1. Hold not thy peace.
Mine enemies speak; be thou pleased to speak too. Break thy solemn silence, and
silence those who slander me. It is the cry of a man whose confidence in God is
deep, and whose communion with him is very close and bold. Note that he only
asks the Lord to speak: a word from God is all a believer needs. O God of my
praise. Thou whom my whole soul praises, be pleased to protect my honor and
guard my praise. “My heart is fixed,” said he in the former psalm; “I will
sing and give praise,” and now he appeals to the God whom he had praised. If
we take care of God’s honor he will take care of ours.
2. For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the
deceitful are opened against me.
Wicked people must say wicked things, and these we have reason to dread; but in
addition they utter false and deceitful things, and these are worst of all.
There is no knowing what may come out of mouths which are at once lewd and
lying. They have spoken against me with a lying tongue. Lying tongues
cannot lie still. Bad tongues are not content to vilify bad men, but choose the
most gracious of saints to be the objects of their attacks.
3. They compassed me about also with words of hatred. Turn which way he would, they hedged him in with falsehood,
misrepresentation, accusation, and scorn. Whispers, sneers, insinuations,
satires, and open charges filled his ear with a perpetual buzz, and all for no
reason, but sheer hate.
4. For my love they are my adversaries. They hate me because I love them. One of our poets says of
the Lord Jesus, “Found guilty of excess of love.” Surely it was his only
fault. Our Lord might have used all the language of this complaint most
emphatically—they hated him without a cause and returned him hatred for love.
What a smart this is to the soul, to be hated in proportion to the gratitude
which it deserved, hated by those it loved, and hated because of its love. This
was a cruel case, and the sensitive mind of the psalmist writhed under it. But
I give myself unto prayer. He did nothing else but pray. He became prayer
as they became malice.
5. Evil for good is devil-like. This is Satan’s line of action, and his children upon earth
follow it greedily: it is cruel, and wounds to the quick.
Thus we see the harmless and innocent man upon his knees
pouring out his lamentation: we are now to observe him rising from the
mercy-seat, inspired with prophetic energy, and pouring forth upon his foes the
forewarnings of their doom. We shall hear him speak like a judge clothed with
stern severity, or like the angel of doom robed in vengeance, or as the naked
sword of justice when she bares her arm for execution. When the Judge of all
threatens to punish tyrannical cruelty and falsehearted treachery, virtue gives
her assent and consent. Amen, so let it be, saith every just man in his inmost
soul.
6. Set thou a wicked man over him. What worse punishment could a man have? The proud man
cannot endure the proud, nor the oppressor brook the rule of another like
himself. The righteous in their patience find the rule of the wicked a sore
bondage; but those who are full of resentful passions, and haughty aspirations,
are slaves indeed when men of their own class have the whip hand of them. For
Herod to be ruled by another Herod would be wretchedness enough, and yet what
retribution could be more just? What unrighteous man can complain if he finds
himself governed by one of like character? What can the wicked expect but that
their rulers should be like themselves? And let Satan stand at his right
hand. Should not like come to like? Should not the father of lies stand
near his children?? Who is a better righthand friend for an adversary of the
righteous than the great adversary himself? The curse is an awful one, but it
is most natural that it should come to pass: those who serve Satan may expect
to have his company, his assistance, his temptations, and at last his doom.
7. When he shall be judged, let him be condemned. He judged and condemned others in the vilest manner, he
suffered not the innocent to escape; and it would be a great shame if in his
time of trial, being really guilty, he should be allowed to go free. And let
his prayer become sin. It is sin already; let it be so treated. To the
injured it must seem terrible that the black-hearted villain should
nevertheless pretend to pray, and very naturally do they beg that he may not be
heard, but that his pleadings may be regarded as an addition to his guilt. He
has devoured the widow’s house, and yet he prays. He has put Naboth to death by
false accusation and taken possession of his vineyard, and then he presents
prayers to the Almighty. “Because that he remembered not to show mercy,” he
will himself be forgotten by the God of grace, and his bitter cries for
deliverance will be regarded as mockeries of heaven.
8. Let his days be few.
Who would desire a persecuting tyrant to live long? As well might we wish
length of days to a mad dog. And let another take his office. Perhaps a
better man may come; at any rate it is time a change were tried. So used were
the Jews to look upon these verses and the doom of traitors of cruel and
deceitful mind, that Peter saw at once in the speedy death of Judas a
fulfillment of this sentence, and a reason for the appointment of a successor
who should take his place of oversight. A bad man does not make an office bad:
another may use with benefit that which he perverted to ill uses.
9. This
would inevitably be the case when the man died, but the psalmist uses the words
in an emphatic sense; he would have his widow “a widow indeed,” and his
children so friendless as to be orphaned in the bitterest sense. He sees the
result of the bad man’s decease, and includes it in the punishment. The
tyrant’s sword makes many children fatherless.
10. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg. May they have neither house nor home, settlement nor
substance; and while they thus wander and beg may it ever be on their memory
that their father’s house lies in ruins—let them seek their bread also out
of their desolate places. It has often been so: a race of tyrants has
become a generation of beggars. Misused power and abused wealth have earned the
family name universal detestation, and secured to the family character an
entail of baseness. Justice herself would award no such doom except upon the
supposition that the sin descended with the blood; but supreme providence which
in the end is pure justice has written many a page of history in which the
imprecation of this verse has been literally verified.
We confess that as we read some of these verses we have need
of all our faith and reverence to accept them as the voice of inspiration; but
the exercise is good for the soul, for it educates our sense of ignorance, and
tests our teachableness. Yes, divine Spirit, we can and do believe that even
these dread words from which we shrink have a meaning consistent with the
attributes of the Judge of all the earth, though his name is Love. How this may
be we shall know hereafter.
11. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath. A doom indeed. Those who have once fallen into the hands of
the usurer can tell you what this means: it were better to be a fly in the web
of a spider. In the most subtle, worrying, and sweeping manner the extortioner
takes away, piece by piece, his victim’s estate, till not a fraction remains to
form a pittance for old age. And let the strangers spoil his labor—so
that his kindred may have none of it. What with hard creditors and pilfering
strangers the estate must soon vanish! Extortion drawing one way, and
spoliation the other, a known moneylender and an unknown robber both at work,
the man’s substance would soon disappear, and rightly so, for it was gathered
by shameless means. This too has been frequently seen. Wealth amassed by
oppression has seldom lasted to the third generation.
12. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him. He had no mercy, but on the contrary he crushed down all
who appealed to him. Loath to smite him with his own weapon, stern justice can
do no otherwise; she lifts her scales and sees that this, too, must be in the
sentence. Neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children. We
are staggered to find the children included in the father’s sentence, and yet
as a mater of fact children do suffer for their father’s sins, and as long as
the affairs of this life are ordered as they are, it must be so. So involved
are the interests of the race that it is quite impossible in all respects to
view the father and the child apart.
13. Both from
existence and from memory let them pass away till none know that such a vile
brood ever existed. It would be undesirable that the sons of the utterly
villainous and bloodthirsty should rise to honor, and if they did they would
only revive the memory of their father’s sins.
14. This
verse is, perhaps, the most terrible of all, but yet as a matter of fact
children do procure punishment upon their parents’ sins, and are often
themselves the means of such punishment. A bad son brings to mind his father’s
bad points of character; people say, “Ah, he is like the old man. He takes
after his father.” A mother’s sins also will be sure to be called to mind if
her daughter becomes grossly wicked. “Ah,” they will say, “there is little
wonder, when you consider what her mother was.” These are matters of everyday
occurrence. We cannot, however, pretend to explain the righteousness of this
malediction, though we fully believe in it. We leave it till our Heavenly
Father is pleased to give us further instruction. Yet, as a man’s faults are
often learned from his parents, it is not unjust that his consequent crimes
should recoil upon him.
15. Again, he
wishes that his father’s sins may follow up the transgressor and assist to fill
the measure of his own iniquities, so that for the whole accumulated load the
family may be smitten with utter extinction. A king might justly wish for such
an end to fall upon an incorrigible brood of rebels; and of persecutors,
continuing in the same mind, the saints might well pray for their extinction;
but the passage is dark, and we must leave it so. It must be right or it would
not be here, but how we cannot see. Why should we expect to understand all
things? Perhaps it is more for our benefit to exercise humility, and reverently
worship God over a hard text, than it would be to comprehend all mysteries.
16. Because that he remembered not to show mercy. Because he had no memory to show mercy the Judge of all
will have a strong memory of his sins. So little mercy had he ever shown that
he had forgotten how to do it; he was without common humanity, devoid of
compassion, and therefore only worthy to be dealt with after the bare rule of
justice. But persecuted the poor and needy man. He looked on poor men as
a nuisance upon the earth, he ground their faces, oppressed them in their
wages, and treated them as the mire of the streets. Should he not be punished,
and in his turn laid low? All who know him are indignant at his brutalities,
and will glory to see him overthrown. That he might even slay the broken in
heart. He had malice in his heart towards one who was already sufficiently
sorrowful, whom it was a superfluity of malignity to attack. Yet no grief
excited sympathy in him, no poverty ever moved him to relent.
17. As he loved cursing, so let it come unto him. Retaliation, not for private revenge, but as a measure of
public justice, is demanded by the psalmist and deserved by the crime. Surely
the malicious man cannot complain if he is judged by his own rule, and has his
corn measured with his own bushel. Let him have what he loved. As he
delighted not in blessing, so let it be far from him. He felt no joy in
anyone’s good, nor would he lift a hand to do another a service, but rather did
he frown and fret when another prospered or mirth was heard under his window;
what, then, can we wish him? Blessing was wasted on him; he hated those who
gently sought to lead him to a better mind; even the blessings of providence he
received with grumbling and repinings; he wished for famine to raise the price
of his corn, and for war to increase his trade. Evil was good to him, and good
he counted evil. To invoke blessings on such a man would be to participate in
his wickedness; therefore let blessing be far from him, so long as he continues
what he now is.
18–19. He was so
openly in the habit of wishing ill to others that he seemed to wear robes of cursing;
therefore let ill be as his raiment girded and belted about him; let it enter
as water into his bowels, and search the very marrow of his bones like a
penetrating oil. It is but common justice that he should receive a return for
his malice, and receive it in kind, too.
20. This is
the summing up of the entire imprecation, and fixes it upon the persons who had
so maliciously assailed the inoffensive man of God. David was a man of gentle
mold, and remarkably free from the spirit of revenge, and therefore we may here
conceive him to be speaking as a judge or as a representative man, in whose
person great principles needed to be vindicated and great injuries redressed.
Thousands of God’s people are perplexed with this psalm, and
we fear we have contributed very little towards their enlightenment. What then?
Is it not good for us sometimes to be made to feel that we are not yet able to
understand all the Word and mind of God? A thorough bewilderment, so long as it
does not stagger our faith, may be useful to us by confounding our pride,
arousing our faculties, and leading us to cry, “What I know not, teach me.”
21. But do thou for me, O God
the Lord, for thy name’s sake. How eagerly he turns from his enemies to his God! He sets
the great Thou in opposition to all his adversaries, and you see at once that
his heart is at rest. He leaves himself in the Lord’s hands, dictating nothing,
but quite content so long as his God will but undertake for him. His plea is
not his own merit, but the name. The saints have always felt this to be
their most mighty plea. God himself has performed his grandest deeds of grace
for the honor of his name, and his people know that this is the most potent
argument with him. What the Lord himself has guarded with sacred jealousy we
should reverence with our whole hearts and rely upon without distrust. Because
thy mercy is good, deliver thou me. Not because I am good, but because thy
mercy is good: see how the saints fetch their pleadings in prayer from the Lord
himself. God’s mercy is the star to which the Lord’s people turn their eye when
they are tossed with tempest and not comforted, for the special bounty and
goodness of that mercy have a charm for weary hearts.
22. For I am poor and needy. When he does plead anything about himself he urges not his
riches or his merits, but his poverty and his necessities: this is Gospel
supplication, such as only the Spirit of God can indite upon the heart. And
my heart is wounded within me. The Lord has always a tender regard to
broken-hearted ones, and such the psalmist had become: the undeserved cruelty,
the baseness, the slander of his remorseless enemies had pierced him to the
soul, and this sad condition he pleads as a reason for speedy help.
23. I am gone like the shadow when it declineth. I am a mere shadow, a shadow at the vanishing point, when
it stretches far, but is almost lost in the universal gloom of evening which
settles over all, and so obliterates the shadows cast by the setting sun. Lord,
there is next to nothing left of me; wilt thou not come in before I am quite
gone? I am tossed up and down as the locust, which is the sport of the
winds, and must go up or down as the breeze carries it. The psalmist felt as
powerless in his distress as a poor insect, which a child may toss up and down
at its pleasure.
24. My knees are weak through fasting; either religious fasting, to which he resorted in the dire
extremity of his grief, or else through loss of appetite occasioned by distress
of mind. And my flesh faileth of fatness. He was wasted to a skeleton,
and as his body was emaciated, so was his soul bereft of comfort: he was pining
away, and all the while his enemies saw it and laughed at his distress. How
pathetically he states his case; this is one of the truest forms of prayer, the
setting forth of our sorrow before the Lord. Weak knees are strong with God,
and failing flesh has great power in leading.
25. I became also a reproach unto them. They made him the theme of ridicule, the butt of their
ribald jests: his emaciation by fasting made him a tempting subject for their
caricatures and lampoons. When they looked upon me they shook their heads.
Words were not sufficient expression of their scorn, so they resorted to
gestures which were meant both to show their derision and to irritate his mind.
Though these things break no bones, yet they do worse, for they break and
bruise far tenderer parts of us. Many a person who could have answered a
malicious speech, and so have relieved his mind, has felt keenly a sneer, a
putting out of the tongue, or some other sign of contempt. Those, too, who are
exhausted by such fasting and wasting as the last verse describes are generally
in a state of morbid sensibility, and therefore feel more acutely the
unkindness of others. What they would smile at during happier seasons becomes
intolerable when they are in a highly nervous condition.
26. Help me, O Lord
my God. Laying hold of Jehovah by the
appropriating word my, he implores his aid both to help him to bear his
heavy load and to enable him to rise superior to it. He has described his own
weakness, and the strength and fury of his foes, and by these two arguments he
urges his appeal with double force. This is a very rich, short, and suitable
prayer for believers in any situation of peril, difficulty, or sorrow. O
save me according to thy mercy. As thy mercy is, so let thy salvation be.
The measure is a great one, for the mercy of God is without bound. When man has
no mercy it is comforting to fall back upon God’s mercy. Justice to the wicked
is often mercy to the righteous, and because God is merciful he will save his
people by overthrowing their adversaries.
27. That they may know that this is thy hand. Ungodly people will not see God’s hand in anything if they
can help it, and when they see good people delivered into their power they
become more confirmed than ever in their atheism, but all in good time God will
arise and so effectually punish their malice and rescue the object of their
spite that they will be compelled to say like the Egyptian magicians, “this is
the finger of God.” That thou, Lord,
hast done it. There will be no mistaking the author of so thorough a
vindication, so complete a turning of the tables.
28. Let them curse, but bless thou, or, “they will curse and thou wilt bless.” Their cursing
will then be of such little consequence that it will not matter a straw. One
blessing from the Lord will take the poison out of ten thousand curses of men. When
they arise, let them be ashamed. They lift up themselves to deal out
another blow, to utter another falsehood, and to watch for its injurious
effects upon their victim, but they see their own defeat and are filled with
shame. But let thy servant rejoice. Not merely as a man protected and
rescued, but as God’s servant in whom his master’s goodness and glory are
displayed when he is saved from his foes. It ought to be our greatest joy that
the Lord is honored in our experience; the mercy itself ought not so much to
rejoice us as the glory which is thereby brought to him who so graciously
bestows it.
29. Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame. It is a prophecy as well as a wish, and may we read both in
the indicative and the imperative. Where sin is the underclothing, shame will
soon be the outer vesture. He who would clothe good people with contempt will
himself be clothed with dishonor. And let them cover themselves with their
own confusion, as with a mantle. Let their confusion be broad enough to
wrap them all over from head to foot; let them bind it about them and hide
themselves in it, as being utterly afraid to be seen.
30. I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth.
Enthusiastically, abundantly, and loudly will he extol the righteous Lord, who
redeemed him from all evil; and that not only in his own chamber or among his
own family, but in the most public manner. Yea, I will praise him among the
multitude. Remarkable and public providences demand public recognition, for
otherwise men of the world will judge us to be ungrateful. We do not praise God
to be heard of men, but as a natural sense of justice leads everyone to expect
to hear a befriended person speak well of his benefactor, we therefore have
regard to such natural and just expectations, and endeavor to make our praises
as public as the benefit we have received.
31. For he shall stand at the right hand of the poor. God will not be absent when his people are on their trial;
he will hold a brief for them and stand in court as their advocate, prepared to
plead on their behalf. How different is this from the doom of the ungodly who
has Satan at his right hand (verse 6). To save him from those that condemn
his soul. The court only met as a matter of form. The malicious had made up
their minds as to the verdict: they judged him guilty, for their hate condemned
him; they pronounced sentence of damnation upon the very soul of their victim.
But what mattered it? The great King was in court, and their sentence was
turned against themselves. Nothing can more sweetly sustain the heart of a
slandered believer than the firm conviction that God is near all who are
wronged, and is sure to work out their salvation.
O Lord, save us from the severe trial of slander: deal in
thy righteousness with all those who spitefully assail the characters of holy
people, and cause all who are smarting under calumny and reproach to come forth
unsullied from the affliction, just as did thine only-begotten Son. Amen.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
