Let us now proceed to the main feature in this verse. We have already noted how the exiled King had tried to reason his soul out of its depression by the exercise of Hope—by looking beyond the shadows of the present to a brighter future. But the torch flickered and languished in his hand. He adopts a new expedient. Instead of looking to the future, he resolves to take a retrospective survey; he directs his eye to the past. As often at eventide, when the lower valleys are in shadow, the mountain-tops are gilded with the radiance of the setting sun; so from the Valley of Humiliation, where he now was, he looks back on the lofty memorials of God's faithfulness. He "lifts his eyes unto the HILLS, from whence cometh his help." "O my God, I will remember Thee!" "This is my infirmity," he seems to say, when he thinks of the weakness of his faith, and the fitfulness of his frames and feelings: "but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the works of the Lord; surely I will remember Thy wonders of old."[57] With this key he proceeds again to open the door of Hope. And as he treads the valley of Achor, he "sings there as in the days of his youth."[58]
In connexion with this remembrance of his God, David alludes to some well-known places in his Kingdom—"The land of Jordan, and the Hermonites, and the hill Mizar."
What means he by this reference? His language may admit of a twofold interpretation.
1. He may possibly refer to his present sojourn in the region beyond Jordan, with the Hermon range in sight; and which had this peculiarity, that it was beyond the old boundary-line of the Land of Promise, making him for the time, "an alien from the commonwealth of Israel."
We know from a passage in Joshua (chap. xxii.) how sacredly the division between the covenant people and the neighbouring tribes was preserved. The latter were denominated a "possession unclean;" the former, "the land of the possession of the Lord, wherein the Lord's tabernacle is." How bitter must it have been to a patriotic heart like that of the Psalmist, thus to be cut off (even though for a brief season) from all participation in national and sanctuary blessings,—to stand outside the land trodden by the footsteps of angels, consecrated by the ashes of patriarchs, and over which hovered the shadowing wings of Jehovah!
But he exults in the persuasion that Israel's God is not confined to lands or to sanctuaries. "I will remember Thee," says the banished monarch. "Though wandering here beyond the region Thou hast blest with Thy favour, I will not cease still to call Thee and claim Thee as my God, and to recount all the manifold tokens of Thy mercy, even though it be from the 'land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.' My foes may drive me from my home,—they may strip me of my regal glories,—they may make me the butt of scorn, the mark for their arrows;—but they cannot banish me from the better portion and heritage I have in Thy blessed self!"
If we should ever be in circumstances when, like David, we are denuded of the means of grace—shut out from the public ministrations of the sanctuary,—or, what is more common, placed in a disadvantageous position for spiritual advancement;—when our situation as regards the world, the family, business, pursuits, companions, society, is such as to prove detrimental to the interests of our souls,—let us still "remember God!" Let the loss of means, and privileges, and opportunities, and congenial intercourse, draw us nearer the Source of all knowledge, and peace, and true joy. If the starlight be wanting, let us prize the sunlight more. If the streams fail, let us go direct to the fountainhead.
Yes, and God can make His people independent of all outward circumstances. In the court of an Ethiopian Queen there was a believing Treasurer. In the household of Nero there were illustrious saints. Down in the depths of the briny ocean, imprisoned in the strangest of tombs, a disobedient prophet "remembered God," and his prayer was heard. Joseph was torn away from the land of his birth, and the home where his piety had been nurtured, but in Egypt "the Lord was with Joseph." "At my first answer," says the apostle of the Gentiles, "no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.... Notwithstanding, the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me." Comforting thought! that the true Sanctuary, of which all earthly ones are the shadowy type, is ever near: God himself, the refuge and dwelling-place of His people to all generations, and who, wherever we are, can turn the place of forlorn exile—our "land of Jordan, the Hermonites, the hill Mizar"—into scenes bright with manifestations of His covenant love.