ancient city on the\nhill, and stands before the very walls and weather-beaten gates which\nMelchizedek may have passed through, and which had been barred against\nIsrael till David's might had burst them. National triumph and glad\nworship are wonderfully blended in the summons which rings from the lips\nof the Levites without: \"Lift up your heads, O ye gates! and be ye lift\nup, ye doors (that have been from) of old!\" as if even their towering\nportals were too low, \"and the King of glory shall come in.\" What force\nin that name here, in this early song of the King! How clearly he\nrecognises his own derived power, and the real Monarch of whom he is but\nthe shadowy representative! The newly-conquered city is summoned to\nadmit its true conqueror and sovereign, whose throne is the ark, which\nwas emphatically named \"the glory,\"[S] and in whose train the earthly\nking follows as a subject and a worshipper. Then, with wonderful\ndramatic force, a single voice from within the barred gates asks, like\nsome suspicious warder, \"Who then is the King of glory?\" With what a\nshout of proud confidence and triumphant memories of a hundred fields\ncomes, ready and full, the crash of many voices in the answer, \"Jehovah\nstrong and mighty, Jehovah mighty in battle!\" How vividly the reluctance\nof an antagonistic world to yield to Israel and Israel's King, is\nrepresented in the repetition of the question in a form slightly more\nexpressive of ignorance and doubt, in answer to the reiterated summons,\n\"Who is He, then, the King of glory?\" With what deepened intensity of\ntriumph there peals, hoarse and deep, the choral shout, \"The Lord of\nHosts, He is the King of glory.\" That name which sets Him forth as\nSovereign of the personal and impersonal forces of the universe--angels,\nand stars, and terrene creatures, all gathered in ordered ranks,\nembattled for His service--was a comparatively new name in Israel,[T]\nand brought with it thoughts of irresistible might in earth and heaven.\nIt crashes like a catapult against the ancient gates; and at that\nproclamation of the omnipotent name of the God who dwells with men, they\ngrate back on their brazen hinges, and the ark of the Lord enters into\nits rest.\n\n[S] \"And she named the child I-chabod (Where is the glory?) saying, The\nglory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken.\"--1\n_Sam._ iv. 21.\n\n[T] It has been asserted that this is the first introduction of the\nname. (\"Psalms Chronologically Arranged by Four Friends,\" p. 14). But it\noccurs in Hannah's vow (1 Sam. i. 11); in Samuel's words to Saul (xv.\n2); in David's reply to Goliath (xvii. 45). We have it also in Psalm\nlix. 5, which we regard as his earliest during his exile. Do the authors\nreferred to consider these speeches in 1 Sam. as not authentic?\n\n\n\n\nXII.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.\n\n\nThe second event recorded as important in the bright early years is the\ngreat promise of the perpetuity of the kingdom in David's house. As soon\nas the king was firmly established and free from war, he remembered the\nancient word which said, \"When He giveth you rest from all your enemies\nround about, so that ye dwell in safety, then there shall be a place\nwhich the Lord your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there\"\n(Deut. xii. 10, 11). His own ease rebukes him; he regards his\ntranquillity not as a season for selfish indolence, but as a call to new\nforms of service. He might well have found in the many troubles and\nvicissitudes of his past life an excuse for luxurious repose now. But\ndevout souls will consecrate their leisure as their toil to God, and\nwill serve Him with thankful offerings in peace whom they invoked with\nearnest cries in battle. Prosperity is harmless only when it is\naccepted as an opportunity for fresh forms of devotion, not as an\noccasion for idle self-indulgence. So we read, with distinct verbal\nreference to the words already quoted, that \"when the Lord had given him\nrest round about from all his enemies, the king said unto Nathan the\nprophet, See now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God\ndwelleth in curtains.\" The impulse of generous devotion, which cannot\nbear to lavish more upon self than it gives to God, at first commended\nitself to the prophet; but in the solitude of his nightly thoughts the\nhigher wisdom speaks in his spirit, and the word of God gives him a\nmessage for the king. The narrative in 2 Sam. makes no mention of\nDavid's warlike life as unfitting him for the task, which we find from 2\nChron. was one reason why his purpose was set aside, but brings into\nprominence the thought that David's generous impulse was outrunning\nGod's commandment, and that his ardour to serve was in some danger of\nforgetting his entire dependence on God, and of fancying that God would\nbe the better for him. So the prophetic message reminds him that the\nLord had never, through all the centuries, asked for a house of cedar,\nand recalls the past life of David as having been wholly shaped and\nblessed by Him, while it pointedly inverts the king's proposal in its\nown grand promise, \"The Lord telleth thee that He will make thee an\nhouse.\" Then follows the prediction of a son of David who should build\nthe house, whose kingdom should be perpetual, whose transgressions\nshould be corrected indeed, but never punished as those of the unhappy\nSaul; and then, in emphatic and unmistakable words, the perpetuity of\nDavid's house, his kingdom, and his throne, is reiterated as the close\nof the whole.\n\nThe wonderful burst of praise which sprang from David's heart in answer\ncannot be dealt with here; but clearly from that time onwards a new\nelement had been added to his hopes, and a new object presented to his\nfaith. The prophecy of the Messiah enters upon a new stage, bearing a\nrelation, as its successive stages, always unmistakably did, to the\nhistory which supplies a framework for it. Now for the first time can he\nbe set forth as the king of Israel; now the width of the promise which\nat first had embraced the seed of the woman, and then had been narrowed\nto the seed of Abraham, and thereafter probably to the tribe of Judah,\nis still further defined as to be fulfilled in the line of the house of\nDavid; now the personal Messiah Himself begins to be discerned through\nthe words which are to have a preparatory fulfilment, in itself\nprophetic, in the collective Davidic monarchs whose very office is\nitself also a prophecy.\n\nMany echoes of this new message ring through the later psalms of the\nking. His own dominion, his conquests, and his office, gradually became\nto himself a solemn prophecy of a mysterious descendant who should be\nreally and fully all that he was in shadow and in part. As the\nexperience of the exile, so that of the victorious monarch supplied the\ncolours with which the spirit of prophecy in him painted \"beforehand the\nsufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.\" In both classes\nof psalms we have two forms of the Messianic reference, the typical and\nthe purely prophetic. In the former the events of David's own biography\nand the feelings of his own soul are so portrayed and expressed as to\nsuggest his greater Son. In the latter, the personality of the psalmist\nretreats into the background, and is at most only the starting-point for\nwails of sorrow or gleams of glory which far transcend anything in the\nlife of the singer. There are portions, for instance, of the xxii. and\nlxix. psalms which no torturing can force into correspondence with any\nof David's trials; and in like manner there are paeans of victory and\npredictions of dominion which demand a grander interpretation than his\nown royalty or his hopes for his house can yield. Of course, if prophecy\nis impossible, there is no more to be said, but that in that case a\nconsiderable part of the Old Testament, including many of David's\npsalms, is unintelligible.\n\nPerhaps the clearest instance of distinct prophecy of the victorious\ndominion of the personal Messiah is the 110th psalm. In it we do see, no\ndoubt, the influence of the psalmist's own history, shaping the image\nwhich rises before his soul. But the attributes of that king whom he\nbeholds are not his attributes, nor those of any son of his who wore the\ncrown in Israel. And whilst his own history gives the form, it is \"the\nSpirit of Christ that was in\" him which gives the substance, and\ntransfigures the earthly monarchy into a heavenly dominion. We do not\nenter upon the question of the Davidic authorship of this psalm. Here we\nhave not to depend upon Jewish superscriptions, but on the words of Him\nwhose bare assertion should be \"an end of all strife.\" Christ says that\nDavid wrote it. Some of us are far enough behind the age to believe that\nwhat He said He meant, and that what He meant is truth.\n\nThis psalm, then, being David's, can hardly be earlier than the time of\nNathan's prophecy. There are traces in it of the influence of the\nhistory of the psalmist, giving, as we have said, form to the\npredictions. Perhaps we may see these in Zion being named as the seat of\nMessiah's sovereignty and in the reference to Melchizedek, both of which\npoints assume new force if we suppose that the ancient city over which\nthat half-forgotten name once ruled had recently become his own.\nPossibly, too, his joy in exchanging his armour and kingly robe for the\npriest's ephod, when he brought up the ark to its rest, and his\nconsciousness that in himself the regal and the sacerdotal offices did\nnot blend, may have led him to meditations on the meaning of both, on\nthe miseries that seemed to flow equally from their separation and from\ntheir union, which were the precursors of his hearing the Divine oath\nthat, in the far-off future, they would be fused together in that mighty\nfigure who was to repeat in higher fashion the union of functions which\ninvested that dim King of Righteousness and Priest of God in the far-off\npast. He discerns that _his_ support from the right hand of God, _his_\nsceptre which he swayed in Zion, _his_ loyal people fused together into\na unity at last, _his_ triumphant warfare on the nations around, are all\nbut faint shadows of One who is to come. That solemn form on the horizon\nof hope is his Lord, the true King whose viceroy he was, the \"bright\nconsummate flower\" for the sake of which the root has its being. And, as\nhe sees the majestic lineaments shimmering through the facts of his own\nhistory, like some hidden fire toiling in a narrow space ere it leaps\ninto ruddy spires that burst their bonds and flame heaven high, he is\nborne onwards by the prophetic impulse, and the Spirit of God speaks\nthrough his tongue words which have no meaning unless their theme be a\nDivine ruler and priest for all the world.\n\nHe begins with the solemn words with which a prophetic message is wont\nto be announced, thus at the outset stamping on the psalm its true\ncharacter. The \"oracle\" or \"word of Jehovah unto my Lord,\" which he\nheard, is a new revelation made to him from the heavens. He is taken up\nand listens to the Divine voice calling to His right hand, to the most\nintimate communion with Himself, and to wielding the energies of\nomnipotence--Him whom David knew to be his lord. And when that Divine\nvoice ceases, its mandate having been fulfilled, the prophetic spirit in\nthe seer hymns the coronation anthem of the monarch enthroned by the\nside of the majesty in the heavens. \"The sceptre of Thy strength will\nJehovah send out of Zion. Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.\" In\nsingular juxtaposition are the throne at God's right hand and the\nsceptre--the emblem of sovereignty--issuing from Zion, a dominion\nrealised on earth by a monarch in the heavens, a dominion the centre of\nwhich is Zion, and the undefined extent universal. It is a monarchy,\ntoo, established in the midst of enemies, sustained in spite of\nantagonism not only by the power of Jehovah, but by the activity of the\nsovereign's own \"rule.\" It is a dominion for the maintenance of which\ndevout souls will burst into prayer, and the most powerful can bring\nbut their aspirations. But the vision includes more than the warrior\nking and his foes. Imbedded, as it were, in the very heart of the\ndescription of the former comes the portraiture of his subjects, for a\nwitness how close is the union between Him and them, and how inseparable\nfrom His glories are those who serve Him. They are characterised in a\nthreefold manner. \"Thy people (shall be) willing in the day of Thine\narray.\" The army is being mustered.[U] They are not mercenaries, nor\npressed men. They flock gladly to the standard, like the warriors\ncelebrated of old in Deborah's chant of victory, who \"willingly offered\nthemselves.\" The word of our psalm might be translated \"freewill\nofferings,\" and the whole clause carries us into the very heart of that\ngreat truth, that glad consecration and grateful self-surrender is the\none bond which knits us to the Captain of our salvation who gave\nHimself for us, to the meek Monarch whose crown is of thorns and His\nsceptre a reed, for tokens that His dominion rests on suffering and is\nwielded in gentleness. The next words should be punctuated as a separate\nclause, co-ordinate with the former, and adding another feature to the\ndescription of the army. \"In the beauties of holiness\" is a common name\nfor the dress of the priests: the idea conveyed is that the army is an\narmy of priests, as the king himself is a priest. They are clothed, not\nin mail and warlike attire, but in \"fine linen clean and white,\" like\nthe armies which a later prophet saw following the Lord of lords. Their\nwarfare is not to be by force and cruelty, nor their conquests bloody;\nbut while soldiers they are to be priests, their weapons purity and\ndevotion, their merciful struggle to bring men to God, and to mirror God\nto men. Round the one image gather all ideas of discipline, courage,\nconsecration to a cause, loyalty to a leader; round the other, all\nthoughts of gentleness, of an atmosphere of devotion calm and still as\nthe holy place, of stainless character. Christ's servants must be both\nsoldiers and priests, like some of those knightly orders who bore the\ncross on helmet and shield, and shaped the very hilts of their swords\ninto its likeness. And these soldier-priests are described by yet\nanother image, \"From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy\nyouth,\" where we are to regard the last word as used in a collective\nsense, and equivalent to \"Thy young warriors.\" They are like the dew\nsparkling in infinite globelets on every blade of grass, hanging gems on\nevery bit of dead wood, formed in secret silence, reflecting the\nsunlight, and, though the single drops be small and feeble, yet together\nfreshening the thirsty world. So, formed by an unseen and mysterious\npower, one by one insignificant, but in the whole mighty, mirroring God\nand quickening and beautifying the worn world, the servants of the\npriest-king are to be \"in the midst of many people like the dew from the\nLord.\"\n\n[U] The word translated \"power\" in our version, has the same double\nmeaning as that has in old English, or as \"force\" has now, sometimes\nsignifying \"strength\" and sometimes an \"army.\" The latter is the more\nappropriate here. \"The day of Thine army\" will then be equivalent to the\nday of mustering the troops.\n\nAnother solemn word from the lips of God begins the second half of the\npsalm. \"Jehovah swears,\" gives the sanction and guarantee of His own\nnature, puts in pledge His own being for the fulfilment of the promise.\nAnd that which He swears is a new thing in the earth. The blending of\nthe royal and priestly offices in the Messiah, and the eternal duration\nin Him of both, is a distinct advancement in the development of\nMessianic prophecy. The historical occasion for it may indeed be\nconnected with David's kingship and conquest of Melchizedek's city; but\nthe real source of it is a direct predictive inspiration. We have here\nnot merely the devout psalmist meditating on the truths revealed before\nhis day, but the prophet receiving a new word from God unheard by mortal\nears, and far transcending even the promises made to him by Nathan.\nThere is but one person to whom it can apply, who sits as a priest upon\nhis throne, who builds the temple of the Lord (Zech. vi. 12, 13).\n\nAs the former Divine word, so this is followed by the prophet's\nrapturous answer, which carries on the portraiture of the priest-king.\nThere is some doubt as to the person addressed in these later verses.\n\"The Lord at thy right hand crushes kings in the day of His wrath.\"\nWhose right hand? The answer generally given is, \"The Messiah's.\" Who is\nthe Lord that smites the petty kinglets of earth? The answer generally\ngiven is, \"God.\" But it is far more dramatic, avoids an awkward\nabruptness in the change of persons in the last verse, and brings out a\nstriking contrast with the previous half, if we take the opposite view,\nand suppose Jehovah addressed and the Messiah spoken of throughout. Then\nthe first Divine word is followed by the prophetic invocation of the\nexalted Messiah throned at the right hand and expecting till His enemies\nbe made His footstool. The second is followed by the prophetic\ninvocation of Jehovah, and describes the Lord Messiah at God's right\nhand as before, but instead of longer waiting He now flames forth in all\nthe resistless energy of a conqueror. The day of His array is succeeded\nby the day of His wrath. He crushes earth's monarchies. The psalmist's\neye sees the whole earth one great battle-field. \"(It is) full of\ncorpses. He wounds the head over wide lands,\" where there may possibly\nbe a reference to the first vague dawning of a hope which God's mercy\nhad let lighten on man's horizon--\"He shall bruise thy head,\" or the\nword may be used as a collective expression for rulers, as the\nparallelism with the previous verse requires. Thus striding on to\nvictory across the prostrate foe, and pursuing the flying relics of\ntheir power, \"He drinks of the brook in the way, therefore shall He lift\nup the head,\" words which are somewhat difficult, however interpreted.\nIf, with the majority of modern commentators, we take them as a\npicturesque embodiment of eager haste in the pursuit, the conqueror\n\"faint, yet pursuing,\" and stooping for a moment to drink, then hurrying\non with renewed strength after the fugitives, one can scarcely help\nfeeling that such a close to such a psalm is trivial and liker the\nartificial play of fancy than the work of the prophetic spirit, to say\nnothing of the fact that there is nothing about pursuit in the psalm. If\nwe fall back on the older interpretation, which sees in the words a\nprophecy of the sufferings of the Messiah who tastes death and drinks of\nthe cup of sorrows, and therefore is highly exalted, we get a meaning\nwhich worthily crowns the psalm, but seems to break somewhat abruptly\nthe sequence of thought, and to force the metaphor of drinking of the\nbrook into somewhat strained parallelism with the very different New\nTestament images just named. But the doubt we must leave over these\nfinal words does not diminish the preciousness of this psalm as a clear,\narticulate prophecy from David's lips of David's Son, whom he had\nlearned to know through the experiences and facts of his own life. He\nhad climbed through sufferings to his throne. God had exalted him and\ngiven him victory, and surrounded him with a loyal people. But he was\nonly a shadow; limitations and imperfections surrounded his office and\nweakened himself; half of the Divine counsel of peace could not be\nmirrored in his functions at all, and death lay ahead of him. So his\nglory and his feebleness alike taught him that \"one mightier than\" he\nmust be coming behind him, \"the latchet of whose shoes he was not worthy\nto unloose\"--the true King of Israel, to bear witness to whom was his\nhighest honour.\n\nThe third characteristic of the first seventeen years of David's reign\nis his successful wars with surrounding nations. The gloomy days of\ndefeat and subjugation which had darkened the closing years of Saul are\nover now, and blow after blow falls with stunning rapidity on the amazed\nenemies. The narrative almost pants for breath as it tells with hurry\nand pride how, south, and east, and north, the \"lion of the tribe of\nJudah\" sprang from his fastness, and smote Philistia, Edom, Moab, Ammon,\nAmalek, Damascus, and the Syrians beyond, even to the Euphrates; and\nthe bounding courage of king and people, and the unity of heart and hand\nwith which they stood shoulder to shoulder in many a bloody field, ring\nthrough the psalms of this period. Whatever higher meaning may be\nattached to them, their roots are firm in the soil of actual history,\nand they are first of all the war-songs of a nation. That being so, that\nthey should also be inspired hymns for the church in all ages will\npresent no difficulty nor afford any consecration to modern warfare, if\nthe progressive character of revelation be duly kept in mind. There is a\nwhole series of such psalms, such as xx., xxi., lx., and probably\nlxviii. We cannot venture in our limited space on any analysis of the\nlast of these. It is a splendid burst of national triumph and devout\npraise, full of martial ardour, throbbing with lofty consciousness of\nGod's dwelling in Israel, abounding with allusions to the ancient\nvictories of the people, and world-wide in its anticipations of future\ntriumph. How strange the history of its opening words has been! Through\nthe battle smoke of how many a field they have rung! On the plains of\nthe Palatinate, from the lips of Cromwell's Ironsides, and from the poor\npeasants that went to death on many a bleak moor for Christ's crown and\ncovenant, to the Doric music of their rude chant--\n\n  \"Let God arise, and scattered\n    Let all His enemies be;\n  And let all those that do Him hate,\n    Before His presence flee.\"\n\nThe sixtieth psalm is assigned to David after Joab's signal victory over\nthe Edomites (2 Sam. viii.). It agrees very well with that date, though\nthe earlier verses have a wailing tone so deep over recent disasters, so\ngreat that one is almost inclined to suppose that they come from a later\nhand than his. But after the first verses all is warlike energy and\ntriumph. How the glad thought of ruling over a united people dances in\nthe swift words, \"I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out\nthe valley of Succoth;\" he has, as it were, repeated Joshua's conquest\nand division of the land, and the ancient historical sites that fill a\nconspicuous place in the history of his great ancestor are in his power.\n\"Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine, Ephraim also is the defence of my\nhead, Judah my staff of command.\" He looks eastward to the woods and\npastoral uplands across the Jordan, whose inhabitants had been but\nloosely attached to the western portion of the nation, and triumphs in\nknowing that Gilead and Manasseh own his sway. The foremost tribes on\nthis side the river are to him like the armour and equipments of a\nconqueror; he wears the might of Ephraim, the natural head of the\nnorthern region, as his helmet, and he grasps the power of Judah as his\nbaton of command or sceptre of kingly rule (Gen. xlix. 10).\n\nThus, strong in the possession of a united kingdom, his flashing eye\nturns to his enemies, and a stern joy, mingled with contempt, blazes up\nas he sees them reduced to menial offices and trembling before him.\n\"Moab (is) my washing-basin; to Edom will I fling my shoe; because of\nme, Philistia, cry out\" (in fear). The three ancestral foes that hung on\nIsrael's southern border from east to west are subdued. He will make of\none \"a vessel of dishonour\" to wash his feet, soiled with battle; he\nwill throw his shoes to another the while, as one would to a slave to\ntake care of; and the third, expecting a like fate, shrieks out in fear\nof the impending vengeance. He pants for new victories, \"Who will bring\nme into (the) strong city?\" probably the yet unsubdued Petra, hidden\naway in its tortuous ravine, with but one perilous path through the\ngorge. And at last all the triumph of victory rises to a higher region\nof thought in the closing words, which lay bare the secret of his\nstrength, and breathe the true spirit of the soldier of Jehovah. \"In God\nwe shall do valiantly; and He, even He, shall tread down our enemies.\"\n\nThe twentieth psalm, another of these stirring war-songs, is in that\nchoral manner which we have already seen in psalm xxiv., and the\nadoption of which was probably connected with David's careful\norganization of \"the service of song.\" It is all ablaze with the light\nof battle and the glow of loyal love.\n\nThe army, ready drawn up for action, as we may fancy, prays for the\nking, who, according to custom, brings sacrifices and offerings before\nthe fight. \"Jehovah hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God\nof Jacob defend thee, send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen\nthee out of Zion, remember all thine offerings, and accept thy burnt\nsacrifice.\" Then, as they wave their standards in the sunshine, or plant\nbefore the ranks of each tribe its cognizance, to be defended to the\ndeath, the hoarse shout rises from the files, \"In the name of our God we\nwill set up (or wave) our banners.\" Then the single voice of the king\nspeaks, rejoicing in his soldiers' devotion, which he accepts as an omen\nthat his sacrifice has not been in vain: \"Now know I that Jehovah saveth\nHis anointed. He will hear him from the heaven of His holiness with the\nstrength of the salvation of His right hand;\" not merely from a God\ndwelling in Zion, according to language of the previous prayer, but from\nthe Lord in the heavens, will the strength come. Then again the chorus\nof the host exclaims, as they look across the field to the chariots and\ncavalry of the foe--forces which Israel seldom used--\"These (boast[V])\nof chariots, and those of horses, and we, of the name of Jehovah, our\nGod, do we boast.\" Ere a sword has been drawn, they see the enemy\nscattered. \"They are brought down and fallen; and we, we are risen and\nstand upright.\" Then one earnest cry to God, one more thought of the\ntrue monarch of Israel, whom David would teach them to feel he only\nshadowed; and with the prayer, \"Jehovah! save! Let the King hear us in\nthe day when we cry,\" ringing like the long trumpet blast that sounds\nfor the charge, they dash forth to victory!\n\n[V] Lit. \"make mention of\" or \"commemorate.\"\n\n\n\n\nXIII.--THE TEARS OF THE PENITENT.\n\n\nAdversity had taught David self-restraint, had braced his soul, had\ndriven him to grasp firmly the hand of God. And prosperity had seemed\nfor nearly twenty years but to perfect the lessons. Gratitude had\nfollowed deliverance, and the sunshine after the rain had brought out\nthe fragrance of devotion and the blossoms of glad songs. A good man,\nand still more a man of David's age at the date of his great crime,\nseldom falls so low, unless there has been previous, perhaps\nunconscious, relaxation of the girded loins, and negligence of the\nuntrimmed lamp. The sensitive nature of the psalmist was indeed not\nunlikely to yield to the sudden force of such a temptation as conquered\nhim, but we can scarcely conceive of its having done so without a\nprevious decay of his religious life, hidden most likely from himself.\nAnd the source of that decay may probably be found in self-indulgence,\nfostered by ease, and by long years of command. The actual fall into\nsin seems to have been begun by slothful abdication of his functions as\ncaptain of Israel. It is perhaps not without bitter emphasis that the\nnarrative introduces it by telling us that, \"at the time when kings go\nforth to battle,\" David contented himself with sending his troops\nagainst Ammon, and \"tarried still at Jerusalem.\" At all events, the\nstory brings into sharp contrast the levy _en masse_, encamped round\nRabbath, and their natural head, who had once been so ready to take his\nshare of blows and privations, loitering behind, taking his quiet siesta\nin the hot hours after noon, as if there had been no soldiers of his\nsweltering in their armour, and rising from his bed to stroll on his\npalace roof, and peer into the household privacies below, as if his\nheart had no interest in the grim tussle going on behind the hills that\nhe could almost see from his height, as they grew purple in the evening\ntwilight. He has fallen to the level of an Eastern despot, and has lost\nhis sense of the responsibilities of his office. Such loosening of the\ntension of his moral nature as is indicated in his absence from the\nfield, during what was evidently a very severe as well as a long\nstruggle, prepared the way for the dismal headlong plunge into sin.\n\nThe story is told in all its hideousness, without palliation or reserve,\nwithout comment or heightening, in that stern judicial fashion so\ncharacteristic of the Bible records of its greatest characters. Every\nstep is narrated without a trace of softening, and without a word of\nemotion. Not a single ugly detail is spared. The portraiture is as vivid\nas ever. Bathsheba's willing complicity, her punctilious observance of\nceremonial propriety while she is trampling under foot her holiest\nobligations; the fatal necessity which drags sin after sin, and summons\nup murder to hide, if it be possible, the foul form of adultery; the\nstinging rebuke in the conduct of Uriah, who, Hittite as he was, has a\nmore chivalrous, not to say devout, shrinking from personal ease while\nhis comrades and the ark are in the field, than the king has; the mean\ntreason, the degradation implied in getting into Joab's power; the\ncynical plainness of the murderous letter, in which a hardened\nconscience names his purposed evil by its true name; the contemptuous\nmeasure of his master which Joab takes in his message, the king's\nindifference to the loss of his men so long as Uriah is out of the way;\nthe solemn platitudes with which he pretends to console his tool for the\ncheck of his troops; and the hideous haste with which, after her\nscrupulous \"mourning\" for one week, Bathsheba threw herself again into\nDavid's arms;--all these particulars, and every particular an\naggravation, stand out for ever, as men's most hidden evil will one day\ndo, in the clear, unpitying, unmistakable light of the Divine record.\nWhat a story it is!\n\nThis saint of nearly fifty years of age, bound to God by ties which he\nrapturously felt and acknowledged, whose words have been the very breath\nof devotion for every devout heart, forgets his longings after\nrighteousness, flings away the joys of Divine communion, darkens his\nsoul, ends his prosperity, brings down upon his head for all his\nremaining years a cataract of calamities, and makes his name and his\nreligion a target for the barbed sarcasms of each succeeding generation\nof scoffers. \"All the fences and their whole array,\" which God's mercies\nand his own past had reared, \"one cunning sin sweeps quite away.\" Every\nobligation of his office, as every grace of his character, is trodden\nunder foot by the wild beast roused in his breast. As man, as king, as\nsoldier, he is found wanting. Lust and treason, and craft and murder,\nare goodly companions for him who had said, \"I will walk within my house\nwith a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.\" Why\nshould we dwell on the wretched story? Because it teaches us, as no\nother page in the history of God's church does, how the alchemy of\nDivine love can extract sweet perfumes of penitence and praise out of\nthe filth of sin; and therefore, though we turn with loathing from\nDavid's sin, we have to bless God for the record of it, and for the\nlessons of hope that come from David's pardon.\n\nTo many a sin-tortured soul since then, the two psalms (li., xxxii.),\nall blotted with tears, in which he has sobbed out his penitence, have\nbeen as footsteps in a great and terrible wilderness. They are too\nfamiliar to need, and too sacred to bear, many words here, but we may\nbriefly note some points connected with them--especially those which\nassist us in forming some image of the psalmist's state of mind after\nhis transgression. It may be observed that of these two psalms, the\nfifty-first is evidently earlier than the thirty-second. In the former\nwe see the fallen man struggling up out of the \"horrible pit and miry\nclay;\" in the latter he stands upon the rock, with a new song in his\nmouth, even the blessedness of him \"whose sin is covered.\" It appears\nalso that both must be dated after the sharp thrust of God's lancet\nwhich Nathan drove into his conscience, and the healing balsam of God's\nassurance of forgiveness which Nathan laid upon his heart. The\npassionate cries of the psalm are the echo of the Divine promise--the\neffort of his faith to grasp and keep the merciful gift of pardon. The\nconsciousness of forgiveness is the basis of the prayer for forgiveness.\n\nSomewhere about a year passed between the crime and the message of\nNathan. And what sort of a year it was the psalms tell us. The coarse\nsatisfactions of his sin could not long content him, as they might have\ndone a lower type of man. Nobody buys a little passing pleasure in evil\nat so dear a rate, or keeps it for so short a time as a good man. He\ncannot make himself as others. \"That which cometh into your mind shall\nnot be at all, in that ye say, We will be as the families of the\nnations, which serve wood and stone.\" Old habits quickly reassert their\nforce, conscience soon lifts again its solemn voice; and while worse men\nare enjoying the strong-flavoured meats on sin's table, the servant of\nGod, who has been seduced to prefer them for a moment to the \"light\nbread\" from heaven, tastes them already bitter in his mouth. He may be\nfar from true repentance, but he will very soon know remorse. Months may\npass before he can feel again the calm joys of God, but disgust with\nhimself and with his sin will quickly fill his soul. No more vivid\npicture of such a state has ever been drawn, than is found in the psalms\nof this period. They tell of sullen \"silence;\" dust had settled on the\nstrings of his harp, as on helmet and sword. He will not speak to God of\nhis sin, and there is nothing else that he can speak of. They tell of\nhis \"roaring all the day long\"--the groan of anguish forced from his yet\nunsoftened spirit. Day and night God's heavy hand weighed him down; the\nconsciousness of that power, whose gentleness had once holden him up,\ncrushed, but did not melt him. Like some heated iron, its heaviness\nscorched as well as bruised, and his moisture--all the dew and\nfreshness of his life--was dried up at its touch and turned into dusty,\ncracking drought, that chaps the hard earth, and shrinks the streamlets,\nand burns to brown powder the tender herbage (Ps. xxxii.). Body and mind\nseem both to be included in this wonderful description, in which\nobstinate dumbness, constant torture, dread of God, and not one\nsoftening drop of penitence fill the dry and dusty heart, while \"bones\nwaxing old,\" or, as the word might be rendered, \"rotting,\" sleepless\nnights, and perhaps the burning heat of disease, are hinted at as the\naccompaniments of the soul-agony. It is possible that similar allusions\nto actual bodily illness are to be found in another psalm, probably\nreferring to the same period, and presenting striking parallelisms of\nexpression (Ps. vi.), \"Have mercy upon me, Jehovah, for I languish (fade\naway); heal me, for my bones are affrighted. My soul is also sore vexed.\nI am weary with my groaning; every night make I my bed to swim. I water\nmy couch with my tears.\" The similar phrase, too, in psalm fifty-one,\n\"The bones which Thou hast broken,\" may have a similar application.\nThus, sick in body and soul, he dragged through a weary year--ashamed\nof his guilty dalliance, wretched in his self-accusations, afraid of\nGod, and skulking in the recesses of his palace from the sight of his\npeople. A goodly price he had sold integrity for. The bread had been\nsweet for a moment, but how quickly his \"mouth is filled with gravel\"\n(Proverbs xx. 17). David learned, what we all learn (and the holier a\nman is, the more speedily and sharply does the lesson follow on the\nheels of his sin), that every transgression is a blunder, that we never\nget the satisfaction which we expect from any sin, or if we do, we get\nsomething with it which spoils it all. A nauseous drug is added to the\nexciting, intoxicating drink which temptation offers, and though its\nflavour is at first disguised by the pleasanter taste of the sin, its\nbitterness is persistent though slow, and clings to the palate long\nafter that has faded utterly.\n\nInto this dreary life Nathan's message comes with merciful rebuke. The\nprompt severity of David's judgment against the selfish sinner of the\ninimitable apologue may be a subtle indication of his troubled\nconscience, which fancies some atonement for his own sin in stern\nrepression of that of others; for consciousness of evil may sometimes\nsting into harshness as well as soften to lenity, and sinful man is a\nsterner judge than the righteous God. The answer of Nathan is a perfect\nexample of the Divine way of convincing of sin. There is first the plain\ncharge pressed home on the individual conscience, \"Thou art the man.\"\nThen follows, not reproach nor further deepening of the blackness of the\ndeed, but a tender enumeration of God's great benefits, whereon is built\nthe solemn question, \"Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of\nthe Lord, to do evil in His sight?\" The contemplation of God's faithful\nlove, and of the all-sufficient gifts which it bestows, makes every\ntransgression irrational as well as ungrateful, and turns remorse, which\nconsumes like the hot wind of the wilderness, into tearful repentance\nwhich refreshes the soul. When God has been seen loving and bestowing\nere He commands and requires, it is profitable to hold the image of the\nman's evil in all its ugliness close up to his eyes; and so the bald\nfacts are repeated next in the fewest, strongest words. Nor can the\nmessage close until a rigid law of retribution has been proclaimed, the\nslow operation of which will filter bitterness and shame through all\nhis life. \"And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord.\"\nTwo words (in the Hebrew) make the transition from sullen misery to real\nthough shaded peace. No lengthened outpouring, no accumulation of\nself-reproach; he is too deeply moved for many words, which he knows God\ndoes not need. More would have been less. All is contained in that one\nsob, in which the whole frostwork of these weary months breaks up and\nrolls away, swept before the strong flood. And as brief and simple as\nthe confession, is the response, \"And Nathan said unto David, The Lord\nalso hath put away thy sin.\" How full and unconditional the blessing\nbestowed in these few words; how swift and sufficient the answer! So the\nlong estrangement is ended. Thus simple and Divine is the manner of\npardon. In such short compass may the turning point of a life lie! But\nwhile confession and forgiveness heal the breach between God and David,\npardon is not impunity, and the same sentence which bestows the\nremission of sin announces the exaction of a penalty. The judgments\nthreatened a moment before--a moment so far removed now to David's\nconsciousness that it would look as if an age had passed--are not\nwithdrawn, and another is added, the death of Bathsheba's infant. God\nloves His servants too well to \"suffer sin upon them,\" and the freest\nforgiveness and the happiest consciousness of it may consist with the\nloving infliction and the submissive bearing of pains, which are no\nlonger the strokes of an avenging judge, but the chastisements of a\ngracious father.\n\nThe fifty-first psalm must, we think, be conceived of as following soon\nafter Nathan's mission. There may be echoes of the prophet's stern\nquestion, \"Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to\ndo evil in His sight?\" and of the confession, \"I have sinned against the\nLord,\" in the words, \"Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done\nevil in Thy sight\" (ver. 4), though perhaps the expressions are not so\npeculiar as to make the allusion certain. But, at all events, the\npenitence and prayers of the psalm can scarcely be supposed to have\npreceded the date of the historical narrative, which clearly implies\nthat the rebuke of the seer was the first thing that broke up the dumb\nmisery of unrepented sin.\n\nAlthough the psalm is one long cry for pardon and restoration, one can\ndiscern an order and progress in its petitions--the order, not of an\nartificial reproduction of a past mood of mind, but the instinctive\norder in which the emotion of contrite desire will ever pour itself\nforth. In the psalm all begins, as all begins in fact, with the\ngrounding of the cry for favour on \"Thy loving-kindness,\" \"the multitude\nof Thy tender mercies;\" the one plea that avails with God, whose love is\nits own motive and its own measure, whose past acts are the standard for\nall His future, whose compassions, in their innumerable numbers, are\nmore than the sum of our transgressions, though these be \"more than the\nhairs of our head.\" Beginning with God's mercy, the penitent soul can\nlearn to look next upon its own sin in all its aspects of evil. The\ndepth and intensity of the psalmist's loathing of self is wonderfully\nexpressed in his words for his crime. He speaks of his \"transgressions\"\nand of his \"sin.\" Looked at in one way, he sees the separate acts of\nwhich he had been guilty--lust, fraud, treachery, murder: looked at in\nanother, he sees them all knotted together, in one inextricable tangle\nof forked, hissing tongues, like the serpent locks that coil and twist\nround a Gorgon head. No sin dwells alone; the separate acts have a\ncommon root, and the whole is matted together like the green growth on a\nstagnant pond, so that, by whatever filament it is grasped, the whole\nmass is drawn towards you. And a profound insight into the essence and\ncharacter of sin lies in the accumulated synonyms. It is\n\"transgression,\" or, as the word might be rendered, \"rebellion\"--not the\nmere breach of an impersonal law, not merely an infraction of \"the\nconstitution of our nature\"--but the rising of a subject will against\nits true king, disobedience to a person as well as contravention of a\nstandard. It is \"iniquity\"--perversion or distortion--a word which\nexpresses the same metaphor as is found in many languages, namely,\ncrookedness as descriptive of deeds which depart from the perfect line\nof right. It is \"sin,\" _i.e._, \"missing one's aim;\" in which profound\nword is contained the truth that all sin is a blunder, shooting wide of\nthe true goal, if regard be had to the end of our being, and not less\nwide if regard be had to our happiness. It ever misses the mark; and the\nepitaph might be written over every sinner who seeks pleasure at the\nprice of righteousness, \"Thou fool.\"\n\nNor less pregnant with meaning is the psalmist's emphatic\nacknowledgment, \"Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.\" He is not\ncontent with looking upon his evil in itself, or in relation only to the\npeople who had suffered by it; he thinks of it in relation to God. He\nhad been guilty of crimes against Bathsheba and Uriah, and even the\nrough soldier whom he made his tool, as well as against his whole\nsubjects; but, dark as these were, they assumed their true character\nonly when they were discerned as done against God. \"Sin,\" in its full\nsense, implies \"God\" as its correlative. We transgress against each\nother, but we sin against Him.\n\nNor does the psalmist stop here. He has acknowledged the tangled\nmultiplicity and dreadful unity of his evil, he has seen its inmost\ncharacter, he has learned to bring his deed into connection with God;\nwhat remains still to be confessed? He laments, and that not as\nextenuation (though it be explanation), but as aggravation, the sinful\nnature in which he had been born. The deeds had come from a source--a\nbitter fountain had welled out this blackness. He himself is evil,\ntherefore he has done evil. The sin is his; he will not contest his full\nresponsibility; and its foul characteristics declare the inward foulness\nfrom which it has flowed--and that foulness is himself. Does he\ntherefore think that he is less to blame? By no means. His\nacknowledgment of an evil nature is the very deepest of his confessions,\nand leads not to a palliation of his guilt, but to a cry to Him who\nalone can heal the inward wound; and as He can purge away the\ntransgressions, can likewise stanch their source, and give him to feel\nwithin \"that he is healed from that plague.\"\n\nThe same intensity of feeling expressed by the use of so many words for\nsin is revealed also in the reiterated synonyms for pardon. The prayer\ncomes from his lips over and over again, not because he thinks that he\nshall be heard for his much speaking, but because of the earnestness of\nhis longing. Such repetitions are signs of the persistence of faith,\nwhile others, though they last like the prayers of Baal's priests, \"from\nmorning till the time of the evening sacrifice,\" indicate only the\nsuppliant's doubt. David prays that his sins may be \"blotted out,\" in\nwhich petition they are conceived as recorded against him in the\narchives of the heavens; that he may be \"washed\" from them, in which\nthey are conceived as foul stains upon himself, needing for their\nremoval hard rubbing and beating (for such is, according to some\ncommentators, the force of the word); that he may be \"cleansed\"--the\ntechnical word for the priestly cleansing of the leper, and declaring\nhim clear of the taint. He also, with similar recurrence to the Mosaic\nsymbols, prays that he may be \"purged with hyssop.\" There is a pathetic\nappropriateness in the petition, for not only lepers, but those who had\nbecome defiled by contact with a dead body, were thus purified; and on\nwhom did the taint of corruption cleave as on the murderer of Uriah? The\nprayer, too, is even more remarkable in the original, which employs a\nverb formed from the word for \"sin;\" \"and if in our language that were a\nword in use, it might be translated, 'Thou shalt un-sin me.'\"[W]\n\n[W] Donne's Sermons, quoted in Perowne, _in. loc._\n\nIn the midst of these abased confessions and cries for pardon there\ncomes with wonderful force and beauty the bold prayer for restoration\nto \"joy and gladness\"--an indication surely of more than ordinary\nconfidence in the full mercy of God, which would efface all the\nconsequences of his sin.\n\nAnd following upon them are petitions for sanctifying, reiterated and\nmany-sided, like those that have preceded. Three pairs of clauses\ncontain these, in each of which the second member of the clause asks for\nthe infusion into his spirit of some grace from God--that he may possess\na \"steadfast spirit,\" \"Thy Holy Spirit,\" \"a willing spirit.\" It is\nperhaps not an accident that the central petition of the three is the\none which most clearly expresses the thought which all imply--that the\nhuman spirit can only be renewed and hallowed by the entrance into it of\nthe Divine. We are not to commit the theological anachronism which has\nbeen applied with such evil effect to the whole Old Testament, and\nsuppose that David meant by that central clause in his prayer for\nrenewal all that we mean by it; but he meant, at least, that his\nspiritual nature could be made to love righteousness and hate iniquity\nby none other power than God's breathing on it. If we may venture to\nregard this as the heart of the series, the other two on either side of\nit may be conceived as its consequences. It will then be \"a right\nspirit,\" or, as the word means, a steadfast spirit, strong to resist,\nnot swept away by surges of passion, nor shaken by terrors of remorse,\nbut calm, tenacious, and resolved, pressing on in the path of holiness,\nand immovable with the immobility of those who are rooted in God and\ngoodness. It will be a free, or \"a willing spirit,\" ready for all joyful\nservice of thankfulness, and so penetrated with the love of his God that\nhe will delight to do His will, and carry the law charactered in the\nspontaneous impulses of his renewed nature. Not without profound meaning\ndoes the psalmist seem to recur in his hour of penitence to the tragic\nfate of his predecessor in the monarchy, to whom, as to himself, had\nbeen given by the same anointing, the same gift of \"the Spirit of God.\"\nRemembering how the holy chrism had faded from the raven locks of Saul\nlong before his bloody head had been sent round Philistine cities to\nglut their revenge, and knowing that if God were \"strict to mark\niniquity,\" the gift which had been withdrawn from Saul would not be\ncontinued to himself, he prays, not as anointed monarch only, but as\nsinful man, \"Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.\" As before he had\nventured to ask for the joy of forgiveness, so now he pleads once more\nfor \"the joy of Thy salvation,\" which comes from cleansing, from\nconscious fellowship--which he had so long and deeply felt, which for so\nmany months had been hid from him by the mists of his own sin. The\npsalmist's natural buoyancy, the gladness which was an inseparable part\nof his religion, and had rung from his harp in many an hour of peril,\nthe bold width of his desires, grounded on the clear breadth of his\nfaith in God's perfect forgiveness, are all expressed in such a prayer\nfrom such lips at such a time, and may well be pondered and imitated by\nus.\n\nThe lowly prayer which we have been tracing rises ere its close to a vow\nof renewed praise. It is very beautiful to note how the poet nature, as\nwell as the consciousness of a Divine function, unite in the resolve\nthat crowns the psalm. To David no tribute that he could bring to God\nseemed so little unworthy--none to himself so joyous--as the music of\nhis harp, and the melody of his songs; nor was any part of his kingly\noffice so lofty in his estimation as his calling to proclaim in glowing\nwords the name of the Lord, that men might learn to love. His earliest\nsong in exile had closed with a like vow. It had been well fulfilled for\nmany a year; but these last doleful months had silenced all his praise.\nNow, as hope begins to shine upon him once more, the frost which had\nstilled the stream of his devotion is melting, and as he remembers his\nglad songs of old, and this miserable dumbness, his final prayer is, \"O\nLord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.\"\n\nThe same consciousness of sin, which we have found in a previous verse\ndiscerning the true significance of ceremonial purification, leads also\nto the recognition of the insufficiency of outward sacrifices--a thought\nwhich is not, as some modern critics would fain make it, the product of\nthe latest age of Judaism, but appears occasionally through the whole of\nthe history, and indicates not the date, but the spiritual elevation of\nits utterer. David sets it on the very summit of his psalm, to sparkle\nthere like some stone of price. The rich jewel which he has brought up\nfrom the abyss of degradation is that truth which has shone out from its\nsetting here over three millenniums: \"The sacrifices of God are a\nbroken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not\ndespise.\"\n\nThe words which follow, containing a prayer for the building up of Zion,\nand a prediction of the continuous offering of sacrifice, present some\ndifficulty. They do not necessarily presuppose that Jerusalem is in\nruins; for \"build Thou the walls\" would be no less appropriate a\npetition if the fortifications were unfinished (as we know they were in\nDavid's time) than if they had been broken down. Nor do the words\ncontradict the view of sacrifice just given, for the use of the symbol\nand the conviction of its insufficiency co-existed, in fact, in every\ndevout life, and may well be expressed side by side. But the transition\nfrom so intensely personal emotions to intercession for Zion seems\nalmost too sudden even for a nature as wide and warm as David's. If the\nclosing verses are his, we may, indeed, see in them the king re-awaking\nto a sense of his responsibilities, which he had so long neglected,\nfirst, in the selfishness of his heart, and then in the morbid\nself-absorption of his remorse; and the lesson may be a precious one\nthat the first thought of a pardoned man should be for others. But\nthere is much to be said, on the other hand, in favour of the conjecture\nthat these verses are a later addition, probably after the return from\ncaptivity, when the walls of Zion were in ruins, and the altar of the\ntemple had been long cold. If so, then our psalm, as it came from\nDavid's full heart, would be all of a piece--one great gush of penitence\nand faith, beginning with, \"Have mercy upon me, O God,\" ending with the\nassurance of acceptance, and so remaining for all ages the chart of the\nthorny and yet blessed path that leads \"from death unto life.\" In that\naspect, what it does not contain is as noteworthy as what it does. Not\none word asks for exemption from such penalties of his great fall as can\nbe inflicted by a loving Father on a soul that lives in His love. He\ncries for pardon, but he gives his back to the smiters whom God may\nplease to send.\n\nThe other psalm of the penitent (xxxii.) has been already referred to in\nconnection with the autobiographical materials which it contains. It is\nevidently of a later period than the fifty-first. There is no struggle\nin it; the prayer has been heard, and this is the beginning of the\nfulfilment of the vow to show forth God's praise. In the earlier he had\nsaid, \"Then will I teach transgressors the way;\" here he says, \"I will\ninstruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go.\" There he\nbegan with the plaintive cry for mercy; here with a burst of praise\ncelebrating the happiness of the pardoned penitent. There we heard the\nsobs of a man in the very agony of abasement; here we have the story of\ntheir blessed issue. There we had multiplied synonyms for sin, and for\nthe forgiveness which was desired; here it is the many-sided\npreciousness of forgiveness possessed which runs over in various yet\nequivalent phrases. There the highest point to which he could climb was\nthe assurance that a bruised heart was accepted, and the bones broken\nmight still rejoice. Here the very first word is of blessedness, and the\nclose summons the righteous to exuberant joy. The one is a psalm of\nwailing; the other, to use its own words, a \"song of deliverance.\"\n\nWhat glad consciousness that he himself is the happy man whom he\ndescribes rings in the melodious variations of the one thought of\nforgiveness in the opening words! How gratefully he draws on the\ntreasures of that recent experience, while he sets it forth as being\nthe \"taking away\" of sin, as if it were the removal of a solid\nsomething, or the lifting of a burden off his back; and as the\n\"covering\" of sin, as if it were the wrapping of its ugliness in thick\nfolds that hide it for ever even from the all-seeing Eye; and as the\n\"non-reckoning\" of sin, as if it were the discharge of a debt! What\nvivid memory of past misery in the awful portrait of his impenitent\nself, already referred to--on which the mind dwells in silence, while\nthe musical accompaniment (as directed by the \"selah\") touches some\nplaintive minor or grating discord! How noble and eloquent the brief\nwords (echo of the historical narrative) that tell the full and swift\nforgiveness that followed simple confession--and how effectively the\nmusic again comes in, prolonging the thought and rejoicing in the\npardon! How sure he is that his experience is of priceless value to the\nworld for all time, when he sees in his absolution a motive that will\ndraw all the godly nearer to their Helper in heaven! How full his heart\nis of praise, that he cannot but go back again to his own story, and\nrejoice in God his hiding-place--whose past wondrous love assures him\nthat in the future songs of deliverance will ring him round, and all his\npath be encompassed with music of praise.\n\nSo ends the more personal part of the psalm. A more didactic portion\nfollows, the generalization of that. Possibly the voice which now speaks\nis a higher than David's. \"I will instruct thee and teach thee in the\nway which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye,\" scarcely\nsounds like words meant to be understood as spoken by him. They are the\npromise from heaven of a gentle teaching to the pardoned man, which will\ninstruct by no severity, but by patient schooling; which will direct by\nno harsh authority, but by that loving glance that is enough for those\nwho love, and is all too subtle and delicate to be perceived by any\nother. Such gracious direction is not for the psalmist alone, but it\nneeds a spirit in harmony with God to understand it. For others there\ncan be nothing higher than mere force, the discipline of sorrow, the\nbridle in the hard mouth, the whip for the stiff back. The choice for\nall men is through penitence and forgiveness to rise to the true\nposition of men, capable of receiving and obeying a spiritual guidance,\nwhich appeals to the heart, and gently subdues the will, or by stubborn\nimpenitence to fall to the level of brutes, that can only be held in by\na halter and driven by a lash. And because this is the alternative,\ntherefore \"Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; but he that trusteth in\nthe Lord, mercy shall compass him about.\"\n\nAnd then the psalm ends with a great cry of gladness, three times\nreiterated, like the voice of a herald on some festal day of a nation:\n\"Rejoice in Jehovah! and leap for joy, O righteous! and gladly shout,\nall ye upright in heart!\"\n\nSuch is the end of the sobs of the penitent.\n\n\n\n\nXIV.--CHASTISEMENTS.\n\n\nThe chastisements, which were the natural fruits of David's sin, soon\nbegan to show themselves, though apparently ten years at least passed\nbefore Absalom's revolt, at which time he was probably a man of sixty.\nBut these ten years were very weary and sad. There is no more joyous\nactivity, no more conquering energy, no more consciousness of his\npeople's love. Disasters thicken round him, and may all be traced to his\ngreat sin. His children learned the lesson it had taught them, and lust\nand fratricide desolated his family. A parent can have no sharper pang\nthan the sight of his own sins reappearing in his child. David saw the\nghastly reflection of his unbridled passion in his eldest son's foul\ncrime (and even a gleam of it in his unhappy daughter), and of his\nmurderous craft in his second son's bloody revenge. Whilst all this hell\nof crime is boiling round him, a strange passiveness seems to have\ncrept over the king, and to have continued till his flight before\nAbsalom. The narrative is singularly silent about him. He seems\nparalysed by the consciousness of his past sin; he originates nothing.\nHe dares not punish Ammon; he can only weep when he hears of Absalom's\ncrime. He weakly longs for the return of the latter from his exile, but\ncannot nerve himself to send for him till Joab urges it. A flash of his\nold kingliness blazes out for a moment in his refusal to see his son;\nbut even that slight satisfaction to justice vanishes as soon as Joab\nchooses to insist that Absalom shall return to court. He seems to have\nno will of his own. He has become a mere tool in the hands of his fierce\ngeneral--and Joab's hold upon him was his complicity in Uriah's murder.\nThus at every step he was dogged by the consequences of his crime, even\nthough it was pardoned sin. And if, as is probable, Ahithophel was\nBathsheba's grandfather, the most formidable person in Absalom's\nconspiracy, whose defection wounded him so deeply, was no doubt driven\nto the usurper's side out of revenge for the insult to his house in her\nperson. Thus \"of our pleasant vices doth heaven make whips to scourge\nus.\" \"Be not deceived; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also\nreap.\"\n\nIt is not probable that many psalms were made in those dreary days. But\nthe forty-first and fifty-fifth are, with reasonable probability,\nreferred to this period by many commentators. They give a very touching\npicture of the old king during the four years in which Absalom's\nconspiracy was being hatched. It seems, from the forty-first, that the\npain and sorrow of his heart had brought on some serious illness, which\nhis enemies had used for their own purposes, and embittered by\nhypocritical condolences and ill-concealed glee. The sensitive\nnature of the psalmist winces under their heartless desertion of him,\nand pours out its plaint in this pathetic lament. He begins with a\nblessing on those who \"consider the afflicted\"--having reference,\nperhaps, to the few who were faithful to him in his languishing\nsickness. He passes thence to his own case, and, after humble confession\nof his sin,--almost in the words of the fifty-first psalm,--he tells how\nhis sickbed had been surrounded by very different visitors. His disease\ndrew no pity, but only fierce impatience that he lingered in life so\nlong. \"Mine enemies speak evil of me--when will he die, and his name\nhave perished?\" One of them, in especial, who must have been a man in\nhigh position to gain access to the sick chamber, has been conspicuous\nby his lying words of condolence: \"If he come to see me he speaketh\nvanity.\" The sight of the sick king touched no chord of affection, but\nonly increased the traitor's animosity--\"his heart gathereth evil to\nitself\"--and then, having watched his pale face for wished-for\nunfavourable symptoms, the false friend hurries from the bedside to talk\nof his hopeless illness--\"he goeth abroad, he telleth it.\" The tidings\nspread, and are stealthily passed from one conspirator to another. \"All\nthat hate me whisper together against me.\" They exaggerate the gravity\nof his condition, and are glad because, making the wish the father to\nthe thought, they believe him dying. \"A thing of Belial\" (_i.e._, a\ndestructive disease), \"say they, is poured out upon him, and now that he\nlieth, he shall rise up no more.\" And, sharpest pang of all, that among\nthese traitors, and probably the same person as he whose heartless\npresence in the sick chamber was so hard to bear, should be Ahithophel,\nwhose counsel had been like an oracle from God. Even he, \"the man of my\nfriendship, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread\"--he, like an\nignoble, vicious mule--\"has lifted high his heel\" against the sick lion.\n\nWe should be disposed to refer the thirty-ninth psalm also to this\nperiod. It, too, is the meditation of one in sickness, which he knows to\nbe a Divine judgment for his sin. There is little trace of enemies in\nit; but his attitude is that of silent submission, while wicked men are\ndisquieted around him--which is precisely the characteristic peculiarity\nof his conduct at this period. It consists of two parts (vers. 1-6 and\n7-13), in both of which the subjects of his meditations are the same,\nbut the tone of them different. His own sickness and mortality, and\nman's fleeting, shadowy life, are his themes. The former has led him to\nthink of the latter. The first effect of his sorrow was to close his\nlips in a silence that was not altogether submission. \"I held my peace,\neven from good, and my sorrow was stirred.\" As in his sin, when he kept\nsilence, his \"bones waxed old,\" so now in his sorrow and sickness the\npain that could not find expression raged the more violently. The\ntearless eyes were hot and aching; but he conquered the dumb spirit, and\ncould carry his heavy thoughts to God. They are very heavy at first. He\nonly desires that the sad truth may be driven deeper into his soul. With\nthe engrossment so characteristic of melancholy, he asks, what might\nhave been thought the thing he needed least, \"Make me to know mine end;\"\nand then he dilates on the gloomy reflections which he had been\ncherishing in silence. Not only he himself, with his handbreadth of\ndays, that shrink into absolute nothingness when brought into contrast\nwith the life of God, but \"every man,\" even when apparently \"standing\"\nmost \"firm, is only a breath.\" As a shadow every man moves spectral\namong shadows. The tumult that fills their lives is madness; \"only for a\nbreath are they disquieted.\" So bitterly, with an anticipation of the\nsad, clear-eyed pity and scorn of \"The Preacher,\" does the sick and\nwearied king speak, in tones very unlike the joyous music of his earlier\nutterances.\n\nBut, true and wholesome as such thoughts are, they are not all the\ntruth. So the prayer changes in tone, even while its substance is the\nsame. He rises from the shows of earth to his true home, driven thither\nby their hollowness. \"My hope is in Thee.\" The conviction of earth's\nvanity is all different when it has \"tossed him to Thy breast.\" The\npardoned sinner, who never thereafter forgot his grievous fall, asks for\ndeliverance \"from all his transgressions.\" The sullen silence has\nchanged into full acquiescence: \"I opened not my mouth, because Thou\ndidst it,\"--a silence differing from the other as the calm after the\nstorm, when all the winds sleep and the sun shines out on a freshened\nworld, differs from the boding stillness while the slow thunder-clouds\ngrow lurid on the horizon. He cries for healing, for he knows his\nsickness to be the buffet and assault of God's hand; and its bitterness\nis assuaged, even while its force continues, by the conviction that it\nis God's fatherly chastisement for sin which gnaws away his manly vigour\nas the moth frets his kingly robe. The very thought which had been so\nbitter--that every man is vanity--reappears in a new connection as the\nbasis of the prayer that God would hear, and is modified so as to become\ninfinitely blessed and hopeful. \"I am a stranger with Thee, and a\nsojourner, as all my fathers were.\" A wanderer indeed, and a transient\nguest on earth; but what of that, if he be God's guest? All that is\nsorrowful is drawn off from the thought when we realise our connection\nwith God. We are in God's house; the host, not the guest, is responsible\nfor the housekeeping. We need not feel life lonely if He be with us, nor\nits shortness sad. It is not a shadow, a dream, a breath, if it be\nrooted in Him. And thus the sick man has conquered his gloomy thoughts,\neven though he sees little before him but the end; and he is not cast\ndown even though his desires are all summed up in one for a little\nrespite and healing, ere the brief trouble of earth be done with: \"O\nspare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence, and be no\nmore.\"\n\nIt may be observed that this supposition of a protracted illness, which\nis based upon these psalms, throws light upon the singular passiveness\nof David during the maturing of Absalom's conspiracy, and may naturally\nbe supposed to have favoured his schemes, an essential part of which was\nto ingratiate himself with suitors who came to the king for judgment by\naffecting great regret that no man was deputed of the king to hear them.\nThe accumulation of untried causes, and the apparent disorganization of\nthe judicial machinery, are well accounted for by David's sickness.\n\nThe fifty-fifth psalm gives some very pathetic additional particulars.\nIt is in three parts--a plaintive prayer and portraiture of the\npsalmist's mental distress (vers. 1-8); a vehement supplication against\nhis foes, and indignant recounting of their treachery (vers. 9-16); and,\nfinally, a prophecy of the retribution that is to fall upon them (vers.\n17-23). In the first and second portions we have some points which help\nto complete our picture of the man. For instance, his heart \"writhes\"\nwithin him, the \"terrors of death\" are on him, \"fear and trembling\" are\ncome on him, and \"horror\" has covered him. All this points, like\nsubsequent verses, to his knowledge of the conspiracy before it came to\na head. The state of the city, which is practically in the hands of\nAbsalom and his tools, is described with bold imagery. Violence and\nStrife in possession of it, spies prowling about the walls day and\nnight, Evil and Trouble in its midst, and Destruction, Oppression, and\nDeceit--a goodly company--flaunting in its open spaces. And the spirit,\nthe brain of the whole, is the trusted friend whom he had made his own\nequal, who had shared his secretest thoughts in private, who had walked\nnext him in solemn processions to the temple. Seeing all this, what does\nthe king do, who was once so fertile in resource, so decisive in\ncounsel, so prompt in action? Nothing. His only weapon is prayer. \"As\nfor me, I will call upon God; and the Lord will save me. Evening, and\nmorning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and He shall hear my\nvoice.\" He lets it all grow as it list, and only longs to be out of all\nthe weary coil of troubles. \"Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would\nI fly away and be at rest. Lo, I would flee far off, I would lodge in\nthe wilderness. I would swiftly fly to my refuge from the raging wind,\nfrom the tempest.\" The langour of his disease, love for his worthless\nson, consciousness of sin, and submission to the chastisement through\n\"one of his own house,\" which Nathan had foretold, kept him quiet,\nthough he saw the plot winding its meshes round him. And in this\nsubmission patient confidence is not wanting, though subdued and\nsaddened, which finds expression in the last words of this psalm of the\nheavy laden, \"Cast thy burden upon Jehovah. He, He will sustain\nthee.... I will trust in Thee.\"\n\nWhen the blow at last fell, the same passive acquiescence in what he\nfelt to be God's chastisement is very noticeable. Absalom escapes to\nHebron, and sets up the standard of revolt. When the news comes to\nJerusalem the king's only thought is immediate flight. He is almost\ncowardly in his eagerness to escape, and is prepared to give up\neverything without a blow. It seems as if only a touch was needed to\noverthrow his throne. He hurries on the preparations for flight with\nnervous haste. He forms no plans beyond those of his earlier wish to fly\naway and be at rest. He tries to denude himself of followers. When the\nsix hundred men of Gath--who had been with him ever since his early days\nin Philistia, and had grown grey in his service--make themselves the van\nof his little army, he urges the heroic Ittai, their leader, to leave\nhim a fugitive, and to worship the rising sun, \"Return to thy place, and\nabide with _the king_\"--so thoroughly does he regard the crown as passed\nalready from his brows. The priests with the ark are sent back; he is\nnot worthy to have the symbol of the Divine presence identified with\nhis doubtful cause, and is prepared to submit without a murmur if God\n\"thus say, I have no delight in thee.\" With covered head and naked feet\nhe goes up the slope of Olivet, and turning perhaps at that same bend in\nthe rocky mountain path where the true King, coming to the city, wept as\nhe saw its shining walls and soaring pinnacles across the narrow valley,\nthe discrowned king and all his followers broke into passionate weeping\nas they gazed their last on the lost capital, and then with choking sobs\nrounded the shoulder of the hill and set their faces to their forlorn\nflight. Passing through the territory of Saul's tribe--dangerous ground\nfor him to tread--the rank hatred of Shimei's heart blossoms into\nspeech. With Eastern vehemence, he curses and flings stones and dust in\nthe transports of his fury, stumbling along among the rocks high up on\nthe side of the glen, as he keeps abreast of the little band below. Did\nDavid remember how the husband from whom he had torn Michal had followed\nher to this very place, and there had turned back weeping to his lonely\nhome? The remembrance, at any rate, of later and more evil deeds\nprompted his meek answer, \"Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden\nhim.\"\n\nThe first force of the disaster spent itself, and by the time he was\nsafe across Jordan, on the free uplands of Bashan, his spirit rises. He\nmakes a stand at Mahanaim, the place where his great ancestor, in\ncircumstances somewhat analogous to his own, had seen the vision of\n\"bright-harnessed angels\" ranked in battle array for the defence of\nhimself and his own little band, and called the name of the place the\n\"two camps.\" Perhaps that old story helped to hearten him, as the\ndefection of Ahithophel from the conspiracy certainly would do. As the\ntime went on, too, it became increasingly obvious that the leaders of\nthe rebellion were \"infirm of purpose,\" and that every day of respite\nfrom actual fighting diminished their chances of success, as that\npolitic adviser saw so plainly. Whatever may have been the reason, it is\nclear that by the time David had reached Mahanaim he had resolved not to\nyield without a struggle. He girds on his sword once more with some of\nthe animation of early days, and the light of trustful valour blazes\nagain in his old eyes.\n\n\n\n\nXV. THE SONGS OF THE FUGITIVE.\n\n\nThe psalms which probably belong to the period of Absalom's rebellion\ncorrespond well with the impression of his spirit gathered from the\nhistorical books. Confidence in God, submission to His will, are\nstrongly expressed in them, and we may almost discern a progress in the\nformer respect as the rebellion grows. They flame brighter and brighter\nin the deepening darkness. From the lowest abyss the stars are seen most\nclearly. He is far more buoyant when he is an exile once more in the\nwilderness, and when the masks of plot and trickery are fallen, and the\ndanger stands clear before him. Like some good ship issuing from the\nshelter of the pier heads, the first blow of the waves throws her over\non her side and makes her quiver like a living thing recoiling from a\nterror, but she rises above the tossing surges and keeps her course. We\nmay allocate with a fair amount of likelihood the following psalms to\nthis period--iii.; iv.; xxv. (?); xxviii. (?); lviii. (?); lxi.; lxii.;\nlxiii.; cix. (?); cxliii.\n\nThe first two of these form a pair; they are a morning and an evening\nhymn. The little band are encamped on their road to Mahanaim, with no\nroof but the stars, and no walls but the arm of God. In the former the\ndiscrowned king sings, as he rises from his nightly bivouac. He pours\nout first his plaint of the foes, who are described as \"many,\" and as\nsaying that, \"There is no help for him in God,\" words which fully\ncorrespond to the formidable dimensions of the revolt, and to the belief\nwhich actuated the conspirators, and had appeared as possible even to\nhimself, that his sin had turned away the aid of heaven from his cause.\nTo such utterances of malice and confident hatred he opposes the\nconviction which had again filled his soul, that even in the midst of\nreal peril and the shock of battle Jehovah is his \"shield.\" With bowed\nand covered head he had fled from Jerusalem, but \"Thou art the lifter up\nof mine head.\" He was an exile from the tabernacle on Zion, and he had\nsent back the ark to its rest; but though he has to cry to God from\nbeyond Jordan, He answers \"from His holy hill.\" He and his men camped\namidst dangers, but one unslumbering Helper mounted guard over their\nundefended slumbers. \"I laid me down and slept\" there among the echoes\nof the hills. \"I awaked, for Jehovah sustained me;\" and another night\nhas passed without the sudden shout of the rebels breaking the silence,\nor the gleam of their swords in the starlight. The experience of\nprotection thus far heartens him to front even the threatening circle of\nhis foes around him, whom it is his pain to think of as \"the people\" of\nGod, and yet as his foes. And then he betakes himself in renewed energy\nof faith to his one weapon of prayer, and even before the battle sees\nthe victory, and the Divine power fracturing the jaws and breaking the\nteeth of the wild beasts who hunt him. But his last thought is not of\nretribution nor of fear; for himself he rises to the height of serene\ntrust, \"Salvation is of the Lord;\" and for his foes and for all the\nnation that had risen against him his thoughts are worthy of a true\nking, freed from all personal animosity, and his words are a prayer\nconceived in the spirit of Him whose dying breath was intercession for\nHis rebellious subjects who crucified their King, \"Thy blessing be upon\nThy people.\"\n\nThe fourth psalm is the companion evening hymn. Its former portion\n(vers. 2-4) seems to be a remonstrance addressed as if to the leaders of\nthe revolt (\"sons of men\" being equivalent to \"persons of rank and\ndignity\"). It is the expression in vivid form, most natural to such a\nnature, of his painful feeling under their slanders; and also of his\nhopes and desires for them, that calm thought in these still evening\nhours which are falling on the world may lead them to purer service and\nto reliance on God. So forgivingly, so lovingly does he think of them,\nere he lays himself down to rest, wishing that \"on their beds,\" as on\nhis, the peace of meditative contemplation may rest, and the day of\nwar's alarms be shut in by holy \"communion with their own hearts\" and\nwith God.\n\nThe second portion turns to himself and his followers, among whom we may\nsuppose some faint hearts were beginning to despond; and to them, as to\nthe very enemy, David would fain be the bringer of a better mind. \"Many\nsay, Who will show us good?\" He will turn them from their vain search\nround the horizon on a level with their own eyes for the appearance of\nsuccour. They must look upwards, not round about. They must turn their\nquestion, which only expects a negative answer, into a prayer, fashioned\nlike that triple priestly benediction of old (Numbers vi. 24-26). His\nown experience bursts forth irrepressible. He had prayed in his hour of\npenitence, \"Make me to hear joy and gladness\" (Psa. li.); and the prayer\nhad been answered, if not before, yet now when peril had brought him\nnearer to God, and trust had drawn God nearer to him. In his calamity,\nas is ever the case with devout souls, his joy increased, as Greek fire\nburns more brightly under water. Therefore this pauper sovereign,\ndiscrowned and fed by the charity of the Gileadite pastoral chief,\nsings, \"Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that\ntheir corn and wine increased.\" And how tranquilly the psalm closes, and\nseems to lull itself to rest, \"In peace I will at once lie down and\nsleep, for Thou, O Jehovah, only makest me dwell safely.\" The growing\nsecurity which experience of God's care should ever bring, is\nbeautifully marked by the variation on the similar phrase in the\nprevious psalm. There he gratefully recorded that he had laid himself\ndown and slept; here he promises himself that he will lie down \"in\npeace;\" and not only so, but that at once on his lying down he will\nsleep--kept awake by no anxieties, by no bitter thoughts, but, homeless\nand in danger as he is, will close his eyes, like a tired child, without\na care or a fear, and forthwith sleep, with the pressure and the\nprotection of his Father's arm about him.\n\nThis psalm sounds again the glad trustful strain which has slumbered in\nhis harp-strings ever since the happy old days of his early trials, and\nis re-awakened as the rude blast of calamity sweeps through them once\nmore.\n\nThe sixty-third psalm is by the superscription referred to the time when\nDavid was \"in the wilderness of Judah,\" which has led many readers to\nthink of his long stay there during Saul's persecution. But the psalm\ncertainly belongs to the period of his reign, as is obvious from its\nwords, \"_The king_ shall rejoice in God.\" It must therefore belong to\nhis brief sojourn in the same wilderness on his flight to Mahanaim,\nwhen, as we read in 2 Sam., \"The people were weary and hungry and\nthirsty in the wilderness.\" There is a beautiful progress of thought in\nit, which is very obvious if we notice the triple occurrence of the\nwords \"my soul,\" and their various connections--\"my soul thirsteth,\" \"my\nsoul is satisfied,\" \"my soul followeth hard after Thee;\" or, in other\nwords, the psalm is a transcript of the passage of a believing soul from\nlonging through fruition to firm trust, in which it is sustained by the\nright hand of God.\n\nThe first of these emotions, which is so natural to the fugitive in his\nsorrows, is expressed with singular poetic beauty in language borrowed\nfrom the ashen grey monotony of the waterless land in which he was. One\nof our most accurate and least imaginative travellers describes it thus:\n\"There were no signs of vegetation, with the exception of a few reeds\nand rushes, and here and there a tamarisk.\" This lonely land, cracked\nwith drought, as if gaping with chapped lips for the rain that comes\nnot, is the image of his painful yearning for the Fountain of living\nwaters. As his men plodded along over the burning marl, fainting for\nthirst and finding nothing in the dry torrent beds, so he longed for the\nrefreshment of that gracious presence. Then he remembers how in happier\ndays he had had the same desires, and they had been satisfied in the\ntabernacle. Probably the words should read, \"Thus in the sanctuary have\nI gazed upon Thee, to see Thy power and Thy glory.\" In the desert and in\nthe sanctuary his longing had been the same, but then he had been able\nto behold the symbol which bore the name, \"the glory,\"--and now he\nwanders far from it. How beautifully this regretful sense of absence\nfrom and pining after the ark is illustrated by those inimitably\npathetic words of the fugitive's answer to the priests who desired to\nshare his exile. \"And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of\nGod into the city. If I find favour in the eyes of the Lord, He will\nbring me again, and show me both it and His habitation.\"\n\nThe fulfilment is cotemporaneous with the desire. The swiftness of the\nanswer is beautifully indicated in the quick turn with which the psalm\npasses from plaintive longing to exuberant rapture of fruition. In the\none breath \"my soul thirsteth;\" in the next, \"my soul is satisfied\"--as\nwhen in tropical lands the rain comes, and in a day or two what had been\nbaked earth is rich meadow, and the dry torrent-beds, where the white\nstones glistered in the sunshine, foam with rushing waters and are edged\nwith budding willows. The fulness of satisfaction when God fills the\nsoul is vividly expressed in the familiar image of the feast of \"marrow\nand fatness,\" on which he banquets even while hungry in the desert. The\nabundant delights of fellowship with God make him insensible to external\nprivations, are drink for him thirsty, food for his hunger, a home in\nhis wanderings, a source of joy and music in the midst of much that is\ndepressing: \"My mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips.\" The little\ncamp had to keep keen look-out for nightly attacks; and it is a slight\nlink of connection, very natural under the circumstances, between the\npsalms of this period, that they all have some references to the\nperilous hours of darkness. We have found him laying himself down to\nsleep in peace; here he wakes, not to guard from hostile surprises, but\nin the silence there below the stars to think of God and feel again the\nfulness of His all-sufficiency. Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes\nwaking. \"I remember Thee upon my bed.\"\n\nThe fruition heartens for renewed exercise of confidence, in which\nDavid feels himself upheld by God, and foresees his enemies' defeat and\nhis own triumph. \"My soul cleaveth after Thee\"--a remarkable phrase, in\nwhich the two metaphors of tenacious adherence and eager following are\nmingled to express the two \"phases of faith,\" which are really one--of\nunion with and quest after God, the possession which pursues, the\npursuit which possesses Him who is at once grasped and felt after by the\nfinite creature whose straitest narrowness is not too narrow to be\nblessed by some indwelling of God, but whose widest expansion of\ncapacity and desire can but contain a fragment of His fulness. From such\nelevation of high communion he looks down and onward into the dim\nfuture, his enemies sunken, like Korah and his rebels, into the gaping\nearth, or scattered in fight, and the jackals that were snuffing\nhungrily about his camp in the wilderness gorging themselves on corpses,\nwhile he himself, once more \"king,\" shall rejoice in God, and with his\nfaithful companions, whose lips and hearts were true to God and His\nanointed, shall glory in the deliverance that by the arbitrament of\nvictory has flung back the slanders of the rebels in their teeth, and\nchoked them with their own lies.\n\nOur space forbids more than a brief reference to psalm lxii., which\nseems also to belong to this time. It has several points of contact with\nthose already considered, _e.g._, the phrase, \"sons of men,\" in the\nsense of \"nobles\" (ver. 9); \"my soul,\" as equivalent to \"myself,\" and\nyet as a kind of quasi-separate personality which he can study and\nexhort; the significant use of the term \"people,\" and the double\nexhortations to his own devout followers and to the arrogant enemy. The\nwhole tone is that of patient resignation, which we have found\ncharacterising David now. The first words are the key-note of the whole,\n\"Truly unto God my soul is silence\"--is all one great stillness of\nsubmissive waiting upon Him. It was in the very crisis of his fate, in\nthe suspense of the uncertain issue of the rebellion, that these words,\nthe very sound of which has calmed many a heart since, welled to his\nlips. The expression of unwavering faith and unbroken peace is much\nheightened by the frequent recurrence of the word which is variously\ntranslated \"truly,\" \"surely,\" and \"only.\" It carries the force of\nconfident affirmation, like the \"verily\" of the New Testament, and is\nhere most significantly prefixed to the assertions of his patient\nresignation (ver. 1); of God's defence (ver. 2); of the enemies'\nwhispered counsels (ver. 4); to his exhortation of his soul to the\nresignation which it already exercises (ver. 5); and to the triumphant\nreiteration of God's all-sufficient protection. How beautifully, too,\ndoes that reiteration--almost verbal repetition--of the opening words\nstrengthen the impression of his habitual trust. His soul in its silence\nmurmurs to itself, as it were, the blessed thoughts over and over again.\nTheir echoes haunt his spirit \"lingering and wandering on, as loth to\ndie;\" and if for a moment the vision of his enemies disturbs their flow,\none indignant question flung at them suffices, \"How long will ye rush\nupon a man? (how long) will ye all of you thrust him down as (if he\nwere) a bowing wall, a tottering fence?\" and with a rapid glance at\ntheir plots and bitter words, he comes back again to his calm gaze on\nGod. Lovingly he accumulates happy names for Him, which, in their\nimagery, as well as in their repetition, remind us of the former songs\nof the fugitive. \"My rock,\" in whom I hide; \"He is my salvation,\" which\nis even more than \"from Him cometh my salvation;\" my \"fortress,\" my\n\"glory,\" \"the rock of my strength,\" \"my refuge.\" So many phases of his\nneed and of God's sufficiency thus gathered together, tell how familiar\nto the thoughts and real to the experience of the aged fugitive was his\nsecurity in Jehovah. The thirty years since last he had wandered there\nhave confirmed the faith of his earlier songs; and though the ruddy\nlocks of the young chieftain are silvered with grey now, and sins and\nsorrows have saddened him, yet he can take up again with deeper meaning\nthe tones of his old praise, and let the experience of age seal with its\n\"verily\" the hopes of youth. Exhortations to his people to unite\nthemselves with him in his faith, and assurances that God is a refuge\nfor them too, with solemn warnings to the rebels, close this psalm of\nglad submission. It is remarkable for the absence of all petitions. He\nneeds nothing beyond what he has. As the companion psalm says, his soul\n\"is satisfied.\" Communion with God has its moments of restful\nblessedness, when desire is stilled, and expires in peaceful fruition.\n\nThe other psalms of this period must be left unnoticed. The same general\ntone pervades them all. In many particulars they closely resemble those\nof the Sauline period. But the resemblance fails very significantly at\none point. The emphatic assertion of his innocence is gone for ever.\nPardoned indeed he is, cleansed, conscious of God's favour, and able to\nrejoice in it; but carrying to the end the remembrance of his sore fall,\nand feeling it all the more penitently, the more he is sure of God's\nforgiveness. Let us remember that there are sins which, once done, leave\ntheir traces on memory and conscience, painting indelible forms on the\nwalls of our \"chambers of imagery,\" and transmitting results which\nremission and sanctifying do not, on earth at least, wholly obliterate.\nLet David's youthful prayer be ours, \"Keep back Thy servant from\npresumptuous sins: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from\nmuch transgression.\"\n\nIt does not fall within the scope of this volume to deal with the\nsuppression of Absalom's revolt, nor with the ten years of rule that\nremained to David after his restoration. The psalter does not appear to\ncontain psalms which throw light upon the somewhat clouded closing\nyears of his reign. One psalm, indeed, there is attributed to him, which\nis, at any rate, the work of an old man--a sweet song into which mellow\nwisdom has condensed its final lessons--and a snatch of it may stand\ninstead of any summing-up of the life by us:\n\n  \"Trust in the Lord, and do good;\n   Dwell in the land, and enjoy security;\n   Delight thyself also in the Lord,\n   And He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.\n   Commit thy way unto the Lord.\n\n   Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.\n\n   I have been young and now am old,\n   Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.\n\n   I have seen the wicked in great power,\n   And spreading himself like a green tree....\n   Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not.\"\n\nMay we not apply the next words to the psalmist himself, and hear him\ncalling us to look on him as he lies on his dying bed--disturbed though\nit were by ignoble intrigues of hungry heirs--after so many storms\nnearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging\nhome; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God:\n\"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man\nis peace?\" Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset,\nall the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. The music of his\nsongs die away into \"peace;\" as when some master holds our ears captive\nwith tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, until\nthe jar of common noises, which that low sweetness had deadened, rushes\nin.\n\nOne strain of a higher mood is preserved for us in the historical books\nthat prophesy of the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less\nthan his consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. The dying\neyes see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of Him who is to\nbe a just and perfect ruler; before the brightness of whose presence,\nand the refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe\nthe world. As the shades gather, that radiant glory to come brightens.\nHe departs in peace, having seen the salvation from afar. It was fitting\nthat this fullest of his prophecies should be the last of his strains,\nas if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings had snapped them\nin twain.\n\nAnd then, for earth, the richest voice which God ever tuned for His\npraise was hushed, and the harp of Jesse's son hangs untouched above his\ngrave. But for him death was God's last, best answer to his prayer, \"O\nLord, open Thou my lips;\" and as that cold but most loving hand\nunclothes him from the weakness of flesh, and leads him in among the\nchoirs of heaven, we can almost hear again his former thanksgiving\nbreaking from his immortal lips, \"Thou hast put a new song into my\nmouth,\" whose melodies, unsaddened by plaintive minors of penitence and\npain, are yet nobler and sweeter than the psalms which he sang here, and\nleft to be the solace and treasure of all generations!\n\n\n\n\nINDEX.\n\n\nPSALM                                                             PAGE\n\n   iii.                                                            246\n\n    iv.                                                            248\n\n   vii.                                                            110\n\n  viii.                                                             28\n\n    xi.                                                            138\n\n  xiii.                                                            138\n\n    xv.                                                            177\n\n  xvii.                                                            138\n\n xviii.                                                    153 and 157\n\n   xix.                                                             24\n\n    xx.                                                            203\n\n  xxii.                                                            141\n\n xxiii.                                                             37\n\n  xxiv.                                                            177\n\n   xxv.                                                            138\n\n xxvii.                                                             89\n\n  xxix.                                                             31\n\n  xxxi.                                                            132\n\n xxxii.                                                            227\n\n xxxiv.                                                             86\n\n  xxxv.                                                            139\n\nxxxvii.                                                            259\n\n xxxix.                                                            236\n\n   xli.                                                            234\n\n    li.                                                            209\n\n   lii.                                                             72\n\n   liv.                                                            100\n\n    lv.                                                            240\n\n   lvi.                                                             77\n\n  lvii.                                                            119\n\n   lix.                                                             63\n\n    lx.                                                            201\n\n  lxii.                                                            255\n\n lxiii.                                                            250\n\n  lxiv.                                                            138\n\nlxviii.                                                            208\n\n    cx.                                                            189\n\ncxliii.                                                            128\n\n\n\n\n_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._\n\n_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each._\n\n\nTHE PSALMS.\n\nVOL. I.--PSALMS I.-XXXVIII.\n \"  II.--PSALMS XXXIX.-LXXXIX.\n \" III.--PSALMS XC-CL.\n\nIN THE \"EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.\"\n\n      \"The work of a brilliant and effective teacher. He writes with\n      real power and insight.\"--_Saturday Review._\n\n      \"Dr. Maclaren has evidently mastered his subject with the aid of\n      the best authorities, and has put the results of his studies\n      before his readers in a most attractive form, and if we add that\n      this commentary really helps to the better understanding of the\n      Psalms, that, far from degrading, it vivifies and illuminates\n      these sublime stories, and that it is written in a charming style,\n      very seldom falling below the dignity of the subject, we believe\n      we only give it the praise which is its due.\"--_Scotsman._\n\n      \"It is scholarly, honest, thoughtful, and suggestive.\"--_Daily\n      Chronicle._\n\n      \"Striking thoughts, strongly expressed, are to be found on every\n      page.\"--_Manchester Guardian._\n\n      \"There is certainly room for the work which Dr. Maclaren does\n      here--largely because it is he who does it. The book is most\n      heartily to be commended. Preachers will find it to be a mine of\n      wealth, and to Christians of all kinds it may serve as a manual of\n      devotion.\"--_Christian World._\n\n      \"Dr. Maclaren's charming pages furnish a most fruitful field of\n      study, alike for those whose chief aim is personal edification,\n      and for those who are in quest of suggestions in the line of\n      ministerial service. Altogether a most valuable book.\"--_United\n      Presbyterian Magazine._\n\n      \"Most heartily do we welcome this new volume of Dr. Maclaren's\n      'Exposition of the Psalms.' It fully sustains the traditions of\n      insight, scholarly instinct, and spiritual force which gather\n      around that beloved name. Notwithstanding the rich treasures of\n      devout literature which the Psalter has called forth, there is a\n      special niche for this book, and it makes a distinct advance in\n      tone and method upon all other commentaries on the Psalms. We\n      greatly err if this does not prove the most popular and useful\n      commentary in the English language, both among preachers and the\n      commonality of Christ's Church.\"--_Evangelical Magazine._\n\nLONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON.\n\n\n\n\nBIBLE CLASS EXPOSITIONS.\n\n_Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each volume._\n\n\nTHE GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW.\n\nTWO VOLS.\n\n      \"They are all written in clear, forcible language, and bring\n      abundant illustration from science, the facts of life and history\n      and Scripture. All through they manifest a true philosophical\n      spirit, and a deep knowledge of human nature. None can read them\n      without profit.\"--_Leeds Mercury._\n\n\nTHE GOSPEL OF ST. MARK.\n\n      \"As clear, luminous, and pellucid as is everything that comes from\n      the pen of the great Manchester preacher. Even in treating the\n      simplest incident he surprises his readers, and that without once\n      forcing the note, or seeking sensationalism.\"--_Christian World._\n\n\nTHE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE.\n\n      \"Dr. Maclaren is a prince of expositors, and his expositions are\n      as wholesome as they are able, and as interesting as they are\n      instructive and edifying. Every paragraph is luminous with vivid\n      expression.\"--_The London Quarterly Review._\n\n\nTHE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.\n\n      \"There is much freshness and suggestiveness in these papers. Dr.\n      Maclaren has studied the art of compression with great success,\n      and no teacher of a class could desire anything better for his\n      purpose than these lessons. They may be heartily recommended to\n      all teachers as about the best things of the kind to be\n      had.\"--_Glasgow Herald._\n\n\nTHE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.\n\n      \"The more this volume is read and studied the more do we admire\n      the humility that ranks such a book as for Bible Classes only. It\n      is for them beyond all question, and better fare has nowhere been\n      provided for them. Whether they be Bible Classes or preachers who\n      study this volume they will be enriched and strengthened by\n      it.\"--_Presbyterian._\n\n\nLONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON.\n\n\n\n\n{Transcriber's Note: The following list of books has been moved from\n  the front to the back of the book to make the beginning more\n  reader-friendly.}\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF EXPOSITION\n\n\n=The Life of David as Reflected in his Psalms.= By ALEXANDER MACLAREN,\n  D.D. Ninth Edition. 3_s._ 6_d._\n\n=Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.= By MARCUS DODS, D.D. Sixth Thousand. 3_s._\n  6_d._\n\n=The Last Supper of our Lord, and His Words of Consolation to the\n  Disciples.= By Principal J. MARSHALL LANG, D.D. Third Edition. 3_s._\n  6_d._\n\n=The Speeches of the Holy Apostles.= By the Rev. DONALD FRASER, D.D.,\n  London. Second Edition. 3_s._ 6_d._\n\n=The Galilean Gospel.= By the Rev. Professor A.B. BRUCE, D.D. Fourth\n  Edition. 3_s._ 6_d._\n\n=The Lamb of God: Expositions in the Writings of St. John.= By W.R.\n  NICOLL, M.A., LL.D. Second Thousand. 2_s._ 6_d._\n\n=The Lord's Prayer.= By CHARLES STANFORD, D.D. Fourth Thousand. 3_s._\n  6_d._\n\n=The Parables of our Lord. First Series.= As Recorded by St. Matthew. By\n  MARCUS DODS, D.D. Twelfth Thousand. 3_s._ 6_d._\n\n=The Parables of our Lord. Second Series.= As Recorded by St. Luke. By\n  the same Author. Tenth Thousand. 3_s._ 6_d._\n\n=The Law of the Ten Words.= By Principal J. OSWALD DYKES, D.D. Fourth\n  Thousand. 3_s._ 6_d._\n\n\nLONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON,\n27, PATERNOSTER ROW.","title":"The Life of David: As Reflected in His Psalms","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":53398}