EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (4)

Verse 8.—“All thy garments smell of myrrh,” etc. These things are true in Jesus; by his garments is meant his righteousness; for it is written, He clothed himself with righteousness and zeal. And here the translator hath put in “smell,” which rather should have been are, for “his garments are of myrrh, and aloes and cassia,” that is, truly purging, cleansing, and making sound; for his righteousness, which is the righteousness of faith, maketh sound-hearted Christians; whereas, man’s righteousness, which is the righteousness of works, maketh filthy hypocrites. And by “ivory palaces,” is meant the true faith and fear of God; for ivory is solid and white, and palaces are king’s houses; and by Christ we are made kings, and our dwelling is in faith and fear of God; and this is the gladness and joy of our Lord Jesus, that he brings many sons and daughters unto God.—Richard Coore, 1683.

Verse 8.—“Out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.” Commentators have been more perplexed in explaining these words than any other part of the Psalm. Not to detain you with the various expositions that have been proposed, I will give you what I conceive to be the meaning of the passage. The word rendered “whereby,” is also the name of a region in Arabia Felix, namely, Minnæa, which, according to the geographer Strabo, “abounded in myrrh and frankincense.” Now, it is singular that, according to the historian, Diodorus Siculus, “the inhabitants of Arabia Felix had sumptuous houses, adorned with ivory and precious stones.” Putting these two things together, therefore, namely, that this region abounded in myrrh and frankincense, and that its inhabitants adorned their houses with ivory, we may, I conceive, find a clue to the Psalmist’s meaning. If we substitute “Minnæa” for “whereby,” the passage will run thus—

You recollect in the verse just going before, the oil with which Christ was said to be anointed, is called the oil of “gladness.” Accordingly, he is here said to be made glad (it is the same word in both places in the Hebrew), by the spices of which that oil is composed. Those spices are said to have been brought out of the most spicy region of the land of spices, and it is implied that they are the best spices of that spicy region. “Out of the ivory palaces,” says the Psalmist; not only houses, but palaces—the mansions of the great, where the best spices would naturally be kept—out of these have come the myrrh, aloes, and cassia, that have composed the oil of gladness whereby thou art made glad. God anointed Christ, when he set him on his everlasting throne, with the oil of gladness; and this anointing was so profuse, his garments were so overspread with it, that they seemed to be nothing but myrrh, aloes, and cassia. The spices, moreover, of which the anointing oil was composed were the best of their kind, brought, as they were, from the ivory palaces of Minnæa. Such appears to be the Psalmist’s meaning; and when thus understood, the passage becomes most beautifully expressive of the excellency and unmeasured supply of the gifts and graces of that Spirit with which Christ was anointed by his Father.—George Harpur.

Verse 8.—“The ivory palaces.” “The ivory courts.” Probably so called from the great quantity of ivory used in ornamenting and inlaying them; as the emperor Nero’s palace, mentioned by Suetonius, was named “aurea,” or “golden,” because “lita auro,” “overlaid with gold.” This method of ornamenting or inlaying rooms was very ancient among the Greeks. Homer, in the fourth book of the Odyssey, seems to mention it, as employed in Menelaus’s palace at Lacedæmon; and that the Romans sometimes ornamented their apartments in like manner, seems evident from Horace and Ovid. So in modern times, the winter apartment of the fair Fatima at Constantinople, has been described by an eye-witness as “wainscotted with inlaid work of mother-of-pearl, ivory of different colours, and olive wood.” Ivory is likewise employed at Aleppo, as Dr. Russell informs us, in the decoration of some of the more expensive apartments.—Richard Mant.

Verse 8.—“Ivory palaces.” Either edifices (1 Kings xxii. 39; Cant. vii. 14), or ivory coffers, and wardrobes, whence those garments were taken, and are kept.—Westminster Assembly’s Annotations.

Verse 8.—“Whereby they have made thee glad.” The best sense of the phrase—from which they rejoice thee—is had by making they refer to the king’s daughters mentioned in the next verse.—William S. Plumer.

Verse 8.—Gesenius and Delitzsch consider מִנִּי an abbreviated form of the plural מִנִּים (Ps. cl. 4), “strings,” or “stringed instruments,” and would render thus:—“Thee glad out of the ivory palaces stringed instruments have made.”—Dalman Hapstone. [With this rendering Ewald and Lange agree.—J. L. K.]

Verse 9.—“Kings’ daughters.” Albeit the Catholic church consisting of true converts or real saints be but the one and only true spouse of Christ, yet particular visible churches consisting of saints by calling, by obligation, by profession, and common estimation, their own or others, are many. The true church consisting of true converts (whose praise is of God, to whom only they are certainly known, and not of men), being but one, is compared to the queen; but the particular, whose collections and consociations are known to men, being many, are compared to ladies of honour who serve the queen.—David Dickson.

Verse 9.—“The queen.” It is written of Matilda, the empress, that she was the daughter of a king, the mother of a king, and the wife of a king.

So David intimates in this hymn, that the church is the daughter of a King, at the 13th verse, “The king’s daughter is all glorious within;” and the mother of a king, at the 16th verse, “Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth;” and the wife of a king, in this verse, “Upon thy right hand did stand the queen,” as being (I speak in the language of Canaan), spiritually the wedded and bedded wife to the king of glory.—John Boys.

Verse 10.—“Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house.” Three alls I expect you to part with, saith Christ. 1. All your sinful lusts, all the ways of the old Adam, our father’s house. Ever since Adam’s apostacy, God and man have parted houses. Ever since, our father’s house is a house of ill manners, a house of sin and wickedness. 2. All your worldly advantages. “If any man come unto me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” He that hath all these must be ready to part with all; they are joined not disjunctively but copulatively. 3. All self, self-will, self-righteousness, self-sufficiencies, self-confidences, and self-seekings.—Lewis Stuckley.

Verse 10.—“Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house.” If you see a bee leave a fair flower and stick upon another, you may conclude that she finds most honey-dew in that flower she most sticks upon: so here God’s people would never leave so many fair flowers in the world’s garden, had they not some other in which they find most sweetness. Christ hath his garden, into which he brings his beloved, and there she finds other manner of flowers than any the world hath, in which there is sweetness of a higher nature, even the honey-dew of the choice mercy and goodness and blessing of God himself: if God’s people do leave the full breasts of the world, it is because they have found the breasts of consolation from which they have sucked other manner of sweetness than the breasts of the world can afford.—Jeremiah Burroughs, in “Moses, his self-denyall.” 1649.

Verse 10.—“Forget.” If thou be on the mountain, have no love to look back to Sodom. If thou be in the ark, fly not back to the world, as the raven did. If thou be set on Canaan, forget the flesh-pots of Egypt. If marching against Midian, forget stooping to the waters of Harod. Judg. vii. If on the house-top, forget that is below thee. Mark xiii. 15. If thy hand be put to the plough, forget that is behind thee. Luke ix. 62. Themistocles desired rather to learn the art of forgetfulness than of memory. Philosophy is an art of remembering, divinity includes in it an art of forgetting. The first lesson that Socrates taught his scholars was, Remember; for he thought that knowledge was nothing else but a calling to remembrance of those things the mind knew ere it knew the body. But the first lesson that Christ teacheth his scholars is, Forget: “Forget thine own people;” “Repent” (Matt. iv. 17); first, “eschew evil,” 1 Peter iii. 11.—Thomas Adams.

Verse 11.—“So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.” This is a most sweet promise. For the Holy Spirit knoweth that this monster, Monk, sticks fast in our heart—that we want to be pure and without spot before God. Thus, under Popery, all my temptation was this. I used to say, “that I would willingly go to the sacrament if I were but worthy.” Thus we seek, naturally, a purity in ourselves; and we examine our whole life and want to find a purity in ourselves, that we might have no need of grace, but might be pronounced righteous upon the grounds of our own merit.... Thou wilt certainly never become righteous by thyself and thine own works.... The Holy Spirit saith, therefore, I will give thee wholesome counsel; and if thou wilt hear me, thou shalt become a virgin all fair. For, if thou wouldst be beautiful in the sight of God, so that all thy works should please him, and he should say, “Thy prayer pleaseth me; all that thou sayest, doest, and thinkest, pleaseth me!” proceed thou thus: “hear, see, and incline thine ear;” and thou shalt thus become all fair. When thou hast heard, hast seen, hast forgotten all thine own righteousness, all the law, all traditions, and all that monkery, and hast believed, then art thou fair; not in thine own beauty, but in the beauty of the King who has adorned thee with his Word; because he has brought unto thee thereby his righteousness, his holiness, truth, and fortitude, and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit.... The Holy Spirit uses the most exalted language. “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty:” that is, thou wilt by this faith prevail upon him to do whatever thou desirest: so that, as one urged by the power of love, he will spontaneously follow thee, abide with thee, and take up his abode with thee. For wherever God has given his Word, there he does not leave his work which he has begun in thee; but he brings upon thee first the temptations of the world, the devil, and the flesh; that by them he may work upon thee. These are his embraces whereby he embraceth his spouse through impatiency of love.... The sum of the whole, therefore, is this: That our beauty does not consist in our own virtues, nor even in the gifts which we have received from God, by which we put forth virtues and do all those things which pertain unto the life of the law; but in this—our apprehending Christ and believing in him. Then it is that we are truly beautiful: and it is this beauty alone that Christ looks upon, and upon no other.—Martin Luther.

Verse 11.—In this Psalm Christ is set forth in all his royalty and majesty; yet he is said “greatly to desire or delight in the beauty” of his queen, that is, the graces of the saints; and that not with an ordinary delight, but he “greatly desires;” his desire is increased as her beauty is. For that is there brought in as a motive unto her to be more holy and conformed unto him, “to incline her ear, and forsake her father’s house.” “So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.” Christ hath a beauty that pleaseth him as well as we have, though of another kind: and, therefore, ceaseth not till he hath got out every spot and wrinkle out of his spouse’s face, as the apostle speaks (Eph. v. 27), “so as to present her glorious unto himself,” that is, delightful and pleasing in his eye.—Thomas Goodwin.

Verse 12.—“And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift.” The daughters of Tyre are the daughters of the Gentiles, the part standing for the whole. Tyre, a city bordering on this country where the prophecy was delivered, typified the nations that were to believe in Christ. Thence came that Canaanitish woman, who was at first called a dog; for that ye may know that she was from thence, the gospel speaks thus (Matt. xv. 21-28), “Jesus departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts,” with all the rest that is related there. She who at first, at the house of her “father,” and among her “own people,” was but a dog, who by coming to, and crying after that “King,” was made beautiful by believing in him, what did she obtain to hear? “O woman, great is thy faith.” The King has greatly desired thy beauty.—Augustine.