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intended by the Psalmist. Is he speaking against the needless fret and worry which spoil the lives of many workers? Or would he insist that the proud confidence in our own strength, without a thought of God the Inspirer, will end in failure? Would he urge that they who love God and whose love is returned will gain blessings, they know not how? And indeed it is a notable fact in the lives of truly religious persons that they will tell you in all sincerity of the many blessings which God has undeservedly and unexpectedly conferred upon them, when perhaps in many outward respects their lives are difficult and hard. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.'

The Hebrew of the last line of the first part of the Psalm is very obscure; hence it is all the more difficult to determine the thought precisely. The Authorized Version has, 'For so he giveth his beloved sleep,' and it is this rendering which prompted the lovely poem of our greatest English poetess, Mrs. Browning. I wish I had space to quote more than the opening verse.

'Of all the thoughts of God that are

Borne inward unto souls afar,

Along the Psalmists' music deep,
Now tell me if that any is

For gift or grace surpassing this,

"He giveth his beloved sleep.""

But this rendering would be unsuitable to the context, and so the line is usually translated: Even so he giveth his beloved in sleep,' i.e. the results which you hardly achieve with ceaseless toil and anxious but trustless heart, God gives to his beloved even while they sleep. But Wellhausen's curt note reminds us how uncertain this rendering is. Even so giveth he to his beloved in sleep is the traditional, but quite inadmissible, translation of the last line. The Hebrew words are unintelligible.'

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'They shall not be ashamed.' The father is emboldened to resist injustice and enmity by the support of his sons. They are not disconcerted before the judges; they win their suit, and are not disappointed and put to shame.

'The gate,' i.e. the broad space before the gates where the judges sat. The man who has a number of stalwart sons to support him will not be exposed there to the danger of an unjust conviction' (Driver).

§ 10. Psalm one hundred and twenty-eight.-' Domestic happiness is generally left to the proverb-writers; our Psalmist (cxxviii), however, seizes upon the neglected theme, side by side with which observe his deep love for Zion' (Cheyne).

'HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP'

Happy is every one that feareth the Lord;

That walketh in his ways.

For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands:

Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.

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Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine in the recesses of thine house:

Thy children like olive plants round about thy table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed

That feareth the Lord.

May the Lord bless thee out of Zion:
Mayest thou see the welfare of Jerusalem
All the days of thy life;

Yea, mayest thou see thy children's children.
(Peace be upon Israel.)

§ 11. Psalm one hundred and twenty-nine: 'Saepe expugnaverunt.-A short national hymn of thanksgiving (cxxix). Israel is first compared to a furrowed field, then to a driven ox. The precise meaning of the metaphor in the third stanza is a little doubtful on account of an uncertainty as to one of the Hebrew words (unsheathed'). In March the village housetops in Palestine are bright green with grass which soon withers when the latter rains are over' (Cheyne). But withers before what? If 'unsheathed' be right, it would mean: before the grass shoots up in blossom.

'Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth,' Let Israel now say:

'Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: Yet they have not prevailed against me.

The ploughers ploughed upon my back:

They made long their furrows.

The Lord is righteous:

He hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.'

Let them all be confounded and turned back
That hate Zion.

Let them be as the grass upon the housetops,
Which withereth before it is unsheathed;
Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand;
Nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.

Neither do they which go by say,

"The blessing of the Lord be upon you: We bless you in the name of the Lord.'

It is still true: 'Many a time have they afflicted me, yet have they not prevailed against me.' Israel, the witness of God, still remains, a marvel to many, a puzzle to some, to accomplish in God's good time the work which God has given him to do.

§ 12. The one hundred and thirtieth Psalm: 'De profundis clamavi.'-A national Psalm in sore affliction (cxxx) follows upon the hymn of thanksgiving. One of the most famous of all the Psalms. To how many hearts this Psalm has brought comfort and hope, God only can tell' (Dr. Ker).

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Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.
Lord, hear my voice:

Let thine ears be attentive

To the voice of my supplications.

If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with thee,

That thou mayest be feared.

I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait,
And in his word do I hope.

My soul waiteth for the Lord

More than the watchmen for the morning:
Yea, more than the watchmen for the morning.

Let Israel hope in the Lord:

For with the Lord there is lovingkindness,
And with him is plenteous redemption.

And he shall redeem Israel

From all his iniquities.

'There is forgiveness with thee.' If God were merciless in his relations to man, what man would care to worship such a pitiless Deity? But for man's sake and for his own glory God desires man to worship him; he desires that there should be such a thing as religion. He forgives that he may be feared. The word 'feared' is here used as a synonym for religion. God does not forgive in order that man may be in terror of him. That would be nonsense. But God would neither be worth reverence, nor

HUMILITY AND TRUST

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would it be worth while to revere him, unless he were forgiving. 'Not worth reverence,' because he would not be good; 'not worth while to revere,' because, as sin is for us inevitable, it would be hopeless to serve him. Who would not run away from and disown an unforgiving Father?

'Watchmen.' As the tired watchmen in the city yearn for the break of day, so Israel yearns for God to put an end to the long night of suffering which seems eternal.

§ 13. The one hundred and thirty-first Psalm.-A fascinating lyric of resignation and hope.

Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty Neither do I exercise myself in great matters or in things too high for me.

Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul,

As a weaned child with his mother:

My soul within me is even as a weaned child.

Let Israel hope in the Lord

From henceforth and for ever.

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We seem perhaps to understand this Psalm more completely than we actually do. What are those great matters or things too high (literally things too wonderful') with which the Psalmist does not concern himself? They are probably anxious problems and questions about the date and advent of the Messianic age, the continued rule of the foreigner, the prosperity of the lax and the indifferent, the sufferings of the righteous and the faithful. These puzzling perplexities the Psalmist leaves to the care and disposal of God, in whom he has brought himself to trust; in him he rests as quietly as a child in the arms of its mother.

We should be inclined to contrast the humble resignation of the Psalmist with a condition of anxious fretting and of worrying doubt. But the Psalmist seems to contrast it with pride. 'The heavens are the heavens of the Lord': to seek to fathom the meaning of problems to whose solution God alone can hold the key, to trouble oneself over the seeming non-fulfilment of divine promises-all this is to show not merely a lack of faith, but actual presumption. It is an overstepping of the human limit. Our Psalmist would not perhaps have sympathized with the mental wrestlings of Job. Profound humility is not, however, an impossible ally of the deepest philosophical investigation. But that happy peace and blissful contentment in God attained by the Psalmist still remain as an ideal for us all. Nor must we omit to notice the force of the image which he has chosen. The weaned

child is satisfied by the mere presence and nearness of its mother. So the Psalmist in his thought of God is not storm-tossed and agitated by a desire for earthly prosperities, for the punishment of his enemies, for the visible solution of life's perplexities; God himself is enough for him. In him he finds his rest. He does not cry to him for satisfaction. God is his satisfaction. In communion with Him he is at peace. The peace of God is no sleepy stupor or thoughtless ease: it is the peace which (for almost all who know it) lies on the other side of striving; noble deeds and holy living are both its presupposition and its fruit.

§ 14. Psalms one hundred and thirty-three and one hundred and thirty-four.-Of the two last pilgrimage songs the first (cxxxiii) celebrates the union of all classes and conditions of Israelites in common worship at Jerusalem. 'In the solemn feast which has brought them together to Zion, the scattered brethren of one faith enjoy the privilege of being near one another.' The two figures under which this 'pleasant' union is described are not quite easy. Does the first mean that the goodliness of the sight is as the goodliness of the sacred oil, or rather that the unbroken lines of the pilgrims are like the continuous flow of the oil? What is the dew of distant Hermon which flows down on Mount Zion? Does it mean dew as rich as that which falls on Hermon, and is the point of the comparison the reviving quality of the dew? The pilgrims gain fresh strength from their common worship even as the dew, goodly as Hermon's, which falls on Zion refreshes the herbage.

Professor Robertson-Smith, whose interpretation of the first two lines of the Psalm is quoted and adopted above, holds that the rest of it describes 'the scene under a figure. The long lines of the houses of Jerusalem, and the tents of the pilgrims, flow down the slopes of the Temple-hill even to the base, like the oil on Aaron's garments-a blessed sight. Nay, this gathering of all the piety of Israel is as if the fertilizing dews of great Hermon were all concentrated on the little hill of Zion.'

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is

That brethren should dwell together!

It is like the fine oil upon the head

That floweth down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: That floweth down to the skirts of his garments:

As the dew of Hermon, that floweth down upon the

mountains of Zion:

For there the Lord hath appointed the blessing,

Even life for evermore.

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