EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS.

Verse 1.—“In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust.” Let us therefore shun mistrust; doubt is death, trust alone is life. Let us make sure that we trust the Lord, and never take our trust on trust. “Let me never be ashamed.” If David prays against being ashamed, let us strive against it. Lovers of Jesus should be ashamed of being ashamed.—C. H. S.

Verse 1.—“Deliver me in thy righteousness.” For supporting thy faith, mark well whereon it may safely rest; even upon God’s righteousness, as well as upon his mercy. On this ground did the apostle in faith expect the crown of righteousness (2 Tim. iv. 7, 8), because the Lord from whom he expected it is a righteous judge; and the Psalmist is bold to appeal to the righteousness of God. Ps. xxxv. 24. For we may be well assured that what God’s goodness, grace, and mercy moved him to promise, his truth, his faithfulness, and righteousness will move him to perform.—William Gouge.

Verses 1, 2, 3:—

Verse 2.—“Bow down thine ear.” Listen to my complaint. Put thy ear to my lips, that thou mayest hear all that my feebleness is capable of uttering. We generally put our ear near to the lips of the sick and dying that we may hear what they say. To this the text appears to allude.—Adam Clarke.

Verse 2.—“Deliver me speedily.” In praying that he may be delivered speedily there is shown the greatness of his danger, as if he had said, All will soon be over with my life, unless God make haste to help me.—John Calvin.

Verses 2, 3.—“Be thou my strong rock,” etc. What the Lord is engaged to be unto us by covenant, we may pray and expect to find him in effect. “Be thou my strong rock,” saith he, “for thou art my rock.”—David Dickson.

Verse 3.—“For thy name’s sake.” If merely a creature’s honour, the credit of ministers or the glory of angels were involved, man’s salvation would indeed be uncertain. But every step involves the honour of God. We plead for his name’s sake. If God should begin and not continue, or if he should carry on but not complete the work, all would admit that it was for some reason that must bring reproach on the Almighty. This can never be. God was self-moved to undertake man’s salvation. His glorious name makes it certain the top-stone shall be laid in glory.—William S. Plumer.

Verse 3.—“For thy name’s sake.” On account of the fame of thy power, thy goodness, thy truth, etc. “Lead me.” As a shepherd an erring sheep, as a leader military bands, or as one leads another ignorant of the way. See Gen. xxiv. 27; Neh. ix. 12, 13; Ps. xxiii. 3; lxxiii. 24. Govern my counsels, my affections, and my thoughts.—Martin Geier, 1614-1681.

Verse 4.—“Pull me out of the net:” that noted net, as the Hebrew hath it.—John Trapp.

Verse 4.—“Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me.” By these words, he intimateth that his enemies did not only by open force come against him, but by cunning and policy attempted to circumvent him, as when they put him on, as Saul instructed them, to be the king’s son-in-law, and to this end set him on to get two hundred foreskins of the Philistines for a dowry, under a pretence of good-will, seeking his ruin; and when wait also was laid for him to kill him in his house. But he trusted in God, and prayed to be delivered, if there should be any the like enterprise against him hereafter.—John Mayer.

Verse 4.—“For thou art my strength.” Omnipotence cuts the net which policy weaves. When we poor puny things are in the net, God is not. In the old fable the mouse set free the lion, here the lion liberates the mouse.—C. H. S.

Verse 5.—“Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” These were the last words of Polycarp, of Bernard, of Huss, of Jerome of Prague, of Luther, Melancthon, and many others. “Blessed are they,” says Luther, “who die not only for the Lord, as martyrs, not only in the Lord, as all believers, but likewise with the Lord, as breathing forth their lives in these words, ‘Into thine hand I commit my spirit.’” J. J. Stewart Perowne.

Verse 5.—“Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” These words, as they stand in the Vulgate, were in the highest credit among our ancestors; by whom they were used in all dangers, difficulties, and in the article of death. In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum, was used by the sick when about to expire, if they were sensible; and if not, the priest said it in their behalf. In forms of prayer for sick and dying persons, these words were frequently inserted in Latin, though all the rest of the prayer was English; for it was supposed there was something sovereign in the language itself. But let not the abuse of such words hinder their usefulness. For an ejaculation nothing can be better; and when the pious or the tempted with confidence use them, nothing can exceed their effect.—Adam Clarke.

Verse 5.—“Into thine hand I commit my spirit,” etc. For what are the saints to commit their spirits into the hands of God by Jesus Christ?

1. That they may be safe; i.e., preserved in their passage to heaven, from all the enemies and dangers that may stand in the way. When saints die, the powers of darkness would, doubtless, if possible, hinder the ascending of their souls to God. As they are cast out of heaven, they are filled with rage to see any out of our world going thither. One thing, therefore, which the saint means in committing his spirit into the hands of God, is, that the precious depositum may be kept from all that wish or would attempt its ruin. And they are sure that almighty power belongs to God: and if this is engaged for their preservation, none can pluck them out of his hand. The Redeemer hath spoiled principalities and powers, and proved it by his triumphant ascension to glory; and hath all his and the believer’s enemies in a chain, so that they shall be more than conquerors in and through him. Angels, for order’s sake, are sent forth to minister to them and be their guard, who will faithfully attend them their charge, till they are brought to the presence of the common Lord of both. “I know,” saith the apostle, “whom I have believed; and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”

2. They commit their soul into the hands of God, that they may be admitted to dwell with him, even in that presence of his where there is fulness of joy, and where there are pleasures for evermore: where all evil is excluded, and all good present, to fill their desires, and find them matter of praise to all eternity.

3. They commit their departing spirits into the hands of God, that their bodies may be at length raised and reunited to them, and that so they may enter at last into the blessedness prepared for them that love him....

The grounds on which they may do this with comfort, i.e., with lively hopes of being happy for ever, are many. To mention only two:—

1. God’s interest in them, and upon the most endearing foundation, that of redemption. “Into thine hand I commit my spirit: for thou hast redeemed me.”

Redeemed me from hell and the wrath to come, by giving thy Son to die for me. Lord, I am not only thy creature, but thy redeemed creature, bought with a price, saith the saint.

Redeemed me from the power of my inward corruption, and from love to it, and delight in it; and with my consent hast drawn me to be thine, and thine for ever. Lord, I am thine, save me unchangeably.

2. His known faithfulness. “Into thine hand I commit my spirit, O Lord God of truth.” Into thine hand I commit my spirit, who hast been a God of truth, in performing thy promises to all thy people that are gone before me out of this world; and hast been so to me hitherto, and, I cannot doubt, wilt continue so to the end.—Daniel Wilcox.

Verse 5.—“Into thine hand.” When those hands fail me, then am I indeed abandoned and miserable! When they sustain and keep me, then am I safe, exalted, strong, and filled with good.

Receive me, then, O Eternal Father, for the sake of our Lord’s merits and words; for he, by his obedience and his death, hath now merited from thee everything which I do not merit of myself. Into thy hands, my Father and my God, I commend my spirit, my soul, my body, my powers, my desires. I offer up to thy hands, all; to them I commit all that I have hitherto been, that thou mayest forgive and restore all; my wounds, that thou mayest heal them; my blindness, that thou mayest enlighten it; my coldness, that thou mayest inflame it; my wicked and erring ways, that thou mayest set me forth in the right path; and all my evils, that thou mayest uproot them all from my soul. I commend and offer up into thy most sacred hands, O my God, what I am, which thou knowest far better than I can know, weak, wretched, wounded, fickle, blind, deaf, dumb, poor, bare of every good, nothing, yea, less than nothing, on account of my many sins, and more miserable than I can either know or express. Do thou, Lord God, receive me and make me to become what he, the divine Lamb, would have me to be. I commend, I offer up, I deliver over into thy divine hands, all my affairs, my cares, my affections, my success, my comforts, my labours, and everything which thou knowest to be coming upon me. Direct all to thy honour and glory; teach me in all to do thy will, and in all to recognise the work of thy divine hands; to seek nothing else, and with this reflection alone to find rest and comfort in everything.

O hands of the Eternal God, who made and still preserve the heavens and earth for my sake, and who made me for yourselves, suffer me not ever to stray from you. In those hands I possess my Lamb, and all I love; in them therefore must I be also, together with him. Together with him, in these loving hands I shall sleep and rest in peace, since he in dying left me hope in them and in their infinite mercies, placed me within them, as my only and my special refuge. Since by these hands I live and am what I am, make me continually to live through them, and in them to die; in them to live in the love of our Lord, and from them only to desire and look for every good; that from them I may at last, together with the Lord, receive the crown.—Fra Thomé de Jesu.

Verse 5.—“Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” No shadowy form of a dark destiny stands before him at the end of his career, although he must die on the cross, the countenance of his Father shines before him. He does not behold his life melting away into the gloomy floods of mortality. He commends it into the hands of his Father. It is not alone in the general spirit of humanity, that he will continue to live. He will live on in the definite personality of his own spirit, embraced by the special protection and faithfulness of his Father. Thus he does not surrender his life despondingly to death for destruction, but with triumphant consciousness to the Father for resurrection. It was the very centre of his testament; assurance of life; surrender of his life into the hand of a living Father. With loud voice he exclaimed it to the world, which will for ever and ever sink into the heathenish consciousness of death, of the fear of death, of despair of immortality and resurrection, because it for ever and ever allows the consciousness of the personality of God, and of personal union with him, to be obscured and shaken. With the heart of a lion, the dying Christ once more testified of life with an expression which was connected with the word of the Old Testament Psalm, and testified that the Spirit of eternal life was already operative, in prophetic anticipation, in the old covenant. Thus living as ever, he surrendered his life, through death, to the eternally living One. His death was the last and highest fact, the crown of his holy life.—J. P. Lange, D.D., in “The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ,” 1864.

Verse 5.—“Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” David committed his spirit to God that he might not die, but Christ and all Christians after him, commit their spirit to God, that they may live for ever by death, and after death. This Psalm is thus connected with the twenty-second Psalm. Both of these Psalms were used by Christ on the cross. From the twenty-second he derived those bitter words of anguish, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” From the present Psalm he derived those last words of love and trust which he uttered just before his death. The Psalter was the hymn-book and prayer-book of Christ.—Christopher Wordsworth.