EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (5)

Verse 10.—“The Lord will take me up;” Hebrew, will gather me, that is, take me into his care and keeping. In the civil law we find provision made for outcasts and friendless persons; some hospitals to entertain them, some liberties to comfort and compensate their trouble. ’Tis sure, that in God the forlorn and fatherless find mercy.—John Trapp.

Verse 11.—“Teach me thy way, O Lord.” Having compared himself to an exposed, deserted infant, adopted by God, he anon fairly asks to be shown how to walk. He asks the grace of being able to observe all his holy commandments, which he never loses sight of through the whole one hundred-and-fifty Psalms. What else could he do? when it was the only path to that heavenly house of God, which he had just declared to be the only wish and desire of his heart.—Robert Bellarmine (Cardinal), 1542-1621.

Verse 11.—“Lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.” If a man, travelling in the King’s highway, be robbed between sun and sun, satisfaction is recoverable upon the county where the robbery was made; but if he takes his journey in the night, being an unseasonable time, then it is at his own peril, he must take what falls. So, if a man keep in God’s ways, he shall be sure of God’s protection; but if he stray out of them, he exposeth himself to danger.—Robert Skinner (Bishop), 1636.

Verse 11.—“Because of mine enemies.” If once a man commence a professor, the eyes of all are upon him; and well they may, for his profession in the world is a separation from the world. Believers condemn those by their lives who condemn them by their lips. Righteous David saw many who were waiting to triumph in his mistakes. Hence the more they watched, the more he prayed: “Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.” It may be rendered, because of mine observers. Christian, if you dwell in the open tent of licentiousness, the wicked will not walk backward, like modest Shem and Japheth, to cover your shame: but they will walk forward, like cursed Ham, to publish it. Thus they make use of your weakness as a plea for their wickedness. Men are merciless in their censures of Christians; they have no sympathy for their infirmity: while God weighs them in more equal scales, and says, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” While a saint is a dove in the eyes of God, he is only a raven in the estimation of sinners.—William Secker.

Verse 13.—“I had fainted,” etc. Study much the all-sufficiency, the power, the goodness, the unchangeableness of God. 1. The all-sufficiency of God. What fulness there is in him to make up all you can lose for him; what refreshments there are in him to sweeten all you can suffer for him. What fulness! You may as well doubt that all the waters of the ocean cannot fill a spoon, as that the divine fulness cannot be enough to you, if you should have nothing left in this world; for all the waters that cover the sea are not so much as a spoonful, compared with the boundless and infinite fulness of all-sufficiency. What refreshments in him! One drop of divine sweetness is enough to make one in the very agony of the cruellest death to cry out with joy, “The bitterness of death is past.” Now in him there are not only drops, but rivers; not a scanty sprinkling, but an infinite fulness. 2. Eye much the power of God, how it can support under the cross, what it can bring to pass for you by the cross. No cross so sharp and grievous, but he can make it sweet and comfortable. No cross so heavy and intolerable, but he can make light and easy. No cross so ignominious and reproachful, but he can turn it to your honour. No cross so fastened to you, but he can easily remove it. 3. His goodness. His all-sufficiency and power make him able, his goodness makes him willing to do for his people under the cross what his all-sufficiency and almighty power can afford. His goodness sets his mighty power a-work for his suffering saints. His goodness sets his all-sufficiency, his fulness, abroach for them, so that it runs freely upon them; and never more freely than when they are under the cross. “I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord,” &c. What is it that makes you ready to faint under the cross, or thoughts and foresight of it? Look to the goodness of God, there is support.—Condensed from David Clarkson.

Verse 13.—“I had fainted.” The words in italics are supplied by our translators; but, far from being necessary, they injure the sense. Throw out the words I had fainted, and leave a break after the verse, and the elegant figure of the Psalmist will be preserved: “Unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living”——what! what, alas! should have become of me!—Adam Clarke.

Verse 13.—“Unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” In the Hebrew this verse is elliptical, as Calvin here translates it. In the French version he supplies the ellipsis, by adding to the end of the verse the words, “C’estoit fait de moy,” “I had perished.” In our English version, the words, “I had fainted,” are introduced as a supplement in the beginning of the verse. Both the supplement of Calvin, and that of our English version, which are substantially the same, doubtless explain the meaning of the passage; but they destroy the elegant abrupt form of the expression employed by the Psalmist, who breaks off in the middle of his discourse without completing the sentence, although what he meant to say is very evident.—Editorial Note to Calvin, in loc.

Verse 13.—Under sore trouble and distress, labour to exercise a strong and lively faith. It was a noble and heroic resolution in that holy man Job, under his singular trials (Job xiii. 15): “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him;” as if he had said, Let my strokes be never so sore and heavy, yet I will not let go my grips of his word and promises, I will not raze these foundations of my hope. It was the way the Psalmist kept himself from sinking under his heavy burdens: “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”... Faith brings new strength and auxiliary supplies of grace from heaven, when the former supply is exhausted and spent; whereof David had the sweet experience here. As God doth plant and actuate grace in the soul, so he is pleased to come in with seasonable supplies and reinforcements to the weak and decayed graces of his people, answerable to their present exigences and pressures; and thus he doth from time to time feed the believer’s lamp with fresh oil, give in more faith, more love, more hope, and more desires; and hereby he gives power to the faint, and strengthens the things which remain when ready to die.—John Willison.

Verse 13.—“Unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living:” a cordial made up of three sovereign ingredients—a hope to see; and to see the goodness of God; and the goodness of God in the land of the living.—Sir Richard Baker.

Verse 13.—“The land of the living.” Alas! what a land of the living is this, in which there are more dead than living, more under ground than above it; where the earth is fuller of graves than houses; where life lies trembling under the hand of death; and where death hath power to tyrannise over life! No, my soul, there only is the land of the living where there are none but the living; where there is a church, not militant, but triumphant; a church indeed, but no churchyard, because none dead, nor none that can die; where life is not passive, nor death active; where life sits crowned, and where death is swallowed up in victory.—Sir Richard Baker.

Verse 14.—“Wait on the Lord, be of good courage.” Be comfortable, hold fast (as the Greek hath), be manly, or, quit thee as a man; which word the apostle useth. 1 Cor. xvi. 13. These are the words of encouragement against remissness, fear, faintness of heart, or other infirmities.—Henry Ainsworth.

Verse 14.—“Wait on the Lord, be of good courage.”

Verse 14.—Think not the government is out of Christ’s hand, when men are doing many sad things, and giving many heavy blows to the work of God. No, no; men are but his hand; and it is the hand of God that justly and righteously is lying heavy upon his people. Look above men, then; you have not to do with them: there is a turn of matters, just as he is pleased to turn his hand.—Ralph Erskine, 1685-1752.