EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (5)

Verse 26.—“He is ever merciful, and lendeth; and his seed is blessed.” He, the good man, is “merciful” to himself, for mercy, like charity, begins at home; he is not afraid to eat a good meal because he hath children. And he is merciful to others too; for he will lend and do good to whom he can, and then his seed fares the better for it. Mark, that the more he gives and lends in doing works of mercy, the better it is for his children; for those children are ever best provided for whose parents bear this mind—they had rather trust God with their children, than their children with riches; and have made this their hope, that though they die, yet God lives. Did but one of those rich and wretched parents (who pinched and pined himself to make his son a gentleman, forsooth), rise from the dead, and see that proverb of Solomon fulfilled in himself, “He begetteth a son, and in his hand is nothing;” I persuade myself, the rumination of this world afflict him in his soul as much as any one pain of sense, even in hell itself, O consider this, you that now live and see it in others; and remember withal, that if your goods be either ill-gotten, or worse kept, it may be your children’s case when you are departed, and feel it, though you see it not.—Matthew Griffith.

Verse 28.—“For the Lord ... forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever.” How? since they die as others do. Mark the antithesis, and that will explain it. “They are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.” They are preserved in their posterity: children are but the parents multiplied, and the parents continued; ’tis nodosa æternitas; when the father’s life is run out to the last, there is a knot tied, and the line is still continued by the child. I confess temporal blessings, such as long life, and the promise of an happy posterity, are more visible in the eye of that dispensation of the covenant; but yet God still taketh care for the children of his people, and many promises run that way that belong to the gospel administration, and still God’s service is the surest way to establish a family, as sin is the ready way to root it out. And if it doth not always fall out accordingly, yet for the most part it doth; and we are no competent judges of God’s dispensations in this kind, because we see providence by pieces, and have not the skill to set them together; but at the day of judgment, when the whole contexture of God’s dealings is laid before us, we shall clearly understand how the children of his servants continue, and their seed is established. Psalm cii. 28.—Thomas Manton.

Verse 29.—“The righteous shall inherit the land,” or the earth. There is clearly an emphasis in the repetition of the same promise in the same terms which ought to have been uniformly rendered throughout verses 9, 11, 22, 29, 34. And it cannot be doubted, that there is a reference to the new heavens and the new earth of Isaiah lxvi. 17; 2 Peter iii. 13.—W. Wilson.

Verse 29.—“The righteous shall inherit the land,” etc. Comp. Matt. v. 5. Consider well this Bible truth, of the future exclusive possession of the earth by the righteous. The millennial kingdom furnishes a fuller explanation.—T. C. Barth.

Verse 31.—“The law of his God is in his heart,” etc. The flock of sheep that’s indisposed and unwilling to drive, start out of the way into every lane’s end, one this way and another that; and just so is it with an unwilling heart; one thought starts this way, and another that, and it’s a piece of skill to drive them through. But a willing heart, a heart prepared and ready to every good work, it flies quite up an end, and delights itself in the Lord.—Richard Steele.

Verse 31 (first clause).—He hath a Bible in his head, and another in his heart; he hath a good treasure within, and there hence bringeth good things.—John Trapp.

Verses 32, 33.—The Jews “watched” that Just One daily and hourly; they “sought to slay him,” and did so; but Jehovah left him not in their hands, but vindicated his innocence by raising him from the dead.—George Horne.

Verse 34.—“Wait on the Lord,” etc. He that truly trusts in God will stay God’s time, and use God’s means, and walk in God’s way, though it seem round about; they will not neglect their souls for haste; they know this would be to make more haste than good speed. Nor would they step out of the way, the way that is holy and righteous, though they may escape a loss, an affliction by it, though they might gain some desirable advantage by it. True faith goes leaning upon God, and therefore will “keep his way.” He that will not be liberal for the promoting and honouring of the gospel; he that fears poverty or affliction more than he fears sin; he that is more careful for the things of the world than for his soul; he that takes indirect or suspected courses, to get, or increase, or secure his estate; he that is not jealous or watchful, lest his cares for the world (when he is much engaged therein) should be immoderate—it is plain he doth not trust God with his estate; and he that does not trust God for his estate, whatever he think or pretend, he does not trust God for his soul, for his salvation; his hopes of heaven and salvation are but presumption.—David Clarkson.

Verse 34.—“Wait on the Lord.” Bind him not to a day, wake not the Beloved till he please.—John Trapp.

Verse 34.—“Wait ... keep.” While we are waiting let us take heed of wavering. Go not a step out of God’s way, though a lion be in the way; avoid not duty to meet with safety; keep God’s highway, the good old way (Jer. vi. 16), the way which is paved with holiness. “And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness.” Isaiah xxxv. 8. Avoid crooked paths, take heed of turning to the left hand, lest you be set on the left hand. Sin doth cross our hopes, it barricades up our way; a man may as well expect to find heaven in hell, as in a sinful way.—Thomas Watson.

Verse 35.—“Green bay tree.” The LXX translates כְּאֶוְרָח רַעֲנָן as if it were כְּאֶזְרָח לְבָנֹן, “Like the cedar of Lebanon;” but אֶזְרָח רַעֲנָן according to Delitzsch, means a noble timber-tree, one that in the course of centuries of growth has acquired a gigantic trunk, and an umbrageous, dome-like crown.

Verse 35.—“Green bay tree.” The marginal rendering—“a tree that groweth in his own soil”—is, no doubt, the true one. The idea generally formed of this passage by the reader of the English Bible is that the tree referred to was the bay laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), or cherry laurel of our gardens. But this plant belongs to an entirely different family. The bay and the Portugal laurels, whose forms of growth and evergreen leaves make them highly ornamental in shrubberies, belong to a sub-family (Drupaceæ, Lind.) of the rose tribe (Rosaceæ), but the bay tree proper, which flourisheth luxuriantly in Southern Europe, is the type of the laurel family (Lauraceæ). Several circumstances make it unlikely that the true bay tree represents the Hebrew esrāch. There is no evidence that it was ever so plentiful in Palestine as to be chosen by the Psalmist in an illustration in a poem for popular use. It is indeed to be met with, but that chiefly in localities on the borders of the eastern shore of the Great Sea. The chief objection to the supposition that the bay tree was referred to by the royal poet is to be found in the Psalm itself. Having mentioned it in the lines quoted above, he adds, “Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.” The idea here is not one which could be represented and illustrated by an evergreen plant, slow of growth, and yet reaching in maturity a height of above thirty feet. The words demand a quick growing tree, in a soil more than usually favourable to its growth. Thus planted, and shooting up in calm and sunshine, it would attract every eye; but when the storm broke over it, when the strong wind swept impetuously through its branches, it would not stand. Torn up by the root, and its timber comparatively useless, like Abraham’s dead, it would be buried out of sight. And thus with the wicked. He was sought and could not be found.—John Duns, D.D., F.R.S.E., in “Biblical Natural Science.”

Verse 35.—We see no force in the observation of Dr. Duns; in fact, if there were not other reasons for preferring the translation given in the following note by Wilson, we should see all the more reason to keep to the bay tree. It was a tree of permanence and of long-continued verdure, and so the prosperous wicked seem to be. They look as if their happiness would be eternal; yet, for all that, those who carefully note the dealings of providence observe with holy wonder that divine justice cuts short their glory, and they perish utterly.—C. H. S.

“I have seen the wicked in great power (terrible, fierce, violent), and spreading himself like a green bay tree” (a tree in its native soil, vigorous, and luxuriant, that had never been transplanted). A striking figure of the ungodly man of the world, firmly rooted in earthly things—his native soil, grown proud and wanton in his prosperity, without fear or apprehension of any reverse.—William Wilson.

Verse 35.—“Like a green bay tree,” which produceth all leaves and no fruit.—Matthew Henry.

Verse 35.—“I have seen the wicked,” saith David, “in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree.” And why like a green bay-tree? Because in the winter, when all other trees—as the vine-tree, fig-tree, apple-tree, &c., which are more profitable trees—are withered and naked, yet the bay-tree continueth as green in the winter as the summer. So fareth it with wicked men: when the children of God, in the storms of persecutions, and afflictions, and miseries, seem withered, and, as it were, dead, yet the wicked all that time flourish, and do appear green in the eyes of the world: they wallow in worldly wealth, but it is for their destruction; they wax fat, but it is for the day of slaughter. It was the case of Hophni and Phinehas: the Lord gave them enough and suffered them to go on and prosper in their wickedness; but what was the reason? Because he would destroy them.—J. Gore’s Sermon at St. Paul’s, 1633.

Verses 35, 36.—

Verses 36, 37.—The hawk flies high, and is as highly prized, being set upon a perch, vervelled with the gingling bells of encouragement, and carried on his master’s fist; but being once dead and picked over the perch, is cast upon the dunghill as good for nothing. The hen scrapes in the dust, not anything rewarded when she is alive, but being dead, is brought as a choice dish to her master’s table. Thus wicked men are commonly set in high places, and prosper in this life; and good men lie grovelling with their mouths in the dust, as the very underlings of the world; but being once dead, the one is cast into the dungeon of hell, the other advanced to the kingdom of heaven: the one is into Abraham’s bosom, whilst the other is tormented with the devil and his angels.—Thomas Westfield, D.D., 1644.

Verse 37.—“Mark ... and behold.” Herodotus maketh mention of a custom among the Ethiopians to set the dead bodies of their friends in glazed sepulchres, that their proportions might be obvious to the passengers. How needless soever that custom was, ’tis doubtless no more than just that the pious lineaments of their minds who die in the Lord should be presented to the living in the mirrour of art. Indeed, commendation after death is the tribute of a religious life. Good works are jewels not to be locked up in a cabinet, but to be set forth to public view. If Christ would have Mary’s name remembered in the gospel until the world’s end for one box of ointment poured on his head, we cannot imagine that he would have the many pious and charitable deeds of his servants to be buried in oblivion. Consult the Scriptures, and you shall scarce find any godly man laid in his grave without an epitaph of honour. View the fathers, and you shall observe it their practice to honour the death of the good by giving them their deserved praises.—Nathanael Hardy.

Verse 37.—“The perfect man,” etc.—Divines well distinguish of a double perfection, it is absoluta or comparata. That is absolutely perfect, to which nothing (that may be accounted truly good) is wanting; and thus He only is perfectus who is infactus; God, who made all things, and himself is not made, only enjoying an all-sufficient perfection, in and of himself. That is comparatively perfect, in which, notwithstanding some wants, there is a fulness compared with others. Thus every saint is perfect in comparison of the wicked among whom he liveth. In this respect it is said of Noah, “That he was a perfect man in his generations;” his grace compared with the wickedness of the old world well deserving the name of perfection; indeed every upright man is perfect in comparison of them who are openly bad, or but openly good; stained with wickedness, or but painted with holiness. Thus one saint may be perfect if compared with another, the strong Christian in respect of the weak, whom he outstrips in grace and piety: such saints Paul means when he saith, “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect;” that is, such as have attained to greater measures of grace than others. It was said of Benaiah, “He was more honourable than thirty, but he attained not to the first three;” and though no saint can ever attain to the perfections of the first three, the blessed Trinity, yet many saints may be honourable amongst thirty perfect in comparison of those among whom they live.