The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 1: Psalms I.-XXXVIII.Maclaren, Alexander
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Psalms, Vol. 1: Psalms I.-XXXVIII.
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
That assurance prepares the way for the noble burst of thanksgiving, as
for accomplished deliverance, which ends the psalm, springing up in a
joyous outpouring of melody, like a lark from a bare furrow. But there
is no such change of tone as to warrant the supposition that these last
verses (19-24) are either the psalmist's later addition or the work of
another, nor do they oblige us to suppose that the whole psalm was
written after the peril which it commemorates had passed. Rather the
same voice which triumphantly rings out in these last verses has been
sounding in the preceding, even in their saddest strains. The ear
catches a twitter hushed again and renewed more than once before the
full song breaks out. The psalmist has been absorbed with his own
troubles till now, but thankfulness expands his vision, and suddenly
there is with him a multitude of fellow-dependants on God's goodness. He
hungers alone, but he feasts in company. The abundance of God's
"goodness" is conceived of as a treasure stored, and in part openly
displayed, before the sons of men. The antithesis suggests manifold
applications of the contrast, such as the inexhaustibleness of the mercy
which, after all revelation, remains unrevealed, and, after all
expenditure, has not perceptibly diminished in its shining mass, as of
bullion in some vault; or the varying dealings of God, who sometimes,
while sorrow is allowed to have its scope, seems to keep His riches of
help under lock and key, and then again flashes them forth in deeds of
deliverance; or the difference between the partial unfolding of these on
earth and the full endowment of His servants with "riches in glory"
hereafter. All these carry the one lesson that there is more in God than
any creature or all creatures have ever drawn from Him or can ever draw.
The repetition of the idea of hiding in ver. 20 is a true touch of
devout poetry. The same word is used for laying up the treasure and for
sheltering in a pavilion from the jangle of tongues. The wealth and the
poor men who need it are stored together, as it were; and the place
where they both lie safe is God Himself. How can they be poor who are
dwelling close beside infinite riches? The psalmist has just prayed that
God would make His face to shine upon him; and now he rejoices in the
assurance of the answer, and knows himself and all like-minded men to be
hidden in that "glorious privacy of light," where evil things cannot
live. As if caught up to and "clothed with the sun," he and they are
beyond the reach of hostile conspiracies, and have "outsoared the shadow
of" earth's antagonisms. The great thought of security in God has never
been more nobly expressed than by that magnificent metaphor of the light
inaccessible streaming from God's face to be the bulwark of a poor man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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