But the last words of the psalm are sunny with the assurance of present favour and with boundless hope. The man is still lying on his sick-bed, ringed by whispering foes. There is no change without, but this change has passed: that he has tightened his hold of God, and therefore can feel that his enemies' whispers will never rise or swell into a shout of victory over him. He can speak of the future deliverance as if present; and he can look ahead over an indefinite stretch of sunlit country, scarcely knowing whether the furthest point is earth or no. His integrity is not sinless, nor does he plead it as a reason for Jehovah's upholding, but hopes for it as the consequence of His sustaining hand. He knows that he will have close approach to Jehovah; and though, no doubt, "for ever" on his lips meant less than it does on ours, his assurance of continuous communion with God reached, if not to actual, clear consciousness of immortality, at all events to assurance of a future so indefinitely extended, and so brightened by the sunlight of God's face, that it wanted but little additional extension or brightening to be the full assurance of life immortal.
[BOOK II.]
PSALMS XLII.-LXXII.
[PSALMS XLII., XLIII.]
Psalm xlii.
1 Like a hind which pants after the water-brooks,
So pants, my soul after Thee, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
3 My tears have been bread to me day and night,
While they say to me all the day, Where is thy God?
4 This would I remember, and pour out my soul in me,
How I went with the throng, led them in procession to the house of God,
With shrill cries of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why art thou bowed down, my soul, and moanest within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet give Him thanks,
[As] the help of my countenance and my God.
6 Within me is my soul bowed down;
Therefore let me remember Thee from the land of Jordan and of the Hermons, from Mount Mizar.
7 Flood calls to flood at the voice of Thy cataracts;
All Thy breakers and rollers are gone over me.
8 [Yet] by day will Jehovah command His loving-kindness,
And in the night shall a song to Him be with me,
[Even] a prayer to the God of my life.
9 Let me say to God my Rock, Why hast Thou forgotten me?
Why must I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
10 As if they crushed my bones, my adversaries reproach me,
Whilst all the day they say to me, Where is thy God?
11 Why art thou bowed down, my soul, and why moanest thou within me?
Hope thou in God, for I shall yet give Him thanks
[As] the help of my countenance and my God.