David spake unto the Lord the word of this song.
The song of thanksgiving
Some of David’s actions are very characteristic of himself; there are other actions quite out of harmony with his character. This psalm of thanksgiving belongs to the former order. It is quite like David, at the conclusion of his military enterprises, to cast his eye gratefully over the whole, and acknowledge the goodness and mercy that had followed him all along. The date of this song is not to be determined by the place which it occupies in the history. It is likely that this psalm was written considerably before the end of David’s reign. Two considerations make it all but certain that its date is earlier than Absalom’s rebellion. In the first place, the mention of the name of Saul in the first verse would seem to imply that the deliverance from Saul was somewhat recent, certainly not so remote as it would have been at the end of David’s reign. And secondly, while the affirmation of David’s sincerity and honesty in serving God might doubtless have been made at any period of his life, yet some of his expressions would not have been likely to be used after his deplorable fall.
I. The leading thought of the song, an adoring acknowledgment of what God had been and was to David (2 Samuel 22:2-4.)
1. The feeling that recognised God as the Author of all his deliverances was intensely strong, for every expression that can denote it is heaped together: “My rock, my portion, my deliverer; the God of my rock, my shield; the horn of my salvation, my high tower, my refuge, my Saviour.” He takes no credit to himself; he gives no glory to his captains; the glory is all the Lord’s. He sees God so supremely the Author of his deliverance that the human instruments that helped him are for the moment quite out of view. He who, in the depths of his penitence, sees but one supremely injured Being,. and says, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,” at the height of his prosperity sees but one gracious Being, and adores Him, who only is his rock and his salvation. In an ago when all the stress is apt to be laid on the human instruments, and God left out of view, this habit of mind is instructive and refreshing. It was a touching incident in English history when, after the battle of Agincourt, Henry V. of England directed the hundred and fifteenth Psalm to be sung; prostrating himself on the ground, and causing his whole army to do the same, when the words were sounded out, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to Thy name give glory.”
2. The emphatic use of the pronoun “my” by the Psalmist is very instructive. It is so easy to speak in general terms of what God is, and what God does; but it is quite another thing to be able to appropriate Him as ours, and rejoice in that relation. The use of the “my” indicates a personal transaction, a covenant relation into which the parties have solemnly entered.
3. One other point has to be noticed in this introduction--when David comes to express his dependence on God, he very specially sets Him before his mind as “worthy to be praised.”
II. Trials and God’s deliverance in his times of danger (2 Samuel 22:5-20.) That description is eminently poetical. First, there is a vivid picture of his troubles. “The waves of death compassed me, and the floods vi ungodly men made me afraid; the sorrows of hell compassed me; the snares of death prevented me.” (“The cords of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodliness made me afraid; the cords of sheol were round about me; the snares of death came upon me,” R.V.) It is no overcharged picture. With Saul’s javelins flying at his head in the palace, or his best troops scouring the wilderness in search of him; with Syrian hosts bearing down on him like the waves of the sea, and a confederacy of nations conspiring to swallow him up, he might well speak of the waves Of death and the cords of Hades. Then, after a brief account of his calling upon God, comes a most animated description of God coming to his help. The description is ideal, but it gives a vivid view how the Divine energy is roused when any of God’s children are in distress. Faith saw God bestirring Himself for his deliverance, as if every agency of nature had been set in motion on his behalf. And this being done, his deliverance was conspicuous and corn-plebe. He saw God’s hand stretched out with remarkable distinctness. And what a blessed thing to have accumulated through life a store of such providences--to have Ebenezers reared along the whole line of one’s history!
III. The grounds on which the Divine protection was thus enjoyed by David. Substantially these grounds were the uprightness and faithfulness with which he had served God. The expressions are strong, and at first sight they have a flavour of self-righteousness. “The Lord rewarded me according to my self-righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands hath He recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord, and have not wickedly departed from my God.” But it is impossible to read this Psalm without feeling that it is not pervaded by the spirit of the self-righteous man. It is pervaded by a profound sense of dependence on God, and of obligation to His mercy and love. Now that is the very opposite of the self-righteous spirit. What he here celebrates is not any personal righteousness that might enable him as an individual to claim the favour and reward of God, but the ground on which he, as the public champion of God’s cause before the world, enjoyed God’s countenance and obtained His protection. There would be no self-righteousness in an inferior officer of the navy or the army who had been sent on some expedition, saying, “I obeyed your instructions in every particular; I never deviated from the course you prescribed.”
IV. His providential mercies, for which he specially praises God. One of the earliest appears to be recalled in the words, “By my God have I leaped over a wall” the wall, it may be supposed, of Gibeah, down which Michal let him when Saul sent to take him in his house. Still further back: perhaps, in his life is the allusion in another expression--“Thy gentleness hath made me great.” He seems to go back to his shepherd life, and in the gentleness with which he dealt with the feeble lamb that might have perished in rougher hands, to find an emblem of God’s method with himself. If God had not, dealt gently with him, he never would have become what he was. But what? Can David praise God’s gentleness and in the next words utter such terrible words against his foes? How can he extol God’s gentleness to him and immediately dwell on his tremendous severity to them? We cannot but regard it as the spirit of one who was imperfectly enlightened. We rejoice in the Christian spirit that teaches us to regard even public enemies as our brothers, for whom individually kindly and brotherly feelings are to be cherished. In the closing verses of the Psalm, the views of the Psalmist seem to sweep beyond the limits of an earthly kingdom. His eye seems to embrace the wide-spreading dominion of Messiah; at all events, he dwells on those features of his own kingdom that were typical of the all-embracing kingdom of the Gospel. “It is beyond doubt,” says Luther, “that the wars and victories of David prefigured the passion and resurrection of Christ.” At the same time, he admits that it is very doubtful how far the Psalm applies to Christ, anal how far to David,. and he declines to press the type to particulars. But we may surely apply the concluding words to David’s son: “He showeth loving-kindness to his anointed, to David and to his seed for evermore.” (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.)
Psalm singing
Would you know? asks William Law, in his beautiful chapter on singing psalms--would you know who is the greatest saint in the world? Well, it is not he who prays most or fasts most; it is not he who gives most alms, or is most eminent for temperance, chastity, or justice; but it is he who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, and who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness, and has a heart always ready to praise God for His goodness. And then Law winds up with this, and I wish it would send you all to the golden works of that grace-laden writer: Sometimes, he adds, imagine to yourselves that you saw holy David with his hands upon his harp, and his eyes fixed” upon heaven, calling in transport upon all creation, sun and moon, light and darkness, day and night, men and angels, to join with his rapturous soul in praising the Lord of heaven. Dwell upon this imagination till you think you are singing with this Divine musician; and let such a companion teach you to exalt your heart unto God every new morning in his thanksgiving psalms. Or make a morning psalm suitable to your own circumstance out of David’s great thanksgiving psalms. You should take the finest and the selectest parts of David’s finest and selectest psalms, and adding them together make them every morning more and more fit to express your own thankful hearts. (A. Whyte, D. D.)
Abundant cause for thanksgiving
Max O’Rell has well and wittily said that people are divided into two classes--those who complain that roses have thorns and those who rejoice that thorns have roses. We know to which class we ought to belong. Let us make most of our mercies. God is a great God, and His gifts are like Himself, and more than can be numbered. The Rev. Mark Guy Pearse tells us that, when going home from a meeting once on a starlit night, and wishing to have a little quiet to think, he gave his little girl, who was with him, the task of counting the stars, knowing this would be a task long enough until they reached home, and longer. He heard her count into the third hundred, then she stopped, and he heard her say, “Dear me! I never thought they were so many!” “And so,” he said--and we can say it with him--“when I begin to count” my mercies and the kindnesses of my God, I am surprised, and have to say I never thought they were so many until I began to count them.” (Christian Endeavour Times.)