EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (4)

Verse 4.—This is an evil world. It hates the people of God. “Because ye are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” John xv. 19. Haman’s hatred was against the whole seed of the Jews. When you can find a serpent without a sting, or a leopard without spots, then may you expect to find a wicked world without hatred to the saints. Piety is the target which is aimed at. “They are mine adversaries because I follow the thing that good is.” Psalm xxxviii. 20. The world pretends to hate the godly for something else, but the ground of the quarrel is holiness. The world’s hatred is implacable: anger may be reconciled, hatred cannot. You may as soon reconcile heaven and hell as the two seeds. If the world hated Christ, no wonder that it hates us. “The world hated me before it hated you.” John xv. 18. Why should any hate Christ? This blessed Dove had no gall, this rose of Sharon did send forth a most sweet perfume; but this shows the world’s baseness, it is a Christ-hating and a saint-eating world.—Thomas Watson.

Verse 5.—“There were they in great fear.” That we may not mistake the meaning of the point, we must understand that this faintheartedness and cowardliness doth not always come upon presumptuous sinners when they behold imminent dangers, for though none of them have true courage and fortitude, yet many of them have a kind of desperate stoutness and resolution when they do, as it were, see death present before their faces; which proceedeth from a kind of deadness that is upon their hearts, and a brawniness that hath overgrown their conscience to their greater condemnation. But when it pleaseth the Lord to waken them out of the dead slumber, and to set the worm of conscience awork within them, then this doctrine holdeth true without any exception, that the boldest sinners prove at length the basest cowards: and they that have been most audacious in adventuring upon the most mischievous evils, do become of all others most timorous when God’s revenging hand seizeth upon them for the same.—John Dod, 1547-1645.

Verse 5.—“God is in the generation of the righteous;” that is, he favours that generation or sort of men; God is in all generations, but such he delights in most: the wicked have cause enough to fear those in whom God delights.—Joseph Caryl.

Verse 5.—The King of Glory cannot come into the heart (as he is said to come into the hearts of his people as such; Psalm xxiv. 9, 10), but some glory of himself will appear; and as God doth accompany the word with majesty because it is his word, so he doth accompany his own children, and their ways, with majesty, yea, even in their greatest debasements. As when Stephen was brought before the council as a prisoner at the bar for his life, then God manifested his presence to him, for it is said, “his face shone as the face of an angel of God.” (Acts vi. 15); in a proportionable manner it is ordinarily true what Solomon says of all righteous men, “A man’s wisdom makes his face to shine.” Eccles. viii. 1. Thus Peter also speaks (1 Peter iv. 14): “If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are you, for the Spirit,” not only of God, or of grace, but “of glory, resteth upon you.” And so in the martyrs; their innocency and carriage, and godly behaviour, what majesty had it with it! What an amiableness in the sight of the people, which daunted, dashed and confounded their most wretched oppressors; so that although the wicked persecutors “did eat up God’s people as bread” (verse 4), yet it is added that they were in great fear upon this very account, that “God is in the generation of the just.” Verse 5. God stands, as it were, astonished at their dealings: “Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge,” (so in the words afore) “that eat up my people as bread,” and make no more ado of it than a man doth that heartily eats of his meat? They seem to do thus, they would carry it and bear it out; but for all that they are in great fear whilst they do thus, and God strikes their hearts with terror then when they most insult. Why? For, “God is in the generation of, or dwelleth in the just,” and God gives often some glimmerings, hints, and warnings to the wicked (such as Pilate had concerning Christ), that his people are righteous. And this you may see in Phil. i. 28: “And in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God.” In that latter passage, I observe that an assurance of salvation, and a spirit of terror, and that of God, is given to either. In the Old Testament it is recorded of David (1 Sam. xviii. 12), that although Saul hated him (verse 9), and sought to destroy him (verses 10, 11), “yet Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with him, and was departed from Saul;” which is the reason in hand. God manifested his presence in David, and struck Saul’s conscience with his godly and wise carriage, and that made him afraid.—Thomas Goodwin.

Verse 6.—“Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge.” In the fifty-third Psalm it is, “Thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them.” Of course, the allusion is totally different in each; in this Psalm it is the indignant remonstrance of the Psalmist with “the workers of iniquity” for undervaluing and putting God’s poor to shame; the other affirms the final shame and confusion of the ungodly, and the contempt in which the Lord holds them. In either case it sweetly illustrates God’s care of his poor, not merely the poor in spirit, but literally the poor and lowly ones, the oppressed and the injured. It is this character of God which is so conspicuously delineated in his word. We may look through all the Shasters and Vedas of the Hindoo, the Koran of the Mahometan, the legislation of the Greek, and the code of the Roman, aye, and the Talmud of the Jew, the bitterest of all; and not in one single line or page shall we find a vestige or trace of that tenderness, compassion, or sympathy for the wrongs, and oppressions, and trials, and sorrows of God’s poor, which the Christian’s Bible evidences in almost every page.—Barton Bouchier.

Verse 6.—“Ye have shamed.” Every fool that saith in his heart there is no God, hath out of the same quiver a bolt to shoot at goodness. Barren Michal hath too many sons, who, like their mother, jeer at holy David.—John Trapp.

Verse 6.—“Ye have shamed,” saith he, “the counsel of the poor.” There is nothing that wicked men do so despise as the making God a refuge—nothing which they scorn in their hearts like it. “They shame it,” saith he, “It is a thing to be cast out of all consideration. The wise man trusts in his wisdom, the strong man in his strength, the rich man in his riches; but this trusting in God is the foolishest thing in the world.” The reasons of it are—1. They know not God; and it is a foolish thing to trust one knows not whom. 2. They are enemies to God, and God is their enemy; and they account it a foolish thing to trust their enemy. 3. They know not the way of God’s assistance and help. And—4. They seek for such help, such assistance, such supplies as God will not give; to be delivered, to serve their lusts; to be preserved, to execute their rage, filthiness, and folly. They have no other design or end of these things; and God will give none of them. And it is a foolish thing in any man to trust God to be preserved in sin. It is true their folly is their wisdom, considering their state and condition. It is a folly to trust in God to live in sin, and despise the counsel of the poor.—John Owen.

Verse 6.—“Ye have made a mock of the counsel of the poor:” and why? “because the Lord is his trust.” This is the very true cause, whatsoever other pretences there be. Whence observe this doctrine; that true godliness is that which breeds the quarrel between God’s children and the wicked. Ungodly men may say what they list, as, namely, that they hate and dislike them for that they are proud and saucy in meddling with their betters; for that they are so scornful and disdainful towards their neighbours; for that they are malcontent, and turbulent, and I know not what; but the true reason is yielded by the Lord in this place, to wit, because they make him their stay and their confidence, and will not depend upon lying vanities as the men of the world do.—John Dod.

Verse 6.—“The Lord is his refuge.”—Be persuaded actually to hide yourselves with Jesus Christ. To have a hiding-place and not to use it, is as bad as to want one; fly to Christ; run into the holes of this Rock.—Ralph Robinson, 1656.

Verse 7.—“O that the salvation,” etc. Like as when we be in quiet, we do pray either nothing at all, or very coldly unto God; so in adversity and trouble, our spirit is stirred up and enkindled to prayer, whereof we do find examples everywhere in the Psalms of David: so that affliction is as it were the sauce of prayer, as hunger is unto meat. Truly their prayer is usually unsavoury who are without afflictions, and many of them do not pray truly, but do rather counterfeit a prayer, or pray for custom.—Wolfgang Musculus, 1497-1563.

Verse 7.—“Out of Zion.” Zion the church is no Saviour, neither dare we trust in her ministers or ordinances, and yet salvation comes to men through her. The hungry multitudes are fed by the hands of the disciples, who delight to act as the servitors of the gospel feast. Zion becomes the site of the fountain of healing waters which shall flow east and west till all nations drink thereat. What a reason for maintaining in the utmost purity and energy all the works of the church of the living God!—C. H. S.

Verse 7.—“When the Lord turneth the captivity of his people: then shall Jacob rejoice and Israel shall be glad.”—Notice that by Israel we are to understand those other sheep which the Lord has that are not of this fold, but which he must also bring, that they may hear his voice. For it is Israel, not Judah; Sion, not Jerusalem. “When the Lord turneth the captivity of his people.” “Then,” as it is in the parallel passage, “were we like unto them that dream.” A glorious dream indeed, in which, fancy what we may, the half of the beauty, the half of the splendour, will not be reached by our imagination. “The captivity” of our souls to the law of concupiscence, of our bodies to the law of death; the captivity of our senses to fear; the captivity, the conclusion of which is so beautifully expressed by one of our greatest poets:—namely, Giles Fletcher (1588-1623), in his “Christ’s Triumph over Death.”