EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS.

Title.—“Sons of Korah.” Who were the sons of Korah? These opinions have more or less prevailed. One is that they sprang from some one of that name in the days of David. Mudge and others think that the sons of Korah were a society of musicians, founded or presided over by Korah. Others think that the sons of Korah were the surviving descendants of that miserable man who, together with two hundred and fifty of his adherents, who were princes, perished when “the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, together with Korah.” In Numbers xxvi. 11, we read: “Notwithstanding the children of Korah died not.” They had taken the warning given, and had departed from the tents of these wicked men. Numbers xvi. 24, 26. It must be admitted that the name Korah and the patronymic Korahite are found in the Scriptures in a way that creates considerable doubt respecting the particular man from whom the Korahites are named. See 1 Chron. i. 35; ii. 43; vi. 22, 54; ix. 19; xxvi. 1; 2 Chron. xx. 19. Yet the more common belief is that they descended from him who perished for his gainsaying. This view is taken by Ainsworth with entire confidence, by Gill, and others. Korah, who perished, was a Levite. Whatever may have been their origin, it is clear the sons of Korah were a Levitical family of singers. Nothing, then, could be more appropriate than the dedication of a sacred song to these very people.—William S. Plumer.

Title.—“Sons of Korah.” The “Korah” whose “sons” are here spoken of, is the Levite who headed the insurrection against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. Numbers xvi. We find his descendants existing as a powerful Levitical family in the time of David, at least, if they are to be identified, as is probable, with the Korahites mentioned in 1 Chron. xii. 6, who, like our own warlike bishops of former times, seem to have known how to doff the priestly vestment for the soldier’s armour, and whose hand could wield the sword as well as strike the harp. The Korahites were a part of the band who acknowledged David as their chief, at Ziklag; warriors “whose faces,” it is said, “were like the faces of lions, and who were (for speed) like gazelles upon the mountains.” According to 1 Chron. ix. 17-19, the Korahites were in David’s time, keepers of the threshold of the tabernacle; and still earlier, in the time of Moses, watchmen at the entrance of the camp of the Levites. In 1 Chron. xxvi. 1-19, we find two branches of this family associated with that of Merari, as guardians of the doors of the Temple. There is probably an allusion to this their office, in Psalm lxxxiv. 10. But the Korahites were also celebrated musicians and singers; see 1 Chron. vi. 16-33, where Heman, one of the three famous musicians of the time, is said to be a Korahite (comp. 1 Chron. xxv). The musical reputation of the family continued in the time of Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xx. 19), where we have the peculiar doubly plural form בְּנֵ הַקֶּרְחִים, “Sons of the Korahites.”—J. J. Stewart Perowne.

Title.—“Sons of Korah.” Mediæval writers remark how here, as so often, it was the will of God to raise up saints where they could have been least looked for. Who should imagine that from the posterity of him who said, “Ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Aaron,” should have risen those whose sweet Psalms would be the heritage of the church of God to the end of time?—J. M. Neale.

Verse 1.—“The hart panteth after the water brooks.” And here we have started up, and sent leaping over the plain another of Solomon’s favourites. What elegant creatures those gazelles are, and how gracefully they bound!... The sacred writers frequently mention gazelles under the various names of harts, roes, and hinds.... I have seen large flocks of these panting harts gather round the water-brooks in the great deserts of Central Syria, so subdued by thirst that you could approach quite near them before they fled.—W. M. Thomson.

Verse 1.—Little do the drunkards think that take so much pleasure in frequenting the houses of Bacchus that the godly take a great deal more, and have a great deal more joy in frequenting the houses of God. But ’tis a thing that God promised long ago by the prophet: “Them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.” Isaiah lvi. 7. And methinks, I hear the willing people of God’s power, merrily calling one to another in the words of Micah iv. 2, “come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” How is a godly man ravished with “the beauty of holiness,” when he is at such meetings! How was holy David taken with being in the house of God at Jerusalem! insomuch, that if he were kept from it but a little while, his soul panted for it, and longed after it, and fainted for lack of it, as a thirsty hart would do for lack of water! “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?” The poor disconsolate captives preferred it to the best place in their memory. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning” (Psalm cxxxvii. 5); nay, they preferred it to their chiefest joy: “If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy,” verse 6. There was no place in the world that David regarded or cared to be in in comparison of it. “A day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Psalm lxxxiv. 10), insomuch, that he could find it in his heart, nay, and would choose, if he might have his desire, to spend all his days in that house. Psalm xxvii. 4.—Zachary Bogan.

Verse 1.—The soul strongly desires acquaintance with God here in his ordinances. Chrysostom’s very rhetorical upon the text, and tells us how that David, like a lover in absence, must express his affections; as they have their dainty sighs, and passionate complaints, their loving exclamations, and sundry discoveries of affection; they can meet with never a tree, but in the bark of it they must engrave the name of their darling, Δεινὸς δ’ ὁ ἔρως ὥσπερ ὁ κιττὸς αὐτὸν ἐκ πάσης ἀναδῆσαι προφάσεως; ’twill twine upon every opportunity, as the Moralist speaks. And the true lovers of God, they are always thinking upon him, sighing for him, panting after him, talking of him, and (if ’twere possible) would engrave the name of the Lord Jesus upon the breasts of all the men in the world. Look upon David, now a banished man, and fled from the presence of Saul, and see how he behaves himself: not like Themistocles or Camillus, or some of those brave banished worthies. He does not complain of the ungratefulness of his country, the malice of his adversaries, and his own unhappy success. No, instead of murmuring, he falls a panting, and that only after his God. He is banished from the sanctuary, the palace of God’s nearest presence, and chiefest residence; he can’t enjoy the beauty of holiness, and all other places seem to him but as the tents of Kedar. He is banished from the temple, and he thinks himself banished from his God, as it is in the following words, “When shall I come and appear before God?” The whole stream of expositors run this way, that it is meant of his strong longing to visit the Temple, and those amiable courts of his God, with which his soul was so much taken.—Nathanael Culverwel’s “Panting Soul,” 1652.

Verse 1, 2, 3, are an illustration of the frequent use of the word Elohim in the second book of Psalms. We give Fry’s translation of the first three verses—

Verse 2.—“My soul thirsteth for God,” etc. See that your heart rest not short of Christ in any duty. Let go your hold of no duty until you find something of Christ in it; and until you get not only an handful, but an armful (with old Simeon, Luke ii. 28); yea, a heartful of the blessed and beautiful babe of Bethlehem therein. Indeed you should have commerce with heaven, and communion with Christ in duty, which is therefore called the presence of God, or your appearing before him. Exodus xxiii. 17, and Psalm xlii. 2. Your duties then must be as a bridge to give you passage, or as a boat to carry you over into the bosom of Christ. Holy Mr. Bradford, Martyr, said he could not leave confession till he found his heart touched and broken for sin; nor supplication, till his heart was affected with the beauty of the blessings desired; nor thanksgiving, till his soul was quickened in return of praises; nor any duty, until his heart was brought into a duty frame, and something of Christ was found therein. Accordingly Bernard speaks, Nunquam abs te absque te recedam Domine: I will never depart (in duty) from thee without thee, Lord. Augustine said he loved not Tully’s elegant orations (as formerly) because he could not find Christ in them: nor doth a gracious soul love empty duties. Rhetorical flowers and flourishes, expressions without impressions in praying or preaching, are not true bread, but a tinkling cymbal to it, and it cannot be put off with the empty spoon of aëry notions, or lovely (that are not also lively) songs: if Christ talk with you in the way (of duty) your heart will burn within you. Luke xxiv. 16, 32.—Christopher Ness’s “Chrystal Mirrour,” 1679.

Verse 2.—“The living God.” There are three respects especially in which our God is said to be the “living God.” First, originally, because he only hath life in himself, and of himself, and all creatures have it from him. Secondly, operatively, because he is the only giver of life unto man. Our life, in the threefold extent and capacity of it, whether we take it for natural, or spiritual, or eternal, flows to us from God. Thirdly, God is said to be the “living God” by way of distinction, and in opposition to all false gods.—Thomas Horton.

Verse 2 (last clause).—A wicked man can never say in good earnest, “When shall I come and appear before God?” because he shall do so too soon, and before he would, as the devils that said Christ came “to torment them before their time.” Ask a thief and a malefactor whether he would willingly appear before the judge. No, I warrant you, not he; he had rather there were no judge at all to appear before. And so is it with worldly men in regard of God they desire rather to be hidden from him.—Thomas Horton.

Verse 2.—“Come and appear before God.” When any of us have been at church, and waited in the sanctuary, let us examine what did we go thither to see; a shadow of religion? An outside of Christian forms? A graceful orator? The figures and shapes of devotion? Surely then we might with as much wisdom, and more innocence, have gone to the wilderness “to see a reed shaken with the wind.” Can we say as the Greeks at the feast (John xii. 21), “We would see Jesus?” Or as Absalom (2 Sam. xiv. 32), “It is to little purpose I am come to Jerusalem if I may not see the King’s face.” To little purpose we go to church, or attend on ordinances, if we seek not, if we see not God there.—Isaac Watts, D.D., 1674-1748.

Verse 2.—If you attempt to put a little child off with toys and fine things, it will not be pleased long, it will cry for its mother’s breast; so, let a man come into the pulpit with pretty Latin and Greek sentences, and fine stories, these will not content a hungry soul, he must have the sincere milk of the word to feed upon.—Oliver Heywood.

Verse 2.—“When shall I come and appear before God?”—

Verse 3.—“My tears have been my meat day and night.” The Psalmist could eat nothing because of his extreme grief.—John Gadsby.

Verse 3.—“They say unto me.” It is not only of me, but to me; they spake it to his very face, as those who were ready to justify it and make it good, that God had forsaken him. Backbiting argues more baseness, but open reproach carries more boldness, and shamelessness, and impudence in it; and this is that which David’s enemies were guilty of here in this place.—Thomas Horton.