But before the assize opens, the heavens, which had been summoned to behold, declare beforehand His righteousness, as manifested by the fact that He is about to judge His people. The Selah indicates that a long-drawn swell of music fills the expectant pause before the Judge speaks from His tribunal.
The second part (vv. 7-15) deals with one of the two permanent tendencies which work for the corruption of religion—namely, the reliance on external worship, and neglect of the emotions of thankfulness and trust. God appeals first to the relation into which He has entered with the people, as giving Him the right to judge. There may be a reference to the Mosaic formula, "I am Jehovah, thy God," which is here converted, in accordance with the usage of this book of the Psalter, into "God (Elohim), thy God." The formula which was the seal of laws when enacted is also the warrant for the action of the Judge. He has no fault to find with the external acts of worship. They are abundant and "continually before Him." Surely this declaration at the outset sets aside the notion that the psalmist was launching a polemic against sacrifices per se. It distinctly takes the ground that the habitual offering of these was pleasing to the Judge. Their presentation continually is not reproved, but approved. What then is condemned? Surely it can be nothing but sacrifice without the thanksgiving and prayer required in vv. 14, 15. The irony of vv. 9-13 is directed against the folly of believing that in sacrifice itself God delighted; but the shafts are pointless as against offerings which are embodied gratitude and trust. The gross stupidity of supposing that man's gift makes the offering to be God's more truly than before is laid bare in the fine, sympathetic glance at the free, wild life of forest, mountain, and plain, which is all God's possession, and present to His upholding thought, and by the side of which man's folds are very small affairs. "The cattle" in ver. 10 are not, as usually, domesticated animals, but the larger wild animals. They graze or roam "on the mountains of a thousand"—a harsh expression, best taken, perhaps, as meaning mountains where thousands [of the cattle] are. But the omission of one letter gives the more natural reading "mountains of God" (cf. Psalm xxxvi. 6). It is adopted by Olshausen and Cheyne, and smooths the construction, but has against it its obliteration of the fine thought of the multitudes of creatures peopling the untravelled hills. The word rendered "whatever moves" is obscure; but that meaning is accepted by most. Cheyne in his Commentary gives as alternative "that which comes forth abundantly," and in "Orig. of Psalt.," 473, "offspring." All these are "with Me"—i.e., present to His mind—a parallel to "I know" in the first clause of the same verse.
Vv. 12, 13, turn the stream of irony on another absurdity involved in the superstition attacked—the grossly material thought of God involved in it. What good do bulls' flesh and goats' blood do to Him? But if these are expressions of thankful love, they are delightsome to Him. Therefore the section ends with the declaration that the true sacrifice is thanksgiving and the discharge of vows. Men honour God by asking and taking, not by giving. They glorify Him when, by calling on Him in trouble, they are delivered; and then, by thankfulness and service, as well as by the evidence which their experience gives that prayer is not in vain, they again glorify Him. All sacrifices are God's before they are offered, and do not become any more His by being offered. He neither needs nor can partake of material sustenance. But men's hearts are not His without their glad surrender, in the same way as after it; and thankful love, trust, and obedience are as the food of God, sacrifices acceptable, well-pleasing to Him.
The third part of the psalm is still sterner in tone. It strikes at the other great corruption of worship by hypocrites. As has been often remarked, it condemns breaches of the second table of the law, just as the former part may be regarded as dealing with transgressions of the first. The eighth, seventh, and ninth commandments are referred to in vv. 18, 19, as examples of the hypocrites' sins. The irreconcilable contradiction of their professions and conduct is vividly brought out in the juxtaposition of "declare My statutes" and "castest My words behind thee." They do two opposite things with the same words—at the same time proclaiming them with all lip-reverence, and scornfully flinging them behind their backs in their conduct. The word rendered in the A.V. "slanderest" is better taken as in margin of the R.V., "givest a thrust," meaning to use violence so as to harm or overthrow.
Hypocrisy finds encouragement in impunity. God's silence is an emphatic way of expressing His patient tolerance of evil unpunished. Such "long-suffering" is meant to lead to repentance, and indicates God's unwillingness to smite. But, as experience shows, it is often abused, and "because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons of men is throughly set in them to do evil." The gross mind has gross conceptions of God. One nemesis of hypocrisy is the dimming of the idea of the righteous Judge. All sin darkens the image of God. When men turn away from God's self-revelation, as they do by transgression and most fatally by hypocrisy, they cannot but make a God after their own image. Browning has taught us in his marvellous "Caliban on Setebos" how a coarse nature projects its own image into the heavens and calls it God. God made man in His own likeness. Men who have lost that likeness make God in theirs, and so sink deeper in evil till He speaks. Then comes an apocalypse to the dreamer, when there is flashed before him what God is and what he himself is. How terror-stricken the gaze of these eyes before which God arrays the deeds of a life, seen for the first time in their true character! It will be the hypocrite's turn to keep silence then, and his thought of a complaisant God like himself will perish before the stern reality.
The whole teaching of the psalm is gathered up in the two closing verses. "Ye that forget God" includes both the superstitious formalists and the hypocrites. Reflection upon such truths as those of the psalm will save them from else inevitable destruction. "This" points on to ver. 23, which is a compendium of both parts of the psalm. The true worship, which consists in thankfulness and praise, is opposed in ver. 23 a to mere externalisms of sacrifice, as being the right way of glorifying God. The second clause presents a difficulty. But it would seem that we must expect to find in it a summing up of the warning of the third part of the psalm similar to that of the second part in the preceding clause. That consideration goes against the rendering in the R.V. margin (adopted from Delitzsch): "and prepares a way [by which] I may show," etc. The ellipsis of the relative is also somewhat harsh. The literal rendering of the ambiguous words is, "one setting a way." Graetz, who is often wild in his emendations, proposes a very slight one here—the change of one letter, which would yield a good meaning: "he that is perfect in his way." Cheyne adopts this, and it eases a difficulty. But the received text is capable of the rendering given in the A.V., and, even without the natural supplement "aright," is sufficiently intelligible. To order one's way or "conversation" is, of course, equivalent to giving heed to it according to God's word, and is the opposite of the conduct stigmatised in vv. 16-21. The promise to him who thus acts is that he shall see God's salvation, both in the narrower sense of daily interpositions for deliverance, and in the wider of a full and final rescue from all evil and endowment with all good. The psalm has as keen an edge for modern as for ancient sins. Superstitious reliance on externals of worship survives, though sacrifices have ceased; and hypocrites, with their mouths full of the Gospel, still cast God's words behind them, as did those ancient hollow-hearted proclaimers and breakers of the Law.
[PSALM LI.]
1 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Thy loving-kindness:
According to the greatness of Thy compassions blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And from my sin make me clean.
3 For I, I know my transgressions:
And my sin is before me continually.
4 Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,
And done what is evil in Thine eyes:
That Thou mightest appear righteous when Thou speakest,
And clear when Thou judgest.
5 Behold, in iniquity was I born;
And in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts:
Therefore in the hidden part make me to know wisdom.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me to hear joy and gladness;
That the bones Thou hast crushed may exult.
9 Hide Thy face from my sins, and all my iniquities blot out.
10 A clean heart create for me, O God;
And a steadfast spirit renew within me.
11 Cast me not out from Thy presence;
And Thy holy spirit take not from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation:
And with a willing spirit uphold me.
13 [Then] will I teach transgressors Thy ways;
And sinners shall return to Thee.
14 Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation;
And my tongue shall joyfully sing Thy righteousness.
15 Lord, open my lips;
And my mouth shall declare Thy praise.
16 For Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it:
In burnt offering Thou hast no pleasure.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:
A heart broken and crushed, O God, Thou wilt not despise.
18 Do good in Thy good pleasure to Zion:
O build the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then shalt Thou delight in sacrifices of righteousness, burnt offering and whole burnt offering:
Then shall they offer bullocks on Thine altar.