TITLE. To the Chief Musician, A Psalm
of David. So far the title corresponds with Psalm 40, of
which this is a copy with variations. David appears to have
written the full length Psalm, and also to have made this
excerpt from it, and altered it to suit the occasion. It is a
fit pendant to Psalm 69, and a suitable preface to Psalm 71. To
bring to remembrance. This is the poor man's memorial. David
personally pleads with God that he may not be forgotten, but
David's Lord may be heard here also. Even if the Lord seems to
forget us, we must not forget him. This memorial Psalm acts as a
connecting link between the two Psalms of supplicatory
expostulation, and makes up with them a precious triad of song.
EXPOSITION
(The Reader is referred for full Exposition
and Notes to Ps 40:13-17, in "Treasury of David,
"Vol. 2, pp 267-268.)
Verse 1. This is the second Psalm which is a
repetition of another, the former being Psalm 53, which was a
rehearsal of Psalm 14. The present differs from the Fortieth
Psalm at the outset, for that begins with, "Be pleased,
"and this, in our version, more urgently with, Make haste;
or, as in the Hebrew, with an abrupt and broken cry, O God,
to deliver me; O Lord, to help me hasten. It is not
forbidden us, in hours of dire distress, to ask for speed on
God's part in his coming to rescue us. The only other difference
between this and verse 13 of Psalm 40, is the putting of Elohim
in the beginning of the verse for Jehovah, but why this
is done we know not; perhaps, the guesses of the critics are
correct, but perhaps they are not. As we have the words of this
Psalm twice in the letter, let them be doubly with us in spirit.
It is most meet that we should day by day cry to God for
deliverance and help; our frailty and our many dangers render
this a perpetual necessity.
Verse 2. Here the words, "together, "and,
"to destroy it, "which occur in Psalm 40, are omitted:
a man in haste uses no more words than are actually necessary.
His enemies desired to put his faith to shame, and he eagerly
entreats that they may be disappointed, and themselves covered
with confusion. It shall certainly be so; if not sooner, yet at
that dread day when the wicked shall awake to shame and
everlasting contempt. Let them be ashamed and confounded that
seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to
confusion, that desire my hurt: turned back and driven back
are merely the variations of the translators. When men labour to
turn others back from the right road, it is God's retaliation to
drive them back from the point they are aiming at.
Verse 3. Let them be turned back. This is a
milder term than that used in Psalm 40, where he cries,
"let them be desolate." Had growing years matured and
mellowed the psalmist's spirit? To be "turned back,
"however, may come to the same thing as to be
"desolate; " disappointed malice is the nearest akin
to desolation that can well be conceived. For a reward of their
shame that say, Aha, aha. They thought to shame the godly, but
it was their shame, and shall be their shame for ever. How fond
men are of taunts, and if they are meaningless ahas, more like
animal cries than human words, it matters nothing, so long as
they are a vent for scorn and sting the victim. Rest assured,
the enemies of Christ and his people shall have wages for their
work; they shall be paid in their own coin; they loved scoffing,
and they shall be filled with it—yea, they shall become a
proverb and a byword for ever.
Verse 4. Anger against enemies must not make us forget
our friends, for it is better to preserve a single citizen of
Zion, than to kill a thousand enemies. Let all those that seek
thee rejoice and be glad in thee. All true worshippers, though
as yet in the humble ranks of seekers, shall have cause for joy.
Even though the seeking commence in darkness, it shall bring
light with it. And let such as love thy salvation say
continually, Let God be magnified. Those who have tasted
divine grace, and are, therefore, wedded to it, are a somewhat
more advanced race, and these shall not only feel joy, but shall
with holy constancy and perseverance tell abroad their joy, and
call upon men to glorify God. The doxology, "Let the Lord's
name be magnified, "is infinitely more manly and ennobling
than the dog's bark of "Aha, aha."
Verse 5. But I am poor and needy. Just the same
plea as in the preceding Psalm, Ps 69:29: it seems to be a
favourite argument with tried saints; evidently our poverty is
our wealth, even as our weakness is our strength. May we learn
well this riddle. Make haste unto me, O God. This is written
instead of "yet the Lord thinketh upon me, "in Psalm
40: and there is a reason for the change, since the key note of
the Psalm frequently dictates its close. Psalm 40 sings of God's
thoughts, and, therefore, ends therewith; but the peculiar note
of Psalm 70 is "Make haste, "and, therefore, so it
concludes. Thou art my help and my deliverer. My help in
trouble, my deliverer out of it. O Lord, make no tarrying. Here
is the name of "Jehovah" instead of "my
God." We are warranted in using all the various names of
God, for each has its own beauty and majesty, and we must
reverence each by its holy use as well as by abstaining from
taking it in vain. I have presumed to close this recapitulatory
exposition with an original hymn, suggested by the watchword of
this Psalm, "MAKE HASTE."
Make haste, O God, my soul to bless!
My help and my deliverer thou;
Make haste, for I am in deep distress,
My case is urgent; help me now.
Make haste, O God! make haste to save!
For time is short, and death is nigh;
Make haste ere yet I am in my grave,
And with the lost forever lie.
Make haste, for I am poor and low;
And Satan mocks my prayers and tears;
O God, in mercy be not slow,
But snatch me from my horrid fears.
Make haste, O God, and hear my cries;
Then with the souls who seek thy face,
And those who thy salvation prize,
I will magnify thy matchless grace.
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Verse 2. Let them be confounded; viz., among
themselves, and in their own understandings: and put to
shame; viz., in the sight and presence of men before whom
they think to attain great glory, in banding themselves against
me. Thomas Wilcocks.
Verse 3. Aha, aha. In describing his human
foes, our Saviour represents them as saying to him, Aha, aha.
These exclamations are ebullitions of exulting insolence. They
can escape from the lips of those only who are at once haughty
and cruel, and insensible to the delicacies and decorum of
demeanour. Doubtless, they would be the favourite expressions of
the rude rabble that accompanied the traitor in his ignoble
campaign against Incarnate Love, and of the rude aristocratic
mob that held over the Apostle of Heaven the mockery of an
ecclesiastical trial, and of the larger, more excited, and more
rancorous multitude that insultingly accompanied him to the
cross, and mocked him, and wagged their heads at him, and railed
upon him as he meekly, but majestically, hung on the accursed
tree. The prescient Saviour would, no doubt, catch in his ears
the distant mutter of all the violent and ruthless exclamations
with which his foes were about to rend the air; and, amid these
heartless and sneering ejaculations, he could not but feel the
keen and poisoning edge of the malevolent and hilarious cry, Aha,
aha. O miracle of mercy! He who deserved the hallelujahs of
an intelligent universe, and the special hosannas of all the
children of men, had first to anticipate, and then to endure
from the mouths of the very rebels whom he came to bless and to
save, the malicious taunting of Aha, aha. James Frame.
Verse 4. Such as love thy salvation. They love
it for its own sake; they love it for the sake of him who
procured it by his obedience until death; they love it for the
sake of that Holy Spirit who moved them to seek it and accept
it; and they love it for the sake of their own souls, which they
cannot but love, and which, without it, would be the most
miserable outcasts in the universe. No wonder that in the light
of its intrinsic importance, and of its intrinsic relations,
they should be "such as love God's salvation." All men
are lovers as well as seekers; for all men love. Some love money
more than God's salvation; others love pleasure, even the
pleasures of sin, more than God's salvation; and others love
bustle and business more than God's salvation. But, as the stamp
of the material, the temporal and the evanescent, is on all
these earthly objects of men's love, the friends of Jesus
elevate above them all, as the worthier object of their regard
and embrace, the salvation of God. James Frame.
Verse 4. Let God be magnified. Not only The
Lord be magnified, but also alway. Behold, when thou
wast straying, and wast turned away from him; he recalled thee: Be
the Lord magnified. Behold, he hath inspired thee with
confession of sins; thou hast confessed, he hath given pardon: Be
the Lord magnified.... Now, thou hast begun to advance, thou
hast been justified, thou hast arrived at a sort of excellence
of virtue; is it not a seemly thing that thou also
sometime be magnified? No! Let them say, Be the Lord alway
magnified. A sinner thou art, to be magnified in order that
he may call; you confess, be he magnified in order that he may
forgive: now thou livest justly, be he magnified in order that
he may direct; you persevere even unto the end, be he magnified
in order that he may glorify. Be the Lord, then, alway
magnified. Let just men say this, let them say this that
seek him. Whosoever doth not say this, doth not seek him... Be
the Lord magnified. But, wilt thou thyself never be great?
wilt thou be nowhere? In him was something, in me nothing; but
if in him is whatsoever I am, be he magnified, not I.
But, what of thee? But I am poor and needy: he is rich,
he abounding, he needing nothing. Behold my light, behold whence
I am illumined, for I cry, "Thou shalt illumine my candle,
O Lord; my God, thou shalt illumine my darkness. The Lord doth
loose men fettered, the Lord raiseth up men crushed, the Lord
maketh wise the blind men, the Lord keepeth the
proselytes." Ps 18:28 146:7. What, then, of thee? But I
am needy and poor. I am like an orphan, my soul is like a
widow destitute and desolate; help I seek, alway mine infirmity
I confess. But I am poor and needy. There have been
forgiven me my sins, now I have begun to follow the commandments
of God; still, however, I am needy and poor. Why still needy and
poor? Because I see another law in my members fighting against
the law of my mind. Ro 7:23. Why needy and poor? Because,
"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness." Mt 5:6. Still I hunger, still I thirst. Augustine.
Verse 5. But I am poor and needy. He had been
rich, but for our sake he had become poor, that we, through his
poverty, might be rich. Out of the fulness of his grace he had
voluntarily entered, for our sakes, into a state in which he had
experience, and most bitter experience, of the want of the means
of enjoyment... But the word here rendered poor is often
elsewhere, translated afflicted; in various ways he was
afflicted. He was despised and rejected of men, a man of
sorrows, and the acquaintance of grief. He was reproached, and
"reproach broke his heart." James Frame.
Verse 5. I am poor and needy. By this I hold to
be meant the chastisements, and fiery trials that come from God
the Father; the temptations and bitter assaults of that foul
and fell fiend, Satan; the persecutions and vexations
inflicted by the hands of unreasonable and wicked men;
and (but in this following Christ must be exempted) the
inward corruptions, disordered motions, unsettled affections,
and the original pollutions brought from the mother's womb; with
the soul and body's inaptness and unableness with cheerfulness
and constancy to run the direct and just paths of God's
commandments. Many of these made the Head, all of these (and
more, too) the members, poor and needy. John Barlow.
1618.
Verse 5. O Lord, make no tarrying. His prayer
for himself, like his prayer for his foes and for his friends,
was answered. The Lord made no tarrying. Ere four and twenty
hours had rolled past, his rescued spirit was in Paradise, and
the crucified thief was with him. O, what a change! The morning
saw him condemned at the bar of an earthly tribunal, sentenced
to death, and nailed to the bitter tree; before the evening
shadowed the hill of Calvary, he was nestling in the bosom of
God, and had become the great centre of attraction and of
admiration to all the holy intelligences of the universe. The
morning saw him led out through the gate of the Jerusalem below,
surrounded by a ribald crowd, whose hootings rung in his ear;
but ere the night fell, he had passed through the gate of the
Jerusalem above, and his tread was upon the streets of gold, and
angel anthems rose high through the dome of heaven, and joy
filled the heart of God. James Frame.
Verse 5. (third clause). Helper, in all
good works; Deliverer, from all evil ones. Make no
long tarrying: it is the cry of the individual sinner. Dionysius
the Carthusian (1471) quoted in Neale and Littledale's
Commentary.
HINTS TO THE VILLAGE PREACHER
Verse 1.
1. Occasion of his prayer.
(a) Affliction.
(b) Helplessness.
2. Subject of his prayer. Deliverance, help.
3. Importunity of his prayer. The time of deliverance may be
an answer to prayer, as well as deliverance itself.
Verse 1.
1. Times when such urgent prayer is allowable, praiseworthy,
or faulty.
2. Reasons for expecting a speedy reply.
3. Consolations if delay should occur.
Verse 2.
1. There are those who seek our soul's hurt.
2. We must oppose them, not dally or yield.
3. Our best weapon is prayer to God.
4. Their defeat is here described.
Verse 3.
1. Who are these who cry "shame"?
2. What master do they serve?
3. What shall their wages be?
Verse 4. Joy for seekers, and employment for finders.
Verse 4. (last clause).
1. The character.
2. The saying.
3. The wish.
Verse 5.
1. Who needs help?
2. Who renders help?
3. What it comes to: "deliver."
4. What prayer it suggests.
Verse 5.
1. Confession! I am poor and needy.
2. Profession: Thou art my help, etc.
3. Supplication: Make haste; Make no tarrying.