No wonder that the psalmist breaks into blessing; but it is deeply significant of the freedom from mere sentimental religion which characterises the highest flights of his devotion, that his special ground of blessing Jehovah is not inward peace of communion, but the wise guidance given thereby for daily difficulties. A God whose sweet sufficiency gives satisfaction for all desires and balm for every wound is much, but a God who by these very gifts makes duty plain, is more. The test of inward devotion is its bearing on common tasks. True wisdom is found in fellowship with God. Eyes which look on Him see many things more clearly. The "reins" are conceived of as the seat of the Divine voice. In Old Testament psychology they seem to stand for feelings rather than reason or conscience, and it is no mistake of the psalmist's when he thinks that through them God's counsel comes. He means much the same as we do when we say that devout instincts are of God. He will purify, ennoble and instruct even the lower propensities and emotions, so that they may be trusted to guide, when the heart is at rest in Him. "Prayer is better than sleep," says the Mohammedan call to devotion. "In the night seasons," says the psalmist, when things are more clearly seen in the dark than by day, many a whisper from Jehovah steals into his ears.
The upshot of all is a firm resolve to make really his what is his. "I set Jehovah always before me"—since He is "always my lot." That effort of faith is the very life of devotion. We have any possession only while it is present to our thoughts. It is all one not to have a great estate and never to see it or think about it. True love is an intense desire for the presence of its object. God is only ours in reality when we are conscious of His nearness, and that is strange love of Him which is content to pass days without ever setting Him before itself. The effort of faith brings an ally and champion for faith, for "He is at my right hand," in so far as I set Him before me. "At my right hand,"—then I am at His left, and the left arm wears the shield, and the shield covers my head. Then He is close by my working hand, to direct its activity and to lay His own great hand on my feeble one, as the prophet did his on the wasted fingers of the sick king to give strength to draw the bow. The ally of faith secures the stability of faith. "I shall not be moved," either by the agitations of passions or by the shocks of fortune. A calm heart, which is not the same thing as a stagnant heart, is the heritage of him who has God at his side; and he who is fixed on that rock stands four-square to all the winds that blow. Foolhardy self-reliance says, I shall never be moved (x. 6), and the end of that boast is destruction. A good man, seduced by prosperity, may forget himself so far as to say it (xxx. 6), and the end of that has to be fatherly discipline, to bring him right. But to say "Because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved" is but to claim the blessings belonging to the possession of the only satisfying inheritance, even Jehovah Himself.
The heart that expands with such blessed consciousness of possessing God can chant its triumphant song even in front of the grave. So, in his closing strain the psalmist pours out his rapturous faith that his fellowship with God abolishes death. No worthy climax to the profound consciousness of communion already expressed, nor any satisfactory progress of thought justifying the "therefore" of ver. 9, can be made out with any explanation of the final verses, which eliminates the assurance of immortal life from them. The experiences of the devout life here are prophecies. These aspirations and enjoyments are to their possessor, not only authentic proofs "that God is and that He is the rewarder of the heart that seeks Him," but also witnesses of immortality not to be silenced. They "were not born for death," but, in their sweetness and incompleteness alike, point onwards to their own perpetuity and perfecting. If a man has been able to say and has said "My God," nothing will seem more impossible to him than that such a trifle as death should have power to choke his voice or still the outgoings of his heart towards, and its rest in, his God. Whatever may have been the current beliefs of the psalmist's time in regard to a future life, and whether his sunny confidence here abode with him in less blessed hours of less "high communion with the living God," or ebbed away, leaving him to the gloomier thoughts of other psalms, we need not try to determine. Here, at all events, we see his faith in the act of embracing the great thought, which may have been like the rising of a new sun in his sky—namely, the conviction that this his joy was joy for ever. A like depth of personal experience of the sweetness of communion with God will always issue in like far-seeing assurance of its duration as unaffected by anything that touches only the physical husk of the true self. If we would be sure of immortal life, we must make the mortal a God-filled life.
The psalmist feels the glad certainty in all his complex nature, heart, soul, and flesh. All three have their portion in the joy which it brings. The foundation of the exultation of heart and soul and of the quiet rest of flesh is not so much the assurance that after death there will be life, and after the grave a resurrection, as the confidence that there will be no death at all. To "see the pit" is a synonym for experiencing death, and what is hoped for is exemption from it altogether, and a Divine hand leading him, as Enoch was led, along the high levels on a "path of life" which leads to God's right hand, without any grim descent to the dark valley below. Such an expectation may be called vain, but we must distinguish between the form and the substance of the psalmist's hope. Its essence was—unbroken and perfected communion with God, uninterrupted sense of possessing Him, and therein all delights and satisfactions. To secure these he dared to hope that for him death would be abolished. But he died, and assuredly he found that the unbroken communion for which he longed was persistent through death, and that in dying his hope that he should not die was fulfilled beyond his hope.
The correspondence between his effort of faith in ver. 8 and his final position in ver. 11 is striking. He who sets Jehovah continually before himself will, in due time, come where there are fulness of joys before God's face; and he who here, amid distractions and sorrows, has kept Jehovah at his right hand as his counsellor, defender and companion, will one day stand at Jehovah's right hand, and be satisfied for evermore with the uncloying and inexhaustible pleasures that there abide.
The singer, whose clear notes thus rang above the grave, died and saw corruption. But, as the apostolic use of this psalm as a prophecy of Christ's resurrection has taught us, the apparent contradiction of his triumphal chant by the fact of his death did not prove it to be a vain dream. If there ever should be a life of absolutely unbroken communion, that would be a life in which death would be abolished. Jesus Christ is God's "Beloved" as no other is. He has conquered death as no other has. The psalm sets forth the ideal relation of the perfectly devout man to death and the future, and that ideal is a reality in Him, from whom the blessed continuity, which the psalmist was sure must belong to fellowship so close as was his with God, flows to all who unite themselves with Him. He has trodden the path of life which He shows to us, and it is life, at every step, even when it dips into the darkness of what men call death, whence it rises into the light of the Face which it is joy to see, and close to the loving strong Hand which holds and gives pleasures for evermore.
[PSALM XVII.]
1 Hear a righteous cause, Jehovah, attend to my cry;
Give ear to my prayer from no lips of guile.
2 From Thy face let my sentence go forth;
Thine eyes behold rightly.
3 Thou provest my heart, searchest it by night,
Triest me by fire: Thou findest not [anything];
Should I purpose evil, it shall not pass my mouth (?)
4 As for (During) the doings of men, by the word of Thy lips
I have kept [me from] the paths of the violent man.
5 My steps have held fast to Thy ways;
My feet have not slipped.
6 I, I call upon Thee, for Thou wilt answer me, O God;
Incline Thine ear unto me: hear my speech.
7 Magnify (Make wonderful) Thy loving-kindnesses, Thou who savest those who seek refuge
From those who rise [against them?] by Thy right hand.
8 Keep me as the pupil, the daughter of the eye;
In the shadow of Thy wing hide me
9 From the wicked, who lay me waste,
My enemies at heart, [who] ring me round.
10 Their heart they have shut up;
With their mouth they speak in arrogance.
11 In our steps, they already compass us about;
Their eyes they fix, to lay [us] on the ground.
12 He is like a lion who longs to rend,
And a young lion crouching in coverts.
13 Arise, Jehovah: meet his face: make him crouch;
Deliver my soul from the wicked [with] Thy sword,
14 From men [by] Thy hand, Jehovah, from men of the world,
[Having] their portion in [this] life, and [with] Thy hidden treasure Thou fillest their belly;
They are full of sons, and leave their overabundance to their children.
15 I, I shall in righteousness behold Thy face;
I shall be satisfied on awaking [with] Thy likeness.