To The Chief Musician. Intended therefore
to be sung, and sung in the temple service! Yet is it by no
means easy to imagine the whole nation singing such dreadful
imprecations. We ourselves, at any rate, under the gospel
dispensation, find it very difficult to infuse into the Psalm a
gospel sense, or a sense at all compatible with the Christian
spirit; and therefore one would think the Jews must have found
it hard to chant such strong language without feeling the spirit
of revenge excited; and the arousal of that spirit could never
have been the object of divine worship in any period of
time—under law or under gospel. At the very outset this title
shows that the Psalm has a meaning with which it is fitting for
men of God to have fellowship before the throne of the Most
High: but what is that meaning? This is a question of no small
difficulty, and only a very childlike spirit will ever be able
to answer it.
A Psalm of David. Not therefore the ravings of a
vicious misanthrope, or the execrations of a hot, revengeful
spirit. David would not smite the man who sought his blood, he
frequently forgave those who treated him shamefully; and
therefore these words cannot be read in a bitter, revengeful
sense, for that would be foreign to the character of the son of
Jesse. The imprecatory sentences before us were penned by one
who with all his courage in battle was a man of music and of
tender heart, and they were meant to be addressed to God in the
form of a Psalm, and therefore they cannot possibly have been
meant to be mere angry cursing.
Unless it can be proved that the religion of the old
dispensation was altogether hard, morose, and Draconian, and
that David was of a malicious, vindictive spirit, it cannot be
conceived that this Psalm contains what one author has ventured
to call "a pitiless hate, a refined and insatiable
malignity." To such a suggestion we cannot give place, no,
not for an hour. But what else can we make of such strong
language? Truly this is one of the hard places of Scripture, a
passage which the soul trembles to read; yet as it is a Psalm
unto God, and given by inspiration, it is not ours to sit in
judgment upon it, but to bow our ear to what God the Lord would
speak to us therein.
This psalm refers to Judas, for so Peter quoted it; but to
ascribe its bitter denunciations to our Lord in the hour of his
sufferings is more than we dare to do. These are not consistent
with the silent Lamb of God, who opened not his mouth when led
to the slaughter. It may seem very pious to put such words into
his mouth; we hope it is our piety which prevents our doing so.
(See our first note from Perowne in the Explanatory Notes and
Quaint Sayings.)
DIVISION. In the first five verses (Ps
109:1-5) David humbly pleads with God that he may be delivered
from his remorseless and false hearted enemies. From Ps
109:6-20, filled with a prophetic fervour, which carries him
entirely beyond himself, he denounces judgment upon his foes,
and then from Ps 109:21-31 he returns to his communion with God
in prayer and praise. The central portion of the Psalm in which
the difficulty lies must be regarded not as the personal wish of
the psalmist in cool blood, but as his prophetic denunciation of
such persons as he describes, and emphatically of one special
"son of perdition" whom he sees with prescient eye. We
would all pray for the conversion of our worst enemy, and David
would have done the same; but viewing the adversaries of the
Lord, and doers of iniquity, As Such, and as incorrigible
we cannot wish them well; on the contrary, we desire their
overthrow, and destruction. The gentlest hearts burn with
indignation when they hear of barbarities to women and children,
of crafty plots for ruining the innocent, of cruel oppression of
helpless orphans, and gratuitous ingratitude to the good and
gentle. A curse upon the perpetrators of the atrocities in
Turkey may not be less virtuous than a blessing upon the
righteous. We wish well to all mankind, and for that very reason
we sometimes blaze with indignation against the inhuman wretches
by whom every law which protects our fellow creatures is
trampled down, and every dictate of humanity is set at nought.
EXPOSITION
Verse 1. Hold not thy peace. Mine enemies
speak, be thou pleased to speak too. Break thy solemn silence,
and silence those who slander me. It is the cry of a man whose
confidence in God is deep, and whose communion with him is very
close and bold. Note, that he only asks the Lord to speak: a
word from God is all a believer needs. O God of my praise. Thou
whom my whole soul praises, be pleased to protect my honour and
guard my praise. "My heart is fixed", said he in the
former psalm, "I will sing and give praise", and now
he appeals to the God whom he had praised. If we take care of
God's honour he will take care of ours. We may look to him as
the guardian of our character if we truly seek his glory. If we
live to God's praise, he will in the long run give us praise
among men.
Verse 2. For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth
of the deceitful are opened against me. Wicked men must
needs say wicked things, and these we have reason to dread; but
in addition they utter false and deceitful things, and these are
worst of all. There is no knowing what may come out of mouths
which are at once lewd and lying. The misery caused to a good
man by slanderous reports no heart can imagine but that which is
wounded by them: in all Satan's armoury there are no worse
weapons than deceitful tongues. To have a reputation, over which
we have watched with daily care, suddenly bespattered with the
foulest aspersions, is painful beyond description; but when
wicked and deceitful men get their mouths fully opened we can
hardly expect to escape any more than others. They have spoken
against me with a lying tongue. Lying tongues cannot lie still.
Bad tongues are not content to vilify bad men, but choose the
most gracious of saints to be the objects of their attacks. Here
is reason enough for prayer. The heart sinks when assailed with
slander, for we know not what may be said next, what friend may
be alienated, what evil may be threatened, or what misery may be
caused to us and others. The air is full of rumours, and shadows
impalpable flit around; the mind is confused with dread of
unseen foes, and invisible arrows. What ill can be worse than to
be assailed with slander,
"Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue
Out venoms all the worms of Nile"?
Verse 3. They compassed me about also with words of
hatred. Turn which way he would they hedged him in with
falsehood, misrepresentation, accusation, and scorn. Whispers,
sneers, insinuations, satires, and open charges filled his ear
with a perpetual buzz, and all for no reason, but sheer hate.
Each word was as full of venom as an egg is full of meat: they
could not speak without showing their teeth. And fought against
me without a cause. He had not provoked the quarrel or
contributed to it, yet in a thousand ways they laboured to
"corrode his comfort, and destroy his ease." All this
tended to make the suppliant feel the more acutely the wrongs
which were done to him.
Verse 4. For my love they are my adversaries.
They hate me because I love them. One of our poets says of the
Lord Jesus—"Found guilty of excess of love." Surely
it was his only fault. Our Lord might have used all the language
of this complaint most emphatically—they hated him without a
cause and returned him hatred for love. What a smart this is to
the soul, to be hated in proportion to the gratitude which it
deserved, hated by those it loved, and hated because of its
love. This was a cruel case, and the sensitive mind of the
psalmist writhed under it. But give myself unto prayer. He did
nothing else but pray. He became prayer as they became malice.
This was his answer to his enemies, he appealed from men and
their injustice to the Judge of all the earth, who must do
right. True bravery alone can teach a man to leave his traducers
unanswered, and carry the case unto the Lord.
"Men cannot help but reverence the courage that walketh
amid calumnies unanswering."
"He standeth as a gallant chief unheeding shot or
shell."
Verse 5. And they have rewarded me evil for good,
and hatred for my love. Evil for good is devil like. This is
Satan's line of action, and his children upon earth follow it
greedily; it is cruel, and wounds to the quick. The revenge
which pays a man back in his own coin has a kind of natural
justice in it; but what shall be said of that baseness which
returns to goodness the very opposite of what it has a right to
expect? Our Lord endured such base treatment all his days, and,
alas, in his members, endures it still. Thus we see the harmless
and innocent man upon his knees pouring out his lamentation: we
are now to observe him rising from the mercy seat, inspired with
prophetic energy, and pouring forth upon his foes the
forewarning of their doom. We shall hear him speak like a judge
clothed with stern severity, or like the angel of doom robed in
vengeance, or as the naked sword of justice when she bares her
arm for execution. It is not for himself that he speaks so much
as for all the slandered and the down trodden, of whom he feels
himself to be the representative and mouthpiece. He asks for
justice, and as his soul is stung with cruel wrongs he asks with
solemn deliberation, making no stint in his demands. To pity
malice would be malice to mankind; to screen the crafty seekers
of human blood would be cruelty to the oppressed. Nay, love, and
truth, and pity lift their wounds to heaven, and implore
vengeance on the enemies of the innocent and oppressed; those
who render goodness itself a crime, and make innocence a motive
for hate, deserve to find no mercy from the great Preserver of
men. Vengeance is the prerogative of God, and as it would be a
boundless calamity if evil were for ever to go unpunished, so it
is an unspeakable blessing that the Lord will recompense the
wicked and cruel man, and there are times and seasons when a
good man ought to pray for that blessing. When the Judge of all
threatens to punish tyrannical cruelty and false hearted
treachery, virtue gives her assent and consent. Amen, so let it
be, saith every just man in his inmost soul.
Verse 6. Set thou a wicked man over him. What
worse punishment could a man have? The proud man cannot endure
the proud, nor the oppressor brook the rule of another like
himself. The righteous in their patience find the rule of the
wicked a sore bondage; but those who are full of resentful
passions, and haughty aspirations, are slaves indeed when men of
their own class have the whip hand of them. For Herod to be
ruled by another Herod would be wretchedness enough, and yet
what retribution could be more just? What unrighteous man can
complain if he finds himself governed by one of like character?
What can the wicked expect but that their rulers should be like
themselves? Who does not admire the justice of God when he sees
fierce Romans ruled by Tiberius and Nero, and Red Republicans
governed by Marat and Robespierre? And let Satan stand at his
right hand. Should not like come to like? Should not the father
of lies stand near his children? Who is a better right hand
friend for an adversary of the righteous than the great
adversary himself? The curse is an awful one, but it is most
natural that it should come to pass: those who serve Satan may
expect to have his company, his assistance, his temptations, and
at last his doom.
Verse 7. When he shall be judged, let him be
condemned. He judged and condemned others in the vilest
manner, he suffered not the innocent to escape; and it would be
a great shame if in his time of trial, being really guilty, he
should be allowed to go free. Who would wish Judge Jeffries to
be acquitted if he were tried for perverting justice? Who would
desire Nero or Caligula to be cleared if set at the bar for
cruelty? When Shylock goes into court, who wishes him to win his
suit? And let his prayer become sin. It is sin already, let it
be so treated. To the injured it must seem terrible that the
black hearted villain should nevertheless pretend to pray, and
very naturally do they beg that he may not be heard, but that
his pleadings may be regarded as an addition to his guilt. He
has devoured the widow's house, and yet he prays. He has put
Naboth to death by false accusation and taken possession of his
vineyard, and then he presents prayers to the Almighty. He has
given up villages to slaughter, and his hands are red with the
blood of babes and maidens, and then he pays his vows unto
Allah! He must surely be accursed himself who does not wish that
such abominable prayers may be loathed of heaven and written
down as new sins. He who makes it a sin for others to pray will
find his own praying become sin. When he at last sees his need
of mercy, mercy herself shall resent his appeal as an insult.
"Because that he remembered not to show mercy", he
shall himself be forgotten by the God of grace, and his bitter
cries for deliverance shall be regarded as mockeries of heaven.
Verse 8. Let his days be few. Who would desire
a persecuting tyrant to live long? As well might we wish length
of days to a mad dog. If he will do nothing but mischief the
shortening of his life will be the lengthening of the world's
tranquillity. "Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out
half their days",—this is bare justice to them, and great
mercy to the poor and needy. And let another take his office.
Perhaps a better man may come, at any rate it is time a change
were tried. So used were the Jews to look upon these verses as
the doom of traitors, of cruel and deceitful mind, that Peter
saw at once in the speedy death of Judas a fulfilment of this
sentence, and a reason for the appointment of a successor who
should take his place of oversight. A bad man does not make an
office bad: another may use with benefit that which he perverted
to ill uses.
Verse 9. Let his children be fatherless, and his
wife a widow. This would inevitably be the case when the man
died, but the psalmist uses the words in an emphatic sense, he
would have his widow "a widow indeed", and his
children so friendless as to be orphaned in the bitterest sense.
He sees the result of the bad man's decease, and includes it in
the punishment. The tyrant's sword makes many children
fatherless, and who can lament when his barbarities come home to
his own family, and they too, weep and lament. Pity is due to
all orphans and widows as such, but a father's atrocious actions
may dry up the springs of pity. Who mourns that Pharaoh's
children lost their father, or that Sennacherib's wife became a
widow? As Agag's sword had made women childless none wept when
Samuel's weapon made his mother childless among women. If Herod
had been slain when he had just murdered the innocents at
Bethlehem no man would have lamented it even though Herod's wife
would have become a widow. These awful maledictions are not for
common men to use, but for judges, such as David was, to
pronounce over the enemies of God and man. A judge may sentence
a man to death whatever the consequences may be to the
criminal's family, and in this there will be no feeling of
private revenge, but simply the doing of justice because evil
must be punished. We are aware that this may not appear to
justify the full force of these expressions, but it should never
be forgotten that the case supposed is a very execrable one, and
the character of the culprit is beyond measure loathsome and not
to be met by any common abhorrence. Those who regard a sort of
effeminate benevolence to all creatures alike as the acme of
virtue are very much in favour with this degenerate age; these
look for the salvation of the damned, and even pray for the
restoration of the devil. It is very possible that if they were
less in sympathy with evil, and more in harmony with the
thoughts of God, they would be of a far sterner and also of a
far better mind. To us it seems better to agree with God's
curses than with the devil's blessings; and when at any time our
heart kicks against the terrors of the Lord we take it as a
proof of our need of greater humbling, and confess our sin
before our God.
Verse 10. Let his children be continually
vagabonds, and beg. May they have neither house nor home,
settlement nor substance; and while they thus wander and beg may
it ever be on their memory that their father's house lies in
ruins,—let them seek their bread also out of their desolate
places. It has often been so: a race of tyrants has become a
generation of beggars. Misused power and abused wealth have
earned the family name universal detestation, and secured to the
family character an entail of baseness. Justice herself would
award no such doom except upon the supposition that the sin
descended with the blood; but supreme providence which in the
end is pure justice has written many a page of history in which
the imprecation of this verse has been literally verified. We
confess that as we read some of these verses we have need of all
our faith and reverence to accept them as the voice of
inspiration; but the exercise is good for the soul, for it
educates our sense of ignorance, and tests our teachability.
Yes, Divine Spirit, we can and do believe that even these dread
words from which we shrink have a meaning consistent with the
attributes of the Judge of all the earth, though his name is
LOVE. How this may be we shall know hereafter.
Verse 11. Let the extortioner catch all that he
hath. A doom indeed. Those who have once fallen into the
hands of the usurer can tell you what this means: it were better
to be a fly in the web of a spider. In the most subtle,
worrying, and sweeping manner the extortioner takes away, piece
by piece, his victim's estate, till not a fraction remains to
form a pittance for old age. Baiting his trap, watching it
carefully, and dexterously driving his victim into it, the
extortioner by legal means performs unlawful deeds, catches
his bird, strips him of every feather, and cares not if he die
of starvation. He robs with law to protect him, and steals with
the magistrate at his back: to fall into his clutches is worse
than to be beset by professed thieves. And let the strangers
spoil his labour,—so that his kindred may have none of it.
What with hard creditors and pilfering strangers the estate must
soon vanish! Extortion drawing one way, and spoliation the
other, a known moneylender and an unknown robber both at work,
the man's substance would soon disappear, and rightly so, for it
was gathered by shameless means. This too has been frequently
seen. Wealth amassed by oppression has seldom lasted to the
third generation: it was gathered by wrong and by wrong it is
scattered, and who would decree that it should be otherwise?
Certainly those who suffer beneath high handed fraud will not
wish to stay the retribution of the Almighty, nor would those
who see the poor robbed and trampled on desire to alter the
divine arrangements by which such evils are recompensed even in
this life.
Verse 12. Let there be none to extend mercy unto
him. He had no mercy, but on the contrary, he crushed down
all who appealed to him. Loath to smite him with his own weapon,
stern justice can do no otherwise, she lifts her scales and sees
that this, too, must be in the sentence. Neither let there be
any to favour his fatherless children. We are staggered to find
the children included in the father's sentence, and yet as a
matter of fact children do suffer for their father's sins, and,
as long as the affairs of this life are ordered as they are, it
must be so. So involved are the interests of the race, that it
is quite impossible in all respects to view the father and the
child apart. No man among us could desire to see the fatherless
suffer for their deceased father's fault, yet so it happens, and
there is no injustice in the fact. They share the parent's ill
gotten gain or rank, and their aggrandizement is a part of the
object at which he aimed in the perpetration of his crimes; to
allow them to prosper would be an encouragement and reward of
his iniquity; therefore, for these and other reasons, a man
perishes not alone in his iniquity. The ban is on his race. If
the man were innocent this would be a crime; if he were but
commonly guilty it would be excessive retribution; but when the
offence reeks before high heaven in unutterable abomination, it
is little marvel that men devote the man's whole house to
perpetual infamy, and that so it happeneth.
Verse 13. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the
generation following let their name be blotted out. Both
from existence and from memory let them pass away till none
shall know that such a vile brood ever existed. Who wishes to
see the family of Domitian or Julian continued upon earth? Who
would mourn if the race of Tom Paine or of Voltaire should come
to an utter end? It would be undesirable that the sons of the
utterly villainous and bloodthirsty should rise to honour, and
if they did they would only revive the memory of their father's
sins.
Verse 14. This verse is, perhaps, the most terrible of
all, but yet as a matter of fact children do procure punishment
upon their parents' sins, and are often themselves the means of
such punishment. A bad son brings to mind his father's bad
points of character; people say, "Ah, he is like the old
man. He takes after his father." A mother's sins also will
be sure to be called to mind if her daughter becomes grossly
wicked. "Ah", they will say, "there is little
wonder, when you consider what her mother was." These are
matters of everyday occurrence. We cannot, however, pretend to
explain the righteousness of this malediction, though we fully
believe in it. We leave it till our heavenly Father is pleased
to give us further instruction. Yet, as a man's faults are often
learned from his parents, it is not unjust that his consequent
crimes should recoil upon him.
Verse 15. Again, he wishes that his father's sins may
follow up the transgressor and assist to fill the measure of his
own iniquities, so that for the whole accumulated load the
family may be smitten with utter extinction. A king might justly
wish for such an end to fall upon an incorrigible brood of
rebels; and of persecutors, continuing in the same mind, the
saints might well pray for their extinction; but the passage is
dark; and we must leave it so. It must be right or it would not
be here, but how we cannot see. Why should we expect to
understand all things? Perhaps it is more for our benefit to
exercise humility, and reverently worship God over a hard text,
than it would be to comprehend all mysteries.
Verse 16. Because that he remembered not to shew
mercy. Because he had no memory to show mercy the Judge of
all will have a strong memory of his sins. So little mercy had
he ever shown that he had forgotten how to do it, he was without
common humanity, devoid of compassion, and therefore only worthy
to be dealt with after the bare rule of justice. But persecuted
the poor and needy man. He looked on poor men as a nuisance upon
the earth, he ground their faces, oppressed them in their wages,
and treated them as the mire of the streets. Should he not be
punished, and in his turn laid low? All who know him are
indignant at his brutalities, and will glory to see him
overthrown. That he might even slay the broken in heart. He had
malice in his heart towards one who was already sufficiently
sorrowful, whom it was a superfluity of malignity to attack. Yet
no grief excited sympathy in him, no poverty ever moved him to
relent. No, he would kill the heart broken and rob their orphans
of their patrimony. To him groans were music, and tears were
wine, and drops of blood precious rubies. Would any man spare
such a monster? Will it not be serving the ends of humanity if
we wish him gone, gone to the throne of God to receive his
reward? If he will turn and repent, well: but if not, such a up
as tree ought to be felled and cast into the fire. As men kill
mad dogs if they can, and justly too, so may we lawfully wish
that cruel oppressors of the poor were removed from their place
and office, and, as an example to others, made to smart for
their barbarities.
Verse 17. As he loved cursing, so let it come unto
him. Deep down in every man's soul the justice of the lex
talionis is established. Retaliation, not for private
revenge, but as a measure of public justice, is demanded by the
psalmist and deserved by the crime. Surely the malicious man
cannot complain if he is judged by his own rule, and has his
corn measured with his own bushel. Let him have what he loved.
They are his own chickens, and they ought to come home to roost.
He made the bed, let him lie on it himself. As he brewed, so let
him drink. So all men say as a matter of justice, and though the
higher law of love overrides all personal anger, yet as against
the base characters here described even Christian love would not
wish to see the sentence mitigated. As he delighted not in
blessing, so let it be far from him. He felt no joy in any man's
good, nor would he lift a hand to do another a service, rather
did he frown and fret when another prospered or mirth was heard
under his window; what, then, can we wish him? Blessing was
wasted on him, he hated those who gently sought to lead him to a
better mind; even the blessings of providence he received with
murmurs and repinings, he wished for famine to raise the price
of his corn, and for war to increase his trade. Evil was good to
him, and good he counted evil. If he could have blasted every
field of corn in the world he would have done so if he could
have turned a penny by it, or if he could thereby have injured
the good man whom he hated from his very soul. What can we wish
for him? He hunts after evil, he hates good; he lays himself out
to ruin the godly whom God has blessed, he is the devil's
friend, and as fiendish as his patron; should things go well
with such a being? Shall we "wish him good luck in the name
of the Lord?" To invoke blessings on such a man would be to
participate in his wickedness, therefore let blessing be far
from him, so long as he continues what he now is.
Verses 18-19. He was so openly in the habit of wishing
ill to others that he seemed to wear robes of cursing, therefore
let it be as his raiment girded and belted about him, yea, let
it enter as water into his bowels, and search the very marrow of
his bones like a penetrating oil. It is but common justice that
he should receive a return for his malice, and receive it in
kind, too.
Verse 20. This is the summing up of the entire
imprecation, and fixes it upon the persons who had so
maliciously assailed the inoffensive man of God. David was a man
of gentle mould, and remarkably free from the spirit of revenge,
and therefore we may here conceive him to be speaking as a judge
or as a representative man, in whose person great principles
needed to be vindicated and great injuries redressed. Thousands
of God's people are perplexed with this psalm, and we fear we
have contributed very little towards their enlightenment, and
perhaps the notes we have gathered from others, since they
display such a variety of view, may only increase the
difficulty. What then? Is it not good for us sometimes to be
made to feel that we are not yet able to understand all the word
and mind of God? A thorough bewilderment, so long as it does not
stagger our faith, may be useful to us by confounding our pride,
arousing our faculties, and leading us to cry, "What I know
not teach thou me."
Verse 21. But do thou for me, O God the Lord, for
thy name's sake. How eagerly he turns from his enemies to
his God! He sets the great THOU in opposition to all his
adversaries, and you see at once that his heart is at rest. The
words are very indistinct and though our version may not
precisely translate them, yet it in a remarkable manner hits
upon the sense and upon the obscurity which hangs over it.
"Do thou for me"—what shall he do? Why, do whatever
he thinks fit. He leaves himself in the Lord's hands, dictating
nothing, but quite content so long as his God will but undertake
for him. His plea is not his own merit, but the name. The
saints have always felt this to be their most mighty plea. God
himself has performed his grandest deeds of grace for the honour
of his name, and his people know that this is the most potent
argument with him. What the Lord himself has guarded with sacred
jealousy we should reverence with our whole hearts and rely upon
without distrust. "Because thy mercy is good, deliver thou
me." Not because I am good, but because thy mercy is good:
see how the saints fetch their pleadings in prayer from the Lord
himself. God's mercy is the star to which the Lord's people turn
their eye when they are tossed with tempest and not comforted,
for the peculiar bounty and goodness of that mercy have a charm
for weary hearts. When man has no mercy we shall still find it
in God. When man would devour we may look to God to deliver. His
name and his mercy are two firm grounds for hope, and happy are
those who know how to rest upon them.
Verse 22. For I am poor and needy. When he does
plead anything about himself he urges not his riches or his
merits, but his poverty and his necessities: this is gospel
supplication, such as only the Spirit of God can indite upon the
heart. This lowliness does not comport with the supposed
vengeful spirit of the preceding verses: there must therefore be
some interpretation of them which would make them suitable in
the lips of a lowly minded man of God. And my heart is wounded
within me. The Lord has always a tender regard to broken hearted
ones, and such the psalmist had become: the undeserved cruelty,
the baseness, the slander of his remorseless enemies had pierced
him to the soul, and this sad condition he pleads as a reason
for speedy help. It is time for a friend to step in when the
adversary cuts so deep. The case has become desperate without
divine aid; now, therefore, is the Lord's time.
Verse 23. I am gone like the shadow when it
declineth. I am a mere shadow, a shadow at the vanishing
point, when it stretches far, but is almost lost in the
universal gloom of evening which settles over all, and so
obliterates the shadows cast by the setting sun. Lord, there is
next to nothing left of me, wilt thou not come in before I am
quite gone? I am tossed up and down as the locust, which is the
sport of the winds, and must go up or down as the breeze carries
it. The psalmist felt as powerless in his distress as a poor
insect, which a child may toss up and down at its pleasure. He
entreats the divine pity, because he had been brought to this
forlorn and feeble condition by the long persecution which his
tender heart had endured. Slander and malice are apt to produce
nervous disorders and to lead on to pining diseases. Those who
use these poisoned arrows are not always aware of the
consequences; they scatter fire brands and death and say it is
sport.
Verse 24. My knees are weak through fasting;
either religious fasting, to which he resorted in the dire
extremity of his grief, or else through loss of appetite
occasioned by distress of mind. Who can eat when every morsel is
soured by envy? This is the advantage of the slanderer, that he
feels nothing himself, while his sensitive victim can scarcely
eat a morsel of bread because of his sensitiveness. However, the
good God knoweth all this, and will succour his afflicted. The
Lord who bids us confirm the feeble knees will assuredly
do it himself. "And my flesh faileth of fatness." He
was wasted to a skeleton, and as his body was emaciated, so was
his soul bereft of comfort: he was pining away, and all the
while his enemies saw it and laughed at his distress. How
pathetically he states his case; this is one of the truest forms
of prayer, the setting forth of our sorrow before the Lord. Weak
knees are strong with God, and failing flesh has great power in
pleading.
Verse 25. I became also a reproach unto them.
They made him the theme of ridicule, the butt of their ribald
jests: his emaciation by fasting made him a tempting subject for
their caricatures and lampoons. When they looked upon me they
shaked their heads. Words were not a sufficient expression of
their scorn, they resorted to gestures which were meant both to
show their derision and to irritate his mind. Though these
things break no bones, yet they do worse, for they break and
bruise far tenderer parts of us. Many a man who could have
answered a malicious speech, and so have relieved his mind, has
felt keenly a sneer, a putting out of the tongue, or some other
sign of contempt. Those, too, who are exhausted by such fasting
and wasting, as the last verse describes (Ps 109:31) are
generally in a state of morbid sensibility, and therefore feel
more acutely the unkindness of others. What they would smile at
during happier seasons becomes intolerable when they are in a
highly nervous condition.
Verse 26. Help me, O LORD my God. Laying hold
of Jehovah by the appropriating word my, he implores his
aid both to help him to bear his heavy load and to enable him to
rise superior to it. He has described his own weakness, and the
strength and fury of his foes, and by these two arguments he
urges his appeal with double force. This is a very rich, short,
and suitable prayer for believers in any situation of peril,
difficulty, or sorrow. O save me according to thy mercy. As thy
mercy is, so let thy salvation be. The measure is a great one,
for the mercy of God is without bound. When man has no mercy it
is comforting to fall back upon God's mercy. Justice to the
wicked is often mercy to the righteous, and because God is
merciful he will save his people by overthrowing their
adversaries.
Verse 27. That they may know that this is thy hand.
Dolts as they are, let the mercy shown to me be so conspicuous
that they shall be forced to see the Lord's agency in it.
Ungodly men will not see God's hand in anything if they can help
it, and when they see good men delivered into their power they
become more confirmed than ever in their atheism; but all in
good time God will arise and so effectually punish their malice
and rescue the object of their spite that they will be compelled
to say like the Egyptian magicians, "this is the finger of
God." That thou, LORD, hast done it. There will be no
mistaking the author of so thorough a vindication, so complete a
turning of the tables.
Verse 28. Let them curse, but bless thou, or, they
will curse and thou wilt bless. Their cursing will then be
of such little consequence that it will not matter a straw. One
blessing from the Lord will take the poison out of ten thousand
curses of men. When they arise, let them be ashamed. They lift
up themselves to deal out another blow, to utter another
falsehood, and to watch for its injurious effects upon their
victim, but they see their own defeat and are filled with shame.
But let thy servant rejoice. Not merely as a man protected and
rescued, but as God's servant in whom his master's goodness and
glory are displayed when he is saved from his foes. It ought to
be our greatest joy that the Lord is honoured in our experience;
the mercy itself ought not so much to rejoice us as the glory
which is thereby brought to him who so graciously bestows it.
Verse 29. Let mine adversaries be clothed with
shame. It is a prophecy as well as a wish, and may be read
both in the indicative and the imperative. Where sin is the
underclothing, shame will soon be the outer vesture. He who
would clothe good men with contempt shall himself be clothed
with dishonour. And let them cover themselves with their own
confusion, as with a mantle. Let their confusion be broad
enough to wrap them all over from head to foot, let them bind it
about them and hide themselves in it, as being utterly afraid to
be seen. Now they walk abroad unblushingly and reveal their own
wickedness, acting as if they either had nothing to conceal or
did not care whether it was seen or no; but they will be of
another mind when the great Judge deals with them, then will
they entreat mountains to hide them and hills to fall upon them,
that they may not be seen: but all in vain, they must be dragged
to the bar with no other covering but their own confusion.
Verse 30. I will greatly praise the LORD with my
mouth. Enthusiastically, abundantly, and loudly will he
extol the righteous Lord, who redeemed him from all evil; and
that not only in his own chamber or among his own family, but in
the most public manner. Yea, I will praise him among the
multitude. Remarkable and public providence demand public
recognition, for otherwise men of the world will judge us to be
ungrateful. We do not praise God to be heard of men, but as a
natural sense of justice leads every one to expect to hear a
befriended person speak well of his benefactor, we therefore
have regard to such natural and just expectations, and endeavour
to make our praises as public as the benefit we have received.
The singer in the present case is the man whose heart was
wounded within him because he was the laughing stock of
remorseless enemies; yet now he praises, praises greatly,
praises aloud, praises in the teeth of all gainsayers, and
praises with a right joyous spirit. Never let us despair, yea,
never let us cease to praise.
Verse 31. For he shall stand at the right hand of
the poor. God will not be absent when his people are on
their trial; he will hold a brief for them and stand in court as
their advocate, prepared to plead on their behalf. How different
is this from the doom of the ungodly who has Satan at his right
hand (Ps 109:6). To save him from those that condemn his soul.
The court only met as a matter of form, the malicious had made
up their minds to the verdict, they judged him guilty, for their
hate condemned him, yea, they pronounced sentence of damnation
upon the very soul of their victim: but what mattered it? The
great King was in court, and their sentence was turned against
themselves. Nothing can more sweetly sustain the heart of a
slandered believer than the firm conviction that God is near to
all who are wronged, and is sure to work out their salvation. O
Lord, save us from the severe trial of slander: deal in thy
righteousness with all those who spitefully assail the
characters of holy men, and cause all who are smarting under
calumny and reproach to come forth unsullied from the
affliction, even as did thine only begotten Son. Amen.
EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS
Whole Psalm. Mysterious was the one word written
opposite this psalm in the pocket Bible of a late devout and
popular writer. It represents the utter perplexity with which it
is very generally regarded.—Joseph Hammond.
Whole Psalm. In this psalm David is supposed to refer
to Doeg the Edomite, or to Ahithophel. It is the most
imprecatory of the psalms, and may well be termed the
Iscariot Psalm. What David here refers to his mortal enemy,
finds its accomplishment in the betrayer of the Son of David. It
is from the 8th verse that Peter infers the necessity of filling
up the vacancy occasioned by the death of Judas: it was, says
he, predicted that another should take his office.—Paton J.
Gloag, in "A Commentary on the Acts," 1870.
Whole Psalm. We may consider Judas, at the same time,
as the virtual head of the Jewish nation in their daring attempt
to dethrone the Son of God. The doom pronounced, and the reasons
for it, apply to the Jews as a nation, as well as to the leader
of the band who took Jesus.—Andrew A. Bonar.
Whole Psalm. Is it possible that this perplexing and
distressing Psalm presents us after all, not with David's
maledictions upon his enemies, but with their maledictions upon
him? Not only do I hold this interpretation to be quite
legitimate, I hold it to be by far the more natural and
reasonable interpretation.—Joseph Hammond. (In Dr.
Cox's Expositor, Vol. 2. pg 225, this theory is well
elaborated by Mr. Hammond, but we cannot for an instant accept
it.—C.H.S.)
The Imprecations of the Psalm. The language has been
justified, not as the language of David, but as the language of
Christ, exercising his office of Judge, or, in so far as he had
laid aside that office during his earthly life, calling upon his
Father to accomplish the curse. It has been alleged that this is
the prophetic foreshadowing of the solemn words, "Woe unto
that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It had been good
for that man if he had not been born" (Mt 26:24). The curse
in the words of Chrysostom is, "a prophecy in the form of a
curse", (profhteia en eidei arav). The strain which such a
view compels us to put on much of the language ought to have led
long since to its abandonment. Not even the words denounced by
our Lord against the Pharisees can really be compared to the
anathemas which are here strung together. Much less is there any
pretence for saying that those words so full of deep and holy
sorrow, addressed to the traitor in the gospels, are merely
another expression of the appalling denunciations of the psalm.
But terrible as these undoubtedly are, to be accounted for by
the spirit of the Old Dispensation, not to be defended by that
of the New, still let us learn to estimate them aright.—J.J.
Stewart Perowne.
The Imprecations. These imprecations are not
appropriate in the mouth of the suffering Saviour. It is not the
spirit of Zion but of Sinai which here speaks out of the mouth
of David; the spirit of Elias, which, according to Lu 9:58, is
not the spirit of the New Testament. This wrathful spirit is
overpowered by the spirit of love. But these anathemas are still
not on this account so many beatings of the air. There is in
them a divine energy, as in the blessing and cursing of every
man who is united to God, and more especially of a man whose
temper of mind is such as David's. They possess the same power
as the prophetical threatenings, and in this sense they are
regarded in the New Testament as fulfilled in the son of
perdition (Joh 17:12). To the generation of the time of Jesus
they were a deterrent warning not to offend against the Holy One
of God, and this Psalmus Ischarioticus (Ac 1:20) will
ever be such a mirror of warning to the enemies and persecutors
of Christ and his church.—Franz Delitzsch.
The Imprecations. Respecting the imprecations
contained in this psalm, it will be proper to keep in mind what
I have said elsewhere, that when David forms such maledictions,
or expresses his desire for them, he is not instigated by any
immoderate carnal propensity, nor is he actuated by zeal without
knowledge, nor is he influenced by any private personal
considerations. These three matters must be carefully weighed,
for in proportion to the amount of self esteem which a man
possesses, is he so enamoured with his own interests as to rush
headlong upon revenge. Hence it comes to pass that the more a
person is devoted to selfishness, he will be the more
immoderately addicted to advancement of his own individual
interests. This desire for the promotion of personal interest
gives birth to another species of vice: for no one wishes to be
avenged upon his enemies because such a thing would be right and
equitable, but because it is the means of gratifying his own
spiteful propensity. Some, indeed, make a pretext of
righteousness and equity in the matter; but the spirit of
malignity, by which they are inflamed, effaces every trace of
justice, and blinds their minds. When the two vices, selfishness
and carnality, are corrected, there is still another thing
demanding correction: we must repress the ardour of foolish
zeal, in order that we may follow the Spirit of God as our
guide. Should any one, under the influence of perverse zeal,
produce David as an example of it, that would not be an example
in point; for to such a person may be very aptly applied the
answer which Christ returned to his disciples, "Ye know not
what spirit ye are of", Lu 9:55. How detestable a piece of
sacrilege is it on the part of the monks, and especially the
Franciscan friars, to pervert this psalm by employing it to
countenance the most nefarious purposes! If a man harbour malice
against a neighbour, it is quite a common thing for him to
engage one of these wicked wretches to curse him, which he would
do by daily repeating this psalm. I know a lady in France who
hired a parcel of these friars to curse her own and only son in
these words. But I return to David, who, free from all
inordinate passion, breathed forth his prayers under the
influence of the Holy Spirit.—John Calvin.
The imprecations. It is possible, as Tholuck thinks,
that in some of the utterances in what are called the vindictive
psalms, especially the imprecations in Ps 109:1-31, unholy
personal zeal may have been mingled with holy zeal, as was the
case seemingly with the two disciples James and John, when the
Lord chided their desire for vengeance (Lu 9:54-56). But, in
reality, the feeling expressed in these psalms may well be
considered as virtuous anger, such as Bishop Butler explains and
justifies in his sermons on "Resentment and the Forgiveness
of Injuries", and such as Paul teaches in Eph 4:26,
"Be ye angry, and sin not." Anger against sin and a
desire that evildoers may be punished, are not opposed to the
spirit of the gospel, or to that love of enemies which our Lord
both enjoined and exemplified. If the emotion or its utterance
were essentially sinful, how could Paul wish the enemy of Christ
and the perverter of the gospel to be accursed (anayema, 1Co
16:22 Ga 1:8); and especially, how could the spirit of the
martyred saints in heaven call on God for vengeance (Re 6:10),
and join to celebrate its final execution (Re 19:1-6)? Yea,
resentment against the wicked is so far from being necessarily
sinful, that we find it manifested by the Holy and Just One
himself, when in the days of his flesh he looked around on his
hearers "with anger, being grieved for the hardness of
their hearts" (Mr 3:5); and when in "the great day of
his wrath" (Re 6:17), he shall say to "all workers of
iniquity" (Lu 13:27), "Depart from me, ye cursed"
(Mt 25:41).—Benjamin Davies (1814-1875), in Kitto's
Cyclopaedia.
Imprecations. It is true that this vengeance is
invoked on the head of the betrayer of Christ: and we may profit
by reading even the severest of the passages when we regard them
as dictated by a burning zeal for the honour of Jehovah, a
righteous indignation and a jealousy of love, and generally, if
not universally, as denunciations of just judgment against the
obstinate enemies of Christ, and all who obey not the Gospel of
God. At the same time, these passages cannot be fully accounted
for without a frank recognition of the fact that the Psalter was
conceived and written under the Old Covenant. That dispensation
was more stern than ours. God's people had with all other
peoples a conflict with sword and spear. They wanted to tread
down their enemies, to crush the heathen; and thought it a grand
religious triumph for a righteous man to wash his feet in the
blood of the wicked. Ps 8:10 68:23. Now the struggle is without
carnal weapons, and the tone of the dispensation is changed.—Donald
Fraser. 1873.
Imprecations. Imprecations of judgment on the wicked on
the hypothesis their continued impenitence are not
inconsistent with simultaneous efforts of to bring them to
repentance; and Christian charity itself can do no more than
labour for the sinner's conversion. The law of holiness requires
us to pray for the fires of divine retribution: the law of love
to seek meanwhile to rescue the brand from the burning. The last
prayer of the martyr Stephen was answered not by any general
averting of doom from a guilty nation, but by the conversion of
an individual persecutor to the service of God.—Joseph
Francis Thrupp.
Imprecations. That explanation which regards the
"enemies" as spiritual foes has a large measure of
truth. It commended itself to a mind so far removed from
mysticism as Arnold's. It is most valuable for devout private
use of the Psalter. For, though we are come to Mount Sion,
crested with the eternal calm, the opened ear can hear the
thunder rolling along the peaks of Sinai. In the Gospel, the
wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness. Sin is utterly hateful to God. The broad gates
are flung wide open of the city that lies foursquare towards all
the winds of heaven; for its ruler is divinely tolerant. But
there shall in no wise enter it anything that defileth, neither
whatever worketh abomination; for he is divinely intolerant too.
And thus when, in public or private, we read these Psalms of
imprecation, there is a lesson that comes home to us. We must
read them, or dishonour God's word. Reading them, we must depart
from sin, or pronounce judgment upon ourselves. Drunkenness,
impurity, hatred, every known sin of flesh or spirit—these,
and not mistaken men, are the worst enemies of God and of his
Christ. Against these we pray in our Collects for Peace at
Morning and Evening prayer—"Defend us in all assaults of
our enemies, that by thee we being defended from the fear of our
enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness." These
were the dark hosts which swept through the Psalmist's vision
when he cried, "Let all mine enemies be ashamed and sore
vexed", Ps 6:10.—William Alexander, in "The
Witness of the Psalms to Christ and Christianity",
1877.
Imprecations. I cannot forbear the following little
incident that occurred the other morning at family worship. I
happened to be reading one of the imprecatory psalms, and as I
paused to remark, my little boy, a lad of ten years, asked with
some earnestness: "Father, do you think it right for a good
man to pray for the destruction of his enemies like that?"
and at the same time referred me to Christ as praying for his
enemies. I paused a moment to know how to shape the reply so as
to fully meet and satisfy his enquiry, and then said, "My
son, if an assassin should enter the house by night, and murder
your mother, and then escape, and the sheriff and citizens were
all out in pursuit, trying to catch him, would you not pray to
God that they might succeed and arrest him, and that he might be
brought to justice?" "Oh, yes!" said he,
"but I never saw it so before. I did not know that that was
the meaning of these Psalms." "Yes", said I,
"my son, the men against whom David plays were bloody men,
men of falsehood and crime, enemies to the peace of society,
seeking his own life, and unless they were arrested and their
wicked devices defeated, many innocent persons must
suffer." The explanation perfectly satisfied his mind.—F.G.
Hibbard, in "The Psalms chronologically arranged",
1856.
Title. It is worth noting, that the superscription, to
the chief Musician, to the precentor (xunml), proves it to
have been designed, such as it is, for the Tabernacle or Temple
service of song.—Joseph Hammond, in "The
Expositor," 1875.
Title. Syriac inscription. The verbs of the
Hebrew text through nearly the whole of the imprecatory part of
this Psalm are read in the singular number, as if some
particular subject were signified by the divine prophet. But our
translators always change the verbs into the plural number;
which is not done by the Seventy and the other translators, who
adhere more closely to the Hebrew text. But without doubt this
has arisen, because the Syriac Christians explain this Psalm of
the sufferings of Christ, which may be understood from the
Syriac inscription of this Psalm, and which in Polyglottis Angl.
reads thus:—"Of David: when they made Absalom king, be
not knowing: and on account of this he was killed. But to us it
sets forth the sufferings of Christ." For this reason
all these imprecations are transferred to the enemies or
murderers of Jesus Christ.—John Augustus Dathe,
1731-1791.
Verse 1. Hold not thy peace, O God of my praise.
All commendation or manifestation of our innocence is to be
sought from God when we are assailed with calumnies on all
sides. When God is silent, we should cry all the more strongly;
nor should we because of such delay despair of help, nor
impatiently cease from praying.—Martin Geier.
Verse 1. Hold not thy peace. How appropriately
this phrase is applied to God, with whom to speak is the
same as to do; for by his word he made all things.
Rightly, therefore, is he said to be silent when he seems not to
notice the things which are done by the wicked, and patiently
bears with their malice. The Psalmist begs him to rise up and
speak with the wicked in his wrath, and thus take deserved
vengeance on them; which is as easy for him to do as for an
angry man to break forth in words of rebuke and blame. This
should be to us a great solace against the wickedness of this
last age, which God, our praise, can restrain with one little
word.—Wolfgang Musculus.
Verse 1. O God. As the most innocent and holy
servants of God are subject to heavy slanders and false
calumnies raised against them, so the best remedy and relief in
this case is to go to God, as here the Psalmist doth.—David
Dickson.
Verse 1. God of my praise. Thou, who art the
constant object of my praise and thanksgiving, Jer 17:14.—William
Keatinge Clay.
Verse 1. O God of my praise. In denominating
him the God of his praise, he intrusts to him the
vindication of his innocence, in the face of the calumnies by
which he was all but universally assailed.—John Calvin.
Verse 1. The God of MY praise. Give me leave,
in order to expound it the better, to expostulate. What, David,
were there no saints but thyself that gave praise to God? Why
dost thou then seem to appropriate and engross God unto thyself,
as the God of thy praise, as if none praised him else but thee?
It is because his soul had devoted all the praise he was able to
bestow on any, unto the Lord alone; as whom he had set himself
to praise, and praise alone. As of a beloved son we use to say,
"the son of my love." And further, it is as if he had
said, If I had all the ability of all the spirits of men and
angels wherewith to celebrate him, I would bestow them all on
him, he is the God of my praise. And as he was David's, so he
should be ours.—Thomas Goodwin.
Verse 2. For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth
of the deceitful are opened against me. Speak, says Arnobius,
to thine own conscience, O man of God, thou who art following
Christ; and when the mouth of the wicked and deceitful man is
opened concerning thee, rejoice and be secure; because while the
mouth of the wicked is opened for thy slander in the earth, the
mouth of God is opened for thy praise in heaven.—Lorinus.
Verses 2-3. Note, first, the detractor opens his
mouth, that he may pour forth his poison, and that he may devour
his victim. Hence, David says, "the mouth of the wicked is
opened against me." Note, secondly, the detractor is
talkative—They have spoken, etc. The mouth of the
detractor is a broken pitcher leaking all over. Note, thirdly,
detraction springs from hatred, "they compassed me about
also with words of hatred." In Greek, ekuklwoan me, ie.,
as in a circle they have enclosed me. St. Climacus says,
"Detraction is odii partus, a subtle disease, a fat
but hidden leech which sucks the blood of charity and after
destroys it."—Lorinus.
Verse 2-5. The mouth of the wicked, etc.
Vice—deformed
Itself, and ugly, and of flavour rank—
To rob fair Virtue of so sweet an incense
And with it to anoint and salve its own
Rotten ulcers, and perfume the path that led
To death, strove daily by a thousand means:
And oft succeeded to make Virtue sour
In the world's nostrils, and its loathly self
Smell sweetly. Rumour was the messenger
Of defamation, and so swift that none
Could be the first to tell an evil tale.
It was Slander filled her mouth with lying words;
Slander, the foulest whelp of Sin. The man
In whom this spirit entered was undone.
His tongue was set on fire of hell; his heart
Was black as death; his legs were faint with haste
To propagate the lie his tongue had framed
His pillow was the peace of families
Destroyed, the sigh of innocence reproached,
Broken friendships, and the strife of brotherhoods.
Yet did he spare his sleep, and hear the clock
Number the midnight watches, on bis bed
Devising mischief more; and early rose
And made most hellish meals of good men's names.
Peace fled the neighbourhood in which he made
His haunts; and, like a moral pestilence,
Before his breath the healthy shoots and blooms
Of social joy and happiness decayed.
Fools only in his company were seen,
And those forsaken of God, and to themselves
Given up. The prudent man shunned him and his house
As one who had a deadly moral plague.
—Robert Pollok.
Verse 3. Although an individual may be absent, so that
he cannot corporeally be encompassed and fought with;
nevertheless, so great is the force and malice of an envenomed
tongue, that an absent man may be none the less dangerously
surrounded and warred against. Thus David, though absent and
driven into exile, was nevertheless surrounded and assailed by
the calumnies of Doeg and the other flatterers of Saul, so that
at length he was also corporeally surrounded; in which contest
he would clearly have perished unless he had been divinely
delivered: see 1Sa 23:1-29. And this kind of surrounding and
assault is so much the more deadly as it is so much the less
possible to be avoided. For who can be so innocent as to escape
the snares of a back biting and calumnious tongue? What place
can be so remote and obscure as that this evil will not intrude
when David could not be safe in the mountains and caves of the
rocks?—Wolfgang Musculus.
Verse 4. (first clause). None prove worse
enemies than those that have received the greatest kindnesses,
when once they turn unkind. As the sharpest vinegar is made of
the purest wine, and pleasant meats turn to the bitterest
humours in the stomach; so the highest love bestowed upon
friends, being ill digested or corrupt, turns to the most
unfriendly hatred, proximorum odia sunt acerrima.—Abraham
Wright.
Verse 4. For my love they are my adversaries;
that's an ill requital; but how did David requite them? We may
take his own word for it; he tells us how, "But I give
myself unto prayer"; yea, he seemed a man wholly given
unto prayer. The elegant conciseness of the Hebrew is, "But
I prayer"; we supply it thus, "But I give
myself unto prayer." They are sinning against me,
requiting my love with hatred, "But I give myself unto
prayer." But for whom did he pray? Doubtless he prayed
and prayed much for himself; he prayed also for them. We may
understand these words, "I give myself unto
prayer", two ways. First I pray against their plots and
evil dealings with me (prayer was David's best strength always
against his enemies), yet that was not all. But, secondly, "I
give myself unto prayer", that the Lord would pardon
their sin, and turn their hearts, when they are doing me
mischief; or, though they have done me mischief, I am wishing
them the best good. David (in another place) showed what a
spirit of charity he was clothed with, when no reproof could
hinder him from praying for others, Ps 141:5.—Joseph Caryl.
Verse 4. The translator of the Syriac version has
inserted in Ps 109:4 Arabic "and I have prayed for
them", as if he had copied them from the words of our
Lord in Mt 5:44, where in the Syriac version of the New
Testament we have exactly the same construction. It is in
keeping with the inscription of the Psalm, which applies it
directly to Christ. It would seem as if the Translator
understood this verse of the crucifixion and of the Redeemer's
prayer for his murderers, or as if the only way to understand
the elliptical language of the Psalmist was from the teaching
and example of our Lord.—E.T. Gibson, of Crayford.
Verse 4. I prayer. The Messiah says in this
prophetic psalm, "I am prayer." During his pilgrimage
on earth, his whole life was communion with God; and now in his
glory, he is constantly making intercession for us. But this
does not exhaust the idea, "I am prayer." He
not merely prayed and is now praying, he not merely teaches and
influences us to pray, but he is prayer, the fountain and source
of all prayer, as well as the foundation and basis of all
answers to our petitions. He is the Word in this sense also.
From all eternity his Father heard him, heard him as interceding
for that world which, created through him, he represented, and
in which, through him, divine glory was to be revealed. In the
same sense, therefore, in which he is light and gives light, in
which he is life and resurrection, and therefore quickens, Jesus
is prayer.—Adolph Saphir, in Lectures on the Lord's
Prayer, 1870.
Verse 4. Persecuted saints are men of prayer, yea,
they are as it were made up all of prayer. David prayed before;
but, oh, when his enemies fell a persecuting of him, then he
gave himself up wholly to prayer. Oh, then he was more earnest;
more fervent, more frequent, more diligent, more constant, and
more abundant in the work of prayer! When Numa, king of the
Romans, was told that his enemies were in arms against him, he
did but laugh at it, and answered, "And I do
sacrifice"; so when persecutors arm themselves against the
people of God, they do but divinely smile and laugh at it, and
give themselves the more up to prayer. When men arm against
them, then they arm themselves with all their might to the work
of prayer; and woe, woe to them that have armies of prayers
marching against them.—Thomas Brooks.
Verse 4. I give myself unto prayer. The
instruction to ourselves from these words is most comforting and
precious. Are we bowed down with sorrow and distress? "I
give myself unto prayer." Are we persecuted, and
reviled, and compassed about with words of hatred? "I
give myself unto prayer." Has death entered our
dwellings? And as we gaze in heart-broken anguish on the no
longer answering look of one who was our earthly stay, and we
feel as if all hope as well as all help were gone, still there
remains the same blessed refuge for all the Lord's sorrowing
ones, "I give myself unto prayer." In the
allegory of the ancients. Hope was left at the bottom of the
casket, as the sweetener of human life; but God, in far richer
mercy, gives prayer as the balm of human trial.—Barton
Bouchier.
Verse 4. A Christian is all over prayer: he prays at
rising, at lying down, and as he walks: like a prime favourite
at court, who has the key to the privy stairs, and can wake his
prince by night.—Augustus Montague Toplady, 1740-1778.
Verse 6. Set thou a wicked man over him, etc.
Here commences that terrible series of maledictions,
unparalleled in Holy Writ, as directed against an individual
sinner, albeit it is little more than a special reduplication of
the national woes denounced in Le 26:1-46 and De 28:1-68.—Neale
and Littledale.
Verse 6. Set thou a wicked man over him. The
first thing that the Psalmist asks is, that his foe might be
subjected to the evil of having a man placed over him like
himself:—a man regardless of justice, truth, and right; a man
who would respect character and propriety no more than he had
himself done. It is, in fact, a prayer that he might be punished
in the line of his offences. It cannot be wrong that a
man should be treated as he treats others; and it cannot be in
itself wrong to desire that a man should be treated according to
his character and deserts, for this is the object of all law,
and this is what all magistrates and legislators are
endeavouring to secure.—Albert Barnes.
Verse 6. Over HIM. Consider what would have
been the effect if these denunciations had been made against the
sins of men and not, as they are in these passages,
against the sinners. Men would have said, "My sin is
denounced, not me." What a license would have been
given to sin! The depraved nature would have said, "if I
am not condemned, but only my sin, I can do as I like; I
shall not be called to account for it. I love sin and can
go on in it." This is what men would have said. There would
have been no effort to get rid of it. Why should there be; if
only sin is condemned and not the sinner? But
man's sin is identified with himself, and this
makes him tremble. God's wrath rests on him because of
his sin. Condemnation is awaiting him because of his sin.
This makes him anxious to get rid of it.—Frederick
Whitfield.
Verse 6. Let Satan stand at his right hand. It
appears to have been the custom at trials before the Jewish
tribunals for a pleader to stand at the right hand of the
accused: See Zec 3:1, where are described Joshua the High
Priest, standing before the Angel of Jehovah, and the adversary
(Njs, Satan, as here) standing at his right hand to
oppose him. See also Ps 109:31.—John Le Clerc,
1657-1736.
Verse 6. Let Satan stand at his right hand.
Hugo observes that the Devil is on the left hand of those whom
he persecutes in temporal things: on the right of those whom he
rules in spiritual things: before the face of those who are on
their guard against his wiles: behind those who are not
foreseeing and prudent: above those whom he treads down: below,
and beneath the feet of those who tread him down. A recent
Spanish author, (Peter Vega. On the Penitential Psalms.) writing
in that language, thinks that there cannot be anything worse
than that man who diligently and of set purpose injures others
by speaking deceitfully, by surrounding with speeches of hatred,
by attacking without cause, by slandering, by returning evil for
good, and hatred for love: therefore, in this place it is
desired that a wicked man may be set over such a one, and the
devil at his right hand; as if he should be doomed to take the
lowest place because he is the worst.—Lorinus.
Verse 6. At his right hand. The strength or
force of the body shows itself principally in the right hand.
Therefore, he who wishes to obstruct another, and to hinder his
endeavour, stands at his right hand; and thus easily parries his
stroke or attempt. This I consider to be the most simple meaning
of this passage which shows that God represses and restrains the
raging of the enemies of the Church, who withstand each other by
their opposing efforts, either from envy or from other causes.
Thus, 2Sa 17:1-29, the counsels of Ahithophel are broken by
Hushai; and in our day we see that the counsels and attempts of
our enemies have been frequently and wonderfully restrained by
the hindrances they have give one to the other: in which matter
the goodness of God is to be discerned.—Mollerus.
Verse 6. He begins to prophesy what they should
receive for their great impiety, detailing their lot in such a
manner as if he wished its realization from a desire of revenge:
while he declareth what was to happen with the most absolute
certainty, and what of God's justice would worthily come upon
such. Some not understanding this mode of predicting the future
under the appearance of wishing evil, suppose hatred to be
returned for hatred, and an evil will for an evil will: since in
truth it belongeth to few to distinguish in what way the
punishment of the wicked pleaseth the accuser, who longeth to
satiate his enmity; and in how widely different a way it
pleaseth the judge, who with a righteous mind punishes sins. For
the former returneth evil for evil, but the judge when he
punishes does not return evil for evil, since he returneth
justice to the unjust; and what is just is surely good. He
therefore punishes not from delight in another's misery, which
is evil for evil, but from love of justice, which is good for
evil. Let not then the blind pervert the light of the Scriptures
imagining that God doth not punish sins: nor let the wicked
flatter themselves, as if he rendered evil for evil. Let us
therefore hear the sequel of this divine composition; and in the
words of one who seemeth to wish ill, let us recognise the
predictions of a prophet; and let us see God making a just
retribution, raising our mind up to his eternal laws.—Augustine.
Verses 6-19. These terrible curses are repeated with
many words and sentences, that we may know that David has not
let these words fall rashly or from any precipitate impulse of
mind; but, the Holy Spirit having dictated, he employs this form
of execration that it may be a perpetual prophecy or prediction
of the bitter pains and destruction of the enemies of the Church
of God. Nor does David imprecate these punishments so much on
his own enemies and Judas the betrayer of Christ; but that
similar punishments await all who fight against the kingdom of
Christ.—Mollerus.
Verses 6-20. I had also this consideration, that if I
should now venture all for God, I engaged God to take care of my
concerns; but if I forsook him and his ways for fear of any
trouble that should come to me or mine, then I should not only
falsify my profession, but should count also that my concerns
were not so sure, if left at God's feet, while I stood to and
for his name, as they would be if they were under my own tuition
(or care) though with the denial of the way of God. This was a
smarting consideration, and was as spurs unto my flesh. This
Scripture (Ps 109:6-20.) also greatly helped it to fasten the
more upon me, where Christ prays against Judas, that God would
disappoint him in all his selfish thoughts, which moved him to
sell his master: pray read it soberly. I had also another
consideration, and that was, the dread of the torments of hell,
which I was sure they must partake of, that for fear of the
cross to shrink from their profession of Christ, his words, and
laws, before the sons of men. I thought also of the glory that
he had prepared for those that, in faith, and love, and
patience, stood to his ways before them. These things, I say,
have helped me, when the thoughts of the misery that both myself
and mine might for the sake of my profession be exposed to hath
lain pinching on my mind.—John Bunyan.
Verse 7. Let his prayer become sin. As the
clamours of a condemned malefactor, not only find no acceptance,
but are looked upon as an affront to the court. The prayers of
the wicked now become sin, because soured with the leaven of
hypocrisy and malice; and so they will in the great day, because
then it will be too late to cry, "Lord, Lord, open unto
us."—Matthew Henry.
Verse 7. Let his prayer become sin. Evidently
his prayer in reference to his trial for crime; his
prayer that he might be acquitted and discharged. Let it be seen
in the result that such a prayer was wrong; that it was
in fact, a prayer for the discharge of a bad man—a man who ought
to be punished. Let it be seen to be what a prayer would
be if offered for a murderer, or violator of the law,—a prayer
that he might escape or not be punished. All must see that such
a prayer would be wrong, or would be a "sin"; and so,
in his own case, it would be equally true that a prayer for
his own escape would be "sin." The Psalmist asks
that, by the result of the trial, such a prayer might be seen
to be in fact a prayer for the protection and escape of a bad
man. A just sentence in the case would demonstrate this; and
this is what the Psalmist prays for.—Albert Barnes.
Verse 7. Let his prayer become sin. Kimchi in
his annotations thus explains these words: i.e.,
"let it be without effect, so that he does not get what he
asks for; let him not hit the mark at which he aims": for
ajx sometimes has the meaning to miss.—Wolfgang
Musculus.
Verse 7. Let his prayer become sin. St. Jerome
says that Judas's prayer was turned into sin, by reason of his
want of hope when he prayed: and thus it was that in despair he
hanged himself.—Robert Bellarmine.
Verse 7. Let his prayer become sin. The prayer
of the hypocrite is sin formally, and it is sin in the effect,
that is, instead of getting any good by it, he gets hurt, and
the Lord instead of helping him because he prays, punishes him
because of the sinfulness of his prayers. Thus his prayer
becomes sin to him, because he receives no more respect from God
when he prays than when he sins. And sin doth not only mingle
with his prayer (as it doth with the prayers of the holiest),
but his prayer is nothing else but a mixture or mingle mangle
(as we speak) of many sins.—Joseph Caryl.
Verse 7. Let his prayer become sin. We should
be watchful in prayer lest the most holy worship of God should
become an abomination: Isa 1:15 66:3 Jas 4:3 Ho 7:14 Am 5:23. If
the remedy be poisoned, how shall the diseased be cured?—Martin
Geier.
Verses 7-19. These and the following verses, although
they contain terrible imprecations, will become less dreadful if
we understand them as spoken concerning men pertinaciously
cleaving to their vices, against whom only has God threatened
punishments; not against those who repent with all their heart,
and become thoroughly changed in life.—John Le Clerc.
Verse 8. Let his days be few. By "his
days", he meant the days of his apostleship, which were
few; since before the passion of our Lord, they were ended by
his crime and death. And as if it were asked, What then shall
become of that most sacred number twelve, within which our Lord
willed, not without a meaning, to limit his twelve first
apostles? he at once addeth, and let another take his office.
As much as to say, let both himself be punished according to his
desert, and let his number be filled up. And if any one desire
to know how this was done, let him read the Acts of the
Apostles.—Augustine.
Verse 8. Let another take his office. So every
man acts, and practically prays, who seeks to remove a bad and
corrupt man from office. As such an office must be filled by
some one, all the efforts which he puts forth to remove a wicked
man tend to bring it about that "another should take his
office", and for this it is right to labour and
pray. The act does not of itself imply malignity or bad feeling,
but is consistent with the purest benevolence, the kindest
feelings, the strictest integrity, the sternest patriotism, and
the highest form of piety.—Albert Barnes.
Verse 9. Let his children be fatherless.
Helpless and shiftless. A sore vexation to many on their death
beds, and just enough upon graceless persecutors. But happy are
they who, when they lie dying, can say as Luther did, "Domine
Deus gratias ago tibi quod velueris me esse pauperem, et
mendicum, & c. Lord God, I thank thee for my present
poverty, but future hopes. I have not an house, lands,
possessions, or monies to leave behind me. Thou hast given me
wife and children; behold, I return them back to thee, and
beseech thee to nourish them, teach them, keep them safe, as
hitherto thou hast done, O thou father of the fatherless, and
judge of widows."—John Trapp.
Verses 9-10, 12-13. "His children;
""his posterity." Though in matters of a
civil or judicial character, we have it upon the highest
authority that the children are not to be made accountable for
the fathers, nor the fathers for the children, but every
transgressor is to bear the penalty of his own sin; yet, in a
moral, and in a social and spiritual sense, it is impossible
that the fathers should eat sour grapes, and yet that the
children's teeth should not be set on edge. The offspring of the
profligate and the prodigal may, and often do, avoid the
specific vices of the parent; but rarely, if ever, do they
escape the evil consequences of those vices. And this reaction
cannot be prevented, until it shall please God first to unmake
and then to remodel his whole intelligent creation.—T.
Dale, in a Sermon to Heads of Families, 1839.
Verses 9-13. Under the Old Covenant, calamity,
extending from father to son, was the meed of transgression;
prosperity, vice versa, of obedience: (see Solomon's
prayer, 2Ch 6:23): and these prayers of the psalmist (cf. Ps
10:13, 12:1 58:10, etc.) may express the wish that God's
providential government of his people should be asserted in the
chastisement of the enemy of God and man.—Speaker's
Commentary.
Verse 10. Let his children be continually
vagabonds. The word used in the sentence pronounced upon Cain,
Ge 4:12. Compare Ps 59:11,15.—William Kay.
Verse 10. Let them seek, etc. Horsley renders
this clause, Let them be driven out from the very ruins of
their dwellings, and remarks that the image is that of
"vagabonds seeking a miserable shelter among the ruins of
decayed or demolished buildings, and not suffered to remain even
in such places undisturbed."
Verses 9-10. When we consider of whom this Psalm is
used there will be no difficulty about it. No language could be
more awful than that of Ps 109:6-19. It embraces almost every
misery we can think of. But could any man be in a more wretched
condition than Judas was? Could any words be too severe to
express the depth of his misery—of him, who, for three whole
years, had been the constant attendant of the Saviour of
mankind; who had witnessed his miracles, and had shared his
miraculous powers; who had enjoyed all the warnings, all the
reproofs of his love, and then had betrayed him for thirty
pieces of silver? Can we conceive a condition more miserable
than that of Judas? And this Psalm is a prophecy of the
punishment that should overtake him for his sin. S. Peter,
in the Acts of the Apostles, quotes part of this psalm, and
applies it to Judas: he applies it as a prophecy of the
punishment he should suffer on the betrayal of the Son of God.
It is probable that in this psalm, when it uses the word
children, it does not mean those who are his offspring by
natural descent, but those who resemble him, and who
partake with him in his wickedness. This is a common meaning
of the word sons, or children, in Holy Scripture. As where our
blessed Lord tells the Jews, Ye are of your father the devil,
he could not mean that the Jews were the natural descendants of
the devil, but that they were his children because they did his
works. Again, when they are called Abraham's children, it means
those who do the works of Abraham. So in this psalm, where it is
foretold that fearful punishment should happen to Judas for the
betrayal of his Lord, and should be extended to his children, it
means his associates, his companions, and imitators in
wickedness.—F.H. Dunwell, in "A Tract on the
Commination Service," 1853.
Verses 10, 12-13. It is for public ends that the
psalmist prayed that the families of the wicked might be
involved in their ruin. These are very terrible petitions; but
it is God, not man, who has appointed these calamities as the
ordinary consequences of persistence in wickedness. It is God,
not man, who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children, to the third and fourth generations. It is because
this is the ordinary portion of the transgressors, and that
thus in God's wonted way his abhorrence of the transgressions
of his enemies might be marked, that the psalmist prays for
these calamities. He asks God to do what he had declared he
would do, and this for public ends, for he says: "I will
greatly praise the Lord with my mouth; yea, I will praise him among
the multitude. For he shall stand at the right hand of the
poor, to save him from those that condemn his soul", Ps
109:30-31.—R.A. Bertram, in "The Imprecatory
Psalms," 1867.
Verses 10-13. Many penurious fathers are so scraping
for their children, that they ravish the poor children of God;
but the hand of the Lord shall be against their young lions. Na
2:13. They join house to house, and field to field, but their
children shall be "vagabonds and beg",
"seeking their bread out of their desolate places."
How many a covetous mole is now digging a house in the earth for
his posterity, and never dreams of this sequel, that God should
make those children beggars, for whose sake their fathers had
made so many beggars! This is a quittance which the sire will
not believe, but as sure as God is just the son shall feel. Now
if he had but leave to come out of hell for an hour, and see
this, how should he curse his folly! Sure, if possible, it would
double the pain of his infernal torture. Be moderate, then, ye
that so insatiately devour, as if you had an infinite capacity:
you overload your stomachs, it is fit they should be disburdened
in shameful spewing. How quickly doth a worldly minded man grow
a defrauder, from a defrauder to a usurer, from a usurer to an
oppressor, from an oppressor to an extortioner! If his eyes do
but tell his heart of a booty, his heart will charge his hand,
and he must have it, Mic 2:2. They do but see it, like it, and
take it. Observe their due payment. Let the extortioner catch
all that he hath: they got all by extortion, they shall lose
all by extortion. They spoiled their neighbours, strangers shall
spoil them. How often hath the poor widow and orphan cried,
wept, groaned to them for mercy, and found none! They have
taught God how to deal with themselves; let there be none to
extend mercy to them. They have advanced houses for a
memorial, and dedicated lands to their own names, Ps 49:11; all
to get them a name; and even in this they shall be crossed: In
the next generation their name shall be quite put out.—Thomas
Adams.
Verse 11. Let the extortioner catch all that he
hath. Note: he is most miserable who falls into the hands of
usurers; for they will flay him alive and drain his blood. The
Romans, that they might deter the citizens from usury, placed a
statue of Marsyas in the Forum or law court, by which they
signified that those who came into the hands of usurers would be
skinned alive; and to show that usurers, as the most unjust
litigants, deserved hanging, they placed a rope in the hand of
the figure.—Le Blanc.
Verse 11. Catch. This refers to the obligations
between creditors and debtors, and he calls these snares, by
which, as it were, the insolvent debtors are caught, and at last
come to servitude.—Mollerus.
Verse 12. Let there be none to extend mercy to him.
He does not say, None who shall shew, but none who shall "extend"
kindness to him. The extending of kindness is, when after a
friend's death it is shown to his children, and true friendship
is of this sort, that the kindness which friends shewed to each
other while alive is maintained, not extinguished with the death
of the friend.—Wolfgang Musculus.
Verse 12. Let there be none to extend mercy to him.
Let God in his justice set off all hearts from him that had been
so unreasonably merciless. Thus no man opened his mouth to
intercede for Haman; Judas was shaken off by the priests, and
bid see to himself, etc.—John Trapp.
Verse 15. Let them be before the Lord continually.
The fearful punishment of sinners is, to be always under the eye
of an angry God: then the soul of the sinner is dismayed at its
own deformity.—Le Blanc.
Verse 15. Let them be before the Lord continually.
Lafayette, the friend and ally of Washington, was in his youth
confined in a French dungeon. In the door of his ceil there was
cut a small hole, just big enough for a man's eye; at that hole
a sentinel was placed, whose duty it was to watch, moment by
moment, till he was relieved by a change of guard. All Lafayette
saw was the winking eye, but the eye was always there; look when
he would, it met his gaze. In his dreams, he was conscious it
was staring at him. "Oh", he says, "it was
horrible; there was no escape; when he lay down and when he rose
up, when he ate and when he read, that eye searched
him."—"New Cyclopaedia of Illustrative
Anecdote", 1875.
Verse 15-19, 29. Strict justice, and nothing more,
breathes in every petition. Cannot you say, Amen! to all these
petitions? Are you not glad when the wicked man falls into the
ditch he has made for another's destruction, and when his
mischief returns upon his own head? But you say, "These
petitions are unquestionably just, but why did not the psalmist
ask, not for justice, but for mercy?" The answer is,
that in his public capacity, he was bound to think first about
justice. No government could stand upon the basis of
forgiveness, justice must always go before mercy. Suppose that
in the course of the next session Parliament should decree that
henceforth, instead of justice being shown to thieves, by
sending them to prison, they should be treated charitably, and
compelled to restore one half of what they stole, what
would honest men say about the government? The thieves would
doubtless be very complimentary, but what would honest men say?
Why, they would say the government had altogether failed of its
function, and it would not live to be a week older. And just so,
the psalmists were bound first of all to seek for the
vindication and establishment of justice and truth. Like the
magistrates of today, they considered first the well being of
the community. This they had in view in all the calamities they
sought to bring upon wrong doers.—R.A. Bertram.
Verse 16. Because. Why, what is the crime? Because
that he remembered not to shew mercy, etc. See what a long
vial full of the plagues of God is poured out upon the
unmerciful man!—Thomas Watson.
Verse 16. But persecuted the poor. If any man
will practise subtraction against the poor, God will use it
against him, and take his name out of the book of life. If he be
damned that gives not his own, what shall become of him that
takes away another man's? (Augustine.) If judgment
without mercy shall be to him that shows no mercy (Jas 2:13)
where shall subtraction and rapine appear? Let the
extortioner catch all that he hath; and let strangers spoil his
labour, Ps 109:11: there is one subtraction, his estate. Let
his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let
their name be blotted out, Ps 109:13: there is another
subtraction, his memory. Let there be none to extend mercy
unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless
children, Ps 109:12: there is another subtraction, a denial
of all pity to him and his, Let him be condemned: and let his
prayer become sin, Ps 109:7: there is another subtraction,
no audience from heaven. Let another take his office;
there is a subtraction of his place: let his days be few,
Ps 109:8: there is a subtraction of his life. Let him be
blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with
the righteous, Ps 69:28; there is the last, the subtraction
of his soul. This is a fearful arithmetic: if the wicked add
sins, God will add plagues. If they subtract from others their
rights, God shall subtract from them his mercies.—Thomas
Adams.
Verse 17. Cursing is both good and bad. For we
read in the Scriptures that holy men have often cursed. Indeed
none can offer the Lord's Prayer rightly without cursing. For
when he prays, "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy
will be done", etc., he must include in the same outpouring
of his desires all that is opposed to these, and say, cursed and
execrated and dishonoured must all other names be, and all
kingdoms which are opposed to thee must be destroyed and rent in
pieces, and all devices and purposes formed against thee fall to
the ground.—Martin Luther.
Verse 17. As he delighted not in blessing, so let
it be far from him.
He was a wolf in clothing of the lamb,
That stole into the fold of God, and on
The blood of souls, which he did sell to death,
Grew fat; and yet, when any would have turned
Him out, he cried, "Touch not the priest of God."
And that he was anointed, fools believed;
But knew, that day, he was the devil's priest,
Anointed by the hands of Sin and Death,
And set peculiarly apart to ill—
While on him smoked the vials of perdition,
Poured measureless. Ah, me! What cursing then
Was heaped upon his head by ruined souls,
That charged him with their murder, as he stood
With eye, of all the unredeemed, most sad,
Waiting the coming of the Son of Man!
—Robert Pollok.
Verses 17-19. Possibly Ps 109:17-18 describe as fact
what Ps 109:19 amplifies in a wish, or prayer. "He loved
cursing, and it loved him in return, and came to him: he
delighted not in blessing, and it was far from him. He clothed
himself with cursing as with a garment, and, it permeated his
inmost parts as water, as the refreshing oil with which the body
is anointed finds a way into marrow and bones." The images
are familiar; the daily dress, the water that permeates daily
every part of the body, the oil used daily for nourishment (Ps
104:15) and gladness (Ps 23:5). In the wish that follows (Ps
109:19), the mantle, or garment, which is always worn,
and the girdle or belt with which the accursed one is always
girded, are substituted, apparently, for more general terms.—Speakers
Commentary.
Verses 17-19. As the loss of the soul is a loss
peculiar to itself, and a loss double, so it is a loss most
fearful, because it is attended with the most heavy curse of
God. This curse lieth in a deprivation of all good, and in a
being swallowed up of all the most fearful miseries that a holy
and just and eternal God can righteously inflict, or lay upon
the soul of a sinful man. Now let reason here come in and
exercise itself in the most exquisite manner; yea, let him now
count up all, and all manner of curses and torments that a
reasonable and an immortal soul is, or can be made capable of,
and able to suffer, and when he has done, he shall come
infinitely short of this great anathema, this master curse which
God has reserved amongst his treasuries, and intends to bring
out in that day of battle and war, which he proposes to make
upon damned souls in that day. And this God will do, partly as a
retaliation, as the former, and partly by way of revenge.
1. By way of retaliation: As he loved cursing, so let it
come unto him: as he delighted not in blessing, so let it be far
from him. Again, "As he clothed himself with cursing
like as with his garment, so let it come into his bowels like
water, and like oil it, to his bones. Let it be unto him as the
garment which covereth him, and for a girdle wherewith he is
girded continually." "Let this", saith
Christ, "be the reward of wine adversaries from the
Lord," etc.
2. As this curse comes by way of retaliation, so it cometh by
way of revenge. God will right the wrongs that sinners have done
him, will repay vengeance for the despite and reproach wherewith
they have affronted him, and will revenge the quarrel of his
covenant. As the beginnings of revenges are terrible (De
32:41-42); what, then, will the whole execution be, when he
shall come in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know
not God, and that obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ? And,
therefore, this curse is executed in wrath, in jealousy, in
anger, in fury; yea, the heavens and the earth shall be burned
up with the fire of that jealousy in which the great God will
come when he cometh to curse the souls of sinners, and when he
cometh to defy the ungodly, 2Th 1:7-9.—John Bunyan.
Verse 18. The three figures in this verse are
climatic: he has clothed himself in cursing, he has drunk it in
like water (Job 15:16, 34:7), it has penetrated to the marrow of
his bones, like the oily preparations which are rubbed in and
penetrate to the bones.—Franz Delitzsch.
Verse 18. We must not pass this verse without
remarking that there is an allusion in its tone to Nu 5:21-22,24
the unfaithful wife. Her curse was to penetrate into her bowels;
"the water that causeth the curse shall enter into
her"; and such a curse comes on unfaithful Judas, who
violates his engagement to the Lord, and upon Israel at large
also, who have departed from him "as a wife treacherously
departeth from her husband", and have committed adultery
against the Bridegroom.—Andrew A. Bonar.
Verses 18-19. Peter, in Ac 1:20, applies this psalm to
Christ when the Jews cried, "His blood be upon us and upon
our children"; then did they put on the envenomed garment
which has tormented them ever since. It is girded about their
loins; the curse has penetrated like water, and entered the very
bones like oil. How awful will be the state of those who crucify
him afresh, and again put him to open shame.—Samuel Horsley.
Verse 21. For thy name's sake. My enemies would
soon become my friends and my protectors, if I would but
renounce my allegiance to thee; my refusal to disobey thee
constitutes all my crime in their eyes. My cause, therefore,
becomes thine, it will be to thy glory to declare thyself on my
side, lest the impious should take occasion from my sufferings
to blaspheme thy holy name, as if thou hadst not the power to
deliver, or wert utterly indifferent to those who, renouncing
all human help, have put their confidence in thee.—Jean
Baptiste Massillion.
Verse 21. For thy name's sake. It does not say,
For my name, that it may be vindicated from, reproach and
shame: but for Thy name; as if he would say, whatever I
may be, O Lord, and whatever may befall me, have respect to Thy
name, have regard to it only. I am not worthy, that I should
seek Thy help, but Thy name is worthy which thou mayest
vindicate from contempt. We learn here with what passion for the
glory of the divine name they ought to be animated, who are
peculiarly consecrated to the name of God. He does not say,
"Because my case is good", but because thy mercy is
good. Note this also, he does not simply say, Because thou
art good, or because thou art merciful; but because thy mercy is
good. He had experienced a certain special goodness in the
Divine mercy; i.e., such timeliness, kind readiness in
all afflictions, and help for every kind of affliction prepared
and provided. On this he rests hope and confidence, in this
takes refuge. All those are truly happy who have had experience
of this mercy, and can depend on it with firm hope and
confidence.—Wolfgang Musculus.
Verse 21. Unto a truly broken, humbled sinner, the
mercies that are in God, out of which he pardons, should have
infinitely more of goodness and sweetness in them than the
pardon itself, or all things else that are in the promises. This
a soul that hath tasted how good the Lord is will instantly
acknowledge. A promise of life to a condemned man is sweet, for
life is sweet, as we say; but "thy lovingkindness",
said David, who had tasted how good the Lord is, "is better
than life", and infinitely sweeter, Ps 63:3. And again says
David, Because thy mercy is good, deliver thou me.
Deliverance was good; yea, but the mercy of God apprehended
therewith was infinitely more good to him, which was the
greatest inducement to him to seek deliverance. And indeed God's
mercy doth eminently bear the style of goodness.—Thomas
Goodwin.
Verse 21-25. The thunder and lightning are now as it
were followed by a shower of tears of deep sorrowful
complaint.—Franz Delitzsch.
Verse 22. For I am poor and needy, and my heart is
wounded within me. Note here, how beautifully he unites
these arguments. He had said, Because Thy mercy is good;
and he adds, "Because I am poor and needy." He
could not have added anything more appropriate: for this is the
nature of goodness and mercy, even in the human heart, much more
in God, the best and most merciful of all beings, that nothing
more easily moves it to give succour, than the affliction,
calamity, and misery of those by whom it is invoked.—Wolfgang
Musculus.
Verse 22. My heart is wounded within me. The
hearts of the saints and pious men are not as brass or stone,
that the apathy of the Stoics should have lodging in them, but
are susceptible to griefs and passions.—Musculus.
Verse 23. I am gone like the shadow when it
declineth.—Bishop Horsley renders, "I am just
gone, like the shadow stretched to its utmost length";
and remarks:—"The state of the shadows of terrestrial
objects at sunset, lengthening every instant, and growing faint
as they lengthen; and in the instant that they shoot to an
immeasurable length disappearing."
Verse 23. I am tossed up and down as the locust.
Although the locusts have sufficient strength of flight to
remain on the wing for a considerable period, and to pass over
great distances, they have little or no command over the
direction of their flight, always travel with the wind, in the
same way as the quail. So entirely are they at the mercy of the
wind, that if a sudden gust arises the locusts are tossed about
in the most helpless manner; and if they should happen to come
across one of the circular air currents that are so frequently
found in the countries which they inhabit, they are whirled
round and round without the least power of extricating
themselves.—J.G. Wood.
Verse 23. I am tossed up and down as the locust.
This reference is to the flying locust. I have had frequent
opportunities to notice how these squadrons are tossed up and
down, and whirled round and round by the ever varying currents
of the mountain winds.—W.M. Thomson.
Verse 28. Let them curse, but bless thou. Fear
not thou, who art a saint, their imprecations; this is but like
false fire in the pan of an uncharged gun, it gives a crack, but
hurts not; God's blessings will cover thee from their curse.—William
Gurnall.
Verse 28. (first clause). Men's curses are
impotent, God's blessings are omnipotent.—Matthew Henry.
Verse 30. I will greatly praise the Lord with my
mouth. In the celebration of God's praises, there can be no
question that these must issue from the heart ere they can be
uttered by the lips; at the same time, it would be an indication
of great coldness, and of want of fervour, did not the tongue
unite with the heart in this exercise. The reason why David
makes mention of the tongue only is, that he takes it for
granted that, unless there be a pouring out of the heart before
God, those praises which reach no farther than the ear are vain
and frivolous; and, therefore, from the very bottom of his soul,
he pours forth his heart felt gratitude in fervent strains of
praise; and this he does from the same motives which ought to
influence all the faithful—the desire of mutual edification;
for to act otherwise would be to rob God of the honour which
belongs to him.—John Calvin.
Verse 31. He shall stand at the right hated of the
poor. This expression implies, first, that he appears there
as a friend. How cheering, how comforting it is to have a
friend to stand by us when we are in trouble! Such a friend is
Jesus. In the hour of necessity he comes as a friend to stand by
the right hand of the poor creature whose soul is condemned by
guilt and accusation. But he stands in a far higher relation
than that of a friend; he stands, too, as surety and a
deliverer. He goes, as it were, into the court; and when the
prisoner stands at the bar, he comes forward and stands at his
right hand as his surety and bondsman; he brings out of his
bosom the acquittance of the debt, signed and sealed with his
own blood, he produces it to the eyes of the court, and claims
and demands the acquittal and absolution of the prisoner at
whose right hand he stands. He stands there, then, that the
prisoner may be freely pardoned, and completely justified from
those accusations that condemn his soul. O sweet
standing! O blessed appearance!—Joseph C. Philpot
(1802-1869).
Verse 31. He shall stand at the right hand of the
poor. One of the oldest Rabbinical commentaries has a very
beautiful gloss on this passage. "Whenever a poor man
stands at thy door, the Holy One, blessed be His Name, stands at
his right hand. If thou givest him alms, know that thou shalt
receive a reward from Him who standeth at his right
hand."—Alfred Edersheim, in "Sketches of the
Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ," 1876.
HINTS TO THE VILLAGE PREACHER
Verse 1. The silence of God. What it may mean: what it
involves: how we may endeavour to break it.
Verse 1. God of my praise. A text which may be
expounded in its double meaning.
Verses 1-3.
1. God is for his people when the wicked are against them (Ps
109:1);
(a) for his people's sake;
(b) for his own sake.
2. The wicked are against his people when he is for them (Ps
109:2-3);
(a) from hatred to God;
(b) from hatred to his people.—G.R.
Verse 2. Slander. Its cause—wickedness and malice.
Its instruments—deceit and lies. Its frequency—Jesus and the
saints slandered. Its punishment. Our resort when tried by
it—prayer to God.
Verse 4. On the excellency of prayer. See Expository
Notes.
Verse 4. Our Lord's adversaries, and his resort.
Verses 4-5.
1. David's spirit and conduct towards his enemies.
(a) His spirit is love—love for hatred; hence his
denunciations are against their sins, rather than against them.
(b) His conduct. He returned good for evil; he interceded for
them.
2. Their spirit and conduct towards him.
(a) Hatred for love.
(b) Evil for good.—G.R.
Verse 5. Evil for good. This is devil like.
Have not men been guilty of this to parents, to those who have
warned them, to saints and ministers, and especially to the Lord
himself?
Verse 5. How has the Redeemer been recompensed? Show
what he deserves and what he receives from various individuals.
He feels the unkindness of those who are ungrateful.
Verse 6. It is the law of retribution to punish the
wicked by means of the wicked.—Starke.
Verse 7. When may prayer become sin. From what is
sought, how sought, by whom sought, and wherefore sought.
Verse 8. Let his days be few. Sin the great
shortener of human life. After the flood the whole race lived a
shorter time; passion and avaricious care shorten life, and some
sins have a peculiar power to do this, lust, drunkenness, &
c.
Verse 20-21.
1. David leaves his enemies in the hand of God (Ps 109:20).
2. He puts himself into the same hands (Ps 109:21).—G.R.
Verse 21. The plea of a believer must be drawn from
his God, his "name" and "mercy." The
opposite habit of searching for arguments in self very common
and very disappointing.
Verse 21. The peculiar goodness of divine mercy.
Verse 22. The inward sorrows of a saint. Their cause,
effects, consolations and cure.
Verses 26-27.
1. The Prayer.
2. The Believing Title: "O Lord my God."
3. The attribute relied upon.
4. The motive for the petition.
Verse 28. The divine cure for human ill will; and the
saint's temper when he trusts therein—"let thy servant
rejoice."
Verse 29.
1. A prayer for the repentance of David's adversaries.
2. A prophecy for their confusion if they remain
impenitent.—G.R.
Verse 29. The sinner's last mantle.
Verse 30. Vocal praise. Should be personal, resolute,
intelligent, abundant, hearty. It should attract others, join
with others, stimulate others, but never lose its personality.
Verses 30-31.
1. David's will with respect to himself: "I
will... yea, I will" etc. (Ps 109:30).
2. His shall with respect to God: "he
shall", etc. (Ps 109:31).—G.R.
Verses 30-31. He promises God that he will praise him,
Ps 109:30. He promises himself that he shall have cause to
praise God, Ps 109:31.—Matthew Henry.
Verse 31.
1. The character to whom the promise is made—the poor.
2. The danger to which he is exposed—those that condemn his
soul.
3. The deliverance which is promised to him—divine,
opportune, efficient, complete, everlasting.
WORKS UPON THE HUNDRED AND NINTH PSALM
In "The Expositor", vol. 2. (1875),
edited by the Rev. Samuel Cox, there is "An Apology for the
Vindictive Psalm" (Ps 109:1-31), by Joseph Hammond, L.L.B.
In volume 3 of the same magazine are four articles from the pen
of the same writer, on "The Vindictive Psalms
vindicated." "The Imprecatory Psalms." Six
Lectures. By the Rev. R.A. Bertram. 1867. (12 mo.)
In Dr. Thomas Randolph's Works, entitled
"A View of our Blessed Saviour's Ministry...together with a
Charge, Dissertations, Sermons, and Theological Lectures,"
2 vols., 8vo., Oxford, 1784, there is a comment on Ps 109:1-31,
vol. 2, p. 315.
The Sermons of Charles Peters, A.M., 8vo.,
London, 1776, contain "The Curses of Psalm the 109th
explained, with practical instructions," pp. 348-378.
W. Keate's Sermon, entitled, "The 109th,
commonly called the Imprecating Psalm, considered, on a
principle by which the Psalm explains itself." 4to.,
London, 1794.
F.H. Dunwell. A Tract on the Commination
Service of the Church of England. 12 mo. 1853.
In the "Bibliotheca Sacra and
Theological Review," vol. 1., 1844, pp. 97-110, there is an
article on "The Imprecations in the Scriptures," by
B.B. Edwards, Professor in the Theological Seminary, Andover.
There is also an article on "The
Imprecatory Psalms", in "Bibliotheca Sacra and
American Biblical Repository," for July, 1856, pp. 551-563,
by John J. Owen, D.D., Professor in the Free Academy, New York.