"Let one more attest,
I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime,
And all was for best."
The epithet is next applied (ver. 66) to the perception (lit. taste) or faculty of discernment of good and evil, for which the psalmist prays, basing his petition on his belief of God's word. Swift, sure, and delicate apprehension of right and wrong comes from such belief. The heart in which it reigns is sensitive as a goldsmith's scales or a thermometer which visibly sinks when a cloud passes before the sun. The instincts of faith work surely and rapidly. The settled judgment that life had been good includes apparent evil (ver. 67), which is real evil in so far as it pains, but is, in a deeper view, good, inasmuch as it scourges a wandering heart back to true obedience and therefore to well-being. The words of ver. 67 are specially appropriate as the utterance of the Israel purified from idolatrous tendencies by captivity, but may also be the expression of individual experience. The epithet is next applied to God Himself (ver. 68). How steadfast a gaze into the depths of the Divine nature and over the broad field of the Divine activity is in that short, all-including clause, containing but three words in the Hebrew, "Good art Thou and doing good"! The prayer built on it is the one which continually recurs in this psalm, and is reached by many paths. Every view of man's condition, whether it is bright or dark, and every thought of God, bring the psalmist to the same desire. Here God's character and beneficence, widespread and continual, prompt to the prayer, both because the knowledge of His will is our highest good, and because a good God cannot but wish His servants to be like Himself, in loving righteousness and hating iniquity.
Vv. 69 and 70 are a pair, setting forth the antithesis, frequent in the psalm, between evil men's conduct to the psalmist and his tranquil contemplation of, and delight in, God's precepts. False slanders buzz about him, but he cleaves to God's Law, and is conscious of innocence. Men are dull and insensible, as if their hearts were waterproofed with a layer of grease, through which no gentle rain from heaven could steal; but the psalmist is all the more led to open his heart to the gracious influences of that law, because others close theirs. If a bad man is not made worse by surrounding evil, he is made better by it.
Just as in vv. 65 and 68 the same thought of God's goodness is expressed, ver. 71 repeats the thought of ver. 67, with a slight deepening. There the beneficent influence of sorrow was simply declared as a fact; here it is thankfully accepted, with full submission and consent of the will. "Good for me" means not only good in fact, but in my estimate. The repetition of the phrase at the beginning of the next verse throws light on its meaning in ver. 71. The singer thinks that he has two real goods, pre-eminent among the uniform sequence of such, and these are, first, his sorrows, which he reckons to be blessings, because they have helped him to a firmer grasp of the other, the real good for every man, the Law which is sacred and venerable, because it has come from the very lips of Deity. That is our true wealth. Happy they whose estimate of it corresponds to its real worth, and who have learned, by affliction or anyhow, that material riches are dross, compared with its solid preciousness!
§ י
73 Thy hands have made me and fashioned me,
Give me understanding that I may learn Thy commandments.
74 Let those who fear Thee see me and rejoice,
For I have waited for Thy word.
75 I know, Jehovah, that Thy judgments are in righteousness,
And that [in] faithfulness Thou hast afflicted me.
76 Oh let Thy lovingkindness be [sent] to comfort me,
According to Thy promise to Thy servant.
77 Let Thy compassions come to me that I may live,
For Thy law is my delight.
78 Let the proud be shamed, for they have lyingly dealt perversely with me;
I, I meditate on Thy precepts.
79 Let those who fear Thee turn to me,
And they shall know Thy testimonies.
80 Let my heart be sound in Thy statutes,
That I be not shamed.
Prayer for illumination is confined to the first and last verses of this section, the rest of which is mainly occupied with petitions for gracious providences, based upon the grounds of the psalmist's love of the Law, and of the encouragement to others to trust, derivable from his experience. Ver. 73 puts forcibly the thought that man is evidently an incomplete fragment, unless the gift of understanding is infused into his material frame. God has begun by shaping it, and therefore is pledged to go on to bestow spiritual discernment, when His creature asks it. But that prayer will only be answered if the suppliant intends to use the gift for its right purpose of learning God's statutes. Ver. 74 prays that the psalmist may be a witness that hope in His word is never vain, and so that his deliverances may be occasions of widespread gladness. God's honour is involved in answering His servant's trust. Vv. 75-77 are linked together. "Judgments" (ver. 75) seem to mean here providential acts, not, as generally in this psalm, the Law. The acknowledgment of the justice and faithfulness which send sorrows precedes the two verses of petition for "lovingkindness" and "compassions." Sorrows still sting and burn, though recognised as sent in love, and the tried heart yearns for these other messengers to come from God to sustain and soothe. God's promise and the psalmist's delight in God's law are the double ground of the twin petitions. Then follow three verses which are discernibly connected, as expressing desires in regard to "the proud," the devout, and the psalmist himself. He prays that the first may be shamed—i.e., that their deceitful or causeless hostility may be balked—and, as in several other verses, contrasts his own peaceful absorption in the Law with their machinations. He repeats the prayer of ver. 74 with a slight difference, asking that his deliverance may draw attention to him, and that others may, from contemplating his security, come to know the worth of God's testimonies. In ver. 79b the text reads "they shall know" (as the result of observing the psalmist), which the Hebrew margin needlessly alters into "those who know." For himself he prays that his heart may be sound, or thoroughly devoted to keep the law, and then he is sure that nothing shall ever put him to shame. "Who is he who will harm you, if ye be zealous for that which is good?"
§ כ
81 My soul has pined for Thy salvation,
For Thy word have I waited.
82 My eyes have pined for Thy promise,
Saying, When wilt Thou comfort me?
83 For I am become like a wine-skin in the smoke;
Thy statutes have I not forgotten.
84 How many are the days of Thy servant?
When wilt Thou execute judgment on my persecutors?
85 The proud have digged pits for me,
—They who are not according to Thy law.
86 All Thy commandments are faithfulness,
Lyingly they persecute me, help Thou me.
87 They had all but made an end of me on earth,
But I, I have not forgotten Thy precepts.
88 According to Thy lovingkindness revive me,
And I will observe the testimonies of Thy mouth.
This section has more than usual continuity. The psalmist is persecuted, and in these eight verses pours out his heart to God. Taken as a whole, they make a lovely picture of patient endurance and submissive longing. Intense and protracted yearning for deliverance has wasted his very soul, but has not merged in impatience or unbelief, for he has "waited for Thy word." His eyes have ached with straining for the signs of approaching comfort, the coming of which he has not doubted, but the delay of which has tried his faith. This longing has been quickened by troubles, which have wrapped him round like pungent smoke-wreaths eddying among the rafters, where disused wine-skins hang and get blackened and wrinkled. So has it been with him, but, through all, he has kept hold of God's statutes. So he plaintively reminds God of the brevity of his life, which has so short a tale of days that judgment on his persecutors must be swift, if it is to be of use. Vv. 85-87 describe the busy hostility of his foes. It is truculently contrary to God's law, and therefore, as is implied, worthy of God's counter-working. Ver. 85b is best taken as a further description of the "proud," which is spread before God as a reason for His judicial action. The antithesis in ver. 86, between the "faithfulness" of the Law and the "lying" persecutors, is the ground of the prayer, "Help Thou me." Even in extremest peril, when he was all but made away with, the psalmist still clung to God's precepts (ver. 87), and therefore he is heartened to pray for reviving, and to vow that then, bound by new chains of gratitude, he will, more than ever, observe God's testimonies. The measure of the new wine poured into the shrivelled wine-skin is nothing less than the measureless lovingkindness of God; and nothing but experience of His benefits melts to obedience.