1. We have hard with our ears, O God. Thy mighty acts have been the subjects of common
conversation; not alone in books, but in the ordinary talk of the people we
have heard of them. Among the godly Israelites the biography of their nation
was preserved by oral tradition, with great diligence and accuracy. This mode
of preserving and transmitting history has its disadvantages, but it certainly
produces a more vivid impression on the mind than any other; to hear with the
ears affects us more sensitively than to read with the eyes; we ought to note
this, and seize every possible opportunity of telling abroad the Gospel of our
Lord Jesus with our voice. Heard with our ears may denote the pleasure
with which they listened, the intensity of their interest, the personality of
their hearing, and the lively remembrance they had of the romantic and
soul-stirring narrative. Too many have ears but hear not; happy are they who,
having ears, have learned to hear. Our fathers have told us. They could
not have had better informants. Schoolmasters are well enough, but godly
fathers are the best instructors of their sons, nor can they delegate the
sacred duty. Many children could plead very little before God of what their
fathers have told them. When fathers are tongue-tied religiously with their
offspring, need they wonder if their children’s hearts remain sin-tied? The
people of God under the old dispensation made their families cheerful by
rehearsing the wondrous doings of the Lord their God. Religious conversation
need not be dull, and indeed it could not be if, as in this case, it dealt more
with facts and less with opinions. What work thou didst in their days, in
the times of old. The main point was the work of God; it is delightful to
see the footprints of the Lord on the sea of changing events, to behold him
riding on the whirlwind of war, pestilence and famine, and above all to see his
unchanging care for his chosen people. Those who are taught to see God in
history have learned a good lesson from their fathers, and no son of believing
parents should be left in ignorance of so holy an art. The traditions of our
past experience are powerful pleas for present help.
2. How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand. The destruction of the Canaanites from the promised land is
the work here brought to remembrance. They were driven out by a far feebler
nation because the Lord was against them in the fight. And plantedst them.
The tribes of Israel were planted in the places formerly occupied by the
heathen. How thou didst afflict the people. With judgments and plagues
the condemned nations were harassed, by fire and sword they were hunted to the
death, till they were all expelled, and the enemies of Israel were banished far
away. And cast them out. This most probably refers to Israel and should
be read, “caused them to increase.” He who troubled his enemies smiled on his
friends. The greatness of divine love has its counterpart in the greatness of
his indignation. The weight of mercy bestowed on Israel is balanced by the
tremendous vengeance which swept the thousands of Amorites and Hittites down to
hell. God’s might, as shown in deeds both of mercy and justice, should be
called to mind in troubled times.
3. For they got not the land in possession by their own
sword. The Lord alone was exalted in
bringing his people to the land which flows with milk and honey. He had put a
difference between Canaan and Israel, and therefore by his own effectual power
he wrought for his chosen and against their adversaries. The
tribes fought for their allotments, but their success was wholly due to the
Lord. The passage is a beautiful parable of the work of salvation; we are not
saved without prayer, repentance, etc., but none of these save us; salvation is
altogether of the Lord. Neither did their own arm save them. They could
not ascribe their memorable victories to themselves. A negative is put both
upon their weapons and themselves as if to show how ready people are to ascribe
success to second causes. But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light
of thy countenance. The divine hand actively fought for them, the
divine arm powerfully sustained them with more than human energy, and
the divine smile inspired them with dauntless courage. Who could not win
with such triple help? Because thou hadst a favor unto them. Here is the
fountain from whence every stream of mercy flows. The Lord’s delight in his
people, his peculiar affection, his distinguishing regard—this is the
mainspring which moves every wheel of a gracious providence. Israel was a
chosen nation, hence their victories and the scattering of their foes;
believers are an elect people, hence their spiritual blessings and conquests.
There was nothing in the people themselves to secure them success; the Lord’s
favor alone did it. Our hope of glory must not rest on anything in ourselves,
but on the free and sovereign favor of the Lord of Hosts.
4. Thou art my King, O God. Knowing right well thy power and grace my heart is glad to
own thee for her sovereign prince. Who among the mighty are so illustrious as
thou art? To whom, then, should I yield my homage or turn for aid? God of my
fathers in the olden time, thou art my soul’s monarch and liege Lord. Command
deliverances for Jacob. To whom should a people look but to their king? He
it is who fights their battles for them. In the case of our King, how easy it
is for him to scatter all our foes! Jacob’s long life was crowded with trials
and deliverances, and his descendants are here called by his name, as if to
typify the similarity of their experience to that of their great forefather. He
who would win the blessings of Israel must share the sorrows of Jacob. This
verse contains a personal declaration and an intercessory prayer; those can
pray best who make most sure of their personal interest in God, and those who
have the fullest assurance that the Lord is their God should be the foremost to
plead for the rest of the faithful.
5. Through thee will we push down our enemies. The fight was very close, bows were of no avail, and swords
failed to be of service. Jacob’s God was renewing in the descendants of Jacob
their father’s wrestling. And how fared it with faith then? Could she stand
foot to foot with her foe and hold her own? Indeed, she came victorious from
the encounter, for she is great at a close push, the Lord being her helper. Through
thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us. The Lord’s name
served instead of weapons, and enabled those who used it to leap on their foes
and crush them with jubilant valor. In union and communion with God, saints
work wonder; if God be for us, who can be against us? Mark well that all the
conquests of these believers are said to be through thy name; going to
war at our own charges, we fail most ignominiously. Let us not, however, fall
into the equally dangerous sin of distrust, for the Lord can make the weakest
of us equal to any emergency. Though today we are timid and defenseless, he can
by his power make us strong, until those who rose up against us are so crushed
and battered as never to rise again.
6. Israel,
under thy guidance, shouldered out the heathen and gained their land by thy
power alone; therefore we will renounce forever all reliance upon outward
confidences, of which other men make such boast, and we will cast ourselves
upon the omnipotence of our God. Bows, having been newly introduced by Saul,
were regarded as very formidable weapons in the early history of Israel, but
they are here laid aside together with the all-conquering sword, in order that
there may be room for faith in the living God. This verse may serve as the
confession of faith of every believer renouncing his own righteousness and
strength, and looking alone to the Lord Jesus.
7. But thou hast saved us from our enemies. In ages past all our rescues have been due to thee, O God.
Never hast thou failed us. And hast put them to shame that hated us.
Thou hast defeated them in such a manner as to make them ashamed of themselves
to be overthrown by such puny adversaries as they thought the Israelites to be.
The double action of God in blessing his people and confounding his enemies is
evermore to be observed.
8. In God we boast all the day long. We have abundant reason for doing so while we recount his
mighty acts. All other boasting is loathsome save this, which is laudable and
pleasing. And praise thy name forever. Praise should be perpetual. If
there were no new acts of love, yet ought the Lord to be praised for what he
has done for his people. High let the song be lifted up as we bring to
remembrance the eternal love which chose us, predestinated us to be sons,
redeemed us with a price, and then enriched us with all the fullness of God. Selah.
A pause comes in fitly here, when we are about to descend from the highest to
the lowest key. No longer are we to hear Miriam’s timbrel, but rather Rachel’s
weeping.
9. But thou hast cast off, and put us to shame. Here the patriot bard begins to contrast the past glories
of the nation’s history with its present sadness and distress, which he does
not ascribe to the death of some human champion, or to the accidents of war,
but solely to the withdrawal of Israel’s God. It seemed to the mourner that
Jehovah had grown weary of his people and put them away in abhorrence. To show
his displeasure he had made his people to be ridiculed by the heathen, whose
easy victories over their largest armies covered Israel with disgrace. Alas for
a church and people when the Lord in the active energy of his Spirit withdraws
from them! He will not cast away his people finally and totally, but many a
church has been left to defeat and disgrace on account of sin, and therefore
all churches should be exceedingly watchful lest the like should happen to
themselves. Poverty and distress bring no shame on a people, but the Lord’s
absence takes from a church everything which can exalt and ennoble. And
goest not forth with our armies. If the Lord be not the leader, of what
avail are strong battalions? May none of us in our churches have to mourn over
the ministry left without divine aid. If our great ally will not go with us our
defeat is inevitable.
10. Thou makest us to turn back from the enemy. The humiliating consciousness that the Lord has left them
soon makes people cowards. And they which hate us spoil for themselves.
The poor, vanquished nation paid a terrible penalty for being overcome. In spiritual
experience we know what it is to be despoiled by our enemies; doubts and fears
rob us of our comforts, and terrible forebodings spoil us of our hopes; and all
because the Lord, for wise purposes, sees fit to leave us to ourselves. Alas
for the deserted soul! No calamity can equal the sorrow of being left by God,
though it be but for a moment.
11. Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat. The people were slain in flocks, with ease and frequency.
Not with the dignity of sacrifice, but with the cruelty of the butcher, were
they put to death. And hast scattered us among the heathen. Many were
carried into captivity, far off from the public worship of the temple. All this
is ascribed to the Lord. It is well to trace the hand of God in our sorrows,
for it is surely there.
12. Thou sellest thy people for nought. As men sell merchandise to anyone who cares to have it, so
the Lord seemed to hand over his people to any nation who might choose to make
way upon them. Meanwhile no good result was perceptible from all the miseries
of Israel; so far as the psalmist could discover, the Lord’s name received no
honor from the sorrows of his people. And dost not increase thy wealth by
their price. Let us rest satisfied that in reality the Lord is glorified,
and when no revenue of glory is manifestly rendered to him, he none the less
accomplishes his own secret purposes, of which the grand result will be
revealed in due time. We do not suffer for nought.
13. Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbors. Scorn is always an intensely bitter ingredient in the cup
of the oppressed. The taunts and jeers of the victors pain the vanquished
almost as much as their swords and spears. It was a mystery indeed that God
should suffer his royal nation to be taunted by all who dwelt near them. A
scorn and a derision to them that are round about us. The down-trodden people
had become a common jest. The psalmist sets forth the brutality of the enemy in
many words, in order to move the pity of the Lord, to whose just anger he
traced all the sorrows of his people; he used the very best of arguments, for
the sufferings of his chosen touch the heart of God far more readily than any
other reasonings. Our great Advocate above knows how to avail himself of this
powerful plea, and if we are at this hour enduring reproach for truth’s sake,
he will urge it before the eternal throne. A father will not long endure to see
his children despitefully treated.
14. They had
sunk so low that none did them reverence, but universally and publicly they
were treated as infamous and despicable. Those who reviled others dragged in
Israel’s name by the way as a garnish to their insults, and if perchance they
saw one of the offspring of Jacob in the street they used lewd gestures to
annoy him. The world has no eye for true excellence: it found a cross for the
Master, and cannot be expected to award crowns to his disciples.
15. My confusion is continually before me. The poet makes himself the representative of his nation,
and declares his own constant distress of soul. He is a man of ill blood who is
unconcerned for the sorrows of the church of which he is a member, or the
nation of which he is a citizen. And the shame of my face hath covered me.
He felt before God that the divine desertion was well deserved, and before man,
that he and his people were despicable indeed now that heavenly help was gone.
It is well for a nation when there still exist in it people who lay to heart
its sin and shame. God will have pity on his chastened ones, and it is a pledge
therefore when he sends us choice ministers, men of tenderness, who make the
people’s cause their own.
16. For the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth. It seems that from mocking the people of God, the
adversaries advanced to reviling God himself; they proceeded from persecution
to blasphemy. By reason of the enemy and avenger. The enemy boasted of
avenging the defeats of their forefathers; they took revenge for the ancient
victories of Israel by insulting over the now fallen people. Here was a sad
plight, but it was by no means a hopeless case, for the Lord who brought all
this evil upon them could with equal ease release them from it. So long as
Israel looked alone to her God, no foe could retain her beneath his foot.
17. All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten
thee. Here the psalmist urges that Israel
had not turned away from her allegiance to Jehovah. When in the midst of many
griefs we can still cling to God in obedience, it must be well with us. True
fidelity can endure rough usage. Those who follow God for what they get will
leave him when persecution is stirred up, but not so the sincere believer. Neither
have we dealt falsely in thy covenant. No idol was set up, the ordained
worship was not relinquished, God was still nationally acknowledged, and
therefore the psalmist is more earnest that the Lord should interpose. This and
the succeeding verses are suitable for the lips of martyrs; indeed the entire
psalm might be called the martyr’s complaint. Not for sin but for righteousness
did the saints suffer, not for falsehood but for truth, not for forsaking the
Lord but for following after him. Sufferings of such a sort may be very
terrible, but they are exceedingly honorable, and the comforts of the Lord will
sustain those who are accounted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake.
18. Heart and
life were both true to the Lord’s way. The godly sufferers were not absolutely
perfect, but they were sincerely free from all willfull transgression. The
prophet-poet could testify to the nation’s uprightness before God, both in
heart and act; far oftener the case would have worn quite another color, for
the tribes were all too apt to set up other gods and forsake the rock of their
salvation.
19. Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of
dragons. Though utterly crushed and rendered
desolate and driven as it were to associate with creatures which haunt deserted
ruins, yet Israel remained faithful. To be true to a smiting God, even when the
blows lay our joys in ruinous heaps, is to be such as the Lord delights in.
Better to be in the place of dragons than of deceivers. And covered us with the
shadow of death. The language is very strong. The nation is completely
enveloped in despair and death, as though coffined in hopelessness. Yet the
claim is made that they still remained mindful of their God, and a glorious
plea it is. Better death than false faith. Those who are true to God will never
find him false to them.
20. An appeal
is now made to the omniscience of God: he is himself called in to bear witness
that Israel had not set up another god. If we have forgotten the name of our
God. This would be the first step in apostasy: first to forget the true,
and then adore the false. Or stretched out our hands to a strange god. A
symbol of adoration or entreaty in prayer; this they had not offered to any of
the idols of the heathen.
21. Shall not God search this out? Could such idolatry be concealed from him? For he
knoweth the secrets of the heart. Not the heart only which is secret, but
the secrets of the heart, which are secrets of the most secret thing, are as
open to God as a book to a reader. The reasoning is that the Lord himself knew
the people to be sincerely his followers, and therefore was not visiting them
for sin; affliction evidently came from quite another cause.
22. Yea, that is,
assuredly, certainly, for thy sake—not for our offenses but for obeying
thee; the trials came because they were loyal to their God—are we killed all
the day long. Persecution never ceased to hound them to the death; and all
because they would not forsake their covenant God and King. We are counted
as sheep for the slaughter. As if we were only meant to be killed, and made
on purpose to be victims. We clearly hear the martyr’s cry. Not long shall the
church plead in this fashion; her shame will be recompensed, her triumph will
dawn.
23. Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord? God does
not sleep, but the psalmist puts it so, as if on no other theory could he
explain the divine inaction. He would like to see the great Judge ending
oppression and giving peace to the holy; therefore he cries, Awake. He
cannot understand why the reign of tyranny and the oppression of virtue are
permitted, and therefore he inquires, why sleepest thou? Arise. One move
of thine will save us. Cast us not off forever. Long enough hast thou
deserted us; the terrible effects of thine absence are destroying us; end our
calamities, and let thine anger be appeased. In persecuting times people are
apt to cry, “Where is the God of Israel?”
24. Not
petulantly, but piteously and inquiringly, we may question the Lord when his
dealings are mysterious. We are permitted arguments. Why, Lord, dost thou
become oblivious of thy children’s woes? This question is far more easily asked
than answered.
25. For our soul is bowed down to the dust. Our heart is as low as the dust. Our belly cleaveth unto
the earth. The man is fastened down on the earth and glued to it. It is
misery, indeed, when the heart cannot escape from itself, is shut up in its own
dejection. God’s saints may be thus abject, but their day is coming.
26. Arise for our help.
A short, but sweet and comprehensive prayer. And redeem us for thy mercies’
sake. The favor is redemption, the plea is mercy; and this, too, in the
case of faithful sufferers who had not forgotten their God. Mercy is always a
safe plea, and never will anyone find a better. Here ends this psalm, but in
heaven its power ends not, but brings down deliverance for the tried people of
God.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
