(51-53) For they be thy people. — This pleading with God by His deliverance of the people from Egypt, and by His promise to Moses to make them His inheritance (see Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 9:26; Deuteronomy 9:29; Deuteronomy 14:2), although especially suggested by the last petition for deliverance from captivity, may be held to apply to the whole of Solomon’s prayer. It implies the belief not only that the declared purpose of God cannot fail, but that, even for the manifestation of His glory to man, it must needs be visibly fulfilled before the eyes of the world. This same conviction breathes in many of the utterances of Moses for Israel (see Exodus 32:12-13; Numbers 14:13-14); it is expressed in the “Help us, O Lord, and deliver us for Thy name’s sake,” of Psalms 79:9-10, or the “Defer not for Thine own sake, O my God” of Daniel 9:19 : it is declared on the part, of the Lord again and again in Ezekiel 20:9; Ezekiel 20:14; Ezekiel 20:22, “I wrought for my name’s sake.” It may, indeed, seem to jar upon our fuller conception of the infinite majesty of God, incapable of being augmented or lessened, and of the infinite love which does all for the sake of His creatures. Yet it is not wholly unlike our Lord’s prayer (John 12:28), “Father, glorify thy name,” or the Apostolic declarations of the great purpose of redemption, as designed for “the praise of God’s glory” (Ephesians 1:6; Ephesians 1:12; Ephesians 1:14), and of all Christian life as commanded to “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). In some respects it is like the pleading with our Lord, in the Litanies of the Church in all ages, by all the various acts of His redemption, and the prayer of the old Latin hymn —
“ Redemisti crucem passus;
Tantus labor ne sit cassus.”
But, indeed, all that might seem to us strange or unworthy in such prayers vanishes at once, when we consider that the knowledge of God in His self-manifestation is the highest happiness of man; on which, indeed, depend all depth and harmony of human knowledge, and all dignity and purity of human life. Hence, in the Lord’s Prayer, the three petitions “for Gods glory,” preceding all special petitions for our own needs, are really prayers for the highest blessing of all mankind. God’s care for His glory is not for His own sake, but for ours.