Psalm 120
120:1. In my distress. Slander occasions distress of the most grievous kind. Those who have felt the edge of a cruel tongue know assuredly that it is sharper than the sword. Calumny rouses our indignation by a sense of injustice, and yet we find ourselves helpless to fight with the evil, or to act in our own defense. We could ward off the strokes of a cutlass, but we have no shield against a liar’s tongue. We do not know who was the father of the falsehood, nor where it was born, nor where it has gone, nor how to follow it, nor how to stay its withering influence. We are perplexed, and know not which way to turn. Like the plague of flies in Egypt, it baffles opposition, and few can stand before it. Detraction touches us in the tenderest point, cuts to the quick, and leaves a venom behind which it is difficult to extract. In all ways it is a sore distress to come under the power of slander. Silence to man and prayer to God are the best cures for the evil of slander.
I cried unto the LORD (or Jehovah). The wisest course that he could follow. It is of little use to appeal to our fellows on the matter of slander, for the more we stir in it the more it spreads; it is of no avail to appeal to the honor of the slanderers, for they have none, and the most piteous demands for justice will only increase their malignity and encourage them to issue fresh insult. To whom should children cry but to their father? Does not some good come even out of that vile thing, falsehood, when it drives us to our knees and to our God?
And he heard me. The psalmist remembered and recorded this instance of prayer-hearing, for it had evidently much affected him. When we are slandered it is a joy that the Lord knows us, and cannot be made to doubt our uprightness: he will not hear the lie against us, but he will hear our prayer against the lie.
If Psalms 120–134 were sung at the ascent of the ark to Mount Zion, and then afterwards by the pilgrims to Jerusalem at the annual festivals and at the return from Babylon, we shall find in the life of David a reason for this being made the first of them. Did not this servant of God meet with Doeg the Edomite when he inquired of the oracle by Abiathar, and did not that wretched creature belie him and betray him to Saul? This made a very painful and permanent impression upon David’s memory, and therefore in commencing the ark-journey he poured out his lament before the Lord. The poet, like the preacher, may find it to his advantage to begin low, for then he has the more room to rise: the next psalm is a full octave above the present mournful hymn. Whenever we are abused it may console us to see that we are not alone in our misery: we are traversing a road upon which David left his footprints.
120:2. Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips. It will need divine power to save a man from these deadly instruments. Lips are soft, but when they are lying lips they suck away the life of character and are as murderous as razors. Lips should never be red with the blood of honest people’s reputes, nor salved with malicious falsehoods. The soul, the life of the man, is endangered by lying lips. The faculty of speech becomes a curse when it is degraded into a mean weapon for smiting people behind their backs. We need to be delivered from slander by the Lord’s restraint upon wicked tongues, or else to be delivered out of it by having our good name cleared from the liar’s calumny.
And from a deceitful tongue. This is rather worse than downright falsehood. Those who fawn and flatter, and all the while have enmity in their hearts, are horrible beings; they are the offspring of the devil, and he works in them after his own deceptive nature. It should be a warning to liars and deceivers when they see that all good people pray against them, and that even bad people are afraid of them. From gossips, talebearers, writers of anonymous letters, forgers of newspaper paragraphs, and all sorts of lie-mongers, good Lord deliver us!
120:3. What shall be given unto thee? It ought to be something great to make it worthwhile to work in so foul an atmosphere and to ruin one’s soul. The liar will have no welcome recompense: he will meet with his deserts; but what will they be? What punishment can equal his crime? The psalmist seems lost to suggest a fitting punishment.
Or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? The law of retaliation can hardly meet the case, since the slanderer is too black to be blackened. He fights with weapons which true men cannot touch. What will God do with lying tongues? He has uttered his most terrible threats against them, and he will terribly execute them in due time.
120:4. Sharp arrows of the mighty. Swift, sure, and sharp will be the judgment. Nor will one form of judgment suffice to avenge this complicated sin. The slanderer will feel woes comparable to coals of juniper, which are quick in flaming, fierce in blazing, and long in burning. Juniper coals long retain their heat, but hell burneth ever, and the deceitful tongue may not deceive itself with the hope of escape from the fire which it has kindled. What a crime is this to which the Almighty allots a doom so dreadful! Let us hate it with perfect hatred. It is better to be the victim of slander than to be the author of it. The shafts of calumny will miss the mark, but not so the arrows of God: the coals of malice will cool, but not the fire of justice. Shun slander as you would avoid hell.
120:5. Gracious people are vexed with the conversation of the wicked. Our poet felt himself to be as ill-at-ease among lying neighbors as if he had lived among savages. He had some hope from the fact that he was only a sojourner in Mesech; but as years rolled on the time dragged heavily, and he feared that he might call himself a dweller in Kedar. The wandering tribes to whom he refers were constantly at war with one another; it was their habit to travel armed to the teeth; they were a kind of plundering gypsies, with their hand against every man and every man’s hand against them; and to these he compared the false-hearted ones who had assailed his character. Those who defame the righteous are worse than cannibals; for savages only eat men after they are dead, but these wretches eat them up alive.
120:6. Too long had he been an exile among such barbarians. A peacemaker is a blessing, but a peace-hater is a curse. To lodge with such for a night is dangerous, but to dwell with them is horrible. The verse may apply to any one of the psalmist’s detractors: he had seen enough of him and pined to quit such company. Perhaps the sweet singer did not at first detect the nature of the man, for he was a deceiver; and when he did discover him he found himself unable to shake him off, and so was compelled to abide with him. Thoughts of Doeg, Saul, Ahithophel, and the sons of Zeruiah come to our mind—these last, not as enemies, but as hot-blooded soldiers who were often too strong for David. What a change for the man of God from the quietude of the sheepfold to the turmoil of court and the tumult of combat! How he must have longed to lay aside his scepter and resume his crook. He felt the time of his dwelling with quarrelsome spirits to be long, too long; and he only endured it because, as the Prayer-book version has it, he was “constrained” so to abide.
120:7. I am for peace. Properly, “I am peace”; desirous of peace, peaceful, forbearing—in fact, peace itself.
But when I speak, they are for war. My kindest words appear to provoke them, and they are as daggers drawn at once. Nothing pleases them; if I am silent they count me morose, and if I open my mouth they cavil and controvert. Let those who dwell with such pugilistic company console themselves with the remembrance that both David and David’s Lord endured the same trial. It is the lot of the saints to find foes even in their own households. Others besides David dwelt in the place of dragons. Others besides Daniel have been cast into a den of lions. Meanwhile, let those who are in quiet resting-places and peaceful habitations be greatly grateful for such ease. God has given us this tranquillity. Be it ours never to inflict upon others that from which we have been screened ourselves.
The Treasury of David by Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
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