into His hands, saying, "_I am oppressed, undertake_ THOU _for me!_" Who can forget that it was this same monosyllable of comfort that cheered a greater Sufferer at a more awful hour? The two most memorable spots in His midnight of agony,--Gethsemane and Calvary, the Garden and the Cross,--have this solitary gleam of sunshine breaking through the darkness, "O MY FATHER!" "MY GOD, MY GOD!" [54] Zech. xiii. 9. [55] Heb. xi. 16. [56] Prov. xviii. 10. Let us now proceed to the main feature in this verse. We have already noted how the exiled King had tried to reason his soul out of its depression by the exercise of HOPE--by looking beyond the shadows of the present to a brighter _future_. But the torch flickered and languished in his hand. He adopts a new expedient. Instead of looking to the _future_, he resolves to take a _retrospective_ survey; he directs his eye to the _past_. As often at eventide, when the lower valleys are in shadow, the mountain-tops are gilded with the radiance of the setting sun; so from the Valley of Humiliation, where he now was, he looks back on the lofty memorials of God's faithfulness. He "_lifts his eyes unto the_ HILLS, _from whence cometh his help_." "_O my God, I will remember_ THEE!" "This is _my_ infirmity," he seems to say, when he thinks of the weakness of his faith, and the fitfulness of his frames and feelings: "but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the works of the Lord; surely I will remember _Thy_ wonders of old."[57] With this key he proceeds again to open the door of HOPE. And as he treads the valley of Achor, he "sings there as in the days of his youth."[58] [57] Psalm lxxvii. 10, 11. [58] Hosea ii. 15. In connexion with this remembrance of his God, David alludes to some well-known places in his Kingdom--"_The land of Jordan, and the Hermonites, and the hill Mizar._" What means he by this reference? His language may admit of a twofold interpretation. 1. He may possibly refer to his present sojourn in the region beyond Jordan, with the Hermon range in sight; and which had this peculiarity, that it was beyond the old boundary-line of the Land of Promise, making him for the time, "an alien from the commonwealth of Israel." We know from a passage in Joshua (chap. xxii.) how sacredly the division between the covenant people and the neighbouring tribes was preserved. The latter were denominated a "_possession unclean_;" the former, "_the land of the possession of the Lord, wherein the Lord's tabernacle is_." How bitter must it have been to a patriotic heart like that of the Psalmist, thus to be cut off (even though for a brief season) from all participation in national and sanctuary blessings,--to stand outside the land trodden by the footsteps of angels, consecrated by the ashes of patriarchs, and over which hovered the shadowing wings of Jehovah!