The Book of Psalms (vol. 2; Pss. 73-150) - Gordon College Faculty

THE BOOK PSALMS: a new translation, with explanatory notes for English readers (vol. 2: Ps. 73-150)

By J. J. Stewart Perowne

BOOK III. PSALMS LXXIII.-LXXXIX.

London: G. Bell, 1888

Digitized by Ted Hildebrandt at Gordon College, Wenham, MA; 2007

CONTENTS. THE PSALMS. BOOK III. PAGE I-157

PSALMS LXXIII.-LXXXIX. BOOK IV. PSALMS XC.--CVI

159-267 BOOK V.

PSALMS CVII.-CL

269-487

APPENDIX:-I. MESSIANIC INTERPRETATION II. THE MASSORETH

489-499 500-503

GENERAL INDEX

505-520

GRAMMATICAL AND CRITICAL INDEX

521-523

PSALM LXXIII. THERE are some questions which never lose their interest, some problems of which it may be said, that they are ever old and yet ever new. Not the least anxious of such questions are those which deal with God's moral government of the world. They lie close to man's heart, and are ever asking and pressing for solution. They may differ in different times, they may assume various forms; but perhaps no man ever looked thoughtfully on the world as it is without seeing much that was hard to reconcile with a belief in the love and wisdom of God. One form of this moral difficulty pressed heavily upon the pious Jew under the Old Dispensation. It was this: Why should good men suffer, and bad men prosper? This difficulty was aggravated, we must remember, by what seemed to be the manifest contradiction between the express teaching of his Law, and the observed facts of human experience. The Law told him that God was a righteous Judge, meting out to men in this world the due recompense of their deeds. The course of the world, where those who had cast off the fear of God were rich and powerful, made him ready to question this truth, and was a serious stumbling-block to his faith. And further, "the Hebrew mind had never risen to the conception of universal law, but was accustomed to regard all visible phenomena as the immediate result of a free Sovereign Will. Direct interposition, even arbitrary interference, was no difficulty to the Jew, to whom Jehovah was the absolute Sovereign of the world, not acting, so far as he could see, according to any established order."* Hence it seemed to him inexplicable that the world of life should not reflect perfectly, as in a mirror, the righteousness of God. This is the perplexity which appears in this Psalm, as it does in the 37th, and also in the Book of Job. Substantially it is the same problem: but it is met differently. In the 37th Psalm the advice given is to wait, to trust in Jehovah, and to rest assured that in the end the seeming disorder will be set right even in this world. The wicked will perish, the enemies of Jehovah be cut off, and the * For some valuable suggestions on this Psalm I am indebted to a friend, the Rev. J. G. Mould.

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righteous will be preserved from evil, and inherit the land. Thus God suffers wickedness for a time, only the more signally to manifest His righteousness in overthrowing it. That is the first, the simplest, the most obvious solution of the difficulty. In the Book of Job, where the sorrow and the perplexity are the darkest, where the question lies upon the heart, "heavy as lead, and deep almost as life," the sufferer finds no such consolation. As a Gentile, he has no need to reconcile his experience with the sanctions of the Pentateuch. But he has to do that which is not less hard, he has to reconcile it with a life's knowledge of God, and a life's love of God. He searches his heart, he lays bare his life, he is conscious of no transgression, and he cannot understand why chastisement should be laid upon him, whilst the most daring offenders against the Majesty of God escape with impunity. Sometimes with a bitterness that cannot be repressed, sometimes with a sorrow hushing itself into resignation, he still turns to God, he would fain stand before His judgement-seat, plead with Him his cause, and receive a righteous sentence. But Job does not find the solution of the Psalmist. He is driven to feel that all this is a mystery. God will not give an account of any of His matters. "I go forward, but He is not there and backward, but I cannot perceive Him " (Job xxiii.). And when Jehovah appears at the end of the Book, it is to show the folly of man, who would presume to think that, short-sighted and ignorant as he is, he can fathom the counsels of the Most High. He appears, not to lift the veil of mystery, but to teach the need of humiliation and the blessedness of faith.* In this Psalm, again, a different conclusion is arrived at. In part it is the same as that which has already met us in Psalm xxxvii., in part it is far higher. The Psalmist here is not content merely with visible retribution in this world. He sees it indeed in the case of the ungodly. When he was tempted to envy their lot, when he had all but yielded to the sophistry of those who would have persuaded him to be even as they, the temptation was subdued by the reflection that such prosperity came to an end as sudden as it was terrible. But he does not place over against this, on the other side, an earthly portion of honour and happiness for the just. Their portion is in * There is a difficulty, no doubt, in reconciling this solution, or rather non-solution of the problem, with that which is given subsequently in the historical conclusion of the Book. There we find Job recompensed in this life for all his sufferings. If the historical parts of the Book are by the same author as the dialogue (as Ewald maintains), then we must suppose that when Job is brought to confess his own vileness, and his own ignorance and presumption, then, and not till then, does God reward him with temporal prosperity.

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God. He is the stay and the satisfaction of their hearts now. He will take them to Himself and to glory hereafter. This conviction it is which finally chases away the shadows of doubt, and brings light and peace into his soul. And this conviction is the more remarkable, because it is reached in spite of the distinct promise made of temporal recompense to piety, and in the absence of a full and definite Revelation with regard to the life to come. In the clear light of another world and its certain recompenses, such perplexities either vanish or lose much of their sharpness. When we confess that God's righteousness has a larger theatre for its display than this world and the years of man, we need not draw hasty conclusions from "the slight whisper" of His ways which reaches us here. It is an interesting question suggested by this Psalm, but one which can only be touched on here, how far there is anything in common between doubts, such as those which perplexed the ancient Hebrews, and those by which modern thinkers are harassed.* There are some persons, who now, as of old, are troubled by the moral aspect of the world. To some, this perplexity is even aggravated by the disclosures of Revelation. And men of pious minds have been shaken to their inmost centre by the appalling prospect of the everlasting punishment of the wicked. But the difficulties which are, properly speaking, modern difficulties, are of another kind. They are, at least in their source, speculative rather than moral. The observed uniformity of nature, the indissoluble chain of cause and effect, the absolute certainty of the laws by which all visible phenomena are governed, these are now the stumbling-blocks even to devout minds. How, it is asked, can we reconcile these things with the belief in a Personal God, or at least with an ever-active Personal Will? Had the world ever a Maker? or, if it had, does He still control and guide it? Knowing as we do that the order of cause and effect is ever the same, how can we accept miracles or Divine interpositions of any kind? What avails prayer, when every event * This point has been touched on by Dr. A. S. Farrar in his "Bampton Lectures," a work which, for breadth and depth of learning, has few parallels in modern English literature, and which combines in no common degree the spirit of a sound faith and a true philosophy. Dr. Farrar says: "It is deeply interesting to observe, not merely that the difficulties concerning Providence felt by Job refer to the very subjects which painfully perplex the modern mind, but also that the friends of Job exhibit the instinctive tendency which is observed in modern times to denounce his doubt as sin, not less than to attribute his trials to evil as the direct cause. These two books of Scripture [Job and Ecclesiastes], together with the seventy-third Psalm, have an increasing religious importance as the world grows older. The things written aforetime were written for our learning."—Lecture I. p. 7, note.

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that happens has been ordained from eternity? How can any words of man interrupt the march of the Universe? Ships are wrecked and harvests are blighted, and famine and pestilence walk the earth, not because men have forgotten to pray, but in accordance with the unerring laws which storm, and blight, and disease obey. Such are some of the thoughts—the birth, it may be said, of modern science —which haunt and vex men now. Difficulties like these are not touched upon in Scripture. But the spirit in which all difficulties, all doubts should be met, is the same. If the answer lies in a region above and beyond us, our true wisdom is to wait in humble dependence upon God, in active fulfilment of what we can see to be our duty, till the day dawn and the shadows flee away. And it is this which Scripture teaches us in this Psalm, in Job, and in that other Book, which is such a wonderful record of a doubting self-tormenting spirit, the Book of Ecclesiastes. It has been said that the Book of Job and the 73rd Psalm "crush free thought."* It would have been truer to say that they teach us that there are heights which we cannot reach, depths which the intellect of man cannot fathom; that God's ways are past finding out; that difficulties, perplexities, sorrows, are best healed and forgotten in the Light which streams from His throne, in the Love which by His Spirit is shed abroad in the heart. But the Psalm teaches us also a lesson of forbearance towards the doubter. It is a lesson perhaps just now peculiarly needed. Christian sympathy is felt, Christian charity is extended toward every form of misery, whether mental or bodily, except toward that which is often the acutest of all, the anguish of doubt. Here it seems as if coldness, suspicion, even denunciation, were justifiable. And yet doubt, even to the verge of scepticism, as is plain from this Psalm, may be no proof of a bad and corrupt heart; it may rather be the evidence of an honest one. Doubt may spring from the very depth and earnestness of a man's faith. In the case of the Psalmist, as in the case of Job, that which lay at the bottom of the doubt, that which made it a thing so full of anguish, was the deep-rooted conviction of the righteousness of God. Unbelief does not doubt, faith doubts.† And God permits the doubt in His truest and noblest * Quinet, OEuvres, tome i. c. 5, § 4. † The expression has been criticised as paradoxical, but the following admirable passages, which I have met with since the first edition of this work was published, may justify my language. They are quoted by Archbishop Whately in his Annotations on Bacon's Essays, pp. 358, 359. The first is from a writer in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1847, on "The Genius of Pascal": "So little inconsistent with a habit of intelligent faith are such transient invasions of doubt, or such diminished

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servants, as our Lord did in the case of Thomas, that He may thereby plant their feet the more firmly on the rock of His own everlasting truth. There is, perhaps, no Psalm in which Faith asserts itself so triumphantly, cleaves to God with such words of lofty hope and affection, and that precisely because in no other instance has the fire been so searching, the test of faith so severe. It may be well to remember this when we see a noble soul compassed about with darkness, yet struggling to the light, lest we "vex one whom God has smitten, and tell of the pain of His wounded ones " (Ps. lxix. 26). The Psalm consists of two parts:-I. The Psalmist tells the story of the doubts which had assailed him, the temptation to which he had nearly succumbed. Ver. 1-14. II. He confesses the sinfulness of these doubts, and explains how he had been enabled to overcome them. Ver. 15-28. These principal portions have their further subdivisions (which are in the main those given by Hupfeld): I. a. First we have, by way of introduction, the conviction to which his struggle with doubt brought him, ver. 1; then the general statement of his offence, ver. 2, 3. b. The reason of which is more fully explained to be the prosperity of the wicked, ver. 4, 5; and their insolence and pride in consequence, ver. 6-11. c. The comfortless conclusion which he had thence drawn, ver. 12-14. perceptions of the evidence of truth, that it may even be said that it is only those who have in some measure experienced them, who can be said in the highest sense to believe at all. He who has never had a doubt, who believes what he believes for reasons which he thinks as irrefragable (if that be possible) as those of a mathematical demonstration, ought not to be said so much to believe as to know; his belief is to him knowledge, and his mind stands in the same relation to it, however erroneous and absurd that belief may be. It is rather he who believes — not indeed without the exercise of his reason, but without the full satisfaction of his reason—with a knowledge and appreciation of formidable objections—it is this man who may most truly be said intelligently to believe." The other is from a short poem by Bishop Hinds: "Yet so it is; belief springs still In souls that nurture doubt; And we must go to Him, who will The baneful weed cast out. "Did never thorns thy path beset? Beware—be not deceived; He who has never doubted yet Has never yet believed.'

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II. a. By way of transition, he tells how he had been led to acknowledge the impiety of this conclusion, and how, seeking for a deeper, truer view, he had come to the sanctuary of God, ver. 15— 17, where he had learned the sudden and fearful end of the wicked, ver. 18-20, and consequently the folly of his own speculation. b. Thus recovering from the almost fatal shock which his faith had received, he returns to a sense of his true position. God holds him by his right hand, God guides him for the present, and will bring him to a glorious end, ver. 23, 24; hence he rejoices in the thought that God is his great and only possession, ver. 25, 26. c. The general conclusion, that departure from God is death and destruction; that in His presence and in nearness to Him are to be found joy and safety, ver. 27, 28. [A PSALM OF ASAPH.a] I SURELYb God is good to Israel, (Even) to such as are of a pure heart. 2 But as for me, my feet were almost gone,c I. SURELY. This particle, which occurs twice again in this Psalm, is rendered differently in each case by the E. V.; here truly, in ver. 13 verily, in ver. 18 surely: but one rendering should be kept throughout. The Welsh more correctly has, yn ddiau (ver. I), diau (ver. 13, 18). The word has been already discussed in the note on lxii. 1, where we have seen it is capable of two meanings. Here it is used affirmatively, and expresses the satisfaction with which the conclusion has been arrived at, after all the anxious questionings and debatings through which the Psalmist has passed: "Yes, it is so; after all, God is good, notwithstanding all my doubts." It thus implies at the same time a tacit opposition to a different view of the case, such as that which is described afterwards. "Fresh from the conflict, he somewhat abruptly opens the Psalm with the confident enunciation of the truth, of which victory over doubt had now made him more, and more

intelligently, sure than ever, that God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart."—Essential Coherence of the Old and New Testament, by my brother, the Rev. T. T. Perowne, p. 85, to which I may, perhaps, be permitted to refer for a clear and satisfactory view of the whole Psalm. It is of importance to remark that the result of the conflict is stated before the conflict itself is described. There is no parade of doubt merely as doubt. He states first, and in the most natural way, the final conviction of his heart. ISRAEL. The next clause limits this, and reminds us that "they are not all Israel, which are of Israel." To the true Israel God is Love; to them "all things work together for good." OF A PURE HEART, lit. "pure of heart," as in xxiv. 4. Comp. Matt.v.8. 2. BUT AS FOR ME. The pronoun is emphatic. He places himself, with shame and sorrow, almost in opposition to that Israel of God

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My steps had well-nigh slipt. 3 For I was envious at the arrogant, When I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 For they have no bands in their death,d And their strengthe (continueth) firm. 5 They are not in trouble as (other) men, of which he had just spoken. He has in view the happiness of those who had felt no doubt. Calvin somewhat differently explains: Even I, with all my knowledge and advantages, I who ought to have known better. GONE, lit. "inclined," not so much in the sense of being bent under him, as rather of being turned aside, out of the way, as in Numb. xx. 17, 2 Sam. ii. 19, 21, &c. The verb in the next clause expresses the giving way from weakness, fear, &c., HAD . . . SLIPT, lit. "were poured out" like water. 3. ENVIOUS, as in xxxvii. 1, Prov. xxiii. 17, wishing that his lot were like theirs who seemed to be the favourites of heaven. Calvin quotes the story of Dionysius the Less, who, having sacrilegiously plundered a temple, and having sailed safely home, said: "Do you see that the gods smile upon sacrilege?" The prosperity and impunity of the wicked invite others to follow their example. THE ARROGANT. The word denotes those whose pride and infatuation amounts almost to madness. It is difficult to find an exact equivalent in English. Gesenius renders it by superbi, insolentes, and J. D. Michaelis by stolide gloriosi, "vain boasters." It occurs in v. 5 [6], where see noted, and again in xxiv. 4 [5]. The LXX., in all these instances, render vaguely, a@nomoi, para do a@dontej w[j xoroi>, pa?sai phgai< mou e]n soi ai]ne e]n soi a]rxo mh toi?j ei]rhkon ai]xmalwsi a!gio