become vicious in their morals, and profane, and rebels in my worship and religion. This then shall happen unto them,-escape they shall not, but shall soundly smart for it. They shall feel,-1. The rod; and, 2. The scourge. Then, 1. "I will visit (that is, punish) their transgression with the rod." 2. "And their iniquity with stripes." Which was often done by the Babylonians, Antiochus, &c. And yet in judgment I will remember mercy. I will remember my covenant, my promise, my word, my oath, and will make that good. I will not totally cast off David's seed; which I mean not after the flesh, for that is long since cast off, but after the Spirit. Christ, which was of the seed of David, and those which are his seed, viz., the church, shall enjoy the benefit of my covenant and oath for ever: "Nevertheless, my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing gone out of my lips." preceding psalm. 6. "Thou hast also turned the edge of his sword (blunted his sword that was wont to slay), and hast not made him to stand in the battle," but to fly and turn his back. 7. "Thou hast made his glory (the glory, dignity, authority of his kingdom) to cease, and cast his crown to the ground." 8. "The days of his youth hast thou shortened;" cut him off in the prime and strength of his years. "Thou hast covered him with shame;" made his opulent, glorious kingdom ignominious; which was true in divers of David's posterity, especially Jehoiakim. These were the sad complaints which the prophet pours out; but he quickly recovers and recals his thoughts; and that he may move God to help, he falls to prayer, which is very pathetic. VIII. He considers the nature of God as kind, loving, merciful, slow to anger; and asks,— 1. "How long, Lord? wilt thou hide thyself for ever?" Hide thy favour? 2. "Shall thy wrath burn like fire?" An element And that there be no doubt of this, he brings in that hath no mercy. God repeating his oath and covenant. He then uses other arguments, pathetically 1. His oath: "Once have I sworn by my holiness;" expressed, to move God to pity :that is, by myself, who am holy. 2. His covenant: "That I will not lie unto David; for his seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven." As the sun and moon are not liable to any ruinous mutations, no more is this covenant: they must endure to the end of the world; and so must this covenant. They are faithful witnesses in heaven; and so we are to seek for the performance of this covenant in heaven; not in the earth, the covenant being about a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly; it being evident that the kingdom of David on earth has failed many ages since: but that of Christ shall never fail. VII. Now that David's kingdom did fail, or at least was brought to a low ebb, is the complaint in the following words, which, flesh and blood considering, gave a wrong judgment upon it, as if God did nothing less than perform his oath and covenant. This is what the prophet lays to God's charge: "But thou hast cut off and abhorred, thou hast been wroth with thine anointed." Both king and people are cast aside, than which nothing seems more contrary to thy covenant. Thou hast made void the covenant of thy servant, of which there are many lamentable consequences: 1. "His crown is cast to the ground." The glory of his kingdom trampled upon. 1. Drawn from the brevity of man's life: "Remember how short my time is." 2. From the end for which man was created; not in vain, but to be an object of God's goodness and favour. 3. From the weakness and disability of man. His life is short; and can he lengthen it? "What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death?" Yea, though he live long, yet he is a mortal creature : Shall he deliver his soul from the grave?" 4. From the covenant, of which he puts God in mind: "Lord, where are thy former loving-kindnesses, which thou swarest to David in thy truth?” 5. From the ignominy, scorns, sarcasms, by enemies cast upon them, which he desires God to look upon. 1. Remember, Lord, the reproach of thy servant." 2. "And how I do bear in my bosom." Not spoken afar off, but in my hearing, and to my face, as if poured and emptied into my bosom; the rebukes, not of this or that man, but of many people. 6. And lastly, that these reproaches, in effect, fall upon God. For they who reproach God's servants are his enemies: "Remember the reproaches"-1. "Where with thine enemies have reproached, O Lord." 2. "Wherewith they have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed," i. e., either whatsoever he says or does; or else by footsteps is to be understood the | latter end of David's kingdom, which was indeed subject to reproach. 3. But the Chaldee paraphrast 2. "His hedges broken down." His strongholds by footsteps understands the coming of the Messiah brought to ruin. in the flesh; which, because it was long promised 2. "All that pass by the way spoil him." He is and men saw not performed, they derided, mocked, exposed to all rapine and plunder. 4. "He is a reproach to his neighbour." Exposed to all contumely and disgrace. 5. "Thou hast set up the right hand of his enemies, and made all his adversaries to rejoice." Thou seemest to take part with the enemy against him, and makest him to exult and rejoice in oppressing him. and reproached, as vain. IX. The close of this long psalm is a benediction, by which the prophet, after his combat with flesh and blood about the performance of the covenant, composes his troubled soul and acquiesces in God; blessing him for whatever falls out, breaking forth into 1. "Blessed be the Lord for evermore:" Blessed The eternity of God, 1, 2; the frailty of the state of man, 3-9; the general limits of human life, 10; the danger of displeasing God, 11; the necessity of considering the shortness of life, and of regaining the favour of the Almighty, 12; earnest prayer for the restoration of Israel, 13-17. NOTES ON PSALM XC. The title of this psalm is, A Prayer of Moses the man of God. The Chaldee has, A prayer which Moses the prophet of the Lord prayed when the people of Israel had sinned in the wilderness." All the Versions ascribe it to Moses; but that it could not be of Moses the lawgiver is evident from this consideration, that the age of man was not then seventy or eighty years, which is here stated to be its almost universal limits, for Joshua lived one hundred and ten years, and Moses himself one hundred and twenty; Miriam his sister, one hundred and thirty; Aaron his brother, one hundred and twenty-three; Caleb, fourscore and five years; and their contemporaries lived in the same proportion. See the note on ver. 4. Therefore the psalm cannot at all refer to such ancient times. If the title be at all authentic, it must refer to some other person of that name; and indeed ⇒¬ w× ish Elohim, a man of God, a divinely inspired man, agrees to the times of the prophets, who were thus denominated. The psalm was doubtless composed during or after the captivity; and most probably on their return, when they were engaged in rebuilding the temple; and this, as Dr. Kennicott conjectures, may be the work of their hands, which they pray God to bless and prosper. Verse 1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place] maon; but instead of this several MSS. have ny maoz, "place of defence," or "refuge," which is the reading of the Vulgate, Septuagint, Arabic, and AngloSaxon. Ever since thy covenant with Abraham thou hast been the Resting-place, Refuge, and Defence of thy people Israel. Thy mercy has been lengthened out from generation to generation. Verse 2. Before the mountains were brought forth] The mountains and hills appear to have been ever i 3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. 4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday "when it is past, and as a watch in the night. 5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. Eccles. xii. 7.- - Ecclus. xviii. 10. 2 Pet. iii. 8. Or, when he hath passed them.- - Ps. Ixxiii. 20. Ps. cill 15. Isai. xl. 6. Or, is changed. lasting; but as they were brought forth out of the womb of eternity, there was a time when they were not: but THou hast been ab æternitate a parte ante, ad æternitatem a parte post; from the eternity that is past, before time began; to the eternity that is after, when time shall have an end. This is the highest description of the eternity of God to which human language can reach. Verse 3. Thou turnest man to destruction] Literally, Thou shalt turn dying man, wr enosh, to the small dust, x27 dacca but thou wilt say, Return, ye children of Adam. This appears to be a clear and strong promise of the resurrection of the human body, after it has long slept, mingled with the dust of the earth. Verse 4. For a thousand years in thy sight] As if he had said, Though the resurrection of the body may be a thousand (or any indefinite number of) years distant; yet, when these are past, they are but as yesterday, or a single watch of the night. They pass through the mind in a moment, and appear no longer in their duration than the time required by the mind to reflect them by thought. But, short as they appear to the eye of the mind, they are nothing when compared with the eternity of God! The author probably has in view also that economy of divine justice and providence by which the life of man has been shortened from one thousand years to threescort years and ten, or fourscore. Verse 5. Thou carriest them away as with a flood] Life is compared to a stream, ever gliding away; but sometimes it is as a mighty torrent, when by reason of plague, famine, or war, thousands are swept away daily. In particular cases it is a rapid stream, when the young are suddenly carried off by consumptions, fevers, &c.; this is the flower that flourisheth in the The frailty and general PSALM XC. limits of human life. 6 In the morning it flourisheth and grow-years and ten; and if by reason of strength eth up; in the evening it is cut down, and they be fourscore years, yet is their strength withereth. labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and 7 For we are consumed by thine anger, and we fly away. by thy wrath are we troubled. 8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy counte nance. d 9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath we spend our years as a tale that is told. e 11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. 12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. k h 13 Return, O LORD, how long? and let it repent thee concerning thy servants. 14 O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that 10 The days of our years are threescore we may rejoice and be glad all our days. morning, and in the evening is cut down and withered. The whole of life is like a sleep or as a dream. The eternal world is real; all here is either shadowy or representative. On the whole, life is represented as a stream; youth, as morning; decline of life, or old ege, as evening; death, as sleep; and the resurrection, as the return of the flowers in spring. All these images appear in these curious and striking verses, 3, 4, 5, and 6. Verse 7. We are consumed by thine anger] Death had not entered into the world, if men had not fallen from God. By thy wrath are we troubled.] Pain, disease, and sickness are so many proofs of our defection from original rectitude. The anger and wrath of God are moved against all sinners. Even in protracted life we consume away, and only seem to live in order to die. "Our wasting lives grow shorter still, As days and months increase; Leaves but the number less." Verse 8. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee] Every one of our transgressions is set before thee; noted and minuted down in thy awful register! Our secret sins] Those committed in darkness and privacy are easily discovered by thee, being shown by the splendours of thy face shining upon them. Thus we light a candle, and bring it into a dark place to discover its contents. Oh, what can be hidden from the all-seeing eye of God? Darkness is no darkness to him; wherever he comes there is a profusion of light-for God is light! Verse 9. We spend our years as a tale] The Vulgate bas: Anni nostri sicut aranea meditabuntur; "Our years pass away like those of the spider." Our plans and operations are like the spider's web; life is as frail, and the thread of it as brittle, as one of those that constitute the well-wrought and curious, but fragile, habitation of that insect. All the Versions have the word spider; but it neither appears in the Hebrew, nor in any of its MSS. which have been collated. My old Psalter has a curious paraphrase here: "Als the iran (spider) makes vayne webe for to take flese (flies) with gile, swa our yeres ere ockupide in ydel and swikel castes aboute erthly thynges; and passes with outen frute of gude werks, and waste in ydel thynkyns." This is too true a picture of most lives. But the Hebrew is different from all the Versions. "We consume our years (ɔɔ kemo hegeh) like a groan." We live a dying, whining, complaining life, and at last a groan is its termination! How amazingly expressive! Verse 10. Threescore years and ten] See the note on the title of this psalm. This psalm could not have been written by Moses, because the term of human life was much more extended when he flourished than eighty years at the most. Even in David's time many lived one hundred years, and the author of Ecclesiasticus, who lived after the captivity, fixed this term at one hundred years at the most (chap. xviii. 9); but this was merely a general average, for even in our country we have many who exceed a hundred years. Yet is their strength labour and sorrow] This refers to the infirmities of old age, which, to those well advanced in life, produce labour and sorrow. It is soon cut off] It-the body, is soon cut off. And we fly away.] The immortal spirit wings its way into the eternal world. Verse 11. Who knoweth the power of thine anger?] The afflictions of this life are not to be compared to the miseries which await them who live and die without being reconciled to God, and saved from their sins. Verse 12. So teach us to number our days] Let us deeply consider our own frailty, and the shortness and uncertainty of life, that we may live for eternity, acquaint ourselves with thee, and be at peace; that we may die in thy favour, and live and reign with thee eternally. Verse 13. Return, O Lord, how long?] Wilt thou continue angry with us for ever? Let it repent thee] hinnachem, be comforted, rejoice over them to do them good. Be glorified rather in our salvation than in our destruction. Verse 14. O satisfy us early] Let us have thy 15 Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil. a for God's favour. 17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our 16 Let thy work appear unto thy servants, hands establish thou it. and thy glory unto their children. a Hebr. iii. 2.- b Ps. xxvii. 4. mercy soon (literally, in the morning). Let it now shine upon us, and it shall seem as the morning of our days, and we shall exult in thee all the days of our life. Verse 15. Make us glad according to the days] Let thy people have as many years of prosperity as they have had of adversity. We have now suffered seventy years of a most distressful captivity. Verse 16. Let thy work appear unto thy servants] That thou art working for us we know; but oh, let thy work appear! Let us now see, in our deliverance, that thy thoughts towards us were mercy and love. And thy glory] Thy pure worship be established among our children for ever. Verse 17. And let the beauty of the Lord] Let us have thy presence, blessing, and approbation, as our fathers had. Establish thou the work of our hands] This is supposed, we have already seen, to relate to their rebuilding the temple, which the surrounding heathens and Samaritans wished to hinder. We have begun, do not let them demolish our work; let the top-stone be brought on with shouting, Grace, grace unto it. Yea, the work of our hands] This repetition is wanting in three of Kennicott's MSS., in the Targum, in the Septuagint, and in the Æthiopic. If the repetition be genuine, it may be considered as marking great earnestness; and this earnestness was to get the temple of God rebuilt, and his pure worship restored. The pious Jews had this more at heart than their own restoration; it was their highest grief that the temple was destroyed and God's ordinances suspended; that his enemies insulted them, and blasphemed the worthy name by which they were called. Every truly pious man feels more for God's glory than his own temporal felicity, and rejoices more in the prosperity of God's work than in the increase of his own worldly goods. A FEW INSTANCES OF MODERN LONGEVITY. In the year 1790 I knew a woman in the city of Bristol, Mrs. Somerhill, then in the 106th year of her age. She read the smallest print without spectacles, and never had used any helps to decayed sight. When she could not go any longer to a place of worship, through the weakness of her limbs, she was accustomed to read over the whole service of the church for each day of the year as it occurred, with all the Lessons, Psalms, &c. She had been from its commencement a member of the Methodist Society; heard Mr. John Wesley the first sermon he preached when he visited Bristol in 1739; and was so struck with his clear manner of preaching the doctrine of justification through faith, that, for the benefit of hearing Isai. xxvi. 12. one more sermon from this apostolic man, she followed him on foot to Portsmouth, a journey of one hundred and twenty-five miles! On my last visit to her in the above year, I was admitted by a very old decrepit woman, then a widow of seventy-five years of age, and the youngest daughter of Mrs. Somerhill. I found the aged woman's faculties strong and vigorous, and her eyesight unimpaired, though she was then confined to her bed, and was hard of hearing. She died rejoicing in God, the following year. Agnes Shuner is another instance. She lived at Camberwell in Surrey; her husband, Richard Shuner, died in 1407, whom she survived ninety-two years. She died in 1499, aged one hundred and nineteen years. The Countess of Desmond in Ireland. On the ruin of the house of Desmond, she was obliged at the age of one hundred and forty to travel from Bristol to London, to solicit relief from the court, being then reduced to poverty. She renewed her teeth two or or three times, and died in 1612, aged one hundred and forty-five years. Thomas Parr, of Winnington, in Shropshire, far outlived the term as set down in the psalm. At the age of eighty-eight he married his first wife, by whom he had two children. At the age of one hundred and two he fell in love with Catharine Milton, by whom he had an illegitimate child, and for which he did penance in the church! At the age of one hundred and twenty he married a widow woman; and when he was one hundred and thirty could perform any operation of husbandry. He died at the age of one hundred and fifty-two, A. D. 1635. He had seen ten kings and queens of England. Thomas Damme, of Leighton, near Minshul in Cheshire, lived one hundred and fifty-four years, and died A. D. 1648. Henry Jenkins, of Ellerton upon Swale, in Yorkshire, was sent, when a boy of about twelve years of age, with a cart load of arrows to Northallerton, to be employed in the battle of Flodden Field, which was fought September 9, 1513. He was a fisherman; and often swam in the rivers when he was more than one hundred years of age! He died A. D. 1670, being then one hundred and sixty-nine years of age! I shall add one foreigner, Peter Toston, a peasant of Temiswar, in Hungary. The remarkable longevity of this man exceeds the age of Isaac five years; of Abraham, ten; falls short of Terah's, Abraham's father, twenty; and exceeds that of Nahor, Abraham's grandfather, thirty-seven years. He died A.D. 1724, at the extraordinary age of one hundred and eighty-five! Analysis of the ANALYSIS OF THE NINETIETH PSALM. There are four parts in this psalm: PSALM XC. I. An ingenuous acknowledgment of God's protection of the people, ver. 1, 2. II. A lively narration of the mortality of man, the fragility and brevity of his life, together with the misery of it, ver. 2-7. III. The causes: man's rebellion and God's anger for it, ver. 7-12. IV. A petition, which is double: 1. That God would instruct man to know his fragility. 2. That he would return, and restore him to his favour, ver. 12-17. preceding psalm. thither return. Or, We are as water spilt on the earth, which cannot be gathered up again. 3. "They are as a sleep," or rather a dream; all our happiness a dream of felicity. In our dreams many pleasant, many fearful things are presented; we pass half our time in sleep; drowsily, it is certain, for our life is okiag ovap, the shadow of a dream. -Pindar. 4. Or we are like grass: "In the morning they are like grass that groweth up: in the morning it flourisheth and groweth up, in the evening it is cut down and withereth." The herb hath its morning and evening, and its mid-day, and so hath our life; naturally fades, or violently it is cut off. I. In the beginning the Psalmist freely acknow-it ledges what God had always been unto his people. What he is in himself, and his own nature. 1. To his people he had always been a refuge, as it were, a dwelling-place: though they had been pilgrims and sojourners in a strange land for many years, yet he had been, nay dwelt, among them; and no doubt he alludes to the tabernacle of God that was pitched among them as an evidence of his presence and protection: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place (a secure place to rest in) in all generations," Deut. xxxiii. 1-6. 2. But in himself he was from everlasting: other creatures had a beginning, and their creation and ornaments from him. He, the Eternal Being, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth, and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God." Not like man, then, whose mutability, fragility, mortality, brevity, he next describes. II. "Thou turnest man to destruction." Though framed according to thy own image, yet he is but an earthen vessel; to that pass thou bringest him, till he be broken to pieces, broken as a potter's vessel. To him thou sayest, "Return, ye children of men (of Adam), return; for dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return." The mortality of man may not be then attributed to diseases, chance, fortune, &c., but to God's decree, pronounced on man upon his disobedience. First, then, let the sons of Adam remember that they are mortal; next, that their life is but very short. Suppose a man should live the longest life, and somewhat longer than the oldest patriarch, a thousand years; yet, let it be compared with eternity, it is as nothing: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday, when it is past;" but as a day which is short, as a day which is past and forgotten; which the prophet farther illustrates by elegant similitudes: 1. "And as a watch in the night." A time of three hours' continuance, which is but the eighth part of a natural day, and so far less than he said before. The flower of our youth, our constant age, and our old age, may well be the three hours of this watch; and wise they are that observe their stations in either of them. 2. "Thou carriest them away as with a flood." As a sudden inundation of waters our life passeth; we swell and fall. Or, As all waters come from the sea, and return thither; so from the earth we came, and III. After he had spoken of and explained our mortality, the brevity, the misery of our life, he next descends to examine the causes of it, which are two. 1. God's anger; and that which brought it our own iniquities. upon us, 1. God's anger: "We consume away by thine anger; and by thy wrath are we troubled." The cause, then, of death and disease is not the decay of the radical moisture, or defect of natural heat; but that which brought these defects upon us, God's wrath because of sin. 2. Our own sin: For this anger of God was not raised without a just cause; he is a just Judge, and proceeds not to punishment, but upon due examination and trial; and to that end he takes an account, not only of our open sins, but even of our secret faults, such as are not known to ourselves, or such as we labour to conceal from others. 1. "Thou hast set our iniquities before thee." 2. "And our secret sins in the light of thy countenance." No hypocrisy, no contempt, can escape thine eye: all to thee is revealed, and clear as the light. 3. And then he repeats the effect, together with the cause: "Therefore all our days (viz., the forty years in the wilderness and the seventy in captivity) are passed away in thy wrath." 2. "We spend our days as a tale that is told ;" et fabula fies, the tale ended, it vanisheth, and is thought of no more. 4. And as for our age, it is of no great length: "The days of our years are threescore years and ten." To that time some men may be said to live, because the faculties of their souls are tolerably vigorous, and their bodies proportionably able to execute the offices of life. But allow that it so happen, which happens not to many, "that by reason of strength," some excellent natural constitution, a man arrive to fourscore years," yet our life is encumbered with these three inconveniences, labour, sorrow, and brevity. 1. It is laborious, even labour itself. One is desirous to be rich, another wise; this man potent, another prudent, or at least to seem so; and this will not be without labour: "All is affliction of spirit.” 2. Sorrow; for our life is only the shadow of real life. 3. Short; for it is soon cut off, and we flee away: Avolat umbra. 1. God's anger for sin is not laid to heart; and of this the prophet in the next verse sadly complains: "Who knows the power of thy anger?" |