1. Do ye indeed speak righteousness, O congregation? The enemies of David were a numerous and united band, and
because they so unanimously condemned the persecuted one they were apt to take
it for granted that their verdict was a fight one. “What everybody says must
be true” is a lying proverb. Yet the persecuted one requires his judges to
answer whether or not they were acting according to justice. It were well if
people would sometimes pause, and candidly consider this. Some of those who
surrounded Saul were rather passive than active persecutors; they held their
tongues when the object of royal hate was slandered; in the original, this
first sentence appears to be addressed to them, and they are asked to justify
their silence. Silence gives consent. Do ye judge uprightly, O ye sons of
men? You too are only men, though dressed in a little brief authority. Have
you not put aside all truth when you have condemned the godly and united in
seeking the overthrow of the innocent? Be not too sure of success, for there is
a God who can and will reverse your verdicts.
2. Yea, in heart ye work wickedness. Those very men who sat as judges, and pretended to so much
indignation at the faults imputed to their victim, were in their hearts
perpetrating all manner of evil. Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the
earth. They were deliberate sinners, cold, calculating villains. Note in
this verse that the men described sinned with heart and hand; privately in
their heart, publicly in the earth; they worked and they weighed—they were
active, and yet deliberate. Such were the foes of our Lord, an evil and
adulterous generation; they sought to kill him because he was righteousness
itself, yet they masked their hatred to his goodness by charging him with sin.
3. The wicked are estranged from the womb. It is small wonder that some people persecute the righteous
offspring of the woman, since all of them are of the serpent’s brood, and
enmity is set between them. No sooner born than alienated from God—do we so
early leave the right track? They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking
lies. Every observer may see how very soon infants act lies. Before they
can speak they practice little deceptive arts. This is especially the case in
those who grow up to be adept in slander. To be untruthful is one of the surest
proofs of a fallen state, and since falsehood is universal, so also is human
depravity.
4. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. The viper has but death for the body in his fangs, but
unregenerate man carries poison under his tongue, destructive to the nobler
nature. They are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. Many
serpents have been conquered by the charmer’s art, but men such as the psalmist
had to deal with no art could tame or restrain; therefore, he likens them to a
serpent less susceptible than others to the charmer’s music, and says that they
refused to hear reason, as the adder shuts her ear to those incantations which
fascinate other reptiles. Man, in his natural corruption, appears to have all
the ill points of a serpent without its excellencies.
5. Which will not hearken to the voice of charmers,
charming never so wisely. The
ungodly are not to be won to right by arguments the most logical, or appeals
the most moving. It is not in the preacher’s music, but in the sinner’s ear
that the cause of failure lies, and it is only the power of God that can remove
it. This is at once the sinner’s guilt and danger. He ought to hear but will
not, and because he will not hear, he cannot escape the damnation of hell.
6. Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth. If they have no capacity for good, at least deprive them of
their ability for evil. Treat them as the snake-charmers do their serpents:
extract their fangs, break their teeth. The Lord will not suffer the malice of
the wicked to triumph. Break out the great teeth of the young lions, O Lord. For fierce cruelty the wicked
are likened to young lions, and it is asked that their grinders may be smashed
in, that the creatures may henceforth be harmless.
7. Let them melt away as waters which run continually. Like mountain torrents dried up by the summer heats let
them disappear; or like running streams whose waters are swiftly gone, so let
them pass away; or like water spilt which none can find again, so let them
vanish out of existence. When he bendeth his bow to shoot his arrows, let
them be as cut in pieces. When the Lord goes forth to war, let his
judgments so tell upon these persecutors that they may be utterly cut in pieces
as a mark shattered by many shafts. Or perhaps the meaning is, when the ungodly
man marches to the conflict, let his arrows and his bow drop into fragments, so
that the boastful warrior may not have wherewithal to hurt the object of his
enmity. In either sense the prayer of the psalm has often become fact, and will
be again fulfilled as often as need arises.
8. As a snail which melteth, let every one of them pass
away. As the snail makes its own way by
its slime, and so dissolves as it goes, or as its shell is often found empty,
as though the inhabitant had melted away, so will the malicious eat out their
own strength, and shall themselves disappear. Like the untimely birth of a
woman, that they may not see the sun. Their character is shapeless,
hideous, revolting. Their life never comes to ripeness, their aims are
abortive, their only achievement is to have brought misery to others, and
horror to themselves. Every unregenerate person is an abortion, missing the
true form of God-manhood, corrupting in the darkness of sin, never seeing the
light of God in purity, in heaven.
9. Before your pots can feel the thorns. So sudden is the overthrow of the wicked, so great a
failure is their life, that they never see joy. Their pot is put on the hook to
prepare a feast of joy, and the fuel is placed beneath, but before the thorns
are lit, before any heat can be brought to bear upon the pot, a storm comes and
sweeps all away. Perhaps the figure may suppose the thorns, which are the fuel,
to be kindled, and then the flame is so rapid that before any heat can be
produced the fire is out, the meat remains raw, the man is disappointed, his
work is altogether a failure. He shall take them away as with a whirlwind.
Cook, fire, pot, meat and all disappear, whirled away to destruction. Both
living, and in his wrath. In the very midst of the man’s life, and in the fury
of his rage against the righteous, the persecutor is overwhelmed with a
tornado, his designs are baffled and himself destroyed. The passage is
difficult, but this is probably its meaning.
10. The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the
vengeance. He will have no hand in meting it
out, neither will he rejoice in the spirit of revenge, but he will rejoice to
see justice triumphant. There is nothing in Scripture of that sympathy with
God’s enemies which modern traitors are so fond of parading as the finest
species of benevolence. We shall at the last say “Amen” to the condemnation
of the wicked, and feel no disposition to question the ways of God with the
impenitent. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. He will
triumph over them; they will be so utterly vanquished that their overthrow will
be final and fatal, and his deliverance complete and crowning. The damnation of
sinners will not mar the happiness of saints.
11. So that a man shall say. Every man, however ignorant, will be compelled to say, Verily,
assuredly, there is a reward for the righteous. The godly are not after
all forsaken and given over to their enemies; the wicked are not to have the
best of it; truth and goodness are recompensed in the long run. Verily he is
a God that judgeth in the earth. Everyone will be forced by the sight of
the final judgment to see that there is a God, and that he is the righteous
ruler of the universe. Two things will come out clearly after all—there is a
God and there is a reward for the righteous. Time will remove doubts, solve
difficulties, and reveal secrets; meanwhile faith’s foreseeing eye discerns the
truth even now, and is glad thereat.
Excerpt from:
The Treasury of David
By Charles H Spurgeon
