CONTENTS
This Psalm is full of gospel from beginning to end, as the authority of God the Holy Ghost fully shows, Ephesians 4:8. It was composed, probably, at David's removing the ark from the house of Obed-edom. And as the ark was well known, and well understood in the church, to have been a type of Christ we may well suppose the mind of David had this in view in all he celebrates.
To the chief musician, A Psalm or Song of David.
If the Reader will consult Numbers 10:35, he will find that the invocation with which this Psalm opens is the same as Moses, the man of God, used ages before, at every removal of the ark in the journeys of the Israelites. Probably it was a devout prayer used in the church upon all occasions of this sort; and therefore the patriarch David, as well as the people, were well acquainted with this divine method of seeking the presence and power of a covenant God to precede them in all their undertakings, as well as in all their religious exercises. And who can doubt but that the eyes of the faithful, as the eyes of one man, were looking to the Lord Jesus Christ, whom the ark represented? Reader, think what views our fathers in the old church had of the same Jesus whom we adore in the new! And shall we not call upon our glorious Head to arise and go before us upon all occasions, and precede us in all that we put our hand to? Oh! had we but faith to do this, how would all the enemies of our salvation, and of our God and his Christ, flee before us! Isaiah 52:12; Deuteronomy 32:30. But when we have paid due attention to this striking verse, in reference to the historical part of it, the beauties of it will meet our souls in a yet more exalted point of view, if we read it as referring to Christ's triumph over death and the grave. Then indeed did Christ arise and scatter all his foes; then it was that he first taught the church to look beyond death and the grave, by going before us, as our forerunner to the upper regions of the blessed, to open the way to the true Canaan, and the Zion of glory, which is above. Hail! thou risen and exalted Jesus!