EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (2)

Verse 5.—Xerxes, the Persian, when he destroyed all the temples in Greece, caused the temple of Diana to be preserved for its beautiful structure: that soul which hath the beauty or holiness shining in it, shall be preserved for the glory of the structure; God will not suffer his own temple to be destroyed. Would you be secured in evil times? Get grace and fortify this garrison; a good conscience is a Christian’s fort-royal. David’s enemies lay round about him; yet saith he, “I laid me down and slept.” A good conscience can sleep in the mouth of a cannon; grace is a Christian’s coat of mail, which fears not the arrow or bullet. True grace may be shot at, but can never be shot through; grace puts the soul into Christ, and there it is safe, as the bee in the hive, as the dove in the ark. “There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Rom. viii. 1.—Thomas Watson.

Verse 5.—“The Lord sustained me.” It would not be unprofitable to consider the sustaining power manifested in us while we lie asleep. In the flowing of the blood, heaving of the lung, etc., in the body and the continuance of mental faculties while the image of death is upon us.—C. H. S.

Verse 6.—“I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.” The psalmist will trust, despite appearances. He will not be afraid though ten thousands of people have set themselves against him round about. Let us here limit our thoughts to this one idea, “despite appearances.” What could look worse to human sight than this array of ten thousands of people? Ruin seemed to stare him in the face; wherever he looked an enemy was to be seen. What was one against ten thousand? It often happens that God’s people come into circumstances like this; they say, “All these things are against me;” they seem scarce able to count their troubles; they cannot see a loophole through which to escape; things look very black indeed; it is great faith and trust which says under these circumstances “I will not be afraid.”

These were the circumstances under which Luther was placed, as he journeyed towards Worms. His friend Spalatin heard it said, by the enemies of the Reformation, that the safe conduct of a heretic ought not to be respected, and became alarmed for the reformer. “At the moment when the latter was approaching the city, a messenger appeared before him with this advice from the chaplin, ‘Do not enter Worms!’ And this from his best friend, the elector’s confidant, from Spalatin himself!... But Luther, undismayed, turned his eyes upon the messenger, and replied, ‘Go and tell your master, that even should there be as many devils in Worms as tiles upon the housetops, still I would enter it.’ The messenger returned to Worms, with this astounding answer: ‘I was then undaunted,’ said Luther, a few days before his death, ‘I feared nothing.’”

At such seasons as these, the reasonable men of the world, those who walk by sight and not by faith, will think it reasonable enough that the Christian should be afraid; they themselves would be very low if they were in such a predicament. Weak believers are now ready to make excuses for us, and we are only too ready to make them for ourselves; instead of rising above the weakness of the flesh, we take refuge under it, and use it as an excuse. But let us think prayerfully for a little while, and we shall see that it should not be thus with us. To trust only when appearances are favourable, is to sail only with the wind and tide, to believe only when we can see. Oh! let us follow the example of the psalmist, and seek that unreservedness of faith which will enable us to trust God, come what will, and to say as he said, “I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.”—Philip Bennett Power’s ‘I wills’ of the Psalms, 1862.

Verse 6.—“I will not be afraid,” etc. It makes no matter what our enemies be, though for number, legions; for power, principalities; for subtilty, serpents; for cruelty, dragons; for vantage of place, a prince of the air; for maliciousness, spiritual wickedness; stronger is he that is in us, than they who are against us; nothing is able to separate us from the love of God. In Christ Jesus our Lord, we shall be more than conquerors.—William Cowper, 1612.

Verse 7.—“Arise, O Lord,” Jehovah! This is a common scriptural mode of calling upon God to manifest his presence and his power, either in wrath or favour. By a natural anthropomorphism, it describes the intervals of such manifestation as periods of inaction or of slumber, out of which he is besought to rouse himself. “Save me,” even me, of whom they say there is no help for him in God. “Save me, O my God,” mine by covenant and mutual engagement, to whom I therefore have a right to look for deliverance and protection. This confidence is warranted, moreover, by experience. “For thou hast,” in former exigencies, “smitten all mine enemies,” without exception “(on the) cheek” or jaw, an act at once violent and insulting.—J. A. Alexander, D.D.

Verse 7.—“Upon the cheek bone.”—The language seems to be taken from a comparison of his enemies with wild beasts. The cheek bone denotes the bone in which the teeth are placed, and to break that is to disarm the animal.—Albert Barnes, in loc.

Verse 7.—When God takes vengeance upon the ungodly, he will smite in such a manner as to make them feel his almightiness in every stroke. All his power shall be exercised in punishing and none in pitying. O that every obstinate sinner would think of this, and consider his unmeasurable boldness in thinking himself able to grapple with Omnipotence!—Stephen Charnock.

Verse 8.—“Salvation belongeth unto the Lord:” parallel passage in Jonah ii. 9, “Salvation is of the Lord.” The mariners might have written upon their ship, instead of Castor and Pollux, or the like device, Salvation is the Lord’s; the Ninevites might have written upon their gates, Salvation is the Lord’s; and whole mankind, whose cause is pitted and pleaded by God against the hardness of Jonah’s heart, in the last, might have written on the palms of their hands, Salvation is the Lord’s. It is the argument of both the Testaments, the staff and supportation of heaven and earth. They would both sink, and all their joints be severed, if the salvation of the Lord were not. The birds in the air sing no other notes, the beasts in the field give no other voice, than Salus Jehovæ, Salvation is the Lord’s. The walls and fortresses to our country’s gates, to our cities and towns, bars to our houses, a surer cover to our heads than a helmet of steel, a better receipt to our bodies than the confection of apothecaries, a better receipt to our souls than the pardons of Rome, is Salus Jehovæ, the salvation of the Lord. The Salvation of the Lord blesseth, preserveth, upholdeth all that we have; our basket and our store, the oil in our cruses, our presses, the sheep in our fold, our stalls, the children in the womb, at our tables, the corn in our field, our stores, our garners; it is not the virtue of the stars, nor nature of all things themselves, that giveth being and continuance to any of these blessings. And, “What shall I more say?” as the apostle asked (Heb. xi.), when he had spoken much, and there was much more behind, but time failed him. Rather, what should I not say? for the world is my theatre at this time, and I neither think nor can feign to myself anything that hath not dependence upon this acclamation, Salvation is the Lord’s. Plutarch writeth, that the Amphictions in Greece, a famous council assembled of twelve sundry people, wrote upon the temple of Apollo Pythius, instead of the Iliads of Homer, or songs of Pindarus (large and tiring discourses), short sentences and memoratives, as, Know thyself, Use moderation, Beware of suretyship, and the like; and doubtless though every creature in the world, whereof we have use, be a treatise and narration unto us of the goodness of God, and we might weary our flesh, and spend our days in writing books of that inexplicable subject, yet this short apothegm of Jonah comprehendeth all the rest, and standeth at the end of the song, as the altars and stones that the patriarch set up at the parting of the ways, to give knowledge to the after-world by what means he was delivered. I would it were daily preached in our temples, sung in our streets, written upon our door-posts, painted upon our walls, or rather cut with an adamant claw upon the tables of our hearts, that we might never forget salvation to be the Lord’s. We have need of such remembrances to keep us in practice of revolving the mercies of God. For nothing decayeth sooner than love: nihil facilius quam amor putrescit. And of all the powers of the soul, memory is most delicate, tender, and brittle, and first waxeth old, memoria delicata, tenera, fragilis, in quam primum senectus incurrit; and of all the apprehensions of memory, first benefit primum senescit beneficium.—John King’s Commentary on Jonah, 1594.

Verse 8.—“Thy blessing is upon thy people.” The saints are not only blessed when they are comprehensors, but while they are viators. They are blessed before they are crowned. This seems a paradox to flesh and blood: what, reproached and maligned, yet blessed! A man that looks upon the children of God with a carnal eye, and sees how they are afflicted, and like the ship in the gospel, which was covered with waves (Matt. viii. 24), would think they were far from blessedness. Paul brings a catalogue of his sufferings (2 Cor. xi. 24-26), “Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck,” etc. And those Christians of the first magnitude, of whom the world was not worthy, “Had trails of cruel mockings and scourgings, they were sawn asunder, they were slain with the sword,” Heb. xi. 36, 37. What! and were all these during the time of their sufferings blessed? A carnal man would think, if this be to be blessed, God deliver him from it. But, however sense would give their vote, our Saviour Christ pronounceth the godly man blessed; though a mourner, though a martyr, yet blessed. Job on the dunghill was blessed Job. The saints are blessed when they are cursed. Shimei did curse David (2 Samuel xvi. 5), “He came forth and cursed him;” yet when he was cursed David he was blessed David. The saints though they are bruised, yet they are blessed. Not only they shall be blessed, but they are so. Psalm cxix. 1. “Blessed are the undefiled.” Psalm iii. 8. “Thy blessing is upon thy people.”—Thomas Watson.

As a curious instance of Luther’s dogmatical interpretations, we give very considerable extracts from his rendering of this Psalm without in any degree endorsing them.—C. H. S.

Whole Psalm.—That the meaning of this Psalm is not historical, is manifest from many particulars, which militate against its being so understood. And first of all, there is this which the blessed Augustine has remarked; that the words, “I laid me down to sleep and took my rest,” seem to be the words of Christ rising from the dead. And then that there is at the end the blessing of God pronounced upon the people, which manifestly belongs to the whole church. Hence, the blessed Augustine interprets the Psalm in a threefold way: first, concerning Christ the head; secondly concerning the whole of Christ, that is, Christ and his church, the head and the body; and thirdly, figuratively, concerning any private Christian. Let each have his own interpretation. I, in the meantime, will interpret it concerning Christ; being moved so to do by the same argument that moved Augustine—that the fifth verse does not seem appropriately to apply to any other but Christ. First, because, “lying down” and “sleeping,” signify in this place altogether a natural death, not a natural sleep. Which may be collected from this—because it then follows, “and rose again.” Whereas if David had spoken concerning the sleep of the body, he would have said, “and awoke;” though this does not make so forcibly for the interpretation of which we are speaking, if the Hebrew word be closely examined. But again, what new thing would he advance by declaring that he laid him down and slept? Why did he not say also that he walked, ate, drank, laboured, or was in necessity, or mention particularly some other work of the body? And moreover, it seems an absurdity under so great a tribulation, to boast of nothing else but the sleep of the body; for that tribulation would rather force him to a privation from sleep, and to be in peril and distress; especially since those two expressions, “I laid me down,” and “I slept,” signify the quiet repose of one lying down in his place, which is not the state of one who falls asleep from exhausture through sorrow. But this consideration makes the more forcibly for us—that he therefore glories in his rising up again because it was the Lord that sustained him, who raised him up while sleeping, and did not leave him in sleep. How can such a glorying agree, and what new kind of religion can make it agree, with any particular sleep of the body? (for in that case, would it not apply to the daily sleep also?) and especially, when this sustaining of God indicates at the same time an utterly forsaken state in the person sleeping, which is not the case in corporal sleep; for there the person sleeping may be protected even by men being his guards; but this sustaining being altogether of God, implies, not a sleep, but a heavy conflict. And lastly, the word HEKIZOTHI itself favours such an interpretation; which, being here put absolutely and transitively, signifies, “I caused to arise or awake.” As if he had said, “I caused myself to awake, I roused myself.” Which certainly more aptly agrees with the resurrection of Christ than with the sleep of the body; both because those who are asleep are accustomed to be roused and awaked, and because it is no wonderful matter, nor a matter worthy of so important a declaration, for any one to awake of himself, seeing that it is what takes place every day. But this matter being introduced by the Spirit as a something new and singular, is certainly different from all that which attends common sleeping and waking.