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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Life of David, by Alexander Maclaren
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Life of David
+       As Reflected in His Psalms
+
+Author: Alexander Maclaren
+
+Release Date: June 19, 2007 [EBook #21872]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF DAVID ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Colin Bell, Thomas Strong and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+{Transcriber's Note: Obvious typos, printing errors and mis-spellings
+  have been corrected, but spellings have not been modernized. Footnotes
+  follow immediately the paragraph in which they are noted. In Chapter
+  XV, eighth paragraph, second last line, "His" changed to "his" in the
+  sentence "Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes waking" to agree
+  with the author's obvious reference to David rather than to God.}
+
+
+            =The Household Library of Exposition.=
+
+
+                      THE LIFE OF DAVID
+                 AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS.
+
+
+
+
+                            THE
+                        LIFE OF DAVID
+                 AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS.
+
+
+                            BY
+
+
+                  ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D.
+
+
+                      _NINTH EDITION._
+
+
+                         =London:=
+                   HODDER AND STOUGHTON
+                   27, PATERNOSTER ROW
+
+
+                          MCMIII
+
+
+_Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                   PAGE
+
+    I. INTRODUCTION,                                                 1
+   II. EARLY DAYS,                                                  14
+   III. EARLY DAYS--_continued_,                                    31
+    IV. THE EXILE,                                                  49
+     V. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                     70
+    VI. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                     86
+   VII. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                    110
+  VIII. THE EXILE--_continued_,                                    130
+    IX. THE KING,                                                  144
+     X. THE KING--_continued_,                                     157
+    XI. THE KING--_continued_,                                     174
+   XII. THE KING--_continued_,                                     185
+  XIII. THE TEARS OF THE PENITENT,                                 205
+   XIV. CHASTISEMENTS,                                             232
+    XV. THE SONGS OF THE FUGITIVE,                                 245
+        INDEX,                                                     262
+        WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR,                                  263
+        BIBLE CLASS EXPOSITIONS,                                   264
+        THE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF EXPOSITION,                       265
+
+
+
+
+I.--INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the life of David is its
+romantic variety of circumstances. What a many-coloured career that was
+which began amidst the pastoral solitudes of Bethlehem, and ended in the
+chamber where the dying ears heard the blare of the trumpets that
+announced the accession of Bathsheba's son! He passes through the most
+sharply contrasted conditions, and from each gathers some fresh fitness
+for his great work of giving voice and form to all the phases of devout
+feeling. The early shepherd life deeply influenced his character, and
+has left its traces on many a line of his psalms.
+
+  "Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
+   His daily teachers had been woods and rills;
+   The silence that is in the starry sky,
+   The sleep that is among the lonely hills."
+
+And then, in strange contrast with the meditative quiet and lowly duties
+of these first years, came the crowded vicissitudes of the tempestuous
+course through which he reached his throne--court minstrel, companion
+and friend of a king, idol of the people, champion of the armies of
+God--and in his sudden elevation keeping the gracious sweetness of his
+lowlier, and perhaps happier days. The scene changes with startling
+suddenness to the desert. He is "hunted like a partridge upon the
+mountains," a fugitive and half a freebooter, taking service at foreign
+courts, and lurking on the frontiers with a band of outlaws recruited
+from the "dangerous classes" of Israel. Like Dante and many more, he has
+to learn the weariness of the exile's lot--how hard his fare, how
+homeless his heart, how cold the courtesies of aliens, how unslumbering
+the suspicions which watch the refugee who fights on the side of his
+"natural enemies." One more swift transition and he is on the throne,
+for long years victorious, prosperous, and beloved.
+
+  "Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place
+   The wisdom which adversity had bred,"
+
+till suddenly he is plunged into the mire, and falsifies all his past,
+and ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heart
+and the prosperity of his kingdom. Thenceforward trouble is never far
+away; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness of
+his great fault, as well as by hatred and rebellion and murder in his
+family, and discontent and alienation in his kingdom.
+
+None of the great men of Scripture pass through a course of so many
+changes; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of them
+were so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, by
+such heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. Like his
+great Son and Lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be "in all
+points tempted like as we are," that his words may be fitted for the
+solace and strength of the whole world. Poets "learn in suffering what
+they teach in song." These quick transitions of fortune, and this wide
+experience, are the many-coloured threads from which the rich web of his
+psalms is woven.
+
+And while the life is singularly varied, the character is also
+singularly full and versatile. In this respect, too, he is most unlike
+the other leading figures of Old Testament history. Contrast him, for
+example, with the stern majesty of Moses, austere and simple as the
+tables of stone; or with the unvarying tone in the gaunt strength of
+Elijah. These and the other mighty men in Israel are like the ruder
+instruments of music--the trumpet of Sinai, with its one prolonged note.
+David is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath of
+God murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring of
+triumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies of
+all devout emotions.
+
+The man had his faults--grave enough. Let it be remembered that no one
+has judged them more rigorously than himself. The critics who have
+delighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; and
+their indictment has been little more than the quotation of his own
+confession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable by
+the delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life of
+occasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exile
+and war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at times
+break from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affection
+became, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an unworthy
+son.
+
+But when all this is admitted, there remains a wonderfully rich, lovable
+character. He is the very ideal of a minstrel hero, such as the legends
+of the East especially love to paint. The shepherd's staff or sling, the
+sword, the sceptre, and the lyre are equally familiar to his hands. That
+union of the soldier and the poet gives the life a peculiar charm, and
+is very strikingly brought out in that chapter of the book of Samuel (2
+Sam. xxiii.) which begins, "These be the last words of David," and after
+giving the swan-song of him whom it calls "the sweet psalmist of
+Israel," passes immediately to the other side of the dual character,
+with, "These be the names of the mighty men whom David had."
+
+Thus, on the one side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all its
+capacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulous
+mobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-like
+wonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, its
+simplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings "after worlds half
+realized," its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. He was made to
+be the inspired poet of the religious affections.
+
+And, on the other side, we see the greatest qualities of a military
+leader of the antique type, in which personal daring and a strong arm
+count for more than strategic skill. He dashes at Goliath with an
+enthusiasm of youthful courage and faith. While still in the earliest
+bloom of his manhood, at the head of his wild band of outlaws, he shows
+himself sagacious, full of resource, prudent in counsel, and swift as
+lightning in act; frank and generous, bold and gentle, cheery in defeat,
+calm in peril, patient in privations and ready to share them with his
+men, modest and self-restrained in victory, chivalrous to his foes, ever
+watchful, ever hopeful--a born leader and king of men.
+
+The basis of all was a profound, joyous trust in his Shepherd God, an
+ardour of personal love to Him, such as had never before been expressed,
+if it had ever found place, in Israel. That trust "opened his mouth to
+show forth" God's praise, and strengthened his "fingers to fight." He
+has told us himself what was his habitual temper, and how it was
+sustained: "I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my
+right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my
+glory rejoiceth." (Psa. xvi. 8, 9.)
+
+Thus endowed, he moved among men with that irresistible fascination
+which only the greatest exercise. From the day when he stole like a
+sunbeam into the darkened chamber where Saul wrestled with the evil
+spirit, he bows all hearts that come under his spell. The women of
+Israel chant his name with song and timbrel, the daughter of Saul
+confesses her love unasked, the noble soul of Jonathan cleaves to him,
+the rude outlaws in his little army peril their lives to gratify his
+longing for a draught from the well where he had watered his father's
+flocks; the priests let him take the consecrated bread, and trust him
+with Goliath's sword, from behind the altar; his lofty courtesy wins the
+heart of Abigail; the very king of the Philistines tells him that he is
+"good in his sight as an angel of God;" the unhappy Saul's last word to
+him is a blessing; six hundred men of Gath forsake home and country to
+follow his fortunes when he returns from exile; and even in the dark
+close of his reign, though sin and self-indulgence, and neglect of his
+kingly duties, had weakened his subjects' loyalty, his flight before
+Absalom is brightened by instances of passionate devotion which no
+common character could have evoked; and even then his people are ready
+to die for him, and in their affectionate pride call him "the light of
+Israel." It was a prophetic instinct which made Jesse call his youngest
+boy by a name apparently before unused--David, "Beloved."
+
+The Spirit of God, acting through these great natural gifts, and using
+this diversified experience of life, originated in him a new form of
+inspiration. The Law was the revelation of the mind, and, in some
+measure, of the heart, of God to man. The Psalm is the echo of the law,
+the return current set in motion by the outflow of the Divine will, the
+response of the heart of man to the manifested God. There had, indeed,
+been traces of hymns before David. There were the burst of triumph which
+the daughters of Israel sang, with timbrel and dance, over Pharaoh and
+his host; the prayer of Moses the man of God (Psa. xc.), so archaic in
+its tone, bearing in every line the impress of the weary wilderness and
+the law of death; the song of the dying lawgiver (Deut. xxxii.); the
+passionate paean of Deborah; and some few briefer fragments. But,
+practically, the Psalm began with David; and though many hands struck
+the harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, he
+remains emphatically "the sweet psalmist of Israel."
+
+The psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a marked
+similarity of manner. Their characteristics have been well summed up as
+"creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form and
+movement, antique but lucid style;"[A] to which may be added the
+intensity of their devotion, the passion of Divine love that glows in
+them all. They correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life as
+given in the historical books. The early shepherd days, the manifold
+sorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, the
+triumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikingly
+in the latter, all reappear in the psalms. The illusions, indeed, are
+for the most part general rather than special, as is natural. His words
+are thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials of
+other lives. But it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that the
+allusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them with
+any precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutually
+illustrative. Much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed,
+and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on that
+score have been made, it still appears possible to carry the process
+sufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definiteness
+of many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence as
+throwing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made in
+some degree in this volume.
+
+[A] Delitzsch, Kommentar, u. d. Psalter II. 376.
+
+It will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the Davidic
+psalms in general. Can we tell which are David's? The Psalter, as is
+generally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from some
+idea that it corresponded with the Pentateuch. These five books are
+marked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. The first
+portion consists of Psa. i.-xli.; the second of Psa. xlii.-lxxii; the
+third of Psa. lxxiii.-lxxxix; the fourth of Psa. xc.-cvi.; and the fifth
+of Psa. cvii.-cl. The psalms attributed to David are unequally
+distributed through these five books. There are seventy-three in all,
+and they run thus:--In the first book there are thirty-seven; so that
+if we regard psalms i. and ii. as a kind of double introduction, a
+frontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the first
+book proper only two which are not regarded as David's. The second book
+has a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. The
+third book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen,
+eight of which (cxxxviii.-cxlv.) occur almost at the close. The
+intention is obvious--to throw the Davidic psalms as much as possible
+together in the first two books. And the inference is not unnatural that
+these may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwards
+added the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms of
+David, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at the
+end, so as to round off the whole.
+
+Be that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of the
+Psalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' names
+are at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided the
+order of the collection in the grouping not only of Davidic psalms, but
+also of those attributed to the sons of Korah (xlii.-xlix.) and to Asaph
+(lxxiii.-lxxxiii.)
+
+The question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotly
+debated. The balance of modern opinion is decidedly against their
+genuineness. As in greater matters, so here "the higher criticism" comes
+to the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, and
+on very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective of
+these ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. The extreme
+form of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of Ewald, who
+has devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with all
+his equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and has
+come to the conclusion that we have but eleven of David's psalms,--which
+is surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method which
+has attained it.
+
+These editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by such
+considerations as these: The Septuagint translators found them, and did
+not understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explain
+them; the Book of Chronicles throws no light upon them; they are very
+rare in the two last books of the Psalter (Delitzsch, ii. 393). In some
+cases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there is
+nothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which they
+are appended; while very frequently they throw a flood of light upon
+these, and all but prove their trustworthiness by their appropriateness.
+They are not authoritative, but they merit respectful consideration,
+and, as Dr. Perowne puts it in his valuable work on the Psalms, stand on
+a par with the subscriptions to the Epistles in the New Testament.
+Regarding them thus, and yet examining the psalms to which they are
+prefixed, there seem to be about forty-five which we may attribute with
+some confidence to David, and with these we shall be concerned in this
+book.
+
+
+
+
+II.--EARLY DAYS
+
+
+The life of David is naturally divided into epochs, of which we may
+avail ourselves for the more ready arrangement of our material. These
+are--his early years up to his escape from the court of Saul, his exile,
+the prosperous beginning of his reign, his sin and penitence, his flight
+before Absalom's rebellion, and the darkened end.
+
+We have but faint incidental traces of his life up to his anointing by
+Samuel, with which the narrative in the historical books opens. But
+perhaps the fact that the story begins with that consecration to office,
+is of more value than the missing biography of his childhood could have
+been. It teaches us the point of view from which Scripture regards its
+greatest names--as nothing, except in so far as they are God's
+instruments. Hence its carelessness, notwithstanding that so much of it
+is history, of all that merely illustrates the personal character of
+its heroes. Hence, too, the clearness with which, notwithstanding that
+indifference, the living men are set before us--the image cut with half
+a dozen strokes of the chisel.
+
+We do not know the age of David when Samuel appeared in the little
+village with the horn of sacred oil in his hand. The only approximation
+to it is furnished by the fact, that he was thirty at the beginning of
+his reign. (2 Sam. v. 4.) If we take into account that his exile must
+have lasted for a very considerable period (one portion of it, his
+second flight to the Philistines, was sixteen months, 1 Sam. xxvii.
+7),--that the previous residence at the court of Saul must have been
+long enough to give time for his gradual rise to popularity, and
+thereafter for the gradual development of the king's insane
+hatred,--that further back still there was an indefinite period, between
+the fight with Goliath, and the first visit as a minstrel-physician to
+the palace, which was spent at Bethlehem, and that that visit itself
+cannot have been very brief, since in its course he became very dear and
+familiar to Saul,--it will not seem that all these events could be
+crowded into less than some twelve or fifteen years, or that he could
+have been more than a lad of some sixteen years of age when Samuel's
+hand smoothed the sacred oil on his clustering curls.
+
+How life had gone with him till then, we can easily gather from the
+narrative of Scripture. His father's household seems to have been one in
+which modest frugality ruled. There is no trace of Jesse having
+servants; his youngest child does menial work; the present which he
+sends to his king when David goes to court was simple, and such as a man
+in humble life would give--an ass load of bread, one skin of wine, and
+one kid--his flocks were small--"a few sheep." It would appear as if
+prosperity had not smiled on the family since the days of Jesse's
+grandfather, Boaz, that "mighty man of wealth." David's place in the
+household does not seem to have been a happy one. His father scarcely
+reckoned him amongst his sons, and answers Samuel's question, if the
+seven burly husbandmen whom he has seen are all his children, with a
+trace of contempt as he remembers that there is another, "and, behold,
+he keepeth the sheep." Of his mother we hear but once, and that
+incidentally, for a moment, long after. His brothers had no love for
+him, and do not appear to have shared either his heart or his fortunes.
+The boy evidently had the usual fate of souls like his, to grow up in
+uncongenial circumstances, little understood and less sympathised with
+by the common-place people round them, and thrown back therefore all the
+more decisively upon themselves. The process sours and spoils some, but
+it is the making of more--and where, as in this case, the nature is
+thrown back upon God, and not on its own morbid operation, strength
+comes from repression, and sweetness from endurance. He may have
+received some instruction in one of Samuel's schools for the prophets,
+but we are left in entire ignorance of what outward helps to unfold
+itself were given to his budding life.
+
+Whatever others he had, no doubt those which are emphasized in the Bible
+story were the chief, namely, his occupation and the many gifts which it
+brought to him. The limbs, "like hinds' feet," the sinewy arms which
+"broke a bow of steel," the precision with which he used the sling, the
+agility which "leaped over a rampart," the health that glowed in his
+"ruddy" face, were the least of his obligations to the breezy uplands,
+where he kept his father's sheep. His early life taught him courage,
+when he "smote the lion" and laid hold by his ugly muzzle of the bear
+that "rose against him," rearing itself upright for the fatal hug.
+Solitude and familiarity with nature helped to nurture the poetical side
+of his character, and to strengthen that meditative habit which blends
+so strangely with his impetuous activity, and which for the most part
+kept tumults and toils from invading his central soul. They threw him
+back on God who peopled the solitude and spoke in all nature. Besides
+this, he acquired in the sheepcote lessons which he practised on the
+throne, that rule means service, and that the shepherd of men holds his
+office in order that he may protect and guide. And in the lowly
+associations of his humble home, he learned the life of the people,
+their simple joys, their unconspicuous toils, their unnoticed sorrows--a
+priceless piece of knowledge both for the poet and for the king.
+
+A breach in all the tranquil habits of this modest life was made by
+Samuel's astonishing errand. The story is told with wonderful
+picturesqueness and dramatic force. The minute account of the successive
+rejections of his brothers, Samuel's question and Jesse's answer, and
+then the pause of idle waiting till the messenger goes and returns,
+heighten the expectation with which we look for his appearance. And then
+what a sweet young face is lovingly painted for us! "He was ruddy, and
+withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to" (1 Sam. xvi.
+12)--of fair complexion, with golden hair, which is rare among these
+swarthy, black-locked easterns, with lovely eyes (for that is the
+meaning of the words which the English Bible renders "of a beautiful
+countenance"), large and liquid as become a poet. So he stood before the
+old prophet, and with swelling heart and reverent awe received the holy
+chrism. In silence, as it would seem, Samuel anointed him. Whether the
+secret of his high destiny was imparted to him then, or left to be
+disclosed in future years, is not told. But at all events, whether with
+full understanding of what was before him or no, he must have been
+conscious of a call that would carry him far away from the pastures and
+olive yards of the little hamlet and of a new Spirit stirring in him
+from that day forward.
+
+This sudden change in all the outlook of his life must have given new
+materials for thought when he went back to his humble task.
+Responsibility, or the prospect of it, makes lads into men very quickly.
+Graver meditations, humbler consciousness of weakness, a firmer trust in
+God who had laid the burden upon him, would do in days the work of
+years. And the necessity for bidding back the visions of the future in
+order to do faithfully the obscure duties of the present, would add
+self-control and patience, not usually the graces of youth. How swiftly
+he matured is singularly shown in the next recorded incident--his
+summons to the court of Saul, by the character of him drawn by the
+courtier who recommends him to the king. He speaks of David in words
+more suitable to a man of established renown than to a stripling. He is
+minstrel and warrior, "cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man,"
+and "skilled in speech (already eloquent), and fair in form, and the
+Lord is with him." (1 Sam. xvi. 18.) So quickly had the new
+circumstances and the energy of the Spirit of God, like tropical
+sunshine, ripened his soul.
+
+That first visit to the court was but an episode in his life, however
+helpful to his growth it may have been. It would give him the knowledge
+of new scenes, widen his experience, and prepare him for the future. But
+it cannot have been of very long duration. Possibly his harp lost its
+power over Saul's gloomy spirit, when he had become familiar with its
+notes. For whatever reason, he returned to his father's house, and
+gladly exchanged the favour at court, which might have seemed to a
+merely ambitious man the first step towards fulfilling the prophecy of
+Samuel's anointing, for the freedom of the pastoral solitudes about
+Bethlehem. There he remained, living to outward seeming as in the quiet
+days before these two great earthquakes in his life, but with deeper
+thoughts and new power, with broader experience, and a wider horizon,
+until the hour when he was finally wrenched from his seclusion, and
+flung into the whirlpool of his public career.
+
+There are none of David's psalms which can be with any certainty
+referred to this first period of his life; but it has left deep traces
+on many of them. The allusions to natural scenery and the frequent
+references to varying aspects of the shepherd's life are specimens of
+these. One characteristic of the poetic temperament is the faithful
+remembrance and cherishing of early days. How fondly he recalled them is
+shown in that most pathetic incident of his longing, as a weary exile,
+for one draught of water from the well at Bethlehem--where in the dear
+old times he had so often led his flocks.
+
+But though we cannot say confidently that we have any psalms prior to
+his first exile, there are several which, whatever their date may be,
+are echoes of his thoughts in these first days. This is especially the
+case in regard to the group which describe varying aspects of
+nature--viz., Psalms xix., viii., xxix. They are unlike his later psalms
+in the almost entire absence of personal references, or of any trace of
+pressing cares, or of signs of a varied experience of human life. In
+their self-forgetful contemplation of nature, in their silence about
+sorrow, in their tranquil beauty, they resemble the youthful works of
+many a poet whose later verse throbs with quivering consciousness of
+life's agonies, or wrestles strongly with life's problems. They may not
+unnaturally be regarded as the outpouring of a young heart at leisure
+from itself, and from pain, far from men and very near God. The fresh
+mountain air of Bethlehem blows through them, and the dew of life's
+quiet morning is on them. The early experience supplied their materials,
+whatever was the date of their composition; and in them we can see what
+his inward life was in these budding years. The gaze of child-like
+wonder and awe upon the blazing brightness of the noonday, and on the
+mighty heaven with all its stars, the deep voice with which all creation
+spoke of God, the great thoughts of the dignity of man (thoughts ever
+welcome to lofty youthful souls), the gleaming of an inward light
+brighter than all suns, the consciousness of mysteries of weakness which
+may become miracles of sin in one's own heart, the assurance of close
+relation to God as His anointed and His servant, the cry for help and
+guidance--all this is what we should expect David to have thought and
+felt as he wandered among the hills, alone with God; and this is what
+these psalms give us.
+
+Common to them all is the peculiar manner of looking upon nature, so
+uniform in David's psalms, so unlike more modern descriptive poetry. He
+can smite out a picture in a phrase, but he does not care to paint
+landscapes. He feels the deep analogies between man and his
+dwelling-place, but he does not care to lend to nature a shadowy life,
+the reflection of our own. Creation is to him neither a subject for
+poetical description, nor for scientific examination. It is nothing but
+the garment of God, the apocalypse of the heavenly. And common to them
+all is also the swift transition from the outward facts which reveal
+God, to the spiritual world, where His presence is, if it were possible,
+yet more needful, and His operations yet mightier. And common to them
+all is a certain rush of full thought and joyous power, which is again a
+characteristic of youthful work, and is unlike the elegiac tenderness
+and pathos of David's later hymns.
+
+The nineteenth Psalm paints for us the glory of the heavens by day, as
+the eighth by night. The former gathers up the impressions of many a
+fresh morning when the solitary shepherd-boy watched the sun rising over
+the mountains of Moab, which close the eastern view from the hills above
+Bethlehem. The sacred silence of dawn, the deeper hush of night, have
+voice for his ear. "No speech! and no words! unheard is their voice."
+But yet, "in all the earth goeth forth their line,[B] and in the end of
+the habitable world their sayings." The heavens and the firmament, the
+linked chorus of day and night, are heralds of God's glory, with silent
+speech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. And as he looks, there
+leaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northern
+lands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom from the
+bridal chamber, like some athlete impatient for the course. How the joy
+of morning and its new vigour throb in the words! And then he watches
+the strong runner climbing the heavens till the fierce heat beats down
+into the deep cleft of the Jordan, and all the treeless southern hills,
+as they slope towards the desert, lie bare and blazing beneath the
+beams.
+
+[B] Their boundary, _i.e._, their territory, or the region through which
+their witness extends. Others render "their chord," or sound (LXX.
+Ewald, etc.)
+
+The sudden transition from the revelation of God in nature to His voice
+in the law, has seemed to many critics unaccountable, except on the
+supposition that this psalm is made up of two fragments, put together by
+a later compiler; and some of them have even gone so far as to maintain
+that "the feeling which saw God revealed in the law did not arise till
+the time of Josiah."[C] But such a hypothesis is not required to explain
+either the sudden transition or the difference in style and rhythm
+between the two parts of the psalm, which unquestionably exists. The
+turn from the outer world to the better light of God's word, is most
+natural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the difference
+of style and measure gives emphasis to the contrast. There is also an
+obvious connection between the two parts, inasmuch as the law is
+described by epithets, which in part hint at its being a brighter sun,
+enlightening the eyes.
+
+[C] "Psalms chronologically arranged"--following Ewald.
+
+The Word which declares the will of the Lord is better than the heavens
+which tell His glory. The abundance of synonyms for that word show how
+familiar to his thoughts it was. To him it is "the law," "the
+testimonies" by which God witnesses of Himself and of man: "the
+statutes," the fixed settled ordinances; that which teaches "the fear of
+God," the "judgments" or utterances of His mind on human conduct. They
+are "perfect, firm, right, clean, pure,"--like that spotless
+sun--"eternal, true." "They quicken, make wise, enlighten," even as the
+light of the lower world. His heart prizes them "more than gold," of
+which in his simple life he knew so little; more than "the honey," which
+he had often seen dropping from "the comb" in the pastures of the
+wilderness.
+
+And then the twofold contemplation rises into the loftier region of
+prayer. He feels that there are dark depths in his soul, gloomier pits
+than any into which the noontide sun shines. He speaks as one who is
+conscious of dormant evils, which life has not yet evolved, and his
+prayer is more directed towards the future than the past, and is thus
+very unlike the tone of the later psalms, that wail out penitence and
+plead for pardon. "Errors," or weaknesses,--"faults" unknown to
+himself,--"high-handed sins,"[D]--such is the climax of the evils from
+which he prays for deliverance. He knows himself "Thy servant" (2 Sam.
+vii. 5, 8; Psa. lxxviii. 70)--an epithet which may refer to his
+consecration to God's work by Samuel's anointing. He needs not only a
+God who sets His glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is made
+known, but one who will touch his spirit,--not merely a Maker, but a
+pardoning God; and his faith reaches its highest point as his song
+closes with the sacred name of the covenant Jehovah, repeated for the
+seventh time, and invoked in one final aspiration of a trustful heart,
+as "my Rock, and my Redeemer."
+
+[D] The form of the word would make "reckless men" a more natural
+translation; but probably the context requires a third, more aggravated
+sort of sin.
+
+The eighth psalm is a companion picture, a night-piece, which, like the
+former, speaks of many an hour of lonely brooding below the heavens,
+whether its composition fall within this early period or no. The
+prophetic and doctrinal value of the psalms is not our main subject in
+the present volume, so that we have to touch but very lightly on this
+grand hymn. What does it show us of the singer? We see him, like other
+shepherds on the same hills, long after "keeping watch over his flocks
+by night," and overwhelmed by all the magnificence of an eastern sky,
+with its lambent lights. So bright, so changeless, so far,--how great
+they are, how small the boy that gazes up so wistfully. Are they gods,
+as all but his own nation believed? No,--"the work of Thy fingers,"
+"which Thou hast ordained." The consciousness of God as their Maker
+delivers from the temptation of confounding bigness with greatness, and
+wakes into new energy that awful sense of personality which towers above
+all the stars. He is a babe and suckling--is that a trace of the early
+composition of the psalm?--still he knows that out of his lips, already
+beginning to break into song, and out of the lips of his fellows, God
+perfects praise. There speaks the sweet singer of Israel, prizing as the
+greatest of God's gifts his growing faculty, and counting his God-given
+words as nobler than the voice of "night unto night." God's fingers made
+these, but God's own breath is in him. God ordained them, but God visits
+him. The description of man's dignity and dominion indicates how
+familiar David was with the story in Genesis. It may perhaps also,
+besides all the large prophetic truths which it contains, have some
+special reference to his own earlier experience. It is at least worth
+noting that he speaks of the dignity of man as kingly, like that which
+was dawning on himself, and that the picture has no shadows either of
+sorrow or of sin,--a fact which may point to his younger days, when
+lofty thoughts of the greatness of the soul are ever natural and when in
+his case the afflictions and crimes that make their presence felt in
+all his later works had not fallen upon him. Perhaps, too, it may not be
+altogether fanciful to suppose that we may see the shepherd-boy
+surrounded by his flocks, and the wild creatures that prowled about the
+fold, and the birds asleep in their coverts beneath the moonlight, in
+his enumeration of the subjects of his first and happiest kingdom, where
+he ruled far away from men and sorrow, seeing God everywhere, and
+learning to perfect praise from his youthful lips.
+
+
+
+
+III.--EARLY DAYS--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+In addition to the psalms already considered, which are devoted to the
+devout contemplation of nature, and stand in close connection with
+David's early days, there still remains one universally admitted to be
+his. The twenty-ninth psalm, like both the preceding, has to do with the
+glory of God as revealed in the heavens, and with earth only as the
+recipient of skyey influences; but while these breathed the profoundest
+tranquillity, as they watched the silent splendour of the sun, and the
+peace of moonlight shed upon a sleeping world, this is all tumult and
+noise. It is a highly elaborate and vivid picture of a thunderstorm,
+such as must often have broken over the shepherd-psalmist as he crouched
+under some shelf of limestone, and gathered his trembling charge about
+him. Its very structure reproduces in sound an echo of the rolling peals
+reverberating among the hills.
+
+There is first an invocation, in the highest strain of devout poetry,
+calling upon the "sons of God," the angels who dwell above the lower
+sky, and who see from above the slow gathering of the storm-clouds, to
+ascribe to Jehovah the glory of His name--His character as set forth in
+the tempest. They are to cast themselves before Him "in holy attire," as
+priests of the heavenly sanctuary. Their silent and expectant worship is
+like the brooding stillness before the storm. We feel the waiting hush
+in heaven and earth.
+
+Then the tempest breaks. It crashes and leaps through the short
+sentences, each like the clap of the near thunder.
+
+  _a._  The voice of Jehovah (is) on the waters.
+        The God of glory thunders.
+         _Jehovah (is) on many waters._
+        The voice of Jehovah in strength!
+        The voice of Jehovah in majesty!
+
+  _b._  The voice of Jehovah rending the cedars!
+         _And Jehovah rends the cedars of Lebanon_,
+        And makes them leap like a calf;
+        Lebanon and Sirion like a young buffalo
+        The voice of Jehovah hewing flashes of fire!
+
+  _c._  The voice of Jehovah shakes the desert,
+         _Jehovah shakes the Kadesh desert_.
+
+        The voice of Jehovah makes the hinds writhe
+        And scathes the woods--and in His temple--
+        --All in it (are) saying, "Glory."
+
+Seven times the roar shakes the world. The voice of the seven thunders
+is the voice of Jehovah. In the short clauses, with their uniform
+structure, the pause between, and the recurrence of the same initial
+words, we hear the successive peals, the silence that parts them, and
+the monotony of their unvaried sound. Thrice we have the reverberation
+rolling through the sky or among the hills, imitated by clauses which
+repeat previous ones, as indicated by the italics, and one forked flame
+blazes out in the brief, lightning-like sentence, "The voice of Jehovah
+(is) hewing flashes of fire," which wonderfully gives the impression of
+their streaming fiercely forth, as if cloven from some solid block of
+fire, their swift course, and their instantaneous extinction.
+
+The range and effects of the storm, too, are vividly painted. It is
+first "on the waters," which may possibly mean the Mediterranean, but
+more probably, "the waters that are above the firmament," and so depicts
+the clouds as gathering high in air. Then it comes down with a crash on
+the northern mountains, splintering the gnarled cedars, and making
+Lebanon rock with all its woods--leaping across the deep valley of
+Coelo-Syria, and smiting Hermon (for which Sirion is a Sidonian name),
+the crest of the Anti Lebanon, till it reels. Onward it sweeps--or
+rather, perhaps, it is all around the psalmist; and even while he hears
+the voice rolling from the furthest north, the extreme south echoes the
+roar. The awful voice shakes[E] the wilderness, as it booms across its
+level surface. As far south as Kadesh (probably Petra) the tremor
+spreads, and away in the forests of Edom the wild creatures in their
+terror slip their calves, and the oaks are scathed and stripped of their
+leafy honours. And all the while, like a mighty diapason sounding on
+through the tumult, the voice of the sons of God in the heavenly temple
+is heard proclaiming "Glory!"
+
+[E] Delitzsch would render "whirls in circles"--a picturesque allusion
+to the sand pillars which accompany storms in the desert.
+
+The psalm closes with lofty words of confidence, built on the story of
+the past, as well as on the contemplation of the present. "Jehovah sat
+throned for (_i.e._, to send on earth) the flood" which once drowned
+the world of old. "Jehovah will sit throned, a King for ever." That
+ancient judgment spoke of His power over all the forces of nature, in
+their most terrible form. So now and for ever, all are His servants, and
+effect His purposes. Then, as the tempest rolls away, spent and
+transient, the sunshine streams out anew from the softened blue over a
+freshened world, and every raindrop on the leaves twinkles into diamond
+light, and the end of the psalm is like the after brightness; and the
+tranquil low voice of its last words is like the songs of the birds
+again as the departing storm growls low and faint on the horizon. "The
+Lord will bless His people with peace."
+
+Thus, then, nature spoke to this young heart. The silence was vocal; the
+darkness, bright; the tumult, order--and all was the revelation of a
+present God. It is told of one of our great writers that, when a child,
+he was found lying on a hill-side during a thunderstorm, and at each
+flash clapping his hands and shouting, unconscious of danger, and
+stirred to ecstasy. David, too, felt all the poetic elevation, and
+natural awe, in the presence of the crashing storm; but he felt
+something more. To him the thunder was not a power to tremble before,
+not a mere subject for poetic contemplation. Still less was it
+something, the like of which could be rubbed out of glass and silk, and
+which he had done with when he knew its laws. No increase of knowledge
+touching the laws of physical phenomena in the least affects the point
+of view which these Nature-psalms take. David said, "God makes and moves
+all things." We may be able to complete the sentence by a clause which
+tells something of the methods of His operation. But that is only a
+parenthesis after all, and the old truth remains widened, not overthrown
+by it. The psalmist knew that all being and action had their origin in
+God. He saw the last links of the chain, and knew that it was rivetted
+to the throne of God, though the intermediate links were unseen; and
+even the fact that there were any was not present to his mind. We know
+something of these; but the first and the last of the series to him, are
+the first and the last to us also. To us as to him, the silent splendour
+of noonday speaks of God, and the nightly heavens pour the soft radiance
+of His "excellent name over all the earth." The tempest is His voice,
+and the wildest commotions in nature and among men break in obedient
+waves around His pillared throne.
+
+  "Well roars the storm to those who hear
+   A deeper voice across the storm!"
+
+There still remains one other psalm which may be used as illustrating
+the early life of David. The Twenty-third psalm is coloured throughout
+by the remembrances of his youthful occupation, even if its actual
+composition is of a later date. Some critics, indeed, think that the
+mention in the last verse of "the house of the Lord" compels the
+supposition of an origin subsequent to the building of the Temple; but
+the phrase in question need not have anything to do with tabernacle or
+temple, and is most naturally accounted for by the preceding image of
+God as the Host who feasts His servants at His table. There are no other
+notes of time in the psalm, unless, with some commentators, we see an
+allusion in that image of the furnished table to the seasonable
+hospitality of the Gileadite chieftains during David's flight before
+Absalom (2 Sam. xvii. 27-29)--a reference which appears prosaic and
+flat. The absence of traces of distress and sorrow--so constantly
+present in the later songs--may be urged with some force in favour of
+the early date; and if we follow one of the most valuable commentators
+(Hupfeld) in translating all the verbs as futures, and so make the whole
+a hymn of hope, we seem almost obliged to suppose that we have here the
+utterance of a youthful spirit, which ventured to look forward, because
+it first looked upward. In any case, the psalm is a transcript of
+thoughts that had been born and cherished in many a meditative hour
+among the lonely hills of Bethlehem. It is the echo of the shepherd
+life. We see in it the incessant care, the love to his helpless charge,
+which was expressed in and deepened by all his toil for them. He had to
+think for their simplicity, to fight for their defencelessness, to find
+their pasture, to guard them while they lay amid the fresh grass;
+sometimes to use his staff in order to force their heedlessness with
+loving violence past tempting perils; sometimes to guide them through
+gloomy gorges, where they huddled close at his heels; sometimes to smite
+the lion and the bear that prowled about the fold--but all was for their
+good and meant their comfort. And thus he has learned, in preparation
+for his own kingdom, the inmost meaning of pre-eminence among men--and,
+more precious lesson still, thus he has learned the very heart of God.
+Long before, Jacob had spoken of Him as the "Shepherd of Israel;" but it
+was reserved for David to bring that sweet and wonderful name into
+closer relations with the single soul; and, with that peculiar
+enthusiasm of personal reliance, and recognition of God's love to the
+individual which stamps all his psalms, to say "The Lord is my
+Shepherd." These dumb companions of his, in their docility to his
+guidance, and absolute trust in his care, had taught him the secret of
+peace in helplessness, of patience in ignorance. The green strips of
+meadow-land where the clear waters brought life, the wearied flocks
+sheltered from the mid-day heat, the quiet course of the little stream,
+the refreshment of the sheep by rest and pasture, the smooth paths which
+he tried to choose for them, the rocky defiles through which they had to
+pass, the rod in his hand that guided, and chastised, and defended, and
+was never lifted in anger,--all these, the familiar sights of his youth,
+pass before us as we read; and to us too, in our widely different social
+state, have become the undying emblems of the highest care and the
+wisest love. The psalm witnesses how close to the youthful heart the
+consciousness of God must have been, which could thus transform and
+glorify the little things which were so familiar. We can feel, in a kind
+of lazy play of sentiment, the fitness of the shepherd's life to suggest
+thoughts of God--because it is not our life. But it needs both a
+meditative habit and a devout heart to feel that the trivialities of our
+own daily tasks speak to us of Him. The heavens touch the earth on the
+horizon of our vision, but it always seems furthest to the sky from the
+spot where we stand. To the psalmist, however,--as in higher ways to his
+Son and Lord,--all things around him were full of God; and as the
+majesties of nature, so the trivialities of man's works--shepherds and
+fishermen--were solemn with deep meanings and shadows of the heavenly.
+With such lofty thoughts he fed his youth.
+
+The psalm, too, breathes the very spirit of sunny confidence and of
+perfect rest in God. We have referred to the absence of traces of
+sorrow, and to the predominant tone of hopefulness, as possibly
+favouring the supposition of an early origin. But it matters little
+whether they were young eyes which looked so courageously into the
+unknown future, or whether we have here the more solemn and weighty
+hopes of age, which can have few hopes at all, unless they be rooted in
+God. The spirit expressed in the psalm is so thoroughly David's, that in
+his younger days, before it was worn with responsibilities and sorrows,
+it must have been especially strong. We may therefore fairly take the
+tone of this song of the Shepherd God as expressing the characteristic
+of his godliness in the happy early years. In his solitude he was glad.
+One happy thought fills the spirit; one simple emotion thrills the
+chords of his harp. No doubts, or griefs, or remorse throw their shadows
+upon him. He is conscious of dependence, but he is above want and fear.
+He does not ask, he has--he possesses God, and is at rest in Him. He is
+satisfied with that fruition which blesseth all who hunger for God, and
+is the highest form of communion with Him. As the present has no
+longings, the future has no terrors. All the horizon is clear, all the
+winds are still, the ocean at rest, "and birds of peace sit brooding on
+the charmed wave." If there be foes, God holds them back. If there lie
+far off among the hills any valley of darkness, its black portals cast
+no gloom over him, and will not when he enters. God is his Shepherd,
+and, by another image, God is his Host. The life which in one aspect, by
+reason of its continual change, and occupation with outward things, may
+be compared to the journeyings of a flock, is in another aspect, by
+reason of its inward union with the stability of God, like sitting ever
+at the table which His hand has spread as for a royal banquet, where the
+oil of gladness glistens on every head, and the full cup of Divine
+pleasure is in every hand. For all the outward and pilgrimage aspect,
+the psalmist knows that only Goodness and Mercy--these two white-robed
+messengers of God--will follow his steps, however long may be the term
+of the days of his yet young life; for all the inward, he is sure that,
+in calm, unbroken fellowship, he will dwell in the house of God, and
+that when the twin angels who fed and guided him all his young life long
+have finished their charge, and the days of his journeyings are ended,
+there stretches beyond a still closer union with his heavenly Friend,
+which will be perfected in His true house "for ever." We look in vain
+for another example, even in David's psalms, of such perfect, restful
+trust in God. These clear notes are perhaps the purest utterance ever
+given of "the peace of God which passeth all understanding."
+
+Such were the thoughts and hopes of the lad who kept his father's sheep
+at Bethlehem. He lived a life of lofty thoughts and lowly duties. He
+heard the voice of God amidst the silence of the hills, and the earliest
+notes of his harp echoed the deep tones. He learned courage as well as
+tenderness from his daily tasks, and patience from the contrast between
+them and the high vocation which Samuel's mysterious anointing had
+opened before him. If we remember how disturbing an influence the
+consciousness of it might have wrought in a soul less filled with God,
+we may perhaps accept as probably correct the superscription which
+refers one sweet, simple psalm to him, and may venture to suppose that
+it expresses the contentment, undazzled by visions of coming greatness,
+that calmed his heart. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes
+lofty; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too
+high for me. Surely I have smoothed and quieted my soul: like a weanling
+on his mother's (breast), like a weanling is my soul within me." (Psa.
+cxxxi.) So lying in God's arms, and content to be folded in His embrace,
+without seeking anything beyond, he is tranquil in his lowly lot.
+
+It does not fall within our province to follow the course of the
+familiar narrative through the picturesque events that led him to fame
+and position at court. The double character of minstrel and warrior, to
+which we have already referred, is remarkably brought out in his double
+introduction to Saul, once as soothing the king's gloomy spirit with the
+harmonies of his shepherd's harp, once as bringing down the boasting
+giant of Gath with his shepherd's sling. On the first occasion his
+residence in the palace seems to have been ended by Saul's temporary
+recovery. He returns to Bethlehem for an indefinite time, and then
+leaves it and all its peaceful tasks for ever. The dramatic story of the
+duel with Goliath needs no second telling. His arrival at the very
+crisis of the war, the eager courage with which he leaves his baggage in
+the hands of the guard and runs down the valley to the ranks of the
+army, the busy hum of talk among the Israelites, the rankling jealousy
+of his brother that curdles into bitter jeers, the modest courage with
+which he offers himself as champion, the youthful enthusiasm of brave
+trust in "the Lord, that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and
+out of the paw of the bear;" the wonderfully vivid picture of the young
+hero with his shepherd staff in one hand, his sling in the other, and
+the rude wallet by his side, which had carried his simple meal, and now
+held the smooth stone from the brook that ran between the armies in the
+bottom of the little valley--the blustering braggadocio of the big
+champion, the boy's devout confidence in "the name of the Lord of
+hosts;" the swift brevity of the narrative of the actual fight, which in
+its hurrying clauses seems to reproduce the light-footed eagerness of
+the young champion, or the rapid whizz of the stone ere it crashed into
+the thick forehead; the prostrate bulk of the dead giant prone upon the
+earth, and the conqueror, slight and agile, hewing off the huge head
+with Goliath's own useless sword;--all these incidents, so full of
+character, so antique in manner, so weighty with lessons of the
+impotence of strength that is merely material, and the power of a living
+enthusiasm of faith in God, may, for our present purposes, be passed
+with a mere glance. One observation may, however, be allowed. After the
+victory, Saul is represented as not knowing who David was, and as
+sending Abner to find out where he comes from. Abner, too, professes
+entire ignorance; and when David appears before the king, "with the head
+of the Philistine in his hand," he is asked, "Whose son art thou, young
+man?" It has been thought that here we have an irreconcilable
+contradiction with previous narratives, according to which there was
+close intimacy between him and the king, who "loved him greatly," and
+gave him an office of trust about his person. Suppositions of
+"dislocation of the narrative," the careless adoption by the compiler of
+two separate legends, and the like, have been freely indulged in. But it
+may at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seeming
+discrepancy, that when Saul had passed out of his moody madness it is
+not wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred in
+his paroxysm. It is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon that
+a man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during his
+mental aberration. And as for Abner's profession of ignorance, an
+incipient jealousy of this stripling hero may naturally have made the
+"captain of the host" willing to keep the king as ignorant as he could
+concerning a probable formidable rival. There is no need to suppose he
+was really ignorant, but only that it suited him to say that he was.
+
+With this earliest deed of heroism the peaceful private days are closed,
+and a new epoch of court favour and growing popularity begins. The
+impression which the whole story leaves upon one is well summed up in a
+psalm which the Septuagint adds to the Psalter. It is not found in the
+Hebrew, and has no pretension to be David's work; but, as a _resume_ of
+the salient points of his early life, it may fitly end our
+considerations of this first epoch.
+
+"This is the autograph psalm of David, and beyond the number (_i.e._, of
+the psalms in the Psalter), when he fought the single fight with
+Goliath:--
+
+"(1.) I was little among my brethren, and the youngest in the house of
+my father: I kept the flock of my father. (2.) My hands made a pipe, my
+fingers tuned a psaltery. (3.) And who shall tell it to my Lord? He is
+the Lord, He shall hear me. (4.) He sent His angel (messenger), and
+took me from the flocks of my father, and anointed me with the oil of
+His anointing. (5.) But my brethren were fair and large, and in them the
+Lord took not pleasure. (6.) I went out to meet the Philistine, and he
+cursed me by his idols. (7.) But I, drawing his sword, beheaded him, and
+took away reproach from the children of Israel."
+
+
+
+
+IV.--THE EXILE.
+
+
+David's first years at the court of Saul in Gibeah do not appear to have
+produced any psalms which still survive.
+
+  "The sweetest songs are those
+   Which tell of saddest thought."
+
+It was natural, then, that a period full of novelty and of prosperous
+activity, very unlike the quiet days at Bethlehem, should rather
+accumulate materials for future use than be fruitful in actual
+production. The old life shut to behind him for ever, like some
+enchanted door in a hill-side, and an unexplored land lay beckoning
+before. The new was widening his experience, but it had to be mastered,
+to be assimilated by meditation before it became vocal.
+
+The bare facts of this section are familiar and soon told. There is
+first a period in which he is trusted by Saul, who sets him in high
+command, with the approbation not only of the people, but even of the
+official classes. But a new dynasty resting on military pre-eminence
+cannot afford to let a successful soldier stand on the steps of the
+throne; and the shrill chant of the women out of all the cities of
+Israel, which even in Saul's hearing answered the praises of his prowess
+with a louder acclaim for David's victories, startled the king for the
+first time with a revelation of the national feeling. His unslumbering
+suspicion "eyed David from that day." Rage and terror threw him again
+into the gripe of his evil spirit, and in his paroxysm he flings his
+heavy spear, the symbol of his royalty, at the lithe harper, with fierce
+vows of murder. The failure of his attempt to kill David seems to have
+aggravated his dread of him as bearing a charm which won all hearts and
+averted all dangers. A second stage is marked not only by Saul's growing
+fear, but by David's new position. He is removed from court, and put in
+a subordinate command, which only extends his popularity, and brings him
+into more immediate contact with the mass of the people. "All Israel and
+Judah loved David, because he went out and came in before them." Then
+follows the offer of Saul's elder daughter in marriage, in the hope that
+by playing upon his gratitude and his religious feeling, he might be
+urged to some piece of rash bravery that would end him without scandal.
+Some new caprice of Saul's, however, leads him to insult David by
+breaking his pledge at the last moment, and giving the promised bride to
+another. Jonathan's heart was not the only one in Saul's household that
+yielded to his spell. The younger Michal had been cherishing his image
+in secret, and now tells her love. Her father returns to his original
+purpose, with the strange mixture of tenacity and capricious
+changefulness that marks his character, and again attempts, by demanding
+a grotesquely savage dowry, to secure David's destruction. But that
+scheme, too, fails; and he becomes a member of the royal house.
+
+This third stage is marked by Saul's deepening panic hatred, which has
+now become a fixed idea. All his attempts have only strengthened David's
+position, and he looks on his irresistible advance with a nameless awe.
+He calls, with a madman's folly, on Jonathan and on all his servants to
+kill him; and then, when his son appeals to him, his old better nature
+comes over him, and with a great oath he vows that David shall not be
+slain. For a short time David returns to Gibeah, and resumes his former
+relations with Saul, but a new victory over the Philistines rouses the
+slumbering jealousy. Again the "evil spirit" is upon him, and the great
+javelin is flung with blind fury, and sticks quivering in the wall. It
+is night, and David flies to his house. A stealthy band of assassins
+from the palace surround the house with orders to prevent all egress,
+and, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynical
+shamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. Michal,
+who, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proud
+godlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest parts
+of her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in these
+early days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened by
+love, the crouching murderers, and with rapid promptitude urges
+immediate flight. Her hands let him down from the window--the house
+being probably on the wall. Her ready wit dresses up one of those
+mysterious teraphim (which appear to have had some connection with
+idolatry or magic, and which are strange pieces of furniture for
+David's house), and lays it in the bed to deceive the messengers, and so
+gain a little more time before pursuit began. "So David fled and
+escaped, and came to Samuel to Ramah," and thus ended his life at court.
+
+Glancing over this narrative, one or two points come prominently forth.
+The worth of these events to David must have lain chiefly in the
+abundant additions made to his experience of life, which ripened his
+nature, and developed new powers. The meditative life of the sheepfold
+is followed by the crowded court and camp. Strenuous work, familiarity
+with men, constant vicissitude, take the place of placid thought, of
+calm seclusion, of tranquil days that knew no changes but the
+alternation of sun and stars, storm and brightness, green pastures and
+dusty paths. He learned the real world, with its hate and effort, its
+hollow fame and its whispering calumnies. Many illusions no doubt faded,
+but the light that had shone in his solitude still burned before him for
+his guide, and a deeper trust in his Shepherd God was rooted in his soul
+by all the shocks of varying fortune. The passage from the visions of
+youth and the solitary resolves of early and uninterrupted piety to the
+naked realities of a wicked world, and the stern self-control of manly
+godliness, is ever painful and perilous. Thank God! it may be made clear
+gain, as it was by this young hero psalmist.
+
+David's calm indifference to outward circumstances affecting himself, is
+very strikingly expressed in his conduct. Partly from his poetic
+temperament, partly from his sweet natural unselfishness, and chiefly
+from his living trust in God, he accepts whatever happens with
+equanimity, and makes no effort to alter it. He originates nothing.
+Prosperity comes unsought, and dangers unfeared. He does not ask for
+Jonathan's love, or the people's favour, or the women's songs, or Saul's
+daughter. If Saul gives him command he takes it, and does his work. If
+Saul flings his javelin at him, he simply springs aside and lets it
+whizz past. If his high position is taken from him, he is quite content
+with a lower. If a royal alliance is offered, he accepts it; if it is
+withdrawn, he is not ruffled; if renewed, he is still willing. If a busy
+web of intrigue is woven round him, he takes no notice. If
+reconciliation is proposed, he cheerfully goes back to the palace. If
+his life is threatened he goes home. He will not stir to escape but for
+the urgency of his wife. So well had he already begun to learn the
+worthlessness of life's trifles. So thoroughly does he practice his own
+precept, "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers;" "rest in the Lord,
+and wait patiently for Him." (Psa. xxxvii. 1, 7.)
+
+This section gives also a remarkable impression of the irresistible
+growth of his popularity and influence. The silent energy of the Divine
+purpose presses his fortunes onward with a motion slow and inevitable as
+that of a glacier. The steadfast flow circles unchecked round, or rises
+victorious over all hindrances. Efforts to ruin, to degrade, to
+kill--one and all fail. Terror and hate, suspicion and jealousy, only
+bring him nearer the goal. A clause which comes in thrice in the course
+of one chapter, expresses this fated advance. In the first stage of his
+court life, we read, "David prospered" (1 Sam. xviii. 5, margin), and
+again with increased emphasis it is told as the result of the efforts to
+crush him, that, "He prospered in all his ways, and the Lord was with
+him" (verse 14), and yet again, in spite of Saul's having "become his
+enemy continually," he "prospered more than all the servants of Saul"
+(verse 30). He moves onward as stars in their courses move, obeying the
+equable impulse of the calm and conquering will of God.
+
+The familiar Scripture antithesis, which naturally finds its clearest
+utterance in the words of the last inspired writer--namely, the eternal
+opposition of Light and Darkness, Love and Hate, Life and Death, is
+brought into sharpest relief by the juxtaposition and contrast of David
+and Saul. This is the key to the story. The two men are not more unlike
+in person than in spirit. We think of the one with his ruddy beauty and
+changeful eyes, and lithe slight form, and of the other gaunt and black,
+his giant strength weakened, and his "goodly" face scarred with the
+lightnings of his passions--and as they look so they are. The one full
+of joyous energy, the other devoured by gloom; the one going in and out
+among the people and winning universal love, the other sitting moody and
+self-absorbed behind his palace walls; the one bringing sweet clear
+tones of trustful praise from his harp, the other shaking his huge spear
+in his madness; the one ready for action and prosperous in it all, the
+other paralyzed, shrinking from all work, and leaving the conduct of
+the war to the servant whom he feared; the one conscious of the Divine
+presence making him strong and calm, the other writhing in the gripe of
+his evil spirit, and either foaming in fury, or stiffened into torpor;
+the one steadily growing in power and favour with God and man, the other
+sinking in deeper mire, and wrapped about with thickening mists as he
+moves to his doom. The tragic pathos of these two lives in their fateful
+antagonism is the embodiment of that awful alternative of life and
+death, blessing and cursing, which it was the very aim of Judaism to
+stamp ineffaceably on the conscience.
+
+David's flight begins a period to which a large number of his psalms are
+referred. We may call them "The Songs of the Outlaw." The titles in the
+psalter connect several with specific events during his persecution by
+Saul, and besides these, there are others which have marked
+characteristics in common, and may therefore be regarded as belonging to
+the same time. The bulk of the former class are found in the second book
+of the psalter (Ps. xlii.-lxxii.), which has been arranged with some
+care. There are first eight Korahite psalms, and one of Asaph's; then a
+group of fifteen Davidic (li.-lxv.), followed by two anonymous; then
+three more of David's (lxviii.-lxx.), followed by one anonymous and the
+well-known prayer "for Solomon." Now it is worth notice that the group
+of fifteen psalms ascribed to David is as nearly as possible divided in
+halves, eight having inscriptions which give a specific date of
+composition, and seven having no such detail. There has also been some
+attempt at arranging the psalms of these two classes alternately, but
+that has not been accurately carried out. These facts show that the
+titles are at all events as old as the compilation of the second book of
+the psalter, and were regarded as accurate then. Several points about
+the complete book of psalms as we have it, seem to indicate that these
+two first books were an older nucleus, which was in existence long prior
+to the present collection--and if so, the date of the titles must be
+carried back a very long way indeed, and with a proportionate increase
+of authority.
+
+Of the eight psalms in the second book having titles with specific
+dates, five (Ps. lii., liv., lvi., lvii., lix.) are assigned to the
+period of the Sauline persecution, and, as it would appear, with
+accuracy. There is a general similarity of tone in them all, as well as
+considerable parallelisms of expression, favourite phrases and
+metaphors, which are favourable to the hypothesis of a nearly
+cotemporaneous date. They are all in what, to use a phrase from another
+art, we may call David's earlier manner. For instance, in all the
+psalmist is surrounded by enemies. They would "swallow him up" (lvi. 1,
+2; lvii. 3). They "oppress" him (liv. 3; lvi. 1). One of their weapons
+is calumny, which seems from the frequent references to have much moved
+the psalmist. Their tongues are razors (lii. 2), or swords (lvii. 4;
+lix. 7; lxiv. 3). They seem to him like crouching beasts ready to spring
+upon harmless prey (lvi. 6; lvii. 6; lix. 3); they are "lions" (lvii.
+4), dogs (lix. 6, 14). He is conscious of nothing which he has done to
+provoke this storm of hatred (lix. 3; lxiv. 4.) The "strength" of God is
+his hope (liv. 1; lix. 9, 17). He is sure that retribution will fall
+upon the enemies (lii. 5; liv. 5; lvi. 7; lvii. 6; lix. 8-15; lxiv. 7,
+8). He vows and knows that psalms of deliverance will yet succeed these
+plaintive cries (lii. 9; liv. 7; lvi. 12; lvii. 7-11; lix. 16, 17).
+
+We also find a considerable number of psalms in the first book of the
+psalter which present the same features, and may therefore probably be
+classed with these as belonging to the time of his exile. Such for
+instance are the seventh and thirty-fourth, which have both inscriptions
+referring them to this period, with others which we shall have to
+consider presently. The imagery of the preceding group reappears in
+them. His enemies are lions (vii. 2; xvii. 12; xxii. 13; xxxv. 17); dogs
+(xxii. 16); bulls (xxii. 12). Pitfalls and snares are in his path (vii.
+15; xxxi. 4; xxxv. 7). He passionately protests his innocence, and the
+kindliness of his heart to his wanton foes (vii. 3-5; xvii. 3, 4); whom
+he has helped and sorrowed over in their sickness (xxxv. 13, 14)--a
+reference, perhaps, to his solacing Saul in his paroxysms with the music
+of his harp. He dwells on retribution with vehemence (vii. 11-16; xi.
+5-7; xxxi. 23; xxxv. 8), and on his own deliverance with confidence.
+
+These general characteristics accurately correspond with the
+circumstances of David during the years of his wanderings. The scenery
+and life of the desert colours the metaphors which describe his enemies
+as wild beasts; himself as a poor hunted creature amongst pits and
+snares; or as a timid bird flying to the safe crags, and God as his
+Rock. Their strong assertions of innocence accord with the historical
+indications of Saul's gratuitous hatred, and appear to distinguish the
+psalms of this period from those of Absalom's revolt, in which the
+remembrance of his great sin was too deep to permit of any such claims.
+In like manner the prophecies of the enemies' destruction are too
+triumphant to suit that later time of exile, when the father's heart
+yearned with misplaced tenderness over his worthless son, and nearly
+broke with unkingly sorrow for the rebel's death. Their confidence in
+God, too, has in it a ring of joyousness in peril which corresponds with
+the buoyant faith that went with him through all the desperate
+adventures and hairbreadth escapes of the Sauline persecution. If then
+we may, with some confidence, read these psalms in connection with that
+period, what a noble portraiture of a brave, devout soul looks out upon
+us from them. We see him in the first flush of his manhood--somewhere
+about five-and-twenty years old--fronting perils of which he is fully
+conscious, with calm strength and an enthusiasm of trust that lifts his
+spirit above them all, into a region of fellowship with God which no
+tumult can invade, and which no remembrance of black transgression
+troubled and stained. His harp is his solace in his wanderings; and
+while plaintive notes are flung from its strings, as is needful for the
+deepest harmonies of praise here, every wailing tone melts into clear
+ringing notes of glad affiance in the "God of his mercy."
+
+Distinct references to the specific events of his wanderings are,
+undoubtedly, rare in them, though even these are more obvious than has
+been sometimes carelessly assumed. Their infrequency and comparative
+vagueness has been alleged against the accuracy of the inscriptions
+which allocate certain psalms to particular occasions. But in so far as
+it is true that these allusions are rare and inexact, the fact is surely
+rather in favour of than against the correctness of the titles. For if
+these are not suggested by obvious references in the psalms to which
+they are affixed, by what can they have been suggested but by a
+tradition considerably older than the compilation of the psalter?
+Besides, the analogy of all other poetry would lead us to expect
+precisely what we find in these psalms--general and not detailed
+allusions to the writer's circumstances. The poetic imagination does not
+reproduce the bald prosaic facts which have set it in motion, but the
+echo of them broken up and etherealised. It broods over them till life
+stirs, and the winged creature bursts from them to sing and soar.
+
+If we accept the title as accurate, the fifty-ninth psalm is the first
+of these Songs of the Outlaw. It refers to the time "when Saul sent, and
+they watched the house to kill him." Those critics who reject this date,
+which they do on very weak grounds, lose themselves in a chaos of
+assumptions as to the occasion of the psalm. The Chaldean invasion, the
+assaults in the time of Nehemiah, and the era of the Maccabees, are
+alleged with equal confidence and equal groundlessness. "We believe that
+it is most advisable to adhere to the title, and most scientific to
+ignore these hypotheses built on nothing." (Delitzsch.)
+
+It is a devotional and poetic commentary on the story in Samuel. There
+we get the bare facts of the assassins prowling by night round David's
+house; of Michal's warning; of her ready-witted trick to gain time, and
+of his hasty flight to Samuel at Ramah. In the narrative David is, as
+usual at this period, passive and silent; but when we turn to the psalm,
+we learn the tone of his mind as the peril bursts upon him, and all the
+vulgar craft and fear fades from before his lofty enthusiasm of faith.
+
+The psalm begins abruptly with a passionate cry for help, which is
+repeated four times, thus bringing most vividly before us the extremity
+of the danger and the persistency of the suppliant's trust. The peculiar
+tenderness and closeness of his relation to his heavenly Friend, which
+is so characteristic of David's psalms, and which they were almost the
+first to express, breathes through the name by which he invokes help,
+"my God." The enemies are painted in words which accurately correspond
+with the history, and which by their variety reveal how formidable they
+were to the psalmist. They "lie in wait (literally weave plots) for my
+life." They are "workers of iniquity," "men of blood," insolent or
+violent ("mighty" in English version). He asserts his innocence, as ever
+in these Sauline psalms, and appeals to God in confirmation, "not for my
+transgressions, nor for my sins, O Lord." He sees these eager tools of
+royal malice hurrying to their congenial work: "they run and prepare
+themselves." And then, rising high above all encompassing evils, he
+grasps at the throne of God in a cry, which gains additional force when
+we remember that the would-be murderers compassed his house in the
+night. "Awake to meet me, and behold;" as if he had said, "In the
+darkness do Thou see; at midnight sleep not Thou." The prayer is
+continued in words which heap together with unwonted abundance the
+Divine names, in each of which lie an appeal to God and a pillar of
+faith. As Jehovah, the self-existent Fountain of timeless Being; as the
+God of Hosts, the Commander of all the embattled powers of the universe,
+whether they be spiritual or material; as the GOD of Israel, who calls
+that people His, and has become theirs--he stirs up the strength of God
+to "awake to visit all the heathen,"--a prayer which has been supposed
+to compel the reference of the whole psalm to the assaults of Gentile
+nations, but which may be taken as an anticipation on David's lips of
+the truth that, "They are not all Israel which are of Israel." After a
+terrible petition--"Be not merciful to any secret plotters of
+evil"--there is a pause (Selah) to be filled, as it would appear, by
+some chords on the harp, or the blare of the trumpets, thus giving time
+to dwell on the previous petitions.
+
+But still the thought of the foe haunts him, and he falls again to the
+lower level of painting their assembling round his house, and their
+whispers as they take their stand. It would appear that the watch had
+been kept up for more than one night. How he flings his growing scorn of
+them into the sarcastic words, "They return at evening; they growl like
+a dog, and compass the city" (or "go their rounds in the city"). One
+sees them stealing through the darkness, like the troops of vicious curs
+that infest Eastern cities, and hears their smothered threatenings as
+they crouch in the shadow of the unlighted streets. Then growing bolder,
+as the night deepens and sleep falls on the silent houses: "Behold they
+pour out with their mouth, swords (are) in their lips, for 'who hears'?"
+In magnificent contrast with these skulking murderers fancying
+themselves unseen and unheard, David's faith rends the heaven, and, with
+a daring image which is copied in a much later psalm (ii. 4), shows God
+gazing on them with Divine scorn which breaks in laughter and mockery. A
+brief verse, which recurs at the end of the psalm, closes the first
+portion of the psalm with a calm expression of untroubled trust, in
+beautiful contrast with the peril and tumult of soul, out of which it
+rises steadfast and ethereal, like a rainbow spanning a cataract. A
+slight error appears to have crept into the Hebrew text, which can be
+easily corrected from the parallel verse at the end, and then the quiet
+confident words are--
+
+  "My strength! upon Thee will I wait,
+   For God is my fortress!"
+
+The second portion is an intensification of the first; pouring out a
+terrible prayer for exemplary retribution on his enemies; asking that no
+speedy destruction may befall them, but that God would first of all
+"make them reel" by the blow of His might; would then fling them
+prostrate; would make their pride and fierce words a net to snare them;
+and then, at last, would bring them to nothing in the hot flames of His
+wrath--that the world may know that He is king. The picture of the
+prowling dogs recurs with deepened scorn and firmer confidence that
+they will hunt for their prey in vain.
+
+  "And they return at evening; they growl like a dog,
+   And compass the city.
+   They--they prowl about for food
+   If (or, since) they are not satisfied, they spend the night (in the
+      search.)"
+
+There is almost a smile on his face as he thinks of their hunting about
+for him, like hungry hounds snuffing for their meal in the kennels, and
+growling now in disappointment--while he is safe beyond their reach. And
+the psalm ends with a glad burst of confidence, and a vow of praise very
+characteristic on his lips--
+
+  "But I--I will sing Thy power,
+   And shout aloud, in the morning, Thy mercy,
+   For Thou hast been a fortress for me.
+   And a refuge in the day of my trouble.
+   My strength! unto Thee will I harp,
+   For God is my fortress--the God of my mercy."
+
+Thrice he repeats the vow of praise. His harp was his companion in his
+flight, and even in the midst of peril the poet's nature appears which
+regards all life as materials for song, and the devout spirit appears
+which regards all trial as occasions for praise. He has calmed his own
+spirit, as he had done Saul's, by his song, and by prayer has swung
+himself clear above fightings and fears. The refrain, which occurs twice
+in the psalm, witnesses to the growth of his faith even while he sings.
+At first he could only say in patient expectance, "My strength! I will
+wait upon thee, for God is my fortress." But at the end his mood is
+higher, his soul has caught fire as it revolves, and his last words are
+a triumphant amplification of his earlier trust: "My strength! unto thee
+will I sing with the harp--for God is my fortress--the God of my
+mercy."
+
+
+
+
+V.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+"So David fled, and escaped and came to Samuel to Ramah, and told him
+all that Saul had done unto him. And he and Samuel went and dwelt in
+Naioth" (1 Sam. xix. 18)--or, as the word probably means, in the
+collection of students' dwellings, inhabited by the sons of the
+prophets, where possibly there may have been some kind of right of
+sanctuary. Driven thence by Saul's following him, and having had one
+last sorrowful hour of Jonathan's companionship--the last but one on
+earth--he fled to Nob, whither the ark had been carried after the
+destruction of Shiloh. The story of his flight had not reached the
+solitary little town among the hills, and he is received with the honour
+due to the king's son-in-law. He pleads urgent secret business for Saul
+as a reason for his appearance with a slender retinue, and unarmed; and
+the priest, after some feeble scruples, supplies the handful of hungry
+fugitives with the shewbread. But David's quick eye caught a swarthy
+face peering at him from some enclosure of the simple forest sanctuary,
+and as he recognised Doeg the Edomite, Saul's savage herdsman, a cold
+foreboding of evil crept over his heart, and made him demand arms from
+the peaceful priest. The lonely tabernacle was guarded by its own
+sanctity, and no weapons were there, except one trophy which was of good
+omen to David--Goliath's sword. He eagerly accepts the matchless weapon
+which his hand had clutched on that day of danger and deliverance, and
+thus armed, lest Doeg should try to bar his flight, he hurries from the
+pursuit which he knew that the Edomite's malignant tongue would soon
+bring after him. The tragical end of the unsuspecting priest's kindness
+brings out the furious irrational suspicion and cruelty of Saul. He
+rages at his servants as leagued with David in words which have a most
+dreary sound of utter loneliness sighing through all their fierce folly:
+"All of you have conspired against me; there is none of you that is
+sorry for me" (1 Sam. xxii. 8.) Doeg is forward to curry favour by
+telling his tale, and so tells it as to suppress the priest's ignorance
+of David's flight, and to represent him as aiding and comforting the
+rebel knowingly. Then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit,
+and the whole priestly population of Nob are summoned before him, loaded
+with bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, and
+his guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiers
+shrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild blood
+of Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doeg
+crowns his baseness by slaying--with the help of his herdsmen, no
+doubt--"on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear an ephod,"
+and utterly extirpating every living thing from the defenceless little
+city.
+
+One psalm, the fifty-second, is referred by its inscription to this
+period, but the correspondence between the history and the tone of the
+psalm is doubtful. It is a vehement rebuke and a prophecy of destruction
+directed against an enemy, whose hostility was expressed in "devouring
+words." The portrait does not apply very accurately to the Doeg of the
+historical books, inasmuch as it describes the psalmist's enemy as "a
+mighty man,"--or rather as "a hero," and as trusting "in the abundance
+of his riches,"--and makes the point of the reproach against him that
+he is a confirmed liar. But the dastardly deed of blood may be covertly
+alluded to in the bitterly sarcastic "hero"--as if he had said, "O brave
+warrior, who dost display thy prowess in murdering unarmed priests and
+women?" And Doeg's story to Saul was a lie in so far as it gave the
+impression of the priests' complicity with David, and thereby caused
+their deaths on a false charge. The other features of the description
+are not contrary to the narrative, and most of them are in obvious
+harmony with it. The psalm, then, may be taken as showing how deeply
+David's soul was stirred by the tragedy. He pours out broken words of
+hot and righteous indignation:
+
+  "Destructions doth thy tongue devise,
+   Like a razor whetted--O thou worker of deceit."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Thou lovest all words that devour:[F] O thou deceitful tongue!"
+
+[F] Literally, "words of swallowing up."
+
+He prophesies the destruction of the cruel liar, and the exultation of
+the righteous when he falls, in words which do indeed belong to the old
+covenant of retribution, and yet convey an eternal truth which modern
+sentimentalism finds very shocking, but which is witnessed over and
+over again in the relief that fills the heart of nations and of
+individuals when evil men fade: "When the wicked perish, there is
+shouting"--
+
+  "Also God shall smite thee down for ever,
+   Will draw thee out,[G] and carry thee away from the tent,
+   And root thee out of the land of the living;
+   And the righteous shall see and fear,
+   And over him shall they laugh."
+
+In confident security he opposes his own happy fellowship with God to
+this dark tragedy of retribution:
+
+  "But I--(I am) like a green olive tree in the house of God."
+
+[G] The full force of the word is, "will pluck out as a glowing ember
+from a hearth" (Delitzsch).
+
+The enemy was to be "rooted out;" the psalmist is to flourish by
+derivation of life and vigour from God. If Robinson's conjecture that
+Nob was on the Mount of Olives were correct (which is very doubtful),
+the allusion here would gain appropriateness. As the olives grew all
+round the humble forest sanctuary, and were in some sort hallowed by the
+shrine which they encompassed, so the soul grows and is safe in loving
+fellowship with God. Be that as it may, the words express the outlaw's
+serene confidence that he is safe beneath the sheltering mercy of God,
+and re-echo the hopes of his earlier psalm, "I will dwell in the house
+of the Lord for ever." The stormy indignation of the earlier verses
+passes away into calm peace and patient waiting in praise and trust:
+
+  "I will praise Thee for ever, for Thou hast done (it),
+   And wait on Thy name in the presence of Thy beloved, for it is good."
+
+Hunted from Nob, David with a small company struck across the country in
+a southwesterly direction, keeping to the safety of the tangled
+mountains, till, from the western side of the hills of Judah, he looked
+down upon the broad green plain of Philistia. Behind him was a mad
+tyrant, in front the uncircumcised enemies of his country and his God.
+His condition was desperate, and he had recourse to desperate measures.
+That nearest Philistine city, some ten miles off, on which he looked
+down from his height, was Gath; the glen where he had killed its
+champion was close beside him,--every foot of ground was familiar by
+many a foray and many a fight. It was a dangerous resource to trust
+himself in Gath, with Goliath's sword dangling in his belt. But he may
+have hoped that he was not known by person, or may have thought that
+Saul's famous commander would be a welcome guest, as a banished man, at
+the Philistine court. So he made the plunge, and took refuge in
+Goliath's city. Discovery soon came, and in the most ominous form. It
+was an ugly sign that the servants of Achish should be quoting the words
+of the chant of victory which extolled him as the slayer of their
+countryman. Vengeance for his death was but too likely to come next. The
+doubts of his identity seem to have lasted for some little time, and to
+have been at first privately communicated to the king. They somehow
+reached David, and awoke his watchful attention, as well as his fear.
+The depth of his alarm and his ready resource are shown by his degrading
+trick of assumed madness--certainly the least heroic action of his life.
+What a picture of a furious madman is the description of his conduct
+when Achish's servants came to arrest him. He "twisted himself about in
+their hands" in the feigned contortions of possession; he drummed on the
+leaves of the gate,[H] and "let his spittle run down into his beard."
+(1 Sam. xxi. 13.) Israelitish quickness gets the better of Philistine
+stupidity, as it had been used to do from Sampson's time onwards, and
+the dull-witted king falls into the trap, and laughs away the suspicions
+with a clumsy joke at his servants' expense about more madmen being the
+last thing he was short of. A hasty flight from Philistine territory
+ended this episode.
+
+[H] The Septuagint appears to have followed a different reading here
+from that of our present Hebrew text, and the change adds a very
+picturesque clause to the description. A madman would be more likely to
+hammer than to "scrabble" on the great double-leaved gate.
+
+The fifty-sixth psalm, which is referred by its title to this period,
+seems at first sight to be in strange contrast with the impressions
+drawn from the narrative, but on a closer examination is found to
+confirm the correctness of the reference by its contents. The terrified
+fugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot in
+the hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enough
+to hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. The
+psalm is far in advance of the conduct--is it so unusual a circumstance
+as to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith and
+submission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? Instead of taking
+the contrast between the words and the acts as a proof that this psalm
+is wrongly ascribed to the period in question, let us rather be thankful
+for another instance that imperfect faith may be genuine, and that if we
+cannot rise to the height of unwavering fortitude, God accepts a
+tremulous trust fighting against mortal terror, and grasping with a
+feeble hand the word of God, and the memory of all his past
+deliverances. It is precisely this conflict of faith and fear which the
+psalm sets before us. It falls into three portions, the first and second
+of which are closed by a kind of refrain (vers. 4, 10, 11)--a structure
+which is characteristic of several of these Sauline persecution psalms
+(_e.g._, lvii. 5, 11; lix. 9, 17). The first part of each of these two
+portions is a vivid description of his danger, from which he rises to
+the faith expressed in the closing words. The repetition of the same
+thoughts in both is not to be regarded as a cold artifice of
+composition, but as the true expression of the current of his thoughts.
+He sees his enemies about him, ready to swallow him up--"there be many
+fighting against me disdainfully"[I] (ver. 2). Whilst the terror creeps
+round his heart ("he was sore afraid," 1 Sam. xxi. 12), he rouses
+himself to trust, as he says, in words which express most emphatically
+the co-existence of the two, and carry a precious lesson of the reality
+of even an interrupted faith, streaked with many a black line of doubt
+and dread.
+
+[I] Literally, "loftily." Can there be any allusion to the giant stature
+of Goliath's relations in Gath? We hear of four men "born to the giant
+in Gath," who were killed in David's wars. (2 Sam. xxi. 22.)
+
+  "(In) the day (that) I am afraid--I trust on Thee."
+
+And then he breaks into the utterance of praise and confidence--to which
+he has climbed by the ladder of prayer.
+
+  "In God I praise His word,
+   In God I trust, I do not fear:--
+   What shall flesh do to me?"
+
+How profoundly these words set forth the object of his trust, as being
+not merely the promise of God--which in David's case may be the specific
+promise conveyed by his designation to the throne--but the God who
+promises, the inmost nature of that confidence as being a living union
+with God, the power of it as grappling with his dread, and enabling him
+now to say, "I do _not_ fear."
+
+But again he falls from this height; another surge of fear breaks over
+him, and almost washes him from his rock. His foes, with ceaseless
+malice, arrest his words; they skulk in ambush, they dog his heels, they
+long for his life. The crowded clauses portray the extremity of the
+peril and the singer's agitation. His soul is still heaving with the
+ground swell of the storm, though the blasts come more fitfully, and are
+dying into calm. He is not so afraid but that he can turn to God; he
+turns to Him because he is afraid, like the disciples in later days, who
+had so much of terror that they must awake their Master, but so much of
+trust that His awaking was enough. He pleads with God, as in former
+psalms, against his enemies, in words which go far beyond the occasion,
+and connect his own deliverance with the judgments of God over the whole
+earth. He plaintively recalls his homelessness and his sorrows in words
+which exhibit the characteristic blending of hope and pain, and which
+are beautifully in accordance with the date assigned to the psalm. "My
+wanderings dost Thou, even Thou, number." He is not alone in these
+weary flights from Gibeah to Ramah, from Ramah to Nob, from Nob to Gath,
+from Gath he knows not whither. One friend goes with him through them
+all. And as the water-skin was a necessary part of a traveller's
+equipment, the mention of his wanderings suggests the bold and tender
+metaphor of the next clause, "Put my tears in Thy bottle,"--a prayer for
+that very remembrance of his sorrows, in the existence of which he
+immediately declares his confidence--"Are they not in Thy book?" The
+true office of faithful communion with God is to ask for, and to
+appropriate, the blessings which in the very act become ours. He knows
+that his cry will scatter his foes, for God is for him. And thus once
+again he has risen to the height of confidence where for a moment his
+feet have been already planted, and again--but this time with even
+fuller emphasis, expressed by an amplification which introduces for the
+only time in the psalm the mighty covenant name--he breaks into his
+triumphant strain--
+
+  "In God I praise the Word;
+   In JEHOVAH I praise the Word:
+   In God I trust, I do not fear:--
+   What shall man do to me?"
+
+And from this mood of trustful expectation he does not again decline.
+Prayer has brought its chiefest blessing--the peace that passeth
+understanding. The foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusively
+by faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praise
+for deliverance, as if it had been already achieved--
+
+  "Thou hast delivered my life from death,
+   (Hast Thou) not (delivered) my feet from falling,
+   That I may walk before God in the light of the living?"
+
+He already reckons himself safe; his question is not an expression of
+doubt, but of assurance; and he sees the purpose of all God's dealings
+with him to be that the activities of life may all be conducted in the
+happy consciousness of _His_ eye who is at once Guardian and Judge of
+His children. How far above his fears and lies has this hero and saint
+risen by the power of supplication and the music of his psalm!
+
+David naturally fled into Israelitish territory from Gath. The exact
+locality of the cave Adullam, where we next find him, is doubtful; but
+several strong reasons occur for rejecting the monkish tradition which
+places it away to the east, in one of the wild wadies which run down
+from Bethlehem to the Dead Sea. We should expect it to be much more
+accessible by a hasty march from Gath. Obviously it would be convenient
+for him to hang about the frontier of Philistia and Israel, that he
+might quickly cross the line from one to the other, as dangers appeared.
+Further, the city of Adullam is frequently mentioned, and always in
+connections which fix its site as on the margin of the great plain of
+Philistia, and not far from Gath. (2 Chron. xi. 7, etc.) There is no
+reason to suppose that the cave of Adullam was in a totally different
+district from the city. The hills of Dan and Judah, which break sharply
+down into the plain within a few miles of Gath, are full of "extensive
+excavations," and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold,
+where he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look down
+over the vast sweep of the rich Philistine country. Gath lay at his
+feet, close by was the valley where he had killed Goliath, the scenes of
+Samson's exploits were all about him. Thither fled to him his whole
+family, from fear, no doubt, of Saul's revenge falling on them; and
+there he gathers his band of four hundred desperate men, whom poverty
+and misery, and probably the king's growing tyranny, drove to flight.
+They were wild, rough soldiers, according to the picturesque
+description, "whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were as
+swift as the roes upon the mountains." They were not freebooters, but
+seem to have acted as a kind of frontier-guard against southern Bedouins
+and western Philistines for the sheep-farmers of the border whom Saul's
+government was too weak to protect. In this desultory warfare, and in
+eluding the pursuit of Saul, against whom it is to be observed David
+never employed any weapon but flight, several years were passed. The
+effect of such life on his spiritual nature was to deepen his
+unconditional dependence on God; by the alternations of heat and cold,
+fear and hope, danger and safety, to temper his soul and make it
+flexible, tough and bright as steel. It evolved the qualities of a
+leader of men; teaching him command and forbearance, promptitude and
+patience, valour and gentleness. It won for him a name as the defender
+of the nation, as Nabal's servant said of him and his men, "They were a
+wall unto us, both by night and by day" (1 Sam. xxv. 16). And it
+gathered round him a force of men devoted to him by the enthusiastic
+attachment bred from long years of common dangers, and the hearty
+friendships of many a march by day, and nightly encampment round the
+glimmering watchfires, beneath the lucid stars.
+
+
+
+
+VI.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+We have one psalm which the title connects with the beginning of David's
+stay at Adullam,--the thirty-fourth. The supposition that it dates from
+that period throws great force into many parts of it, and gives a unity
+to what is else apparently fragmentary and disconnected. Unlike those
+already considered, which were pure soliloquies, this is full of
+exhortation and counsel, as would naturally be the case if it were
+written when friends and followers began to gather to his standard. It
+reads like a long sigh of relief at escape from a danger just past; its
+burden is to tell of God's deliverance, and to urge to trust in Him. How
+perfectly this tone corresponds to the circumstances immediately after
+his escape from Gath to Adullam need not be more than pointed out. The
+dangers which he had dreaded and the cry to God which he had sent forth
+are still present to his mind, and echo through his song, like a
+subtly-touched chord of sadness, which appears for a moment, and is
+drowned in the waves of some triumphant music.
+
+  "I sought the Lord, and He heard me,
+   And from all my alarms He delivered me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  This afflicted (man) cried, and Jehovah heard,
+  And from all his troubles He saved him."
+
+And the "local colouring" of the psalm corresponds too with the
+circumstances of Adullam. How appropriate, for instance, does the form
+in which the Divine protection is proclaimed become, when we think of
+the little band bivouacking among the cliffs, "The angel of the Lord
+encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." Like his
+great ancestor, he is met in his desert flight by heavenly guards, "and
+he calls the name of that place Mahanaim" (that is, "two camps"), as
+discerning gathered round his own feeble company the ethereal weapons of
+an encircling host of the warriors of God, through whose impenetrable
+ranks his foes must pierce before they can reach him. From Samson's time
+we read of lions in this district (Judges xiv. 8, 9), and we may
+recognise another image as suggested by their growls heard among the
+ravines, and their gaunt forms prowling near the cave. "The young lions
+do lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not want
+any good" (ver. 10).
+
+And then he passes to earnest instructions and exhortations, which
+derive appositeness from regarding them as a proclamation to his men of
+the principles on which his camp is to be governed. "Come, ye children,
+hearken unto me." He regards himself as charged with guiding them to
+godliness: "I will teach you the fear of the Lord." With some
+remembrance, perhaps, of his deception at Gath, he warns them to "keep"
+their "tongues from evil" and their "lips from speaking guile." They are
+not to be in love with warfare, but, even with their swords in their
+hands, are to "seek peace, and pursue it." On these exhortations follow
+joyous assurances of God's watchful eye fixed upon the righteous, and
+His ear open to their cry; of deliverance for his suppliants, whatsoever
+hardship and trouble they may have to wade through; of a guardianship
+which "keepeth all the bones" of the righteous, so that neither the
+blows of the foe nor the perils of the crags should break them,--all
+crowned with the contrast ever present to David's mind, and having a
+personal reference to his enemies and to himself:
+
+  "Evil shall slay the wicked,
+   And the haters of the righteous shall suffer penalty.
+   Jehovah redeems the life of His servants,
+   And no penalty shall any suffer who trust in Him."
+
+Such were the counsels and teachings of the young leader to his little
+band,--noble "general orders" from a commander at the beginning of a
+campaign!
+
+We venture to refer the twenty-seventh psalm also to this period. It is
+generally supposed, indeed, by those commentators who admit its Davidic
+authorship, to belong to the time of Absalom's rebellion. The main
+reason for throwing it so late is the reference in ver. 4 to dwelling in
+the house of the Lord and inquiring in His temple.[J] This is supposed
+to require a date subsequent to David's bringing up of the ark to
+Jerusalem, and placing it in a temporary sanctuary. But whilst longing
+for the sanctuary is no doubt characteristic of the psalms of the later
+wanderings, it is by no means necessary to suppose that in the present
+case that desire, which David represents as the longing of his life, was
+a desire for mere bodily presence in a material temple. Indeed, the very
+language seems to forbid such an interpretation. Surely the desire for
+an abode in the house of the Lord--which was his one wish, which he
+longed to have continuous throughout all the days of his life, which was
+to surround him with a privacy of protection in trouble, and to be as
+the munitions of rocks about him--was something else than a morbid
+desire for an impossible seclusion in the tabernacle,--a desire fitter
+for some sickly mediaeval monarch who buried his foolish head and faint
+heart in a monastery than for God's Anointed. We have seen an earlier
+germ of the same desire in the twenty-third psalm, the words of which
+are referred to here; and the interpretation of the one is the
+interpretation of the other. The psalmist breathes his longing for the
+Divine fellowship, which shall be at once vision, and guidance, and
+hidden life in distress, and stability, and victory, and shall break
+into music of perpetual praise.
+
+[J] "The fourth verse in its present form _must_ have been written after
+the temple was built."--"The Psalms chronologically arranged," p.
+68--following Ewald, in whose imperious criticism that same naked "must
+have been," works wonders.
+
+If, then, we are not obliged by the words in question to adopt the
+later date, there is much in the psalm which strikingly corresponds with
+the earlier, and throws beautiful illustration on the psalmist's mood at
+this period. One such allusion we venture to suppose in the words (ver.
+2),
+
+  "When the wicked came against me to devour my flesh,
+   My enemies and my foes,--they stumbled and fell;"
+
+which have been usually taken as a mere general expression, without any
+allusion to a specific event. But there was one incident in David's life
+which had been forced upon his remembrance by his recent peril at
+Gath--his duel with Goliath, which exactly meets the very peculiar
+language here. The psalm employs the same word as the narrative, which
+tells how the Philistine "arose, and came, and drew near to David." The
+braggart boast, "I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and the
+beasts of the fields," is echoed in the singular phrase of the psalm;
+and the emphatic, rapid picture, "they stumbled and fell," is at once a
+reminiscence of the hour when the stone crashed through the thick
+forehead, "and he fell upon his face to the earth;" and also a reference
+to an earlier triumph in Israel's history, celebrated with fierce
+exultation in the wild chant whom rolls the words like a sweet morsel
+under the tongue, as it tells of Sisera--
+
+  "Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay;
+   Between her feet he bowed, he fell;
+   Where he bowed, there he fell down dead."
+
+Another autobiographical reference in the psalm has been disputed on
+insufficient grounds:
+
+  "For my father and my mother forsake me,
+   And Jehovah takes me up." (Ver. 10.)
+
+It is, at all events, a remarkable coincidence that the only mention of
+his parents after the earliest chapters of his life falls in precisely
+with this period of the history, and is such as might have suggested
+these words. We read (1 Sam. xxii. 3, 4) that he once ventured all the
+way from Adullam to Moab to beg an asylum from Saul's indiscriminate
+fury for his father and mother, who were no doubt too old to share his
+perils, as the rest of his family did. Having prepared a kindly welcome
+for them, perhaps on the strength of the blood of Ruth the Moabitess in
+Jesse's veins, he returned to Bethlehem, brought the old couple away,
+and guarded them safely to their refuge. It is surely most natural to
+suppose that the psalm is the lyrical echo of that event, and most
+pathetic to conceive of the psalmist as thinking of the happy home at
+Bethlehem now deserted, his brothers lurking with him among the rocks,
+and his parents exiles in heathen lands. Tears fill his eyes, but he
+lifts them to a Father that is never parted from him, and feels that he
+is no more orphaned nor homeless.
+
+The psalm is remarkable for the abrupt transition of feeling which
+cleaves it into two parts; one (vers. 1-6) full of jubilant hope and
+enthusiastic faith, the other (vers. 7-14) a lowly cry for help. There
+is no need to suppose, with some critics, that we have here two
+independent hymns bound together in error. He must have little knowledge
+of the fluctuations of the devout life who is surprised to find so swift
+a passage from confidence to conscious weakness. Whilst the usual order
+in the psalms, as the usual order in good men's experience, is that
+prayer for deliverance precedes praise and triumph, true communion with
+God is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on God,
+and realizing the mysteries of beauty in His secret place, ere it drops
+to earth. The lark sings as it descends from the "privacy of glorious
+light" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though more
+plaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps a
+nobler effect of faith to begin with God and hymn the victory as if
+already won, than to begin with trouble and to call for deliverance. But
+with whichever we commence, the prayer of earth must include both; and
+so long as we are weak, and God our strength, its elements must be
+"supplication and thanksgiving." The prayer of our psalm bends round
+again to its beginning, and after the plaintive cry for help breaks once
+more into confidence (vers. 13, 14). The psalmist shudders as he thinks
+what ruin would have befallen him if he had not trusted in God, and
+leaves the unfinished sentence,--as a man looking down into some fearful
+gulf starts back and covers his eyes, before he has well seen the bottom
+of the abyss.
+
+  "If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord
+     in the land of the living!"
+
+Then rejoicing to remember how even by his feeble trust he has been
+saved, he stirs up himself to a firmer faith, in words which are
+themselves an exercise of faith, as well as an incitement to it:
+
+  "Wait on Jehovah!
+   Courage! and let thy heart be strong!
+   Yea! wait on Jehovah!"
+
+Here is the true highest type of a troubled soul's fellowship with God,
+when the black fear and consciousness of weakness is inclosed in a
+golden ring of happy trust. Let the name of our God be first upon our
+lips, and the call to our wayward hearts to wait on Him be last, and
+then we may between think of our loneliness, and feebleness, and foes,
+and fears, without losing our hold of our Father's hand.
+
+David in his rocky eyrie was joyful, because he began with God. It was a
+man in real peril who said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom
+shall I fear?" It was at a critical pause in his fortunes, when he knew
+not yet whether Saul's malice was implacable, that he said, "Though war
+should rise against me, in this will I be confident." It was in
+thankfulness for the safe hiding-place among the dark caverns of the
+hills that he celebrated the dwelling of the soul in God with words
+coloured by his circumstances, "In the secret of His tabernacle shall
+He hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock." It was with Philistia at
+his feet before and Saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphant
+confidence was sure that "Now shall mine head be lifted up above mine
+enemies round about me." It was in weakness, not expelled even by such
+joyous faith, that he plaintively besought God's mercy, and laid before
+His mercy-seat as the mightiest plea His own inviting words, "Seek ye My
+face," and His servant's humble response, "Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
+Together, these made it impossible that that Face, the beams of which
+are light and salvation, should be averted. God's past comes to his lips
+as a plea for a present consistent with it and with His own mighty name.
+"Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my
+salvation." His loneliness, his ignorance of his road, and the enemies
+who watch him, and, like a later Saul, "breathe out cruelty" (see Acts
+ix. 1), become to him in his believing petitions, not grounds of fear,
+but arguments with God; and having thus mastered all that was
+distressful in his lot, by making it all the basis of his cry for help,
+he rises again to hope, and stirs up himself to lay hold on God, to be
+strong and bold, because his expectation is from Him. A noble picture of
+a steadfast soul; steadfast not because of absence of fears and reasons
+for fear, but because of presence of God and faith in Him.
+
+Having abandoned Adullam, by the advice of the prophet Gad, who from
+this time appears to have been a companion till the end of his reign (2
+Sam. xxiv. 11), and who subsequently became his biographer (1 Chron.
+xxix. 29), he took refuge, as outlaws have ever been wont to do, in the
+woods. In his forest retreat, somewhere among the now treeless hills of
+Judah, he heard of a plundering raid made by the Philistines on one of
+the unhappy border towns. The marauders had broken in upon the mirth of
+the threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year's
+harvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral
+foes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as
+he was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirred
+to action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little band
+bursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recaptures
+the cattle which like moss troopers they were driving homewards from
+the ruined farmsteads, and routs them with great slaughter. But the
+cowardly townspeople of Keilah had less gratitude than fear; and the
+king's banished son-in-law was too dangerous a guest, even though he was
+of their own tribe, and had delivered them from the enemy. Saul, who had
+not stirred from his moody seclusion to beat back invasion, summoned a
+hasty muster, in the hope of catching David in the little city, like a
+fox in his earth: and the cowardly citizens meditated saving their homes
+by surrendering their champion. David and his six hundred saved
+themselves by a rapid flight, and, as it would appear, by breaking up
+into detachments. "They went whithersoever they could go" (1 Sam. xxiii.
+13); whilst David, with some handful, made his way to the inhospitable
+wilderness which stretches from the hills of Judah to the shores of the
+Dead Sea, and skulked there in "lurking places" among the crags and
+tangled underwood. With fierce perseverance "Saul sought him every day,
+but God delivered him not into his hand." One breath of love, fragrant
+and strength-giving, was wafted to his fainting heart, when Jonathan
+found his way where Saul could not come, and the two friends met once
+more. In the woodland solitudes they plighted their faith again, and the
+beautiful unselfishness of Jonathan is wonderfully set forth in his
+words, "Thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee;"
+while an awful glimpse is given into that mystery of a godless will
+consciously resisting the inevitable, when there is added, "and that
+also Saul, my father, knoweth." In such resistance the king's son has no
+part, for it is pointedly noticed that he returned to his house.
+Treachery, and that from the men of his own tribe, again dogs David's
+steps. The people of Ziph, a small place on the edge of the southern
+desert, betray his haunt to Saul. The king receives the intelligence
+with a burst of thanks, in which furious jealousy and perverted
+religion, and a sense of utter loneliness and misery, and a strange
+self-pity, are mingled most pathetically and terribly: "Blessed be ye of
+the Lord, for ye have compassion on me!" He sends them away to mark down
+his prey; and when they have tracked him to his lair, he follows with
+his force and posts them round the hill where David and his handful
+lurk. The little band try to escape, but they are surrounded and
+apparently lost. At the very moment when the trap is just going to
+close, a sudden messenger, "fiery red with haste," rushes into Saul's
+army with news of a formidable invasion: "Haste thee and come; for the
+Philistines have spread themselves upon the land!" So the eager hand,
+ready to smite and crush, is plucked back; and the hour of deepest
+distress is the hour of deliverance.
+
+At some period in this lowest ebb of David's fortunes, we have one short
+psalm, very simple and sad (liv.) It bears the title, "When the Ziphims
+came and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?" and may
+probably be referred to the former of the two betrayals by the men of
+Ziph. The very extremity of peril has made the psalmist still and quiet.
+The sore need has shortened his prayer. He is too sure that God hears to
+use many words; for it is distrust, not faith, which makes us besiege
+His throne with much speaking. He is confident as ever; but one feels
+that there is a certain self-restraint and air of depression over the
+brief petitions, which indicate the depth of his distress and the
+uneasiness of protracted anxiety. Two notes only sound from his harp:
+one a plaintive cry for help; the other, thanksgiving for deliverance as
+already achieved. The two are bound together by the recurrence in each
+of "the name" of GOD, which is at once the source of his salvation and
+the theme of his praise. We have only to read the lowly petitions to
+feel that they speak of a spirit somewhat weighed down by danger, and
+relaxed from the loftier mood of triumphant trust.
+
+  (1) O God, by Thy name save me,
+      And in Thy strength do judgment for me
+
+  (2) O God, hear my prayer,
+      Give ear to the words of my mouth.
+
+  (3) For strangers are risen against me,
+      And tyrants seek my life.
+      They set not God before them.
+
+The enemies are called "strangers;" but, as we have seen in the first of
+these songs of the exile, it is not necessary, therefore, to suppose
+that they were not Israelites. The Ziphites were men of Judah like
+himself; and there is bitter emphasis as well as a gleam of insight into
+the spiritual character of the true Israel in calling them foreigners.
+The other name, oppressors, or violent men, or, as we have rendered it,
+tyrants, corresponds too accurately with the character of Saul in his
+later years, to leave much doubt that it is pointed at him. If so, the
+softening of the harsh description by the use of the plural is in
+beautiful accordance with the forgiving leniency which runs through all
+David's conduct to him. Hard words about Saul himself do not occur in
+the psalms. His counsellors, his spies, the liars who calumniated David
+to him, and for their own ends played upon his suspicious nature,--the
+tools who took care that the cruel designs suggested by themselves
+should be carried out, kindle David's wrath, but it scarcely ever lights
+on the unhappy monarch whom he loved with all-enduring charity while he
+lived, and mourned with magnificent eulogy when he died. The allusion is
+made all the more probable, because of the verbal correspondence with
+the narrative which records that "Saul was come out to seek his life" (1
+Sam. xxiii. 15.)
+
+A chord or two from the harp permits the mind to dwell on the thought of
+the foes, and prepares for the second part of this psalm. In it
+thanksgiving and confidence flow from the petitions of the former
+portion. But the praise is not so jubilant, nor the trust so
+victorious, as we have seen them. "The peace of God" has come in answer
+to prayer, but it is somewhat subdued:
+
+  "Behold, God is my helper;
+   The Lord is the supporter of my life."
+
+The foes sought his life, but, as the historical book gives the
+antithesis, "Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into
+his hand." The rendering of the English version, "The Lord is with them
+that uphold my soul," is literally accurate, but does not convey the
+meaning of the Hebrew idiom. God is not regarded as one among many
+helpers, but as alone the supporter or upholder of his life. Believing
+that, the psalmist, of course, believes as a consequence that his
+enemies will be smitten with evil for their evil. The prophetic lip of
+faith calls things that are not as though they were. In the midst of his
+dangers he looks forward to songs of deliverance and glad sacrifices of
+praise; and the psalm closes with words that approach the more fervid
+utterances we have already heard, as if his song had raised his own
+spirit above its fears:
+
+  (6) With willinghood will I sacrifice unto Thee.
+      I will praise Thy name for it is good.
+
+
+  (7) For from all distress it has delivered me.
+      And on my enemies will mine eye see (my desire)
+
+The name--the revealed character of God--was the storehouse of all the
+saving energies to which he appealed in verse 1. It is the theme of his
+praise when the deliverance shall have come. It is almost regarded here
+as equivalent to the Divine personality--it is good, _it_ has delivered
+him. Thus, we may say that this brief psalm gives us as the single
+thought of a devout soul in trouble, the name of the Lord, and teaches
+by its simple pathos how the contemplation of God as He has made Himself
+known, should underlie every cry for help and crown every thanksgiving;
+whilst it may assure us that whosoever seeks for the salvation of that
+mighty name may, even in the midst of trouble, rejoice as in an
+accomplished deliverance. And all such thoughts should be held with a
+faith at least as firm as the ancient psalmist's, by us to whom the
+"name" of the Lord is "declared" by Him who is the full revelation of
+God, and the storehouse of all blessings and help to his "brethren."
+(Heb. ii. 12.)
+
+A little plain of some mile or so in breadth slopes gently down towards
+the Dead Sea about the centre of its western shore. It is girdled round
+by savage cliffs, which, on the northern side, jut out in a bold
+headland to the water's edge. At either extremity is a stream flowing
+down a deep glen choked with luxurious vegetation; great fig-trees,
+canes, and maiden-hair ferns covering the rocks. High up on the hills
+forming its western boundary a fountain sparkles into light, and falls
+to the flat below in long slender threads. Some grey weathered stones
+mark the site of a city that was old when Abraham wandered in the land.
+Traces of the palm forests which, as its name indicates, were cleared
+for its site (Hazezon Tamar, The palm-tree clearing) have been found,
+encrusted with limestone, in the warm, damp gullies, and ruined terraces
+for vineyards can be traced on the bare hill-sides. But the fertility of
+David's time is gone, and the precious streams nourish only a jungle
+haunted by leopard and ibex. This is the fountain and plain of Engedi
+(the fount of the wild goat), a spot which wants but industry and care
+to make it a little paradise. Here David fled from the neighbouring
+wilderness, attracted no doubt by the safety of the deep gorges and
+rugged hills, as well as by the abundance of water in the fountain and
+the streams. The picturesque and touching episode of his meeting with
+Saul has made the place for ever memorable. There are many excavations
+in the rocks about the fountain, which may have been the cave--black as
+night to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare of
+sunlight upon limestone, but holding a glimmering twilight to one
+looking outwards with eyes accustomed to the gloom--in the innermost
+recesses of which David lay hid while Saul tarried in its mouth. The
+narrative gives a graphic picture of the hurried colloquy among the
+little band, when summary revenge was thus unexpectedly put within their
+grasp. The fierce retainers whispered their suggestion that it would be
+"tempting providence" to let such an opportunity escape; but the nobler
+nature of David knows no personal animosity, and in these earliest days
+is flecked by no cruelty nor lust of blood. He cannot, however, resist
+the temptation of showing his power and almost parading his forbearance
+by stealing through the darkness and cutting away the end of Saul's long
+robe. It was little compared with what he could as easily have
+done--smite him to the heart as he crouched there defenceless. But it
+was a coarse practical jest, conveying a rude insult, and the quickly
+returning nobleness of his nature made him ashamed of it, as soon as he
+had clambered back with his trophy. He felt that the sanctity of Saul's
+office as the anointed of the Lord should have saved him from the gibe.
+The king goes his way all unawares, and, as it would seem, had not
+regained his men, when David, leaving his band (very much out of temper
+no doubt at his foolish nicety), yields to a gush of ancient friendship
+and calls loudly after him, risking discovery and capture in his
+generous emotion. The pathetic conversation which ensued is eminently
+characteristic of both men, so tragically connected and born to work woe
+to one another. David's remonstrance (1 Sam. xxiv. 9-15) is full of
+nobleness, of wounded affection surviving still, of conscious rectitude,
+of solemn devout appeal to the judgment of God. He has no words of
+reproach for Saul, no weak upbraidings, no sullen anger, no repaying
+hate with hate. He almost pleads with the unhappy king, and yet there is
+nothing undignified or feeble in his tone. The whole is full of
+correspondences, often of verbal identity, with the psalms which we
+assign to this period. The calumnies which he so often complains of in
+these are the subject of his first words to Saul, whom he regards as
+having had his heart poisoned by lies: "Wherefore hearest thou men's
+words, saying, Behold! David seeketh thy hurt." He asserts absolute
+innocence of anything that warranted the king's hostility, just as he
+does so decisively in the psalms. "There is neither evil nor
+transgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee." As in
+them he so often compares himself to some wild creature pursued like the
+goats in the cliffs of Engedi, so he tells Saul, "Thou huntest my life
+to take it." And his appeal from earth's slanders, and misconceptions,
+and cruelties, to the perfect tribunal of God, is couched in language,
+every clause of which may be found in his psalms. "The Lord, therefore,
+be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause,
+and deliver me out of thy hand."
+
+The unhappy Saul again breaks into a passion of tears. With that sudden
+flashing out into vehement emotion so characteristic of him, and so
+significant of his enfeebled self-control, he recognises David's
+generous forbearance and its contrast to his own conduct. For a moment,
+at all events, he sees, as by a lightning flash, the mad hopelessness of
+the black road he is treading in resisting the decree that has made his
+rival king--and he binds him by an oath to spare his house when he sits
+on the throne. The picture moves awful thoughts and gentle pity for the
+poor scathed soul writhing in its hopelessness and dwelling in a great
+solitude of fear, but out of which stray gleams of ancient nobleness
+still break;--and so the doomed man goes back to his gloomy seclusion at
+Gibeah, and David to the free life of the mountains and the wilderness.
+
+
+
+
+VII.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+There are many echoes of this period of Engedi in the Psalms. Perhaps
+the most distinctly audible of these are to be found in the seventh
+psalm, which is all but universally recognised as David's, even Ewald
+concurring in the general consent. It is an irregular ode--for such is
+the meaning of Shiggaion in the title, and by its broken rhythms and
+abrupt transitions testifies to the emotion of its author. The occasion
+of it is said to be "the words of Cush the Benjamite." As this is a
+peculiar name for an Israelite, it has been supposed to be an
+allegorical designation for some historical person, expressive of his
+character. We might render it "the negro." The Jewish commentators have
+taken it to refer to Saul himself, but the bitter tone of the psalm, so
+unlike David's lingering forbearance to the man whom he never ceased to
+love, is against that supposition. Shimei the Benjamite, whose foul
+tongue cursed him in rabid rage, as he fled before Absalom, has also
+been thought of, but the points of correspondence with the earlier date
+are too numerous to make that reference tenable. It seems better to
+suppose that Cush "the black" was one of Saul's tribe, who had been
+conspicuous among the calumniators of whom we have seen David
+complaining to the king. And if so, there is no period in the Sauline
+persecution into which the psalm will fit so naturally as the present.
+Its main thoughts are precisely those which he poured out so
+passionately in his eager appeal when he and Saul stood face to face on
+the solitary hill side. They are couched in the higher strain of poetry
+indeed, but that is the only difference; whilst there are several verbal
+coincidences, and at least one reference to the story, which seem to fix
+the date with considerable certainty.
+
+In it we see the psalmist's soul surging with the ground swell of strong
+emotion, which breaks into successive waves of varied feeling--first
+(vers. 1, 2) terror blended with trust, the enemy pictured, as so
+frequently in these early psalms, as a lion who tears the flesh and
+breaks the bones of his prey--and the refuge in God described by a
+graphic word very frequent also in the cotemporaneous psalms (xi. 1;
+lvii. 1, etc.). Then with a quick turn comes the passionate protestation
+of his innocence, in hurried words, broken by feeling, and indignantly
+turning away from the slanders which he will not speak of more
+definitely than calling them "this."
+
+  (3) Jehovah, my God! if I have done this--
+      If there be iniquity in my hands--
+
+  (4) If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me--
+      Yea, I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy--
+
+  (5) May the enemy pursue my soul and capture it,
+      And trample down to the earth my life,
+      And my glory in the dust may he lay!
+
+How remarkably all this agrees with his words to Saul, "There is neither
+evil nor transgression in my hand, ... yet thou huntest my soul to take
+it" (1 Sam. xxiv. 11); and how forcible becomes the singular reiteration
+in the narrative, of the phrase "my hand," which occurs six times in
+four verses. The peculiarly abrupt introduction in ver. 4 of the clause,
+"I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy," which completely
+dislocates the grammatical structure, is best accounted for by
+supposing that David's mind is still full of the temptation to stain
+his hands with Saul's blood, and is vividly conscious of the effort
+which he had had to make to overcome it. And the solemn invocation of
+destruction which he dares to address to Jehovah his God includes the
+familiar figure of himself as a fugitive before the hunters, which is
+found in the words already quoted, and which here as there stands in
+immediate connection with his assertion of clean hands.
+
+Then follows, with another abrupt turn, a vehement cry to God to judge
+his cause; his own individual case melts into the thought of a
+world-wide judgment, which is painted with grand power with three or
+four broad rapid strokes.
+
+  (6) Awake for me--Thou hast commanded judgment.
+
+  (7) Let the assembly of the nations stand round Thee,
+      And above it return Thou up on high.
+
+  (8) Jehovah will judge the nations.
+      Judge me, O Jehovah, according to my righteousness and mine
+       integrity in me!
+
+Each smaller act of God's judgment is connected with the final
+world-judgment, is a prophecy of it, is one in principle therewith; and
+He, who at the last will be known as the universal Judge of all,
+certainly cannot leave His servants' cause unredressed nor their cry
+unheard till then. The psalmist is led by his own history to realize
+more intensely that truth of a Divine manifestation for judicial
+purposes to the whole world, and his prophetic lip paints its
+solemnities as the surest pledge of his own deliverance. He sees the
+gathered nations standing hushed before the Judge, and the Victor God at
+the close of the solemn act ascending up on high where He was before,
+above the heads of the mighty crowd (Psalm lxviii. 19). In the faith of
+this vision, and because God will judge the nations, he invokes for
+himself the anticipation of that final triumph of good over evil, and
+asks to be dealt with according to his righteousness. Nothing but the
+most hopeless determination to find difficulties could make a difficulty
+of such words. David is not speaking of his whole character or life, but
+of his conduct in one specific matter, namely, in his relation to Saul.
+The righteous integrity which he calls God to vindicate is not general
+sinlessness nor inward conformity with the law of God, but his
+blamelessness in all his conduct to his gratuitous foe. His prayer that
+God would judge him is distinctly equivalent to his often repeated cry
+for deliverance, which should, as by a Divine arbitration, decide the
+debate between Saul and him. The whole passage in the psalm, with all
+its lyrical abruptness and lofty imagery, is the expression of the very
+same thought which we find so prominent in his words to Saul, already
+quoted, concerning God's judging between them and delivering David out
+of Saul's hand. The parallel is instructive, not only as the prose
+rendering of the poetry in the psalm, explaining it beyond the
+possibility of misunderstanding, but also as strongly confirmatory of
+the date which we have assigned to the latter. It is so improbable as to
+be almost inconceivable that the abrupt disconnected themes of the psalm
+should echo so precisely the _whole_ of the arguments used in the
+remonstrance of the historical books, and should besides present verbal
+resemblances and historical allusions to these, unless it be of the same
+period, and therefore an inlet into the mind of the fugitive as he
+lurked among the rugged cliffs by "the fountain of the wild goat."
+
+In that aspect the remainder of the psalm is very striking and
+significant. We have two main thoughts in it--that of God as punishing
+evil in this life, and that of the self-destruction inherent in all sin;
+and these are expressed with such extraordinary energy as to attest at
+once the profound emotion of the psalmist, and his familiarity with such
+ideas during his days of persecution. It is noticeable, too, that the
+language is carefully divested of all personal reference; he has risen
+to the contemplation of a great law of the Divine government, and at
+that elevation the enemies whose calumnies and cruelties had driven him
+to God fade into insignificance.
+
+With what magnificent boldness he paints God the Judge arraying Himself
+in His armour of destruction!
+
+  (11) God is a righteous Judge,
+       And a God (who is) angry every day.
+
+  (12) If he (_i.e._, the evil-doer) turn not, He whets His sword,
+       His bow He has bent, and made it ready.
+
+  (13) And for him He has prepared weapons of death,
+       His arrows He has made blazing darts.
+
+Surely there is nothing grander in any poetry than this tremendous
+image, smitten out with so few strokes of the chisel, and as true as it
+is grand. The representation applies to the facts of life, of which as
+directed by a present Providence, and not of any future retribution,
+David is here thinking. Among these facts is chastisement falling upon
+obstinate antagonism to God. Modern ways of thinking shrink from such
+representations; but the whole history of the world teems with
+confirmation of their truth--only what David calls the flaming arrows of
+God, men call "the natural consequences of evil." The later revelation
+of God in Christ brings into greater prominence the disciplinary
+character of all punishment here, but bates no jot of the intensity with
+which the earlier revelation grasped the truth of God as a righteous
+Judge in eternal opposition to, and aversion from, evil.
+
+With that solemn picture flaming before his inward eye, the
+prophet-psalmist turns to gaze on the evil-doer who has to bear the
+brunt of these weapons of light. Summoning us to look with him by a
+"Behold!" he tells his fate in an image of frequent occurrence in the
+psalms of this period, and very natural in the lips of a man wandering
+in the desert among wild creatures, and stumbling sometimes into the
+traps dug for them: "He has dug a hole and hollowed it out, and he falls
+into the pitfall he is making." The crumbling soil in which he digs
+makes his footing on the edge more precarious with every spadeful that
+he throws out, and at last, while he is hard at work, in he tumbles. It
+is the conviction spoken in the proverbs of all nations, expressed here
+by David in a figure drawn from life--the conviction that all sin digs
+its own grave and is self-destructive. The psalm does not proclaim the
+yet deeper truth that this automatic action, by which sin sets in motion
+its own punishment, has a disciplinary purpose, so that the arrows of
+God wound for healing, and His armour is really girded on for, even
+while it seems to be against, the sufferer. But it would not be
+difficult to show that that truth underlies the whole Old Testament
+doctrine of retribution, and is obvious in many of David's psalms. In
+the present one the deliverance of the hunted prey is contemplated as
+the end of the baffled trapper's fall into his own snare, and beyond
+that the psalmist's thoughts do not travel. His own safety, the
+certainty that his appeal to God's judgment will not be in vain, fill
+his mind; and without following the fate of his enemy further, he closes
+this song of tumultuous and varied emotion with calm confidence and a
+vow of thanksgiving for a deliverance which is already as good as
+accomplished:
+
+  (17) I will give thanks to Jehovah according to His righteousness,
+       And I will sing the name of Jehovah, Most High.
+
+We have still another psalm (lvii.) which is perhaps best referred to
+this period. According to the title, it belongs to the time when David
+"fled from Saul in the cave." This may, of course, apply to either
+Adullam or Engedi, and there is nothing decisive to be alleged for
+either; yet one or two resemblances to psalm vii. incline the balance to
+the latter period.
+
+These resemblances are the designation of his enemies as lions (vii. 2;
+lvii. 4); the image of their falling into their own trap (vii. 15; lvii.
+6); the use of the phrase "my honour" or "glory" for "my soul" (vii. 5;
+lvii. 8--the same word in the original); the name of God as "Most High"
+(vii. 17; lvii. 2), an expression which only occurs twice besides in the
+Davidic psalms (ix. 2; xxi. 7); the parallelism in sense between the
+petition which forms the centre and the close of the one, "Be Thou
+exalted, O God, above the heavens" (lvii. 5, 11), and that which is the
+most emphatic desire of the other, "Arise, O Lord, awake, ... lift up
+Thyself for me" (vii. 6). Another correspondence, not preserved in our
+English version, is the employment in both of a rare poetical word,
+which originally means "to complete," and so comes naturally to have the
+secondary significations of "to perfect" and "to put an end to." The
+word in question only occurs five times in the Old Testament, and always
+in psalms. Four of these are in hymns ascribed to David, of which two
+are (lvii. 2), "The God that _performeth_ all things for me," and (vii.
+9), "Let the wickedness of the wicked _come to an end_." The use of the
+same peculiar word in two such dissimilar connections seems to show that
+it was, as we say, "running in his head" at the time, and is, perhaps, a
+stronger presumption of the cotemporaneousness of both psalms than its
+employment in both with the same application would have been.
+
+Characteristic of these early psalms is the occurrence of a refrain
+(compare lvi. and lix.) which in the present instance closes both of
+the portions of which the hymn consists. The former of these (1-5)
+breathes prayerful trust, from which it passes to describe the
+encompassing dangers; the second reverses this order, and beginning with
+the dangers and distress, rises to ringing gladness and triumph, as
+though the victory were already won. The psalmist's confident cleaving
+of soul to God is expressed (ver. 1) by an image that may be connected
+with his circumstances at Engedi: "In Thee has my soul taken refuge."
+The English version is correct as regards the sense, though it
+obliterates the beautiful metaphor by its rendering "trusteth." The
+literal meaning of the verb is "to flee to a refuge," and its employment
+here may be due to the poetical play of the imagination, which likens
+his secure retreat among the everlasting hills to the safe hiding-place
+which his spirit found in God his habitation. A similar analogy appears
+in the earliest use of the expression, which may have been floating in
+the psalmist's memory, and which occurs in the ancient song of Moses
+(Deut. xxxii.). The scenery of the forty years' wanderings remarkably
+colours that ode, and explains the frequent recurrence in it of the name
+of God as "the Rock." We have false gods, too, spoken of in it, as,
+"Their rock in whom they took refuge," where the metaphor appears in its
+completeness (ver. 37). Our psalm goes on with words which contain a
+further allusion to another part of the same venerable hymn, "And in the
+shadow of Thy wings will I take refuge," which remind us of the grand
+image in it of God's care over Israel, as of the eagle bearing her
+eaglets on her mighty pinions (ver. 11), and point onwards to the still
+more wonderful saying in which all that was terrible and stern in the
+older figure is softened into tenderness, and instead of the fierce
+affection of the mother eagle, the hen gathering her chickens under her
+wings becomes the type of the brooding love and more than maternal
+solicitude of God in Christ. Nor can we forget that the only other
+instance of the figure before David's psalms is in the exquisite idyl
+which tells of the sweet heroism of David's ancestress, Ruth, on whose
+gentle and homeless head was pronounced the benediction, "A full reward
+be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come
+to trust" (Ruth ii. 12). We may perhaps also see in this clause an
+extension of the simile which unquestionably lies in the verb, and may
+think of the strong "sides of the cave," arching above the fugitive like
+a gigantic pair of wings beneath which he nestles warm and dry, while
+the short-lived storm roars among the rocks--a type of that broad pinion
+which is his true defence till threatening evils be overpast. In the
+past he has sheltered his soul in God, but no past act of faith can
+avail for present distresses. It must be perpetually renewed. The past
+deliverances should make the present confidence more easy; and the true
+use of all earlier exercises of trust is to prepare for the resolve that
+we will still rely on the help we have so often proved. "I have trusted
+in Thee" should ever be followed by "And in the shadow of Thy wings will
+I trust."
+
+The psalmist goes on to fulfil his resolve. He takes refuge by prayer in
+God, whose absolute elevation above all creatures and circumstances is
+the ground of his hope, whose faithful might will accomplish its design,
+and complete His servant's lot. "I will call to God Most High; to God
+who perfects (His purpose) for me." And then assured hope gleams upon
+his soul, and though the storm-clouds hang low and black as ever, they
+are touched with light. "He will send from heaven and save me." But even
+while this happy certainty dawns upon him, the contending fears, which
+ever lurk hard by faith, reassert their power, and burst in, breaking
+the flow of the sentence, which by its harsh construction indicates the
+sudden irruption of disturbing thoughts. "He that would swallow me up
+reproaches (me)." With this two-worded cry of pain--prolonged by the
+very unusual occurrence, in the middle of a verse, of the "Selah," which
+is probably a musical direction for the accompaniment--a billow of
+terror breaks over his soul; but its force is soon spent, and the hope,
+above which for a moment it had rolled, rises from the broken spray like
+some pillared light round which the surges dash in vain. "God shall send
+forth His mercy and His truth"--those two white-robed messengers who
+draw nigh to all who call on Him. Then follows in broken words, the true
+rendering of which is matter of considerable doubt, a renewed picture of
+his danger:
+
+  (4) (With) my soul--among lions will I lie down.
+      Devourers are the sons of men;
+      Their teeth a spear and arrows,
+      And their tongue a sharp sword
+
+The psalmist seems to have broken off the construction, and instead of
+finishing the sentence as he began it, to have substituted the first
+person for the third, which ought to have followed "my soul." This
+fragmentary construction expresses agitation of spirit. It may be a
+question whether the "lions" in the first clause are to be regarded as a
+description of his enemies, who are next spoken of without metaphor as
+sons of men who devour (or who "breathe out fire"), and whose words are
+cutting and wounding as spear and sword. The analogy of the other psalms
+of this period favours such an understanding of the words. But, on the
+other hand, the reference preferred by Delitzsch and others gives great
+beauty. According to that interpretation, the fugitive among the savage
+cliffs prepares himself for his nightly slumbers in calm confidence, and
+lays himself down there in the cave, while the wild beasts, whose haunt
+it may have been, prowl without, feeling himself safer among them than
+among the more ferocious "sons of men," whose hatred has a sharper tooth
+than even theirs. And then this portion of the psalm closes with the
+refrain, "Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let Thy glory be
+above all the earth." A prayer that God would show forth His power, and
+exalt His name by delivering His servant. What lofty conviction that his
+cause was God's cause, that the Divine honour was concerned in his
+safety, that he was a chosen instrument to make known God's praise over
+all the world!--and what self-forgetfulness in that, even whilst he
+prays for his own deliverance, he thinks of it rather as the magnifying
+of God, than as it affects himself personally!
+
+The second part continues the closing strain of the former, and
+describes the plots of his foes in the familiar metaphor of the pit,
+into which they fall themselves. The contemplation of this divine
+Nemesis on evil-doers leads up to the grand burst of thanksgiving with
+which the psalm closes--
+
+  (7) Fixed is my heart, O God! fixed my heart!
+      I will sing and strike the harp.[K]
+
+  (8) Awake, my glory! awake psaltery and harp![L]
+      I will awake the dawn.
+
+[K] Properly, "sing with a musical accompaniment."
+
+[L] Two kinds of stringed instrument, the difference between which is
+very obscure.
+
+If the former part may be regarded as the evening song of confidence,
+this is the morning hymn of thankfulness. He lay down in peace among
+lions; he awakes to praise. He calls upon his soul to shake off slumber;
+he invokes the chords of his harp to arouse from its chamber the
+sleeping dawn. Like a mightier than himself, he will rise a great while
+before day, and the clear notes of the rude lyre, his companion in all
+his wanderings, will summon the morning to add its silent speech to His
+praise. But a still loftier thought inspires him. This hunted solitary
+not only knows that his deliverance is certain, but he has already the
+consciousness of a world-wide vocation, and anticipates that the story
+of his sorrow and his trust, with the music of his psalms, belong to the
+world, and will flow over the barriers of his own generation and of his
+own land into the whole earth--
+
+   (9) I will praise Thee among the peoples, O Lord,
+       I will strike the harp to Thee among the nations.
+
+  (10) For great unto the heavens is Thy mercy,
+       And to the clouds Thy truth.
+
+These two mighty messengers of God, whose coming he was sure of (ver.
+3), will show themselves in his deliverance, boundless and filling all
+the creation. They shall be the theme of his world-wide praise. And
+then with the repetition of the refrain the psalm comes round again to
+supplication, and dies into silent waiting before God till He shall be
+pleased to answer. Thus triumphant were the hopes of the lonely fugitive
+skulking in the wilderness; such bright visions peopled the waste
+places, and made the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose.
+
+The cxlii. is also, according to the title, one of the cave-psalms. But
+considerable doubt attaches to the whole group of so-called Davidic
+compositions in the last book of the psalter (p. 138-144), from their
+place, and from the fact that there are just seven of them, as well as
+in some cases from their style and character. They are more probably
+later hymns in David's manner. The one in question corresponds in tone
+with the psalms which we have been considering. It breathes the same
+profound consciousness of desolation and loneliness: "My spirit is
+darkened within me;" "Refuge fails me, no man cares for my soul." It
+glows with the same ardour of personal trust in and love to God which
+spring from his very loneliness and helplessness: "I cry unto Thee, O
+Jehovah! I say Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the
+living." It triumphs with the same confidence, and with the same
+conviction that his deliverance concerns all the righteous: "They shall
+_crown themselves in me_, for Thou hast dealt bountifully with me;" for
+such would appear to be the true meaning of the word rendered in our
+version "compass me about;" the idea being that the mercy of God to the
+psalmist would become a source of festal gladness to all His servants,
+who would bind the story of God's bounty to him upon their brows like a
+coronal for a banquet.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.--THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+As our purpose in this volume is not a complete biography, it will not
+be necessary to dwell on the subsequent portions of the exile, inasmuch
+as there is little reference to these in the psalms. We must pass over
+even that exquisite episode of Abigail, whose graceful presence and
+"most subtle flow of silver-paced counsel" soothed David's ruffled
+spirit, and led him captive at once as in a silken leash. The glimpse of
+old-world ways in the story, the rough mirth of the shearers, the hint
+of the kind of black mail by which David's little force was provided,
+the snarling humour and garrulous crustiness of Nabal, David's fierce
+blaze of hot wrath, the tribute of the shepherds to the kindliness and
+honour of the outlaws, the rustic procession, with the gracious lady
+last of all, the stately courtesy of the meeting, her calm wise
+words--not flattery, yet full of predictions of prosperity most pleasant
+to hear from such lips; not rebuke, yet setting in the strongest light
+how unworthy of God's anointed personal vengeance was; not servile, but
+yet recognising in delicate touches his absolute power over her; not
+abject, and yet full of supplication,--the quick response of David's
+frank nature and susceptible heart, which sweeps away all his wrath; the
+budding germ of love, which makes him break into benedictions on her and
+her wisdom, and thankfulness that he had been kept back from "hurting
+_thee_," and the dramatic close in their happy union,--all make up one
+of the most charming of the many wonderful idyls of Scripture, all
+fragrant with the breath of love, and fresh with undying youth. The
+story lives--alas! how much longer do words endure than the poor earthly
+affections which they record!
+
+After a second betrayal by the men of Ziph, and a second meeting with
+Saul--their last--in which the doomed man parts from him with blessing
+and predictions of victory on his unwilling lips, David seems to have
+been driven to desperation by his endless skulking in dens and caves,
+and to have seen no hope of continuing much longer to maintain himself
+on the frontier and to elude Saul's vigilance. Possibly others than
+Nabal grudged to pay him for the volunteer police which he kept up on
+behalf of the pastoral districts exposed to the wild desert tribes. At
+all events he once more made a plunge into Philistine territory, and
+offers himself and his men to the service of the King of Gath. On the
+offer being accepted, the little town of Ziklag was allotted to them,
+and became their home for a year and four months.
+
+To this period of comparative security one psalm has been supposed to
+belong--the xxxi., which, in tone and in certain expressions,
+corresponds very well with the circumstances. There are many
+similarities in it with the others of the same period which we have
+already considered--such, for instance, as the figure of God his rock
+(ver. 3), the net which his enemies have laid for him (ver. 4), the
+allusions to their calumnies and slanders (vers. 13, 18), his safe
+concealment in God (ver. 20: compare xxvii. 5; lvii. 1; xvii. 8, etc.),
+and the close verbal resemblance of ver. 24 with the closing words of
+psalm xxvii. The reference, however, which has been taken as pointing to
+David's position in Ziklag is that contained in the somewhat remarkable
+words (ver. 21): "Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me His
+marvellous loving-kindness in a strong city." Of course, the expression
+may be purely a graphic figure for the walls and defences of the Divine
+protection, as, indeed, it is usually understood to be. But the general
+idea of the encompassing shelter of God has just been set forth in the
+magnificent imagery of the previous verse as the tabernacle, the secret
+of His presence in which He hides and guards His servants. And the
+further language of the phrase in question, introduced as it is by a
+rapturous burst of blessing and praise, seems so emphatic and peculiar
+as to make not unnatural the supposition of a historical basis in some
+event which had recently happened to the psalmist.
+
+No period of the life will so well correspond to such a requirement as
+the sixteen months of his stay in Ziklag, during which he was completely
+free from fear of Saul, and stood high in favour with the King of Gath,
+in whose territory he had found a refuge. We may well believe that to
+the hunted exile, so long accustomed to a life of constant alarms and
+hurried flight, the quiet of a settled home was very sweet, and that
+behind the rude fortifications of the little town in the southern
+wilderness there seemed security, which made a wonderful contrast to
+their defenceless lairs and lurking-places among the rocks. Their eyes
+would lose their watchful restlessness, and it would be possible to lay
+aside their weapons, to gather their households about them, and, though
+they were in a foreign land, still to feel something of the bliss of
+peaceful habitudes and tranquil use and wont healing their broken lives.
+No wonder, then, that such thankful praise should break from the
+leader's lips! No wonder that he should regard this abode in a fortified
+city as the result of a miracle of Divine mercy! He describes the
+tremulous despondency which had preceded this marvel of loving-kindness
+in language which at once recalls the wave of hopelessness which swept
+across his soul after his final interview with Saul, and which led to
+his flight into Philistine territory, "And David said in his heart, I
+shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul" (1 Sam. xxvii. 1). How
+completely this corresponds with the psalm, allowance being made for the
+difference between poetry and prose, when he describes the thoughts
+which had shaded his soul just before the happy peace of the strong
+city--"I said in my haste,[M] I am cut off from before Thine eyes;
+nevertheless Thou heardest the voice of my supplication" (ver. 22). And
+rising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience to
+the great truths concerning God's care of His children, the discovery of
+which was to him even more precious than his personal safety, he breaks
+forth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of his
+consciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole household
+of God--
+
+  (23) O love Jehovah, all ye beloved of Him!
+       The faithful doth Jehovah preserve,
+       And plentifully repayeth the proud-doer.
+
+  (24) Courage! and let your heart be strong,
+       All ye that wait for Jehovah!
+
+[M] Confusion (Perowne), distrust (Delitzsch), anguish (Ewald),
+trepidation (Calvin). The word literally means to sway backwards and
+forwards, and hence to be agitated by any emotion, principally by fear;
+and then, perhaps, to flee in terror.
+
+The glow of personal attachment to Jehovah which kindles in the trustful
+words is eminently characteristic. It anticipates the final teaching of
+the New Testament in bringing all the relations between God and the
+devout soul down to the one bond of love. "We love Him because He first
+loved us," says John. And David has the same discernment that the basis
+of all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of God, and that the
+only response which that seeking love requires is the awaking of the
+echo of its own Divine voice in our hearts. Love begets love; love seeks
+love; love rests in love. Our faith _corresponds_ to His faithfulness,
+our obedience to His command, our reverence to His majesty; but our love
+_resembles_ His, from which it draws its life. So the one exhortation is
+"love the Lord," and the ground of it lies in that name--"His
+beloved"--those to whom He shows His loving-kindness (ver. 21).
+
+The closing words remind us of the last verse of psalm xxvii. They are
+distinctly quoted from it, with the variation that there the heartening
+to courage was addressed to his own soul, and here to "all who wait on
+the Lord." The resemblance confirms the reference of both psalms to the
+same epoch, while the difference suits the change in his circumstances
+from a period of comparative danger, such as his stay at Adullam, to one
+of greater security, like his residence in Ziklag. The same persons who
+were called to love the Lord because they were participant of His
+loving-kindness, are now called to courage and manly firmness of soul
+because their hope is fixed on Jehovah. The progress of thought is
+significant and obvious. Love to God, resting on consciousness of His
+love to us, is the true armour. "There is no fear in love." The heart
+filled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters,
+while the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grinding
+collision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry sea
+of life. Love, too, is the condition of hope. The patience and
+expectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of the
+sweetness of the former. Of these fair sisters, Love is the elder as the
+greater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which Hope
+forges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experience
+supplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance;
+and she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, and
+clear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. To
+love the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. So
+had the psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous years
+of exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed on
+his lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less external
+security, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. Not
+in vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to his
+feet from their stormy waves. Not in vain will ours be to us, if we
+learn the lesson which he here would divide with all those "that wait on
+the Lord."
+
+Our limits prevent the further examination of the remaining psalms of
+this period. It is the less necessary, inasmuch as those which have been
+already considered fairly represent the whole. The xi., xiii., xvii.,
+xxii., xxv., and lxiv. may, with varying probability, be considered as
+belonging to the Sauline persecution. To this list some critics would
+add the xl. and lxix., but on very uncertain grounds. But if we exclude
+them, the others have a strong family likeness, not only with each
+other, but with those which have been presented to the reader. The
+imagery of the wilderness, which has become so familiar to us,
+continually reappears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares,
+the hunted psalmist like a timid bird among the hills; the protestation
+of innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked,
+the confidence that their own devices will come down on their heads, the
+intense yearning of soul after God--are all repeated in these psalms.
+Single metaphors and peculiar phrases which we have already met with
+recur--as, for instance, "the shadow of Thy wings" (xvii. 8, lvii. 1),
+and the singular phrase rendered in our version, "show Thy marvellous
+loving-kindness" (xvii. 7, xxxi. 21), which is found only here. In one
+of these psalms (xxxv. 13) there seems to be a reference to his earliest
+days at the court, and to the depth of loving sympathy with Saul's
+darkened spirit, which he learned to cherish, as he stood before him to
+soothe him with the ordered harmonies of harp and voice. The words are
+so definite that they appear to refer to some historic occasion:
+
+  And as for me--in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth,
+  With fasting I humbled my soul,
+  And my prayer into my own bosom returned.
+
+So truly did he feel for him who is now his foe. The outward marks of
+mourning became the natural expression of his feelings. Such is plainly
+the meaning of the two former clauses, as well as of the following
+verse. As the whole is a description of the outward signs of grief, it
+seems better to understand the last of these three clauses as a picture
+of the bent head sunk on the bosom even while he prayed,[N] than to
+break the connection by referring it either to the requital of hate for
+his sympathy,[O] or to the purity of his prayer, which was such that he
+could desire nothing more for himself.[P] He goes on with the
+enumeration of the signs of sorrow: "As if (he had been) a friend, a
+brother to me, I went,"--walking slowly, like a man absorbed in sorrow:
+"as one who laments a mother, in mourning garments I bowed
+down,"--walking with a weary, heavy stoop, like one crushed by a
+mother's death, with the garb of woe. Thus faithfully had he loved, and
+truly wept for the noble ruined soul which, blinded by passion and
+poisoned by lies, had turned to be his enemy. And that same love clung
+by him to the last, as it ever does with great and good men, who learn
+of God to suffer long and be kind, to bear all things, and hope all
+things.
+
+[N] So Ewald and Delitzsch.
+
+[O] Hupfeld.
+
+[P] Perowne.
+
+Of these psalms the xxii. is remarkable. In it David's personal
+experience seems to afford only the starting-point for a purely
+Messianic prophecy, which embraces many particulars that far transcend
+anything recorded of his sorrows. The impossibility of finding
+occurrences in his life corresponding to such traits as tortured limbs
+and burning thirst, pierced hands and parted garments, has driven some
+critics to the hypothesis that we have here a psalm of the exile
+describing either actual sufferings inflicted on some unknown confessor
+in Babylon, or in figurative language the calamities of Israel there.
+But the Davidic origin is confirmed by many obvious points of
+resemblance with the psalms which are indisputably his, and especially
+with those of the Sauline period, while the difficulty of finding
+historical facts answering to the emphatic language is evaded, not met,
+by either assuming that such facts existed in some life which has left
+no trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which sound
+wonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. Of course, if we
+believe that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighter
+than the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. But, unless we
+have a foregone conclusion of that sort to blind us, we shall see in
+this psalm a clear example of the prophecy of a suffering Messiah. In
+most of the other psalms where David speaks of his sorrows we have only
+a typical foreshadowing of Christ. But in this, and in such others as
+lxix. and cix. (if these are David's), we have type changing into
+prophecy, and the person of the psalmist fading away before the image
+which, by occasion of his own griefs, rose vast, and solemn, and distant
+before his prophet gaze,--the image of One who should be perfectly all
+which he was in partial measure, the anointed of God, the utterer of His
+name to His brethren, the King of Israel,--and whose path to His
+dominion should be thickly strewn with solitary sorrow, and reproach,
+and agony, to whose far more exceeding weight of woe all his affliction
+was light as a feather, and transitory as a moment. And when the
+psalmist had learned that lesson, besides all the others of trust and
+patience which his wanderings taught him, his schooling was nearly over,
+he was almost ready for a new discipline; and the slowly-evolving
+revelation of God's purposes, which by his sorrows had unfolded more
+distinctly than before "the sufferings of the Messiah," was ripening for
+the unveiling, in his Kinghood, of "the glory that should follow."
+
+
+
+
+IX.--THE KING.
+
+
+We have now to turn and see the sudden change of fortune which lifted
+the exile to a throne. The heavy cloud which had brooded so long over
+the doomed king broke in lightning crash on the disastrous field of
+Gilboa. Where is there a sadder and more solemn story of the fate of a
+soul which makes shipwreck "of faith and of a good conscience," than
+that awful page which tells how, godless, wretched, mad with despair and
+measureless pride, he flung himself on his bloody sword, and died a
+suicide's death, with sons and armour-bearer and all his men, a ghastly
+court of corpses, laid round him? He had once been brave, modest, and
+kind, full of noble purposes and generous affections--and he ended so.
+Into what doleful regions of hate and darkness may self-will drag a
+soul, when once the reins fall loose from a slackened hand! And what a
+pathetic beam of struggling light gleams through heavy clouds, in the
+grateful exploit of the men of Jabesh, who remembered how he had once
+saved them, while yet he could care and dare for his kingdom, and
+perilled their lives to bear the poor headless corpse to its rude
+resting-place!
+
+The news is received by the fugitive at Ziklag in striking and
+characteristic fashion. He first flames out in fierce wrath upon the
+lying Amalekite, who had hurried with the tidings and sought favour by
+falsely representing that he had killed the king on the field. A short
+shrift and a bloody end were his. And then the wrath melts into
+mourning. Forgetting the mad hatred and wild struggles of that poor
+soul, and his own wrongs, remembering only the friendship and nobleness
+of his earlier days, he casts over the mangled corpses of Saul and
+Jonathan the mantle of his sweet elegy, and bathes them with the healing
+waters of his unstinted praise and undying love. Not till these two
+offices of justice and affection had been performed, does he remember
+himself and the change in his own position which had been effected. He
+had never thought of Saul as standing between him and the kingdom; the
+first feeling on his death was not, as it would have been with a less
+devout and less generous heart, a flush of gladness at the thought of
+the empty throne, but a sharp pang of pain from the sense of an empty
+heart. And even when he begins to look forward to his own new course,
+there is that same remarkable passiveness which we have observed
+already. His first step is to "inquire of the Lord, saying, Shall I go
+up to any of the cities of Judah?" (2 Sam. ii. 1). He will do nothing in
+this crisis of his fortunes, when all which had been so long a hope
+seemed to be rapidly becoming a fact, until his Shepherd shall lead him.
+Rapid and impetuous as he was by nature, schooled to swift decisions,
+followed by still swifter action, knowing that a blow struck at once,
+while all was chaos and despair at home, might set him on the throne, he
+holds nature and policy and the impatience of his people in check to
+hear what God will say. So fully did he fulfil the vow of his early
+psalm, "My strength! upon thee will I wait" (lix. 9).
+
+We can fancy the glad march to the ancient Hebron, where the great
+fathers of the nation lay in their rock-hewn tombs. Even before the
+death of Saul, David's strength had been rapidly increasing, by a
+constant stream of fugitives from the confusion and misery into which
+the kingdom had fallen. Even Benjamin, Saul's own tribe, sent him some
+of its famous archers--a sinister omen of the king's waning fortunes;
+the hardy half-independent men of Manasseh and Gad, from the pastoral
+uplands on the east of Jordan, "whose faces," according to the vivid
+description of the chronicler (1 Chron. xii. 8), "were like the faces of
+lions, and were as swift as roes upon the mountains," sought his
+standard; and from his own kinsmen of Judah recruits "day by day came to
+David to help him, until it was a great host like the host of God." With
+such forces, it would have been child's play to have subdued any
+scattered troops of the former dynasty which might still have been in a
+condition to keep the field. But he made no attempt of the sort; and
+even when he came to Hebron he took no measures to advance any claims to
+the crown. The language of the history seems rather to imply a
+disbanding of his army, or at least their settling down to domestic life
+in the villages round Hebron, without a thought of winning the kingdom
+by arms. And his elevation to the partial monarchy which he at first
+possessed was the spontaneous act of "the men of Judah," who come to him
+and anoint him king over Judah.
+
+The limits of his territory are substantially those of the kingdom over
+which his descendants ruled after Jeroboam's revolt, thus indicating the
+existence of a natural "line of cleavage" between north and south. The
+geographical position of Benjamin finally attached it to the latter
+monarchy; but for the present, the wish to retain the supremacy which it
+had had while the king was one of the tribe, made it the nucleus of a
+feeble and lingering opposition to David, headed by Saul's cousin Abner,
+and rallying round his incompetent son Ishbosheth.[Q] The chronology of
+this period is obscure. David reigned in Hebron seven years and a half,
+and as Ishbosheth's phantom sovereignty only occupied two of these
+years, and those evidently the last, it would appear almost as if the
+Philistines had held the country, with the exception of Judah, in such
+force that no rival cared to claim the dangerous dignity, and that five
+years passed before the invaders were so far cleared out as to leave
+leisure for civil war.
+
+[Q] The Canaanitish worship of Baal seems to have lingered in Saul's
+family. One of his grand-uncles was named Baal (1 Chron. ix. 36); his
+son was really called Eshbaal (Fire of Baal), which was contemptuously
+converted into Ishbosheth (Man of Shame). So also Mephibosheth was
+properly Meribbaal (Fighter for Baal).
+
+The summary narrative of these seven years presents the still youthful
+king in a very lovable light. The same temper which had marked his first
+acts after Saul's death is strikingly brought out (2 Sam. ii.-iv.) He
+seems to have left the conduct of the war altogether to Joab, as if he
+shrank from striking a single blow for his own advancement. When he does
+interfere, it is on the side of peace, to curb and chastise ferocious
+vengeance and dastardly assassination. The incidents recorded all go to
+make up a picture of rare generosity, of patient waiting for God to
+fulfil His purposes, of longing that the miserable strife between the
+tribes of God's inheritance should end. He sends grateful messages to
+Jabesh-Gilead; he will not begin the conflict with the insurgents. The
+only actual fight recorded is provoked by Abner, and managed with
+unwonted mildness by Joab. The list of his children born in Hebron is
+inserted in the very heart of the story of the insurrection, a token of
+the quiet domestic life of peaceful joys and cares which he lived while
+the storm was raging without. Eagerly, and without suspicion, he
+welcomes Abner's advances towards reconciliation. He falls for a moment
+to the level of his times, and yields to a strong temptation, in making
+the restoration of his long-lost wife Michal the condition of further
+negotiations--a demand which was strictly just, no doubt, but for which
+little more can be said. The generosity of his nature and the ideal
+purity of his love, which that incident shadows, shine out again in his
+indignation at Joab's murder of Abner, though he was too meek to avenge
+it. There is no more beautiful picture in his life than that of his
+following the bier where lay the bloody corpse of the man who had been
+his enemy ever since he had known him, and sealing the reconciliation
+which Death ever makes in noble souls, by the pathetic dirge he chanted
+over Abner's grave. We have a glimpse of his people's unbounded
+confidence in him, given incidentally when we are told that his sorrow
+pleased them, "as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people." We
+have a glimpse of the feebleness of his new monarchy as against the
+fierce soldier who had done so much to make it, in his acknowledgment
+that he was yet weak, being but recently anointed king, and that these
+vehement sons of Zeruiah were too strong for him; and we have a
+remarkable trace of connection with the psalms, in the closing words
+with which he invokes on Joab the vengeance which he as yet felt himself
+unable to execute: "The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according to
+his wickedness."
+
+The only other incident recorded of his reign in Hebron is his execution
+of summary justice upon the murderers of the poor puppet-king
+Ishbosheth, upon whose death, following so closely that of Abner, the
+whole resistance to David's power collapses. There had never been any
+real popular opposition. His enemies are emphatically named as "the
+house of Saul," and we find Abner himself admitting that "the elders of
+Israel" wanted David as king (2 Sam. iii. 17), so that when he was gone,
+it is two Benjamites who give the _coup-de-grace_ to Ishbosheth, and end
+the whole shadowy rival power. Immediately the rulers of all the tribes
+come up to Hebron, with the tender of the crown. They offer it on the
+triple grounds of kinship, of his military service even in Saul's reign,
+and of the Divine promise of the throne. A solemn pact was made, and
+David was anointed in Hebron, a king by Divine right, but also a
+constitutional monarch chosen by popular election, and limited in his
+powers.
+
+The first result of his new strength is the capture of the old
+hill-fortress of the Jebusites, the city of Melchizedek, which had
+frowned down upon Israel unsubdued till now, and whose inhabitants
+trusted so absolutely in its natural strength that their answer to the
+demand for surrender was the jeer, "Thou wilt not come hither, but the
+blind and lame will drive thee away." This time David does not leave the
+war to others. For the first time for seven years we read, "_The king_
+and his men went to Jerusalem." Established there as his capital, he
+reigns for some ten years with unbroken prosperity over a loyal and
+loving people, with this for the summary of the whole period, "David
+went on and grew great, and the Lord God of Hosts was with him" (2 Sam.
+v. 10). These years are marked by three principal events--the bringing
+up of the ark to the city of David, the promise by Nathan of the
+perpetual dominion of his house, and the unbroken flow of victories over
+the surrounding nations. These are the salient points of the narrative
+in the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. v.-viii.), and are all abundantly
+illustrated by the psalms. We shall have next then to consider "The
+Songs of the King."
+
+How did the fugitive bear his sudden change of fortune? What were his
+thoughts when at last the dignity which he had ever expected and never
+sought was his? The answer is ready to our hand in that grand psalm (Ps.
+xviii.) which he "spake in the day that the Lord delivered him from all
+his enemies, and from the hand of Saul." The language of this
+superscription seems to connect the psalm with the period of internal
+and external repose which preceded and prompted David's "purpose to
+build an house for the Lord" (2 Sam. vii.) The same thankfulness which
+glows so brightly in the psalm stimulated that desire, and the emphatic
+reference to the mercy promised by God to "his seed for evermore," which
+closes the hymn, points perhaps to the definite promise of the
+perpetuity of the kingdom to his descendants, which was God's answer to
+the same desire. But whether the psalm belongs to the years of the
+partial sovereignty at Hebron, or to those of the complete dominion at
+Jerusalem, it cannot be later than the second of these two dates; and
+whatever may have been the time of its composition, the feelings which
+it expresses are those of the first freshness of thankful praise when he
+was firmly settled in the kingdom. Some critics would throw it onwards
+to the very close of his life. But this has little in its favour beyond
+the fact that the author of the Book of Samuel has placed his version of
+the psalm among the records of David's last days. There is, however,
+nothing to show that that position is due to chronological
+considerations. The victories over heathen nations which are supposed to
+be referred to in the psalm, and are relied on by the advocates of later
+date, really point to the earlier, which was the time of his most
+brilliant conquests. And the marked assertions of his own purity, as
+well as the triumphant tone of the whole, neither of which
+characteristics corresponds to the sad and shaded years after his great
+fall, point in the same direction. On the whole, then, we may fairly
+take this psalm as belonging to the bright beginning of the monarchy,
+and as showing us how well the king remembered the vows which the exile
+had mingled with his tears.
+
+It is one long outpouring of rapturous thankfulness and triumphant
+adoration, which streams from a full heart in buoyant waves of song.
+Nowhere else, even in the psalms--and if not there, certainly nowhere
+else--is there such a continuous tide of unmingled praise, such
+magnificence of imagery, such passion of love to the delivering God,
+such joyous energy of conquering trust. It throbs throughout with the
+life blood of devotion. The strong flame, white with its very ardour,
+quivers with its own intensity as it steadily rises heavenward. All the
+terrors, and pains, and dangers of the weary years--the black fuel for
+the ruddy glow--melt into warmth too great for smoke, too equable to
+blaze. The plaintive notes that had so often wailed from his harp, sad
+as if the night wind had been wandering among its chords, have all led
+up to this rushing burst of full-toned gladness. The very blessedness of
+heaven is anticipated, when sorrows gone by are understood and seen in
+their connection with the joy to which they have led, and are felt to
+be the theme for deepest thankfulness. Thank God that, for the
+consolation of the whole world, we have this hymn of praise from the
+same lips which said, "My life is spent with grief, and my years with
+sighing." "We have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is very
+pitiful and of tender mercy." The tremulous minors of trustful sorrow
+shall swell into rapturous praise; and he who, compassed with foes,
+cries upon God, will, here or yonder, sing this song "unto the Lord, in
+the day that the Lord delivers him from the hand of all his enemies."
+
+
+
+
+X.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+In our last chapter we have seen that the key-note of "The Songs of the
+King" may be said to be struck in Psalm xviii. Its complete analysis
+would carry us far beyond our limits. We can but glance at some of the
+more prominent points of the psalm.
+
+The first clause strikes the key-note. "I love Thee, O Jehovah, my
+strength." That personal attachment to God, which is so characteristic
+of David's religion, can no longer be pent up in silence, but gushes
+forth like some imprisoned stream, broad and full even from its
+well-head. The common word for "love" is too weak for him, and he bends
+to his use another, never elsewhere employed to express man's emotions
+towards God, the intensity of which is but feebly expressed by some such
+periphrasis as, "From my heart do I love Thee." The same exalted feeling
+is wonderfully set forth by the loving accumulation of Divine names
+which follow, as if he would heap together in one great pile all the
+rich experiences of that God, unnamed after all names, which he had
+garnered up in his distresses and deliverances. They tell so much as the
+poor vehicle of words can tell, what his Shepherd in the heavens had
+been to him. They are the treasures which he has brought back from his
+exile; and they most pathetically point to the songs of that time. He
+had called on God by these names when it was hard to believe in their
+reality, and now he repeats them all in his glad hour of fruition, for
+token that they who in their extremity trust in the name of the Lord
+will one day have the truth of faith transformed into truth of
+experience. "Jehovah, my rock and my fortress," reminds us of his cry in
+Ziklag, "Thou art my rock and my fortress" (xxxi. 3), and of the "hold"
+(the same word) of Adullam in which he had lain secure. "My deliverer"
+echoes many a sigh in the past, now changed into music of praise. "My
+rock" (a different word from that in a preceding clause), "in whom I
+take refuge," recalls the prayer, "Be Thou my rock of strength" (xxxi.
+2), and his former effort of confidence, when, in the midst of
+calamities, he said, "My soul takes refuge in Thee" (lvii. 1.) "My
+shield" carries us back to the ancient promise, fresh after so many
+centuries, and fulfilled anew in every age, "Fear not, Abram, I am thy
+shield," and to his own trustful words at a time when trust was
+difficult, "My shield is upon God" (vii. 10). "My high tower," the last
+of this glowing series, links on to the hope breathed in the first song
+of his exile, "God is my defence" (the same expression); "Thou hast been
+my defence in the day of trouble" (lix. 9, 16). And then he sums up his
+whole past in one general sentence, which tells his habitual resource in
+his troubles, and the blessed help which he has ever found, "I call on
+Jehovah, who is worthy to be praised;[R] and from my enemies am I saved"
+(verse 3).
+
+[R] The old English word "the worshipful" comes near the form and
+meaning of the phrase.
+
+No comment can heighten, and no translation can adequately represent,
+while none can altogether destroy the unapproachable magnificence of the
+description which follows, of the majestic coming forth of God in answer
+to his cry. It stands at the very highest point, even when compared with
+the other sublime passages of a like kind in Scripture. How
+pathetically he paints his sore need in metaphors which again bring to
+mind the songs of the outlaw:--
+
+  The snares of death compassed me,
+  And floods of destruction made me afraid;
+  The snares of Sheol surrounded me,
+  The toils of death surprised me.
+
+As he so often likened himself to some wild creature in the nets, so
+here Death, the hunter, has cast his fatal cords about him, and they are
+ready suddenly to close on the unsuspecting prey. Or, varying the image,
+he is sinking in black waters, which are designated by a difficult
+phrase (literally, "streams of Belial," or worthlessness), which is most
+probably rendered as above (so Ewald, Hupfeld). In this dire extremity
+one thing alone is left him. He is snared, but he has his voice free to
+cry with, and a God to cry to. He is all but sinking, but he can still
+shriek (so one of the words might be rendered) "like some strong swimmer
+in his agony." And it is enough. That one loud call for help rises, like
+some slender pillar of incense-smoke, straight into the palace temple of
+God--and, as he says, with a meaning which our version obscures, "My cry
+before Him came into His ears." The prayer that springs from a living
+consciousness of being in God's presence, even when nearest to
+perishing, is the prayer that He hears. The cry is a poor, thin,
+solitary voice, unheard on earth, though shrill enough to rise to
+heaven; the answer shakes creation. One man in his extremity can put in
+motion all the magnificence of God. Overwhelming is the contrast between
+the cause and the effect. And marvellous as the greatness, so also is
+the swiftness of the answer. A moment suffices--and then! Even whilst he
+cries, the rocking earth and the quivering foundations of the hills are
+conscious that the Lord comes from afar for his help. The majestic
+self-revelation of God as the deliverer has for its occasion the
+psalmist's cry of distress, and for its issue, "He drew me out of many
+waters." All the splendour flames out because a poor man prays, and all
+the upheaval of earth and the artillery of heaven has simply this for
+its end, that a poor man may be delivered. The paradox of prayer never
+found a more bold expression than in this triumphant utterance, of the
+insignificant occasion for, and the equally insignificant result sought
+by, the exercise of the energy of Omnipotence.
+
+The Divine deliverance is set forth under the familiar image of the
+coming of God in a tempest. Before it bursts, and simultaneous with the
+prayer, the "earth rocks and quivers," the sunless "pillars of the hills
+reel and rock to and fro," as if conscious of the gathering wrath which
+begins to flame far off in the highest heavens. There has been no
+forth-putting yet of the Divine power. It is but accumulating its fiery
+energy, and already the solid framework of the world trembles,
+anticipating the coming crash. The firmest things shake, the loftiest
+bow before His wrath. "There went up smoke out of his nostrils, and fire
+out of his mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it." This kindling
+anger, expressed by these tremendous metaphors, is conceived of as the
+preparation in "His temple" for the earthly manifestation of delivering
+vengeance. It is like some distant thunder-cloud which grows on the
+horizon into ominous blackness, and seems to be filling its
+ashen-coloured depths with store of lightnings. Then the piled-up terror
+begins to move, and, drawing nearer, pours out an avalanche of gloom
+seamed with fire. First the storm-cloud descends, hanging lower and
+lower in the sky. And whose foot is that which is planted upon its heavy
+mass, thick and frowning enough to be the veil of God?
+
+  "He bowed the heavens, and came down,
+   And blackness of cloud was under His feet."
+
+Then the sudden rush of wind which heralds the lightning breaks the
+awful silence:--
+
+  And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly,
+  Yea, He swept along upon the wings of the wind.
+
+The cherubs bear, as in a chariot, the throned God, and the swift
+pinions of the storm bear the cherubs. But He that sits upon the throne,
+above material forces and the highest creatures, is unseen. The
+psalmist's imagination stops at its base, nor dares to gaze into that
+light above; and the silence is more impressive than all words. Instead
+of pagan attempts at a likeness of God, we have next painted, with equal
+descriptive accuracy, poetic force, and theological truth, the pitchy
+blackness which hides Him. In the gloom of its depths He makes His
+"secret place" His "tent." It is "darkness of waters," that is, darkness
+from which streams out the thunder-rain; it is "thick clouds of the
+skies;" or perhaps the expression should be rendered, "heavy masses of
+clouds." Then comes the crash of the tempest. The brightness that lies
+closer around Him, and lives in the heart of the blackness, flames
+forth, parting the thick clouds--and through the awful rent hail and
+coals of fire are flung down on the trembling earth. The grand
+description may be rendered in two ways: either that adopted in our
+version, "At the brightness that was before Him His thick clouds
+passed--hailstones and coals of fire;" or, "Through His thick clouds
+there passed hailstones and coals of fire." The former of these is the
+more dramatic; the broken construction expresses more vividly the fierce
+suddenness of the lightning blaze and of the down-rush of the hail, and
+is confirmed by the repetition of the same words in the same
+construction in the next verse. That verse describes another burst of
+the tempest--the deep roll of the thunder along the skies is the voice
+of Jehovah, and again the lightning tears through the clouds, and the
+hail streams down. With what profound truth all this destructive power
+is represented as coming from the brightness of God--that "glory" which
+in its own nature is light, but in its contact with finite and sinful
+creatures must needs become darkness, rent asunder by lightning! What
+lessons as to the root and the essential nature of all punitive acts of
+God cluster round such words! and how calm and blessed the faith which
+can pierce even the thickest mass "that veileth Love!"--to see the light
+at the centre, even though the circumference be brooding thunder-clouds
+torn by sudden fires. Then comes the purpose of all this apocalypse of
+Divine magnificence. The fiery arrows scatter the psalmist's enemies.
+The waters in which he had well nigh drowned are dried up before the hot
+breath of His anger. "That dread voice" speaks "which shrinks their
+streams." And amid the blaze of tempest, the rocking earth, and the
+failing floods, His arm is thrust forth from above, and draws His
+servant from many waters. As one in later times, "he was afraid, and
+beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me; and immediately He
+stretched forth His hand and caught him."
+
+A calmer tone follows, as the psalmist recounts without metaphor his
+deliverance, and reiterates the same assertion of his innocence which
+we have already found so frequently in the previous psalms (vers.
+17-24). Rising from his personal experience to the broad and lofty
+thoughts of God which that experience had taught him, as it does all who
+prize life chiefly as a means of knowing Him, he proclaims the solemn
+truth, that in the exercise of a righteous retribution, and by the very
+necessity of our moral nature, God appears to man what man is to God:
+loving to the loving, upright to the upright, pure to the pure, and
+froward to the froward. Our thoughts of God are shaped by our moral
+character; the capacity of perceiving depends on sympathy. "Unless the
+eye were light, how could it see the sun?" The self-revelation of God in
+His providence, of which only the psalm speaks, is modified according to
+our moral character, being full of love to those who love, being harsh
+and antagonistic to those who set themselves in opposition to it. There
+is a higher law of grace, whereby the sinfulness of man but draws forth
+the tenderness of a father's pardoning pity; and the brightest
+revelation of His love is made to froward prodigals. But that is not in
+the psalmist's view here, nor does it interfere with the law of
+retribution in its own sphere.
+
+The purely personal tone is again resumed, and continued unbroken to the
+close. In the former portion David was passive, except for the voice of
+prayer, and God's arm alone was his deliverance. In the latter half he
+is active, the conquering king, whose arm is strengthened for victory by
+God. This difference may possibly suggest the reference of the former
+half to the Sauline persecution, when, as we have seen, the exile ever
+shrunk from avenging himself; and of the latter to the early years of
+his monarchy, which, as we shall see, were characterized by much
+successful military activity; and if so, the date of the psalm would
+most naturally be taken to be the close of his victorious campaigns,
+when "the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about" (2
+Sam. vii. 1). Be that as it may, the latter portion of the psalm shows
+us the soldier king tracing all his past victories to God alone, and
+building upon them the confidence of a world-wide dominion. The point at
+which memory passes into hope is difficult to determine, and great
+variety of opinion prevails on the matter among commentators. It is
+perhaps best to follow many of the older versions, and the valuable
+exposition of Hupfeld, in regarding the whole section from ver. 37 of
+our translation as the expression of the trust which past experience had
+wrought. We shall then have two periods in the second half of the
+psalm--the past victories won by God's help (vers. 31-36), the coming
+triumphs of which these are the pledge (vers. 37-end).
+
+In the former there shine out not only David's habitual consciousness of
+dependence on and aid from God, but also a very striking picture of his
+physical qualifications for a military leader. He is girded with bodily
+strength, swift and sure of foot like a deer, able to scale the crags
+where his foes fortified themselves like the wild antelopes he had so
+often seen bounding among the dizzy ledges of the cliffs in the
+wilderness; his hands are trained for war, and his sinewy arms can bend
+the great bow of brass. But these capacities are gifts, and not they,
+but their Giver, have made him victorious. Looking back upon all his
+past, this is its summing up:--
+
+  "Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation,
+   And Thy right hand hath holden me up,
+   And Thy lowliness hath made me great."
+
+God's strength, God's buckler, God's supporting hand, God's
+condescension, by which He bows down to look upon and help the feeble,
+with the humble showing Himself humble--these have been his weapons, and
+from these has come his victory.
+
+And because of these, he looks forward to a future like the past, but
+more glorious still, thereby teaching us how the unchanging faithfulness
+of our God should encourage us to take all the blessings which we have
+received as but the earnest of what is yet to come. He sees himself
+pursuing his enemies, and smiting them to the ground. The fierce light
+of battle blazes through the rapid sentences which paint the panic
+flight, and the swift pursuit, the vain shrieks to man and God for
+succour, and the utter annihilation of the foe:--
+
+  (42) "And I will pound them like dust before the wind,
+        Like street-filth will I empty them out."
+
+Then he gives utterance to the consciousness that his kingdom is
+destined to extend far beyond the limits of Israel, in words which, like
+so many of the prophecies, may be translated in the present tense, but
+are obviously future in signification--the prophet placing himself in
+imagination in the midst of the time of which he speaks:--
+
+  (43) "Thou deliverest me from the strivings of the people (_i.e._,
+          Israel),
+        Thou makest me head of the heathen;
+        People whom I knew not serve me.
+
+  (44)  At the hearing of the ear they obey me.
+        The sons of the stranger feign obedience to me.
+
+  (45)  The sons of the stranger fade away,
+        They come trembling from their hiding-places."
+
+The rebellion which weakened his early reign is subdued, and beyond the
+bounds of his own people his dominion spreads. Strange tribes submit to
+the very sound of his name, and crouch before him in extorted and
+pretended submission. The words are literally "lie unto me," descriptive
+of the profuse professions of loyalty characteristic of conquered
+orientals. Their power withers before him like a gathered flower before
+a hot wind, and the fugitives creep trembling out of their holes where
+they have hid themselves.
+
+Again he recurs to the one thought which flows like a river of light
+through all the psalm--that all his help is in God. The names which he
+lovingly heaped together at the beginning are in part echoed in the
+close. "The Lord liveth, and blessed is my rock, and the God of my
+salvation is exalted." His deliverances have taught him to know a living
+God, swift to hear, active to help, in whom he lives, who has magnified
+His own name in that He has saved His servant. And as that blessed
+conviction is the sum of all his experience, so one glad vow expresses
+all his resolves, and thrills with the expectation which he had
+cherished even in his lonely exile, that the music of his psalm would
+one day echo through all the world. With lofty consciousness of his new
+dignity, and with lowly sense that it is God's gift, he emphatically
+names himself _His_ king, _His_ anointed, taking, as it were, his crown
+from his brows and laying it on the altar. With prophetic eye he looks
+onward, and sees the throne to which he had been led by a series of
+miracles enduring for ever, and the mercy of God sustaining the dominion
+of his house through all generations:--
+
+  (49) "Therefore will I give thanks to Thee among the nations, O
+         Jehovah,
+        And to Thy name will I strike the harp:
+
+  (50)  Who maketh great the deliverances of His king
+        And executeth mercy for His anointed,
+        For David and his seed for evermore."
+
+And what were his purposes for the future? Here is his answer, in a
+psalm which has been with considerable appropriateness regarded as a
+kind of manifesto of the principles which he intended should
+characterize his reign (Psa. ci.): "I will walk within my house with a
+perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes." For
+himself, he begins his reign with noble self-restraint, not meaning to
+make it a region of indulgence, but feeling that there is a law above
+his will, of which he is only the servant, and knowing that if his
+people and his public life are to be what they should be, his own
+personal and domestic life must be pure. As for his court and his
+ministers, he will make a clean sweep of the vermin who swarm and sting
+and buzz about a throne. The froward, the wicked, privy slanderers,
+proud hearts, crafty plotters, liars, and evil-doers he will not
+suffer--but "mine eyes shall be upon the faithful in the land; he that
+walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me." He is fired with ambition,
+such as has brightened the beginning of many a reign which has darkened
+to cruelty and crime, to make his kingdom some faint image of God's, and
+to bring the actual Israel into conformity with its ancient Magna
+Charta, "Ye shall be to me a holy nation." And so, not knowing perhaps
+how hard a task he planned, and little dreaming of his own sore fall, he
+grasps the sword, resolved to use it for the terror of evil-doers, and
+vows, "I will early destroy all the wicked in the land, that I may cut
+off all wicked doers from the city of the Lord." Such was his
+"proclamation against vice and immorality" on his accession to his
+throne.
+
+
+
+
+XI.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+The years thus well begun are, in the historical books, characterized
+mainly by three events, namely, the bringing up of the ark to the newly
+won city of David, Nathan's prophecy of the perpetual dominion of his
+house, and his victories over the surrounding nations. These three
+hinges of the narrative are all abundantly illustrated in the psalms.
+
+As to the first, we have relics of the joyful ceremonial connected with
+it in two psalms, the fifteenth and twenty-fourth, which are singularly
+alike not only in substance but in manner, both being thrown into a
+highly dramatic form by question and answer. This peculiarity, as we
+shall see, is one of the links of connection which unite them with the
+history as given in the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. vi.). From that record we
+learn that David's first thought after he was firmly seated as king over
+all Israel, was the enthronement in his recently-captured city of the
+long-forgotten ark. That venerable symbol of the presence of the true
+King had passed through many vicissitudes since the days when it had
+been carried round the walls of Jericho. Superstitiously borne into
+battle, as if it were a mere magic palladium, by men whose hearts were
+not right with God, the presence which they had invoked became their
+ruin, and Israel was shattered, and "the ark of God taken," on the fatal
+field of Aphek. It had been carried in triumph through Philistine
+cities, and sent back in dismay. It had been welcomed with gladness by
+the villagers of Bethshemesh, who lifted their eyes from their harvest
+work, and saw it borne up the glen from the Philistine plain. Their rude
+curiosity was signally punished, "and the men of Bethshemesh said, Who
+is able to stand before this holy Lord God, and to whom shall He go up
+from us?" It had been removed to the forest seclusion of Kirjath-jearim
+(the city of the woods), and there bestowed in the house of Abinadab
+"upon the hill," where it lay neglected and forgotten for about seventy
+years. During Saul's reign they "inquired not at it," and, indeed, the
+whole worship of Jehovah seems to have been decaying. David set himself
+to reorganize the public service of God, arranged a staff of priests and
+Levites, with disciplined choir and orchestra (1 Chron. xv.), and then
+proceeded with representatives of the whole nation to bring up the ark
+from its woodland hiding-place. But again death turned gladness into
+dread, and Uzzah's fate silenced the joyous songs, "and David was afraid
+of the Lord that day, and said, How shall the ark of God come unto me?"
+The dangerous honour fell on the house of Obed-edom; and only after the
+blessing which followed its three months' stay there, did he venture to
+carry out his purpose. The story of the actual removal of the ark to the
+city of David with glad ceremonial need not be repeated here; nor the
+mocking gibes of Michal who had once loved him so fondly. Probably she
+bitterly resented her violent separation from the household joys that
+had grown up about her in her second home; probably the woman who had
+had teraphim among her furniture cared nothing for the ark of God;
+probably, as she grew older, her character had hardened in its lines,
+and become like her father's in its measureless pride, and in its
+half-dread, half-hatred of David--and all these motives together pour
+their venom into her sarcasm. Taunts provoke taunts; the husband feels
+that the wife is in heart a partisan of the fallen house of her father,
+and a despiser of the Lord and of His worship; her words hiss with
+scorn, his flame with anger and rebuke--and so these two that had been
+so tender in the old days part for ever. The one doubtful act that
+stained his accession was quickly avenged. Better for both that she had
+never been rent from that feeble, loving husband that followed her
+weeping, and was driven back by a single word, flung at him by Abner as
+if he had been a dog at their heels! (2 Sam. iii. 16).
+
+The gladness and triumph, the awe, and the memories of victory which
+clustered round the dread symbol of the presence of the Lord of Hosts,
+are wonderfully expressed in the choral twenty-fourth psalm. It is
+divided into two portions, which Ewald regards as being originally two
+independent compositions. They are, however, obviously connected both in
+form and substance. In each we have question and answer, as in psalm
+xv., which belongs to the same period. The first half replies to the
+question, "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand
+in His holy place?"--an echo of the terror-struck exclamation of the
+people of Bethshemesh, already quoted. The answer is a description of
+the _men who dwell with God_. The second half deals with the correlative
+inquiry, "Who is the King of Glory?" and describes the _God who comes to
+dwell with men_. It corresponds in substance, though not in form, with
+David's thought when Uzzah died, in so far as it regards God as drawing
+near to the worshippers, rather than the worshippers drawing near to
+Him. Both portions are united by a real internal connection, in that
+they set forth the mutual approach of God and man which leads to
+communion, and thus constitute the two halves of an inseparable whole.
+
+Most expositors recognise a choral structure in the psalm, as in several
+others of this date, as would be natural at the time of the
+reorganization of the public musical service. Probably we may gain the
+key to its form by supposing it to be a processional hymn, of which the
+first half was to be sung during the ascent to the city of David, and
+the second while standing before the gates. We have then to fancy the
+long line of worshippers climbing the rocky steep hill-side to the
+ancient fortress so recently won, the Levites bearing the ark, and the
+glad multitude streaming along behind them.
+
+First there swells forth from all the singers the triumphant
+proclamation of God's universal sovereignty, "The earth is the Lord's
+and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For He
+hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods." It is
+very noteworthy that such a thought should precede the declaration of
+His special dwelling in Zion. It guards that belief from the abuses to
+which it was of course liable--the superstitions, the narrowness, the
+contempt of all the rest of the world as God-deserted, which are its
+perversion in sensuous natures. If Israel came to fancy that God
+belonged to them, and that there was only one sacred place in all the
+world, it was not for want of clear utterances to the contrary, which
+became more emphatic with each fresh step in the development of the
+specializing system under which they lived. The very ground of their
+peculiar relation to God had been declared, in the hour of constituting
+it to be--"all the earth is Mine" (Exod. xix. 5). So now, when the
+symbol of His presence is to have a local habitation in the centre of
+the national life, the psalmist lays for the foundation of his song the
+great truth, that the Divine presence is concentrated in Israel, but not
+confined there, and concentrated in order that it may be diffused. The
+glory that lights the bare top of Zion lies on all the hills; and He who
+dwells between the cherubim dwells in all the world, which His continual
+presence fills with its fulness, and upholds above the floods.
+
+Then, as they climb, a single voice perhaps chants the solemn question,
+"Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in the place
+of His holiness?"
+
+And the full-toned answer portrays the men who shall dwell with God, in
+words which begin indeed with stringent demands for absolute purity, but
+wonderfully change in tone as they advance, into gracious assurances,
+and the clearest vision that the moral nature which fits for God's
+presence is God's gift. "The clean-handed, and pure-hearted, who has not
+lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully;" there is the
+eternal law which nothing can ever alter, that to abide with God a man
+must be like God--the law of the new covenant as of the old, "Blessed
+are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." But this requirement,
+impossible of fulfilment, is not all. If it were, the climbing
+procession might stop. But up and up they rise, and once again the song
+bursts forth in deeper and more hopeful words, "He shall _receive_ the
+blessing from Jehovah, and righteousness from the God of his salvation."
+Then that righteousness, which he who honestly attempts to comply with
+such requirements will soon find that he does not possess, is to be
+received from above, not elaborated from within; is a gift from God, not
+a product of man's toils. God will make us pure, that we may dwell with
+Him. Nor is this all. The condition of receiving such a gift has been
+already partially set forth in the preceding clause, which seems to
+require righteousness to be possessed as the preliminary to receiving
+it. The paradox which thus results is inseparable from the stage of
+religious knowledge attained under the Mosaic Law. But the last words of
+the answer go far beyond it, and proclaim the special truth of the
+gospel, that the righteousness which fits for dwelling with God is given
+on the simple condition of _seeking_ Him. To this designation of the
+true worshippers is appended somewhat abruptly the one word "Jacob,"
+which need neither be rendered as in the English version as an
+invocation, nor as in the margin, with an unnecessary and improbable
+supplement, "O God of Jacob;" but is best regarded as in apposition with
+the other descriptive clauses, and declaring, as we have found David
+doing already in previous psalms, that the characters portrayed in them,
+and these only, constituted the true Israel.
+
+  This is the generation of them that seek Him,
+  That seek Thy face--(this is) Jacob.
+
+And so the first question is answered, "Who are the men who dwell with
+God?"--The pure, who receive righteousness, who seek Him, the true
+Israel.
+
+And now the procession has reached the front of the ancient city on the
+hill, and stands before the very walls and weather-beaten gates which
+Melchizedek may have passed through, and which had been barred against
+Israel till David's might had burst them. National triumph and glad
+worship are wonderfully blended in the summons which rings from the lips
+of the Levites without: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates! and be ye lift
+up, ye doors (that have been from) of old!" as if even their towering
+portals were too low, "and the King of glory shall come in." What force
+in that name here, in this early song of the King! How clearly he
+recognises his own derived power, and the real Monarch of whom he is but
+the shadowy representative! The newly-conquered city is summoned to
+admit its true conqueror and sovereign, whose throne is the ark, which
+was emphatically named "the glory,"[S] and in whose train the earthly
+king follows as a subject and a worshipper. Then, with wonderful
+dramatic force, a single voice from within the barred gates asks, like
+some suspicious warder, "Who then is the King of glory?" With what a
+shout of proud confidence and triumphant memories of a hundred fields
+comes, ready and full, the crash of many voices in the answer, "Jehovah
+strong and mighty, Jehovah mighty in battle!" How vividly the reluctance
+of an antagonistic world to yield to Israel and Israel's King, is
+represented in the repetition of the question in a form slightly more
+expressive of ignorance and doubt, in answer to the reiterated summons,
+"Who is He, then, the King of glory?" With what deepened intensity of
+triumph there peals, hoarse and deep, the choral shout, "The Lord of
+Hosts, He is the King of glory." That name which sets Him forth as
+Sovereign of the personal and impersonal forces of the universe--angels,
+and stars, and terrene creatures, all gathered in ordered ranks,
+embattled for His service--was a comparatively new name in Israel,[T]
+and brought with it thoughts of irresistible might in earth and heaven.
+It crashes like a catapult against the ancient gates; and at that
+proclamation of the omnipotent name of the God who dwells with men, they
+grate back on their brazen hinges, and the ark of the Lord enters into
+its rest.
+
+[S] "And she named the child I-chabod (Where is the glory?) saying, The
+glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken."--1
+_Sam._ iv. 21.
+
+[T] It has been asserted that this is the first introduction of the
+name. ("Psalms Chronologically Arranged by Four Friends," p. 14). But it
+occurs in Hannah's vow (1 Sam. i. 11); in Samuel's words to Saul (xv.
+2); in David's reply to Goliath (xvii. 45). We have it also in Psalm
+lix. 5, which we regard as his earliest during his exile. Do the authors
+referred to consider these speeches in 1 Sam. as not authentic?
+
+
+
+
+XII.--THE KING--_CONTINUED_.
+
+
+The second event recorded as important in the bright early years is the
+great promise of the perpetuity of the kingdom in David's house. As soon
+as the king was firmly established and free from war, he remembered the
+ancient word which said, "When He giveth you rest from all your enemies
+round about, so that ye dwell in safety, then there shall be a place
+which the Lord your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there"
+(Deut. xii. 10, 11). His own ease rebukes him; he regards his
+tranquillity not as a season for selfish indolence, but as a call to new
+forms of service. He might well have found in the many troubles and
+vicissitudes of his past life an excuse for luxurious repose now. But
+devout souls will consecrate their leisure as their toil to God, and
+will serve Him with thankful offerings in peace whom they invoked with
+earnest cries in battle. Prosperity is harmless only when it is
+accepted as an opportunity for fresh forms of devotion, not as an
+occasion for idle self-indulgence. So we read, with distinct verbal
+reference to the words already quoted, that "when the Lord had given him
+rest round about from all his enemies, the king said unto Nathan the
+prophet, See now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of God
+dwelleth in curtains." The impulse of generous devotion, which cannot
+bear to lavish more upon self than it gives to God, at first commended
+itself to the prophet; but in the solitude of his nightly thoughts the
+higher wisdom speaks in his spirit, and the word of God gives him a
+message for the king. The narrative in 2 Sam. makes no mention of
+David's warlike life as unfitting him for the task, which we find from 2
+Chron. was one reason why his purpose was set aside, but brings into
+prominence the thought that David's generous impulse was outrunning
+God's commandment, and that his ardour to serve was in some danger of
+forgetting his entire dependence on God, and of fancying that God would
+be the better for him. So the prophetic message reminds him that the
+Lord had never, through all the centuries, asked for a house of cedar,
+and recalls the past life of David as having been wholly shaped and
+blessed by Him, while it pointedly inverts the king's proposal in its
+own grand promise, "The Lord telleth thee that He will make thee an
+house." Then follows the prediction of a son of David who should build
+the house, whose kingdom should be perpetual, whose transgressions
+should be corrected indeed, but never punished as those of the unhappy
+Saul; and then, in emphatic and unmistakable words, the perpetuity of
+David's house, his kingdom, and his throne, is reiterated as the close
+of the whole.
+
+The wonderful burst of praise which sprang from David's heart in answer
+cannot be dealt with here; but clearly from that time onwards a new
+element had been added to his hopes, and a new object presented to his
+faith. The prophecy of the Messiah enters upon a new stage, bearing a
+relation, as its successive stages, always unmistakably did, to the
+history which supplies a framework for it. Now for the first time can he
+be set forth as the king of Israel; now the width of the promise which
+at first had embraced the seed of the woman, and then had been narrowed
+to the seed of Abraham, and thereafter probably to the tribe of Judah,
+is still further defined as to be fulfilled in the line of the house of
+David; now the personal Messiah Himself begins to be discerned through
+the words which are to have a preparatory fulfilment, in itself
+prophetic, in the collective Davidic monarchs whose very office is
+itself also a prophecy.
+
+Many echoes of this new message ring through the later psalms of the
+king. His own dominion, his conquests, and his office, gradually became
+to himself a solemn prophecy of a mysterious descendant who should be
+really and fully all that he was in shadow and in part. As the
+experience of the exile, so that of the victorious monarch supplied the
+colours with which the spirit of prophecy in him painted "beforehand the
+sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow." In both classes
+of psalms we have two forms of the Messianic reference, the typical and
+the purely prophetic. In the former the events of David's own biography
+and the feelings of his own soul are so portrayed and expressed as to
+suggest his greater Son. In the latter, the personality of the psalmist
+retreats into the background, and is at most only the starting-point for
+wails of sorrow or gleams of glory which far transcend anything in the
+life of the singer. There are portions, for instance, of the xxii. and
+lxix. psalms which no torturing can force into correspondence with any
+of David's trials; and in like manner there are paeans of victory and
+predictions of dominion which demand a grander interpretation than his
+own royalty or his hopes for his house can yield. Of course, if prophecy
+is impossible, there is no more to be said, but that in that case a
+considerable part of the Old Testament, including many of David's
+psalms, is unintelligible.
+
+Perhaps the clearest instance of distinct prophecy of the victorious
+dominion of the personal Messiah is the 110th psalm. In it we do see, no
+doubt, the influence of the psalmist's own history, shaping the image
+which rises before his soul. But the attributes of that king whom he
+beholds are not his attributes, nor those of any son of his who wore the
+crown in Israel. And whilst his own history gives the form, it is "the
+Spirit of Christ that was in" him which gives the substance, and
+transfigures the earthly monarchy into a heavenly dominion. We do not
+enter upon the question of the Davidic authorship of this psalm. Here we
+have not to depend upon Jewish superscriptions, but on the words of Him
+whose bare assertion should be "an end of all strife." Christ says that
+David wrote it. Some of us are far enough behind the age to believe that
+what He said He meant, and that what He meant is truth.
+
+This psalm, then, being David's, can hardly be earlier than the time of
+Nathan's prophecy. There are traces in it of the influence of the
+history of the psalmist, giving, as we have said, form to the
+predictions. Perhaps we may see these in Zion being named as the seat of
+Messiah's sovereignty and in the reference to Melchizedek, both of which
+points assume new force if we suppose that the ancient city over which
+that half-forgotten name once ruled had recently become his own.
+Possibly, too, his joy in exchanging his armour and kingly robe for the
+priest's ephod, when he brought up the ark to its rest, and his
+consciousness that in himself the regal and the sacerdotal offices did
+not blend, may have led him to meditations on the meaning of both, on
+the miseries that seemed to flow equally from their separation and from
+their union, which were the precursors of his hearing the Divine oath
+that, in the far-off future, they would be fused together in that mighty
+figure who was to repeat in higher fashion the union of functions which
+invested that dim King of Righteousness and Priest of God in the far-off
+past. He discerns that _his_ support from the right hand of God, _his_
+sceptre which he swayed in Zion, _his_ loyal people fused together into
+a unity at last, _his_ triumphant warfare on the nations around, are all
+but faint shadows of One who is to come. That solemn form on the horizon
+of hope is his Lord, the true King whose viceroy he was, the "bright
+consummate flower" for the sake of which the root has its being. And, as
+he sees the majestic lineaments shimmering through the facts of his own
+history, like some hidden fire toiling in a narrow space ere it leaps
+into ruddy spires that burst their bonds and flame heaven high, he is
+borne onwards by the prophetic impulse, and the Spirit of God speaks
+through his tongue words which have no meaning unless their theme be a
+Divine ruler and priest for all the world.
+
+He begins with the solemn words with which a prophetic message is wont
+to be announced, thus at the outset stamping on the psalm its true
+character. The "oracle" or "word of Jehovah unto my Lord," which he
+heard, is a new revelation made to him from the heavens. He is taken up
+and listens to the Divine voice calling to His right hand, to the most
+intimate communion with Himself, and to wielding the energies of
+omnipotence--Him whom David knew to be his lord. And when that Divine
+voice ceases, its mandate having been fulfilled, the prophetic spirit in
+the seer hymns the coronation anthem of the monarch enthroned by the
+side of the majesty in the heavens. "The sceptre of Thy strength will
+Jehovah send out of Zion. Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies." In
+singular juxtaposition are the throne at God's right hand and the
+sceptre--the emblem of sovereignty--issuing from Zion, a dominion
+realised on earth by a monarch in the heavens, a dominion the centre of
+which is Zion, and the undefined extent universal. It is a monarchy,
+too, established in the midst of enemies, sustained in spite of
+antagonism not only by the power of Jehovah, but by the activity of the
+sovereign's own "rule." It is a dominion for the maintenance of which
+devout souls will burst into prayer, and the most powerful can bring
+but their aspirations. But the vision includes more than the warrior
+king and his foes. Imbedded, as it were, in the very heart of the
+description of the former comes the portraiture of his subjects, for a
+witness how close is the union between Him and them, and how inseparable
+from His glories are those who serve Him. They are characterised in a
+threefold manner. "Thy people (shall be) willing in the day of Thine
+array." The army is being mustered.[U] They are not mercenaries, nor
+pressed men. They flock gladly to the standard, like the warriors
+celebrated of old in Deborah's chant of victory, who "willingly offered
+themselves." The word of our psalm might be translated "freewill
+offerings," and the whole clause carries us into the very heart of that
+great truth, that glad consecration and grateful self-surrender is the
+one bond which knits us to the Captain of our salvation who gave
+Himself for us, to the meek Monarch whose crown is of thorns and His
+sceptre a reed, for tokens that His dominion rests on suffering and is
+wielded in gentleness. The next words should be punctuated as a separate
+clause, co-ordinate with the former, and adding another feature to the
+description of the army. "In the beauties of holiness" is a common name
+for the dress of the priests: the idea conveyed is that the army is an
+army of priests, as the king himself is a priest. They are clothed, not
+in mail and warlike attire, but in "fine linen clean and white," like
+the armies which a later prophet saw following the Lord of lords. Their
+warfare is not to be by force and cruelty, nor their conquests bloody;
+but while soldiers they are to be priests, their weapons purity and
+devotion, their merciful struggle to bring men to God, and to mirror God
+to men. Round the one image gather all ideas of discipline, courage,
+consecration to a cause, loyalty to a leader; round the other, all
+thoughts of gentleness, of an atmosphere of devotion calm and still as
+the holy place, of stainless character. Christ's servants must be both
+soldiers and priests, like some of those knightly orders who bore the
+cross on helmet and shield, and shaped the very hilts of their swords
+into its likeness. And these soldier-priests are described by yet
+another image, "From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thy
+youth," where we are to regard the last word as used in a collective
+sense, and equivalent to "Thy young warriors." They are like the dew
+sparkling in infinite globelets on every blade of grass, hanging gems on
+every bit of dead wood, formed in secret silence, reflecting the
+sunlight, and, though the single drops be small and feeble, yet together
+freshening the thirsty world. So, formed by an unseen and mysterious
+power, one by one insignificant, but in the whole mighty, mirroring God
+and quickening and beautifying the worn world, the servants of the
+priest-king are to be "in the midst of many people like the dew from the
+Lord."
+
+[U] The word translated "power" in our version, has the same double
+meaning as that has in old English, or as "force" has now, sometimes
+signifying "strength" and sometimes an "army." The latter is the more
+appropriate here. "The day of Thine army" will then be equivalent to the
+day of mustering the troops.
+
+Another solemn word from the lips of God begins the second half of the
+psalm. "Jehovah swears," gives the sanction and guarantee of His own
+nature, puts in pledge His own being for the fulfilment of the promise.
+And that which He swears is a new thing in the earth. The blending of
+the royal and priestly offices in the Messiah, and the eternal duration
+in Him of both, is a distinct advancement in the development of
+Messianic prophecy. The historical occasion for it may indeed be
+connected with David's kingship and conquest of Melchizedek's city; but
+the real source of it is a direct predictive inspiration. We have here
+not merely the devout psalmist meditating on the truths revealed before
+his day, but the prophet receiving a new word from God unheard by mortal
+ears, and far transcending even the promises made to him by Nathan.
+There is but one person to whom it can apply, who sits as a priest upon
+his throne, who builds the temple of the Lord (Zech. vi. 12, 13).
+
+As the former Divine word, so this is followed by the prophet's
+rapturous answer, which carries on the portraiture of the priest-king.
+There is some doubt as to the person addressed in these later verses.
+"The Lord at thy right hand crushes kings in the day of His wrath."
+Whose right hand? The answer generally given is, "The Messiah's." Who is
+the Lord that smites the petty kinglets of earth? The answer generally
+given is, "God." But it is far more dramatic, avoids an awkward
+abruptness in the change of persons in the last verse, and brings out a
+striking contrast with the previous half, if we take the opposite view,
+and suppose Jehovah addressed and the Messiah spoken of throughout. Then
+the first Divine word is followed by the prophetic invocation of the
+exalted Messiah throned at the right hand and expecting till His enemies
+be made His footstool. The second is followed by the prophetic
+invocation of Jehovah, and describes the Lord Messiah at God's right
+hand as before, but instead of longer waiting He now flames forth in all
+the resistless energy of a conqueror. The day of His array is succeeded
+by the day of His wrath. He crushes earth's monarchies. The psalmist's
+eye sees the whole earth one great battle-field. "(It is) full of
+corpses. He wounds the head over wide lands," where there may possibly
+be a reference to the first vague dawning of a hope which God's mercy
+had let lighten on man's horizon--"He shall bruise thy head," or the
+word may be used as a collective expression for rulers, as the
+parallelism with the previous verse requires. Thus striding on to
+victory across the prostrate foe, and pursuing the flying relics of
+their power, "He drinks of the brook in the way, therefore shall He lift
+up the head," words which are somewhat difficult, however interpreted.
+If, with the majority of modern commentators, we take them as a
+picturesque embodiment of eager haste in the pursuit, the conqueror
+"faint, yet pursuing," and stooping for a moment to drink, then hurrying
+on with renewed strength after the fugitives, one can scarcely help
+feeling that such a close to such a psalm is trivial and liker the
+artificial play of fancy than the work of the prophetic spirit, to say
+nothing of the fact that there is nothing about pursuit in the psalm. If
+we fall back on the older interpretation, which sees in the words a
+prophecy of the sufferings of the Messiah who tastes death and drinks of
+the cup of sorrows, and therefore is highly exalted, we get a meaning
+which worthily crowns the psalm, but seems to break somewhat abruptly
+the sequence of thought, and to force the metaphor of drinking of the
+brook into somewhat strained parallelism with the very different New
+Testament images just named. But the doubt we must leave over these
+final words does not diminish the preciousness of this psalm as a clear,
+articulate prophecy from David's lips of David's Son, whom he had
+learned to know through the experiences and facts of his own life. He
+had climbed through sufferings to his throne. God had exalted him and
+given him victory, and surrounded him with a loyal people. But he was
+only a shadow; limitations and imperfections surrounded his office and
+weakened himself; half of the Divine counsel of peace could not be
+mirrored in his functions at all, and death lay ahead of him. So his
+glory and his feebleness alike taught him that "one mightier than" he
+must be coming behind him, "the latchet of whose shoes he was not worthy
+to unloose"--the true King of Israel, to bear witness to whom was his
+highest honour.
+
+The third characteristic of the first seventeen years of David's reign
+is his successful wars with surrounding nations. The gloomy days of
+defeat and subjugation which had darkened the closing years of Saul are
+over now, and blow after blow falls with stunning rapidity on the amazed
+enemies. The narrative almost pants for breath as it tells with hurry
+and pride how, south, and east, and north, the "lion of the tribe of
+Judah" sprang from his fastness, and smote Philistia, Edom, Moab, Ammon,
+Amalek, Damascus, and the Syrians beyond, even to the Euphrates; and
+the bounding courage of king and people, and the unity of heart and hand
+with which they stood shoulder to shoulder in many a bloody field, ring
+through the psalms of this period. Whatever higher meaning may be
+attached to them, their roots are firm in the soil of actual history,
+and they are first of all the war-songs of a nation. That being so, that
+they should also be inspired hymns for the church in all ages will
+present no difficulty nor afford any consecration to modern warfare, if
+the progressive character of revelation be duly kept in mind. There is a
+whole series of such psalms, such as xx., xxi., lx., and probably
+lxviii. We cannot venture in our limited space on any analysis of the
+last of these. It is a splendid burst of national triumph and devout
+praise, full of martial ardour, throbbing with lofty consciousness of
+God's dwelling in Israel, abounding with allusions to the ancient
+victories of the people, and world-wide in its anticipations of future
+triumph. How strange the history of its opening words has been! Through
+the battle smoke of how many a field they have rung! On the plains of
+the Palatinate, from the lips of Cromwell's Ironsides, and from the poor
+peasants that went to death on many a bleak moor for Christ's crown and
+covenant, to the Doric music of their rude chant--
+
+  "Let God arise, and scattered
+    Let all His enemies be;
+  And let all those that do Him hate,
+    Before His presence flee."
+
+The sixtieth psalm is assigned to David after Joab's signal victory over
+the Edomites (2 Sam. viii.). It agrees very well with that date, though
+the earlier verses have a wailing tone so deep over recent disasters, so
+great that one is almost inclined to suppose that they come from a later
+hand than his. But after the first verses all is warlike energy and
+triumph. How the glad thought of ruling over a united people dances in
+the swift words, "I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out
+the valley of Succoth;" he has, as it were, repeated Joshua's conquest
+and division of the land, and the ancient historical sites that fill a
+conspicuous place in the history of his great ancestor are in his power.
+"Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine, Ephraim also is the defence of my
+head, Judah my staff of command." He looks eastward to the woods and
+pastoral uplands across the Jordan, whose inhabitants had been but
+loosely attached to the western portion of the nation, and triumphs in
+knowing that Gilead and Manasseh own his sway. The foremost tribes on
+this side the river are to him like the armour and equipments of a
+conqueror; he wears the might of Ephraim, the natural head of the
+northern region, as his helmet, and he grasps the power of Judah as his
+baton of command or sceptre of kingly rule (Gen. xlix. 10).
+
+Thus, strong in the possession of a united kingdom, his flashing eye
+turns to his enemies, and a stern joy, mingled with contempt, blazes up
+as he sees them reduced to menial offices and trembling before him.
+"Moab (is) my washing-basin; to Edom will I fling my shoe; because of
+me, Philistia, cry out" (in fear). The three ancestral foes that hung on
+Israel's southern border from east to west are subdued. He will make of
+one "a vessel of dishonour" to wash his feet, soiled with battle; he
+will throw his shoes to another the while, as one would to a slave to
+take care of; and the third, expecting a like fate, shrieks out in fear
+of the impending vengeance. He pants for new victories, "Who will bring
+me into (the) strong city?" probably the yet unsubdued Petra, hidden
+away in its tortuous ravine, with but one perilous path through the
+gorge. And at last all the triumph of victory rises to a higher region
+of thought in the closing words, which lay bare the secret of his
+strength, and breathe the true spirit of the soldier of Jehovah. "In God
+we shall do valiantly; and He, even He, shall tread down our enemies."
+
+The twentieth psalm, another of these stirring war-songs, is in that
+choral manner which we have already seen in psalm xxiv., and the
+adoption of which was probably connected with David's careful
+organization of "the service of song." It is all ablaze with the light
+of battle and the glow of loyal love.
+
+The army, ready drawn up for action, as we may fancy, prays for the
+king, who, according to custom, brings sacrifices and offerings before
+the fight. "Jehovah hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the God
+of Jacob defend thee, send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthen
+thee out of Zion, remember all thine offerings, and accept thy burnt
+sacrifice." Then, as they wave their standards in the sunshine, or plant
+before the ranks of each tribe its cognizance, to be defended to the
+death, the hoarse shout rises from the files, "In the name of our God we
+will set up (or wave) our banners." Then the single voice of the king
+speaks, rejoicing in his soldiers' devotion, which he accepts as an omen
+that his sacrifice has not been in vain: "Now know I that Jehovah saveth
+His anointed. He will hear him from the heaven of His holiness with the
+strength of the salvation of His right hand;" not merely from a God
+dwelling in Zion, according to language of the previous prayer, but from
+the Lord in the heavens, will the strength come. Then again the chorus
+of the host exclaims, as they look across the field to the chariots and
+cavalry of the foe--forces which Israel seldom used--"These (boast[V])
+of chariots, and those of horses, and we, of the name of Jehovah, our
+God, do we boast." Ere a sword has been drawn, they see the enemy
+scattered. "They are brought down and fallen; and we, we are risen and
+stand upright." Then one earnest cry to God, one more thought of the
+true monarch of Israel, whom David would teach them to feel he only
+shadowed; and with the prayer, "Jehovah! save! Let the King hear us in
+the day when we cry," ringing like the long trumpet blast that sounds
+for the charge, they dash forth to victory!
+
+[V] Lit. "make mention of" or "commemorate."
+
+
+
+
+XIII.--THE TEARS OF THE PENITENT.
+
+
+Adversity had taught David self-restraint, had braced his soul, had
+driven him to grasp firmly the hand of God. And prosperity had seemed
+for nearly twenty years but to perfect the lessons. Gratitude had
+followed deliverance, and the sunshine after the rain had brought out
+the fragrance of devotion and the blossoms of glad songs. A good man,
+and still more a man of David's age at the date of his great crime,
+seldom falls so low, unless there has been previous, perhaps
+unconscious, relaxation of the girded loins, and negligence of the
+untrimmed lamp. The sensitive nature of the psalmist was indeed not
+unlikely to yield to the sudden force of such a temptation as conquered
+him, but we can scarcely conceive of its having done so without a
+previous decay of his religious life, hidden most likely from himself.
+And the source of that decay may probably be found in self-indulgence,
+fostered by ease, and by long years of command. The actual fall into
+sin seems to have been begun by slothful abdication of his functions as
+captain of Israel. It is perhaps not without bitter emphasis that the
+narrative introduces it by telling us that, "at the time when kings go
+forth to battle," David contented himself with sending his troops
+against Ammon, and "tarried still at Jerusalem." At all events, the
+story brings into sharp contrast the levy _en masse_, encamped round
+Rabbath, and their natural head, who had once been so ready to take his
+share of blows and privations, loitering behind, taking his quiet siesta
+in the hot hours after noon, as if there had been no soldiers of his
+sweltering in their armour, and rising from his bed to stroll on his
+palace roof, and peer into the household privacies below, as if his
+heart had no interest in the grim tussle going on behind the hills that
+he could almost see from his height, as they grew purple in the evening
+twilight. He has fallen to the level of an Eastern despot, and has lost
+his sense of the responsibilities of his office. Such loosening of the
+tension of his moral nature as is indicated in his absence from the
+field, during what was evidently a very severe as well as a long
+struggle, prepared the way for the dismal headlong plunge into sin.
+
+The story is told in all its hideousness, without palliation or reserve,
+without comment or heightening, in that stern judicial fashion so
+characteristic of the Bible records of its greatest characters. Every
+step is narrated without a trace of softening, and without a word of
+emotion. Not a single ugly detail is spared. The portraiture is as vivid
+as ever. Bathsheba's willing complicity, her punctilious observance of
+ceremonial propriety while she is trampling under foot her holiest
+obligations; the fatal necessity which drags sin after sin, and summons
+up murder to hide, if it be possible, the foul form of adultery; the
+stinging rebuke in the conduct of Uriah, who, Hittite as he was, has a
+more chivalrous, not to say devout, shrinking from personal ease while
+his comrades and the ark are in the field, than the king has; the mean
+treason, the degradation implied in getting into Joab's power; the
+cynical plainness of the murderous letter, in which a hardened
+conscience names his purposed evil by its true name; the contemptuous
+measure of his master which Joab takes in his message, the king's
+indifference to the loss of his men so long as Uriah is out of the way;
+the solemn platitudes with which he pretends to console his tool for the
+check of his troops; and the hideous haste with which, after her
+scrupulous "mourning" for one week, Bathsheba threw herself again into
+David's arms;--all these particulars, and every particular an
+aggravation, stand out for ever, as men's most hidden evil will one day
+do, in the clear, unpitying, unmistakable light of the Divine record.
+What a story it is!
+
+This saint of nearly fifty years of age, bound to God by ties which he
+rapturously felt and acknowledged, whose words have been the very breath
+of devotion for every devout heart, forgets his longings after
+righteousness, flings away the joys of Divine communion, darkens his
+soul, ends his prosperity, brings down upon his head for all his
+remaining years a cataract of calamities, and makes his name and his
+religion a target for the barbed sarcasms of each succeeding generation
+of scoffers. "All the fences and their whole array," which God's mercies
+and his own past had reared, "one cunning sin sweeps quite away." Every
+obligation of his office, as every grace of his character, is trodden
+under foot by the wild beast roused in his breast. As man, as king, as
+soldier, he is found wanting. Lust and treason, and craft and murder,
+are goodly companions for him who had said, "I will walk within my house
+with a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes." Why
+should we dwell on the wretched story? Because it teaches us, as no
+other page in the history of God's church does, how the alchemy of
+Divine love can extract sweet perfumes of penitence and praise out of
+the filth of sin; and therefore, though we turn with loathing from
+David's sin, we have to bless God for the record of it, and for the
+lessons of hope that come from David's pardon.
+
+To many a sin-tortured soul since then, the two psalms (li., xxxii.),
+all blotted with tears, in which he has sobbed out his penitence, have
+been as footsteps in a great and terrible wilderness. They are too
+familiar to need, and too sacred to bear, many words here, but we may
+briefly note some points connected with them--especially those which
+assist us in forming some image of the psalmist's state of mind after
+his transgression. It may be observed that of these two psalms, the
+fifty-first is evidently earlier than the thirty-second. In the former
+we see the fallen man struggling up out of the "horrible pit and miry
+clay;" in the latter he stands upon the rock, with a new song in his
+mouth, even the blessedness of him "whose sin is covered." It appears
+also that both must be dated after the sharp thrust of God's lancet
+which Nathan drove into his conscience, and the healing balsam of God's
+assurance of forgiveness which Nathan laid upon his heart. The
+passionate cries of the psalm are the echo of the Divine promise--the
+effort of his faith to grasp and keep the merciful gift of pardon. The
+consciousness of forgiveness is the basis of the prayer for forgiveness.
+
+Somewhere about a year passed between the crime and the message of
+Nathan. And what sort of a year it was the psalms tell us. The coarse
+satisfactions of his sin could not long content him, as they might have
+done a lower type of man. Nobody buys a little passing pleasure in evil
+at so dear a rate, or keeps it for so short a time as a good man. He
+cannot make himself as others. "That which cometh into your mind shall
+not be at all, in that ye say, We will be as the families of the
+nations, which serve wood and stone." Old habits quickly reassert their
+force, conscience soon lifts again its solemn voice; and while worse men
+are enjoying the strong-flavoured meats on sin's table, the servant of
+God, who has been seduced to prefer them for a moment to the "light
+bread" from heaven, tastes them already bitter in his mouth. He may be
+far from true repentance, but he will very soon know remorse. Months may
+pass before he can feel again the calm joys of God, but disgust with
+himself and with his sin will quickly fill his soul. No more vivid
+picture of such a state has ever been drawn, than is found in the psalms
+of this period. They tell of sullen "silence;" dust had settled on the
+strings of his harp, as on helmet and sword. He will not speak to God of
+his sin, and there is nothing else that he can speak of. They tell of
+his "roaring all the day long"--the groan of anguish forced from his yet
+unsoftened spirit. Day and night God's heavy hand weighed him down; the
+consciousness of that power, whose gentleness had once holden him up,
+crushed, but did not melt him. Like some heated iron, its heaviness
+scorched as well as bruised, and his moisture--all the dew and
+freshness of his life--was dried up at its touch and turned into dusty,
+cracking drought, that chaps the hard earth, and shrinks the streamlets,
+and burns to brown powder the tender herbage (Ps. xxxii.). Body and mind
+seem both to be included in this wonderful description, in which
+obstinate dumbness, constant torture, dread of God, and not one
+softening drop of penitence fill the dry and dusty heart, while "bones
+waxing old," or, as the word might be rendered, "rotting," sleepless
+nights, and perhaps the burning heat of disease, are hinted at as the
+accompaniments of the soul-agony. It is possible that similar allusions
+to actual bodily illness are to be found in another psalm, probably
+referring to the same period, and presenting striking parallelisms of
+expression (Ps. vi.), "Have mercy upon me, Jehovah, for I languish (fade
+away); heal me, for my bones are affrighted. My soul is also sore vexed.
+I am weary with my groaning; every night make I my bed to swim. I water
+my couch with my tears." The similar phrase, too, in psalm fifty-one,
+"The bones which Thou hast broken," may have a similar application.
+Thus, sick in body and soul, he dragged through a weary year--ashamed
+of his guilty dalliance, wretched in his self-accusations, afraid of
+God, and skulking in the recesses of his palace from the sight of his
+people. A goodly price he had sold integrity for. The bread had been
+sweet for a moment, but how quickly his "mouth is filled with gravel"
+(Proverbs xx. 17). David learned, what we all learn (and the holier a
+man is, the more speedily and sharply does the lesson follow on the
+heels of his sin), that every transgression is a blunder, that we never
+get the satisfaction which we expect from any sin, or if we do, we get
+something with it which spoils it all. A nauseous drug is added to the
+exciting, intoxicating drink which temptation offers, and though its
+flavour is at first disguised by the pleasanter taste of the sin, its
+bitterness is persistent though slow, and clings to the palate long
+after that has faded utterly.
+
+Into this dreary life Nathan's message comes with merciful rebuke. The
+prompt severity of David's judgment against the selfish sinner of the
+inimitable apologue may be a subtle indication of his troubled
+conscience, which fancies some atonement for his own sin in stern
+repression of that of others; for consciousness of evil may sometimes
+sting into harshness as well as soften to lenity, and sinful man is a
+sterner judge than the righteous God. The answer of Nathan is a perfect
+example of the Divine way of convincing of sin. There is first the plain
+charge pressed home on the individual conscience, "Thou art the man."
+Then follows, not reproach nor further deepening of the blackness of the
+deed, but a tender enumeration of God's great benefits, whereon is built
+the solemn question, "Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of
+the Lord, to do evil in His sight?" The contemplation of God's faithful
+love, and of the all-sufficient gifts which it bestows, makes every
+transgression irrational as well as ungrateful, and turns remorse, which
+consumes like the hot wind of the wilderness, into tearful repentance
+which refreshes the soul. When God has been seen loving and bestowing
+ere He commands and requires, it is profitable to hold the image of the
+man's evil in all its ugliness close up to his eyes; and so the bald
+facts are repeated next in the fewest, strongest words. Nor can the
+message close until a rigid law of retribution has been proclaimed, the
+slow operation of which will filter bitterness and shame through all
+his life. "And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord."
+Two words (in the Hebrew) make the transition from sullen misery to real
+though shaded peace. No lengthened outpouring, no accumulation of
+self-reproach; he is too deeply moved for many words, which he knows God
+does not need. More would have been less. All is contained in that one
+sob, in which the whole frostwork of these weary months breaks up and
+rolls away, swept before the strong flood. And as brief and simple as
+the confession, is the response, "And Nathan said unto David, The Lord
+also hath put away thy sin." How full and unconditional the blessing
+bestowed in these few words; how swift and sufficient the answer! So the
+long estrangement is ended. Thus simple and Divine is the manner of
+pardon. In such short compass may the turning point of a life lie! But
+while confession and forgiveness heal the breach between God and David,
+pardon is not impunity, and the same sentence which bestows the
+remission of sin announces the exaction of a penalty. The judgments
+threatened a moment before--a moment so far removed now to David's
+consciousness that it would look as if an age had passed--are not
+withdrawn, and another is added, the death of Bathsheba's infant. God
+loves His servants too well to "suffer sin upon them," and the freest
+forgiveness and the happiest consciousness of it may consist with the
+loving infliction and the submissive bearing of pains, which are no
+longer the strokes of an avenging judge, but the chastisements of a
+gracious father.
+
+The fifty-first psalm must, we think, be conceived of as following soon
+after Nathan's mission. There may be echoes of the prophet's stern
+question, "Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to
+do evil in His sight?" and of the confession, "I have sinned against the
+Lord," in the words, "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done
+evil in Thy sight" (ver. 4), though perhaps the expressions are not so
+peculiar as to make the allusion certain. But, at all events, the
+penitence and prayers of the psalm can scarcely be supposed to have
+preceded the date of the historical narrative, which clearly implies
+that the rebuke of the seer was the first thing that broke up the dumb
+misery of unrepented sin.
+
+Although the psalm is one long cry for pardon and restoration, one can
+discern an order and progress in its petitions--the order, not of an
+artificial reproduction of a past mood of mind, but the instinctive
+order in which the emotion of contrite desire will ever pour itself
+forth. In the psalm all begins, as all begins in fact, with the
+grounding of the cry for favour on "Thy loving-kindness," "the multitude
+of Thy tender mercies;" the one plea that avails with God, whose love is
+its own motive and its own measure, whose past acts are the standard for
+all His future, whose compassions, in their innumerable numbers, are
+more than the sum of our transgressions, though these be "more than the
+hairs of our head." Beginning with God's mercy, the penitent soul can
+learn to look next upon its own sin in all its aspects of evil. The
+depth and intensity of the psalmist's loathing of self is wonderfully
+expressed in his words for his crime. He speaks of his "transgressions"
+and of his "sin." Looked at in one way, he sees the separate acts of
+which he had been guilty--lust, fraud, treachery, murder: looked at in
+another, he sees them all knotted together, in one inextricable tangle
+of forked, hissing tongues, like the serpent locks that coil and twist
+round a Gorgon head. No sin dwells alone; the separate acts have a
+common root, and the whole is matted together like the green growth on a
+stagnant pond, so that, by whatever filament it is grasped, the whole
+mass is drawn towards you. And a profound insight into the essence and
+character of sin lies in the accumulated synonyms. It is
+"transgression," or, as the word might be rendered, "rebellion"--not the
+mere breach of an impersonal law, not merely an infraction of "the
+constitution of our nature"--but the rising of a subject will against
+its true king, disobedience to a person as well as contravention of a
+standard. It is "iniquity"--perversion or distortion--a word which
+expresses the same metaphor as is found in many languages, namely,
+crookedness as descriptive of deeds which depart from the perfect line
+of right. It is "sin," _i.e._, "missing one's aim;" in which profound
+word is contained the truth that all sin is a blunder, shooting wide of
+the true goal, if regard be had to the end of our being, and not less
+wide if regard be had to our happiness. It ever misses the mark; and the
+epitaph might be written over every sinner who seeks pleasure at the
+price of righteousness, "Thou fool."
+
+Nor less pregnant with meaning is the psalmist's emphatic
+acknowledgment, "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned." He is not
+content with looking upon his evil in itself, or in relation only to the
+people who had suffered by it; he thinks of it in relation to God. He
+had been guilty of crimes against Bathsheba and Uriah, and even the
+rough soldier whom he made his tool, as well as against his whole
+subjects; but, dark as these were, they assumed their true character
+only when they were discerned as done against God. "Sin," in its full
+sense, implies "God" as its correlative. We transgress against each
+other, but we sin against Him.
+
+Nor does the psalmist stop here. He has acknowledged the tangled
+multiplicity and dreadful unity of his evil, he has seen its inmost
+character, he has learned to bring his deed into connection with God;
+what remains still to be confessed? He laments, and that not as
+extenuation (though it be explanation), but as aggravation, the sinful
+nature in which he had been born. The deeds had come from a source--a
+bitter fountain had welled out this blackness. He himself is evil,
+therefore he has done evil. The sin is his; he will not contest his full
+responsibility; and its foul characteristics declare the inward foulness
+from which it has flowed--and that foulness is himself. Does he
+therefore think that he is less to blame? By no means. His
+acknowledgment of an evil nature is the very deepest of his confessions,
+and leads not to a palliation of his guilt, but to a cry to Him who
+alone can heal the inward wound; and as He can purge away the
+transgressions, can likewise stanch their source, and give him to feel
+within "that he is healed from that plague."
+
+The same intensity of feeling expressed by the use of so many words for
+sin is revealed also in the reiterated synonyms for pardon. The prayer
+comes from his lips over and over again, not because he thinks that he
+shall be heard for his much speaking, but because of the earnestness of
+his longing. Such repetitions are signs of the persistence of faith,
+while others, though they last like the prayers of Baal's priests, "from
+morning till the time of the evening sacrifice," indicate only the
+suppliant's doubt. David prays that his sins may be "blotted out," in
+which petition they are conceived as recorded against him in the
+archives of the heavens; that he may be "washed" from them, in which
+they are conceived as foul stains upon himself, needing for their
+removal hard rubbing and beating (for such is, according to some
+commentators, the force of the word); that he may be "cleansed"--the
+technical word for the priestly cleansing of the leper, and declaring
+him clear of the taint. He also, with similar recurrence to the Mosaic
+symbols, prays that he may be "purged with hyssop." There is a pathetic
+appropriateness in the petition, for not only lepers, but those who had
+become defiled by contact with a dead body, were thus purified; and on
+whom did the taint of corruption cleave as on the murderer of Uriah? The
+prayer, too, is even more remarkable in the original, which employs a
+verb formed from the word for "sin;" "and if in our language that were a
+word in use, it might be translated, 'Thou shalt un-sin me.'"[W]
+
+[W] Donne's Sermons, quoted in Perowne, _in. loc._
+
+In the midst of these abased confessions and cries for pardon there
+comes with wonderful force and beauty the bold prayer for restoration
+to "joy and gladness"--an indication surely of more than ordinary
+confidence in the full mercy of God, which would efface all the
+consequences of his sin.
+
+And following upon them are petitions for sanctifying, reiterated and
+many-sided, like those that have preceded. Three pairs of clauses
+contain these, in each of which the second member of the clause asks for
+the infusion into his spirit of some grace from God--that he may possess
+a "steadfast spirit," "Thy Holy Spirit," "a willing spirit." It is
+perhaps not an accident that the central petition of the three is the
+one which most clearly expresses the thought which all imply--that the
+human spirit can only be renewed and hallowed by the entrance into it of
+the Divine. We are not to commit the theological anachronism which has
+been applied with such evil effect to the whole Old Testament, and
+suppose that David meant by that central clause in his prayer for
+renewal all that we mean by it; but he meant, at least, that his
+spiritual nature could be made to love righteousness and hate iniquity
+by none other power than God's breathing on it. If we may venture to
+regard this as the heart of the series, the other two on either side of
+it may be conceived as its consequences. It will then be "a right
+spirit," or, as the word means, a steadfast spirit, strong to resist,
+not swept away by surges of passion, nor shaken by terrors of remorse,
+but calm, tenacious, and resolved, pressing on in the path of holiness,
+and immovable with the immobility of those who are rooted in God and
+goodness. It will be a free, or "a willing spirit," ready for all joyful
+service of thankfulness, and so penetrated with the love of his God that
+he will delight to do His will, and carry the law charactered in the
+spontaneous impulses of his renewed nature. Not without profound meaning
+does the psalmist seem to recur in his hour of penitence to the tragic
+fate of his predecessor in the monarchy, to whom, as to himself, had
+been given by the same anointing, the same gift of "the Spirit of God."
+Remembering how the holy chrism had faded from the raven locks of Saul
+long before his bloody head had been sent round Philistine cities to
+glut their revenge, and knowing that if God were "strict to mark
+iniquity," the gift which had been withdrawn from Saul would not be
+continued to himself, he prays, not as anointed monarch only, but as
+sinful man, "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." As before he had
+ventured to ask for the joy of forgiveness, so now he pleads once more
+for "the joy of Thy salvation," which comes from cleansing, from
+conscious fellowship--which he had so long and deeply felt, which for so
+many months had been hid from him by the mists of his own sin. The
+psalmist's natural buoyancy, the gladness which was an inseparable part
+of his religion, and had rung from his harp in many an hour of peril,
+the bold width of his desires, grounded on the clear breadth of his
+faith in God's perfect forgiveness, are all expressed in such a prayer
+from such lips at such a time, and may well be pondered and imitated by
+us.
+
+The lowly prayer which we have been tracing rises ere its close to a vow
+of renewed praise. It is very beautiful to note how the poet nature, as
+well as the consciousness of a Divine function, unite in the resolve
+that crowns the psalm. To David no tribute that he could bring to God
+seemed so little unworthy--none to himself so joyous--as the music of
+his harp, and the melody of his songs; nor was any part of his kingly
+office so lofty in his estimation as his calling to proclaim in glowing
+words the name of the Lord, that men might learn to love. His earliest
+song in exile had closed with a like vow. It had been well fulfilled for
+many a year; but these last doleful months had silenced all his praise.
+Now, as hope begins to shine upon him once more, the frost which had
+stilled the stream of his devotion is melting, and as he remembers his
+glad songs of old, and this miserable dumbness, his final prayer is, "O
+Lord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise."
+
+The same consciousness of sin, which we have found in a previous verse
+discerning the true significance of ceremonial purification, leads also
+to the recognition of the insufficiency of outward sacrifices--a thought
+which is not, as some modern critics would fain make it, the product of
+the latest age of Judaism, but appears occasionally through the whole of
+the history, and indicates not the date, but the spiritual elevation of
+its utterer. David sets it on the very summit of his psalm, to sparkle
+there like some stone of price. The rich jewel which he has brought up
+from the abyss of degradation is that truth which has shone out from its
+setting here over three millenniums: "The sacrifices of God are a
+broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not
+despise."
+
+The words which follow, containing a prayer for the building up of Zion,
+and a prediction of the continuous offering of sacrifice, present some
+difficulty. They do not necessarily presuppose that Jerusalem is in
+ruins; for "build Thou the walls" would be no less appropriate a
+petition if the fortifications were unfinished (as we know they were in
+David's time) than if they had been broken down. Nor do the words
+contradict the view of sacrifice just given, for the use of the symbol
+and the conviction of its insufficiency co-existed, in fact, in every
+devout life, and may well be expressed side by side. But the transition
+from so intensely personal emotions to intercession for Zion seems
+almost too sudden even for a nature as wide and warm as David's. If the
+closing verses are his, we may, indeed, see in them the king re-awaking
+to a sense of his responsibilities, which he had so long neglected,
+first, in the selfishness of his heart, and then in the morbid
+self-absorption of his remorse; and the lesson may be a precious one
+that the first thought of a pardoned man should be for others. But
+there is much to be said, on the other hand, in favour of the conjecture
+that these verses are a later addition, probably after the return from
+captivity, when the walls of Zion were in ruins, and the altar of the
+temple had been long cold. If so, then our psalm, as it came from
+David's full heart, would be all of a piece--one great gush of penitence
+and faith, beginning with, "Have mercy upon me, O God," ending with the
+assurance of acceptance, and so remaining for all ages the chart of the
+thorny and yet blessed path that leads "from death unto life." In that
+aspect, what it does not contain is as noteworthy as what it does. Not
+one word asks for exemption from such penalties of his great fall as can
+be inflicted by a loving Father on a soul that lives in His love. He
+cries for pardon, but he gives his back to the smiters whom God may
+please to send.
+
+The other psalm of the penitent (xxxii.) has been already referred to in
+connection with the autobiographical materials which it contains. It is
+evidently of a later period than the fifty-first. There is no struggle
+in it; the prayer has been heard, and this is the beginning of the
+fulfilment of the vow to show forth God's praise. In the earlier he had
+said, "Then will I teach transgressors the way;" here he says, "I will
+instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go." There he
+began with the plaintive cry for mercy; here with a burst of praise
+celebrating the happiness of the pardoned penitent. There we heard the
+sobs of a man in the very agony of abasement; here we have the story of
+their blessed issue. There we had multiplied synonyms for sin, and for
+the forgiveness which was desired; here it is the many-sided
+preciousness of forgiveness possessed which runs over in various yet
+equivalent phrases. There the highest point to which he could climb was
+the assurance that a bruised heart was accepted, and the bones broken
+might still rejoice. Here the very first word is of blessedness, and the
+close summons the righteous to exuberant joy. The one is a psalm of
+wailing; the other, to use its own words, a "song of deliverance."
+
+What glad consciousness that he himself is the happy man whom he
+describes rings in the melodious variations of the one thought of
+forgiveness in the opening words! How gratefully he draws on the
+treasures of that recent experience, while he sets it forth as being
+the "taking away" of sin, as if it were the removal of a solid
+something, or the lifting of a burden off his back; and as the
+"covering" of sin, as if it were the wrapping of its ugliness in thick
+folds that hide it for ever even from the all-seeing Eye; and as the
+"non-reckoning" of sin, as if it were the discharge of a debt! What
+vivid memory of past misery in the awful portrait of his impenitent
+self, already referred to--on which the mind dwells in silence, while
+the musical accompaniment (as directed by the "selah") touches some
+plaintive minor or grating discord! How noble and eloquent the brief
+words (echo of the historical narrative) that tell the full and swift
+forgiveness that followed simple confession--and how effectively the
+music again comes in, prolonging the thought and rejoicing in the
+pardon! How sure he is that his experience is of priceless value to the
+world for all time, when he sees in his absolution a motive that will
+draw all the godly nearer to their Helper in heaven! How full his heart
+is of praise, that he cannot but go back again to his own story, and
+rejoice in God his hiding-place--whose past wondrous love assures him
+that in the future songs of deliverance will ring him round, and all his
+path be encompassed with music of praise.
+
+So ends the more personal part of the psalm. A more didactic portion
+follows, the generalization of that. Possibly the voice which now speaks
+is a higher than David's. "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the
+way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye," scarcely
+sounds like words meant to be understood as spoken by him. They are the
+promise from heaven of a gentle teaching to the pardoned man, which will
+instruct by no severity, but by patient schooling; which will direct by
+no harsh authority, but by that loving glance that is enough for those
+who love, and is all too subtle and delicate to be perceived by any
+other. Such gracious direction is not for the psalmist alone, but it
+needs a spirit in harmony with God to understand it. For others there
+can be nothing higher than mere force, the discipline of sorrow, the
+bridle in the hard mouth, the whip for the stiff back. The choice for
+all men is through penitence and forgiveness to rise to the true
+position of men, capable of receiving and obeying a spiritual guidance,
+which appeals to the heart, and gently subdues the will, or by stubborn
+impenitence to fall to the level of brutes, that can only be held in by
+a halter and driven by a lash. And because this is the alternative,
+therefore "Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; but he that trusteth in
+the Lord, mercy shall compass him about."
+
+And then the psalm ends with a great cry of gladness, three times
+reiterated, like the voice of a herald on some festal day of a nation:
+"Rejoice in Jehovah! and leap for joy, O righteous! and gladly shout,
+all ye upright in heart!"
+
+Such is the end of the sobs of the penitent.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.--CHASTISEMENTS.
+
+
+The chastisements, which were the natural fruits of David's sin, soon
+began to show themselves, though apparently ten years at least passed
+before Absalom's revolt, at which time he was probably a man of sixty.
+But these ten years were very weary and sad. There is no more joyous
+activity, no more conquering energy, no more consciousness of his
+people's love. Disasters thicken round him, and may all be traced to his
+great sin. His children learned the lesson it had taught them, and lust
+and fratricide desolated his family. A parent can have no sharper pang
+than the sight of his own sins reappearing in his child. David saw the
+ghastly reflection of his unbridled passion in his eldest son's foul
+crime (and even a gleam of it in his unhappy daughter), and of his
+murderous craft in his second son's bloody revenge. Whilst all this hell
+of crime is boiling round him, a strange passiveness seems to have
+crept over the king, and to have continued till his flight before
+Absalom. The narrative is singularly silent about him. He seems
+paralysed by the consciousness of his past sin; he originates nothing.
+He dares not punish Ammon; he can only weep when he hears of Absalom's
+crime. He weakly longs for the return of the latter from his exile, but
+cannot nerve himself to send for him till Joab urges it. A flash of his
+old kingliness blazes out for a moment in his refusal to see his son;
+but even that slight satisfaction to justice vanishes as soon as Joab
+chooses to insist that Absalom shall return to court. He seems to have
+no will of his own. He has become a mere tool in the hands of his fierce
+general--and Joab's hold upon him was his complicity in Uriah's murder.
+Thus at every step he was dogged by the consequences of his crime, even
+though it was pardoned sin. And if, as is probable, Ahithophel was
+Bathsheba's grandfather, the most formidable person in Absalom's
+conspiracy, whose defection wounded him so deeply, was no doubt driven
+to the usurper's side out of revenge for the insult to his house in her
+person. Thus "of our pleasant vices doth heaven make whips to scourge
+us." "Be not deceived; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
+reap."
+
+It is not probable that many psalms were made in those dreary days. But
+the forty-first and fifty-fifth are, with reasonable probability,
+referred to this period by many commentators. They give a very touching
+picture of the old king during the four years in which Absalom's
+conspiracy was being hatched. It seems, from the forty-first, that the
+pain and sorrow of his heart had brought on some serious illness, which
+his enemies had used for their own purposes, and embittered by
+hypocritical condolences and ill-concealed glee. The sensitive
+nature of the psalmist winces under their heartless desertion of him,
+and pours out its plaint in this pathetic lament. He begins with a
+blessing on those who "consider the afflicted"--having reference,
+perhaps, to the few who were faithful to him in his languishing
+sickness. He passes thence to his own case, and, after humble confession
+of his sin,--almost in the words of the fifty-first psalm,--he tells how
+his sickbed had been surrounded by very different visitors. His disease
+drew no pity, but only fierce impatience that he lingered in life so
+long. "Mine enemies speak evil of me--when will he die, and his name
+have perished?" One of them, in especial, who must have been a man in
+high position to gain access to the sick chamber, has been conspicuous
+by his lying words of condolence: "If he come to see me he speaketh
+vanity." The sight of the sick king touched no chord of affection, but
+only increased the traitor's animosity--"his heart gathereth evil to
+itself"--and then, having watched his pale face for wished-for
+unfavourable symptoms, the false friend hurries from the bedside to talk
+of his hopeless illness--"he goeth abroad, he telleth it." The tidings
+spread, and are stealthily passed from one conspirator to another. "All
+that hate me whisper together against me." They exaggerate the gravity
+of his condition, and are glad because, making the wish the father to
+the thought, they believe him dying. "A thing of Belial" (_i.e._, a
+destructive disease), "say they, is poured out upon him, and now that he
+lieth, he shall rise up no more." And, sharpest pang of all, that among
+these traitors, and probably the same person as he whose heartless
+presence in the sick chamber was so hard to bear, should be Ahithophel,
+whose counsel had been like an oracle from God. Even he, "the man of my
+friendship, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread"--he, like an
+ignoble, vicious mule--"has lifted high his heel" against the sick lion.
+
+We should be disposed to refer the thirty-ninth psalm also to this
+period. It, too, is the meditation of one in sickness, which he knows to
+be a Divine judgment for his sin. There is little trace of enemies in
+it; but his attitude is that of silent submission, while wicked men are
+disquieted around him--which is precisely the characteristic peculiarity
+of his conduct at this period. It consists of two parts (vers. 1-6 and
+7-13), in both of which the subjects of his meditations are the same,
+but the tone of them different. His own sickness and mortality, and
+man's fleeting, shadowy life, are his themes. The former has led him to
+think of the latter. The first effect of his sorrow was to close his
+lips in a silence that was not altogether submission. "I held my peace,
+even from good, and my sorrow was stirred." As in his sin, when he kept
+silence, his "bones waxed old," so now in his sorrow and sickness the
+pain that could not find expression raged the more violently. The
+tearless eyes were hot and aching; but he conquered the dumb spirit, and
+could carry his heavy thoughts to God. They are very heavy at first. He
+only desires that the sad truth may be driven deeper into his soul. With
+the engrossment so characteristic of melancholy, he asks, what might
+have been thought the thing he needed least, "Make me to know mine end;"
+and then he dilates on the gloomy reflections which he had been
+cherishing in silence. Not only he himself, with his handbreadth of
+days, that shrink into absolute nothingness when brought into contrast
+with the life of God, but "every man," even when apparently "standing"
+most "firm, is only a breath." As a shadow every man moves spectral
+among shadows. The tumult that fills their lives is madness; "only for a
+breath are they disquieted." So bitterly, with an anticipation of the
+sad, clear-eyed pity and scorn of "The Preacher," does the sick and
+wearied king speak, in tones very unlike the joyous music of his earlier
+utterances.
+
+But, true and wholesome as such thoughts are, they are not all the
+truth. So the prayer changes in tone, even while its substance is the
+same. He rises from the shows of earth to his true home, driven thither
+by their hollowness. "My hope is in Thee." The conviction of earth's
+vanity is all different when it has "tossed him to Thy breast." The
+pardoned sinner, who never thereafter forgot his grievous fall, asks for
+deliverance "from all his transgressions." The sullen silence has
+changed into full acquiescence: "I opened not my mouth, because Thou
+didst it,"--a silence differing from the other as the calm after the
+storm, when all the winds sleep and the sun shines out on a freshened
+world, differs from the boding stillness while the slow thunder-clouds
+grow lurid on the horizon. He cries for healing, for he knows his
+sickness to be the buffet and assault of God's hand; and its bitterness
+is assuaged, even while its force continues, by the conviction that it
+is God's fatherly chastisement for sin which gnaws away his manly vigour
+as the moth frets his kingly robe. The very thought which had been so
+bitter--that every man is vanity--reappears in a new connection as the
+basis of the prayer that God would hear, and is modified so as to become
+infinitely blessed and hopeful. "I am a stranger with Thee, and a
+sojourner, as all my fathers were." A wanderer indeed, and a transient
+guest on earth; but what of that, if he be God's guest? All that is
+sorrowful is drawn off from the thought when we realise our connection
+with God. We are in God's house; the host, not the guest, is responsible
+for the housekeeping. We need not feel life lonely if He be with us, nor
+its shortness sad. It is not a shadow, a dream, a breath, if it be
+rooted in Him. And thus the sick man has conquered his gloomy thoughts,
+even though he sees little before him but the end; and he is not cast
+down even though his desires are all summed up in one for a little
+respite and healing, ere the brief trouble of earth be done with: "O
+spare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence, and be no
+more."
+
+It may be observed that this supposition of a protracted illness, which
+is based upon these psalms, throws light upon the singular passiveness
+of David during the maturing of Absalom's conspiracy, and may naturally
+be supposed to have favoured his schemes, an essential part of which was
+to ingratiate himself with suitors who came to the king for judgment by
+affecting great regret that no man was deputed of the king to hear them.
+The accumulation of untried causes, and the apparent disorganization of
+the judicial machinery, are well accounted for by David's sickness.
+
+The fifty-fifth psalm gives some very pathetic additional particulars.
+It is in three parts--a plaintive prayer and portraiture of the
+psalmist's mental distress (vers. 1-8); a vehement supplication against
+his foes, and indignant recounting of their treachery (vers. 9-16); and,
+finally, a prophecy of the retribution that is to fall upon them (vers.
+17-23). In the first and second portions we have some points which help
+to complete our picture of the man. For instance, his heart "writhes"
+within him, the "terrors of death" are on him, "fear and trembling" are
+come on him, and "horror" has covered him. All this points, like
+subsequent verses, to his knowledge of the conspiracy before it came to
+a head. The state of the city, which is practically in the hands of
+Absalom and his tools, is described with bold imagery. Violence and
+Strife in possession of it, spies prowling about the walls day and
+night, Evil and Trouble in its midst, and Destruction, Oppression, and
+Deceit--a goodly company--flaunting in its open spaces. And the spirit,
+the brain of the whole, is the trusted friend whom he had made his own
+equal, who had shared his secretest thoughts in private, who had walked
+next him in solemn processions to the temple. Seeing all this, what does
+the king do, who was once so fertile in resource, so decisive in
+counsel, so prompt in action? Nothing. His only weapon is prayer. "As
+for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord will save me. Evening, and
+morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and He shall hear my
+voice." He lets it all grow as it list, and only longs to be out of all
+the weary coil of troubles. "Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would
+I fly away and be at rest. Lo, I would flee far off, I would lodge in
+the wilderness. I would swiftly fly to my refuge from the raging wind,
+from the tempest." The langour of his disease, love for his worthless
+son, consciousness of sin, and submission to the chastisement through
+"one of his own house," which Nathan had foretold, kept him quiet,
+though he saw the plot winding its meshes round him. And in this
+submission patient confidence is not wanting, though subdued and
+saddened, which finds expression in the last words of this psalm of the
+heavy laden, "Cast thy burden upon Jehovah. He, He will sustain
+thee.... I will trust in Thee."
+
+When the blow at last fell, the same passive acquiescence in what he
+felt to be God's chastisement is very noticeable. Absalom escapes to
+Hebron, and sets up the standard of revolt. When the news comes to
+Jerusalem the king's only thought is immediate flight. He is almost
+cowardly in his eagerness to escape, and is prepared to give up
+everything without a blow. It seems as if only a touch was needed to
+overthrow his throne. He hurries on the preparations for flight with
+nervous haste. He forms no plans beyond those of his earlier wish to fly
+away and be at rest. He tries to denude himself of followers. When the
+six hundred men of Gath--who had been with him ever since his early days
+in Philistia, and had grown grey in his service--make themselves the van
+of his little army, he urges the heroic Ittai, their leader, to leave
+him a fugitive, and to worship the rising sun, "Return to thy place, and
+abide with _the king_"--so thoroughly does he regard the crown as passed
+already from his brows. The priests with the ark are sent back; he is
+not worthy to have the symbol of the Divine presence identified with
+his doubtful cause, and is prepared to submit without a murmur if God
+"thus say, I have no delight in thee." With covered head and naked feet
+he goes up the slope of Olivet, and turning perhaps at that same bend in
+the rocky mountain path where the true King, coming to the city, wept as
+he saw its shining walls and soaring pinnacles across the narrow valley,
+the discrowned king and all his followers broke into passionate weeping
+as they gazed their last on the lost capital, and then with choking sobs
+rounded the shoulder of the hill and set their faces to their forlorn
+flight. Passing through the territory of Saul's tribe--dangerous ground
+for him to tread--the rank hatred of Shimei's heart blossoms into
+speech. With Eastern vehemence, he curses and flings stones and dust in
+the transports of his fury, stumbling along among the rocks high up on
+the side of the glen, as he keeps abreast of the little band below. Did
+David remember how the husband from whom he had torn Michal had followed
+her to this very place, and there had turned back weeping to his lonely
+home? The remembrance, at any rate, of later and more evil deeds
+prompted his meek answer, "Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden
+him."
+
+The first force of the disaster spent itself, and by the time he was
+safe across Jordan, on the free uplands of Bashan, his spirit rises. He
+makes a stand at Mahanaim, the place where his great ancestor, in
+circumstances somewhat analogous to his own, had seen the vision of
+"bright-harnessed angels" ranked in battle array for the defence of
+himself and his own little band, and called the name of the place the
+"two camps." Perhaps that old story helped to hearten him, as the
+defection of Ahithophel from the conspiracy certainly would do. As the
+time went on, too, it became increasingly obvious that the leaders of
+the rebellion were "infirm of purpose," and that every day of respite
+from actual fighting diminished their chances of success, as that
+politic adviser saw so plainly. Whatever may have been the reason, it is
+clear that by the time David had reached Mahanaim he had resolved not to
+yield without a struggle. He girds on his sword once more with some of
+the animation of early days, and the light of trustful valour blazes
+again in his old eyes.
+
+
+
+
+XV. THE SONGS OF THE FUGITIVE.
+
+
+The psalms which probably belong to the period of Absalom's rebellion
+correspond well with the impression of his spirit gathered from the
+historical books. Confidence in God, submission to His will, are
+strongly expressed in them, and we may almost discern a progress in the
+former respect as the rebellion grows. They flame brighter and brighter
+in the deepening darkness. From the lowest abyss the stars are seen most
+clearly. He is far more buoyant when he is an exile once more in the
+wilderness, and when the masks of plot and trickery are fallen, and the
+danger stands clear before him. Like some good ship issuing from the
+shelter of the pier heads, the first blow of the waves throws her over
+on her side and makes her quiver like a living thing recoiling from a
+terror, but she rises above the tossing surges and keeps her course. We
+may allocate with a fair amount of likelihood the following psalms to
+this period--iii.; iv.; xxv. (?); xxviii. (?); lviii. (?); lxi.; lxii.;
+lxiii.; cix. (?); cxliii.
+
+The first two of these form a pair; they are a morning and an evening
+hymn. The little band are encamped on their road to Mahanaim, with no
+roof but the stars, and no walls but the arm of God. In the former the
+discrowned king sings, as he rises from his nightly bivouac. He pours
+out first his plaint of the foes, who are described as "many," and as
+saying that, "There is no help for him in God," words which fully
+correspond to the formidable dimensions of the revolt, and to the belief
+which actuated the conspirators, and had appeared as possible even to
+himself, that his sin had turned away the aid of heaven from his cause.
+To such utterances of malice and confident hatred he opposes the
+conviction which had again filled his soul, that even in the midst of
+real peril and the shock of battle Jehovah is his "shield." With bowed
+and covered head he had fled from Jerusalem, but "Thou art the lifter up
+of mine head." He was an exile from the tabernacle on Zion, and he had
+sent back the ark to its rest; but though he has to cry to God from
+beyond Jordan, He answers "from His holy hill." He and his men camped
+amidst dangers, but one unslumbering Helper mounted guard over their
+undefended slumbers. "I laid me down and slept" there among the echoes
+of the hills. "I awaked, for Jehovah sustained me;" and another night
+has passed without the sudden shout of the rebels breaking the silence,
+or the gleam of their swords in the starlight. The experience of
+protection thus far heartens him to front even the threatening circle of
+his foes around him, whom it is his pain to think of as "the people" of
+God, and yet as his foes. And then he betakes himself in renewed energy
+of faith to his one weapon of prayer, and even before the battle sees
+the victory, and the Divine power fracturing the jaws and breaking the
+teeth of the wild beasts who hunt him. But his last thought is not of
+retribution nor of fear; for himself he rises to the height of serene
+trust, "Salvation is of the Lord;" and for his foes and for all the
+nation that had risen against him his thoughts are worthy of a true
+king, freed from all personal animosity, and his words are a prayer
+conceived in the spirit of Him whose dying breath was intercession for
+His rebellious subjects who crucified their King, "Thy blessing be upon
+Thy people."
+
+The fourth psalm is the companion evening hymn. Its former portion
+(vers. 2-4) seems to be a remonstrance addressed as if to the leaders of
+the revolt ("sons of men" being equivalent to "persons of rank and
+dignity"). It is the expression in vivid form, most natural to such a
+nature, of his painful feeling under their slanders; and also of his
+hopes and desires for them, that calm thought in these still evening
+hours which are falling on the world may lead them to purer service and
+to reliance on God. So forgivingly, so lovingly does he think of them,
+ere he lays himself down to rest, wishing that "on their beds," as on
+his, the peace of meditative contemplation may rest, and the day of
+war's alarms be shut in by holy "communion with their own hearts" and
+with God.
+
+The second portion turns to himself and his followers, among whom we may
+suppose some faint hearts were beginning to despond; and to them, as to
+the very enemy, David would fain be the bringer of a better mind. "Many
+say, Who will show us good?" He will turn them from their vain search
+round the horizon on a level with their own eyes for the appearance of
+succour. They must look upwards, not round about. They must turn their
+question, which only expects a negative answer, into a prayer, fashioned
+like that triple priestly benediction of old (Numbers vi. 24-26). His
+own experience bursts forth irrepressible. He had prayed in his hour of
+penitence, "Make me to hear joy and gladness" (Psa. li.); and the prayer
+had been answered, if not before, yet now when peril had brought him
+nearer to God, and trust had drawn God nearer to him. In his calamity,
+as is ever the case with devout souls, his joy increased, as Greek fire
+burns more brightly under water. Therefore this pauper sovereign,
+discrowned and fed by the charity of the Gileadite pastoral chief,
+sings, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that
+their corn and wine increased." And how tranquilly the psalm closes, and
+seems to lull itself to rest, "In peace I will at once lie down and
+sleep, for Thou, O Jehovah, only makest me dwell safely." The growing
+security which experience of God's care should ever bring, is
+beautifully marked by the variation on the similar phrase in the
+previous psalm. There he gratefully recorded that he had laid himself
+down and slept; here he promises himself that he will lie down "in
+peace;" and not only so, but that at once on his lying down he will
+sleep--kept awake by no anxieties, by no bitter thoughts, but, homeless
+and in danger as he is, will close his eyes, like a tired child, without
+a care or a fear, and forthwith sleep, with the pressure and the
+protection of his Father's arm about him.
+
+This psalm sounds again the glad trustful strain which has slumbered in
+his harp-strings ever since the happy old days of his early trials, and
+is re-awakened as the rude blast of calamity sweeps through them once
+more.
+
+The sixty-third psalm is by the superscription referred to the time when
+David was "in the wilderness of Judah," which has led many readers to
+think of his long stay there during Saul's persecution. But the psalm
+certainly belongs to the period of his reign, as is obvious from its
+words, "_The king_ shall rejoice in God." It must therefore belong to
+his brief sojourn in the same wilderness on his flight to Mahanaim,
+when, as we read in 2 Sam., "The people were weary and hungry and
+thirsty in the wilderness." There is a beautiful progress of thought in
+it, which is very obvious if we notice the triple occurrence of the
+words "my soul," and their various connections--"my soul thirsteth," "my
+soul is satisfied," "my soul followeth hard after Thee;" or, in other
+words, the psalm is a transcript of the passage of a believing soul from
+longing through fruition to firm trust, in which it is sustained by the
+right hand of God.
+
+The first of these emotions, which is so natural to the fugitive in his
+sorrows, is expressed with singular poetic beauty in language borrowed
+from the ashen grey monotony of the waterless land in which he was. One
+of our most accurate and least imaginative travellers describes it thus:
+"There were no signs of vegetation, with the exception of a few reeds
+and rushes, and here and there a tamarisk." This lonely land, cracked
+with drought, as if gaping with chapped lips for the rain that comes
+not, is the image of his painful yearning for the Fountain of living
+waters. As his men plodded along over the burning marl, fainting for
+thirst and finding nothing in the dry torrent beds, so he longed for the
+refreshment of that gracious presence. Then he remembers how in happier
+days he had had the same desires, and they had been satisfied in the
+tabernacle. Probably the words should read, "Thus in the sanctuary have
+I gazed upon Thee, to see Thy power and Thy glory." In the desert and in
+the sanctuary his longing had been the same, but then he had been able
+to behold the symbol which bore the name, "the glory,"--and now he
+wanders far from it. How beautifully this regretful sense of absence
+from and pining after the ark is illustrated by those inimitably
+pathetic words of the fugitive's answer to the priests who desired to
+share his exile. "And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of
+God into the city. If I find favour in the eyes of the Lord, He will
+bring me again, and show me both it and His habitation."
+
+The fulfilment is cotemporaneous with the desire. The swiftness of the
+answer is beautifully indicated in the quick turn with which the psalm
+passes from plaintive longing to exuberant rapture of fruition. In the
+one breath "my soul thirsteth;" in the next, "my soul is satisfied"--as
+when in tropical lands the rain comes, and in a day or two what had been
+baked earth is rich meadow, and the dry torrent-beds, where the white
+stones glistered in the sunshine, foam with rushing waters and are edged
+with budding willows. The fulness of satisfaction when God fills the
+soul is vividly expressed in the familiar image of the feast of "marrow
+and fatness," on which he banquets even while hungry in the desert. The
+abundant delights of fellowship with God make him insensible to external
+privations, are drink for him thirsty, food for his hunger, a home in
+his wanderings, a source of joy and music in the midst of much that is
+depressing: "My mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips." The little
+camp had to keep keen look-out for nightly attacks; and it is a slight
+link of connection, very natural under the circumstances, between the
+psalms of this period, that they all have some references to the
+perilous hours of darkness. We have found him laying himself down to
+sleep in peace; here he wakes, not to guard from hostile surprises, but
+in the silence there below the stars to think of God and feel again the
+fulness of His all-sufficiency. Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes
+waking. "I remember Thee upon my bed."
+
+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.
+
+The other psalms of this period must be left unnoticed. The same general
+tone pervades them all. In many particulars they closely resemble those
+of the Sauline period. But the resemblance fails very significantly at
+one point. The emphatic assertion of his innocence is gone for ever.
+Pardoned indeed he is, cleansed, conscious of God's favour, and able to
+rejoice in it; but carrying to the end the remembrance of his sore fall,
+and feeling it all the more penitently, the more he is sure of God's
+forgiveness. Let us remember that there are sins which, once done, leave
+their traces on memory and conscience, painting indelible forms on the
+walls of our "chambers of imagery," and transmitting results which
+remission and sanctifying do not, on earth at least, wholly obliterate.
+Let David's youthful prayer be ours, "Keep back Thy servant from
+presumptuous sins: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from
+much transgression."
+
+It does not fall within the scope of this volume to deal with the
+suppression of Absalom's revolt, nor with the ten years of rule that
+remained to David after his restoration. The psalter does not appear to
+contain psalms which throw light upon the somewhat clouded closing
+years of his reign. One psalm, indeed, there is attributed to him, which
+is, at any rate, the work of an old man--a sweet song into which mellow
+wisdom has condensed its final lessons--and a snatch of it may stand
+instead of any summing-up of the life by us:
+
+  "Trust in the Lord, and do good;
+   Dwell in the land, and enjoy security;
+   Delight thyself also in the Lord,
+   And He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.
+   Commit thy way unto the Lord.
+
+   Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.
+
+   I have been young and now am old,
+   Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.
+
+   I have seen the wicked in great power,
+   And spreading himself like a green tree....
+   Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not."
+
+May we not apply the next words to the psalmist himself, and hear him
+calling us to look on him as he lies on his dying bed--disturbed though
+it were by ignoble intrigues of hungry heirs--after so many storms
+nearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanging
+home; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God:
+"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man
+is peace?" Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset,
+all the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. The music of his
+songs die away into "peace;" as when some master holds our ears captive
+with tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, until
+the jar of common noises, which that low sweetness had deadened, rushes
+in.
+
+One strain of a higher mood is preserved for us in the historical books
+that prophesy of the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no less
+than his consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. The dying
+eyes see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of Him who is to
+be a just and perfect ruler; before the brightness of whose presence,
+and the refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothe
+the world. As the shades gather, that radiant glory to come brightens.
+He departs in peace, having seen the salvation from afar. It was fitting
+that this fullest of his prophecies should be the last of his strains,
+as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings had snapped them
+in twain.
+
+And then, for earth, the richest voice which God ever tuned for His
+praise was hushed, and the harp of Jesse's son hangs untouched above his
+grave. But for him death was God's last, best answer to his prayer, "O
+Lord, open Thou my lips;" and as that cold but most loving hand
+unclothes him from the weakness of flesh, and leads him in among the
+choirs of heaven, we can almost hear again his former thanksgiving
+breaking from his immortal lips, "Thou hast put a new song into my
+mouth," whose melodies, unsaddened by plaintive minors of penitence and
+pain, are yet nobler and sweeter than the psalms which he sang here, and
+left to be the solace and treasure of all generations!
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+PSALM                                                             PAGE
+
+   iii.                                                            246
+
+    iv.                                                            248
+
+   vii.                                                            110
+
+  viii.                                                             28
+
+    xi.                                                            138
+
+  xiii.                                                            138
+
+    xv.                                                            177
+
+  xvii.                                                            138
+
+ xviii.                                                    153 and 157
+
+   xix.                                                             24
+
+    xx.                                                            203
+
+  xxii.                                                            141
+
+ xxiii.                                                             37
+
+  xxiv.                                                            177
+
+   xxv.                                                            138
+
+ xxvii.                                                             89
+
+  xxix.                                                             31
+
+  xxxi.                                                            132
+
+ xxxii.                                                            227
+
+ xxxiv.                                                             86
+
+  xxxv.                                                            139
+
+xxxvii.                                                            259
+
+ xxxix.                                                            236
+
+   xli.                                                            234
+
+    li.                                                            209
+
+   lii.                                                             72
+
+   liv.                                                            100
+
+    lv.                                                            240
+
+   lvi.                                                             77
+
+  lvii.                                                            119
+
+   lix.                                                             63
+
+    lx.                                                            201
+
+  lxii.                                                            255
+
+ lxiii.                                                            250
+
+  lxiv.                                                            138
+
+lxviii.                                                            208
+
+    cx.                                                            189
+
+cxliii.                                                            128
+
+
+
+
+_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
+
+_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each._
+
+
+THE PSALMS.
+
+VOL. I.--PSALMS I.-XXXVIII.
+ "  II.--PSALMS XXXIX.-LXXXIX.
+ " III.--PSALMS XC-CL.
+
+IN THE "EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE."
+
+      "The work of a brilliant and effective teacher. He writes with
+      real power and insight."--_Saturday Review._
+
+      "Dr. Maclaren has evidently mastered his subject with the aid of
+      the best authorities, and has put the results of his studies
+      before his readers in a most attractive form, and if we add that
+      this commentary really helps to the better understanding of the
+      Psalms, that, far from degrading, it vivifies and illuminates
+      these sublime stories, and that it is written in a charming style,
+      very seldom falling below the dignity of the subject, we believe
+      we only give it the praise which is its due."--_Scotsman._
+
+      "It is scholarly, honest, thoughtful, and suggestive."--_Daily
+      Chronicle._
+
+      "Striking thoughts, strongly expressed, are to be found on every
+      page."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+      "There is certainly room for the work which Dr. Maclaren does
+      here--largely because it is he who does it. The book is most
+      heartily to be commended. Preachers will find it to be a mine of
+      wealth, and to Christians of all kinds it may serve as a manual of
+      devotion."--_Christian World._
+
+      "Dr. Maclaren's charming pages furnish a most fruitful field of
+      study, alike for those whose chief aim is personal edification,
+      and for those who are in quest of suggestions in the line of
+      ministerial service. Altogether a most valuable book."--_United
+      Presbyterian Magazine._
+
+      "Most heartily do we welcome this new volume of Dr. Maclaren's
+      'Exposition of the Psalms.' It fully sustains the traditions of
+      insight, scholarly instinct, and spiritual force which gather
+      around that beloved name. Notwithstanding the rich treasures of
+      devout literature which the Psalter has called forth, there is a
+      special niche for this book, and it makes a distinct advance in
+      tone and method upon all other commentaries on the Psalms. We
+      greatly err if this does not prove the most popular and useful
+      commentary in the English language, both among preachers and the
+      commonality of Christ's Church."--_Evangelical Magazine._
+
+LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON.
+
+
+
+
+BIBLE CLASS EXPOSITIONS.
+
+_Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each volume._
+
+
+THE GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW.
+
+TWO VOLS.
+
+      "They are all written in clear, forcible language, and bring
+      abundant illustration from science, the facts of life and history
+      and Scripture. All through they manifest a true philosophical
+      spirit, and a deep knowledge of human nature. None can read them
+      without profit."--_Leeds Mercury._
+
+
+THE GOSPEL OF ST. MARK.
+
+      "As clear, luminous, and pellucid as is everything that comes from
+      the pen of the great Manchester preacher. Even in treating the
+      simplest incident he surprises his readers, and that without once
+      forcing the note, or seeking sensationalism."--_Christian World._
+
+
+THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE.
+
+      "Dr. Maclaren is a prince of expositors, and his expositions are
+      as wholesome as they are able, and as interesting as they are
+      instructive and edifying. Every paragraph is luminous with vivid
+      expression."--_The London Quarterly Review._
+
+
+THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
+
+      "There is much freshness and suggestiveness in these papers. Dr.
+      Maclaren has studied the art of compression with great success,
+      and no teacher of a class could desire anything better for his
+      purpose than these lessons. They may be heartily recommended to
+      all teachers as about the best things of the kind to be
+      had."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+
+THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
+
+      "The more this volume is read and studied the more do we admire
+      the humility that ranks such a book as for Bible Classes only. It
+      is for them beyond all question, and better fare has nowhere been
+      provided for them. Whether they be Bible Classes or preachers who
+      study this volume they will be enriched and strengthened by
+      it."--_Presbyterian._
+
+
+LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON.
+
+
+
+
+{Transcriber's Note: The following list of books has been moved from
+  the front to the back of the book to make the beginning more
+  reader-friendly.}
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF EXPOSITION
+
+
+=The Life of David as Reflected in his Psalms.= By ALEXANDER MACLAREN,
+  D.D. Ninth Edition. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+=Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.= By MARCUS DODS, D.D. Sixth Thousand. 3_s._
+  6_d._
+
+=The Last Supper of our Lord, and His Words of Consolation to the
+  Disciples.= By Principal J. MARSHALL LANG, D.D. Third Edition. 3_s._
+  6_d._
+
+=The Speeches of the Holy Apostles.= By the Rev. DONALD FRASER, D.D.,
+  London. Second Edition. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+=The Galilean Gospel.= By the Rev. Professor A.B. BRUCE, D.D. Fourth
+  Edition. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+=The Lamb of God: Expositions in the Writings of St. John.= By W.R.
+  NICOLL, M.A., LL.D. Second Thousand. 2_s._ 6_d._
+
+=The Lord's Prayer.= By CHARLES STANFORD, D.D. Fourth Thousand. 3_s._
+  6_d._
+
+=The Parables of our Lord. First Series.= As Recorded by St. Matthew. By
+  MARCUS DODS, D.D. Twelfth Thousand. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+=The Parables of our Lord. Second Series.= As Recorded by St. Luke. By
+  the same Author. Tenth Thousand. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+=The Law of the Ten Words.= By Principal J. OSWALD DYKES, D.D. Fourth
+  Thousand. 3_s._ 6_d._
+
+
+LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON,
+27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
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