{Transcriber's Note: Obvious typos, printing errors and mis-spellings have been corrected, but spellings have not been modernized. Footnotes follow immediately the paragraph in which they are noted. In Chapter XV, eighth paragraph, second last line, "His" changed to "his" in the sentence "Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyes waking" to agree with the author's obvious reference to David rather than to God. }

 =The Household Library of Exposition. =

 THE LIFE OF DAVID AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS. 

 THE LIFE OF DAVID AS REFLECTED IN HIS PSALMS. 

 BY

 ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D. 

 _NINTH EDITION. _

 =London:= HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27, PATERNOSTER ROW

 MCMIII

_Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London_

CONTENTS

 PAGE

 I. INTRODUCTION, 1 II. EARLY DAYS, 14 III. EARLY DAYS--_continued_, 31 IV. THE EXILE, 49 V. THE EXILE--_continued_, 70 VI. THE EXILE--_continued_, 86 VII. THE EXILE--_continued_, 110 VIII. THE EXILE--_continued_, 130 IX. THE KING, 144 X. THE KING--_continued_, 157 XI. THE KING--_continued_, 174 XII. THE KING--_continued_, 185 XIII. THE TEARS OF THE PENITENT, 205 XIV. CHASTISEMENTS, 232 XV. THE SONGS OF THE FUGITIVE, 245 INDEX, 262 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 263 BIBLE CLASS EXPOSITIONS, 264 THE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF EXPOSITION, 265

I. --INTRODUCTION. 

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the life of David is itsromantic variety of circumstances. What a many-coloured career that waswhich began amidst the pastoral solitudes of Bethlehem, and ended in thechamber where the dying ears heard the blare of the trumpets thatannounced the accession of Bathsheba's son! He passes through the mostsharply contrasted conditions, and from each gathers some fresh fitnessfor his great work of giving voice and form to all the phases of devoutfeeling. The early shepherd life deeply influenced his character, andhas left its traces on many a line of his psalms. 

 "Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills; The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills. "

And then, in strange contrast with the meditative quiet and lowly dutiesof these first years, came the crowded vicissitudes of the tempestuouscourse through which he reached his throne--court minstrel, companionand friend of a king, idol of the people, champion of the armies ofGod--and in his sudden elevation keeping the gracious sweetness of hislowlier, and perhaps happier days. The scene changes with startlingsuddenness to the desert. He is "hunted like a partridge upon themountains, " a fugitive and half a freebooter, taking service at foreigncourts, and lurking on the frontiers with a band of outlaws recruitedfrom the "dangerous classes" of Israel. Like Dante and many more, he hasto learn the weariness of the exile's lot--how hard his fare, howhomeless his heart, how cold the courtesies of aliens, how unslumberingthe suspicions which watch the refugee who fights on the side of his"natural enemies. " One more swift transition and he is on the throne, for long years victorious, prosperous, and beloved. 

 "Nor did he change; but kept in lofty place The wisdom which adversity had bred, "

till suddenly he is plunged into the mire, and falsifies all his past, and ruins for ever, by the sin of his mature age, his peace of heartand the prosperity of his kingdom. Thenceforward trouble is never faraway; and his later years are shaded with the saddening consciousness ofhis great fault, as well as by hatred and rebellion and murder in hisfamily, and discontent and alienation in his kingdom. 

None of the great men of Scripture pass through a course of so manychanges; none of them touched human life at so many points; none of themwere so tempered and polished by swift alternation of heat and cold, bysuch heavy blows and the friction of such rapid revolutions. Like hisgreat Son and Lord, though in a lower sense, he, too, must be "in allpoints tempted like as we are, " that his words may be fitted for thesolace and strength of the whole world. Poets "learn in suffering whatthey teach in song. " These quick transitions of fortune, and this wideexperience, are the many-coloured threads from which the rich web of hispsalms is woven. 

And while the life is singularly varied, the character is alsosingularly full and versatile. In this respect, too, he is most unlikethe other leading figures of Old Testament history. Contrast him, forexample, with the stern majesty of Moses, austere and simple as thetables of stone; or with the unvarying tone in the gaunt strength ofElijah. These and the other mighty men in Israel are like the ruderinstruments of music--the trumpet of Sinai, with its one prolonged note. David is like his own harp of many chords, through which the breath ofGod murmured, drawing forth wailing and rejoicing, the clear ring oftriumphant trust, the low plaint of penitence, the blended harmonies ofall devout emotions. 

The man had his faults--grave enough. Let it be remembered that no onehas judged them more rigorously than himself. The critics who havedelighted to point at them have been anticipated by the penitent; andtheir indictment has been little more than the quotation of his ownconfession. His tremulously susceptible nature, especially assailable bythe delights of sense, led him astray. There are traces in his life ofoccasional craft and untruthfulness which even the exigencies of exileand war do not wholly palliate. Flashes of fierce vengeance at timesbreak from the clear sky of his generous nature. His strong affectionbecame, in at least one case, weak and foolish fondness for an unworthyson. 

But when all this is admitted, there remains a wonderfully rich, lovablecharacter. He is the very ideal of a minstrel hero, such as the legendsof the East especially love to paint. The shepherd's staff or sling, thesword, the sceptre, and the lyre are equally familiar to his hands. Thatunion of the soldier and the poet gives the life a peculiar charm, andis very strikingly brought out in that chapter of the book of Samuel (2Sam. Xxiii. ) which begins, "These be the last words of David, " and aftergiving the swan-song of him whom it calls "the sweet psalmist ofIsrael, " passes immediately to the other side of the dual character, with, "These be the names of the mighty men whom David had. "

Thus, on the one side, we see the true poetic temperament, with all itscapacities for keenest delight and sharpest agony, with its tremulousmobility, its openness to every impression, its gaze of child-likewonder, and eager welcome to whatsoever things are lovely, itssimplicity and self-forgetfulness, its yearnings "after worlds halfrealized, " its hunger for love, its pity, and its tears. He was made tobe the inspired poet of the religious affections. 

And, on the other side, we see the greatest qualities of a militaryleader of the antique type, in which personal daring and a strong armcount for more than strategic skill. He dashes at Goliath with anenthusiasm of youthful courage and faith. While still in the earliestbloom of his manhood, at the head of his wild band of outlaws, he showshimself sagacious, full of resource, prudent in counsel, and swift aslightning in act; frank and generous, bold and gentle, cheery in defeat, calm in peril, patient in privations and ready to share them with hismen, modest and self-restrained in victory, chivalrous to his foes, everwatchful, ever hopeful--a born leader and king of men. 

The basis of all was a profound, joyous trust in his Shepherd God, anardour of personal love to Him, such as had never before been expressed, if it had ever found place, in Israel. That trust "opened his mouth toshow forth" God's praise, and strengthened his "fingers to fight. " Hehas told us himself what was his habitual temper, and how it wassustained: "I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at myright hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and myglory rejoiceth. " (Psa. Xvi. 8, 9. )

Thus endowed, he moved among men with that irresistible fascinationwhich only the greatest exercise. From the day when he stole like asunbeam into the darkened chamber where Saul wrestled with the evilspirit, he bows all hearts that come under his spell. The women ofIsrael chant his name with song and timbrel, the daughter of Saulconfesses her love unasked, the noble soul of Jonathan cleaves to him, the rude outlaws in his little army peril their lives to gratify hislonging for a draught from the well where he had watered his father'sflocks; the priests let him take the consecrated bread, and trust himwith Goliath's sword, from behind the altar; his lofty courtesy wins theheart of Abigail; the very king of the Philistines tells him that he is"good in his sight as an angel of God;" the unhappy Saul's last word tohim is a blessing; six hundred men of Gath forsake home and country tofollow his fortunes when he returns from exile; and even in the darkclose of his reign, though sin and self-indulgence, and neglect of hiskingly duties, had weakened his subjects' loyalty, his flight beforeAbsalom is brightened by instances of passionate devotion which nocommon character could have evoked; and even then his people are readyto die for him, and in their affectionate pride call him "the light ofIsrael. " It was a prophetic instinct which made Jesse call his youngestboy by a name apparently before unused--David, "Beloved. "

The Spirit of God, acting through these great natural gifts, and usingthis diversified experience of life, originated in him a new form ofinspiration. The Law was the revelation of the mind, and, in somemeasure, of the heart, of God to man. The Psalm is the echo of the law, the return current set in motion by the outflow of the Divine will, theresponse of the heart of man to the manifested God. There had, indeed, been traces of hymns before David. There were the burst of triumph whichthe daughters of Israel sang, with timbrel and dance, over Pharaoh andhis host; the prayer of Moses the man of God (Psa. Xc. ), so archaic inits tone, bearing in every line the impress of the weary wilderness andthe law of death; the song of the dying lawgiver (Deut. Xxxii. ); thepassionate pćan of Deborah; and some few briefer fragments. But, practically, the Psalm began with David; and though many hands struckthe harp after him, even down at least to the return from exile, heremains emphatically "the sweet psalmist of Israel. "

The psalms which are attributed to him have, on the whole, a markedsimilarity of manner. Their characteristics have been well summed up as"creative originality, predominantly elegiac tone, graceful form andmovement, antique but lucid style;"[A] to which may be added theintensity of their devotion, the passion of Divine love that glows inthem all. They correspond, too, with the circumstances of his life asgiven in the historical books. The early shepherd days, the manifoldsorrows, the hunted wanderings, the royal authority, the wars, thetriumphs, the sin, the remorse, which are woven together so strikinglyin the latter, all reappear in the psalms. The illusions, indeed, arefor the most part general rather than special, as is natural. His wordsare thereby the better fitted for ready application to the trials ofother lives. But it has been perhaps too hastily assumed that theallusions are so general as to make it impossible to connect them withany precise events, or to make the psalms and the history mutuallyillustrative. Much, no doubt, must be conjectured rather than affirmed, and much must be left undetermined; but when all deductions on thatscore have been made, it still appears possible to carry the processsufficiently far to gain fresh insight into the force and definitenessof many of David's words, and to use them with tolerable confidence asthrowing light upon the narrative of his career. The attempt is made insome degree in this volume. 

[A] Delitzsch, Kommentar, u. D. Psalter II. 376. 

It will be necessary to prefix a few further remarks on the Davidicpsalms in general. Can we tell which are David's? The Psalter, as isgenerally known, is divided into five books or parts, probably from someidea that it corresponded with the Pentateuch. These five books aremarked by a doxology at the close of each, except the last. The firstportion consists of Psa. I. -xli. ; the second of Psa. Xlii. -lxxii; thethird of Psa. Lxxiii. -lxxxix; the fourth of Psa. Xc. -cvi. ; and the fifthof Psa. Cvii. -cl. The psalms attributed to David are unequallydistributed through these five books. There are seventy-three in all, and they run thus:--In the first book there are thirty-seven; so thatif we regard psalms i. And ii. As a kind of double introduction, afrontispiece and vignette title-page to the whole collection, the firstbook proper only two which are not regarded as David's. The second bookhas a much smaller proportion, only eighteen out of thirty-one. Thethird book has but one, the fourth two; while the fifth has fifteen, eight of which (cxxxviii. -cxlv. ) occur almost at the close. Theintention is obvious--to throw the Davidic psalms as much as possibletogether in the first two books. And the inference is not unnatural thatthese may have formed an earlier collection, to which were afterwardsadded the remaining three, with a considerable body of alleged psalms ofDavid, which had subsequently come to light, placed side by side at theend, so as to round off the whole. 

Be that as it may, one thing is clear from the arrangement of thePsalter, namely, that the superscriptions which give the authors' namesare at least as old as the collection itself; for they have guided theorder of the collection in the grouping not only of Davidic psalms, butalso of those attributed to the sons of Korah (xlii. -xlix. ) and to Asaph(lxxiii. -lxxxiii. )

The question of the reliableness of these superscriptions is hotlydebated. The balance of modern opinion is decidedly against theirgenuineness. As in greater matters, so here "the higher criticism" comesto the consideration of their claims with a prejudice against them, andon very arbitrary grounds determines for itself, quite irrespective ofthese ancient voices, the date and authorship of the psalms. The extremeform of this tendency is to be found in the masterly work of Ewald, whohas devoted all his vast power of criticism (and eked it out with allhis equally great power of confident assertion) to the book, and hascome to the conclusion that we have but eleven of David's psalms, --whichis surely a result that may lead to questionings as to the method whichhas attained it. 

These editorial notes are proved to be of extreme antiquity by suchconsiderations as these: The Septuagint translators found them, and didnot understand them; the synagogue preserves no traditions to explainthem; the Book of Chronicles throws no light upon them; they are veryrare in the two last books of the Psalter (Delitzsch, ii. 393). In somecases they are obviously erroneous, but in the greater number there isnothing inconsistent with their correctness in the psalms to which theyare appended; while very frequently they throw a flood of light uponthese, and all but prove their trustworthiness by their appropriateness. They are not authoritative, but they merit respectful consideration, and, as Dr. Perowne puts it in his valuable work on the Psalms, stand ona par with the subscriptions to the Epistles in the New Testament. Regarding them thus, and yet examining the psalms to which they areprefixed, there seem to be about forty-five which we may attribute withsome confidence to David, and with these we shall be concerned in thisbook. 

II. --EARLY DAYS

The life of David is naturally divided into epochs, of which we mayavail ourselves for the more ready arrangement of our material. Theseare--his early years up to his escape from the court of Saul, his exile, the prosperous beginning of his reign, his sin and penitence, his flightbefore Absalom's rebellion, and the darkened end. 

We have but faint incidental traces of his life up to his anointing bySamuel, with which the narrative in the historical books opens. Butperhaps the fact that the story begins with that consecration to office, is of more value than the missing biography of his childhood could havebeen. It teaches us the point of view from which Scripture regards itsgreatest names--as nothing, except in so far as they are God'sinstruments. Hence its carelessness, notwithstanding that so much of itis history, of all that merely illustrates the personal character ofits heroes. Hence, too, the clearness with which, notwithstanding thatindifference, the living men are set before us--the image cut with halfa dozen strokes of the chisel. 

We do not know the age of David when Samuel appeared in the littlevillage with the horn of sacred oil in his hand. The only approximationto it is furnished by the fact, that he was thirty at the beginning ofhis reign. (2 Sam. V. 4. ) If we take into account that his exile musthave lasted for a very considerable period (one portion of it, hissecond flight to the Philistines, was sixteen months, 1 Sam. Xxvii. 7), --that the previous residence at the court of Saul must have beenlong enough to give time for his gradual rise to popularity, andthereafter for the gradual development of the king's insanehatred, --that further back still there was an indefinite period, betweenthe fight with Goliath, and the first visit as a minstrel-physician tothe palace, which was spent at Bethlehem, and that that visit itselfcannot have been very brief, since in its course he became very dear andfamiliar to Saul, --it will not seem that all these events could becrowded into less than some twelve or fifteen years, or that he couldhave been more than a lad of some sixteen years of age when Samuel'shand smoothed the sacred oil on his clustering curls. 

How life had gone with him till then, we can easily gather from thenarrative of Scripture. His father's household seems to have been one inwhich modest frugality ruled. There is no trace of Jesse havingservants; his youngest child does menial work; the present which hesends to his king when David goes to court was simple, and such as a manin humble life would give--an ass load of bread, one skin of wine, andone kid--his flocks were small--"a few sheep. " It would appear as ifprosperity had not smiled on the family since the days of Jesse'sgrandfather, Boaz, that "mighty man of wealth. " David's place in thehousehold does not seem to have been a happy one. His father scarcelyreckoned him amongst his sons, and answers Samuel's question, if theseven burly husbandmen whom he has seen are all his children, with atrace of contempt as he remembers that there is another, "and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. " Of his mother we hear but once, and thatincidentally, for a moment, long after. His brothers had no love forhim, and do not appear to have shared either his heart or his fortunes. The boy evidently had the usual fate of souls like his, to grow up inuncongenial circumstances, little understood and less sympathised withby the common-place people round them, and thrown back therefore all themore decisively upon themselves. The process sours and spoils some, butit is the making of more--and where, as in this case, the nature isthrown back upon God, and not on its own morbid operation, strengthcomes from repression, and sweetness from endurance. He may havereceived some instruction in one of Samuel's schools for the prophets, but we are left in entire ignorance of what outward helps to unfolditself were given to his budding life. 

Whatever others he had, no doubt those which are emphasized in the Biblestory were the chief, namely, his occupation and the many gifts which itbrought to him. The limbs, "like hinds' feet, " the sinewy arms which"broke a bow of steel, " the precision with which he used the sling, theagility which "leaped over a rampart, " the health that glowed in his"ruddy" face, were the least of his obligations to the breezy uplands, where he kept his father's sheep. His early life taught him courage, when he "smote the lion" and laid hold by his ugly muzzle of the bearthat "rose against him, " rearing itself upright for the fatal hug. Solitude and familiarity with nature helped to nurture the poetical sideof his character, and to strengthen that meditative habit which blendsso strangely with his impetuous activity, and which for the most partkept tumults and toils from invading his central soul. They threw himback on God who peopled the solitude and spoke in all nature. Besidesthis, he acquired in the sheepcote lessons which he practised on thethrone, that rule means service, and that the shepherd of men holds hisoffice in order that he may protect and guide. And in the lowlyassociations of his humble home, he learned the life of the people, their simple joys, their unconspicuous toils, their unnoticed sorrows--apriceless piece of knowledge both for the poet and for the king. 

A breach in all the tranquil habits of this modest life was made bySamuel's astonishing errand. The story is told with wonderfulpicturesqueness and dramatic force. The minute account of the successiverejections of his brothers, Samuel's question and Jesse's answer, andthen the pause of idle waiting till the messenger goes and returns, heighten the expectation with which we look for his appearance. And thenwhat a sweet young face is lovingly painted for us! "He was ruddy, andwithal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to" (1 Sam. Xvi. 12)--of fair complexion, with golden hair, which is rare among theseswarthy, black-locked easterns, with lovely eyes (for that is themeaning of the words which the English Bible renders "of a beautifulcountenance"), large and liquid as become a poet. So he stood before theold prophet, and with swelling heart and reverent awe received the holychrism. In silence, as it would seem, Samuel anointed him. Whether thesecret of his high destiny was imparted to him then, or left to bedisclosed in future years, is not told. But at all events, whether withfull understanding of what was before him or no, he must have beenconscious of a call that would carry him far away from the pastures andolive yards of the little hamlet and of a new Spirit stirring in himfrom that day forward. 

This sudden change in all the outlook of his life must have given newmaterials for thought when he went back to his humble task. Responsibility, or the prospect of it, makes lads into men very quickly. Graver meditations, humbler consciousness of weakness, a firmer trust inGod who had laid the burden upon him, would do in days the work ofyears. And the necessity for bidding back the visions of the future inorder to do faithfully the obscure duties of the present, would addself-control and patience, not usually the graces of youth. How swiftlyhe matured is singularly shown in the next recorded incident--hissummons to the court of Saul, by the character of him drawn by thecourtier who recommends him to the king. He speaks of David in wordsmore suitable to a man of established renown than to a stripling. He isminstrel and warrior, "cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, "and "skilled in speech (already eloquent), and fair in form, and theLord is with him. " (1 Sam. Xvi. 18. ) So quickly had the newcircumstances and the energy of the Spirit of God, like tropicalsunshine, ripened his soul. 

That first visit to the court was but an episode in his life, howeverhelpful to his growth it may have been. It would give him the knowledgeof new scenes, widen his experience, and prepare him for the future. Butit cannot have been of very long duration. Possibly his harp lost itspower over Saul's gloomy spirit, when he had become familiar with itsnotes. For whatever reason, he returned to his father's house, andgladly exchanged the favour at court, which might have seemed to amerely ambitious man the first step towards fulfilling the prophecy ofSamuel's anointing, for the freedom of the pastoral solitudes aboutBethlehem. There he remained, living to outward seeming as in the quietdays before these two great earthquakes in his life, but with deeperthoughts and new power, with broader experience, and a wider horizon, until the hour when he was finally wrenched from his seclusion, andflung into the whirlpool of his public career. 

There are none of David's psalms which can be with any certaintyreferred to this first period of his life; but it has left deep traceson many of them. The allusions to natural scenery and the frequentreferences to varying aspects of the shepherd's life are specimens ofthese. One characteristic of the poetic temperament is the faithfulremembrance and cherishing of early days. How fondly he recalled them isshown in that most pathetic incident of his longing, as a weary exile, for one draught of water from the well at Bethlehem--where in the dearold times he had so often led his flocks. 

But though we cannot say confidently that we have any psalms prior tohis first exile, there are several which, whatever their date may be, are echoes of his thoughts in these first days. This is especially thecase in regard to the group which describe varying aspects ofnature--viz. , Psalms xix. , viii. , xxix. They are unlike his later psalmsin the almost entire absence of personal references, or of any trace ofpressing cares, or of signs of a varied experience of human life. Intheir self-forgetful contemplation of nature, in their silence aboutsorrow, in their tranquil beauty, they resemble the youthful works ofmany a poet whose later verse throbs with quivering consciousness oflife's agonies, or wrestles strongly with life's problems. They may notunnaturally be regarded as the outpouring of a young heart at leisurefrom itself, and from pain, far from men and very near God. The freshmountain air of Bethlehem blows through them, and the dew of life'squiet morning is on them. The early experience supplied their materials, whatever was the date of their composition; and in them we can see whathis inward life was in these budding years. The gaze of child-likewonder and awe upon the blazing brightness of the noonday, and on themighty heaven with all its stars, the deep voice with which all creationspoke of God, the great thoughts of the dignity of man (thoughts everwelcome to lofty youthful souls), the gleaming of an inward lightbrighter than all suns, the consciousness of mysteries of weakness whichmay become miracles of sin in one's own heart, the assurance of closerelation to God as His anointed and His servant, the cry for help andguidance--all this is what we should expect David to have thought andfelt as he wandered among the hills, alone with God; and this is whatthese psalms give us. 

Common to them all is the peculiar manner of looking upon nature, souniform in David's psalms, so unlike more modern descriptive poetry. Hecan smite out a picture in a phrase, but he does not care to paintlandscapes. He feels the deep analogies between man and hisdwelling-place, but he does not care to lend to nature a shadowy life, the reflection of our own. Creation is to him neither a subject forpoetical description, nor for scientific examination. It is nothing butthe garment of God, the apocalypse of the heavenly. And common to themall is also the swift transition from the outward facts which revealGod, to the spiritual world, where His presence is, if it were possible, yet more needful, and His operations yet mightier. And common to themall is a certain rush of full thought and joyous power, which is again acharacteristic of youthful work, and is unlike the elegiac tendernessand pathos of David's later hymns. 

The nineteenth Psalm paints for us the glory of the heavens by day, asthe eighth by night. The former gathers up the impressions of many afresh morning when the solitary shepherd-boy watched the sun rising overthe mountains of Moab, which close the eastern view from the hills aboveBethlehem. The sacred silence of dawn, the deeper hush of night, havevoice for his ear. "No speech! and no words! unheard is their voice. "But yet, "in all the earth goeth forth their line, [B] and in the end ofthe habitable world their sayings. " The heavens and the firmament, thelinked chorus of day and night, are heralds of God's glory, with silentspeech, heard in all lands, an unremitting voice. And as he looks, thereleaps into the eastern heavens, not with the long twilight of northernlands, the sudden splendour, the sun radiant as a bridegroom from thebridal chamber, like some athlete impatient for the course. How the joyof morning and its new vigour throb in the words! And then he watchesthe strong runner climbing the heavens till the fierce heat beats downinto the deep cleft of the Jordan, and all the treeless southern hills, as they slope towards the desert, lie bare and blazing beneath thebeams. 

[B] Their boundary, _i. E. _, their territory, or the region through whichtheir witness extends. Others render "their chord, " or sound (LXX. Ewald, etc. )

The sudden transition from the revelation of God in nature to His voicein the law, has seemed to many critics unaccountable, except on thesupposition that this psalm is made up of two fragments, put together bya later compiler; and some of them have even gone so far as to maintainthat "the feeling which saw God revealed in the law did not arise tillthe time of Josiah. "[C] But such a hypothesis is not required to explaineither the sudden transition or the difference in style and rhythmbetween the two parts of the psalm, which unquestionably exists. Theturn from the outer world to the better light of God's word, is mostnatural; the abruptness of it is artistic and impressive; the differenceof style and measure gives emphasis to the contrast. There is also anobvious connection between the two parts, inasmuch as the law isdescribed by epithets, which in part hint at its being a brighter sun, enlightening the eyes. 

[C] "Psalms chronologically arranged"--following Ewald. 

The Word which declares the will of the Lord is better than the heavenswhich tell His glory. The abundance of synonyms for that word show howfamiliar to his thoughts it was. To him it is "the law, " "thetestimonies" by which God witnesses of Himself and of man: "thestatutes, " the fixed settled ordinances; that which teaches "the fear ofGod, " the "judgments" or utterances of His mind on human conduct. Theyare "perfect, firm, right, clean, pure, "--like that spotlesssun--"eternal, true. " "They quicken, make wise, enlighten, " even as thelight of the lower world. His heart prizes them "more than gold, " ofwhich in his simple life he knew so little; more than "the honey, " whichhe had often seen dropping from "the comb" in the pastures of thewilderness. 

And then the twofold contemplation rises into the loftier region ofprayer. He feels that there are dark depths in his soul, gloomier pitsthan any into which the noontide sun shines. He speaks as one who isconscious of dormant evils, which life has not yet evolved, and hisprayer is more directed towards the future than the past, and is thusvery unlike the tone of the later psalms, that wail out penitence andplead for pardon. "Errors, " or weaknesses, --"faults" unknown tohimself, --"high-handed sins, "[D]--such is the climax of the evils fromwhich he prays for deliverance. He knows himself "Thy servant" (2 Sam. Vii. 5, 8; Psa. Lxxviii. 70)--an epithet which may refer to hisconsecration to God's work by Samuel's anointing. He needs not only aGod who sets His glory in the heavens, nor even one whose will is madeknown, but one who will touch his spirit, --not merely a Maker, but apardoning God; and his faith reaches its highest point as his songcloses with the sacred name of the covenant Jehovah, repeated for theseventh time, and invoked in one final aspiration of a trustful heart, as "my Rock, and my Redeemer. "

[D] The form of the word would make "reckless men" a more naturaltranslation; but probably the context requires a third, more aggravatedsort of sin. 

The eighth psalm is a companion picture, a night-piece, which, like theformer, speaks of many an hour of lonely brooding below the heavens, whether its composition fall within this early period or no. Theprophetic and doctrinal value of the psalms is not our main subject inthe present volume, so that we have to touch but very lightly on thisgrand hymn. What does it show us of the singer? We see him, like othershepherds on the same hills, long after "keeping watch over his flocksby night, " and overwhelmed by all the magnificence of an eastern sky, with its lambent lights. So bright, so changeless, so far, --how greatthey are, how small the boy that gazes up so wistfully. Are they gods, as all but his own nation believed? No, --"the work of Thy fingers, ""which Thou hast ordained. " The consciousness of God as their Makerdelivers from the temptation of confounding bigness with greatness, andwakes into new energy that awful sense of personality which towers aboveall the stars. He is a babe and suckling--is that a trace of the earlycomposition of the psalm?--still he knows that out of his lips, alreadybeginning to break into song, and out of the lips of his fellows, Godperfects praise. There speaks the sweet singer of Israel, prizing as thegreatest of God's gifts his growing faculty, and counting his God-givenwords as nobler than the voice of "night unto night. " God's fingers madethese, but God's own breath is in him. God ordained them, but God visitshim. The description of man's dignity and dominion indicates howfamiliar David was with the story in Genesis. It may perhaps also, besides all the large prophetic truths which it contains, have somespecial reference to his own earlier experience. It is at least worthnoting that he speaks of the dignity of man as kingly, like that whichwas dawning on himself, and that the picture has no shadows either ofsorrow or of sin, --a fact which may point to his younger days, whenlofty thoughts of the greatness of the soul are ever natural and when inhis case the afflictions and crimes that make their presence felt inall his later works had not fallen upon him. Perhaps, too, it may not bealtogether fanciful to suppose that we may see the shepherd-boysurrounded by his flocks, and the wild creatures that prowled about thefold, and the birds asleep in their coverts beneath the moonlight, inhis enumeration of the subjects of his first and happiest kingdom, wherehe ruled far away from men and sorrow, seeing God everywhere, andlearning to perfect praise from his youthful lips. 

III. --EARLY DAYS--_CONTINUED_. 

In addition to the psalms already considered, which are devoted to thedevout contemplation of nature, and stand in close connection withDavid's early days, there still remains one universally admitted to behis. The twenty-ninth psalm, like both the preceding, has to do with theglory of God as revealed in the heavens, and with earth only as therecipient of skyey influences; but while these breathed the profoundesttranquillity, as they watched the silent splendour of the sun, and thepeace of moonlight shed upon a sleeping world, this is all tumult andnoise. It is a highly elaborate and vivid picture of a thunderstorm, such as must often have broken over the shepherd-psalmist as he crouchedunder some shelf of limestone, and gathered his trembling charge abouthim. Its very structure reproduces in sound an echo of the rolling pealsreverberating among the hills. 

There is first an invocation, in the highest strain of devout poetry, calling upon the "sons of God, " the angels who dwell above the lowersky, and who see from above the slow gathering of the storm-clouds, toascribe to Jehovah the glory of His name--His character as set forth inthe tempest. They are to cast themselves before Him "in holy attire, " aspriests of the heavenly sanctuary. Their silent and expectant worship islike the brooding stillness before the storm. We feel the waiting hushin heaven and earth. 

Then the tempest breaks. It crashes and leaps through the shortsentences, each like the clap of the near thunder. 

 _a. _ The voice of Jehovah (is) on the waters. The God of glory thunders. _Jehovah (is) on many waters. _ The voice of Jehovah in strength! The voice of Jehovah in majesty!

 _b. _ The voice of Jehovah rending the cedars! _And Jehovah rends the cedars of Lebanon_, And makes them leap like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young buffalo The voice of Jehovah hewing flashes of fire!

 _c. _ The voice of Jehovah shakes the desert, _Jehovah shakes the Kadesh desert_. 

 The voice of Jehovah makes the hinds writhe And scathes the woods--and in His temple-- --All in it (are) saying, "Glory. "

Seven times the roar shakes the world. The voice of the seven thundersis the voice of Jehovah. In the short clauses, with their uniformstructure, the pause between, and the recurrence of the same initialwords, we hear the successive peals, the silence that parts them, andthe monotony of their unvaried sound. Thrice we have the reverberationrolling through the sky or among the hills, imitated by clauses whichrepeat previous ones, as indicated by the italics, and one forked flameblazes out in the brief, lightning-like sentence, "The voice of Jehovah(is) hewing flashes of fire, " which wonderfully gives the impression oftheir streaming fiercely forth, as if cloven from some solid block offire, their swift course, and their instantaneous extinction. 

The range and effects of the storm, too, are vividly painted. It isfirst "on the waters, " which may possibly mean the Mediterranean, butmore probably, "the waters that are above the firmament, " and so depictsthe clouds as gathering high in air. Then it comes down with a crash onthe northern mountains, splintering the gnarled cedars, and makingLebanon rock with all its woods--leaping across the deep valley ofCoelo-Syria, and smiting Hermon (for which Sirion is a Sidonian name), the crest of the Anti Lebanon, till it reels. Onward it sweeps--orrather, perhaps, it is all around the psalmist; and even while he hearsthe voice rolling from the furthest north, the extreme south echoes theroar. The awful voice shakes[E] the wilderness, as it booms across itslevel surface. As far south as Kadesh (probably Petra) the tremorspreads, and away in the forests of Edom the wild creatures in theirterror slip their calves, and the oaks are scathed and stripped of theirleafy honours. And all the while, like a mighty diapason sounding onthrough the tumult, the voice of the sons of God in the heavenly templeis heard proclaiming "Glory!"

[E] Delitzsch would render "whirls in circles"--a picturesque allusionto the sand pillars which accompany storms in the desert. 

The psalm closes with lofty words of confidence, built on the story ofthe past, as well as on the contemplation of the present. "Jehovah satthroned for (_i. E. _, to send on earth) the flood" which once drownedthe world of old. "Jehovah will sit throned, a King for ever. " Thatancient judgment spoke of His power over all the forces of nature, intheir most terrible form. So now and for ever, all are His servants, andeffect His purposes. Then, as the tempest rolls away, spent andtransient, the sunshine streams out anew from the softened blue over afreshened world, and every raindrop on the leaves twinkles into diamondlight, and the end of the psalm is like the after brightness; and thetranquil low voice of its last words is like the songs of the birdsagain as the departing storm growls low and faint on the horizon. "TheLord will bless His people with peace. "

Thus, then, nature spoke to this young heart. The silence was vocal; thedarkness, bright; the tumult, order--and all was the revelation of apresent God. It is told of one of our great writers that, when a child, he was found lying on a hill-side during a thunderstorm, and at eachflash clapping his hands and shouting, unconscious of danger, andstirred to ecstasy. David, too, felt all the poetic elevation, andnatural awe, in the presence of the crashing storm; but he feltsomething more. To him the thunder was not a power to tremble before, not a mere subject for poetic contemplation. Still less was itsomething, the like of which could be rubbed out of glass and silk, andwhich he had done with when he knew its laws. No increase of knowledgetouching the laws of physical phenomena in the least affects the pointof view which these Nature-psalms take. David said, "God makes and movesall things. " We may be able to complete the sentence by a clause whichtells something of the methods of His operation. But that is only aparenthesis after all, and the old truth remains widened, not overthrownby it. The psalmist knew that all being and action had their origin inGod. He saw the last links of the chain, and knew that it was rivettedto the throne of God, though the intermediate links were unseen; andeven the fact that there were any was not present to his mind. We knowsomething of these; but the first and the last of the series to him, arethe first and the last to us also. To us as to him, the silent splendourof noonday speaks of God, and the nightly heavens pour the soft radianceof His "excellent name over all the earth. " The tempest is His voice, and the wildest commotions in nature and among men break in obedientwaves around His pillared throne. 

 "Well roars the storm to those who hear A deeper voice across the storm!"

There still remains one other psalm which may be used as illustratingthe early life of David. The Twenty-third psalm is coloured throughoutby the remembrances of his youthful occupation, even if its actualcomposition is of a later date. Some critics, indeed, think that themention in the last verse of "the house of the Lord" compels thesupposition of an origin subsequent to the building of the Temple; butthe phrase in question need not have anything to do with tabernacle ortemple, and is most naturally accounted for by the preceding image ofGod as the Host who feasts His servants at His table. There are no othernotes of time in the psalm, unless, with some commentators, we see anallusion in that image of the furnished table to the seasonablehospitality of the Gileadite chieftains during David's flight beforeAbsalom (2 Sam. Xvii. 27-29)--a reference which appears prosaic andflat. The absence of traces of distress and sorrow--so constantlypresent in the later songs--may be urged with some force in favour ofthe early date; and if we follow one of the most valuable commentators(Hupfeld) in translating all the verbs as futures, and so make the wholea hymn of hope, we seem almost obliged to suppose that we have here theutterance of a youthful spirit, which ventured to look forward, becauseit first looked upward. In any case, the psalm is a transcript ofthoughts that had been born and cherished in many a meditative houramong the lonely hills of Bethlehem. It is the echo of the shepherdlife. We see in it the incessant care, the love to his helpless charge, which was expressed in and deepened by all his toil for them. He had tothink for their simplicity, to fight for their defencelessness, to findtheir pasture, to guard them while they lay amid the fresh grass;sometimes to use his staff in order to force their heedlessness withloving violence past tempting perils; sometimes to guide them throughgloomy gorges, where they huddled close at his heels; sometimes to smitethe lion and the bear that prowled about the fold--but all was for theirgood and meant their comfort. And thus he has learned, in preparationfor his own kingdom, the inmost meaning of pre-eminence among men--and, more precious lesson still, thus he has learned the very heart of God. Long before, Jacob had spoken of Him as the "Shepherd of Israel;" but itwas reserved for David to bring that sweet and wonderful name intocloser relations with the single soul; and, with that peculiarenthusiasm of personal reliance, and recognition of God's love to theindividual which stamps all his psalms, to say "The Lord is myShepherd. " These dumb companions of his, in their docility to hisguidance, and absolute trust in his care, had taught him the secret ofpeace in helplessness, of patience in ignorance. The green strips ofmeadow-land where the clear waters brought life, the wearied flockssheltered from the mid-day heat, the quiet course of the little stream, the refreshment of the sheep by rest and pasture, the smooth paths whichhe tried to choose for them, the rocky defiles through which they had topass, the rod in his hand that guided, and chastised, and defended, andwas never lifted in anger, --all these, the familiar sights of his youth, pass before us as we read; and to us too, in our widely different socialstate, have become the undying emblems of the highest care and thewisest love. The psalm witnesses how close to the youthful heart theconsciousness of God must have been, which could thus transform andglorify the little things which were so familiar. We can feel, in a kindof lazy play of sentiment, the fitness of the shepherd's life to suggestthoughts of God--because it is not our life. But it needs both ameditative habit and a devout heart to feel that the trivialities of ourown daily tasks speak to us of Him. The heavens touch the earth on thehorizon of our vision, but it always seems furthest to the sky from thespot where we stand. To the psalmist, however, --as in higher ways to hisSon and Lord, --all things around him were full of God; and as themajesties of nature, so the trivialities of man's works--shepherds andfishermen--were solemn with deep meanings and shadows of the heavenly. With such lofty thoughts he fed his youth. 

The psalm, too, breathes the very spirit of sunny confidence and ofperfect rest in God. We have referred to the absence of traces ofsorrow, and to the predominant tone of hopefulness, as possiblyfavouring the supposition of an early origin. But it matters littlewhether they were young eyes which looked so courageously into theunknown future, or whether we have here the more solemn and weightyhopes of age, which can have few hopes at all, unless they be rooted inGod. The spirit expressed in the psalm is so thoroughly David's, that inhis younger days, before it was worn with responsibilities and sorrows, it must have been especially strong. We may therefore fairly take thetone of this song of the Shepherd God as expressing the characteristicof his godliness in the happy early years. In his solitude he was glad. One happy thought fills the spirit; one simple emotion thrills thechords of his harp. No doubts, or griefs, or remorse throw their shadowsupon him. He is conscious of dependence, but he is above want and fear. He does not ask, he has--he possesses God, and is at rest in Him. He issatisfied with that fruition which blesseth all who hunger for God, andis the highest form of communion with Him. As the present has nolongings, the future has no terrors. All the horizon is clear, all thewinds are still, the ocean at rest, "and birds of peace sit brooding onthe charmed wave. " If there be foes, God holds them back. If there liefar off among the hills any valley of darkness, its black portals castno gloom over him, and will not when he enters. God is his Shepherd, and, by another image, God is his Host. The life which in one aspect, byreason of its continual change, and occupation with outward things, maybe compared to the journeyings of a flock, is in another aspect, byreason of its inward union with the stability of God, like sitting everat the table which His hand has spread as for a royal banquet, where theoil of gladness glistens on every head, and the full cup of Divinepleasure is in every hand. For all the outward and pilgrimage aspect, the psalmist knows that only Goodness and Mercy--these two white-robedmessengers of God--will follow his steps, however long may be the termof the days of his yet young life; for all the inward, he is sure that, in calm, unbroken fellowship, he will dwell in the house of God, andthat when the twin angels who fed and guided him all his young life longhave finished their charge, and the days of his journeyings are ended, there stretches beyond a still closer union with his heavenly Friend, which will be perfected in His true house "for ever. " We look in vainfor another example, even in David's psalms, of such perfect, restfultrust in God. These clear notes are perhaps the purest utterance evergiven of "the peace of God which passeth all understanding. "

Such were the thoughts and hopes of the lad who kept his father's sheepat Bethlehem. He lived a life of lofty thoughts and lowly duties. Heheard the voice of God amidst the silence of the hills, and the earliestnotes of his harp echoed the deep tones. He learned courage as well astenderness from his daily tasks, and patience from the contrast betweenthem and the high vocation which Samuel's mysterious anointing hadopened before him. If we remember how disturbing an influence theconsciousness of it might have wrought in a soul less filled with God, we may perhaps accept as probably correct the superscription whichrefers one sweet, simple psalm to him, and may venture to suppose thatit expresses the contentment, undazzled by visions of coming greatness, that calmed his heart. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyeslofty; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things toohigh for me. Surely I have smoothed and quieted my soul: like a weanlingon his mother's (breast), like a weanling is my soul within me. " (Psa. Cxxxi. ) So lying in God's arms, and content to be folded in His embrace, without seeking anything beyond, he is tranquil in his lowly lot. 

It does not fall within our province to follow the course of thefamiliar narrative through the picturesque events that led him to fameand position at court. The double character of minstrel and warrior, towhich we have already referred, is remarkably brought out in his doubleintroduction to Saul, once as soothing the king's gloomy spirit with theharmonies of his shepherd's harp, once as bringing down the boastinggiant of Gath with his shepherd's sling. On the first occasion hisresidence in the palace seems to have been ended by Saul's temporaryrecovery. He returns to Bethlehem for an indefinite time, and thenleaves it and all its peaceful tasks for ever. The dramatic story of theduel with Goliath needs no second telling. His arrival at the verycrisis of the war, the eager courage with which he leaves his baggage inthe hands of the guard and runs down the valley to the ranks of thearmy, the busy hum of talk among the Israelites, the rankling jealousyof his brother that curdles into bitter jeers, the modest courage withwhich he offers himself as champion, the youthful enthusiasm of bravetrust in "the Lord, that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, andout of the paw of the bear;" the wonderfully vivid picture of the younghero with his shepherd staff in one hand, his sling in the other, andthe rude wallet by his side, which had carried his simple meal, and nowheld the smooth stone from the brook that ran between the armies in thebottom of the little valley--the blustering braggadocio of the bigchampion, the boy's devout confidence in "the name of the Lord ofhosts;" the swift brevity of the narrative of the actual fight, which inits hurrying clauses seems to reproduce the light-footed eagerness ofthe young champion, or the rapid whizz of the stone ere it crashed intothe thick forehead; the prostrate bulk of the dead giant prone upon theearth, and the conqueror, slight and agile, hewing off the huge headwith Goliath's own useless sword;--all these incidents, so full ofcharacter, so antique in manner, so weighty with lessons of theimpotence of strength that is merely material, and the power of a livingenthusiasm of faith in God, may, for our present purposes, be passedwith a mere glance. One observation may, however, be allowed. After thevictory, Saul is represented as not knowing who David was, and assending Abner to find out where he comes from. Abner, too, professesentire ignorance; and when David appears before the king, "with the headof the Philistine in his hand, " he is asked, "Whose son art thou, youngman?" It has been thought that here we have an irreconcilablecontradiction with previous narratives, according to which there wasclose intimacy between him and the king, who "loved him greatly, " andgave him an office of trust about his person. Suppositions of"dislocation of the narrative, " the careless adoption by the compiler oftwo separate legends, and the like, have been freely indulged in. But itmay at least be suggested as a possible explanation of the seemingdiscrepancy, that when Saul had passed out of his moody madness it isnot wonderful that he should have forgotten all which had occurred inhis paroxysm. It is surely a common enough psychological phenomenon thata man restored to sanity has no remembrance of the events during hismental aberration. And as for Abner's profession of ignorance, anincipient jealousy of this stripling hero may naturally have made the"captain of the host" willing to keep the king as ignorant as he couldconcerning a probable formidable rival. There is no need to suppose hewas really ignorant, but only that it suited him to say that he was. 

With this earliest deed of heroism the peaceful private days are closed, and a new epoch of court favour and growing popularity begins. Theimpression which the whole story leaves upon one is well summed up in apsalm which the Septuagint adds to the Psalter. It is not found in theHebrew, and has no pretension to be David's work; but, as a _résumé_ ofthe salient points of his early life, it may fitly end ourconsiderations of this first epoch. 

"This is the autograph psalm of David, and beyond the number (_i. E. _, ofthe psalms in the Psalter), when he fought the single fight withGoliath:--

"(1. ) I was little among my brethren, and the youngest in the house ofmy father: I kept the flock of my father. (2. ) My hands made a pipe, myfingers tuned a psaltery. (3. ) And who shall tell it to my Lord? He isthe Lord, He shall hear me. (4. ) He sent His angel (messenger), andtook me from the flocks of my father, and anointed me with the oil ofHis anointing. (5. ) But my brethren were fair and large, and in them theLord took not pleasure. (6. ) I went out to meet the Philistine, and hecursed me by his idols. (7. ) But I, drawing his sword, beheaded him, andtook away reproach from the children of Israel. "

IV. --THE EXILE. 

David's first years at the court of Saul in Gibeah do not appear to haveproduced any psalms which still survive. 

 "The sweetest songs are those Which tell of saddest thought. "

It was natural, then, that a period full of novelty and of prosperousactivity, very unlike the quiet days at Bethlehem, should ratheraccumulate materials for future use than be fruitful in actualproduction. The old life shut to behind him for ever, like someenchanted door in a hill-side, and an unexplored land lay beckoningbefore. The new was widening his experience, but it had to be mastered, to be assimilated by meditation before it became vocal. 

The bare facts of this section are familiar and soon told. There isfirst a period in which he is trusted by Saul, who sets him in highcommand, with the approbation not only of the people, but even of theofficial classes. But a new dynasty resting on military pre-eminencecannot afford to let a successful soldier stand on the steps of thethrone; and the shrill chant of the women out of all the cities ofIsrael, which even in Saul's hearing answered the praises of his prowesswith a louder acclaim for David's victories, startled the king for thefirst time with a revelation of the national feeling. His unslumberingsuspicion "eyed David from that day. " Rage and terror threw him againinto the gripe of his evil spirit, and in his paroxysm he flings hisheavy spear, the symbol of his royalty, at the lithe harper, with fiercevows of murder. The failure of his attempt to kill David seems to haveaggravated his dread of him as bearing a charm which won all hearts andaverted all dangers. A second stage is marked not only by Saul's growingfear, but by David's new position. He is removed from court, and put ina subordinate command, which only extends his popularity, and brings himinto more immediate contact with the mass of the people. "All Israel andJudah loved David, because he went out and came in before them. " Thenfollows the offer of Saul's elder daughter in marriage, in the hope thatby playing upon his gratitude and his religious feeling, he might beurged to some piece of rash bravery that would end him without scandal. Some new caprice of Saul's, however, leads him to insult David bybreaking his pledge at the last moment, and giving the promised bride toanother. Jonathan's heart was not the only one in Saul's household thatyielded to his spell. The younger Michal had been cherishing his imagein secret, and now tells her love. Her father returns to his originalpurpose, with the strange mixture of tenacity and capriciouschangefulness that marks his character, and again attempts, by demandinga grotesquely savage dowry, to secure David's destruction. But thatscheme, too, fails; and he becomes a member of the royal house. 

This third stage is marked by Saul's deepening panic hatred, which hasnow become a fixed idea. All his attempts have only strengthened David'sposition, and he looks on his irresistible advance with a nameless awe. He calls, with a madman's folly, on Jonathan and on all his servants tokill him; and then, when his son appeals to him, his old better naturecomes over him, and with a great oath he vows that David shall not beslain. For a short time David returns to Gibeah, and resumes his formerrelations with Saul, but a new victory over the Philistines rouses theslumbering jealousy. Again the "evil spirit" is upon him, and the greatjavelin is flung with blind fury, and sticks quivering in the wall. Itis night, and David flies to his house. A stealthy band of assassinsfrom the palace surround the house with orders to prevent all egress, and, by what may be either the strange whim of a madman, or the cynicalshamelessness of a tyrant, to slay him in the open daylight. Michal, who, though in after time she showed a strain of her father's proudgodlessness, and an utter incapacity of understanding the noblest partsof her husband's character, seems to have been a true wife in theseearly days, discovers, perhaps with a woman's quick eye sharpened bylove, the crouching murderers, and with rapid promptitude urgesimmediate flight. Her hands let him down from the window--the housebeing probably on the wall. Her ready wit dresses up one of thosemysterious teraphim (which appear to have had some connection withidolatry or magic, and which are strange pieces of furniture forDavid's house), and lays it in the bed to deceive the messengers, and sogain a little more time before pursuit began. "So David fled andescaped, and came to Samuel to Ramah, " and thus ended his life at court. 

Glancing over this narrative, one or two points come prominently forth. The worth of these events to David must have lain chiefly in theabundant additions made to his experience of life, which ripened hisnature, and developed new powers. The meditative life of the sheepfoldis followed by the crowded court and camp. Strenuous work, familiaritywith men, constant vicissitude, take the place of placid thought, ofcalm seclusion, of tranquil days that knew no changes but thealternation of sun and stars, storm and brightness, green pastures anddusty paths. He learned the real world, with its hate and effort, itshollow fame and its whispering calumnies. Many illusions no doubt faded, but the light that had shone in his solitude still burned before him forhis guide, and a deeper trust in his Shepherd God was rooted in his soulby all the shocks of varying fortune. The passage from the visions ofyouth and the solitary resolves of early and uninterrupted piety to thenaked realities of a wicked world, and the stern self-control of manlygodliness, is ever painful and perilous. Thank God! it may be made cleargain, as it was by this young hero psalmist. 

David's calm indifference to outward circumstances affecting himself, isvery strikingly expressed in his conduct. Partly from his poetictemperament, partly from his sweet natural unselfishness, and chieflyfrom his living trust in God, he accepts whatever happens withequanimity, and makes no effort to alter it. He originates nothing. Prosperity comes unsought, and dangers unfeared. He does not ask forJonathan's love, or the people's favour, or the women's songs, or Saul'sdaughter. If Saul gives him command he takes it, and does his work. IfSaul flings his javelin at him, he simply springs aside and lets itwhizz past. If his high position is taken from him, he is quite contentwith a lower. If a royal alliance is offered, he accepts it; if it iswithdrawn, he is not ruffled; if renewed, he is still willing. If a busyweb of intrigue is woven round him, he takes no notice. Ifreconciliation is proposed, he cheerfully goes back to the palace. Ifhis life is threatened he goes home. He will not stir to escape but forthe urgency of his wife. So well had he already begun to learn theworthlessness of life's trifles. So thoroughly does he practice his ownprecept, "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers;" "rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him. " (Psa. Xxxvii. 1, 7. )

This section gives also a remarkable impression of the irresistiblegrowth of his popularity and influence. The silent energy of the Divinepurpose presses his fortunes onward with a motion slow and inevitable asthat of a glacier. The steadfast flow circles unchecked round, or risesvictorious over all hindrances. Efforts to ruin, to degrade, tokill--one and all fail. Terror and hate, suspicion and jealousy, onlybring him nearer the goal. A clause which comes in thrice in the courseof one chapter, expresses this fated advance. In the first stage of hiscourt life, we read, "David prospered" (1 Sam. Xviii. 5, margin), andagain with increased emphasis it is told as the result of the efforts tocrush him, that, "He prospered in all his ways, and the Lord was withhim" (verse 14), and yet again, in spite of Saul's having "become hisenemy continually, " he "prospered more than all the servants of Saul"(verse 30). He moves onward as stars in their courses move, obeying theequable impulse of the calm and conquering will of God. 

The familiar Scripture antithesis, which naturally finds its clearestutterance in the words of the last inspired writer--namely, the eternalopposition of Light and Darkness, Love and Hate, Life and Death, isbrought into sharpest relief by the juxtaposition and contrast of Davidand Saul. This is the key to the story. The two men are not more unlikein person than in spirit. We think of the one with his ruddy beauty andchangeful eyes, and lithe slight form, and of the other gaunt and black, his giant strength weakened, and his "goodly" face scarred with thelightnings of his passions--and as they look so they are. The one fullof joyous energy, the other devoured by gloom; the one going in and outamong the people and winning universal love, the other sitting moody andself-absorbed behind his palace walls; the one bringing sweet cleartones of trustful praise from his harp, the other shaking his huge spearin his madness; the one ready for action and prosperous in it all, theother paralyzed, shrinking from all work, and leaving the conduct ofthe war to the servant whom he feared; the one conscious of the Divinepresence making him strong and calm, the other writhing in the gripe ofhis evil spirit, and either foaming in fury, or stiffened into torpor;the one steadily growing in power and favour with God and man, the othersinking in deeper mire, and wrapped about with thickening mists as hemoves to his doom. The tragic pathos of these two lives in their fatefulantagonism is the embodiment of that awful alternative of life anddeath, blessing and cursing, which it was the very aim of Judaism tostamp ineffaceably on the conscience. 

David's flight begins a period to which a large number of his psalms arereferred. We may call them "The Songs of the Outlaw. " The titles in thepsalter connect several with specific events during his persecution bySaul, and besides these, there are others which have markedcharacteristics in common, and may therefore be regarded as belonging tothe same time. The bulk of the former class are found in the second bookof the psalter (Ps. Xlii. -lxxii. ), which has been arranged with somecare. There are first eight Korahite psalms, and one of Asaph's; then agroup of fifteen Davidic (li. -lxv. ), followed by two anonymous; thenthree more of David's (lxviii. -lxx. ), followed by one anonymous and thewell-known prayer "for Solomon. " Now it is worth notice that the groupof fifteen psalms ascribed to David is as nearly as possible divided inhalves, eight having inscriptions which give a specific date ofcomposition, and seven having no such detail. There has also been someattempt at arranging the psalms of these two classes alternately, butthat has not been accurately carried out. These facts show that thetitles are at all events as old as the compilation of the second book ofthe psalter, and were regarded as accurate then. Several points aboutthe complete book of psalms as we have it, seem to indicate that thesetwo first books were an older nucleus, which was in existence long priorto the present collection--and if so, the date of the titles must becarried back a very long way indeed, and with a proportionate increaseof authority. 

Of the eight psalms in the second book having titles with specificdates, five (Ps. Lii. , liv. , lvi. , lvii. , lix. ) are assigned to theperiod of the Sauline persecution, and, as it would appear, withaccuracy. There is a general similarity of tone in them all, as well asconsiderable parallelisms of expression, favourite phrases andmetaphors, which are favourable to the hypothesis of a nearlycotemporaneous date. They are all in what, to use a phrase from anotherart, we may call David's earlier manner. For instance, in all thepsalmist is surrounded by enemies. They would "swallow him up" (lvi. 1, 2; lvii. 3). They "oppress" him (liv. 3; lvi. 1). One of their weaponsis calumny, which seems from the frequent references to have much movedthe psalmist. Their tongues are razors (lii. 2), or swords (lvii. 4;lix. 7; lxiv. 3). They seem to him like crouching beasts ready to springupon harmless prey (lvi. 6; lvii. 6; lix. 3); they are "lions" (lvii. 4), dogs (lix. 6, 14). He is conscious of nothing which he has done toprovoke this storm of hatred (lix. 3; lxiv. 4. ) The "strength" of God ishis hope (liv. 1; lix. 9, 17). He is sure that retribution will fallupon the enemies (lii. 5; liv. 5; lvi. 7; lvii. 6; lix. 8-15; lxiv. 7, 8). He vows and knows that psalms of deliverance will yet succeed theseplaintive cries (lii. 9; liv. 7; lvi. 12; lvii. 7-11; lix. 16, 17). 

We also find a considerable number of psalms in the first book of thepsalter which present the same features, and may therefore probably beclassed with these as belonging to the time of his exile. Such forinstance are the seventh and thirty-fourth, which have both inscriptionsreferring them to this period, with others which we shall have toconsider presently. The imagery of the preceding group reappears inthem. His enemies are lions (vii. 2; xvii. 12; xxii. 13; xxxv. 17); dogs(xxii. 16); bulls (xxii. 12). Pitfalls and snares are in his path (vii. 15; xxxi. 4; xxxv. 7). He passionately protests his innocence, and thekindliness of his heart to his wanton foes (vii. 3-5; xvii. 3, 4); whomhe has helped and sorrowed over in their sickness (xxxv. 13, 14)--areference, perhaps, to his solacing Saul in his paroxysms with the musicof his harp. He dwells on retribution with vehemence (vii. 11-16; xi. 5-7; xxxi. 23; xxxv. 8), and on his own deliverance with confidence. 

These general characteristics accurately correspond with thecircumstances of David during the years of his wanderings. The sceneryand life of the desert colours the metaphors which describe his enemiesas wild beasts; himself as a poor hunted creature amongst pits andsnares; or as a timid bird flying to the safe crags, and God as hisRock. Their strong assertions of innocence accord with the historicalindications of Saul's gratuitous hatred, and appear to distinguish thepsalms of this period from those of Absalom's revolt, in which theremembrance of his great sin was too deep to permit of any such claims. In like manner the prophecies of the enemies' destruction are tootriumphant to suit that later time of exile, when the father's heartyearned with misplaced tenderness over his worthless son, and nearlybroke with unkingly sorrow for the rebel's death. Their confidence inGod, too, has in it a ring of joyousness in peril which corresponds withthe buoyant faith that went with him through all the desperateadventures and hairbreadth escapes of the Sauline persecution. If thenwe may, with some confidence, read these psalms in connection with thatperiod, what a noble portraiture of a brave, devout soul looks out uponus from them. We see him in the first flush of his manhood--somewhereabout five-and-twenty years old--fronting perils of which he is fullyconscious, with calm strength and an enthusiasm of trust that lifts hisspirit above them all, into a region of fellowship with God which notumult can invade, and which no remembrance of black transgressiontroubled and stained. His harp is his solace in his wanderings; andwhile plaintive notes are flung from its strings, as is needful for thedeepest harmonies of praise here, every wailing tone melts into clearringing notes of glad affiance in the "God of his mercy. "

Distinct references to the specific events of his wanderings are, undoubtedly, rare in them, though even these are more obvious than hasbeen sometimes carelessly assumed. Their infrequency and comparativevagueness has been alleged against the accuracy of the inscriptionswhich allocate certain psalms to particular occasions. But in so far asit is true that these allusions are rare and inexact, the fact is surelyrather in favour of than against the correctness of the titles. For ifthese are not suggested by obvious references in the psalms to whichthey are affixed, by what can they have been suggested but by atradition considerably older than the compilation of the psalter?Besides, the analogy of all other poetry would lead us to expectprecisely what we find in these psalms--general and not detailedallusions to the writer's circumstances. The poetic imagination does notreproduce the bald prosaic facts which have set it in motion, but theecho of them broken up and etherealised. It broods over them till lifestirs, and the winged creature bursts from them to sing and soar. 

If we accept the title as accurate, the fifty-ninth psalm is the firstof these Songs of the Outlaw. It refers to the time "when Saul sent, andthey watched the house to kill him. " Those critics who reject this date, which they do on very weak grounds, lose themselves in a chaos ofassumptions as to the occasion of the psalm. The Chaldean invasion, theassaults in the time of Nehemiah, and the era of the Maccabees, arealleged with equal confidence and equal groundlessness. "We believe thatit is most advisable to adhere to the title, and most scientific toignore these hypotheses built on nothing. " (Delitzsch. )

It is a devotional and poetic commentary on the story in Samuel. Therewe get the bare facts of the assassins prowling by night round David'shouse; of Michal's warning; of her ready-witted trick to gain time, andof his hasty flight to Samuel at Ramah. In the narrative David is, asusual at this period, passive and silent; but when we turn to the psalm, we learn the tone of his mind as the peril bursts upon him, and all thevulgar craft and fear fades from before his lofty enthusiasm of faith. 

The psalm begins abruptly with a passionate cry for help, which isrepeated four times, thus bringing most vividly before us the extremityof the danger and the persistency of the suppliant's trust. The peculiartenderness and closeness of his relation to his heavenly Friend, whichis so characteristic of David's psalms, and which they were almost thefirst to express, breathes through the name by which he invokes help, "my God. " The enemies are painted in words which accurately correspondwith the history, and which by their variety reveal how formidable theywere to the psalmist. They "lie in wait (literally weave plots) for mylife. " They are "workers of iniquity, " "men of blood, " insolent orviolent ("mighty" in English version). He asserts his innocence, as everin these Sauline psalms, and appeals to God in confirmation, "not for mytransgressions, nor for my sins, O Lord. " He sees these eager tools ofroyal malice hurrying to their congenial work: "they run and preparethemselves. " And then, rising high above all encompassing evils, hegrasps at the throne of God in a cry, which gains additional force whenwe remember that the would-be murderers compassed his house in thenight. "Awake to meet me, and behold;" as if he had said, "In thedarkness do Thou see; at midnight sleep not Thou. " The prayer iscontinued in words which heap together with unwonted abundance theDivine names, in each of which lie an appeal to God and a pillar offaith. As Jehovah, the self-existent Fountain of timeless Being; as theGod of Hosts, the Commander of all the embattled powers of the universe, whether they be spiritual or material; as the GOD of Israel, who callsthat people His, and has become theirs--he stirs up the strength of Godto "awake to visit all the heathen, "--a prayer which has been supposedto compel the reference of the whole psalm to the assaults of Gentilenations, but which may be taken as an anticipation on David's lips ofthe truth that, "They are not all Israel which are of Israel. " After aterrible petition--"Be not merciful to any secret plotters ofevil"--there is a pause (Selah) to be filled, as it would appear, bysome chords on the harp, or the blare of the trumpets, thus giving timeto dwell on the previous petitions. 

But still the thought of the foe haunts him, and he falls again to thelower level of painting their assembling round his house, and theirwhispers as they take their stand. It would appear that the watch hadbeen kept up for more than one night. How he flings his growing scorn ofthem into the sarcastic words, "They return at evening; they growl likea dog, and compass the city" (or "go their rounds in the city"). Onesees them stealing through the darkness, like the troops of vicious cursthat infest Eastern cities, and hears their smothered threatenings asthey crouch in the shadow of the unlighted streets. Then growing bolder, as the night deepens and sleep falls on the silent houses: "Behold theypour out with their mouth, swords (are) in their lips, for 'who hears'?"In magnificent contrast with these skulking murderers fancyingthemselves unseen and unheard, David's faith rends the heaven, and, witha daring image which is copied in a much later psalm (ii. 4), shows Godgazing on them with Divine scorn which breaks in laughter and mockery. Abrief verse, which recurs at the end of the psalm, closes the firstportion of the psalm with a calm expression of untroubled trust, inbeautiful contrast with the peril and tumult of soul, out of which itrises steadfast and ethereal, like a rainbow spanning a cataract. Aslight error appears to have crept into the Hebrew text, which can beeasily corrected from the parallel verse at the end, and then the quietconfident words are--

 "My strength! upon Thee will I wait, For God is my fortress!"

The second portion is an intensification of the first; pouring out aterrible prayer for exemplary retribution on his enemies; asking that nospeedy destruction may befall them, but that God would first of all"make them reel" by the blow of His might; would then fling themprostrate; would make their pride and fierce words a net to snare them;and then, at last, would bring them to nothing in the hot flames of Hiswrath--that the world may know that He is king. The picture of theprowling dogs recurs with deepened scorn and firmer confidence thatthey will hunt for their prey in vain. 

 "And they return at evening; they growl like a dog, And compass the city. They--they prowl about for food If (or, since) they are not satisfied, they spend the night (in the search. )"

There is almost a smile on his face as he thinks of their hunting aboutfor him, like hungry hounds snuffing for their meal in the kennels, andgrowling now in disappointment--while he is safe beyond their reach. Andthe psalm ends with a glad burst of confidence, and a vow of praise verycharacteristic on his lips--

 "But I--I will sing Thy power, And shout aloud, in the morning, Thy mercy, For Thou hast been a fortress for me. And a refuge in the day of my trouble. My strength! unto Thee will I harp, For God is my fortress--the God of my mercy. "

Thrice he repeats the vow of praise. His harp was his companion in hisflight, and even in the midst of peril the poet's nature appears whichregards all life as materials for song, and the devout spirit appearswhich regards all trial as occasions for praise. He has calmed his ownspirit, as he had done Saul's, by his song, and by prayer has swunghimself clear above fightings and fears. The refrain, which occurs twicein the psalm, witnesses to the growth of his faith even while he sings. At first he could only say in patient expectance, "My strength! I willwait upon thee, for God is my fortress. " But at the end his mood ishigher, his soul has caught fire as it revolves, and his last words area triumphant amplification of his earlier trust: "My strength! unto theewill I sing with the harp--for God is my fortress--the God of mymercy. "

V. --THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_. 

"So David fled, and escaped and came to Samuel to Ramah, and told himall that Saul had done unto him. And he and Samuel went and dwelt inNaioth" (1 Sam. Xix. 18)--or, as the word probably means, in thecollection of students' dwellings, inhabited by the sons of theprophets, where possibly there may have been some kind of right ofsanctuary. Driven thence by Saul's following him, and having had onelast sorrowful hour of Jonathan's companionship--the last but one onearth--he fled to Nob, whither the ark had been carried after thedestruction of Shiloh. The story of his flight had not reached thesolitary little town among the hills, and he is received with the honourdue to the king's son-in-law. He pleads urgent secret business for Saulas a reason for his appearance with a slender retinue, and unarmed; andthe priest, after some feeble scruples, supplies the handful of hungryfugitives with the shewbread. But David's quick eye caught a swarthyface peering at him from some enclosure of the simple forest sanctuary, and as he recognised Doeg the Edomite, Saul's savage herdsman, a coldforeboding of evil crept over his heart, and made him demand arms fromthe peaceful priest. The lonely tabernacle was guarded by its ownsanctity, and no weapons were there, except one trophy which was of goodomen to David--Goliath's sword. He eagerly accepts the matchless weaponwhich his hand had clutched on that day of danger and deliverance, andthus armed, lest Doeg should try to bar his flight, he hurries from thepursuit which he knew that the Edomite's malignant tongue would soonbring after him. The tragical end of the unsuspecting priest's kindnessbrings out the furious irrational suspicion and cruelty of Saul. Herages at his servants as leagued with David in words which have a mostdreary sound of utter loneliness sighing through all their fierce folly:"All of you have conspired against me; there is none of you that issorry for me" (1 Sam. Xxii. 8. ) Doeg is forward to curry favour bytelling his tale, and so tells it as to suppress the priest's ignoranceof David's flight, and to represent him as aiding and comforting therebel knowingly. Then fierce wrath flames out from the darkened spirit, and the whole priestly population of Nob are summoned before him, loadedwith bitter reproaches, their professions of innocence disregarded, andhis guard ordered to murder them all then and there. The very soldiersshrink from the sacrilege, but a willing tool is at hand. The wild bloodof Edom, fired by ancestral hatred, desires no better work, and Doegcrowns his baseness by slaying--with the help of his herdsmen, nodoubt--"on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear an ephod, "and utterly extirpating every living thing from the defenceless littlecity. 

One psalm, the fifty-second, is referred by its inscription to thisperiod, but the correspondence between the history and the tone of thepsalm is doubtful. It is a vehement rebuke and a prophecy of destructiondirected against an enemy, whose hostility was expressed in "devouringwords. " The portrait does not apply very accurately to the Doeg of thehistorical books, inasmuch as it describes the psalmist's enemy as "amighty man, "--or rather as "a hero, " and as trusting "in the abundanceof his riches, "--and makes the point of the reproach against him thathe is a confirmed liar. But the dastardly deed of blood may be covertlyalluded to in the bitterly sarcastic "hero"--as if he had said, "O bravewarrior, who dost display thy prowess in murdering unarmed priests andwomen?" And Doeg's story to Saul was a lie in so far as it gave theimpression of the priests' complicity with David, and thereby causedtheir deaths on a false charge. The other features of the descriptionare not contrary to the narrative, and most of them are in obviousharmony with it. The psalm, then, may be taken as showing how deeplyDavid's soul was stirred by the tragedy. He pours out broken words ofhot and righteous indignation:

 "Destructions doth thy tongue devise, Like a razor whetted--O thou worker of deceit. "

 * * * * *

 "Thou lovest all words that devour:[F] O thou deceitful tongue!"

[F] Literally, "words of swallowing up. "

He prophesies the destruction of the cruel liar, and the exultation ofthe righteous when he falls, in words which do indeed belong to the oldcovenant of retribution, and yet convey an eternal truth which modernsentimentalism finds very shocking, but which is witnessed over andover again in the relief that fills the heart of nations and ofindividuals when evil men fade: "When the wicked perish, there isshouting"--

 "Also God shall smite thee down for ever, Will draw thee out, [G] and carry thee away from the tent, And root thee out of the land of the living; And the righteous shall see and fear, And over him shall they laugh. "

In confident security he opposes his own happy fellowship with God tothis dark tragedy of retribution:

 "But I--(I am) like a green olive tree in the house of God. "

[G] The full force of the word is, "will pluck out as a glowing emberfrom a hearth" (Delitzsch). 

The enemy was to be "rooted out;" the psalmist is to flourish byderivation of life and vigour from God. If Robinson's conjecture thatNob was on the Mount of Olives were correct (which is very doubtful), the allusion here would gain appropriateness. As the olives grew allround the humble forest sanctuary, and were in some sort hallowed by theshrine which they encompassed, so the soul grows and is safe in lovingfellowship with God. Be that as it may, the words express the outlaw'sserene confidence that he is safe beneath the sheltering mercy of God, and re-echo the hopes of his earlier psalm, "I will dwell in the houseof the Lord for ever. " The stormy indignation of the earlier versespasses away into calm peace and patient waiting in praise and trust:

 "I will praise Thee for ever, for Thou hast done (it), And wait on Thy name in the presence of Thy beloved, for it is good. "

Hunted from Nob, David with a small company struck across the country ina southwesterly direction, keeping to the safety of the tangledmountains, till, from the western side of the hills of Judah, he lookeddown upon the broad green plain of Philistia. Behind him was a madtyrant, in front the uncircumcised enemies of his country and his God. His condition was desperate, and he had recourse to desperate measures. That nearest Philistine city, some ten miles off, on which he lookeddown from his height, was Gath; the glen where he had killed itschampion was close beside him, --every foot of ground was familiar bymany a foray and many a fight. It was a dangerous resource to trusthimself in Gath, with Goliath's sword dangling in his belt. But he mayhave hoped that he was not known by person, or may have thought thatSaul's famous commander would be a welcome guest, as a banished man, atthe Philistine court. So he made the plunge, and took refuge inGoliath's city. Discovery soon came, and in the most ominous form. Itwas an ugly sign that the servants of Achish should be quoting the wordsof the chant of victory which extolled him as the slayer of theircountryman. Vengeance for his death was but too likely to come next. Thedoubts of his identity seem to have lasted for some little time, and tohave been at first privately communicated to the king. They somehowreached David, and awoke his watchful attention, as well as his fear. The depth of his alarm and his ready resource are shown by his degradingtrick of assumed madness--certainly the least heroic action of his life. What a picture of a furious madman is the description of his conductwhen Achish's servants came to arrest him. He "twisted himself about intheir hands" in the feigned contortions of possession; he drummed on theleaves of the gate, [H] and "let his spittle run down into his beard. "(1 Sam. Xxi. 13. ) Israelitish quickness gets the better of Philistinestupidity, as it had been used to do from Sampson's time onwards, andthe dull-witted king falls into the trap, and laughs away the suspicionswith a clumsy joke at his servants' expense about more madmen being thelast thing he was short of. A hasty flight from Philistine territoryended this episode. 

[H] The Septuagint appears to have followed a different reading herefrom that of our present Hebrew text, and the change adds a verypicturesque clause to the description. A madman would be more likely tohammer than to "scrabble" on the great double-leaved gate. 

The fifty-sixth psalm, which is referred by its title to this period, seems at first sight to be in strange contrast with the impressionsdrawn from the narrative, but on a closer examination is found toconfirm the correctness of the reference by its contents. The terrifiedfugitive, owing his safety to a trick, and slavering like an idiot inthe hands of his rude captors, had an inner life of trust strong enoughto hold his mortal terror in check, though not to annihilate it. Thepsalm is far in advance of the conduct--is it so unusual a circumstanceas to occasion surprise, that lofty and sincere utterances of faith andsubmission should co-exist with the opposite feelings? Instead of takingthe contrast between the words and the acts as a proof that this psalmis wrongly ascribed to the period in question, let us rather be thankfulfor another instance that imperfect faith may be genuine, and that if wecannot rise to the height of unwavering fortitude, God accepts atremulous trust fighting against mortal terror, and grasping with afeeble hand the word of God, and the memory of all his pastdeliverances. It is precisely this conflict of faith and fear which thepsalm sets before us. It falls into three portions, the first and secondof which are closed by a kind of refrain (vers. 4, 10, 11)--a structurewhich is characteristic of several of these Sauline persecution psalms(_e. G. _, lvii. 5, 11; lix. 9, 17). The first part of each of these twoportions is a vivid description of his danger, from which he rises tothe faith expressed in the closing words. The repetition of the samethoughts in both is not to be regarded as a cold artifice ofcomposition, but as the true expression of the current of his thoughts. He sees his enemies about him, ready to swallow him up--"there be manyfighting against me disdainfully"[I] (ver. 2). Whilst the terror creepsround his heart ("he was sore afraid, " 1 Sam. Xxi. 12), he rouseshimself to trust, as he says, in words which express most emphaticallythe co-existence of the two, and carry a precious lesson of the realityof even an interrupted faith, streaked with many a black line of doubtand dread. 

[I] Literally, "loftily. " Can there be any allusion to the giant statureof Goliath's relations in Gath? We hear of four men "born to the giantin Gath, " who were killed in David's wars. (2 Sam. Xxi. 22. )

 "(In) the day (that) I am afraid--I trust on Thee. "

And then he breaks into the utterance of praise and confidence--to whichhe has climbed by the ladder of prayer. 

 "In God I praise His word, In God I trust, I do not fear:-- What shall flesh do to me?"

How profoundly these words set forth the object of his trust, as beingnot merely the promise of God--which in David's case may be the specificpromise conveyed by his designation to the throne--but the God whopromises, the inmost nature of that confidence as being a living unionwith God, the power of it as grappling with his dread, and enabling himnow to say, "I do _not_ fear. "

But again he falls from this height; another surge of fear breaks overhim, and almost washes him from his rock. His foes, with ceaselessmalice, arrest his words; they skulk in ambush, they dog his heels, theylong for his life. The crowded clauses portray the extremity of theperil and the singer's agitation. His soul is still heaving with theground swell of the storm, though the blasts come more fitfully, and aredying into calm. He is not so afraid but that he can turn to God; heturns to Him because he is afraid, like the disciples in later days, whohad so much of terror that they must awake their Master, but so much oftrust that His awaking was enough. He pleads with God, as in formerpsalms, against his enemies, in words which go far beyond the occasion, and connect his own deliverance with the judgments of God over the wholeearth. He plaintively recalls his homelessness and his sorrows in wordswhich exhibit the characteristic blending of hope and pain, and whichare beautifully in accordance with the date assigned to the psalm. "Mywanderings dost Thou, even Thou, number. " He is not alone in theseweary flights from Gibeah to Ramah, from Ramah to Nob, from Nob to Gath, from Gath he knows not whither. One friend goes with him through themall. And as the water-skin was a necessary part of a traveller'sequipment, the mention of his wanderings suggests the bold and tendermetaphor of the next clause, "Put my tears in Thy bottle, "--a prayer forthat very remembrance of his sorrows, in the existence of which heimmediately declares his confidence--"Are they not in Thy book?" Thetrue office of faithful communion with God is to ask for, and toappropriate, the blessings which in the very act become ours. He knowsthat his cry will scatter his foes, for God is for him. And thus onceagain he has risen to the height of confidence where for a moment hisfeet have been already planted, and again--but this time with evenfuller emphasis, expressed by an amplification which introduces for theonly time in the psalm the mighty covenant name--he breaks into histriumphant strain--

 "In God I praise the Word; In JEHOVAH I praise the Word: In God I trust, I do not fear:-- What shall man do to me?"

And from this mood of trustful expectation he does not again decline. Prayer has brought its chiefest blessing--the peace that passethunderstanding. The foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusivelyby faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praisefor deliverance, as if it had been already achieved--

 "Thou hast delivered my life from death, (Hast Thou) not (delivered) my feet from falling, That I may walk before God in the light of the living?"

He already reckons himself safe; his question is not an expression ofdoubt, but of assurance; and he sees the purpose of all God's dealingswith him to be that the activities of life may all be conducted in thehappy consciousness of _His_ eye who is at once Guardian and Judge ofHis children. How far above his fears and lies has this hero and saintrisen by the power of supplication and the music of his psalm!

David naturally fled into Israelitish territory from Gath. The exactlocality of the cave Adullam, where we next find him, is doubtful; butseveral strong reasons occur for rejecting the monkish tradition whichplaces it away to the east, in one of the wild wadies which run downfrom Bethlehem to the Dead Sea. We should expect it to be much moreaccessible by a hasty march from Gath. Obviously it would be convenientfor him to hang about the frontier of Philistia and Israel, that hemight quickly cross the line from one to the other, as dangers appeared. Further, the city of Adullam is frequently mentioned, and always inconnections which fix its site as on the margin of the great plain ofPhilistia, and not far from Gath. (2 Chron. Xi. 7, etc. ) There is noreason to suppose that the cave of Adullam was in a totally differentdistrict from the city. The hills of Dan and Judah, which break sharplydown into the plain within a few miles of Gath, are full of "extensiveexcavations, " and there, no doubt, we are to look for the rocky hold, where he felt himself safer from pursuit, and whence he could look downover the vast sweep of the rich Philistine country. Gath lay at hisfeet, close by was the valley where he had killed Goliath, the scenes ofSamson's exploits were all about him. Thither fled to him his wholefamily, from fear, no doubt, of Saul's revenge falling on them; andthere he gathers his band of four hundred desperate men, whom povertyand misery, and probably the king's growing tyranny, drove to flight. They were wild, rough soldiers, according to the picturesquedescription, "whose faces were like the faces of lions, and were asswift as the roes upon the mountains. " They were not freebooters, butseem to have acted as a kind of frontier-guard against southern Bedouinsand western Philistines for the sheep-farmers of the border whom Saul'sgovernment was too weak to protect. In this desultory warfare, and ineluding the pursuit of Saul, against whom it is to be observed Davidnever employed any weapon but flight, several years were passed. Theeffect of such life on his spiritual nature was to deepen hisunconditional dependence on God; by the alternations of heat and cold, fear and hope, danger and safety, to temper his soul and make itflexible, tough and bright as steel. It evolved the qualities of aleader of men; teaching him command and forbearance, promptitude andpatience, valour and gentleness. It won for him a name as the defenderof the nation, as Nabal's servant said of him and his men, "They were awall unto us, both by night and by day" (1 Sam. Xxv. 16). And itgathered round him a force of men devoted to him by the enthusiasticattachment bred from long years of common dangers, and the heartyfriendships of many a march by day, and nightly encampment round theglimmering watchfires, beneath the lucid stars. 

VI. --THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_. 

We have one psalm which the title connects with the beginning of David'sstay at Adullam, --the thirty-fourth. The supposition that it dates fromthat period throws great force into many parts of it, and gives a unityto what is else apparently fragmentary and disconnected. Unlike thosealready considered, which were pure soliloquies, this is full ofexhortation and counsel, as would naturally be the case if it werewritten when friends and followers began to gather to his standard. Itreads like a long sigh of relief at escape from a danger just past; itsburden is to tell of God's deliverance, and to urge to trust in Him. Howperfectly this tone corresponds to the circumstances immediately afterhis escape from Gath to Adullam need not be more than pointed out. Thedangers which he had dreaded and the cry to God which he had sent forthare still present to his mind, and echo through his song, like asubtly-touched chord of sadness, which appears for a moment, and isdrowned in the waves of some triumphant music. 

 "I sought the Lord, and He heard me, And from all my alarms He delivered me. 

 * * * * *

 This afflicted (man) cried, and Jehovah heard, And from all his troubles He saved him. "

And the "local colouring" of the psalm corresponds too with thecircumstances of Adullam. How appropriate, for instance, does the formin which the Divine protection is proclaimed become, when we think ofthe little band bivouacking among the cliffs, "The angel of the Lordencampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them. " Like hisgreat ancestor, he is met in his desert flight by heavenly guards, "andhe calls the name of that place Mahanaim" (that is, "two camps"), asdiscerning gathered round his own feeble company the ethereal weapons ofan encircling host of the warriors of God, through whose impenetrableranks his foes must pierce before they can reach him. From Samson's timewe read of lions in this district (Judges xiv. 8, 9), and we mayrecognise another image as suggested by their growls heard among theravines, and their gaunt forms prowling near the cave. "The young lionsdo lack and suffer hunger; but they that seek the Lord shall not wantany good" (ver. 10). 

And then he passes to earnest instructions and exhortations, whichderive appositeness from regarding them as a proclamation to his men ofthe principles on which his camp is to be governed. "Come, ye children, hearken unto me. " He regards himself as charged with guiding them togodliness: "I will teach you the fear of the Lord. " With someremembrance, perhaps, of his deception at Gath, he warns them to "keep"their "tongues from evil" and their "lips from speaking guile. " They arenot to be in love with warfare, but, even with their swords in theirhands, are to "seek peace, and pursue it. " On these exhortations followjoyous assurances of God's watchful eye fixed upon the righteous, andHis ear open to their cry; of deliverance for his suppliants, whatsoeverhardship and trouble they may have to wade through; of a guardianshipwhich "keepeth all the bones" of the righteous, so that neither theblows of the foe nor the perils of the crags should break them, --allcrowned with the contrast ever present to David's mind, and having apersonal reference to his enemies and to himself:

 "Evil shall slay the wicked, And the haters of the righteous shall suffer penalty. Jehovah redeems the life of His servants, And no penalty shall any suffer who trust in Him. "

Such were the counsels and teachings of the young leader to his littleband, --noble "general orders" from a commander at the beginning of acampaign!

We venture to refer the twenty-seventh psalm also to this period. It isgenerally supposed, indeed, by those commentators who admit its Davidicauthorship, to belong to the time of Absalom's rebellion. The mainreason for throwing it so late is the reference in ver. 4 to dwelling inthe house of the Lord and inquiring in His temple. [J] This is supposedto require a date subsequent to David's bringing up of the ark toJerusalem, and placing it in a temporary sanctuary. But whilst longingfor the sanctuary is no doubt characteristic of the psalms of the laterwanderings, it is by no means necessary to suppose that in the presentcase that desire, which David represents as the longing of his life, wasa desire for mere bodily presence in a material temple. Indeed, the verylanguage seems to forbid such an interpretation. Surely the desire foran abode in the house of the Lord--which was his one wish, which helonged to have continuous throughout all the days of his life, which wasto surround him with a privacy of protection in trouble, and to be asthe munitions of rocks about him--was something else than a morbiddesire for an impossible seclusion in the tabernacle, --a desire fitterfor some sickly medićval monarch who buried his foolish head and faintheart in a monastery than for God's Anointed. We have seen an earliergerm of the same desire in the twenty-third psalm, the words of whichare referred to here; and the interpretation of the one is theinterpretation of the other. The psalmist breathes his longing for theDivine fellowship, which shall be at once vision, and guidance, andhidden life in distress, and stability, and victory, and shall breakinto music of perpetual praise. 

[J] "The fourth verse in its present form _must_ have been written afterthe temple was built. "--"The Psalms chronologically arranged, " p. 68--following Ewald, in whose imperious criticism that same naked "musthave been, " works wonders. 

If, then, we are not obliged by the words in question to adopt thelater date, there is much in the psalm which strikingly corresponds withthe earlier, and throws beautiful illustration on the psalmist's mood atthis period. One such allusion we venture to suppose in the words (ver. 2), "When the wicked came against me to devour my flesh, My enemies and my foes, --they stumbled and fell;"

which have been usually taken as a mere general expression, without anyallusion to a specific event. But there was one incident in David's lifewhich had been forced upon his remembrance by his recent peril atGath--his duel with Goliath, which exactly meets the very peculiarlanguage here. The psalm employs the same word as the narrative, whichtells how the Philistine "arose, and came, and drew near to David. " Thebraggart boast, "I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air and thebeasts of the fields, " is echoed in the singular phrase of the psalm;and the emphatic, rapid picture, "they stumbled and fell, " is at once areminiscence of the hour when the stone crashed through the thickforehead, "and he fell upon his face to the earth;" and also a referenceto an earlier triumph in Israel's history, celebrated with fierceexultation in the wild chant whom rolls the words like a sweet morselunder the tongue, as it tells of Sisera--

 "Between her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay; Between her feet he bowed, he fell; Where he bowed, there he fell down dead. "

Another autobiographical reference in the psalm has been disputed oninsufficient grounds:

 "For my father and my mother forsake me, And Jehovah takes me up. " (Ver. 10. )

It is, at all events, a remarkable coincidence that the only mention ofhis parents after the earliest chapters of his life falls in preciselywith this period of the history, and is such as might have suggestedthese words. We read (1 Sam. Xxii. 3, 4) that he once ventured all theway from Adullam to Moab to beg an asylum from Saul's indiscriminatefury for his father and mother, who were no doubt too old to share hisperils, as the rest of his family did. Having prepared a kindly welcomefor them, perhaps on the strength of the blood of Ruth the Moabitess inJesse's veins, he returned to Bethlehem, brought the old couple away, and guarded them safely to their refuge. It is surely most natural tosuppose that the psalm is the lyrical echo of that event, and mostpathetic to conceive of the psalmist as thinking of the happy home atBethlehem now deserted, his brothers lurking with him among the rocks, and his parents exiles in heathen lands. Tears fill his eyes, but helifts them to a Father that is never parted from him, and feels that heis no more orphaned nor homeless. 

The psalm is remarkable for the abrupt transition of feeling whichcleaves it into two parts; one (vers. 1-6) full of jubilant hope andenthusiastic faith, the other (vers. 7-14) a lowly cry for help. Thereis no need to suppose, with some critics, that we have here twoindependent hymns bound together in error. He must have little knowledgeof the fluctuations of the devout life who is surprised to find so swifta passage from confidence to conscious weakness. Whilst the usual orderin the psalms, as the usual order in good men's experience, is thatprayer for deliverance precedes praise and triumph, true communion withGod is bound to no mechanical order, and may begin with gazing on God, and realizing the mysteries of beauty in His secret place, ere it dropsto earth. The lark sings as it descends from the "privacy of gloriouslight" to its nest in the stony furrows as sweetly, though moreplaintively, than whilst it circles upwards to the sky. It is perhaps anobler effect of faith to begin with God and hymn the victory as ifalready won, than to begin with trouble and to call for deliverance. Butwith whichever we commence, the prayer of earth must include both; andso long as we are weak, and God our strength, its elements must be"supplication and thanksgiving. " The prayer of our psalm bends roundagain to its beginning, and after the plaintive cry for help breaks oncemore into confidence (vers. 13, 14). The psalmist shudders as he thinkswhat ruin would have befallen him if he had not trusted in God, andleaves the unfinished sentence, --as a man looking down into some fearfulgulf starts back and covers his eyes, before he has well seen the bottomof the abyss. 

 "If I had not believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!"

Then rejoicing to remember how even by his feeble trust he has beensaved, he stirs up himself to a firmer faith, in words which arethemselves an exercise of faith, as well as an incitement to it:

 "Wait on Jehovah! Courage! and let thy heart be strong! Yea! wait on Jehovah!"

Here is the true highest type of a troubled soul's fellowship with God, when the black fear and consciousness of weakness is inclosed in agolden ring of happy trust. Let the name of our God be first upon ourlips, and the call to our wayward hearts to wait on Him be last, andthen we may between think of our loneliness, and feebleness, and foes, and fears, without losing our hold of our Father's hand. 

David in his rocky eyrie was joyful, because he began with God. It was aman in real peril who said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whomshall I fear?" It was at a critical pause in his fortunes, when he knewnot yet whether Saul's malice was implacable, that he said, "Though warshould rise against me, in this will I be confident. " It was inthankfulness for the safe hiding-place among the dark caverns of thehills that he celebrated the dwelling of the soul in God with wordscoloured by his circumstances, "In the secret of His tabernacle shallHe hide me; He shall set me up upon a rock. " It was with Philistia athis feet before and Saul's kingdom in arms behind that his triumphantconfidence was sure that "Now shall mine head be lifted up above mineenemies round about me. " It was in weakness, not expelled even by suchjoyous faith, that he plaintively besought God's mercy, and laid beforeHis mercy-seat as the mightiest plea His own inviting words, "Seek ye Myface, " and His servant's humble response, "Thy face, Lord, will I seek. "Together, these made it impossible that that Face, the beams of whichare light and salvation, should be averted. God's past comes to his lipsas a plea for a present consistent with it and with His own mighty name. "Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of mysalvation. " His loneliness, his ignorance of his road, and the enemieswho watch him, and, like a later Saul, "breathe out cruelty" (see Actsix. 1), become to him in his believing petitions, not grounds of fear, but arguments with God; and having thus mastered all that wasdistressful in his lot, by making it all the basis of his cry for help, he rises again to hope, and stirs up himself to lay hold on God, to bestrong and bold, because his expectation is from Him. A noble picture ofa steadfast soul; steadfast not because of absence of fears and reasonsfor fear, but because of presence of God and faith in Him. 

Having abandoned Adullam, by the advice of the prophet Gad, who fromthis time appears to have been a companion till the end of his reign (2Sam. Xxiv. 11), and who subsequently became his biographer (1 Chron. Xxix. 29), he took refuge, as outlaws have ever been wont to do, in thewoods. In his forest retreat, somewhere among the now treeless hills ofJudah, he heard of a plundering raid made by the Philistines on one ofthe unhappy border towns. The marauders had broken in upon the mirth ofthe threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year'sharvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestralfoes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw ashe was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirredto action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little bandbursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recapturesthe cattle which like moss troopers they were driving homewards fromthe ruined farmsteads, and routs them with great slaughter. But thecowardly townspeople of Keilah had less gratitude than fear; and theking's banished son-in-law was too dangerous a guest, even though he wasof their own tribe, and had delivered them from the enemy. Saul, who hadnot stirred from his moody seclusion to beat back invasion, summoned ahasty muster, in the hope of catching David in the little city, like afox in his earth: and the cowardly citizens meditated saving their homesby surrendering their champion. David and his six hundred savedthemselves by a rapid flight, and, as it would appear, by breaking upinto detachments. "They went whithersoever they could go" (1 Sam. Xxiii. 13); whilst David, with some handful, made his way to the inhospitablewilderness which stretches from the hills of Judah to the shores of theDead Sea, and skulked there in "lurking places" among the crags andtangled underwood. With fierce perseverance "Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand. " One breath of love, fragrantand strength-giving, was wafted to his fainting heart, when Jonathanfound his way where Saul could not come, and the two friends met oncemore. In the woodland solitudes they plighted their faith again, and thebeautiful unselfishness of Jonathan is wonderfully set forth in hiswords, "Thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee;"while an awful glimpse is given into that mystery of a godless willconsciously resisting the inevitable, when there is added, "and thatalso Saul, my father, knoweth. " In such resistance the king's son has nopart, for it is pointedly noticed that he returned to his house. Treachery, and that from the men of his own tribe, again dogs David'ssteps. The people of Ziph, a small place on the edge of the southerndesert, betray his haunt to Saul. The king receives the intelligencewith a burst of thanks, in which furious jealousy and pervertedreligion, and a sense of utter loneliness and misery, and a strangeself-pity, are mingled most pathetically and terribly: "Blessed be ye ofthe Lord, for ye have compassion on me!" He sends them away to mark downhis prey; and when they have tracked him to his lair, he follows withhis force and posts them round the hill where David and his handfullurk. The little band try to escape, but they are surrounded andapparently lost. At the very moment when the trap is just going toclose, a sudden messenger, "fiery red with haste, " rushes into Saul'sarmy with news of a formidable invasion: "Haste thee and come; for thePhilistines have spread themselves upon the land!" So the eager hand, ready to smite and crush, is plucked back; and the hour of deepestdistress is the hour of deliverance. 

At some period in this lowest ebb of David's fortunes, we have one shortpsalm, very simple and sad (liv. ) It bears the title, "When the Ziphimscame and said to Saul, Doth not David hide himself with us?" and mayprobably be referred to the former of the two betrayals by the men ofZiph. The very extremity of peril has made the psalmist still and quiet. The sore need has shortened his prayer. He is too sure that God hears touse many words; for it is distrust, not faith, which makes us besiegeHis throne with much speaking. He is confident as ever; but one feelsthat there is a certain self-restraint and air of depression over thebrief petitions, which indicate the depth of his distress and theuneasiness of protracted anxiety. Two notes only sound from his harp:one a plaintive cry for help; the other, thanksgiving for deliverance asalready achieved. The two are bound together by the recurrence in eachof "the name" of GOD, which is at once the source of his salvation andthe theme of his praise. We have only to read the lowly petitions tofeel that they speak of a spirit somewhat weighed down by danger, andrelaxed from the loftier mood of triumphant trust. 

 (1) O God, by Thy name save me, And in Thy strength do judgment for me

 (2) O God, hear my prayer, Give ear to the words of my mouth. 

 (3) For strangers are risen against me, And tyrants seek my life. They set not God before them. 

The enemies are called "strangers;" but, as we have seen in the first ofthese songs of the exile, it is not necessary, therefore, to supposethat they were not Israelites. The Ziphites were men of Judah likehimself; and there is bitter emphasis as well as a gleam of insight intothe spiritual character of the true Israel in calling them foreigners. The other name, oppressors, or violent men, or, as we have rendered it, tyrants, corresponds too accurately with the character of Saul in hislater years, to leave much doubt that it is pointed at him. If so, thesoftening of the harsh description by the use of the plural is inbeautiful accordance with the forgiving leniency which runs through allDavid's conduct to him. Hard words about Saul himself do not occur inthe psalms. His counsellors, his spies, the liars who calumniated Davidto him, and for their own ends played upon his suspicious nature, --thetools who took care that the cruel designs suggested by themselvesshould be carried out, kindle David's wrath, but it scarcely ever lightson the unhappy monarch whom he loved with all-enduring charity while helived, and mourned with magnificent eulogy when he died. The allusion ismade all the more probable, because of the verbal correspondence withthe narrative which records that "Saul was come out to seek his life" (1Sam. Xxiii. 15. )

A chord or two from the harp permits the mind to dwell on the thought ofthe foes, and prepares for the second part of this psalm. In itthanksgiving and confidence flow from the petitions of the formerportion. But the praise is not so jubilant, nor the trust sovictorious, as we have seen them. "The peace of God" has come in answerto prayer, but it is somewhat subdued:

 "Behold, God is my helper; The Lord is the supporter of my life. "

The foes sought his life, but, as the historical book gives theantithesis, "Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not intohis hand. " The rendering of the English version, "The Lord is with themthat uphold my soul, " is literally accurate, but does not convey themeaning of the Hebrew idiom. God is not regarded as one among manyhelpers, but as alone the supporter or upholder of his life. Believingthat, the psalmist, of course, believes as a consequence that hisenemies will be smitten with evil for their evil. The prophetic lip offaith calls things that are not as though they were. In the midst of hisdangers he looks forward to songs of deliverance and glad sacrifices ofpraise; and the psalm closes with words that approach the more fervidutterances we have already heard, as if his song had raised his ownspirit above its fears:

 (6) With willinghood will I sacrifice unto Thee. I will praise Thy name for it is good. 

 (7) For from all distress it has delivered me. And on my enemies will mine eye see (my desire)

The name--the revealed character of God--was the storehouse of all thesaving energies to which he appealed in verse 1. It is the theme of hispraise when the deliverance shall have come. It is almost regarded hereas equivalent to the Divine personality--it is good, _it_ has deliveredhim. Thus, we may say that this brief psalm gives us as the singlethought of a devout soul in trouble, the name of the Lord, and teachesby its simple pathos how the contemplation of God as He has made Himselfknown, should underlie every cry for help and crown every thanksgiving;whilst it may assure us that whosoever seeks for the salvation of thatmighty name may, even in the midst of trouble, rejoice as in anaccomplished deliverance. And all such thoughts should be held with afaith at least as firm as the ancient psalmist's, by us to whom the"name" of the Lord is "declared" by Him who is the full revelation ofGod, and the storehouse of all blessings and help to his "brethren. "(Heb. Ii. 12. )

A little plain of some mile or so in breadth slopes gently down towardsthe Dead Sea about the centre of its western shore. It is girdled roundby savage cliffs, which, on the northern side, jut out in a boldheadland to the water's edge. At either extremity is a stream flowingdown a deep glen choked with luxurious vegetation; great fig-trees, canes, and maiden-hair ferns covering the rocks. High up on the hillsforming its western boundary a fountain sparkles into light, and fallsto the flat below in long slender threads. Some grey weathered stonesmark the site of a city that was old when Abraham wandered in the land. Traces of the palm forests which, as its name indicates, were clearedfor its site (Hazezon Tamar, The palm-tree clearing) have been found, encrusted with limestone, in the warm, damp gullies, and ruined terracesfor vineyards can be traced on the bare hill-sides. But the fertility ofDavid's time is gone, and the precious streams nourish only a junglehaunted by leopard and ibex. This is the fountain and plain of Engedi(the fount of the wild goat), a spot which wants but industry and careto make it a little paradise. Here David fled from the neighbouringwilderness, attracted no doubt by the safety of the deep gorges andrugged hills, as well as by the abundance of water in the fountain andthe streams. The picturesque and touching episode of his meeting withSaul has made the place for ever memorable. There are many excavationsin the rocks about the fountain, which may have been the cave--black asnight to one looking inward with eyes fresh from the blinding glare ofsunlight upon limestone, but holding a glimmering twilight to onelooking outwards with eyes accustomed to the gloom--in the innermostrecesses of which David lay hid while Saul tarried in its mouth. Thenarrative gives a graphic picture of the hurried colloquy among thelittle band, when summary revenge was thus unexpectedly put within theirgrasp. The fierce retainers whispered their suggestion that it would be"tempting providence" to let such an opportunity escape; but the noblernature of David knows no personal animosity, and in these earliest daysis flecked by no cruelty nor lust of blood. He cannot, however, resistthe temptation of showing his power and almost parading his forbearanceby stealing through the darkness and cutting away the end of Saul's longrobe. It was little compared with what he could as easily havedone--smite him to the heart as he crouched there defenceless. But itwas a coarse practical jest, conveying a rude insult, and the quicklyreturning nobleness of his nature made him ashamed of it, as soon as hehad clambered back with his trophy. He felt that the sanctity of Saul'soffice as the anointed of the Lord should have saved him from the gibe. The king goes his way all unawares, and, as it would seem, had notregained his men, when David, leaving his band (very much out of temperno doubt at his foolish nicety), yields to a gush of ancient friendshipand calls loudly after him, risking discovery and capture in hisgenerous emotion. The pathetic conversation which ensued is eminentlycharacteristic of both men, so tragically connected and born to work woeto one another. David's remonstrance (1 Sam. Xxiv. 9-15) is full ofnobleness, of wounded affection surviving still, of conscious rectitude, of solemn devout appeal to the judgment of God. He has no words ofreproach for Saul, no weak upbraidings, no sullen anger, no repayinghate with hate. He almost pleads with the unhappy king, and yet there isnothing undignified or feeble in his tone. The whole is full ofcorrespondences, often of verbal identity, with the psalms which weassign to this period. The calumnies which he so often complains of inthese are the subject of his first words to Saul, whom he regards ashaving had his heart poisoned by lies: "Wherefore hearest thou men'swords, saying, Behold! David seeketh thy hurt. " He asserts absoluteinnocence of anything that warranted the king's hostility, just as hedoes so decisively in the psalms. "There is neither evil nortransgression in my hand, and I have not sinned against thee. " As inthem he so often compares himself to some wild creature pursued like thegoats in the cliffs of Engedi, so he tells Saul, "Thou huntest my lifeto take it. " And his appeal from earth's slanders, and misconceptions, and cruelties, to the perfect tribunal of God, is couched in language, every clause of which may be found in his psalms. "The Lord, therefore, be judge, and judge between me and thee, and see, and plead my cause, and deliver me out of thy hand. "

The unhappy Saul again breaks into a passion of tears. With that suddenflashing out into vehement emotion so characteristic of him, and sosignificant of his enfeebled self-control, he recognises David'sgenerous forbearance and its contrast to his own conduct. For a moment, at all events, he sees, as by a lightning flash, the mad hopelessness ofthe black road he is treading in resisting the decree that has made hisrival king--and he binds him by an oath to spare his house when he sitson the throne. The picture moves awful thoughts and gentle pity for thepoor scathed soul writhing in its hopelessness and dwelling in a greatsolitude of fear, but out of which stray gleams of ancient noblenessstill break;--and so the doomed man goes back to his gloomy seclusion atGibeah, and David to the free life of the mountains and the wilderness. 

VII. --THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_. 

There are many echoes of this period of Engedi in the Psalms. Perhapsthe most distinctly audible of these are to be found in the seventhpsalm, which is all but universally recognised as David's, even Ewaldconcurring in the general consent. It is an irregular ode--for such isthe meaning of Shiggaion in the title, and by its broken rhythms andabrupt transitions testifies to the emotion of its author. The occasionof it is said to be "the words of Cush the Benjamite. " As this is apeculiar name for an Israelite, it has been supposed to be anallegorical designation for some historical person, expressive of hischaracter. We might render it "the negro. " The Jewish commentators havetaken it to refer to Saul himself, but the bitter tone of the psalm, sounlike David's lingering forbearance to the man whom he never ceased tolove, is against that supposition. Shimei the Benjamite, whose foultongue cursed him in rabid rage, as he fled before Absalom, has alsobeen thought of, but the points of correspondence with the earlier dateare too numerous to make that reference tenable. It seems better tosuppose that Cush "the black" was one of Saul's tribe, who had beenconspicuous among the calumniators of whom we have seen Davidcomplaining to the king. And if so, there is no period in the Saulinepersecution into which the psalm will fit so naturally as the present. Its main thoughts are precisely those which he poured out sopassionately in his eager appeal when he and Saul stood face to face onthe solitary hill side. They are couched in the higher strain of poetryindeed, but that is the only difference; whilst there are several verbalcoincidences, and at least one reference to the story, which seem to fixthe date with considerable certainty. 

In it we see the psalmist's soul surging with the ground swell of strongemotion, which breaks into successive waves of varied feeling--first(vers. 1, 2) terror blended with trust, the enemy pictured, as sofrequently in these early psalms, as a lion who tears the flesh andbreaks the bones of his prey--and the refuge in God described by agraphic word very frequent also in the cotemporaneous psalms (xi. 1;lvii. 1, etc. ). Then with a quick turn comes the passionate protestationof his innocence, in hurried words, broken by feeling, and indignantlyturning away from the slanders which he will not speak of moredefinitely than calling them "this. "

 (3) Jehovah, my God! if I have done this-- If there be iniquity in my hands--

 (4) If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me-- Yea, I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy--

 (5) May the enemy pursue my soul and capture it, And trample down to the earth my life, And my glory in the dust may he lay!

How remarkably all this agrees with his words to Saul, "There is neitherevil nor transgression in my hand, . .. Yet thou huntest my soul to takeit" (1 Sam. Xxiv. 11); and how forcible becomes the singular reiterationin the narrative, of the phrase "my hand, " which occurs six times infour verses. The peculiarly abrupt introduction in ver. 4 of the clause, "I delivered him that without cause is mine enemy, " which completelydislocates the grammatical structure, is best accounted for bysupposing that David's mind is still full of the temptation to stainhis hands with Saul's blood, and is vividly conscious of the effortwhich he had had to make to overcome it. And the solemn invocation ofdestruction which he dares to address to Jehovah his God includes thefamiliar figure of himself as a fugitive before the hunters, which isfound in the words already quoted, and which here as there stands inimmediate connection with his assertion of clean hands. 

Then follows, with another abrupt turn, a vehement cry to God to judgehis cause; his own individual case melts into the thought of aworld-wide judgment, which is painted with grand power with three orfour broad rapid strokes. 

 (6) Awake for me--Thou hast commanded judgment. 

 (7) Let the assembly of the nations stand round Thee, And above it return Thou up on high. 

 (8) Jehovah will judge the nations. Judge me, O Jehovah, according to my righteousness and mine integrity in me!

Each smaller act of God's judgment is connected with the finalworld-judgment, is a prophecy of it, is one in principle therewith; andHe, who at the last will be known as the universal Judge of all, certainly cannot leave His servants' cause unredressed nor their cryunheard till then. The psalmist is led by his own history to realizemore intensely that truth of a Divine manifestation for judicialpurposes to the whole world, and his prophetic lip paints itssolemnities as the surest pledge of his own deliverance. He sees thegathered nations standing hushed before the Judge, and the Victor God atthe close of the solemn act ascending up on high where He was before, above the heads of the mighty crowd (Psalm lxviii. 19). In the faith ofthis vision, and because God will judge the nations, he invokes forhimself the anticipation of that final triumph of good over evil, andasks to be dealt with according to his righteousness. Nothing but themost hopeless determination to find difficulties could make a difficultyof such words. David is not speaking of his whole character or life, butof his conduct in one specific matter, namely, in his relation to Saul. The righteous integrity which he calls God to vindicate is not generalsinlessness nor inward conformity with the law of God, but hisblamelessness in all his conduct to his gratuitous foe. His prayer thatGod would judge him is distinctly equivalent to his often repeated cryfor deliverance, which should, as by a Divine arbitration, decide thedebate between Saul and him. The whole passage in the psalm, with allits lyrical abruptness and lofty imagery, is the expression of the verysame thought which we find so prominent in his words to Saul, alreadyquoted, concerning God's judging between them and delivering David outof Saul's hand. The parallel is instructive, not only as the proserendering of the poetry in the psalm, explaining it beyond thepossibility of misunderstanding, but also as strongly confirmatory ofthe date which we have assigned to the latter. It is so improbable as tobe almost inconceivable that the abrupt disconnected themes of the psalmshould echo so precisely the _whole_ of the arguments used in theremonstrance of the historical books, and should besides present verbalresemblances and historical allusions to these, unless it be of the sameperiod, and therefore an inlet into the mind of the fugitive as helurked among the rugged cliffs by "the fountain of the wild goat. "

In that aspect the remainder of the psalm is very striking andsignificant. We have two main thoughts in it--that of God as punishingevil in this life, and that of the self-destruction inherent in all sin;and these are expressed with such extraordinary energy as to attest atonce the profound emotion of the psalmist, and his familiarity with suchideas during his days of persecution. It is noticeable, too, that thelanguage is carefully divested of all personal reference; he has risento the contemplation of a great law of the Divine government, and atthat elevation the enemies whose calumnies and cruelties had driven himto God fade into insignificance. 

With what magnificent boldness he paints God the Judge arraying Himselfin His armour of destruction!

 (11) God is a righteous Judge, And a God (who is) angry every day. 

 (12) If he (_i. E. _, the evil-doer) turn not, He whets His sword, His bow He has bent, and made it ready. 

 (13) And for him He has prepared weapons of death, His arrows He has made blazing darts. 

Surely there is nothing grander in any poetry than this tremendousimage, smitten out with so few strokes of the chisel, and as true as itis grand. The representation applies to the facts of life, of which asdirected by a present Providence, and not of any future retribution, David is here thinking. Among these facts is chastisement falling uponobstinate antagonism to God. Modern ways of thinking shrink from suchrepresentations; but the whole history of the world teems withconfirmation of their truth--only what David calls the flaming arrows ofGod, men call "the natural consequences of evil. " The later revelationof God in Christ brings into greater prominence the disciplinarycharacter of all punishment here, but bates no jot of the intensity withwhich the earlier revelation grasped the truth of God as a righteousJudge in eternal opposition to, and aversion from, evil. 

With that solemn picture flaming before his inward eye, theprophet-psalmist turns to gaze on the evil-doer who has to bear thebrunt of these weapons of light. Summoning us to look with him by a"Behold!" he tells his fate in an image of frequent occurrence in thepsalms of this period, and very natural in the lips of a man wanderingin the desert among wild creatures, and stumbling sometimes into thetraps dug for them: "He has dug a hole and hollowed it out, and he fallsinto the pitfall he is making. " The crumbling soil in which he digsmakes his footing on the edge more precarious with every spadeful thathe throws out, and at last, while he is hard at work, in he tumbles. Itis the conviction spoken in the proverbs of all nations, expressed hereby David in a figure drawn from life--the conviction that all sin digsits own grave and is self-destructive. The psalm does not proclaim theyet deeper truth that this automatic action, by which sin sets in motionits own punishment, has a disciplinary purpose, so that the arrows ofGod wound for healing, and His armour is really girded on for, evenwhile it seems to be against, the sufferer. But it would not bedifficult to show that that truth underlies the whole Old Testamentdoctrine of retribution, and is obvious in many of David's psalms. Inthe present one the deliverance of the hunted prey is contemplated asthe end of the baffled trapper's fall into his own snare, and beyondthat the psalmist's thoughts do not travel. His own safety, thecertainty that his appeal to God's judgment will not be in vain, fillhis mind; and without following the fate of his enemy further, he closesthis song of tumultuous and varied emotion with calm confidence and avow of thanksgiving for a deliverance which is already as good asaccomplished:

 (17) I will give thanks to Jehovah according to His righteousness, And I will sing the name of Jehovah, Most High. 

We have still another psalm (lvii. ) which is perhaps best referred tothis period. According to the title, it belongs to the time when David"fled from Saul in the cave. " This may, of course, apply to eitherAdullam or Engedi, and there is nothing decisive to be alleged foreither; yet one or two resemblances to psalm vii. Incline the balance tothe latter period. 

These resemblances are the designation of his enemies as lions (vii. 2;lvii. 4); the image of their falling into their own trap (vii. 15; lvii. 6); the use of the phrase "my honour" or "glory" for "my soul" (vii. 5;lvii. 8--the same word in the original); the name of God as "Most High"(vii. 17; lvii. 2), an expression which only occurs twice besides in theDavidic psalms (ix. 2; xxi. 7); the parallelism in sense between thepetition which forms the centre and the close of the one, "Be Thouexalted, O God, above the heavens" (lvii. 5, 11), and that which is themost emphatic desire of the other, "Arise, O Lord, awake, . .. Lift upThyself for me" (vii. 6). Another correspondence, not preserved in ourEnglish version, is the employment in both of a rare poetical word, which originally means "to complete, " and so comes naturally to have thesecondary significations of "to perfect" and "to put an end to. " Theword in question only occurs five times in the Old Testament, and alwaysin psalms. Four of these are in hymns ascribed to David, of which twoare (lvii. 2), "The God that _performeth_ all things for me, " and (vii. 9), "Let the wickedness of the wicked _come to an end_. " The use of thesame peculiar word in two such dissimilar connections seems to show thatit was, as we say, "running in his head" at the time, and is, perhaps, astronger presumption of the cotemporaneousness of both psalms than itsemployment in both with the same application would have been. 

Characteristic of these early psalms is the occurrence of a refrain(compare lvi. And lix. ) which in the present instance closes both ofthe portions of which the hymn consists. The former of these (1-5)breathes prayerful trust, from which it passes to describe theencompassing dangers; the second reverses this order, and beginning withthe dangers and distress, rises to ringing gladness and triumph, asthough the victory were already won. The psalmist's confident cleavingof soul to God is expressed (ver. 1) by an image that may be connectedwith his circumstances at Engedi: "In Thee has my soul taken refuge. "The English version is correct as regards the sense, though itobliterates the beautiful metaphor by its rendering "trusteth. " Theliteral meaning of the verb is "to flee to a refuge, " and its employmenthere may be due to the poetical play of the imagination, which likenshis secure retreat among the everlasting hills to the safe hiding-placewhich his spirit found in God his habitation. A similar analogy appearsin the earliest use of the expression, which may have been floating inthe psalmist's memory, and which occurs in the ancient song of Moses(Deut. Xxxii. ). The scenery of the forty years' wanderings remarkablycolours that ode, and explains the frequent recurrence in it of the nameof God as "the Rock. " We have false gods, too, spoken of in it, as, "Their rock in whom they took refuge, " where the metaphor appears in itscompleteness (ver. 37). Our psalm goes on with words which contain afurther allusion to another part of the same venerable hymn, "And in theshadow of Thy wings will I take refuge, " which remind us of the grandimage in it of God's care over Israel, as of the eagle bearing hereaglets on her mighty pinions (ver. 11), and point onwards to the stillmore wonderful saying in which all that was terrible and stern in theolder figure is softened into tenderness, and instead of the fierceaffection of the mother eagle, the hen gathering her chickens under herwings becomes the type of the brooding love and more than maternalsolicitude of God in Christ. Nor can we forget that the only otherinstance of the figure before David's psalms is in the exquisite idylwhich tells of the sweet heroism of David's ancestress, Ruth, on whosegentle and homeless head was pronounced the benediction, "A full rewardbe given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art cometo trust" (Ruth ii. 12). We may perhaps also see in this clause anextension of the simile which unquestionably lies in the verb, and maythink of the strong "sides of the cave, " arching above the fugitive likea gigantic pair of wings beneath which he nestles warm and dry, whilethe short-lived storm roars among the rocks--a type of that broad pinionwhich is his true defence till threatening evils be overpast. In thepast he has sheltered his soul in God, but no past act of faith canavail for present distresses. It must be perpetually renewed. The pastdeliverances should make the present confidence more easy; and the trueuse of all earlier exercises of trust is to prepare for the resolve thatwe will still rely on the help we have so often proved. "I have trustedin Thee" should ever be followed by "And in the shadow of Thy wings willI trust. "

The psalmist goes on to fulfil his resolve. He takes refuge by prayer inGod, whose absolute elevation above all creatures and circumstances isthe ground of his hope, whose faithful might will accomplish its design, and complete His servant's lot. "I will call to God Most High; to Godwho perfects (His purpose) for me. " And then assured hope gleams uponhis soul, and though the storm-clouds hang low and black as ever, theyare touched with light. "He will send from heaven and save me. " But evenwhile this happy certainty dawns upon him, the contending fears, whichever lurk hard by faith, reassert their power, and burst in, breakingthe flow of the sentence, which by its harsh construction indicates thesudden irruption of disturbing thoughts. "He that would swallow me upreproaches (me). " With this two-worded cry of pain--prolonged by thevery unusual occurrence, in the middle of a verse, of the "Selah, " whichis probably a musical direction for the accompaniment--a billow ofterror breaks over his soul; but its force is soon spent, and the hope, above which for a moment it had rolled, rises from the broken spray likesome pillared light round which the surges dash in vain. "God shall sendforth His mercy and His truth"--those two white-robed messengers whodraw nigh to all who call on Him. Then follows in broken words, the truerendering of which is matter of considerable doubt, a renewed picture ofhis danger:

 (4) (With) my soul--among lions will I lie down. Devourers are the sons of men; Their teeth a spear and arrows, And their tongue a sharp sword

The psalmist seems to have broken off the construction, and instead offinishing the sentence as he began it, to have substituted the firstperson for the third, which ought to have followed "my soul. " Thisfragmentary construction expresses agitation of spirit. It may be aquestion whether the "lions" in the first clause are to be regarded as adescription of his enemies, who are next spoken of without metaphor assons of men who devour (or who "breathe out fire"), and whose words arecutting and wounding as spear and sword. The analogy of the other psalmsof this period favours such an understanding of the words. But, on theother hand, the reference preferred by Delitzsch and others gives greatbeauty. According to that interpretation, the fugitive among the savagecliffs prepares himself for his nightly slumbers in calm confidence, andlays himself down there in the cave, while the wild beasts, whose hauntit may have been, prowl without, feeling himself safer among them thanamong the more ferocious "sons of men, " whose hatred has a sharper tooththan even theirs. And then this portion of the psalm closes with therefrain, "Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens: let Thy glory beabove all the earth. " A prayer that God would show forth His power, andexalt His name by delivering His servant. What lofty conviction that hiscause was God's cause, that the Divine honour was concerned in hissafety, that he was a chosen instrument to make known God's praise overall the world!--and what self-forgetfulness in that, even whilst heprays for his own deliverance, he thinks of it rather as the magnifyingof God, than as it affects himself personally!

The second part continues the closing strain of the former, anddescribes the plots of his foes in the familiar metaphor of the pit, into which they fall themselves. The contemplation of this divineNemesis on evil-doers leads up to the grand burst of thanksgiving withwhich the psalm closes--

 (7) Fixed is my heart, O God! fixed my heart! I will sing and strike the harp. [K]

 (8) Awake, my glory! awake psaltery and harp![L] I will awake the dawn. 

[K] Properly, "sing with a musical accompaniment. "

[L] Two kinds of stringed instrument, the difference between which isvery obscure. 

If the former part may be regarded as the evening song of confidence, this is the morning hymn of thankfulness. He lay down in peace amonglions; he awakes to praise. He calls upon his soul to shake off slumber;he invokes the chords of his harp to arouse from its chamber thesleeping dawn. Like a mightier than himself, he will rise a great whilebefore day, and the clear notes of the rude lyre, his companion in allhis wanderings, will summon the morning to add its silent speech to Hispraise. But a still loftier thought inspires him. This hunted solitarynot only knows that his deliverance is certain, but he has already theconsciousness of a world-wide vocation, and anticipates that the storyof his sorrow and his trust, with the music of his psalms, belong to theworld, and will flow over the barriers of his own generation and of hisown land into the whole earth--

 (9) I will praise Thee among the peoples, O Lord, I will strike the harp to Thee among the nations. 

 (10) For great unto the heavens is Thy mercy, And to the clouds Thy truth. 

These two mighty messengers of God, whose coming he was sure of (ver. 3), will show themselves in his deliverance, boundless and filling allthe creation. They shall be the theme of his world-wide praise. Andthen with the repetition of the refrain the psalm comes round again tosupplication, and dies into silent waiting before God till He shall bepleased to answer. Thus triumphant were the hopes of the lonely fugitiveskulking in the wilderness; such bright visions peopled the wasteplaces, and made the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. 

The cxlii. Is also, according to the title, one of the cave-psalms. Butconsiderable doubt attaches to the whole group of so-called Davidiccompositions in the last book of the psalter (p. 138-144), from theirplace, and from the fact that there are just seven of them, as well asin some cases from their style and character. They are more probablylater hymns in David's manner. The one in question corresponds in tonewith the psalms which we have been considering. It breathes the sameprofound consciousness of desolation and loneliness: "My spirit isdarkened within me;" "Refuge fails me, no man cares for my soul. " Itglows with the same ardour of personal trust in and love to God whichspring from his very loneliness and helplessness: "I cry unto Thee, OJehovah! I say Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of theliving. " It triumphs with the same confidence, and with the sameconviction that his deliverance concerns all the righteous: "They shall_crown themselves in me_, for Thou hast dealt bountifully with me;" forsuch would appear to be the true meaning of the word rendered in ourversion "compass me about;" the idea being that the mercy of God to thepsalmist would become a source of festal gladness to all His servants, who would bind the story of God's bounty to him upon their brows like acoronal for a banquet. 

VIII. --THE EXILE--_CONTINUED_. 

As our purpose in this volume is not a complete biography, it will notbe necessary to dwell on the subsequent portions of the exile, inasmuchas there is little reference to these in the psalms. We must pass overeven that exquisite episode of Abigail, whose graceful presence and"most subtle flow of silver-paced counsel" soothed David's ruffledspirit, and led him captive at once as in a silken leash. The glimpse ofold-world ways in the story, the rough mirth of the shearers, the hintof the kind of black mail by which David's little force was provided, the snarling humour and garrulous crustiness of Nabal, David's fierceblaze of hot wrath, the tribute of the shepherds to the kindliness andhonour of the outlaws, the rustic procession, with the gracious ladylast of all, the stately courtesy of the meeting, her calm wisewords--not flattery, yet full of predictions of prosperity most pleasantto hear from such lips; not rebuke, yet setting in the strongest lighthow unworthy of God's anointed personal vengeance was; not servile, butyet recognising in delicate touches his absolute power over her; notabject, and yet full of supplication, --the quick response of David'sfrank nature and susceptible heart, which sweeps away all his wrath; thebudding germ of love, which makes him break into benedictions on her andher wisdom, and thankfulness that he had been kept back from "hurting_thee_, " and the dramatic close in their happy union, --all make up oneof the most charming of the many wonderful idyls of Scripture, allfragrant with the breath of love, and fresh with undying youth. Thestory lives--alas! how much longer do words endure than the poor earthlyaffections which they record!

After a second betrayal by the men of Ziph, and a second meeting withSaul--their last--in which the doomed man parts from him with blessingand predictions of victory on his unwilling lips, David seems to havebeen driven to desperation by his endless skulking in dens and caves, and to have seen no hope of continuing much longer to maintain himselfon the frontier and to elude Saul's vigilance. Possibly others thanNabal grudged to pay him for the volunteer police which he kept up onbehalf of the pastoral districts exposed to the wild desert tribes. Atall events he once more made a plunge into Philistine territory, andoffers himself and his men to the service of the King of Gath. On theoffer being accepted, the little town of Ziklag was allotted to them, and became their home for a year and four months. 

To this period of comparative security one psalm has been supposed tobelong--the xxxi. , which, in tone and in certain expressions, corresponds very well with the circumstances. There are manysimilarities in it with the others of the same period which we havealready considered--such, for instance, as the figure of God his rock(ver. 3), the net which his enemies have laid for him (ver. 4), theallusions to their calumnies and slanders (vers. 13, 18), his safeconcealment in God (ver. 20: compare xxvii. 5; lvii. 1; xvii. 8, etc. ), and the close verbal resemblance of ver. 24 with the closing words ofpsalm xxvii. The reference, however, which has been taken as pointing toDavid's position in Ziklag is that contained in the somewhat remarkablewords (ver. 21): "Blessed be the Lord, for He hath showed me Hismarvellous loving-kindness in a strong city. " Of course, the expressionmay be purely a graphic figure for the walls and defences of the Divineprotection, as, indeed, it is usually understood to be. But the generalidea of the encompassing shelter of God has just been set forth in themagnificent imagery of the previous verse as the tabernacle, the secretof His presence in which He hides and guards His servants. And thefurther language of the phrase in question, introduced as it is by arapturous burst of blessing and praise, seems so emphatic and peculiaras to make not unnatural the supposition of a historical basis in someevent which had recently happened to the psalmist. 

No period of the life will so well correspond to such a requirement asthe sixteen months of his stay in Ziklag, during which he was completelyfree from fear of Saul, and stood high in favour with the King of Gath, in whose territory he had found a refuge. We may well believe that tothe hunted exile, so long accustomed to a life of constant alarms andhurried flight, the quiet of a settled home was very sweet, and thatbehind the rude fortifications of the little town in the southernwilderness there seemed security, which made a wonderful contrast totheir defenceless lairs and lurking-places among the rocks. Their eyeswould lose their watchful restlessness, and it would be possible to layaside their weapons, to gather their households about them, and, thoughthey were in a foreign land, still to feel something of the bliss ofpeaceful habitudes and tranquil use and wont healing their broken lives. No wonder, then, that such thankful praise should break from theleader's lips! No wonder that he should regard this abode in a fortifiedcity as the result of a miracle of Divine mercy! He describes thetremulous despondency which had preceded this marvel of loving-kindnessin language which at once recalls the wave of hopelessness which sweptacross his soul after his final interview with Saul, and which led tohis flight into Philistine territory, "And David said in his heart, Ishall now perish one day by the hand of Saul" (1 Sam. Xxvii. 1). Howcompletely this corresponds with the psalm, allowance being made for thedifference between poetry and prose, when he describes the thoughtswhich had shaded his soul just before the happy peace of the strongcity--"I said in my haste, [M] I am cut off from before Thine eyes;nevertheless Thou heardest the voice of my supplication" (ver. 22). Andrising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience tothe great truths concerning God's care of His children, the discovery ofwhich was to him even more precious than his personal safety, he breaksforth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of hisconsciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole householdof God--

 (23) O love Jehovah, all ye beloved of Him! The faithful doth Jehovah preserve, And plentifully repayeth the proud-doer. 

 (24) Courage! and let your heart be strong, All ye that wait for Jehovah!

[M] Confusion (Perowne), distrust (Delitzsch), anguish (Ewald), trepidation (Calvin). The word literally means to sway backwards andforwards, and hence to be agitated by any emotion, principally by fear;and then, perhaps, to flee in terror. 

The glow of personal attachment to Jehovah which kindles in the trustfulwords is eminently characteristic. It anticipates the final teaching ofthe New Testament in bringing all the relations between God and thedevout soul down to the one bond of love. "We love Him because He firstloved us, " says John. And David has the same discernment that the basisof all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of God, and that theonly response which that seeking love requires is the awaking of theecho of its own Divine voice in our hearts. Love begets love; love seekslove; love rests in love. Our faith _corresponds_ to His faithfulness, our obedience to His command, our reverence to His majesty; but our love_resembles_ His, from which it draws its life. So the one exhortation is"love the Lord, " and the ground of it lies in that name--"Hisbeloved"--those to whom He shows His loving-kindness (ver. 21). 

The closing words remind us of the last verse of psalm xxvii. They aredistinctly quoted from it, with the variation that there the hearteningto courage was addressed to his own soul, and here to "all who wait onthe Lord. " The resemblance confirms the reference of both psalms to thesame epoch, while the difference suits the change in his circumstancesfrom a period of comparative danger, such as his stay at Adullam, to oneof greater security, like his residence in Ziklag. The same persons whowere called to love the Lord because they were participant of Hisloving-kindness, are now called to courage and manly firmness of soulbecause their hope is fixed on Jehovah. The progress of thought issignificant and obvious. Love to God, resting on consciousness of Hislove to us, is the true armour. "There is no fear in love. " The heartfilled with it is strong to resist the pressure of outward disasters, while the empty heart is crushed like a deserted hulk by the grindingcollision of the icebergs that drift rudderless on the wild wintry seaof life. Love, too, is the condition of hope. The patience andexpectation of the latter must come from the present fruition of thesweetness of the former. Of these fair sisters, Love is the elder as thegreater; it is she who bears in her hands the rich metal from which Hopeforges her anchor, and the strong cords that hold it; her experiencesupplies all the colours with which her sister paints the dim distance;and she it is who makes the other bold to be sure of the future, andclear-sighted to see the things that are not as though they were. Tolove the Lord is the path, and the only path, to hoping in the Lord. Sohad the psalmist found it for himself. In his changeful, perilous yearsof exile he had learned that the brightness with which hope glowed onhis lonely path depended not on the accident of greater or less externalsecurity, but on the energy of the clear flame of love in his heart. Notin vain had his trials been to him, which cast that rich treasure to hisfeet from their stormy waves. Not in vain will ours be to us, if welearn the lesson which he here would divide with all those "that wait onthe Lord. "

Our limits prevent the further examination of the remaining psalms ofthis period. It is the less necessary, inasmuch as those which have beenalready considered fairly represent the whole. The xi. , xiii. , xvii. , xxii. , xxv. , and lxiv. May, with varying probability, be considered asbelonging to the Sauline persecution. To this list some critics wouldadd the xl. And lxix. , but on very uncertain grounds. But if we excludethem, the others have a strong family likeness, not only with eachother, but with those which have been presented to the reader. Theimagery of the wilderness, which has become so familiar to us, continually reappears; the prowling wild beasts, the nets and snares, the hunted psalmist like a timid bird among the hills; the protestationof innocence, the passionate invocation of retribution on the wicked, the confidence that their own devices will come down on their heads, theintense yearning of soul after God--are all repeated in these psalms. Single metaphors and peculiar phrases which we have already met withrecur--as, for instance, "the shadow of Thy wings" (xvii. 8, lvii. 1), and the singular phrase rendered in our version, "show Thy marvellousloving-kindness" (xvii. 7, xxxi. 21), which is found only here. In oneof these psalms (xxxv. 13) there seems to be a reference to his earliestdays at the court, and to the depth of loving sympathy with Saul'sdarkened spirit, which he learned to cherish, as he stood before him tosoothe him with the ordered harmonies of harp and voice. The words areso definite that they appear to refer to some historic occasion:

 And as for me--in their sickness my clothing was sackcloth, With fasting I humbled my soul, And my prayer into my own bosom returned. 

So truly did he feel for him who is now his foe. The outward marks ofmourning became the natural expression of his feelings. Such is plainlythe meaning of the two former clauses, as well as of the followingverse. As the whole is a description of the outward signs of grief, itseems better to understand the last of these three clauses as a pictureof the bent head sunk on the bosom even while he prayed, [N] than tobreak the connection by referring it either to the requital of hate forhis sympathy, [O] or to the purity of his prayer, which was such that hecould desire nothing more for himself. [P] He goes on with theenumeration of the signs of sorrow: "As if (he had been) a friend, abrother to me, I went, "--walking slowly, like a man absorbed in sorrow:"as one who laments a mother, in mourning garments I boweddown, "--walking with a weary, heavy stoop, like one crushed by amother's death, with the garb of woe. Thus faithfully had he loved, andtruly wept for the noble ruined soul which, blinded by passion andpoisoned by lies, had turned to be his enemy. And that same love clungby him to the last, as it ever does with great and good men, who learnof God to suffer long and be kind, to bear all things, and hope allthings. 

[N] So Ewald and Delitzsch. 

[O] Hupfeld. 

[P] Perowne. 

Of these psalms the xxii. Is remarkable. In it David's personalexperience seems to afford only the starting-point for a purelyMessianic prophecy, which embraces many particulars that far transcendanything recorded of his sorrows. The impossibility of findingoccurrences in his life corresponding to such traits as tortured limbsand burning thirst, pierced hands and parted garments, has driven somecritics to the hypothesis that we have here a psalm of the exiledescribing either actual sufferings inflicted on some unknown confessorin Babylon, or in figurative language the calamities of Israel there. But the Davidic origin is confirmed by many obvious points ofresemblance with the psalms which are indisputably his, and especiallywith those of the Sauline period, while the difficulty of findinghistorical facts answering to the emphatic language is evaded, not met, by either assuming that such facts existed in some life which has leftno trace, or by forcing a metaphorical sense on words which soundwonderfully like the sad language of a real sufferer. Of course, if webelieve that prediction is an absurdity, any difficulty will be lighterthan the acknowledgment that we have prediction here. But, unless wehave a foregone conclusion of that sort to blind us, we shall see inthis psalm a clear example of the prophecy of a suffering Messiah. Inmost of the other psalms where David speaks of his sorrows we have onlya typical foreshadowing of Christ. But in this, and in such others aslxix. And cix. (if these are David's), we have type changing intoprophecy, and the person of the psalmist fading away before the imagewhich, by occasion of his own griefs, rose vast, and solemn, and distantbefore his prophet gaze, --the image of One who should be perfectly allwhich he was in partial measure, the anointed of God, the utterer of Hisname to His brethren, the King of Israel, --and whose path to Hisdominion should be thickly strewn with solitary sorrow, and reproach, and agony, to whose far more exceeding weight of woe all his afflictionwas light as a feather, and transitory as a moment. And when thepsalmist had learned that lesson, besides all the others of trust andpatience which his wanderings taught him, his schooling was nearly over, he was almost ready for a new discipline; and the slowly-evolvingrevelation of God's purposes, which by his sorrows had unfolded moredistinctly than before "the sufferings of the Messiah, " was ripening forthe unveiling, in his Kinghood, of "the glory that should follow. "

IX. --THE KING. 

We have now to turn and see the sudden change of fortune which liftedthe exile to a throne. The heavy cloud which had brooded so long overthe doomed king broke in lightning crash on the disastrous field ofGilboa. Where is there a sadder and more solemn story of the fate of asoul which makes shipwreck "of faith and of a good conscience, " thanthat awful page which tells how, godless, wretched, mad with despair andmeasureless pride, he flung himself on his bloody sword, and died asuicide's death, with sons and armour-bearer and all his men, a ghastlycourt of corpses, laid round him? He had once been brave, modest, andkind, full of noble purposes and generous affections--and he ended so. Into what doleful regions of hate and darkness may self-will drag asoul, when once the reins fall loose from a slackened hand! And what apathetic beam of struggling light gleams through heavy clouds, in thegrateful exploit of the men of Jabesh, who remembered how he had oncesaved them, while yet he could care and dare for his kingdom, andperilled their lives to bear the poor headless corpse to its ruderesting-place!

The news is received by the fugitive at Ziklag in striking andcharacteristic fashion. He first flames out in fierce wrath upon thelying Amalekite, who had hurried with the tidings and sought favour byfalsely representing that he had killed the king on the field. A shortshrift and a bloody end were his. And then the wrath melts intomourning. Forgetting the mad hatred and wild struggles of that poorsoul, and his own wrongs, remembering only the friendship and noblenessof his earlier days, he casts over the mangled corpses of Saul andJonathan the mantle of his sweet elegy, and bathes them with the healingwaters of his unstinted praise and undying love. Not till these twooffices of justice and affection had been performed, does he rememberhimself and the change in his own position which had been effected. Hehad never thought of Saul as standing between him and the kingdom; thefirst feeling on his death was not, as it would have been with a lessdevout and less generous heart, a flush of gladness at the thought ofthe empty throne, but a sharp pang of pain from the sense of an emptyheart. And even when he begins to look forward to his own new course, there is that same remarkable passiveness which we have observedalready. His first step is to "inquire of the Lord, saying, Shall I goup to any of the cities of Judah?" (2 Sam. Ii. 1). He will do nothing inthis crisis of his fortunes, when all which had been so long a hopeseemed to be rapidly becoming a fact, until his Shepherd shall lead him. Rapid and impetuous as he was by nature, schooled to swift decisions, followed by still swifter action, knowing that a blow struck at once, while all was chaos and despair at home, might set him on the throne, heholds nature and policy and the impatience of his people in check tohear what God will say. So fully did he fulfil the vow of his earlypsalm, "My strength! upon thee will I wait" (lix. 9). 

We can fancy the glad march to the ancient Hebron, where the greatfathers of the nation lay in their rock-hewn tombs. Even before thedeath of Saul, David's strength had been rapidly increasing, by aconstant stream of fugitives from the confusion and misery into whichthe kingdom had fallen. Even Benjamin, Saul's own tribe, sent him someof its famous archers--a sinister omen of the king's waning fortunes;the hardy half-independent men of Manasseh and Gad, from the pastoraluplands on the east of Jordan, "whose faces, " according to the vividdescription of the chronicler (1 Chron. Xii. 8), "were like the faces oflions, and were as swift as roes upon the mountains, " sought hisstandard; and from his own kinsmen of Judah recruits "day by day came toDavid to help him, until it was a great host like the host of God. " Withsuch forces, it would have been child's play to have subdued anyscattered troops of the former dynasty which might still have been in acondition to keep the field. But he made no attempt of the sort; andeven when he came to Hebron he took no measures to advance any claims tothe crown. The language of the history seems rather to imply adisbanding of his army, or at least their settling down to domestic lifein the villages round Hebron, without a thought of winning the kingdomby arms. And his elevation to the partial monarchy which he at firstpossessed was the spontaneous act of "the men of Judah, " who come to himand anoint him king over Judah. 

The limits of his territory are substantially those of the kingdom overwhich his descendants ruled after Jeroboam's revolt, thus indicating theexistence of a natural "line of cleavage" between north and south. Thegeographical position of Benjamin finally attached it to the lattermonarchy; but for the present, the wish to retain the supremacy which ithad had while the king was one of the tribe, made it the nucleus of afeeble and lingering opposition to David, headed by Saul's cousin Abner, and rallying round his incompetent son Ishbosheth. [Q] The chronology ofthis period is obscure. David reigned in Hebron seven years and a half, and as Ishbosheth's phantom sovereignty only occupied two of theseyears, and those evidently the last, it would appear almost as if thePhilistines had held the country, with the exception of Judah, in suchforce that no rival cared to claim the dangerous dignity, and that fiveyears passed before the invaders were so far cleared out as to leaveleisure for civil war. 

[Q] The Canaanitish worship of Baal seems to have lingered in Saul'sfamily. One of his grand-uncles was named Baal (1 Chron. Ix. 36); hisson was really called Eshbaal (Fire of Baal), which was contemptuouslyconverted into Ishbosheth (Man of Shame). So also Mephibosheth wasproperly Meribbaal (Fighter for Baal). 

The summary narrative of these seven years presents the still youthfulking in a very lovable light. The same temper which had marked his firstacts after Saul's death is strikingly brought out (2 Sam. Ii. -iv. ) Heseems to have left the conduct of the war altogether to Joab, as if heshrank from striking a single blow for his own advancement. When he doesinterfere, it is on the side of peace, to curb and chastise ferociousvengeance and dastardly assassination. The incidents recorded all go tomake up a picture of rare generosity, of patient waiting for God tofulfil His purposes, of longing that the miserable strife between thetribes of God's inheritance should end. He sends grateful messages toJabesh-Gilead; he will not begin the conflict with the insurgents. Theonly actual fight recorded is provoked by Abner, and managed withunwonted mildness by Joab. The list of his children born in Hebron isinserted in the very heart of the story of the insurrection, a token ofthe quiet domestic life of peaceful joys and cares which he lived whilethe storm was raging without. Eagerly, and without suspicion, hewelcomes Abner's advances towards reconciliation. He falls for a momentto the level of his times, and yields to a strong temptation, in makingthe restoration of his long-lost wife Michal the condition of furthernegotiations--a demand which was strictly just, no doubt, but for whichlittle more can be said. The generosity of his nature and the idealpurity of his love, which that incident shadows, shine out again in hisindignation at Joab's murder of Abner, though he was too meek to avengeit. There is no more beautiful picture in his life than that of hisfollowing the bier where lay the bloody corpse of the man who had beenhis enemy ever since he had known him, and sealing the reconciliationwhich Death ever makes in noble souls, by the pathetic dirge he chantedover Abner's grave. We have a glimpse of his people's unboundedconfidence in him, given incidentally when we are told that his sorrowpleased them, "as whatsoever the king did pleased all the people. " Wehave a glimpse of the feebleness of his new monarchy as against thefierce soldier who had done so much to make it, in his acknowledgmentthat he was yet weak, being but recently anointed king, and that thesevehement sons of Zeruiah were too strong for him; and we have aremarkable trace of connection with the psalms, in the closing wordswith which he invokes on Joab the vengeance which he as yet felt himselfunable to execute: "The Lord shall reward the doer of evil according tohis wickedness. "

The only other incident recorded of his reign in Hebron is his executionof summary justice upon the murderers of the poor puppet-kingIshbosheth, upon whose death, following so closely that of Abner, thewhole resistance to David's power collapses. There had never been anyreal popular opposition. His enemies are emphatically named as "thehouse of Saul, " and we find Abner himself admitting that "the elders ofIsrael" wanted David as king (2 Sam. Iii. 17), so that when he was gone, it is two Benjamites who give the _coup-de-grâce_ to Ishbosheth, and endthe whole shadowy rival power. Immediately the rulers of all the tribescome up to Hebron, with the tender of the crown. They offer it on thetriple grounds of kinship, of his military service even in Saul's reign, and of the Divine promise of the throne. A solemn pact was made, andDavid was anointed in Hebron, a king by Divine right, but also aconstitutional monarch chosen by popular election, and limited in hispowers. 

The first result of his new strength is the capture of the oldhill-fortress of the Jebusites, the city of Melchizedek, which hadfrowned down upon Israel unsubdued till now, and whose inhabitantstrusted so absolutely in its natural strength that their answer to thedemand for surrender was the jeer, "Thou wilt not come hither, but theblind and lame will drive thee away. " This time David does not leave thewar to others. For the first time for seven years we read, "_The king_and his men went to Jerusalem. " Established there as his capital, hereigns for some ten years with unbroken prosperity over a loyal andloving people, with this for the summary of the whole period, "Davidwent on and grew great, and the Lord God of Hosts was with him" (2 Sam. V. 10). These years are marked by three principal events--the bringingup of the ark to the city of David, the promise by Nathan of theperpetual dominion of his house, and the unbroken flow of victories overthe surrounding nations. These are the salient points of the narrativein the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. V. -viii. ), and are all abundantlyillustrated by the psalms. We shall have next then to consider "TheSongs of the King. "

How did the fugitive bear his sudden change of fortune? What were histhoughts when at last the dignity which he had ever expected and neversought was his? The answer is ready to our hand in that grand psalm (Ps. Xviii. ) which he "spake in the day that the Lord delivered him from allhis enemies, and from the hand of Saul. " The language of thissuperscription seems to connect the psalm with the period of internaland external repose which preceded and prompted David's "purpose tobuild an house for the Lord" (2 Sam. Vii. ) The same thankfulness whichglows so brightly in the psalm stimulated that desire, and the emphaticreference to the mercy promised by God to "his seed for evermore, " whichcloses the hymn, points perhaps to the definite promise of theperpetuity of the kingdom to his descendants, which was God's answer tothe same desire. But whether the psalm belongs to the years of thepartial sovereignty at Hebron, or to those of the complete dominion atJerusalem, it cannot be later than the second of these two dates; andwhatever may have been the time of its composition, the feelings whichit expresses are those of the first freshness of thankful praise when hewas firmly settled in the kingdom. Some critics would throw it onwardsto the very close of his life. But this has little in its favour beyondthe fact that the author of the Book of Samuel has placed his version ofthe psalm among the records of David's last days. There is, however, nothing to show that that position is due to chronologicalconsiderations. The victories over heathen nations which are supposed tobe referred to in the psalm, and are relied on by the advocates of laterdate, really point to the earlier, which was the time of his mostbrilliant conquests. And the marked assertions of his own purity, aswell as the triumphant tone of the whole, neither of whichcharacteristics corresponds to the sad and shaded years after his greatfall, point in the same direction. On the whole, then, we may fairlytake this psalm as belonging to the bright beginning of the monarchy, and as showing us how well the king remembered the vows which the exilehad mingled with his tears. 

It is one long outpouring of rapturous thankfulness and triumphantadoration, which streams from a full heart in buoyant waves of song. Nowhere else, even in the psalms--and if not there, certainly nowhereelse--is there such a continuous tide of unmingled praise, suchmagnificence of imagery, such passion of love to the delivering God, such joyous energy of conquering trust. It throbs throughout with thelife blood of devotion. The strong flame, white with its very ardour, quivers with its own intensity as it steadily rises heavenward. All theterrors, and pains, and dangers of the weary years--the black fuel forthe ruddy glow--melt into warmth too great for smoke, too equable toblaze. The plaintive notes that had so often wailed from his harp, sadas if the night wind had been wandering among its chords, have all ledup to this rushing burst of full-toned gladness. The very blessedness ofheaven is anticipated, when sorrows gone by are understood and seen intheir connection with the joy to which they have led, and are felt tobe the theme for deepest thankfulness. Thank God that, for theconsolation of the whole world, we have this hymn of praise from thesame lips which said, "My life is spent with grief, and my years withsighing. " "We have seen the end of the Lord, that the Lord is verypitiful and of tender mercy. " The tremulous minors of trustful sorrowshall swell into rapturous praise; and he who, compassed with foes, cries upon God, will, here or yonder, sing this song "unto the Lord, inthe day that the Lord delivers him from the hand of all his enemies. "

X. --THE KING--_CONTINUED_. 

In our last chapter we have seen that the key-note of "The Songs of theKing" may be said to be struck in Psalm xviii. Its complete analysiswould carry us far beyond our limits. We can but glance at some of themore prominent points of the psalm. 

The first clause strikes the key-note. "I love Thee, O Jehovah, mystrength. " That personal attachment to God, which is so characteristicof David's religion, can no longer be pent up in silence, but gushesforth like some imprisoned stream, broad and full even from itswell-head. The common word for "love" is too weak for him, and he bendsto his use another, never elsewhere employed to express man's emotionstowards God, the intensity of which is but feebly expressed by some suchperiphrasis as, "From my heart do I love Thee. " The same exalted feelingis wonderfully set forth by the loving accumulation of Divine nameswhich follow, as if he would heap together in one great pile all therich experiences of that God, unnamed after all names, which he hadgarnered up in his distresses and deliverances. They tell so much as thepoor vehicle of words can tell, what his Shepherd in the heavens hadbeen to him. They are the treasures which he has brought back from hisexile; and they most pathetically point to the songs of that time. Hehad called on God by these names when it was hard to believe in theirreality, and now he repeats them all in his glad hour of fruition, fortoken that they who in their extremity trust in the name of the Lordwill one day have the truth of faith transformed into truth ofexperience. "Jehovah, my rock and my fortress, " reminds us of his cry inZiklag, "Thou art my rock and my fortress" (xxxi. 3), and of the "hold"(the same word) of Adullam in which he had lain secure. "My deliverer"echoes many a sigh in the past, now changed into music of praise. "Myrock" (a different word from that in a preceding clause), "in whom Itake refuge, " recalls the prayer, "Be Thou my rock of strength" (xxxi. 2), and his former effort of confidence, when, in the midst ofcalamities, he said, "My soul takes refuge in Thee" (lvii. 1. ) "Myshield" carries us back to the ancient promise, fresh after so manycenturies, and fulfilled anew in every age, "Fear not, Abram, I am thyshield, " and to his own trustful words at a time when trust wasdifficult, "My shield is upon God" (vii. 10). "My high tower, " the lastof this glowing series, links on to the hope breathed in the first songof his exile, "God is my defence" (the same expression); "Thou hast beenmy defence in the day of trouble" (lix. 9, 16). And then he sums up hiswhole past in one general sentence, which tells his habitual resource inhis troubles, and the blessed help which he has ever found, "I call onJehovah, who is worthy to be praised;[R] and from my enemies am I saved"(verse 3). 

[R] The old English word "the worshipful" comes near the form andmeaning of the phrase. 

No comment can heighten, and no translation can adequately represent, while none can altogether destroy the unapproachable magnificence of thedescription which follows, of the majestic coming forth of God in answerto his cry. It stands at the very highest point, even when compared withthe other sublime passages of a like kind in Scripture. Howpathetically he paints his sore need in metaphors which again bring tomind the songs of the outlaw:--

 The snares of death compassed me, And floods of destruction made me afraid; The snares of Sheol surrounded me, The toils of death surprised me. 

As he so often likened himself to some wild creature in the nets, sohere Death, the hunter, has cast his fatal cords about him, and they areready suddenly to close on the unsuspecting prey. Or, varying the image, he is sinking in black waters, which are designated by a difficultphrase (literally, "streams of Belial, " or worthlessness), which is mostprobably rendered as above (so Ewald, Hupfeld). In this dire extremityone thing alone is left him. He is snared, but he has his voice free tocry with, and a God to cry to. He is all but sinking, but he can stillshriek (so one of the words might be rendered) "like some strong swimmerin his agony. " And it is enough. That one loud call for help rises, likesome slender pillar of incense-smoke, straight into the palace temple ofGod--and, as he says, with a meaning which our version obscures, "My crybefore Him came into His ears. " The prayer that springs from a livingconsciousness of being in God's presence, even when nearest toperishing, is the prayer that He hears. The cry is a poor, thin, solitary voice, unheard on earth, though shrill enough to rise toheaven; the answer shakes creation. One man in his extremity can put inmotion all the magnificence of God. Overwhelming is the contrast betweenthe cause and the effect. And marvellous as the greatness, so also isthe swiftness of the answer. A moment suffices--and then! Even whilst hecries, the rocking earth and the quivering foundations of the hills areconscious that the Lord comes from afar for his help. The majesticself-revelation of God as the deliverer has for its occasion thepsalmist's cry of distress, and for its issue, "He drew me out of manywaters. " All the splendour flames out because a poor man prays, and allthe upheaval of earth and the artillery of heaven has simply this forits end, that a poor man may be delivered. The paradox of prayer neverfound a more bold expression than in this triumphant utterance, of theinsignificant occasion for, and the equally insignificant result soughtby, the exercise of the energy of Omnipotence. 

The Divine deliverance is set forth under the familiar image of thecoming of God in a tempest. Before it bursts, and simultaneous with theprayer, the "earth rocks and quivers, " the sunless "pillars of the hillsreel and rock to and fro, " as if conscious of the gathering wrath whichbegins to flame far off in the highest heavens. There has been noforth-putting yet of the Divine power. It is but accumulating its fieryenergy, and already the solid framework of the world trembles, anticipating the coming crash. The firmest things shake, the loftiestbow before His wrath. "There went up smoke out of his nostrils, and fireout of his mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it. " This kindlinganger, expressed by these tremendous metaphors, is conceived of as thepreparation in "His temple" for the earthly manifestation of deliveringvengeance. It is like some distant thunder-cloud which grows on thehorizon into ominous blackness, and seems to be filling itsashen-coloured depths with store of lightnings. Then the piled-up terrorbegins to move, and, drawing nearer, pours out an avalanche of gloomseamed with fire. First the storm-cloud descends, hanging lower andlower in the sky. And whose foot is that which is planted upon its heavymass, thick and frowning enough to be the veil of God?

 "He bowed the heavens, and came down, And blackness of cloud was under His feet. "

Then the sudden rush of wind which heralds the lightning breaks theawful silence:--

 And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly, Yea, He swept along upon the wings of the wind. 

The cherubs bear, as in a chariot, the throned God, and the swiftpinions of the storm bear the cherubs. But He that sits upon the throne, above material forces and the highest creatures, is unseen. Thepsalmist's imagination stops at its base, nor dares to gaze into thatlight above; and the silence is more impressive than all words. Insteadof pagan attempts at a likeness of God, we have next painted, with equaldescriptive accuracy, poetic force, and theological truth, the pitchyblackness which hides Him. In the gloom of its depths He makes His"secret place" His "tent. " It is "darkness of waters, " that is, darknessfrom which streams out the thunder-rain; it is "thick clouds of theskies;" or perhaps the expression should be rendered, "heavy masses ofclouds. " Then comes the crash of the tempest. The brightness that liescloser around Him, and lives in the heart of the blackness, flamesforth, parting the thick clouds--and through the awful rent hail andcoals of fire are flung down on the trembling earth. The granddescription may be rendered in two ways: either that adopted in ourversion, "At the brightness that was before Him His thick cloudspassed--hailstones and coals of fire;" or, "Through His thick cloudsthere passed hailstones and coals of fire. " The former of these is themore dramatic; the broken construction expresses more vividly the fiercesuddenness of the lightning blaze and of the down-rush of the hail, andis confirmed by the repetition of the same words in the sameconstruction in the next verse. That verse describes another burst ofthe tempest--the deep roll of the thunder along the skies is the voiceof Jehovah, and again the lightning tears through the clouds, and thehail streams down. With what profound truth all this destructive poweris represented as coming from the brightness of God--that "glory" whichin its own nature is light, but in its contact with finite and sinfulcreatures must needs become darkness, rent asunder by lightning! Whatlessons as to the root and the essential nature of all punitive acts ofGod cluster round such words! and how calm and blessed the faith whichcan pierce even the thickest mass "that veileth Love!"--to see the lightat the centre, even though the circumference be brooding thunder-cloudstorn by sudden fires. Then comes the purpose of all this apocalypse ofDivine magnificence. The fiery arrows scatter the psalmist's enemies. The waters in which he had well nigh drowned are dried up before the hotbreath of His anger. "That dread voice" speaks "which shrinks theirstreams. " And amid the blaze of tempest, the rocking earth, and thefailing floods, His arm is thrust forth from above, and draws Hisservant from many waters. As one in later times, "he was afraid, andbeginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me; and immediately Hestretched forth His hand and caught him. "

A calmer tone follows, as the psalmist recounts without metaphor hisdeliverance, and reiterates the same assertion of his innocence whichwe have already found so frequently in the previous psalms (vers. 17-24). Rising from his personal experience to the broad and loftythoughts of God which that experience had taught him, as it does all whoprize life chiefly as a means of knowing Him, he proclaims the solemntruth, that in the exercise of a righteous retribution, and by the verynecessity of our moral nature, God appears to man what man is to God:loving to the loving, upright to the upright, pure to the pure, andfroward to the froward. Our thoughts of God are shaped by our moralcharacter; the capacity of perceiving depends on sympathy. "Unless theeye were light, how could it see the sun?" The self-revelation of God inHis providence, of which only the psalm speaks, is modified according toour moral character, being full of love to those who love, being harshand antagonistic to those who set themselves in opposition to it. Thereis a higher law of grace, whereby the sinfulness of man but draws forththe tenderness of a father's pardoning pity; and the brightestrevelation of His love is made to froward prodigals. But that is not inthe psalmist's view here, nor does it interfere with the law ofretribution in its own sphere. 

The purely personal tone is again resumed, and continued unbroken to theclose. In the former portion David was passive, except for the voice ofprayer, and God's arm alone was his deliverance. In the latter half heis active, the conquering king, whose arm is strengthened for victory byGod. This difference may possibly suggest the reference of the formerhalf to the Sauline persecution, when, as we have seen, the exile evershrunk from avenging himself; and of the latter to the early years ofhis monarchy, which, as we shall see, were characterized by muchsuccessful military activity; and if so, the date of the psalm wouldmost naturally be taken to be the close of his victorious campaigns, when "the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies round about" (2Sam. Vii. 1). Be that as it may, the latter portion of the psalm showsus the soldier king tracing all his past victories to God alone, andbuilding upon them the confidence of a world-wide dominion. The point atwhich memory passes into hope is difficult to determine, and greatvariety of opinion prevails on the matter among commentators. It isperhaps best to follow many of the older versions, and the valuableexposition of Hupfeld, in regarding the whole section from ver. 37 ofour translation as the expression of the trust which past experience hadwrought. We shall then have two periods in the second half of thepsalm--the past victories won by God's help (vers. 31-36), the comingtriumphs of which these are the pledge (vers. 37-end). 

In the former there shine out not only David's habitual consciousness ofdependence on and aid from God, but also a very striking picture of hisphysical qualifications for a military leader. He is girded with bodilystrength, swift and sure of foot like a deer, able to scale the cragswhere his foes fortified themselves like the wild antelopes he had sooften seen bounding among the dizzy ledges of the cliffs in thewilderness; his hands are trained for war, and his sinewy arms can bendthe great bow of brass. But these capacities are gifts, and not they, but their Giver, have made him victorious. Looking back upon all hispast, this is its summing up:--

 "Thou hast also given me the shield of Thy salvation, And Thy right hand hath holden me up, And Thy lowliness hath made me great. "

God's strength, God's buckler, God's supporting hand, God'scondescension, by which He bows down to look upon and help the feeble, with the humble showing Himself humble--these have been his weapons, andfrom these has come his victory. 

And because of these, he looks forward to a future like the past, butmore glorious still, thereby teaching us how the unchanging faithfulnessof our God should encourage us to take all the blessings which we havereceived as but the earnest of what is yet to come. He sees himselfpursuing his enemies, and smiting them to the ground. The fierce lightof battle blazes through the rapid sentences which paint the panicflight, and the swift pursuit, the vain shrieks to man and God forsuccour, and the utter annihilation of the foe:--

 (42) "And I will pound them like dust before the wind, Like street-filth will I empty them out. "

Then he gives utterance to the consciousness that his kingdom isdestined to extend far beyond the limits of Israel, in words which, likeso many of the prophecies, may be translated in the present tense, butare obviously future in signification--the prophet placing himself inimagination in the midst of the time of which he speaks:--

 (43) "Thou deliverest me from the strivings of the people (_i. E. _, Israel), Thou makest me head of the heathen; People whom I knew not serve me. 

 (44) At the hearing of the ear they obey me. The sons of the stranger feign obedience to me. 

 (45) The sons of the stranger fade away, They come trembling from their hiding-places. "

The rebellion which weakened his early reign is subdued, and beyond thebounds of his own people his dominion spreads. Strange tribes submit tothe very sound of his name, and crouch before him in extorted andpretended submission. The words are literally "lie unto me, " descriptiveof the profuse professions of loyalty characteristic of conqueredorientals. Their power withers before him like a gathered flower beforea hot wind, and the fugitives creep trembling out of their holes wherethey have hid themselves. 

Again he recurs to the one thought which flows like a river of lightthrough all the psalm--that all his help is in God. The names which helovingly heaped together at the beginning are in part echoed in theclose. "The Lord liveth, and blessed is my rock, and the God of mysalvation is exalted. " His deliverances have taught him to know a livingGod, swift to hear, active to help, in whom he lives, who has magnifiedHis own name in that He has saved His servant. And as that blessedconviction is the sum of all his experience, so one glad vow expressesall his resolves, and thrills with the expectation which he hadcherished even in his lonely exile, that the music of his psalm wouldone day echo through all the world. With lofty consciousness of his newdignity, and with lowly sense that it is God's gift, he emphaticallynames himself _His_ king, _His_ anointed, taking, as it were, his crownfrom his brows and laying it on the altar. With prophetic eye he looksonward, and sees the throne to which he had been led by a series ofmiracles enduring for ever, and the mercy of God sustaining the dominionof his house through all generations:--

 (49) "Therefore will I give thanks to Thee among the nations, O Jehovah, And to Thy name will I strike the harp:

 (50) Who maketh great the deliverances of His king And executeth mercy for His anointed, For David and his seed for evermore. "

And what were his purposes for the future? Here is his answer, in apsalm which has been with considerable appropriateness regarded as akind of manifesto of the principles which he intended shouldcharacterize his reign (Psa. Ci. ): "I will walk within my house with aperfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. " Forhimself, he begins his reign with noble self-restraint, not meaning tomake it a region of indulgence, but feeling that there is a law abovehis will, of which he is only the servant, and knowing that if hispeople and his public life are to be what they should be, his ownpersonal and domestic life must be pure. As for his court and hisministers, he will make a clean sweep of the vermin who swarm and stingand buzz about a throne. The froward, the wicked, privy slanderers, proud hearts, crafty plotters, liars, and evil-doers he will notsuffer--but "mine eyes shall be upon the faithful in the land; he thatwalketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me. " He is fired with ambition, such as has brightened the beginning of many a reign which has darkenedto cruelty and crime, to make his kingdom some faint image of God's, andto bring the actual Israel into conformity with its ancient MagnaCharta, "Ye shall be to me a holy nation. " And so, not knowing perhapshow hard a task he planned, and little dreaming of his own sore fall, hegrasps the sword, resolved to use it for the terror of evil-doers, andvows, "I will early destroy all the wicked in the land, that I may cutoff all wicked doers from the city of the Lord. " Such was his"proclamation against vice and immorality" on his accession to histhrone. 

XI. --THE KING--_CONTINUED_. 

The years thus well begun are, in the historical books, characterizedmainly by three events, namely, the bringing up of the ark to the newlywon city of David, Nathan's prophecy of the perpetual dominion of hishouse, and his victories over the surrounding nations. These threehinges of the narrative are all abundantly illustrated in the psalms. 

As to the first, we have relics of the joyful ceremonial connected withit in two psalms, the fifteenth and twenty-fourth, which are singularlyalike not only in substance but in manner, both being thrown into ahighly dramatic form by question and answer. This peculiarity, as weshall see, is one of the links of connection which unite them with thehistory as given in the Book of Samuel (2 Sam. Vi. ). From that record welearn that David's first thought after he was firmly seated as king overall Israel, was the enthronement in his recently-captured city of thelong-forgotten ark. That venerable symbol of the presence of the trueKing had passed through many vicissitudes since the days when it hadbeen carried round the walls of Jericho. Superstitiously borne intobattle, as if it were a mere magic palladium, by men whose hearts werenot right with God, the presence which they had invoked became theirruin, and Israel was shattered, and "the ark of God taken, " on the fatalfield of Aphek. It had been carried in triumph through Philistinecities, and sent back in dismay. It had been welcomed with gladness bythe villagers of Bethshemesh, who lifted their eyes from their harvestwork, and saw it borne up the glen from the Philistine plain. Their rudecuriosity was signally punished, "and the men of Bethshemesh said, Whois able to stand before this holy Lord God, and to whom shall He go upfrom us?" It had been removed to the forest seclusion of Kirjath-jearim(the city of the woods), and there bestowed in the house of Abinadab"upon the hill, " where it lay neglected and forgotten for about seventyyears. During Saul's reign they "inquired not at it, " and, indeed, thewhole worship of Jehovah seems to have been decaying. David set himselfto reorganize the public service of God, arranged a staff of priests andLevites, with disciplined choir and orchestra (1 Chron. Xv. ), and thenproceeded with representatives of the whole nation to bring up the arkfrom its woodland hiding-place. But again death turned gladness intodread, and Uzzah's fate silenced the joyous songs, "and David was afraidof the Lord that day, and said, How shall the ark of God come unto me?"The dangerous honour fell on the house of Obed-edom; and only after theblessing which followed its three months' stay there, did he venture tocarry out his purpose. The story of the actual removal of the ark to thecity of David with glad ceremonial need not be repeated here; nor themocking gibes of Michal who had once loved him so fondly. Probably shebitterly resented her violent separation from the household joys thathad grown up about her in her second home; probably the woman who hadhad teraphim among her furniture cared nothing for the ark of God;probably, as she grew older, her character had hardened in its lines, and become like her father's in its measureless pride, and in itshalf-dread, half-hatred of David--and all these motives together pourtheir venom into her sarcasm. Taunts provoke taunts; the husband feelsthat the wife is in heart a partisan of the fallen house of her father, and a despiser of the Lord and of His worship; her words hiss withscorn, his flame with anger and rebuke--and so these two that had beenso tender in the old days part for ever. The one doubtful act thatstained his accession was quickly avenged. Better for both that she hadnever been rent from that feeble, loving husband that followed herweeping, and was driven back by a single word, flung at him by Abner asif he had been a dog at their heels! (2 Sam. Iii. 16). 

The gladness and triumph, the awe, and the memories of victory whichclustered round the dread symbol of the presence of the Lord of Hosts, are wonderfully expressed in the choral twenty-fourth psalm. It isdivided into two portions, which Ewald regards as being originally twoindependent compositions. They are, however, obviously connected both inform and substance. In each we have question and answer, as in psalmxv. , which belongs to the same period. The first half replies to thequestion, "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall standin His holy place?"--an echo of the terror-struck exclamation of thepeople of Bethshemesh, already quoted. The answer is a description ofthe _men who dwell with God_. The second half deals with the correlativeinquiry, "Who is the King of Glory?" and describes the _God who comes todwell with men_. It corresponds in substance, though not in form, withDavid's thought when Uzzah died, in so far as it regards God as drawingnear to the worshippers, rather than the worshippers drawing near toHim. Both portions are united by a real internal connection, in thatthey set forth the mutual approach of God and man which leads tocommunion, and thus constitute the two halves of an inseparable whole. 

Most expositors recognise a choral structure in the psalm, as in severalothers of this date, as would be natural at the time of thereorganization of the public musical service. Probably we may gain thekey to its form by supposing it to be a processional hymn, of which thefirst half was to be sung during the ascent to the city of David, andthe second while standing before the gates. We have then to fancy thelong line of worshippers climbing the rocky steep hill-side to theancient fortress so recently won, the Levites bearing the ark, and theglad multitude streaming along behind them. 

First there swells forth from all the singers the triumphantproclamation of God's universal sovereignty, "The earth is the Lord'sand the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For Hehath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods. " It isvery noteworthy that such a thought should precede the declaration ofHis special dwelling in Zion. It guards that belief from the abuses towhich it was of course liable--the superstitions, the narrowness, thecontempt of all the rest of the world as God-deserted, which are itsperversion in sensuous natures. If Israel came to fancy that Godbelonged to them, and that there was only one sacred place in all theworld, it was not for want of clear utterances to the contrary, whichbecame more emphatic with each fresh step in the development of thespecializing system under which they lived. The very ground of theirpeculiar relation to God had been declared, in the hour of constitutingit to be--"all the earth is Mine" (Exod. Xix. 5). So now, when thesymbol of His presence is to have a local habitation in the centre ofthe national life, the psalmist lays for the foundation of his song thegreat truth, that the Divine presence is concentrated in Israel, but notconfined there, and concentrated in order that it may be diffused. Theglory that lights the bare top of Zion lies on all the hills; and He whodwells between the cherubim dwells in all the world, which His continualpresence fills with its fulness, and upholds above the floods. 

Then, as they climb, a single voice perhaps chants the solemn question, "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in the placeof His holiness?"

And the full-toned answer portrays the men who shall dwell with God, inwords which begin indeed with stringent demands for absolute purity, butwonderfully change in tone as they advance, into gracious assurances, and the clearest vision that the moral nature which fits for God'spresence is God's gift. "The clean-handed, and pure-hearted, who has notlifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully;" there is theeternal law which nothing can ever alter, that to abide with God a manmust be like God--the law of the new covenant as of the old, "Blessedare the pure in heart, for they shall see God. " But this requirement, impossible of fulfilment, is not all. If it were, the climbingprocession might stop. But up and up they rise, and once again the songbursts forth in deeper and more hopeful words, "He shall _receive_ theblessing from Jehovah, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. "Then that righteousness, which he who honestly attempts to comply withsuch requirements will soon find that he does not possess, is to bereceived from above, not elaborated from within; is a gift from God, nota product of man's toils. God will make us pure, that we may dwell withHim. Nor is this all. The condition of receiving such a gift has beenalready partially set forth in the preceding clause, which seems torequire righteousness to be possessed as the preliminary to receivingit. The paradox which thus results is inseparable from the stage ofreligious knowledge attained under the Mosaic Law. But the last words ofthe answer go far beyond it, and proclaim the special truth of thegospel, that the righteousness which fits for dwelling with God is givenon the simple condition of _seeking_ Him. To this designation of thetrue worshippers is appended somewhat abruptly the one word "Jacob, "which need neither be rendered as in the English version as aninvocation, nor as in the margin, with an unnecessary and improbablesupplement, "O God of Jacob;" but is best regarded as in apposition withthe other descriptive clauses, and declaring, as we have found Daviddoing already in previous psalms, that the characters portrayed in them, and these only, constituted the true Israel. 

 This is the generation of them that seek Him, That seek Thy face--(this is) Jacob. 

And so the first question is answered, "Who are the men who dwell withGod?"--The pure, who receive righteousness, who seek Him, the trueIsrael. 

And now the procession has reached the front of the ancient city on thehill, and stands before the very walls and weather-beaten gates whichMelchizedek may have passed through, and which had been barred againstIsrael till David's might had burst them. National triumph and gladworship are wonderfully blended in the summons which rings from the lipsof the Levites without: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates! and be ye liftup, ye doors (that have been from) of old!" as if even their toweringportals were too low, "and the King of glory shall come in. " What forcein that name here, in this early song of the King! How clearly herecognises his own derived power, and the real Monarch of whom he is butthe shadowy representative! The newly-conquered city is summoned toadmit its true conqueror and sovereign, whose throne is the ark, whichwas emphatically named "the glory, "[S] and in whose train the earthlyking follows as a subject and a worshipper. Then, with wonderfuldramatic force, a single voice from within the barred gates asks, likesome suspicious warder, "Who then is the King of glory?" With what ashout of proud confidence and triumphant memories of a hundred fieldscomes, ready and full, the crash of many voices in the answer, "Jehovahstrong and mighty, Jehovah mighty in battle!" How vividly the reluctanceof an antagonistic world to yield to Israel and Israel's King, isrepresented in the repetition of the question in a form slightly moreexpressive of ignorance and doubt, in answer to the reiterated summons, "Who is He, then, the King of glory?" With what deepened intensity oftriumph there peals, hoarse and deep, the choral shout, "The Lord ofHosts, He is the King of glory. " That name which sets Him forth asSovereign of the personal and impersonal forces of the universe--angels, and stars, and terrene creatures, all gathered in ordered ranks, embattled for His service--was a comparatively new name in Israel, [T]and brought with it thoughts of irresistible might in earth and heaven. It crashes like a catapult against the ancient gates; and at thatproclamation of the omnipotent name of the God who dwells with men, theygrate back on their brazen hinges, and the ark of the Lord enters intoits rest. 

[S] "And she named the child I-chabod (Where is the glory?) saying, Theglory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken. "--1_Sam. _ iv. 21. 

[T] It has been asserted that this is the first introduction of thename. ("Psalms Chronologically Arranged by Four Friends, " p. 14). But itoccurs in Hannah's vow (1 Sam. I. 11); in Samuel's words to Saul (xv. 2); in David's reply to Goliath (xvii. 45). We have it also in Psalmlix. 5, which we regard as his earliest during his exile. Do the authorsreferred to consider these speeches in 1 Sam. As not authentic?

XII. --THE KING--_CONTINUED_. 

The second event recorded as important in the bright early years is thegreat promise of the perpetuity of the kingdom in David's house. As soonas the king was firmly established and free from war, he remembered theancient word which said, "When He giveth you rest from all your enemiesround about, so that ye dwell in safety, then there shall be a placewhich the Lord your God shall choose to cause His name to dwell there"(Deut. Xii. 10, 11). His own ease rebukes him; he regards histranquillity not as a season for selfish indolence, but as a call to newforms of service. He might well have found in the many troubles andvicissitudes of his past life an excuse for luxurious repose now. Butdevout souls will consecrate their leisure as their toil to God, andwill serve Him with thankful offerings in peace whom they invoked withearnest cries in battle. Prosperity is harmless only when it isaccepted as an opportunity for fresh forms of devotion, not as anoccasion for idle self-indulgence. So we read, with distinct verbalreference to the words already quoted, that "when the Lord had given himrest round about from all his enemies, the king said unto Nathan theprophet, See now, I dwell in an house of cedar, but the ark of Goddwelleth in curtains. " The impulse of generous devotion, which cannotbear to lavish more upon self than it gives to God, at first commendeditself to the prophet; but in the solitude of his nightly thoughts thehigher wisdom speaks in his spirit, and the word of God gives him amessage for the king. The narrative in 2 Sam. Makes no mention ofDavid's warlike life as unfitting him for the task, which we find from 2Chron. Was one reason why his purpose was set aside, but brings intoprominence the thought that David's generous impulse was outrunningGod's commandment, and that his ardour to serve was in some danger offorgetting his entire dependence on God, and of fancying that God wouldbe the better for him. So the prophetic message reminds him that theLord had never, through all the centuries, asked for a house of cedar, and recalls the past life of David as having been wholly shaped andblessed by Him, while it pointedly inverts the king's proposal in itsown grand promise, "The Lord telleth thee that He will make thee anhouse. " Then follows the prediction of a son of David who should buildthe house, whose kingdom should be perpetual, whose transgressionsshould be corrected indeed, but never punished as those of the unhappySaul; and then, in emphatic and unmistakable words, the perpetuity ofDavid's house, his kingdom, and his throne, is reiterated as the closeof the whole. 

The wonderful burst of praise which sprang from David's heart in answercannot be dealt with here; but clearly from that time onwards a newelement had been added to his hopes, and a new object presented to hisfaith. The prophecy of the Messiah enters upon a new stage, bearing arelation, as its successive stages, always unmistakably did, to thehistory which supplies a framework for it. Now for the first time can hebe set forth as the king of Israel; now the width of the promise whichat first had embraced the seed of the woman, and then had been narrowedto the seed of Abraham, and thereafter probably to the tribe of Judah, is still further defined as to be fulfilled in the line of the house ofDavid; now the personal Messiah Himself begins to be discerned throughthe words which are to have a preparatory fulfilment, in itselfprophetic, in the collective Davidic monarchs whose very office isitself also a prophecy. 

Many echoes of this new message ring through the later psalms of theking. His own dominion, his conquests, and his office, gradually becameto himself a solemn prophecy of a mysterious descendant who should bereally and fully all that he was in shadow and in part. As theexperience of the exile, so that of the victorious monarch supplied thecolours with which the spirit of prophecy in him painted "beforehand thesufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow. " In both classesof psalms we have two forms of the Messianic reference, the typical andthe purely prophetic. In the former the events of David's own biographyand the feelings of his own soul are so portrayed and expressed as tosuggest his greater Son. In the latter, the personality of the psalmistretreats into the background, and is at most only the starting-point forwails of sorrow or gleams of glory which far transcend anything in thelife of the singer. There are portions, for instance, of the xxii. Andlxix. Psalms which no torturing can force into correspondence with anyof David's trials; and in like manner there are pćans of victory andpredictions of dominion which demand a grander interpretation than hisown royalty or his hopes for his house can yield. Of course, if prophecyis impossible, there is no more to be said, but that in that case aconsiderable part of the Old Testament, including many of David'spsalms, is unintelligible. 

Perhaps the clearest instance of distinct prophecy of the victoriousdominion of the personal Messiah is the 110th psalm. In it we do see, nodoubt, the influence of the psalmist's own history, shaping the imagewhich rises before his soul. But the attributes of that king whom hebeholds are not his attributes, nor those of any son of his who wore thecrown in Israel. And whilst his own history gives the form, it is "theSpirit of Christ that was in" him which gives the substance, andtransfigures the earthly monarchy into a heavenly dominion. We do notenter upon the question of the Davidic authorship of this psalm. Here wehave not to depend upon Jewish superscriptions, but on the words of Himwhose bare assertion should be "an end of all strife. " Christ says thatDavid wrote it. Some of us are far enough behind the age to believe thatwhat He said He meant, and that what He meant is truth. 

This psalm, then, being David's, can hardly be earlier than the time ofNathan's prophecy. There are traces in it of the influence of thehistory of the psalmist, giving, as we have said, form to thepredictions. Perhaps we may see these in Zion being named as the seat ofMessiah's sovereignty and in the reference to Melchizedek, both of whichpoints assume new force if we suppose that the ancient city over whichthat half-forgotten name once ruled had recently become his own. Possibly, too, his joy in exchanging his armour and kingly robe for thepriest's ephod, when he brought up the ark to its rest, and hisconsciousness that in himself the regal and the sacerdotal offices didnot blend, may have led him to meditations on the meaning of both, onthe miseries that seemed to flow equally from their separation and fromtheir union, which were the precursors of his hearing the Divine oaththat, in the far-off future, they would be fused together in that mightyfigure who was to repeat in higher fashion the union of functions whichinvested that dim King of Righteousness and Priest of God in the far-offpast. He discerns that _his_ support from the right hand of God, _his_sceptre which he swayed in Zion, _his_ loyal people fused together intoa unity at last, _his_ triumphant warfare on the nations around, are allbut faint shadows of One who is to come. That solemn form on the horizonof hope is his Lord, the true King whose viceroy he was, the "brightconsummate flower" for the sake of which the root has its being. And, ashe sees the majestic lineaments shimmering through the facts of his ownhistory, like some hidden fire toiling in a narrow space ere it leapsinto ruddy spires that burst their bonds and flame heaven high, he isborne onwards by the prophetic impulse, and the Spirit of God speaksthrough his tongue words which have no meaning unless their theme be aDivine ruler and priest for all the world. 

He begins with the solemn words with which a prophetic message is wontto be announced, thus at the outset stamping on the psalm its truecharacter. The "oracle" or "word of Jehovah unto my Lord, " which heheard, is a new revelation made to him from the heavens. He is taken upand listens to the Divine voice calling to His right hand, to the mostintimate communion with Himself, and to wielding the energies ofomnipotence--Him whom David knew to be his lord. And when that Divinevoice ceases, its mandate having been fulfilled, the prophetic spirit inthe seer hymns the coronation anthem of the monarch enthroned by theside of the majesty in the heavens. "The sceptre of Thy strength willJehovah send out of Zion. Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies. " Insingular juxtaposition are the throne at God's right hand and thesceptre--the emblem of sovereignty--issuing from Zion, a dominionrealised on earth by a monarch in the heavens, a dominion the centre ofwhich is Zion, and the undefined extent universal. It is a monarchy, too, established in the midst of enemies, sustained in spite ofantagonism not only by the power of Jehovah, but by the activity of thesovereign's own "rule. " It is a dominion for the maintenance of whichdevout souls will burst into prayer, and the most powerful can bringbut their aspirations. But the vision includes more than the warriorking and his foes. Imbedded, as it were, in the very heart of thedescription of the former comes the portraiture of his subjects, for awitness how close is the union between Him and them, and how inseparablefrom His glories are those who serve Him. They are characterised in athreefold manner. "Thy people (shall be) willing in the day of Thinearray. " The army is being mustered. [U] They are not mercenaries, norpressed men. They flock gladly to the standard, like the warriorscelebrated of old in Deborah's chant of victory, who "willingly offeredthemselves. " The word of our psalm might be translated "freewillofferings, " and the whole clause carries us into the very heart of thatgreat truth, that glad consecration and grateful self-surrender is theone bond which knits us to the Captain of our salvation who gaveHimself for us, to the meek Monarch whose crown is of thorns and Hissceptre a reed, for tokens that His dominion rests on suffering and iswielded in gentleness. The next words should be punctuated as a separateclause, co-ordinate with the former, and adding another feature to thedescription of the army. "In the beauties of holiness" is a common namefor the dress of the priests: the idea conveyed is that the army is anarmy of priests, as the king himself is a priest. They are clothed, notin mail and warlike attire, but in "fine linen clean and white, " likethe armies which a later prophet saw following the Lord of lords. Theirwarfare is not to be by force and cruelty, nor their conquests bloody;but while soldiers they are to be priests, their weapons purity anddevotion, their merciful struggle to bring men to God, and to mirror Godto men. Round the one image gather all ideas of discipline, courage, consecration to a cause, loyalty to a leader; round the other, allthoughts of gentleness, of an atmosphere of devotion calm and still asthe holy place, of stainless character. Christ's servants must be bothsoldiers and priests, like some of those knightly orders who bore thecross on helmet and shield, and shaped the very hilts of their swordsinto its likeness. And these soldier-priests are described by yetanother image, "From the womb of the morning thou hast the dew of thyyouth, " where we are to regard the last word as used in a collectivesense, and equivalent to "Thy young warriors. " They are like the dewsparkling in infinite globelets on every blade of grass, hanging gems onevery bit of dead wood, formed in secret silence, reflecting thesunlight, and, though the single drops be small and feeble, yet togetherfreshening the thirsty world. So, formed by an unseen and mysteriouspower, one by one insignificant, but in the whole mighty, mirroring Godand quickening and beautifying the worn world, the servants of thepriest-king are to be "in the midst of many people like the dew from theLord. "

[U] The word translated "power" in our version, has the same doublemeaning as that has in old English, or as "force" has now, sometimessignifying "strength" and sometimes an "army. " The latter is the moreappropriate here. "The day of Thine army" will then be equivalent to theday of mustering the troops. 

Another solemn word from the lips of God begins the second half of thepsalm. "Jehovah swears, " gives the sanction and guarantee of His ownnature, puts in pledge His own being for the fulfilment of the promise. And that which He swears is a new thing in the earth. The blending ofthe royal and priestly offices in the Messiah, and the eternal durationin Him of both, is a distinct advancement in the development ofMessianic prophecy. The historical occasion for it may indeed beconnected with David's kingship and conquest of Melchizedek's city; butthe real source of it is a direct predictive inspiration. We have herenot merely the devout psalmist meditating on the truths revealed beforehis day, but the prophet receiving a new word from God unheard by mortalears, and far transcending even the promises made to him by Nathan. There is but one person to whom it can apply, who sits as a priest uponhis throne, who builds the temple of the Lord (Zech. Vi. 12, 13). 

As the former Divine word, so this is followed by the prophet'srapturous answer, which carries on the portraiture of the priest-king. There is some doubt as to the person addressed in these later verses. "The Lord at thy right hand crushes kings in the day of His wrath. "Whose right hand? The answer generally given is, "The Messiah's. " Who isthe Lord that smites the petty kinglets of earth? The answer generallygiven is, "God. " But it is far more dramatic, avoids an awkwardabruptness in the change of persons in the last verse, and brings out astriking contrast with the previous half, if we take the opposite view, and suppose Jehovah addressed and the Messiah spoken of throughout. Thenthe first Divine word is followed by the prophetic invocation of theexalted Messiah throned at the right hand and expecting till His enemiesbe made His footstool. The second is followed by the propheticinvocation of Jehovah, and describes the Lord Messiah at God's righthand as before, but instead of longer waiting He now flames forth in allthe resistless energy of a conqueror. The day of His array is succeededby the day of His wrath. He crushes earth's monarchies. The psalmist'seye sees the whole earth one great battle-field. "(It is) full ofcorpses. He wounds the head over wide lands, " where there may possiblybe a reference to the first vague dawning of a hope which God's mercyhad let lighten on man's horizon--"He shall bruise thy head, " or theword may be used as a collective expression for rulers, as theparallelism with the previous verse requires. Thus striding on tovictory across the prostrate foe, and pursuing the flying relics oftheir power, "He drinks of the brook in the way, therefore shall He liftup the head, " words which are somewhat difficult, however interpreted. If, with the majority of modern commentators, we take them as apicturesque embodiment of eager haste in the pursuit, the conqueror"faint, yet pursuing, " and stooping for a moment to drink, then hurryingon with renewed strength after the fugitives, one can scarcely helpfeeling that such a close to such a psalm is trivial and liker theartificial play of fancy than the work of the prophetic spirit, to saynothing of the fact that there is nothing about pursuit in the psalm. Ifwe fall back on the older interpretation, which sees in the words aprophecy of the sufferings of the Messiah who tastes death and drinks ofthe cup of sorrows, and therefore is highly exalted, we get a meaningwhich worthily crowns the psalm, but seems to break somewhat abruptlythe sequence of thought, and to force the metaphor of drinking of thebrook into somewhat strained parallelism with the very different NewTestament images just named. But the doubt we must leave over thesefinal words does not diminish the preciousness of this psalm as a clear, articulate prophecy from David's lips of David's Son, whom he hadlearned to know through the experiences and facts of his own life. Hehad climbed through sufferings to his throne. God had exalted him andgiven him victory, and surrounded him with a loyal people. But he wasonly a shadow; limitations and imperfections surrounded his office andweakened himself; half of the Divine counsel of peace could not bemirrored in his functions at all, and death lay ahead of him. So hisglory and his feebleness alike taught him that "one mightier than" hemust be coming behind him, "the latchet of whose shoes he was not worthyto unloose"--the true King of Israel, to bear witness to whom was hishighest honour. 

The third characteristic of the first seventeen years of David's reignis his successful wars with surrounding nations. The gloomy days ofdefeat and subjugation which had darkened the closing years of Saul areover now, and blow after blow falls with stunning rapidity on the amazedenemies. The narrative almost pants for breath as it tells with hurryand pride how, south, and east, and north, the "lion of the tribe ofJudah" sprang from his fastness, and smote Philistia, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Amalek, Damascus, and the Syrians beyond, even to the Euphrates; andthe bounding courage of king and people, and the unity of heart and handwith which they stood shoulder to shoulder in many a bloody field, ringthrough the psalms of this period. Whatever higher meaning may beattached to them, their roots are firm in the soil of actual history, and they are first of all the war-songs of a nation. That being so, thatthey should also be inspired hymns for the church in all ages willpresent no difficulty nor afford any consecration to modern warfare, ifthe progressive character of revelation be duly kept in mind. There is awhole series of such psalms, such as xx. , xxi. , lx. , and probablylxviii. We cannot venture in our limited space on any analysis of thelast of these. It is a splendid burst of national triumph and devoutpraise, full of martial ardour, throbbing with lofty consciousness ofGod's dwelling in Israel, abounding with allusions to the ancientvictories of the people, and world-wide in its anticipations of futuretriumph. How strange the history of its opening words has been! Throughthe battle smoke of how many a field they have rung! On the plains ofthe Palatinate, from the lips of Cromwell's Ironsides, and from the poorpeasants that went to death on many a bleak moor for Christ's crown andcovenant, to the Doric music of their rude chant--

 "Let God arise, and scattered Let all His enemies be; And let all those that do Him hate, Before His presence flee. "

The sixtieth psalm is assigned to David after Joab's signal victory overthe Edomites (2 Sam. Viii. ). It agrees very well with that date, thoughthe earlier verses have a wailing tone so deep over recent disasters, sogreat that one is almost inclined to suppose that they come from a laterhand than his. But after the first verses all is warlike energy andtriumph. How the glad thought of ruling over a united people dances inthe swift words, "I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete outthe valley of Succoth;" he has, as it were, repeated Joshua's conquestand division of the land, and the ancient historical sites that fill aconspicuous place in the history of his great ancestor are in his power. "Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine, Ephraim also is the defence of myhead, Judah my staff of command. " He looks eastward to the woods andpastoral uplands across the Jordan, whose inhabitants had been butloosely attached to the western portion of the nation, and triumphs inknowing that Gilead and Manasseh own his sway. The foremost tribes onthis side the river are to him like the armour and equipments of aconqueror; he wears the might of Ephraim, the natural head of thenorthern region, as his helmet, and he grasps the power of Judah as hisbaton of command or sceptre of kingly rule (Gen. Xlix. 10). 

Thus, strong in the possession of a united kingdom, his flashing eyeturns to his enemies, and a stern joy, mingled with contempt, blazes upas he sees them reduced to menial offices and trembling before him. "Moab (is) my washing-basin; to Edom will I fling my shoe; because ofme, Philistia, cry out" (in fear). The three ancestral foes that hung onIsrael's southern border from east to west are subdued. He will make ofone "a vessel of dishonour" to wash his feet, soiled with battle; hewill throw his shoes to another the while, as one would to a slave totake care of; and the third, expecting a like fate, shrieks out in fearof the impending vengeance. He pants for new victories, "Who will bringme into (the) strong city?" probably the yet unsubdued Petra, hiddenaway in its tortuous ravine, with but one perilous path through thegorge. And at last all the triumph of victory rises to a higher regionof thought in the closing words, which lay bare the secret of hisstrength, and breathe the true spirit of the soldier of Jehovah. "In Godwe shall do valiantly; and He, even He, shall tread down our enemies. "

The twentieth psalm, another of these stirring war-songs, is in thatchoral manner which we have already seen in psalm xxiv. , and theadoption of which was probably connected with David's carefulorganization of "the service of song. " It is all ablaze with the lightof battle and the glow of loyal love. 

The army, ready drawn up for action, as we may fancy, prays for theking, who, according to custom, brings sacrifices and offerings beforethe fight. "Jehovah hear thee in the day of trouble; the name of the Godof Jacob defend thee, send thee help from the sanctuary, and strengthenthee out of Zion, remember all thine offerings, and accept thy burntsacrifice. " Then, as they wave their standards in the sunshine, or plantbefore the ranks of each tribe its cognizance, to be defended to thedeath, the hoarse shout rises from the files, "In the name of our God wewill set up (or wave) our banners. " Then the single voice of the kingspeaks, rejoicing in his soldiers' devotion, which he accepts as an omenthat his sacrifice has not been in vain: "Now know I that Jehovah savethHis anointed. He will hear him from the heaven of His holiness with thestrength of the salvation of His right hand;" not merely from a Goddwelling in Zion, according to language of the previous prayer, but fromthe Lord in the heavens, will the strength come. Then again the chorusof the host exclaims, as they look across the field to the chariots andcavalry of the foe--forces which Israel seldom used--"These (boast[V])of chariots, and those of horses, and we, of the name of Jehovah, ourGod, do we boast. " Ere a sword has been drawn, they see the enemyscattered. "They are brought down and fallen; and we, we are risen andstand upright. " Then one earnest cry to God, one more thought of thetrue monarch of Israel, whom David would teach them to feel he onlyshadowed; and with the prayer, "Jehovah! save! Let the King hear us inthe day when we cry, " ringing like the long trumpet blast that soundsfor the charge, they dash forth to victory!

[V] Lit. "make mention of" or "commemorate. "

XIII. --THE TEARS OF THE PENITENT. 

Adversity had taught David self-restraint, had braced his soul, haddriven him to grasp firmly the hand of God. And prosperity had seemedfor nearly twenty years but to perfect the lessons. Gratitude hadfollowed deliverance, and the sunshine after the rain had brought outthe fragrance of devotion and the blossoms of glad songs. A good man, and still more a man of David's age at the date of his great crime, seldom falls so low, unless there has been previous, perhapsunconscious, relaxation of the girded loins, and negligence of theuntrimmed lamp. The sensitive nature of the psalmist was indeed notunlikely to yield to the sudden force of such a temptation as conqueredhim, but we can scarcely conceive of its having done so without aprevious decay of his religious life, hidden most likely from himself. And the source of that decay may probably be found in self-indulgence, fostered by ease, and by long years of command. The actual fall intosin seems to have been begun by slothful abdication of his functions ascaptain of Israel. It is perhaps not without bitter emphasis that thenarrative introduces it by telling us that, "at the time when kings goforth to battle, " David contented himself with sending his troopsagainst Ammon, and "tarried still at Jerusalem. " At all events, thestory brings into sharp contrast the levy _en masse_, encamped roundRabbath, and their natural head, who had once been so ready to take hisshare of blows and privations, loitering behind, taking his quiet siestain the hot hours after noon, as if there had been no soldiers of hissweltering in their armour, and rising from his bed to stroll on hispalace roof, and peer into the household privacies below, as if hisheart had no interest in the grim tussle going on behind the hills thathe could almost see from his height, as they grew purple in the eveningtwilight. He has fallen to the level of an Eastern despot, and has losthis sense of the responsibilities of his office. Such loosening of thetension of his moral nature as is indicated in his absence from thefield, during what was evidently a very severe as well as a longstruggle, prepared the way for the dismal headlong plunge into sin. 

The story is told in all its hideousness, without palliation or reserve, without comment or heightening, in that stern judicial fashion socharacteristic of the Bible records of its greatest characters. Everystep is narrated without a trace of softening, and without a word ofemotion. Not a single ugly detail is spared. The portraiture is as vividas ever. Bathsheba's willing complicity, her punctilious observance ofceremonial propriety while she is trampling under foot her holiestobligations; the fatal necessity which drags sin after sin, and summonsup murder to hide, if it be possible, the foul form of adultery; thestinging rebuke in the conduct of Uriah, who, Hittite as he was, has amore chivalrous, not to say devout, shrinking from personal ease whilehis comrades and the ark are in the field, than the king has; the meantreason, the degradation implied in getting into Joab's power; thecynical plainness of the murderous letter, in which a hardenedconscience names his purposed evil by its true name; the contemptuousmeasure of his master which Joab takes in his message, the king'sindifference to the loss of his men so long as Uriah is out of the way;the solemn platitudes with which he pretends to console his tool for thecheck of his troops; and the hideous haste with which, after herscrupulous "mourning" for one week, Bathsheba threw herself again intoDavid's arms;--all these particulars, and every particular anaggravation, stand out for ever, as men's most hidden evil will one daydo, in the clear, unpitying, unmistakable light of the Divine record. What a story it is!

This saint of nearly fifty years of age, bound to God by ties which herapturously felt and acknowledged, whose words have been the very breathof devotion for every devout heart, forgets his longings afterrighteousness, flings away the joys of Divine communion, darkens hissoul, ends his prosperity, brings down upon his head for all hisremaining years a cataract of calamities, and makes his name and hisreligion a target for the barbed sarcasms of each succeeding generationof scoffers. "All the fences and their whole array, " which God's merciesand his own past had reared, "one cunning sin sweeps quite away. " Everyobligation of his office, as every grace of his character, is troddenunder foot by the wild beast roused in his breast. As man, as king, assoldier, he is found wanting. Lust and treason, and craft and murder, are goodly companions for him who had said, "I will walk within my housewith a perfect heart. I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. " Whyshould we dwell on the wretched story? Because it teaches us, as noother page in the history of God's church does, how the alchemy ofDivine love can extract sweet perfumes of penitence and praise out ofthe filth of sin; and therefore, though we turn with loathing fromDavid's sin, we have to bless God for the record of it, and for thelessons of hope that come from David's pardon. 

To many a sin-tortured soul since then, the two psalms (li. , xxxii. ), all blotted with tears, in which he has sobbed out his penitence, havebeen as footsteps in a great and terrible wilderness. They are toofamiliar to need, and too sacred to bear, many words here, but we maybriefly note some points connected with them--especially those whichassist us in forming some image of the psalmist's state of mind afterhis transgression. It may be observed that of these two psalms, thefifty-first is evidently earlier than the thirty-second. In the formerwe see the fallen man struggling up out of the "horrible pit and miryclay;" in the latter he stands upon the rock, with a new song in hismouth, even the blessedness of him "whose sin is covered. " It appearsalso that both must be dated after the sharp thrust of God's lancetwhich Nathan drove into his conscience, and the healing balsam of God'sassurance of forgiveness which Nathan laid upon his heart. Thepassionate cries of the psalm are the echo of the Divine promise--theeffort of his faith to grasp and keep the merciful gift of pardon. Theconsciousness of forgiveness is the basis of the prayer for forgiveness. 

Somewhere about a year passed between the crime and the message ofNathan. And what sort of a year it was the psalms tell us. The coarsesatisfactions of his sin could not long content him, as they might havedone a lower type of man. Nobody buys a little passing pleasure in evilat so dear a rate, or keeps it for so short a time as a good man. Hecannot make himself as others. "That which cometh into your mind shallnot be at all, in that ye say, We will be as the families of thenations, which serve wood and stone. " Old habits quickly reassert theirforce, conscience soon lifts again its solemn voice; and while worse menare enjoying the strong-flavoured meats on sin's table, the servant ofGod, who has been seduced to prefer them for a moment to the "lightbread" from heaven, tastes them already bitter in his mouth. He may befar from true repentance, but he will very soon know remorse. Months maypass before he can feel again the calm joys of God, but disgust withhimself and with his sin will quickly fill his soul. No more vividpicture of such a state has ever been drawn, than is found in the psalmsof this period. They tell of sullen "silence;" dust had settled on thestrings of his harp, as on helmet and sword. He will not speak to God ofhis sin, and there is nothing else that he can speak of. They tell ofhis "roaring all the day long"--the groan of anguish forced from his yetunsoftened spirit. Day and night God's heavy hand weighed him down; theconsciousness of that power, whose gentleness had once holden him up, crushed, but did not melt him. Like some heated iron, its heavinessscorched as well as bruised, and his moisture--all the dew andfreshness of his life--was dried up at its touch and turned into dusty, cracking drought, that chaps the hard earth, and shrinks the streamlets, and burns to brown powder the tender herbage (Ps. Xxxii. ). Body and mindseem both to be included in this wonderful description, in whichobstinate dumbness, constant torture, dread of God, and not onesoftening drop of penitence fill the dry and dusty heart, while "boneswaxing old, " or, as the word might be rendered, "rotting, " sleeplessnights, and perhaps the burning heat of disease, are hinted at as theaccompaniments of the soul-agony. It is possible that similar allusionsto actual bodily illness are to be found in another psalm, probablyreferring to the same period, and presenting striking parallelisms ofexpression (Ps. Vi. ), "Have mercy upon me, Jehovah, for I languish (fadeaway); heal me, for my bones are affrighted. My soul is also sore vexed. I am weary with my groaning; every night make I my bed to swim. I watermy couch with my tears. " The similar phrase, too, in psalm fifty-one, "The bones which Thou hast broken, " may have a similar application. Thus, sick in body and soul, he dragged through a weary year--ashamedof his guilty dalliance, wretched in his self-accusations, afraid ofGod, and skulking in the recesses of his palace from the sight of hispeople. A goodly price he had sold integrity for. The bread had beensweet for a moment, but how quickly his "mouth is filled with gravel"(Proverbs xx. 17). David learned, what we all learn (and the holier aman is, the more speedily and sharply does the lesson follow on theheels of his sin), that every transgression is a blunder, that we neverget the satisfaction which we expect from any sin, or if we do, we getsomething with it which spoils it all. A nauseous drug is added to theexciting, intoxicating drink which temptation offers, and though itsflavour is at first disguised by the pleasanter taste of the sin, itsbitterness is persistent though slow, and clings to the palate longafter that has faded utterly. 

Into this dreary life Nathan's message comes with merciful rebuke. Theprompt severity of David's judgment against the selfish sinner of theinimitable apologue may be a subtle indication of his troubledconscience, which fancies some atonement for his own sin in sternrepression of that of others; for consciousness of evil may sometimessting into harshness as well as soften to lenity, and sinful man is asterner judge than the righteous God. The answer of Nathan is a perfectexample of the Divine way of convincing of sin. There is first the plaincharge pressed home on the individual conscience, "Thou art the man. "Then follows, not reproach nor further deepening of the blackness of thedeed, but a tender enumeration of God's great benefits, whereon is builtthe solemn question, "Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment ofthe Lord, to do evil in His sight?" The contemplation of God's faithfullove, and of the all-sufficient gifts which it bestows, makes everytransgression irrational as well as ungrateful, and turns remorse, whichconsumes like the hot wind of the wilderness, into tearful repentancewhich refreshes the soul. When God has been seen loving and bestowingere He commands and requires, it is profitable to hold the image of theman's evil in all its ugliness close up to his eyes; and so the baldfacts are repeated next in the fewest, strongest words. Nor can themessage close until a rigid law of retribution has been proclaimed, theslow operation of which will filter bitterness and shame through allhis life. "And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. "Two words (in the Hebrew) make the transition from sullen misery to realthough shaded peace. No lengthened outpouring, no accumulation ofself-reproach; he is too deeply moved for many words, which he knows Goddoes not need. More would have been less. All is contained in that onesob, in which the whole frostwork of these weary months breaks up androlls away, swept before the strong flood. And as brief and simple asthe confession, is the response, "And Nathan said unto David, The Lordalso hath put away thy sin. " How full and unconditional the blessingbestowed in these few words; how swift and sufficient the answer! So thelong estrangement is ended. Thus simple and Divine is the manner ofpardon. In such short compass may the turning point of a life lie! Butwhile confession and forgiveness heal the breach between God and David, pardon is not impunity, and the same sentence which bestows theremission of sin announces the exaction of a penalty. The judgmentsthreatened a moment before--a moment so far removed now to David'sconsciousness that it would look as if an age had passed--are notwithdrawn, and another is added, the death of Bathsheba's infant. Godloves His servants too well to "suffer sin upon them, " and the freestforgiveness and the happiest consciousness of it may consist with theloving infliction and the submissive bearing of pains, which are nolonger the strokes of an avenging judge, but the chastisements of agracious father. 

The fifty-first psalm must, we think, be conceived of as following soonafter Nathan's mission. There may be echoes of the prophet's sternquestion, "Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, todo evil in His sight?" and of the confession, "I have sinned against theLord, " in the words, "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and doneevil in Thy sight" (ver. 4), though perhaps the expressions are not sopeculiar as to make the allusion certain. But, at all events, thepenitence and prayers of the psalm can scarcely be supposed to havepreceded the date of the historical narrative, which clearly impliesthat the rebuke of the seer was the first thing that broke up the dumbmisery of unrepented sin. 

Although the psalm is one long cry for pardon and restoration, one candiscern an order and progress in its petitions--the order, not of anartificial reproduction of a past mood of mind, but the instinctiveorder in which the emotion of contrite desire will ever pour itselfforth. In the psalm all begins, as all begins in fact, with thegrounding of the cry for favour on "Thy loving-kindness, " "the multitudeof Thy tender mercies;" the one plea that avails with God, whose love isits own motive and its own measure, whose past acts are the standard forall His future, whose compassions, in their innumerable numbers, aremore than the sum of our transgressions, though these be "more than thehairs of our head. " Beginning with God's mercy, the penitent soul canlearn to look next upon its own sin in all its aspects of evil. Thedepth and intensity of the psalmist's loathing of self is wonderfullyexpressed in his words for his crime. He speaks of his "transgressions"and of his "sin. " Looked at in one way, he sees the separate acts ofwhich he had been guilty--lust, fraud, treachery, murder: looked at inanother, he sees them all knotted together, in one inextricable tangleof forked, hissing tongues, like the serpent locks that coil and twistround a Gorgon head. No sin dwells alone; the separate acts have acommon root, and the whole is matted together like the green growth on astagnant pond, so that, by whatever filament it is grasped, the wholemass is drawn towards you. And a profound insight into the essence andcharacter of sin lies in the accumulated synonyms. It is"transgression, " or, as the word might be rendered, "rebellion"--not themere breach of an impersonal law, not merely an infraction of "theconstitution of our nature"--but the rising of a subject will againstits true king, disobedience to a person as well as contravention of astandard. It is "iniquity"--perversion or distortion--a word whichexpresses the same metaphor as is found in many languages, namely, crookedness as descriptive of deeds which depart from the perfect lineof right. It is "sin, " _i. E. _, "missing one's aim;" in which profoundword is contained the truth that all sin is a blunder, shooting wide ofthe true goal, if regard be had to the end of our being, and not lesswide if regard be had to our happiness. It ever misses the mark; and theepitaph might be written over every sinner who seeks pleasure at theprice of righteousness, "Thou fool. "

Nor less pregnant with meaning is the psalmist's emphaticacknowledgment, "Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned. " He is notcontent with looking upon his evil in itself, or in relation only to thepeople who had suffered by it; he thinks of it in relation to God. Hehad been guilty of crimes against Bathsheba and Uriah, and even therough soldier whom he made his tool, as well as against his wholesubjects; but, dark as these were, they assumed their true characteronly when they were discerned as done against God. "Sin, " in its fullsense, implies "God" as its correlative. We transgress against eachother, but we sin against Him. 

Nor does the psalmist stop here. He has acknowledged the tangledmultiplicity and dreadful unity of his evil, he has seen its inmostcharacter, he has learned to bring his deed into connection with God;what remains still to be confessed? He laments, and that not asextenuation (though it be explanation), but as aggravation, the sinfulnature in which he had been born. The deeds had come from a source--abitter fountain had welled out this blackness. He himself is evil, therefore he has done evil. The sin is his; he will not contest his fullresponsibility; and its foul characteristics declare the inward foulnessfrom which it has flowed--and that foulness is himself. Does hetherefore think that he is less to blame? By no means. Hisacknowledgment of an evil nature is the very deepest of his confessions, and leads not to a palliation of his guilt, but to a cry to Him whoalone can heal the inward wound; and as He can purge away thetransgressions, can likewise stanch their source, and give him to feelwithin "that he is healed from that plague. "

The same intensity of feeling expressed by the use of so many words forsin is revealed also in the reiterated synonyms for pardon. The prayercomes from his lips over and over again, not because he thinks that heshall be heard for his much speaking, but because of the earnestness ofhis longing. Such repetitions are signs of the persistence of faith, while others, though they last like the prayers of Baal's priests, "frommorning till the time of the evening sacrifice, " indicate only thesuppliant's doubt. David prays that his sins may be "blotted out, " inwhich petition they are conceived as recorded against him in thearchives of the heavens; that he may be "washed" from them, in whichthey are conceived as foul stains upon himself, needing for theirremoval hard rubbing and beating (for such is, according to somecommentators, the force of the word); that he may be "cleansed"--thetechnical word for the priestly cleansing of the leper, and declaringhim clear of the taint. He also, with similar recurrence to the Mosaicsymbols, prays that he may be "purged with hyssop. " There is a patheticappropriateness in the petition, for not only lepers, but those who hadbecome defiled by contact with a dead body, were thus purified; and onwhom did the taint of corruption cleave as on the murderer of Uriah? Theprayer, too, is even more remarkable in the original, which employs averb formed from the word for "sin;" "and if in our language that were aword in use, it might be translated, 'Thou shalt un-sin me. '"[W]

[W] Donne's Sermons, quoted in Perowne, _in. Loc. _

In the midst of these abased confessions and cries for pardon therecomes with wonderful force and beauty the bold prayer for restorationto "joy and gladness"--an indication surely of more than ordinaryconfidence in the full mercy of God, which would efface all theconsequences of his sin. 

And following upon them are petitions for sanctifying, reiterated andmany-sided, like those that have preceded. Three pairs of clausescontain these, in each of which the second member of the clause asks forthe infusion into his spirit of some grace from God--that he may possessa "steadfast spirit, " "Thy Holy Spirit, " "a willing spirit. " It isperhaps not an accident that the central petition of the three is theone which most clearly expresses the thought which all imply--that thehuman spirit can only be renewed and hallowed by the entrance into it ofthe Divine. We are not to commit the theological anachronism which hasbeen applied with such evil effect to the whole Old Testament, andsuppose that David meant by that central clause in his prayer forrenewal all that we mean by it; but he meant, at least, that hisspiritual nature could be made to love righteousness and hate iniquityby none other power than God's breathing on it. If we may venture toregard this as the heart of the series, the other two on either side ofit may be conceived as its consequences. It will then be "a rightspirit, " or, as the word means, a steadfast spirit, strong to resist, not swept away by surges of passion, nor shaken by terrors of remorse, but calm, tenacious, and resolved, pressing on in the path of holiness, and immovable with the immobility of those who are rooted in God andgoodness. It will be a free, or "a willing spirit, " ready for all joyfulservice of thankfulness, and so penetrated with the love of his God thathe will delight to do His will, and carry the law charactered in thespontaneous impulses of his renewed nature. Not without profound meaningdoes the psalmist seem to recur in his hour of penitence to the tragicfate of his predecessor in the monarchy, to whom, as to himself, hadbeen given by the same anointing, the same gift of "the Spirit of God. "Remembering how the holy chrism had faded from the raven locks of Saullong before his bloody head had been sent round Philistine cities toglut their revenge, and knowing that if God were "strict to markiniquity, " the gift which had been withdrawn from Saul would not becontinued to himself, he prays, not as anointed monarch only, but assinful man, "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. " As before he hadventured to ask for the joy of forgiveness, so now he pleads once morefor "the joy of Thy salvation, " which comes from cleansing, fromconscious fellowship--which he had so long and deeply felt, which for somany months had been hid from him by the mists of his own sin. Thepsalmist's natural buoyancy, the gladness which was an inseparable partof his religion, and had rung from his harp in many an hour of peril, the bold width of his desires, grounded on the clear breadth of hisfaith in God's perfect forgiveness, are all expressed in such a prayerfrom such lips at such a time, and may well be pondered and imitated byus. 

The lowly prayer which we have been tracing rises ere its close to a vowof renewed praise. It is very beautiful to note how the poet nature, aswell as the consciousness of a Divine function, unite in the resolvethat crowns the psalm. To David no tribute that he could bring to Godseemed so little unworthy--none to himself so joyous--as the music ofhis harp, and the melody of his songs; nor was any part of his kinglyoffice so lofty in his estimation as his calling to proclaim in glowingwords the name of the Lord, that men might learn to love. His earliestsong in exile had closed with a like vow. It had been well fulfilled formany a year; but these last doleful months had silenced all his praise. Now, as hope begins to shine upon him once more, the frost which hadstilled the stream of his devotion is melting, and as he remembers hisglad songs of old, and this miserable dumbness, his final prayer is, "OLord, open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise. "

The same consciousness of sin, which we have found in a previous versediscerning the true significance of ceremonial purification, leads alsoto the recognition of the insufficiency of outward sacrifices--a thoughtwhich is not, as some modern critics would fain make it, the product ofthe latest age of Judaism, but appears occasionally through the whole ofthe history, and indicates not the date, but the spiritual elevation ofits utterer. David sets it on the very summit of his psalm, to sparklethere like some stone of price. The rich jewel which he has brought upfrom the abyss of degradation is that truth which has shone out from itssetting here over three millenniums: "The sacrifices of God are abroken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt notdespise. "

The words which follow, containing a prayer for the building up of Zion, and a prediction of the continuous offering of sacrifice, present somedifficulty. They do not necessarily presuppose that Jerusalem is inruins; for "build Thou the walls" would be no less appropriate apetition if the fortifications were unfinished (as we know they were inDavid's time) than if they had been broken down. Nor do the wordscontradict the view of sacrifice just given, for the use of the symboland the conviction of its insufficiency co-existed, in fact, in everydevout life, and may well be expressed side by side. But the transitionfrom so intensely personal emotions to intercession for Zion seemsalmost too sudden even for a nature as wide and warm as David's. If theclosing verses are his, we may, indeed, see in them the king re-awakingto a sense of his responsibilities, which he had so long neglected, first, in the selfishness of his heart, and then in the morbidself-absorption of his remorse; and the lesson may be a precious onethat the first thought of a pardoned man should be for others. Butthere is much to be said, on the other hand, in favour of the conjecturethat these verses are a later addition, probably after the return fromcaptivity, when the walls of Zion were in ruins, and the altar of thetemple had been long cold. If so, then our psalm, as it came fromDavid's full heart, would be all of a piece--one great gush of penitenceand faith, beginning with, "Have mercy upon me, O God, " ending with theassurance of acceptance, and so remaining for all ages the chart of thethorny and yet blessed path that leads "from death unto life. " In thataspect, what it does not contain is as noteworthy as what it does. Notone word asks for exemption from such penalties of his great fall as canbe inflicted by a loving Father on a soul that lives in His love. Hecries for pardon, but he gives his back to the smiters whom God mayplease to send. 

The other psalm of the penitent (xxxii. ) has been already referred to inconnection with the autobiographical materials which it contains. It isevidently of a later period than the fifty-first. There is no strugglein it; the prayer has been heard, and this is the beginning of thefulfilment of the vow to show forth God's praise. In the earlier he hadsaid, "Then will I teach transgressors the way;" here he says, "I willinstruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. " There hebegan with the plaintive cry for mercy; here with a burst of praisecelebrating the happiness of the pardoned penitent. There we heard thesobs of a man in the very agony of abasement; here we have the story oftheir blessed issue. There we had multiplied synonyms for sin, and forthe forgiveness which was desired; here it is the many-sidedpreciousness of forgiveness possessed which runs over in various yetequivalent phrases. There the highest point to which he could climb wasthe assurance that a bruised heart was accepted, and the bones brokenmight still rejoice. Here the very first word is of blessedness, and theclose summons the righteous to exuberant joy. The one is a psalm ofwailing; the other, to use its own words, a "song of deliverance. "

What glad consciousness that he himself is the happy man whom hedescribes rings in the melodious variations of the one thought offorgiveness in the opening words! How gratefully he draws on thetreasures of that recent experience, while he sets it forth as beingthe "taking away" of sin, as if it were the removal of a solidsomething, or the lifting of a burden off his back; and as the"covering" of sin, as if it were the wrapping of its ugliness in thickfolds that hide it for ever even from the all-seeing Eye; and as the"non-reckoning" of sin, as if it were the discharge of a debt! Whatvivid memory of past misery in the awful portrait of his impenitentself, already referred to--on which the mind dwells in silence, whilethe musical accompaniment (as directed by the "selah") touches someplaintive minor or grating discord! How noble and eloquent the briefwords (echo of the historical narrative) that tell the full and swiftforgiveness that followed simple confession--and how effectively themusic again comes in, prolonging the thought and rejoicing in thepardon! How sure he is that his experience is of priceless value to theworld for all time, when he sees in his absolution a motive that willdraw all the godly nearer to their Helper in heaven! How full his heartis of praise, that he cannot but go back again to his own story, andrejoice in God his hiding-place--whose past wondrous love assures himthat in the future songs of deliverance will ring him round, and all hispath be encompassed with music of praise. 

So ends the more personal part of the psalm. A more didactic portionfollows, the generalization of that. Possibly the voice which now speaksis a higher than David's. "I will instruct thee and teach thee in theway which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye, " scarcelysounds like words meant to be understood as spoken by him. They are thepromise from heaven of a gentle teaching to the pardoned man, which willinstruct by no severity, but by patient schooling; which will direct byno harsh authority, but by that loving glance that is enough for thosewho love, and is all too subtle and delicate to be perceived by anyother. Such gracious direction is not for the psalmist alone, but itneeds a spirit in harmony with God to understand it. For others therecan be nothing higher than mere force, the discipline of sorrow, thebridle in the hard mouth, the whip for the stiff back. The choice forall men is through penitence and forgiveness to rise to the trueposition of men, capable of receiving and obeying a spiritual guidance, which appeals to the heart, and gently subdues the will, or by stubbornimpenitence to fall to the level of brutes, that can only be held in bya halter and driven by a lash. And because this is the alternative, therefore "Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; but he that trusteth inthe Lord, mercy shall compass him about. "

And then the psalm ends with a great cry of gladness, three timesreiterated, like the voice of a herald on some festal day of a nation:"Rejoice in Jehovah! and leap for joy, O righteous! and gladly shout, all ye upright in heart!"

Such is the end of the sobs of the penitent. 

XIV. --CHASTISEMENTS. 

The chastisements, which were the natural fruits of David's sin, soonbegan to show themselves, though apparently ten years at least passedbefore Absalom's revolt, at which time he was probably a man of sixty. But these ten years were very weary and sad. There is no more joyousactivity, no more conquering energy, no more consciousness of hispeople's love. Disasters thicken round him, and may all be traced to hisgreat sin. His children learned the lesson it had taught them, and lustand fratricide desolated his family. A parent can have no sharper pangthan the sight of his own sins reappearing in his child. David saw theghastly reflection of his unbridled passion in his eldest son's foulcrime (and even a gleam of it in his unhappy daughter), and of hismurderous craft in his second son's bloody revenge. Whilst all this hellof crime is boiling round him, a strange passiveness seems to havecrept over the king, and to have continued till his flight beforeAbsalom. The narrative is singularly silent about him. He seemsparalysed by the consciousness of his past sin; he originates nothing. He dares not punish Ammon; he can only weep when he hears of Absalom'scrime. He weakly longs for the return of the latter from his exile, butcannot nerve himself to send for him till Joab urges it. A flash of hisold kingliness blazes out for a moment in his refusal to see his son;but even that slight satisfaction to justice vanishes as soon as Joabchooses to insist that Absalom shall return to court. He seems to haveno will of his own. He has become a mere tool in the hands of his fiercegeneral--and Joab's hold upon him was his complicity in Uriah's murder. Thus at every step he was dogged by the consequences of his crime, eventhough it was pardoned sin. And if, as is probable, Ahithophel wasBathsheba's grandfather, the most formidable person in Absalom'sconspiracy, whose defection wounded him so deeply, was no doubt drivento the usurper's side out of revenge for the insult to his house in herperson. Thus "of our pleasant vices doth heaven make whips to scourgeus. " "Be not deceived; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he alsoreap. "

It is not probable that many psalms were made in those dreary days. Butthe forty-first and fifty-fifth are, with reasonable probability, referred to this period by many commentators. They give a very touchingpicture of the old king during the four years in which Absalom'sconspiracy was being hatched. It seems, from the forty-first, that thepain and sorrow of his heart had brought on some serious illness, whichhis enemies had used for their own purposes, and embittered byhypocritical condolences and ill-concealed glee. The sensitivenature of the psalmist winces under their heartless desertion of him, and pours out its plaint in this pathetic lament. He begins with ablessing on those who "consider the afflicted"--having reference, perhaps, to the few who were faithful to him in his languishingsickness. He passes thence to his own case, and, after humble confessionof his sin, --almost in the words of the fifty-first psalm, --he tells howhis sickbed had been surrounded by very different visitors. His diseasedrew no pity, but only fierce impatience that he lingered in life solong. "Mine enemies speak evil of me--when will he die, and his namehave perished?" One of them, in especial, who must have been a man inhigh position to gain access to the sick chamber, has been conspicuousby his lying words of condolence: "If he come to see me he speakethvanity. " The sight of the sick king touched no chord of affection, butonly increased the traitor's animosity--"his heart gathereth evil toitself"--and then, having watched his pale face for wished-forunfavourable symptoms, the false friend hurries from the bedside to talkof his hopeless illness--"he goeth abroad, he telleth it. " The tidingsspread, and are stealthily passed from one conspirator to another. "Allthat hate me whisper together against me. " They exaggerate the gravityof his condition, and are glad because, making the wish the father tothe thought, they believe him dying. "A thing of Belial" (_i. E. _, adestructive disease), "say they, is poured out upon him, and now that helieth, he shall rise up no more. " And, sharpest pang of all, that amongthese traitors, and probably the same person as he whose heartlesspresence in the sick chamber was so hard to bear, should be Ahithophel, whose counsel had been like an oracle from God. Even he, "the man of myfriendship, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread"--he, like anignoble, vicious mule--"has lifted high his heel" against the sick lion. 

We should be disposed to refer the thirty-ninth psalm also to thisperiod. It, too, is the meditation of one in sickness, which he knows tobe a Divine judgment for his sin. There is little trace of enemies init; but his attitude is that of silent submission, while wicked men aredisquieted around him--which is precisely the characteristic peculiarityof his conduct at this period. It consists of two parts (vers. 1-6 and7-13), in both of which the subjects of his meditations are the same, but the tone of them different. His own sickness and mortality, andman's fleeting, shadowy life, are his themes. The former has led him tothink of the latter. The first effect of his sorrow was to close hislips in a silence that was not altogether submission. "I held my peace, even from good, and my sorrow was stirred. " As in his sin, when he keptsilence, his "bones waxed old, " so now in his sorrow and sickness thepain that could not find expression raged the more violently. Thetearless eyes were hot and aching; but he conquered the dumb spirit, andcould carry his heavy thoughts to God. They are very heavy at first. Heonly desires that the sad truth may be driven deeper into his soul. Withthe engrossment so characteristic of melancholy, he asks, what mighthave been thought the thing he needed least, "Make me to know mine end;"and then he dilates on the gloomy reflections which he had beencherishing in silence. Not only he himself, with his handbreadth ofdays, that shrink into absolute nothingness when brought into contrastwith the life of God, but "every man, " even when apparently "standing"most "firm, is only a breath. " As a shadow every man moves spectralamong shadows. The tumult that fills their lives is madness; "only for abreath are they disquieted. " So bitterly, with an anticipation of thesad, clear-eyed pity and scorn of "The Preacher, " does the sick andwearied king speak, in tones very unlike the joyous music of his earlierutterances. 

But, true and wholesome as such thoughts are, they are not all thetruth. So the prayer changes in tone, even while its substance is thesame. He rises from the shows of earth to his true home, driven thitherby their hollowness. "My hope is in Thee. " The conviction of earth'svanity is all different when it has "tossed him to Thy breast. " Thepardoned sinner, who never thereafter forgot his grievous fall, asks fordeliverance "from all his transgressions. " The sullen silence haschanged into full acquiescence: "I opened not my mouth, because Thoudidst it, "--a silence differing from the other as the calm after thestorm, when all the winds sleep and the sun shines out on a freshenedworld, differs from the boding stillness while the slow thunder-cloudsgrow lurid on the horizon. He cries for healing, for he knows hissickness to be the buffet and assault of God's hand; and its bitternessis assuaged, even while its force continues, by the conviction that itis God's fatherly chastisement for sin which gnaws away his manly vigouras the moth frets his kingly robe. The very thought which had been sobitter--that every man is vanity--reappears in a new connection as thebasis of the prayer that God would hear, and is modified so as to becomeinfinitely blessed and hopeful. "I am a stranger with Thee, and asojourner, as all my fathers were. " A wanderer indeed, and a transientguest on earth; but what of that, if he be God's guest? All that issorrowful is drawn off from the thought when we realise our connectionwith God. We are in God's house; the host, not the guest, is responsiblefor the housekeeping. We need not feel life lonely if He be with us, norits shortness sad. It is not a shadow, a dream, a breath, if it berooted in Him. And thus the sick man has conquered his gloomy thoughts, even though he sees little before him but the end; and he is not castdown even though his desires are all summed up in one for a littlerespite and healing, ere the brief trouble of earth be done with: "Ospare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence, and be nomore. "

It may be observed that this supposition of a protracted illness, whichis based upon these psalms, throws light upon the singular passivenessof David during the maturing of Absalom's conspiracy, and may naturallybe supposed to have favoured his schemes, an essential part of which wasto ingratiate himself with suitors who came to the king for judgment byaffecting great regret that no man was deputed of the king to hear them. The accumulation of untried causes, and the apparent disorganization ofthe judicial machinery, are well accounted for by David's sickness. 

The fifty-fifth psalm gives some very pathetic additional particulars. It is in three parts--a plaintive prayer and portraiture of thepsalmist's mental distress (vers. 1-8); a vehement supplication againsthis foes, and indignant recounting of their treachery (vers. 9-16); and, finally, a prophecy of the retribution that is to fall upon them (vers. 17-23). In the first and second portions we have some points which helpto complete our picture of the man. For instance, his heart "writhes"within him, the "terrors of death" are on him, "fear and trembling" arecome on him, and "horror" has covered him. All this points, likesubsequent verses, to his knowledge of the conspiracy before it came toa head. The state of the city, which is practically in the hands ofAbsalom and his tools, is described with bold imagery. Violence andStrife in possession of it, spies prowling about the walls day andnight, Evil and Trouble in its midst, and Destruction, Oppression, andDeceit--a goodly company--flaunting in its open spaces. And the spirit, the brain of the whole, is the trusted friend whom he had made his ownequal, who had shared his secretest thoughts in private, who had walkednext him in solemn processions to the temple. Seeing all this, what doesthe king do, who was once so fertile in resource, so decisive incounsel, so prompt in action? Nothing. His only weapon is prayer. "Asfor me, I will call upon God; and the Lord will save me. Evening, andmorning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and He shall hear myvoice. " He lets it all grow as it list, and only longs to be out of allthe weary coil of troubles. "Oh that I had wings like a dove, then wouldI fly away and be at rest. Lo, I would flee far off, I would lodge inthe wilderness. I would swiftly fly to my refuge from the raging wind, from the tempest. " The langour of his disease, love for his worthlessson, consciousness of sin, and submission to the chastisement through"one of his own house, " which Nathan had foretold, kept him quiet, though he saw the plot winding its meshes round him. And in thissubmission patient confidence is not wanting, though subdued andsaddened, which finds expression in the last words of this psalm of theheavy laden, "Cast thy burden upon Jehovah. He, He will sustainthee. .. . I will trust in Thee. "

When the blow at last fell, the same passive acquiescence in what hefelt to be God's chastisement is very noticeable. Absalom escapes toHebron, and sets up the standard of revolt. When the news comes toJerusalem the king's only thought is immediate flight. He is almostcowardly in his eagerness to escape, and is prepared to give upeverything without a blow. It seems as if only a touch was needed tooverthrow his throne. He hurries on the preparations for flight withnervous haste. He forms no plans beyond those of his earlier wish to flyaway and be at rest. He tries to denude himself of followers. When thesix hundred men of Gath--who had been with him ever since his early daysin Philistia, and had grown grey in his service--make themselves the vanof his little army, he urges the heroic Ittai, their leader, to leavehim a fugitive, and to worship the rising sun, "Return to thy place, andabide with _the king_"--so thoroughly does he regard the crown as passedalready from his brows. The priests with the ark are sent back; he isnot worthy to have the symbol of the Divine presence identified withhis doubtful cause, and is prepared to submit without a murmur if God"thus say, I have no delight in thee. " With covered head and naked feethe goes up the slope of Olivet, and turning perhaps at that same bend inthe rocky mountain path where the true King, coming to the city, wept ashe saw its shining walls and soaring pinnacles across the narrow valley, the discrowned king and all his followers broke into passionate weepingas they gazed their last on the lost capital, and then with choking sobsrounded the shoulder of the hill and set their faces to their forlornflight. Passing through the territory of Saul's tribe--dangerous groundfor him to tread--the rank hatred of Shimei's heart blossoms intospeech. With Eastern vehemence, he curses and flings stones and dust inthe transports of his fury, stumbling along among the rocks high up onthe side of the glen, as he keeps abreast of the little band below. DidDavid remember how the husband from whom he had torn Michal had followedher to this very place, and there had turned back weeping to his lonelyhome? The remembrance, at any rate, of later and more evil deedsprompted his meek answer, "Let him curse, for the Lord hath biddenhim. "

The first force of the disaster spent itself, and by the time he wassafe across Jordan, on the free uplands of Bashan, his spirit rises. Hemakes a stand at Mahanaim, the place where his great ancestor, incircumstances somewhat analogous to his own, had seen the vision of"bright-harnessed angels" ranked in battle array for the defence ofhimself and his own little band, and called the name of the place the"two camps. " Perhaps that old story helped to hearten him, as thedefection of Ahithophel from the conspiracy certainly would do. As thetime went on, too, it became increasingly obvious that the leaders ofthe rebellion were "infirm of purpose, " and that every day of respitefrom actual fighting diminished their chances of success, as thatpolitic adviser saw so plainly. Whatever may have been the reason, it isclear that by the time David had reached Mahanaim he had resolved not toyield without a struggle. He girds on his sword once more with some ofthe animation of early days, and the light of trustful valour blazesagain in his old eyes. 

XV. THE SONGS OF THE FUGITIVE. 

The psalms which probably belong to the period of Absalom's rebellioncorrespond well with the impression of his spirit gathered from thehistorical books. Confidence in God, submission to His will, arestrongly expressed in them, and we may almost discern a progress in theformer respect as the rebellion grows. They flame brighter and brighterin the deepening darkness. From the lowest abyss the stars are seen mostclearly. He is far more buoyant when he is an exile once more in thewilderness, and when the masks of plot and trickery are fallen, and thedanger stands clear before him. Like some good ship issuing from theshelter of the pier heads, the first blow of the waves throws her overon her side and makes her quiver like a living thing recoiling from aterror, but she rises above the tossing surges and keeps her course. Wemay allocate with a fair amount of likelihood the following psalms tothis period--iii. ; iv. ; xxv. (?); xxviii. (?); lviii. (?); lxi. ; lxii. ;lxiii. ; cix. (?); cxliii. 

The first two of these form a pair; they are a morning and an eveninghymn. The little band are encamped on their road to Mahanaim, with noroof but the stars, and no walls but the arm of God. In the former thediscrowned king sings, as he rises from his nightly bivouac. He poursout first his plaint of the foes, who are described as "many, " and assaying that, "There is no help for him in God, " words which fullycorrespond to the formidable dimensions of the revolt, and to the beliefwhich actuated the conspirators, and had appeared as possible even tohimself, that his sin had turned away the aid of heaven from his cause. To such utterances of malice and confident hatred he opposes theconviction which had again filled his soul, that even in the midst ofreal peril and the shock of battle Jehovah is his "shield. " With bowedand covered head he had fled from Jerusalem, but "Thou art the lifter upof mine head. " He was an exile from the tabernacle on Zion, and he hadsent back the ark to its rest; but though he has to cry to God frombeyond Jordan, He answers "from His holy hill. " He and his men campedamidst dangers, but one unslumbering Helper mounted guard over theirundefended slumbers. "I laid me down and slept" there among the echoesof the hills. "I awaked, for Jehovah sustained me;" and another nighthas passed without the sudden shout of the rebels breaking the silence, or the gleam of their swords in the starlight. The experience ofprotection thus far heartens him to front even the threatening circle ofhis foes around him, whom it is his pain to think of as "the people" ofGod, and yet as his foes. And then he betakes himself in renewed energyof faith to his one weapon of prayer, and even before the battle seesthe victory, and the Divine power fracturing the jaws and breaking theteeth of the wild beasts who hunt him. But his last thought is not ofretribution nor of fear; for himself he rises to the height of serenetrust, "Salvation is of the Lord;" and for his foes and for all thenation that had risen against him his thoughts are worthy of a trueking, freed from all personal animosity, and his words are a prayerconceived in the spirit of Him whose dying breath was intercession forHis rebellious subjects who crucified their King, "Thy blessing be uponThy people. "

The fourth psalm is the companion evening hymn. Its former portion(vers. 2-4) seems to be a remonstrance addressed as if to the leaders ofthe revolt ("sons of men" being equivalent to "persons of rank anddignity"). It is the expression in vivid form, most natural to such anature, of his painful feeling under their slanders; and also of hishopes and desires for them, that calm thought in these still eveninghours which are falling on the world may lead them to purer service andto reliance on God. So forgivingly, so lovingly does he think of them, ere he lays himself down to rest, wishing that "on their beds, " as onhis, the peace of meditative contemplation may rest, and the day ofwar's alarms be shut in by holy "communion with their own hearts" andwith God. 

The second portion turns to himself and his followers, among whom we maysuppose some faint hearts were beginning to despond; and to them, as tothe very enemy, David would fain be the bringer of a better mind. "Manysay, Who will show us good?" He will turn them from their vain searchround the horizon on a level with their own eyes for the appearance ofsuccour. They must look upwards, not round about. They must turn theirquestion, which only expects a negative answer, into a prayer, fashionedlike that triple priestly benediction of old (Numbers vi. 24-26). Hisown experience bursts forth irrepressible. He had prayed in his hour ofpenitence, "Make me to hear joy and gladness" (Psa. Li. ); and the prayerhad been answered, if not before, yet now when peril had brought himnearer to God, and trust had drawn God nearer to him. In his calamity, as is ever the case with devout souls, his joy increased, as Greek fireburns more brightly under water. Therefore this pauper sovereign, discrowned and fed by the charity of the Gileadite pastoral chief, sings, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time thattheir corn and wine increased. " And how tranquilly the psalm closes, andseems to lull itself to rest, "In peace I will at once lie down andsleep, for Thou, O Jehovah, only makest me dwell safely. " The growingsecurity which experience of God's care should ever bring, isbeautifully marked by the variation on the similar phrase in theprevious psalm. There he gratefully recorded that he had laid himselfdown and slept; here he promises himself that he will lie down "inpeace;" and not only so, but that at once on his lying down he willsleep--kept awake by no anxieties, by no bitter thoughts, but, homelessand in danger as he is, will close his eyes, like a tired child, withouta care or a fear, and forthwith sleep, with the pressure and theprotection of his Father's arm about him. 

This psalm sounds again the glad trustful strain which has slumbered inhis harp-strings ever since the happy old days of his early trials, andis re-awakened as the rude blast of calamity sweeps through them oncemore. 

The sixty-third psalm is by the superscription referred to the time whenDavid was "in the wilderness of Judah, " which has led many readers tothink of his long stay there during Saul's persecution. But the psalmcertainly belongs to the period of his reign, as is obvious from itswords, "_The king_ shall rejoice in God. " It must therefore belong tohis brief sojourn in the same wilderness on his flight to Mahanaim, when, as we read in 2 Sam. , "The people were weary and hungry andthirsty in the wilderness. " There is a beautiful progress of thought init, which is very obvious if we notice the triple occurrence of thewords "my soul, " and their various connections--"my soul thirsteth, " "mysoul is satisfied, " "my soul followeth hard after Thee;" or, in otherwords, the psalm is a transcript of the passage of a believing soul fromlonging through fruition to firm trust, in which it is sustained by theright hand of God. 

The first of these emotions, which is so natural to the fugitive in hissorrows, is expressed with singular poetic beauty in language borrowedfrom the ashen grey monotony of the waterless land in which he was. Oneof our most accurate and least imaginative travellers describes it thus:"There were no signs of vegetation, with the exception of a few reedsand rushes, and here and there a tamarisk. " This lonely land, crackedwith drought, as if gaping with chapped lips for the rain that comesnot, is the image of his painful yearning for the Fountain of livingwaters. As his men plodded along over the burning marl, fainting forthirst and finding nothing in the dry torrent beds, so he longed for therefreshment of that gracious presence. Then he remembers how in happierdays he had had the same desires, and they had been satisfied in thetabernacle. Probably the words should read, "Thus in the sanctuary haveI gazed upon Thee, to see Thy power and Thy glory. " In the desert and inthe sanctuary his longing had been the same, but then he had been ableto behold the symbol which bore the name, "the glory, "--and now hewanders far from it. How beautifully this regretful sense of absencefrom and pining after the ark is illustrated by those inimitablypathetic words of the fugitive's answer to the priests who desired toshare his exile. "And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark ofGod into the city. If I find favour in the eyes of the Lord, He willbring me again, and show me both it and His habitation. "

The fulfilment is cotemporaneous with the desire. The swiftness of theanswer is beautifully indicated in the quick turn with which the psalmpasses from plaintive longing to exuberant rapture of fruition. In theone breath "my soul thirsteth;" in the next, "my soul is satisfied"--aswhen in tropical lands the rain comes, and in a day or two what had beenbaked earth is rich meadow, and the dry torrent-beds, where the whitestones glistered in the sunshine, foam with rushing waters and are edgedwith budding willows. The fulness of satisfaction when God fills thesoul is vividly expressed in the familiar image of the feast of "marrowand fatness, " on which he banquets even while hungry in the desert. Theabundant delights of fellowship with God make him insensible to externalprivations, are drink for him thirsty, food for his hunger, a home inhis wanderings, a source of joy and music in the midst of much that isdepressing: "My mouth shall praise Thee with joyful lips. " The littlecamp had to keep keen look-out for nightly attacks; and it is a slightlink of connection, very natural under the circumstances, between thepsalms of this period, that they all have some references to theperilous hours of darkness. We have found him laying himself down tosleep in peace; here he wakes, not to guard from hostile surprises, butin the silence there below the stars to think of God and feel again thefulness of His all-sufficiency. Happy thoughts, not fears, hold his eyeswaking. "I remember Thee upon my bed. "

The fruition heartens for renewed exercise of confidence, in whichDavid feels himself upheld by God, and foresees his enemies' defeat andhis own triumph. "My soul cleaveth after Thee"--a remarkable phrase, inwhich the two metaphors of tenacious adherence and eager following aremingled to express the two "phases of faith, " which are really one--ofunion with and quest after God, the possession which pursues, thepursuit which possesses Him who is at once grasped and felt after by thefinite creature whose straitest narrowness is not too narrow to beblessed by some indwelling of God, but whose widest expansion ofcapacity and desire can but contain a fragment of His fulness. From suchelevation of high communion he looks down and onward into the dimfuture, his enemies sunken, like Korah and his rebels, into the gapingearth, or scattered in fight, and the jackals that were snuffinghungrily about his camp in the wilderness gorging themselves on corpses, while he himself, once more "king, " shall rejoice in God, and with hisfaithful companions, whose lips and hearts were true to God and Hisanointed, shall glory in the deliverance that by the arbitrament ofvictory has flung back the slanders of the rebels in their teeth, andchoked them with their own lies. 

Our space forbids more than a brief reference to psalm lxii. , whichseems also to belong to this time. It has several points of contact withthose already considered, _e. G. _, the phrase, "sons of men, " in thesense of "nobles" (ver. 9); "my soul, " as equivalent to "myself, " andyet as a kind of quasi-separate personality which he can study andexhort; the significant use of the term "people, " and the doubleexhortations to his own devout followers and to the arrogant enemy. Thewhole tone is that of patient resignation, which we have foundcharacterising David now. The first words are the key-note of the whole, "Truly unto God my soul is silence"--is all one great stillness ofsubmissive waiting upon Him. It was in the very crisis of his fate, inthe suspense of the uncertain issue of the rebellion, that these words, the very sound of which has calmed many a heart since, welled to hislips. The expression of unwavering faith and unbroken peace is muchheightened by the frequent recurrence of the word which is variouslytranslated "truly, " "surely, " and "only. " It carries the force ofconfident affirmation, like the "verily" of the New Testament, and ishere most significantly prefixed to the assertions of his patientresignation (ver. 1); of God's defence (ver. 2); of the enemies'whispered counsels (ver. 4); to his exhortation of his soul to theresignation which it already exercises (ver. 5); and to the triumphantreiteration of God's all-sufficient protection. How beautifully, too, does that reiteration--almost verbal repetition--of the opening wordsstrengthen the impression of his habitual trust. His soul in its silencemurmurs to itself, as it were, the blessed thoughts over and over again. Their echoes haunt his spirit "lingering and wandering on, as loth todie;" and if for a moment the vision of his enemies disturbs their flow, one indignant question flung at them suffices, "How long will ye rushupon a man? (how long) will ye all of you thrust him down as (if hewere) a bowing wall, a tottering fence?" and with a rapid glance attheir plots and bitter words, he comes back again to his calm gaze onGod. Lovingly he accumulates happy names for Him, which, in theirimagery, as well as in their repetition, remind us of the former songsof the fugitive. "My rock, " in whom I hide; "He is my salvation, " whichis even more than "from Him cometh my salvation;" my "fortress, " my"glory, " "the rock of my strength, " "my refuge. " So many phases of hisneed and of God's sufficiency thus gathered together, tell how familiarto the thoughts and real to the experience of the aged fugitive was hissecurity in Jehovah. The thirty years since last he had wandered therehave confirmed the faith of his earlier songs; and though the ruddylocks of the young chieftain are silvered with grey now, and sins andsorrows have saddened him, yet he can take up again with deeper meaningthe tones of his old praise, and let the experience of age seal with its"verily" the hopes of youth. Exhortations to his people to unitethemselves with him in his faith, and assurances that God is a refugefor them too, with solemn warnings to the rebels, close this psalm ofglad submission. It is remarkable for the absence of all petitions. Heneeds nothing beyond what he has. As the companion psalm says, his soul"is satisfied. " Communion with God has its moments of restfulblessedness, when desire is stilled, and expires in peaceful fruition. 

The other psalms of this period must be left unnoticed. The same generaltone pervades them all. In many particulars they closely resemble thoseof the Sauline period. But the resemblance fails very significantly atone point. The emphatic assertion of his innocence is gone for ever. Pardoned indeed he is, cleansed, conscious of God's favour, and able torejoice in it; but carrying to the end the remembrance of his sore fall, and feeling it all the more penitently, the more he is sure of God'sforgiveness. Let us remember that there are sins which, once done, leavetheir traces on memory and conscience, painting indelible forms on thewalls of our "chambers of imagery, " and transmitting results whichremission and sanctifying do not, on earth at least, wholly obliterate. Let David's youthful prayer be ours, "Keep back Thy servant frompresumptuous sins: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent frommuch transgression. "

It does not fall within the scope of this volume to deal with thesuppression of Absalom's revolt, nor with the ten years of rule thatremained to David after his restoration. The psalter does not appear tocontain psalms which throw light upon the somewhat clouded closingyears of his reign. One psalm, indeed, there is attributed to him, whichis, at any rate, the work of an old man--a sweet song into which mellowwisdom has condensed its final lessons--and a snatch of it may standinstead of any summing-up of the life by us:

 "Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and enjoy security; Delight thyself also in the Lord, And He shall give thee the desires of thy heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord. 

 Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him. 

 I have been young and now am old, Yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken. 

 I have seen the wicked in great power, And spreading himself like a green tree. .. . Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not. "

May we not apply the next words to the psalmist himself, and hear himcalling us to look on him as he lies on his dying bed--disturbed thoughit were by ignoble intrigues of hungry heirs--after so many stormsnearing the port; after so many vicissitudes, close to the unchanginghome; after so many struggles, resting quietly on the breast of God:"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that manis peace?" Into this opal calmness, as of the liquid light of sunset, all the flaming splendours of the hot day have melted. The music of hissongs die away into "peace;" as when some master holds our ears captivewith tones so faint that we scarce can tell sound from silence, untilthe jar of common noises, which that low sweetness had deadened, rushesin. 

One strain of a higher mood is preserved for us in the historical booksthat prophesy of the true King, whom his own failures and sins, no lessthan his consecration and victories, had taught him to expect. The dyingeyes see on the horizon of the far-off future the form of Him who is tobe a just and perfect ruler; before the brightness of whose presence, and the refreshing of whose influence, verdure and beauty shall clothethe world. As the shades gather, that radiant glory to come brightens. He departs in peace, having seen the salvation from afar. It was fittingthat this fullest of his prophecies should be the last of his strains, as if the rapture which thrilled the trembling strings had snapped themin twain. 

And then, for earth, the richest voice which God ever tuned for Hispraise was hushed, and the harp of Jesse's son hangs untouched above hisgrave. But for him death was God's last, best answer to his prayer, "OLord, open Thou my lips;" and as that cold but most loving handunclothes him from the weakness of flesh, and leads him in among thechoirs of heaven, we can almost hear again his former thanksgivingbreaking from his immortal lips, "Thou hast put a new song into mymouth, " whose melodies, unsaddened by plaintive minors of penitence andpain, are yet nobler and sweeter than the psalms which he sang here, andleft to be the solace and treasure of all generations!

INDEX. 

PSALM PAGE

 iii. 246

 iv. 248

 vii. 110

 viii. 28

 xi. 138

 xiii. 138

 xv. 177

 xvii. 138

 xviii. 153 and 157

 xix. 24

 xx. 203

 xxii. 141

 xxiii. 37

 xxiv. 177

 xxv. 138

 xxvii. 89

 xxix. 31

 xxxi. 132

 xxxii. 227

 xxxiv. 86

 xxxv. 139

xxxvii. 259

 xxxix. 236

 xli. 234

 li. 209

 lii. 72

 liv. 100

 lv. 240

 lvi. 77

 lvii. 119

 lix. 63

 lx. 201

 lxii. 255

 lxiii. 250

 lxiv. 138

lxviii. 208

 cx. 189

cxliii. 128

_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. _

_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. Each. _

THE PSALMS. 

VOL. I. --PSALMS I. -XXXVIII. " II. --PSALMS XXXIX. -LXXXIX. " III. --PSALMS XC-CL. 

IN THE "EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE. "

 "The work of a brilliant and effective teacher. He writes with real power and insight. "--_Saturday Review. _

 "Dr. Maclaren has evidently mastered his subject with the aid of the best authorities, and has put the results of his studies before his readers in a most attractive form, and if we add that this commentary really helps to the better understanding of the Psalms, that, far from degrading, it vivifies and illuminates these sublime stories, and that it is written in a charming style, very seldom falling below the dignity of the subject, we believe we only give it the praise which is its due. "--_Scotsman. _

 "It is scholarly, honest, thoughtful, and suggestive. "--_Daily Chronicle. _

 "Striking thoughts, strongly expressed, are to be found on every page. "--_Manchester Guardian. _

 "There is certainly room for the work which Dr. Maclaren does here--largely because it is he who does it. The book is most heartily to be commended. Preachers will find it to be a mine of wealth, and to Christians of all kinds it may serve as a manual of devotion. "--_Christian World. _

 "Dr. Maclaren's charming pages furnish a most fruitful field of study, alike for those whose chief aim is personal edification, and for those who are in quest of suggestions in the line of ministerial service. Altogether a most valuable book. "--_United Presbyterian Magazine. _

 "Most heartily do we welcome this new volume of Dr. Maclaren's 'Exposition of the Psalms. ' It fully sustains the traditions of insight, scholarly instinct, and spiritual force which gather around that beloved name. Notwithstanding the rich treasures of devout literature which the Psalter has called forth, there is a special niche for this book, and it makes a distinct advance in tone and method upon all other commentaries on the Psalms. We greatly err if this does not prove the most popular and useful commentary in the English language, both among preachers and the commonality of Christ's Church. "--_Evangelical Magazine. _

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON. 

BIBLE CLASS EXPOSITIONS. 

_Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. Each volume. _

THE GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW. 

TWO VOLS. 

 "They are all written in clear, forcible language, and bring abundant illustration from science, the facts of life and history and Scripture. All through they manifest a true philosophical spirit, and a deep knowledge of human nature. None can read them without profit. "--_Leeds Mercury. _

THE GOSPEL OF ST. MARK. 

 "As clear, luminous, and pellucid as is everything that comes from the pen of the great Manchester preacher. Even in treating the simplest incident he surprises his readers, and that without once forcing the note, or seeking sensationalism. "--_Christian World. _

THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE. 

 "Dr. Maclaren is a prince of expositors, and his expositions are as wholesome as they are able, and as interesting as they are instructive and edifying. Every paragraph is luminous with vivid expression. "--_The London Quarterly Review. _

THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 

 "There is much freshness and suggestiveness in these papers. Dr. Maclaren has studied the art of compression with great success, and no teacher of a class could desire anything better for his purpose than these lessons. They may be heartily recommended to all teachers as about the best things of the kind to be had. "--_Glasgow Herald. _

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 

 "The more this volume is read and studied the more do we admire the humility that ranks such a book as for Bible Classes only. It is for them beyond all question, and better fare has nowhere been provided for them. Whether they be Bible Classes or preachers who study this volume they will be enriched and strengthened by it. "--_Presbyterian. _

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON. 

{Transcriber's Note: The following list of books has been moved from the front to the back of the book to make the beginning more reader-friendly. }

THE HOUSEHOLD LIBRARY OF EXPOSITION

=The Life of David as Reflected in his Psalms. = By ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D. Ninth Edition. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. = By MARCUS DODS, D. D. Sixth Thousand. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Last Supper of our Lord, and His Words of Consolation to the Disciples. = By Principal J. MARSHALL LANG, D. D. Third Edition. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Speeches of the Holy Apostles. = By the Rev. DONALD FRASER, D. D. , London. Second Edition. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Galilean Gospel. = By the Rev. Professor A. B. BRUCE, D. D. Fourth Edition. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Lamb of God: Expositions in the Writings of St. John. = By W. R. NICOLL, M. A. , LL. D. Second Thousand. 2_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Lord's Prayer. = By CHARLES STANFORD, D. D. Fourth Thousand. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Parables of our Lord. First Series. = As Recorded by St. Matthew. By MARCUS DODS, D. D. Twelfth Thousand. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Parables of our Lord. Second Series. = As Recorded by St. Luke. By the same Author. Tenth Thousand. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

=The Law of the Ten Words. = By Principal J. OSWALD DYKES, D. D. Fourth Thousand. 3_s. _ 6_d. _

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.