The Hart Wounded.
Are we not warranted to infer that it was the wounded stag which David now saw, or pictured he saw, seeking the brooks?—the hart hit by the archers, with blood-drops standing on its flanks, and its eye glazed with faintness, exhaustion, and death? But for these wounds it would never have come to the Valley. It would have been nestling still up in its native heath—the thick furze and cover of the mountain heights of Gilead. But the shaft of the archer had sped with unerring aim; and, with distended nostril and quivering limb, it hastens to allay the rage of its death-thirst.
Picture of David, ay, and of many who have been driven to drink of that "river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God." They are wounded spirits; the arrow festering in their souls, and drawing their life-blood. Faint, trembling, forlorn, weary, they have left the world's high ground—the heights of vanity, and indifference, and self-righteousness, and sin—and have sought the lowly Valley of humiliation.
What are some of these arrows? There are arrows from the quiver of MAN, and arrows from the quiver of God.
The arrows of man are often the cruellest of all. "Lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart." (Ps. xi. 2.) Envy is an archer. His shaft is dipped in gall and wormwood. Jealousy is a bowman, whose barbed weapons cannot stand the prosperity of a rival. Revenge has his quiver filled with keen points of steel, that burn to retaliate the real or imagined injury. Malice is an archer that seeks his prey in ambush. He lurks behind the rock. He inflicts his wanton mischief—irreparable injury—on the absent or innocent. Contempt is a bowman of soaring aim. He looks down with haughty, supercilious scorn on others. The teeth of such "are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword." (Ps. lvii. 4.) Deceit.—He is, in these our days, a huntsman of repute—a modern Nimrod—with gilded arrows in his quiver, and a bugle, boasting great things, slung at his girdle. He makes his target the unsuspecting; decoys them, with siren look, within his toils, and leaves them, wounded and helpless, on "the mountains of prey!" "Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee? or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper." (Ps. cxx. 2-4.)
But there are arrows also from the quiver of God. "The arrows of the Almighty," says Job, "are within me, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit." (Job vi. 4.) "He hath bent His bow," says Jeremiah, "and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath causéd the arrows of His quiver to enter into my reins." (Lam. iii. 12, 13.) And who will not breathe the prayer of the Gilead Exile at another time?—"Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are His mercies!" "Faithful are the wounds of this friend." (2 Sam. xxiv. 14; Prov. xxvii. 6.)
We need not stop to enumerate particularly these arrows. There is the blanched arrow of sickness, the rusted arrow of poverty, the lacerating arrow of bereavement, stained and saturated with tears, and feathered from our own bosoms! There is the arrow, too, (though of a different kind,) of God's own blessed Word, "quick and powerful." "Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the King's enemies." (Ps. xlv. 5.)
Yet, blessed be God, these are often arrows which wound only to heal; or rather, which, from the wounds they create, send the bleeding, panting, thirsting soul to seek the waters of comfort in God himself. Suffering one! be thankful for thy wounds. But for these shafts thou mightest have been, at this moment, sleeping on the mountain heights of self-righteousness, or worldliness, or sin, with no thought of thy soul; the streams of salvation disowned; forsaking, and continuing to forsake, the "Fountain of Living Waters."
Let me ask, Has this been the result of thy woundings? Have they led thee from the "broken (leaky) cistern" to say, "All my springs are in Thee?" Remember affliction, worldly calamity, bereavement, have a twofold effect. It is a solemn alternative! They may drive thee nearer, they may drive thee farther from, thy God. They may drive thee down to the gushing stream, or farther up the cold, freezing mountain-side. The wounded hart of this Psalm, on receiving the sting of the arrow, might have plunged only deeper and deeper into the toils of the huntsmen, or the solitudes of the forest. It might have gone with its pining eye, and broken heart, and bleeding wound, to bury itself amid the withered leaves.
How many there are whose afflictions seem to lead to this sad consequence; who, when mercies and blessings are removed, abandon themselves to sullen and morbid fretfulness; who, instead of bowing submissive to the hand that wounds and is able to heal, seem to feel as if they were denuded of their rights! Their language is the bitter reproach of Jonah—"I do well to be angry, even unto death." Muffling themselves in hardened unbelief, their wretched solace is that of despair—"It is better for me to die than to live."