EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (2)

Verse 1.—I have often been charmed and awed at the sight of the nocturnal heavens, even before I knew how to consider them in their proper circumstances of majesty and beauty. Something like magic has struck my mind, on transient and unthinking survey of the æthereal vault, tinged throughout with the purest azure, and decorated with innumerable starry lamps. I have felt, I know not what, powerful and aggrandising impulse, which seemed to snatch me from the low entanglements of vanity, and prompted an ardent sigh for sublimer objects. Methought I heard, even from the silent spheres, a commanding call to spurn the abject earth, and pant after unseen delights. Henceforth I hope to imbibe more copiously this moral emanation of the skies, when, in some such manner as the preceding, they are rationally seen, and the sight is duly improved. The stars, I trust, will teach as well as shine, and help to dispel both nature’s gloom and my intellectual darkness. To some people they discharge no better a service than that of holding a flambeau to their feet, and softening the horrors of their night. To me and my friends may they act as ministers of a superior order, as counsellors of wisdom, and guides to happiness! Nor will they fail to execute this nobler office, if they gently light our way into the knowledge of their adored Maker—if they point out with their silver rays our path to his beatific presence.—James Hervey, A.M., 1713-1758.

Verse 1.—Should a man live underground, and there converse with the works of art and mechanism, and should afterwards be brought up into the open day, and see the several glories of the heaven and earth, he would immediately pronounce them the works of such a Being as we define God to be.—Aristotle.

Verse 1.—When we behold “the heavens,” when we contemplate the celestial bodies, can we fail of conviction? Must we not acknowledge that there is a Divinity, a perfect Being, a ruling intelligence, which governs; a God who is everywhere and directs all by his power? Anybody who doubts this may as well deny there is a sun that lights us. Time destroys all false opinions, but it confirms those which are formed by nature. For this reason, with us as well as with other nations, the worship of the gods and the holy exercises of religion, increase in purity and extent every day.—Cicero.

Verse 1.—“The heavens declare the glory of God,” etc. They discover his wisdom, his power, his goodness; and so there is not any one creature, though never so little, but we are to admire the Creator in it. As a chamber hung round about with looking-glasses represents the face upon every turn, thus all the world doth the mercy and the bounty of God; though that be visible, yet it discovers an invisible God and his invisible properties.—Anthony Burgess, 1656.

Verse 1.—None of the elect are in that respect so unwise as to refuse to hear and consider the works and words of God as not appertaining unto him. God forbid. No man in the world doth with more fervency consider the works of God, none more readily lift up their ears to hear God speak than even they who have the inward revelation of the Holy Spirit.—Wolfgang Musculus.

Verse 1.—During the French revolution Jean Bon St. André, the Vendean revolutionist, said to a peasant, “I will have all your steeples pulled down, that you may no longer have any object by which you may be reminded of your old superstitions.” “But,” replied the peasant, “you cannot help leaving us the stars.”—John Bate’s “Cyclopædia of Moral and Religious Truths,” 1865.

Verse 1.—“The heavens declare the glory of God”—

Verse 1.—“The firmament sheweth his handywork”—

Verse 1.—

Verses 1, 2.—In order more fully to illustrate the expressive richness of the Hebrew, I would direct the attention of my reader to the beautiful phraseology of the XIX. Psalm. The literal reading of the first and second verses may be thus given:—

Thus the four distinct terms in the original are preserved in the translation; and the overflowing fulness with which day unto day pours forth divine instruction, and the gentle whisperings of the silent night, are contrasted as in the Hebrew.—Henry Craik, 1860.

Verses 1-4.—Though all preachers on earth should grow silent, and every human mouth cease from publishing the glory of God, the heavens above will never cease to declare and proclaim his majesty and glory. They are for ever preaching; for, like an unbroken chain, their message is delivered from day to day and from night to night. At the silence of one herald another takes up his speech. One day, like the other, discloses the same spectacles of his glory, and one night, like the other, the same wonders of his majesty. Though nature be hushed and quiet when the sun in his glory has reached the zenith on the azure sky—though the world keep her silent festival when the stars shine brightest at night—yet, says the Psalmist, they speak; ay, holy silence itself is a speech, provided there be the ear to hear it.—Augustus T. Tholuck.

Verses 1-4.—“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handywork.” If the heavens declare the glory of God, we should observe what that glory is which they declare. The heavens preach to us every day.... “Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” Sun, moon, and stars are preachers; they are universal, they are natural apostles. The world is their charge; “their words,” saith the Psalm, “go to the end of the world.” We may have good doctrine from them, especially this doctrine in the text, of the wisdom and power of God. And it is very observable that the apostle alludes to this text in the Psalm for a proof of gospel preaching to the whole world. Rom. x. 18. The gospel, like the sun, casts his beams over, and sheds his light into all the world. David in the Psalm saith, “Their line is gone out,” etc. By which word he shows that the heavens, being so curious a fabric, made, as it were, by a line and level, do clearly, though silently, preach the skill and perfections of God. Or, that we may read divine truths in them as a line formed by a pen into words and sentences (the original signifies both a measuring line and a written line), letters and words in writing being nothing but lines drawn into several forms or figures. But the Septuagint, whose translation the apostle citeth, for Kavam, their line, read Kolam, their sound; either misreading the word or studiously mollifying the sense into a nearer compliance with the latter clause of the verse, “And their words to the end of the world.”—Joseph Caryl.

Verses 1-4.—Like as the sun with his light beneficially comforteth all the world, so Christ, the Son of God, reacheth his benefits unto all men, so that they will receive them thankfully, and not refuse them disobediently.—Robert Cawdray.

Verse 2.—“Day unto day,” etc. But what is the meaning of the next word—One day telleth another, and one night certifieth another? Literally, dies diem dicit, is nothing else but dies diem docet. One day telleth another, is one day teacheth another. The day past is instructed by the day present: every new day doth afford new doctrine. The day is a most apt time to learn by reading and conference; the night a most fit time for invention and meditation. Now that which thou canst not understand this day thou mayest haply learn the next, and that which is not found out in one night may be gotten in another. Mystically (saith Heirom), Christ is this “day,” who saith of himself, “I am the light of the world,” and his twelve apostles are the twelve hours of the day; for Christ’s Spirit revealed by the mouths of his apostles the mysteries of our salvation, in other ages not so fully known unto the sons of men. One day telleth another, that is, the spiritual utter this unto the spiritual; and one night certifieth another, that is, Judas insinuates as much unto the Jews in the night of ignorance, saying, “Whomsoever I shall kiss, that is he, lay hold on him.” Matt. xxvi. 28. Or, the Old Testament only shadowing Christ is the night, and the New Testament plainly showing Christ, is the day.—John Boys.

Verse 2.—“Day unto day,” or day after day; the vicissitude or continual succession of day and night speaketh much divine knowledge. The assiduity and constancy without any intermission by the heavens preaching is hereby expressed.—John Richardson.

Verse 2.—“Uttereth,” poureth forth abundantly; “sheweth,” demonstrates clearly and effectively, without ambiguity. Job xxxvi. 2. Many in the full light of gospel day, hear not that speech, who yet in the night of affliction and trouble, or in the conviction of their natural darkness, have that knowledge communicated to them which enables them to realise the joy that cometh in the morning.—W. Wilson.

Verse 2.—“Sheweth knowledge.” We may illustrate the differing measures in which natural objects convey knowledge to men of differing mental and spiritual capacity by the story of our great English artist. He is said to have been engaged upon one of his immortal works, and a lady of rank looking on remarked, “But, Mr. Turner, I do not see in nature all that you describe there.” “Ah, Madam,” answered the painter, “do you not wish you could?”—C. H. S.

Verse 3.—“There is no speech,” etc. The sunset was one of the most glorious I ever beheld, and the whole earth seemed so still that the voice of neither God nor man was heard. There was not a ripple upon the waters, not the leaf of a tree nor even of a blade of grass moving, and the rocks upon the opposite shore reflected the sun’s “after-glow,” and were again themselves reflected from or in the river during the brief twilight, in a way I do not remember ever to have beheld before. No! I will not say the voice of God was not heard; it spoke in the very stillness as loud as in roaring thunder, in the placid scene as in rocks and cliffs impassable, and louder still in the heavens and in the firmament, and in the magnificent prospect around me. His wondrous works declared him to be near, and I felt as if the very ground upon which I was treading was holy.—John Gadsby.

Verse 4.—“Their line is gone out,” etc. “Their sound went,” etc. Rom. x. 18. The relations which the gospel of Christ Jesus hath to the Psalms of David I find to be more than to all the Bible besides, that seldom anything is written in the New Testament, but we are sent to fetch our proofs from these. The margin here sends me to the Psalm, and the Psalm sends me back to this again; showing that they both speak one thing. How comes it then that it is not one, for “line” and “sound” are not one thing? Is there not some mistake here? Answer—To fetch a proof from a place is one thing, an allusion is another. Sometimes the evangelists are enforced to bring their proofs for what they write out of the Old Testament, else we should never believe them, and then they must be very sure of the terms, when they say, “This was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken,” etc. But the apostle was not now upon that account; only showing to the Romans the marvellous spreading of the gospel, alluding to this passage of David discoursing of “the heavens,” to which the prophet compared the publication of the word; the sun and moon and stars not only shining through, but round all the earth. The same subject Paul was now upon, and for this purpose makes use of a term fitter to express the preaching of the gospel, by the word “sound,” than that other word expressing the limitations of the law, by the word “line:” both of these agreeing that there is no fitter comparison to be fetched from anything in nature than from “the heavens,” their motions, revolutions, influences upon sublunary bodies; also in their eclipses, when one text seems to darken another, as if it were put out altogether by crossing and opposing, which is but seemingly so to the ignorant, they agree sweetly enough in themselves; no bridegroom can agree better with his bride, nor rejoice more to run his course. So they both conclude in this, that the sun never saw that nation yet where the world of truth, in one degree or other (all the world, you must think, cannot be right under the meridian) hath not shined.—William Streat, in “The Dividing of the Hoof,” 1654.

Verse 4.—“Unto the end of the world.” Venantius Fortunatus eleven hundred years ago witnesses to the peregrinations of Paul the apostle.

Verse 4.—“Their line is gone out through all the earth,” etc. The molten sea did stand upon twelve oxen, that is, as Paul doth interpret it, upon twelve apostles (1 Cor. ix. 10); which in that they looked four ways, east, west, north, and south, they did teach all nations. And in that they looked three and three together, they did represent the blessed Trinity. Not only teaching all nations, but also in that sea of water, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Wherefore, though the two kine which carried the ark wherein were the tables of the law, went straight and kept one path, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left; yet these twelve oxen which carried the molten sea, signifying the doctrine of the gospel, went not straight, neither kept one path, but turned into the way of the Gentiles; yea, they looked all manner of ways, east, west, north, and south. And those two kine stood still and lowed no more when they came to the field of Joshua, dwelling in Bethshemesh, that is, the house of the sun. To note, that all the kine, and calves, and sacrifices, and ceremonies of the old law were to cease and stand still when they came to Jesus, who is the true Joshua, dwelling in heaven, which is the true Bethshemesh. But these twelve oxen were so far from leaving off, either to go, or to low, when they came to Christ, that even then they went much faster and lowed much louder; so that now “their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words to the end of the world;” and “in them hath God set” Bethshemesh, that is, a house or “tabernacle for the sun.” Therefore, as the material sun, through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, goeth forth from the uttermost parts of the heaven, and runneth about to the end of it again: in like sort, the spiritual Sun of Righteousness, by the twelve apostles, as by twelve signs, hath been borne round about the world, that he might be not only “the glory of his people Israel,” but also “a light to lighten the Gentiles;” and that all, “all the ends of the earth might see the salvation of our God.”—Thomas Playfere.