EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (3)

Verse 22.—“Killed.” The word here used is not from קָטַל, but from הָרַג, which means to strangle: this is the rendering given in “Lange’s Biblewerk.”

Verse 23.—“Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” and Psalm cxxi. 4, “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” If God at no time sleep, why doth the church call on him so often to awake? If he must be awakened from sleep, why doth the Psalmist say he never sleeps? Are not these places contradictory?

Answer: It is one thing what the afflicted church cries in the heat of her sufferings, another thing what the Spirit of truth speaks for the comfort of the saints. It is ordinary for the best of saints and martyrs, during the storm, to go to God as Peter did to Christ at sea (sleeping in the stern of the ship), with such importunity in prayer as if the Lord were no more sensible of their agony than Jonah was of the mariners’ misery, ready to perish in the turbulent ocean, and they cried out, What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise! Saints are so familiar with God in prayer, as if they were at his bedside.

The Soul’s Application.—O thou never-slumbering Watchman of the house of Israel, carest not thou that we perish? Awake, awake! put on strength, gird thyself, O thou arm of God! I know thou art up, but what am I the better except thou help me up? I know thou sleepest not as man doth, but what advantage hath my soul by that, except thou show thyself, that I may know thou art waking? Oh, it is I that am asleep! Thou seemest to sleep only to awaken me. O that I could watch with thee one hour, as thou bidd’st me; I should soon perceive then thy vigilancy over me for ever.—William Streat in “The Dividing of the Hoof.” 1654.

Verse 23.—“Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” etc. The weakness of our faith is open to the temptation of supposing that God regards not the situation of his people in the world; and the Spirit, who knows our infirmities, provides a petition suited to this trial, which expresses at the same time an expectation that God will arise to claim his people as his own.—W. Wilson.

Verse 25.—“For our soul is bowed down to the dust: our belly cleaveth unto the earth.” We are as to body and soul, smitten and thrown down, glued as it were to the ground, so that we cannot raise ourselves up.—E. W. Hengstenberg.

Verse 25.—“For our soul is bowed down to the dust,” etc. The speech is metaphorical, expressing the depth of their misery, or the greatness of their sorrow and humiliation. 1. The depth of their misery, with the allusion to the case of a man overcome in battle, or mortally wounded, and tumbling in the dust, or to a man dead and laid in the earth; as, “Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.” Psa. xxii. 15. Sure we are, the expression importeth the extremity of distress and danger, either as a man dead or near death. 2. The greatness of their sorrow and humiliation; and so the allusion is taken from a man prostrate and grovelling on the ground, which was their posture of humbling themselves before the Lord, or when any great calamity befell them. As when Herod Agrippa died, they put on sackcloth and lay upon the earth weeping.—Thomas Manton.