By J.G. Bellet
Psalm 61
This is a beauteous and touching little Psalm. It is as an utterance of Jesus in the sense of being rejected by Israel, though He were consciously and rightfully their king. And David, hunted by Saul in the caves and deserts after he had been anointed by Samuel, was the type of Christ in such condition. (See 1 Sam.)
This rejection by Israel gives Jesus to feel Himself a stranger here. He is, as it were, at "the end of the earth;" and there He prays, and there He desires the Rock, that is, Resurrection (see Ps. 40: 2), or the Kingdom. But He trusts, with full faith, in God's present presence and shelter; and in that, as His tabernacle, He is purposed to abide "for ever," or through the age of His rejection. But after a pause, He anticipates more than a shelter in a time of rejection and sorrow. He assures Himself of God's favour to Him as King; and that, as such, He will soon abide "for ever," or through the age of a kingdom, when He will pay the vows of His present distressful hours, and His cries and prayers shall be changed for joy and praise.
Psalm 62
This same rejected King, the disowned Son of David, is here heard also. He is blessedly making God every thing to Him. He will own no other refuge, or source of strength, but God. God is His rock, His salvation, His glory. His soul waits only upon Him, and all His expectation is from Him. (See Heb. 10: 12, 13, and see Ps. 110) This is a truly excellent expression of the faith of the rejected Jesus, who was the Remnant, as we may speak, in His day; and most acceptable must have been the incense of it before God.
In this Psalm, Jesus enjoys God as His Rock; in Ps. 61. He desired the Rock--and He encourages His people to have the same mind, and to cease from man; and challenges the men of this world for their deceit and violence and false confidence.
Well indeed has He learnt the lesson, that "power belongeth unto God." For once God had spoken it, but twice Jesus had heard it. He had heard it with a full witness of its truth; so wide did He open His ear to divine instruction morning by morning. (Isa. 50: 4) Man is a duller scholar. (See Job 33: 14)
Thus the Lord shows Himself separate from fallen man. He trusts only in God, and will take only from God. The devil would have had Him trust him, and take from him, as Adam did of old (Gen. 3), and as the Apostate will by and by (Rev. 13: 2), but He refused. (Matt. 4)
And He has learnt God's mercy also. Because, though God Himself is everything, as their utterance had owned, yet will He give every one the reward of his works. Though He works all our works in us, yet will He deal with them as ours, and reward even the cup of cold water given in the name of Jesus.
Psalm 63
The same disowned King is again heard in this Psalm. But here He is making God the great source of refreshment and joy to His spirit, as in the preceding Psalm He made Him the ground of His confidence and strength in circumstances.
The whole system in Israel, as settled by the Lord, was a sanctuary. (Ex. 15: 17, Ps. 114: 2) For a sanctuary is a place where God makes Himself known, and the land of Israel was such a place. Jehovah was there. But Israel had revolted, and Jesus was disowned. And thus it was "a dry and thirsty land" to the righteous.
But in this Psalm, faith is in lively exercise. As Jesus cannot see God's power and glory in the sanctuary, He will remember God Himself. He has the sense of His loving -kindness, though the sight of the sanctuary be denied Him. His meditation on Him shall fill Him with praise, and the conscious shadow of His wing with rejoicing, though He be now cast out, and the place be in itself dry and thirsty.
This is blessed exercise of the soul upon God. And refusing His soul any other present joy than this remembrance of God, He assures Himself of other joy by and by, even royal joy, joy in His kingdom, and confusion of all His enemies, when they shall be made a portion for the beasts of the earth. (Rev. 19; Ezekiel 39) Because spiritual joy and refreshment, however blessed, is not the end. Glory ought still to be the expectation. Christ having a kingdom in store for Him, nothing less than the joy of a King can satisfy Him. He is even now, though seated at God's right hand, still an expectant. (Heb. 10: 13)
This Psalm was also, to all appearance, David's utterance when separated from God's house but still encouraged by God's spiritual presence. And our souls should know these secrets. Did not Peter know them when he slept, and Paul and Silas when they sang praises in the prison? There was no sanctuary around them, but the Holy Ghost had spread within a kingdom of light and liberty and joy in God. They were citizens of a city that needed not the light of the sun. The godly Jew in the last days will find his sympathy with this utterance also. Verse 10. "Foxes." (See Lam. 5: 18; Luke 13: 31, 34) The fox does different work from the "hen." She gathereth under her wing,--he scatters and desolates.
Psalm 64
The suffering Jesus here prays for protection from His insidious infidel persecutors, who privily plot against Him, and despise the judgments of God.
More fully, however, it is the desire of the Spirit of Christ in union with the afflicted Remnant in the latter day. For against them, as against Jesus Himself, the infidel faction, as we know both from Psalms and Prophets, will plot.
And Psalms of this character may remind us of what is said of the Lord in 1 Peter 2: 23. As we know also from John 17: 25, that He did commit the world, in its infidelity, to the notice of the righteous Father.
The righteous know that God has His arrows as well as the wicked--His of judgment, theirs of deceit and mischief (verses 3, 7). And they assure themselves that they will see their enemies taken in their own evil way, and then the world around fleeing from them, and learning, by His judgments, to fear the Lord and to publish His doings. And, finally, they take knowledge of themselves, as making their boast, putting their trust, and reaping their joy, in the God of their salvation.
Psalm 65
This is a Psalm of peculiar beauty. The Remnant in Israel are looking at the house where their fathers praised; and they own to the Lord, as it were, that that holy and beautiful place is laid waste, that all there is silent as death now, but ready to break forth again in the glad performance of vows, and in the gathering of all the world into His sanctuary, when He has heard His people's prayer (1, 2). In a spirit of repentance, they then own that their iniquities alone must account for their present ruins; but they have confidence in the coming divine remission of their nation's guilt (v. 3). They look for God's goodness to themselves, and for His righteousness upon their enemies; anticipating that the ends of the earth will be moved when they hear of these divine judgments in righteousness on Israel's enemies (4-8). And at the close, they anticipate the millennial joy and fruitfulness of the earth, when the Lord shall again become the husbandman of the land of His people, as He was in old time, when His eyes shall return to rest on that land from one end of the year to the other, when beauty and gladness and rich fertility shall attest the care and skill of the divine dresser of His loved and favoured vineyard, when days of heaven shall be on earth. (See Deut. 11: 10-21)
Nothing can exceed this picture. The thoughts of the Remnant are rapidly carried through sorrows and judgments up to the millennial rest and prosperity. But there they indulge themselves at some length over the happy scenes around them. The wilderness and the solitary place are glad. The Lord is for the mountains and hills, the rivers and the valleys of Israel again, and they are tilled and sown. "The desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by, and they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden." (Ezek. 36: 35) In poetic words
"The fruitful field
Laughs with abundance--and the land, once lean,
Exults to see its thirsty curse repealed."
