EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (3)

3. “I myself will awake early.” And without this, all the rest had been an empty sound; there would have been no melody to the Lord, whatsoever good music he might have made to himself. He would not put God off with a sacrifice of mere air. He summons the attendance of all his powers. Himself is the offering; and his music plays to the sacrifice, as it goes up in holy affections and spiritual joys; and unless these accompany the song, the mere breath of an organ, or the trembling of the strings of an harp is as good devotion and less offensive to God. Consider the nature and excellency of the duty. Singing Psalms is a compound of several other duties. It contains prayer to a very great advantage: the stretch of the voice does humour and lead on the earnest reaching of the mind after the desired blessing. It is the very element and breath of praise; and the apostle tells us that “teaching and admonishing one another” is performed in singing “Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” For when we sing of judgment, it is awakening to sinners; and when we sing of mercy, it is comforting to all. Meditation cannot have a better help. The solemn movement of the time gives room for the mind to compass the full sense of the matter, and to impress it deep; and while the tongue is making the pause, the heart may make elevation. In short, it gives an accent to all duty; it is the music of all other ordinances; It is adapted and suited to all circumstances; as appears from the Psalms composed upon all occasions and subjects, doctrinal, prophetical, hortatory, and historical; of praise and prayer, of grief and joy, in the penitential and complaining, in the triumphal and rejoicing; as if singing of psalms could stand for everything, and, like the manna in the wilderness, gives a taste of all the other food we enjoy in the house of God.—Benjamin Grosvenor, D.D. (1675-1758), in “An Exhortation to the Duty of Singing.” Eastcheap Lectures, 1810.

Verse 8.—The Psaltery was a stringed instrument, usually with twelve strings, and played with the fingers. The harp or lyre was a stringed instrument, usually consisting of ten strings. Josephus says that it was struck or played with a key. It appears, however, that it was sometimes played with the fingers.—Albert Barnes.

Verse 9.—“I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people.” The Spirit of God who indited this scripture, made his penman know that the Gentiles should have the use of his Psalms.—David Dickson.

Verse 9.—“The people”—“the nations.” The Hebrew church was neither called nor qualified to be a missionary society, but it never ceased to desire and hope for the conversion of the nations. This is seen in those passages in which the Psalmists betray a consciousness that they shall one day have all the world for auditors. How boldly does David exclaim, “I will sing unto thee among the nations.” In the same spirit, a later Psalmist summons the church to lift up her voice, so that all the nations may hear her recital of the Lord’s mighty acts: “O give thanks unto the Lord; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people.” Ps. cv. 1. The full import of this class of texts is often hidden from the English reader by the circumstance that our translators have hardly ever used the word people in its plural form. Twice in the Revelation they venture to write peoples; everywhere else the singular form has to do duty for both numbers; so that in not a few passages the sense is greatly obscured to those who have no access either to the original or to other versions. In the Psalms, in particular, the mention of the Gentiles is more frequent than the English reader is made aware of. It is to be observed, moreover, that in addition to this strain of indirect prediction, the conversion of the world is articulately celebrated in many glorious Psalms. Indeed, so numerous are these, and so generally distributed over the centuries between David and Ezra, that it would seem that at no time during the long history of inspired Psalmody, did the Spirit cease to indite new songs in which the children of Zion might give utterance to their world-embracing hopes.—William Binnie, D.D., in “The Psalms: their History, Teachings, and Use,” 1870.

Verses 10, 11.—A hard and ungrateful heart beholds even in prosperity only isolated drops of divine grace; but a grateful one like David’s, though chased by persecutors, and striking the harp in the gloom of a cave, looks upon the mercy and faithfulness of God as a mighty ocean, waving and heaving from the earth to the clouds, and from the clouds to the earth again.—Augustus F. Tholuck.

Verse 11.—“Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens,” etc. Greater words of prayer than these never came from human lips. Heaven and earth have as they imply, a mutually interwoven history, and the blessed, glorious end of this is in the sunrise of the Divine glory over both.—Franz Delitzsch, 1869.