The last strophe (vv. 10-12) recurs to prayer, and soars to confidence born of communion. A hand stretched out in need and trust soon comes back filled with blessings. Therefore here the moment of true petition is the moment of realised answer. The prayer traverses the malicious hopes of enemies. They had said, "He will rise no more"; it prays, "Raise me up." It touches a note which sounds discordant in the desire "that I may requite them"; and it is far more truly reverential and appreciative of the progress of revelation to recognise the relative inferiority of the psalmist's wish to render _quid pro quo_ than to put violence on his words, in order to harmonise them with Christian ethics, or to slur over the distinction between the Law, of which the keynote was retribution, and the Gospel, of which it is forgiveness. But the last words of the psalm are sunny with the assurance of present favour and with boundless hope. The man is still lying on his sick-bed, ringed by whispering foes. There is no change without, but this change has passed: that he has tightened his hold of God, and therefore can feel that his enemies' whispers will never rise or swell into a shout of victory over him. He can speak of the future deliverance as if present; and he can look ahead over an indefinite stretch of sunlit country, scarcely knowing whether the furthest point is earth or no. His integrity is not sinless, nor does he plead it as a reason for Jehovah's upholding, but hopes for it as the consequence of His sustaining hand. He knows that he will have close approach to Jehovah; and though, no doubt, "for ever" on his lips meant less than it does on ours, his assurance of continuous communion with God reached, if not to actual, clear consciousness of immortality, at all events to assurance of a future so indefinitely extended, and so brightened by the sunlight of God's face, that it wanted but little additional extension or brightening to be the full assurance of life immortal. BOOK II. _PSALMS XLII.-LXXII._ PSALMS XLII., XLIII. PSALM XLII. 1 Like a hind which pants after the water-brooks, So pants, my soul after Thee, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been bread to me day and night, While they say to me all the day, Where is thy God? 4 This would I remember, and pour out my soul in me, How I went with the throng, led them in procession to the house of God, With shrill cries of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. 5 Why art thou bowed down, my soul, and moanest within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet give Him thanks, [As] the help of my countenance and my God.