The storm-struggle in the soul of the Psalmist is now at its height. In the previous verse, he had penetrated through the mists of unbelief that were surrounding him, and rested his eye on the Mizar hills of the Divine faithfulness in a brighter past. But the sunshine-glimpse was momentary. It has again passed away. His sky is anew darkened—rain-clouds sweep the horizon—"Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy water-spouts." Amid the environing floods he exclaims, "All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me!"
The figure is a bold and striking one. Some have thought it has reference to the sudden rush of water-torrents from the heights of Lebanon and Hermon;—that it was suggested by the roaring cataracts at his feet—Jordan with its swollen and winding rapids—the faithful picture of the deep-worn channels in his own spirit—fretted and furrowed with the rush of overwhelming sorrow.
But the word rendered "deep," is, in the original Hebrew, more applicable to the floods of the ocean than to the rapids of a river; and the image, in this sense, is bolder and more expressive still.[70] Billow calls on billow to sweep over the soul of the sufferer. They lift their crested heads, and with hoarse voice summon one another to the assault. "Let us be confederate!" say they. "Let us rouse the spirit of the storm! Let the windows of heaven be opened! Let the fountains of the great deep be broken up, that we may shake this man's confidence in his God, and plunder faith of her expected triumph! Ye angry tempests, driving sleet and battering hail! come and aid us. Ye forked lightnings, gleaming swords of the sky! leap from your cloudy scabbards. Old ocean! be stirred from your lowest depths. Let every wave be fretted to madness, that with one united effort we may effect his discomfiture and leave him a wreck on the waters!"
They obey the summons. Already chafed and buffeted, they return with fresh violence to the shock. Affliction on affliction, temptation on temptation, roll on this lonely, surf-beaten cliff. Outward calamities—inward troubles; his subjects in revolt—his friends treacherous; his own son and favourite child heading the insurrection; he himself an exile, haunted with the thought of past sins that were now exacting terrible retribution;—and worse than all temporal calamities, the countenance of his God averted. Affliction seemed as if it could go no further—"All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me!"
We believe there are periods in the history of most of God's people corresponding to the awful experience recorded in this verse. Few there are who cannot point to some sad and memorable epochs alike in their natural and spiritual being,—some solemn and critical crisis-hours, in which they have been subjected to special and peculiar trials;—encompassed with the thunders and lightnings of Sinai—the trumpet sounding long and loud:—or, to revert to the simile of the Psalm, when the moorings of life have been torn away, and they have been left to drift, on a starless, tempestuous ocean. Often, as with David, there may at such times be a combination of trials,—sickness—bereavement—loss of worldly substance—estrangement of friends—blighting of fair hopes. Then, following on these, and worse than all, hard thoughts of God. We see the wicked around prospering,—vice apparently pampered,—virtue apparently trodden under foot,—many passing through life without an ache or trial—their homes unrifled—their hearts unwounded—their every plan prospering—fortune smiling benignantly at every turn; while we seem to have been a target for the arrows of misfortune,—tempted with Jeremiah to say, "I am THE man who have seen affliction by the rod of His wrath."[71] And doubting a God of providence, the next step is to doubt a God of grace. We begin to question our interest in the covenant,—to wonder whether, after all, our hopes of heaven have been a delusion and a lie. God's mercy we imagine to be "gone for ever." He seems as if He would be "favourable no more." There is no comfort in prayer—no brightness in the promises; the Bible is a sealed book;—the heavens have become as brass and the earth as iron! Oh, so long as we had merely external trials, we could brave and buffet the surrounding floods. So long as we had the Divine smile, like the bow in the cloud, resting upon us, we could gaze in calmness on the blackest sky;—yea, rejoice in trial, as only unfolding to us more of the preciousness of the Saviour. But when we have the cloud without the bow,—when outer trials come to a soul in spiritual unrest and trouble,—when we harbour the suspicion that the only Being who could befriend in such an hour has Himself hidden His face,—when we have neither this world nor the next to comfort us—smitten hopes for time and despairing hopes for eternity!—this is the woe of woes—the "horror of great darkness,"—"deep calleth unto deep." We can say, with a more terrible emphasis far than the smitten patriarch, "I AM bereaved!"
The Psalmist had now reached this extremity. It is the turning point of his present experience. He has two alternatives before him:—either to suffer unbelief to triumph, to distrust God, abandon the conflict, and sink as lead in the surging waters; or to gather up once more his spiritual resources, breast the waves, and manfully buffet the storm.
It is with him now, as with a sinking disciple in a future age:—when the storm is loudest and the midnight is darkest, the voice and footsteps of his God are heard on the waves: "And about the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the sea." "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles!"[72]
And what is the first gleam of comfort which crests these topmost waves? It is discerning the hand and appointment of God in all his afflictions! He speaks of "Thy waves and Thy billows." These floods do not riot and revel at the bidding of chance. "The Lord sitteth upon the water-floods."[73] While, in one sense, it aggravated his trials to think of them as Divine chastisements—the expressions of the Divine displeasure at sin—yet how unspeakable the consolation that every billow rolled at the summons of Omnipotence. "The floods," he can say, "have lifted up, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea."[74] "O Lord our God, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them."[75]
But he could go further than this. He could triumph in the assurance of God's returning favour;—that behind these troubled elements there was seated a Being of unchanging faithfulness and love. Already the lowering mist was beginning to clear off the mountains, and the eye of faith to descry sunny patches of golden light gleaming in the hollows. Soon he knew the whole landscape would be flooded with glory. The sailor does not discredit the existence of the beacon or lighthouse, or alter the direction of his vessel, because the fog prevents these being seen. Nay rather, he strains his eyes more keenly through the murky curtain, in hopes of hailing their guidance. When a cloud or clouds are passing over the sun's disc, and hiding it from view, the sunflower does not, on account of the momentary intervention, hang its head, or cease to turn in the direction of the great luminary. It keeps still gazing upwards with wistful eye, as if knowing that the clouds will soon roll past, and that it will ere long again be bathed in the grateful beams! So it was with David. He felt that the countenance of his God, though hidden, was not eclipsed. This pining flower on the mountains of Gilead does not droop in the anguish of unbelief, when "the Sun of his soul" is for the moment obscured. He knew that there would yet arise "light in the darkness." Amid the roll of the billows—the moaning of the blast—he listens to celestial music. Its key-note is "the loving-kindness" of his God. While the heavens are still black, and the tempest raging, he lifts the voice of faith above the war of the storm, and thus sings:—"Yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the day-time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life!"