Truly. — See Note, Psalms 62:2. This particle often, like the Latin at, introduces a rejoinder to some supposed statement.
Dryden’s lines express the feeling of this opening —
“Yet sure the gods are good! I would fain think so,
If they would give me leave!
But virtue in distress, and vice in triumph,
Make atheists of mankind.”
The question arises whether the second clause of the verse limits, or only repeats, the first. No doubt in theory God was understood to be good to Israel generally, but the very subject of the psalm seems to require a limitation here. The poet sees that a moral correspondence with their profession is necessary, even in the chosen people — the truth which St. Paul stated with such insistance, “For they are not all Israel which are of Israel.”