4 For thou hast maintained my right and my cause ;-thou sattest in the throne judging right. 5 Thou hast rebuked the heathen,-thon hast destroyed the wicked, Thou hast put out their name for ever and ever. 6 0 thou enemy, destructions are come to a perpetual end! And thou hast destroyed cities ;-their memorial is perished with them. 7 But the Lord shall endure for ever:-he hath prepared his throne for judgment. 8 And he shall judge the world in righteousness, He shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. 9 The Lord also will be a refuge for the oppressed,— trouble. refuge in times of 10 And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: For thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek thee. 11 Sing praises to the Lord, which dwelleth in Zion :-declare among the people his doings. 12 When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: He forgetteth not the cry of the humble. 13 Have mercy upon me, O Lord;-consider my trouble which I suffer of them that hate me, Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death : 14 That I may shew forth all thy praise in the gates of the daughter of Zion! I will rejoice in thy salvation. 15 The heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: In the net which they hid is their own foot taken. 16 The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth: The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah. 17 The wicked shall be turned into hell,--and all the nations that forget God. 18 For the needy shall not always be forgotten: The expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever. 19 Arise, O Lord; let not man prevail:-let the heathen be judged in thy sight. 20 Put them in fear, O Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah. Psalm. THE position of the Psalms in their relation to each other is Position of the often remarkable. It is questioned whether the present arrangement of them was the order in which they were given forth to Israel, or whether some later compiler, perhaps Ezra, was inspired to attend to this matter, as well as to other points connected with the Canon. Without attempting to decide this point, it is enough to remark that we have proof that the order of the Psalms is as ancient as the completing of the canon; and if so, it seems obvious that the Holy Spirit wished this book to come down to us in its present order. Referred to by Alphabetic. The title. We make these remarks, in order to invite attention to the fact, that as the eighth caught up the last line of the seventh, this ninth Psalm opens with an apparent reference to the eighth : "I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart. I will show forth all thy marvellous works. I will be glad and rejoice in thee. (Comp. Song i. 4; Rev. xix. 7.) As if "The Name," so highly praised in the former l'salm, There is a considerable resemblance, in the commencement, to the song in Isaiah xxv. 1-5. In both we have praisepraise to his name-wonderful things-enemies, and nations, and cities destroyed-and the Lord a refuge for the needy, a refuge in times of trouble. The period in prophetic history, before the view of the prophetic Spirit, is the same in both cases; the same scene of the final ruin of God's enemies, and of Antichrist, is exhibited; and the language of our Psalm, like that of Isaiah xxv. 1-5, is that of the past, because the future is to the Lord as sure as if already come and gone. There is an approach to the alphabetic form in the verses of this Psalm, but only in part. We shall have occasion to remark on this point again in Psalm x. and elsewhere. It may be in connection with the subject of the Psalm, that it is inscribed "To the Chief Musician upon Muth-labben." None of the titles in this whole book is so obscure as this one. There is a plausible conjecture that by should be the pointing, in which case it might be connected with "the psalteries on Alamoth," 1 Chron. xv. 20; and "Ben," of 1 Chron. xv. 18, be referred to in "Lab-ben;" but then the omission of is unaccountable, were this sense intended. There has been an attempt by Grotius, and others, to regard it as an anagram, "y" on the death of Nabal, or, on the dying of the foolbut this is wholly gratuitous. Probably the title refers to something in the sacred music now unknown, the appropriate ness of which to the subject of this Psalm can be conjectured death, occurring in it, suggests something only; the word ♫ sombre and solemn. From vers. 1-8, there is a sketch of what the Lord is to do The plan. when he rises up. "O enemy,”—as if like Hos. xiii. 14, look ing in the face of Satan, and all that follow him on earth, from Saul down to the last Antichrist. “O enemy, destructions are at an end." The memory of the foe perishes, like the cities. which they destroy. In vers. 9-12, we hear what the Lord has been, and is, and shall be to his own, onward to the day when he remembers the cry of souls under the altar (Rev. vi. 10.) Then a cry, like that of the martyrs, arises, vers. 13, 14, and the answer is given in vers. 15-17. After all which, vers. 18-20, sing confidently, and pray boldly to him who is to do such things on behalf of his saints. members. The speaker may be any member of Christ's body in sympa- Christ and his thy with his Head; but Christ himself could utter it as no other could. Hence Augustine, on ver. 13, asks, "Quare non dixit, Miserere nostri, Domine? An quia unus interpellat pro sanctis qui primus pauper pro nobis factus est." Christ on earth delighted to commend his Father's name, as ver. 10 does, and to assure disciples that with God there is no casting out of one that has once come in. But to all this every believer responds, and even in ver. 16, every member of Christ may, in full sympathy with the feelings of justice and holiness in our Head, enter into the awful scene. They see the event as if it were already come : "The heathen are sunk down into the pit that they made; In the net which they hid is their own foot taken. The Lord is known by the judgment he executeth! The wicked is snared in the work of his own hands! Higgaion! Selah ! Selah. We hear a voice, as from the Holiest, uttering the words, Higgaion...--"Higgaion," a call to deep reflection or solemn musing,* and "Selah," a call to the Chief Musician to pause, that, the * So in Buchanan's version in Latin metre: "O res pectoris altis Condenda in penetralibus!" C music ceasing, the worshippers might for a time meditate and adore. With such silent awe, we may suppose, the hosts of Israel stood for a time, gazing on the dead bodies of the Egyptians, when morning light unveiled them floating on the wave, or cast up as sea-weed on the shore. Not less than this shall be the intensity of interest and awe felt by the saints, when from their cloud they look down on the overwhelmed hosts of Babylon. In ver. 18 there is an interesting rendering of Dy pa, in the English Prayer-book version, "the patient abiding of the poor." It reminds us of James v. 7, " Be patient, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord." At the same time, the words more properly express the earnest expectation of God's poor ones, who are looking from their state of "oppression" and "trouble" (ver. 9), for the coming of him whose "name they know” (ver. 10), to be the Judge of a disordered world. Then truly shall they sing: “The Lord is enthroned for ever. (lit. has sat down, i.e., on his throne.) He has prepared his throne for judgment. He judges the world in uprightness : He ministers judgment to the people in uprightness." (v. 7, 8). Of this Psalm, then, we may say that in it we see— The Righteous One anticipating the setting up of the throne of judgment. PSALM X. 1 WHY standest thou afar off, O Lord ?-why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? 2 The wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor : Let them be taken in the devices that they have imagined. 3 For the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, And blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth. 4 The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God : God is not in all his thoughts. 5 His ways are always grievous; thy judgments are far above out of his sight: As for all his enemies he puffeth at them. 6 He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved :-for I shall never be in adversity. 7 His mouth is full of cursing, and deceit, and fraud: Under his tongue is mischief and vanity. 8 He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: His eyes are privily set against the poor. 9 He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: He lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he 10 He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones. 11 He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it. 12 Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up thine hand: forget not the humble. 13 Wherefore doth the wicked contemn God? He hath said in his heart, Thou wilt not require it. 14 Thou hast seen it;-for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it The poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the 15 Break thou the arm of the wicked and the evil man: Seek out his wickedness till thou find none. 16 The Lord is King for ever and ever! the heathen are perished out of his land, 17 Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble: Thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine ear to hear: 18 To judge the fatherless and the oppressed, That the man of the earth may no more oppress. The prophetic THERE is much that is prophetic in this Psalm towards its close-the gloom of the present turning the eye forward in element. search of the coming day-spring. In ver. 16, faith is seen in its strength, singing as if already in possession of anticipated victory and deliverance, "The Lord is king for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land!" Such confidence and faith must appear to the world strange and unaccountable. It is like what his fellow-citizens may be supposed to have felt (if the story be true) toward that man of whom it is recorded, that his powers of vision were so extraordinary, that he could distinctly see the fleet of the Carthaginians entering the harbour of Carthage, while he stood himself at Lilybæum, in Sicily. A man seeing across an ocean and able to tell of objects so far off! he could feast his vision on what others saw not. Even |