By J.G. Bellet
Psalm 39
David's conduct towards Shimei can explain this Psalm also. He was dumb while the wicked were before him. He was accepting the punishment of his sin, bowing himself under the mighty hand of God in silence. His repentance, as in 2 Sam. 15-19 is a very affecting sight indeed.
The path of the soul in this Psalm is very blessed, and within the range of the experience of the saints at all times. It is to be traced thus -
Under provocation, the believer is resolved in God's strength to be silent, though this at first stirred and kindled the sorrow within (1, 2). But the Spirit, in season, brought relief, and gave the fire of spiritual affections in the soul increased and lively energy. For this is His way--if nature be restrained, the new kingdom will rise in power. So it was here. During the silence put upon nature, this warmth of the renewed heart is heated, and yields blessed fruit to this silence and mortification; for the lips are opened, not to revile again, nor to threaten those from whom he was suffering, but to commit himself to God, owning his own unworthiness, and taking all this suffering as from the hand of his gracious God for good (3-11). His soul, by all this holy exercise, learns to see itself in heavenly companionship with God himself in this earth, and he only looks for strength to travel the rest of his pilgrim journey with increased alacrity and vigour (12, 13).
This suits us all; and blessed is the soul of any saint thus healthfully exercised. We should know these paths of the Spirit better than we do. Thus will the repentant Israel of the latter day accept the punishment of their sin. (Lev. 26: 40) So, in silence, did Jesus receive our chastisement. (Isa. 53: 7; Matt. 26: 63; see Ps. 38)
Shimei did the part of that injurious multitude who surrounded the blessed Sufferer before the Governor and on Calvary, reviling Him with their lips, and gnashing on Him with their teeth. Ahithophel was the Judas of those scenes in 2 Samuel. (See Ps. 109)
Psalm 40
Probably this Psalm was uttered by David on the same occasion. But the Spirit who spoke through David, and in David's circumstances, soon leaves David to utter the heart of Jesus only. (v. 6-8; and Heb. 11: 5-7)
The opening verses give us the Lord's anticipation of His resurrection or deliverance; He afterwards rehearses His self-dedication, His ministry, His sorrows, and His cry. He tells us that He patiently waited for resurrection. He might, we know, have asserted His divine power; but He waited till He was raised "by the blood of the everlasting covenant." (Heb. 13) Thus was He, as He says in this Psalm, the poor and needy one--the one who depended on God for everything--the one who waited patiently in exercise of faith.
As in other Psalms, He confesses the sins which He had taken on Him. For such confession both vindicates God, and is a gracious adoption of that which had been laid upon Him, that we may have strong consolation in knowing the reality of the imputation of our sins to His account; as the high priest, under the law, confessed Israel's sins on the head of the scape-goat.
The unnumbered multitude of God's thoughts (see also Psalm 139) beautifully expresses the diligence and delight of God over Christ and His redeemed, as though this object were all His concern, and the centre of all His counsels. Would that we knew how to enjoy this truth as we should! (See Psalm 70 in connection with the closing verses of this.)
Psalm 41
This Psalm still suits David in the same affliction. In it he seems at the beginning to have respect to Barzillai, who in the day of Absalom, Ahithophel, and Shimei, considered the afflicted David. (2 Sam. 17: 27, 29) He then pleads against his enemies, and ends with anticipation of his own deliverance and their confusion to the praise of his God, the God of Israel.
But Jesus is surely here, as in the others. We could not, we dared not, we would not, however, see Him in verse 4; and this reminds me of what I have already observed on Psalm 27. The daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23) may be regarded as filling in measure the place of Barzillai, as Judas does that of Ahithophel, or the multitude that of Shimei. And they moved the Lord's sympathy, as Barzillai did David's. They gave him as it were a cup of cold water, and it got its reward. But Barzillai is a pattern of all who now in the day of His rejection own the righteous Jesus; to whom He says, "ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations."
And blessed indeed is he who thus looks at the mystery of the preceding Psalm, and considers the poor and needy Jesus, and who by faith casts in his lot with Him. "Blessed is he," as He says Himself, "whosoever is not offended in me." And yet the pride of life and the course of this apostate world make our following of "this poor man" no easy or pleasant thing.
NOTE.--Here ends the first of the five books into which the Jews distribute the Psalms.
Psalms 42-49 constitute a little series or volume. They are all said to be "for the sons of Korah"--an intimation of their being connected with each other. They may have been indited at different times, but that is no matter; the Spirit of God has presented them to us together, and they so follow in order that one subject is duly unfolded in them.
The subject may be said to be this: "The sorrows of the Jewish remnant in the latter day, their triumphs, and then their joy and glory in Zion as head of the nations under their great king."
Psalm 42
This Psalm gives us the complaint of a suppliant who is in sorrow because of separation from God's house, because of the reproach of his enemies, and because of the remembrance of joy now gone by. He is, however, able to encourage himself in God, and to hope for the future.
David's sorrow at the hand of Absalom was kindred with this; for we remember how he was then driven beyond Jordan, and how he sent back Zadok and the Ark of God to Jerusalem. All his joy was in God's habitation; but he had sinned, and his soul owned that joy was not his proper portion then. (2 Sam. 15)
But in all this, we may say, like king, like people. The people, the true Israel of God, in the latter day will come to such sorrow and desire after God. They will mourn sore like doves--like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity. (Ezek. 7: 16)
The Spirit of Christ, in full sympathy with them (for in all their afflictions He is afflicted), will lead the soul of the Remnant in these exercises, making them His own. The challenge of the enemy to the individual suppliant, "Where is thy God?" (verse 3) is given to us in Joel 2: 17, as said by the heathen to God's Israel, "Where is their God?"
But the spirit of this Psalm may be the burden of any righteous and afflicted one. And all such sorrow gives exercise of soul towards God, and advances the discipline of the wilderness. It gives knowledge of God's resources, which had never been otherwise brought out by Him, or known by us.
