CONTENTS This Psalm, as the title sets forth, is a Maschil, that is, a Psalm of instruction. It contains, in an historical method of relation, God's gracious dealings with Israel as a people. In reading it the believer should have an eye to his own history, to mark the parallel between Israel and h... [ Continue Reading ]
I beg the Reader's attention to what is here said, and, by way of rightly explaining it, to turn to what our Lord himself saith; Matthew 13:34. Have we not authority from hence to believe, that what Asaph saith in this Psalm, he delivers by the spirit of prophecy, as in the person of Christ? And as... [ Continue Reading ]
Was not the gospel preached to our fathers in type and figure, as it is now in sum and substance? See Hebrews 4:2; Galatians 3:8.... [ Continue Reading ]
How lovely is it to behold, even from the days of the patriarchs, the care and attention with which the fathers handed down the testimony they had received concerning the promised seed. Hence we find Abraham telling Isaac, and Isaac Jacob, and Jacob, when dying, holding forth to his children, the bl... [ Continue Reading ]
I venture to believe, contrary to the opinion of most commentators, that the testimony in Jacob, and the law in Israel here spoken of, had a reference to a much higher subject than the law on mount Sinai. Surely that testimony and that law was Christ himself, who is both the word and the testimony,... [ Continue Reading ]
We need only refer to the history of Israel in the wilderness, to discover to what particular period of the church the prophet in these verses refers. Perhaps, as in several other parts of scripture, Ephraim, as one of the tribes of Israel, is put for the whole. Jeremiah 31:20; Hosea 11:8. But when... [ Continue Reading ]
Here we have a full representation of Israel's unworthiness, as the preceding verses gave us a short relation of God's mercy. Reader, had you and I been present when, at the lifting up of the rod of Moses, water issued from a dry unpromising rock, could we have thought it possible that Israel would... [ Continue Reading ]
The history of this event is recorded at large, Numbers 11:1. But beside the history, I earnestly beg the Reader to keep his eye steadily upon the sacramental design of the whole. The despising here spoken of, concerning Israel, is evidently the taking up slight views of Christ. That portion of scri... [ Continue Reading ]
Our Lord's discourse (John 6:31) throws a complete light upon this passage, considered with reference to the typical and sacramental design of it, and plainly shows thy it was the slight that the Israelites manifested by unbelief of God's method of salvation by Christ, in which the greatness of thei... [ Continue Reading ]
What gracious instructions are read to us in these verses! See, my soul, how unsuitable and self-destroying would prove thy desires in numberless instances, if the Lord, in anger, granted them to thy impatient request. And as in Israel of old, so in Israel now, if chastisements do not soften and bri... [ Continue Reading ]
The history of Israel fully shows this. While under the divine chastisements, oh! how seemingly earnest they sought the Lord: but when the rod was taken off, they returned every man again to his evil way. But, Reader, was Israel singular in this? Whose heart is free from the same reproach? Precious... [ Continue Reading ]
What precious views are these of covenant love and covenant faithfulness: and how they all run up to the fountain-head of all our mercies, in the everlasting, free, spontaneous, and unchangeable love of God in Christ to a nature like ours, that is crushed before the moth!... [ Continue Reading ]
Here, by way of remembrance, the prophet carries back the subject to the period of the church's deliverance at the time of the Egyptian bondage, and gives some of the striking examples of the Lord's dealings with their oppressors, by way of showing his mercy to them. Reader, it is one of the most bl... [ Continue Reading ]
Here a sweet contrast is drawn, in the view of divine love and compassion, notwithstanding human ingratitude. The sacred writer takes up the subject in tracing the history of the church even into Canaan, and shows that even here, in the land flowing with milk and honey, as well as in a wilderness, a... [ Continue Reading ]
God may be said to hear when the cry of a sinful land comes up before him for judgment. So in the case of Cain's murdering his brother: The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. Genesis 4:10. And as in judgment, so in mercy; when the Lord would heal a barren land, made barren... [ Continue Reading ]
The history of the church is pursued through all these verses. But we must look farther than the history, and particularly in the close of the Psalm, which ends with a view of David as the chosen of God to the throne of Israel; behold the Christ, the chosen of God, of whom David was a type, as set f... [ Continue Reading ]
REFLECTIONS READER, let us make a solemn pause over the perusal of this most interesting Psalm. And when we have taken a careful survey of its precious contents, let us beg of God the Holy Ghost, the almighty Author of it, to give us grace so to read, and so to improve it to our own use and benefit... [ Continue Reading ]