The fruition heartens
for renewed exercise of
confidence,
in which David feels himself upheld by God, and foresees his enemies' defeat
and his own triumph. "My soul cleaveth after Thee"—a remarkable
phrase, in which the two metaphors of tenacious adherence and eager following
are mingled to express the two "phases of faith," which are really
one—of union with and quest after God, the possession which pursues, the
pursuit which possesses Him who is at once grasped and felt after by the finite
creature whose straitest narrowness is not too narrow to be blessed by some
indwelling of God, but whose widest expansion of capacity and desire can but
contain a fragment of His fulness. From such elevation of high communion he
looks down and onward into the dim future, his enemies sunken, like Korah and
his rebels, into the gaping earth, or scattered in fight, and the jackals that
were snuffing hungrily about his camp in the wilderness gorging themselves on
corpses, while he himself, once more "king," shall rejoice in God,
and with his faithful companions, whose lips and hearts were true to God and
His anointed, shall glory in the deliverance that by the arbitrament of victory
has flung back the slanders of the rebels in their teeth, and choked them
with their own lies.
Our space forbids more than
a brief reference to psalm lxii., which seems also to belong to this time. It
has several points of contact with those already considered, e.g.,
the phrase, "sons of men," in the sense of "nobles" (ver.
9); "my soul," as equivalent to "myself," and yet as a kind
of quasi-separate personality which he can study and exhort; the significant
use of the term "people," and the double exhortations to his own
devout followers and to the arrogant enemy. The whole tone is that of patient
resignation, which we have found characterising David now. The first words are
the key-note of the whole, "Truly unto God my soul is silence"—is all
one great stillness of submissive waiting upon Him. It was in the very crisis
of his fate, in the suspense of the uncertain issue of the rebellion, that
these words, the very sound of which has calmed many a heart since, welled to
his lips. The expression of unwavering faith and unbroken peace is much
heightened by the frequent recurrence of the word which is variously translated
"truly," "surely," and "only." It carries the force of confident affirmation,
like the "verily" of the New Testament, and is here most
significantly prefixed to the assertions of his patient resignation (ver. 1);
of God's defence (ver. 2); of the enemies' whispered counsels (ver. 4); to his
exhortation of his soul to the resignation which it already exercises (ver. 5);
and to the triumphant reiteration of God's all-sufficient protection. How
beautifully, too, does that reiteration—almost verbal repetition—of the opening
words strengthen the impression of his habitual trust. His soul in its silence
murmurs to itself, as it were, the blessed thoughts over and over again. Their
echoes haunt his spirit "lingering and wandering on, as loth to die;"
and if for a moment the vision of his enemies disturbs their flow, one
indignant question flung at them suffices, "How long will ye rush upon a
man? (how long) will ye all of you thrust him down as (if he were) a bowing
wall, a tottering fence?" and with a rapid glance at their plots and
bitter words, he comes back again to his calm gaze on God.
Lovingly he
accumulates happy names for Him, which, in their imagery, as well as in their
repetition, remind us of the former songs of the fugitive. "My
rock," in whom I hide; "He is my salvation," which is even more
than "from Him cometh my salvation;" my "fortress," my
"glory," "the rock of my strength," "my refuge."
So many phases of his need and of God's sufficiency thus gathered together,
tell how familiar to the thoughts and real to the experience of the aged
fugitive was his security in Jehovah. The thirty years since last he had
wandered there have confirmed the faith of his earlier songs; and though the
ruddy locks of the young chieftain are silvered with grey now, and sins and
sorrows have saddened him, yet he can take up again with deeper meaning the
tones of his old praise, and let the experience of age seal with its
"verily" the hopes of youth. Exhortations to his people to unite
themselves with him in his faith, and assurances that God is a refuge for them
too, with solemn warnings to the rebels, close this psalm of glad submission.
It is remarkable for the absence of all petitions. He needs nothing beyond what
he has. As the companion psalm says, his soul "is satisfied." Communion
with God has its moments of restful blessedness, when desire is stilled, and
expires in peaceful fruition.
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