O Lord, rebuke me not in Thine anger.
A song of sorrow
It is needless to look for a historical occasion of the Psalm; but to an oar that knows the tones of sorrow, or to a heart that has itself uttered them, the supposition that in these pathetic cries we hear only a representative Israelite bewailing the national ruin sounds singularly artificial. If ever the throb of personal anguish found tears and a Voice, it does so in this Psalm. Whoever wrote it wrote with his blood. There are in it no obvious references to events in the recorded life of David, and hence the ascription of it to him must rest on something else than the interpretation of the Psalm. The worth of this little plaintive cry depends on quite other considerations than the discovery of the name of the singer, or the nature of his sorrow. It is a transcript of a perennial experience, a guide fern road which all feet have to travel. Its stream runs turbid and broken at first, but calms and clears as it flows. It has four curves or windings, which can scarcely be called strophes without making too artificial a framework for such a simple and spontaneous gush of feeling. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The cry of the penitent
The strains of this Psalm are two-- Psalms 6:1-7, the petition to God for himself; and Psalms 6:8-10, an insultation over his enemies.
I. The petition.
1. A deprecation of evil. He prays God to avert His wrath.
2. A petition of good. He entreats to be partaker of God’s favour, both to his body and to his soul. The petition he enforceth upon divers and weighty reasons: from the quantity and degrees of his calamity; from the continuance of it; from the consequences that were like to follow. That he was brought to death’s door is seen by three symptoms, sighs and groans, tears, eyes melted away. Moreover, he had many ill-willers.
II. The insultation. At last, receiving joy and comfort from his penitential tears, he begins to look up, and from his complaint he turns upon his enemies, who gaped after his death, and over them he insults (an old word for “he glories”). He rejects these reprobates from him with scorn and indignation. He assigns the cause in effect, because God had been moved by his prayer to reject them. Then follows his imprecation; made up of three ingredients, which he prays may light on them--shame and confusion, vexation, eversion. These two last he aggravates by the weight and speed. He desires that their vexation should be nor easy, nor mild, but very sore; and that their shame and overthrow linger not, but be present, hasty, and sudden. (William Nicholson, D. D.)
The penitent suppliant
Though God will be no example of upbraiding or reproaching repented sins, when God hath so far expressed His love as to bring that sinner to that repentance, and so to mercy, yet, that He may perfect His own care, He exercises that repentant sinner with such medicinal corrections as may enable him to stand upright for the future.
I. The person upon whom David turned for succour. His first access is to God only. It is to God by name, not to any universal God. That name in which he comes to Him here is the name Jehovah, His radical, fundamental, primary, essential name.
II. For what he supplicates. His prayer is but deprecatory; he does but pray that God would forbear him. He pretends no error, he enterprises no reversing of judgment; at first he dares not sue for pardon, he only desires a reprieve, a respite of execution, and that not absolutely either; but he would not be executed in hot blood, not in God’s anger, not in His hot displeasure. To be rebuked was but to be chidden, to be chastened, to be beaten; and yet David was heartily afraid of the first, of the least of them, when it was done to him in anger. “Rebuke” here means reprove, convince by way of argument and disputation. What David deprecates is not the disputing, impleading, correcting, but that anger which might change the nature of all and make the physic poison. When there was no anger in the case David was a forward scholar to hearken to God’s reasoning. Both these words “chasten” and “hot displeasure” are words of a heavy, vehement significance. David foresees that if God rebuke in anger it will come to chastening in hot displeasure. (John Donne.)
The prayer of the a afflicted soul
1. In our afflictions we must look to God, and not to secondary causes.
2. To go to God for help in our distresses. When, then, we are wounded, we must go to one who can cure us, even Him who hath heaved us up, and cast us down again, and will again raise us up.
3. Prayer is our wings to fly to God in our affliction.
4. Means by which God brings us to obedience.
(1) His Word.
(2) His rod. If we refuse to be ruled by God’s Word, then God will not fail to correct us with His rod. (A. Symson.)
Rebuke needed
As I deserve it for my sin, so I need it for my amendment, for without rebuking what amending?--what amending, indeed, without Thy rebuking? for, alas! the flesh flatters me, the world abuseth me, Satan deludes me; and now, O God, if Thou also shouldst hold Thy peace and wink at my follies, whom should I have--alas I whom could I have--to make me sensible of their foulness? If Thou shouldst not tell me, and tell me roundly, I went astray, how should I ever--alas I how could I ever--be brought to return into the right way? To Thy rebuking, therefore, I humbly submit myself. I know Thou intendest it for my amendment, and not for my confusion; for my conversion, and not for my subversion. It may be bitter in the tasting, but is most comfortable in the working; hard, perhaps, to digest, but most sovereign being digested. Yet I cannot endure Thou shouldst rebuke me in anger; I cannot endure it in affection, but I can less endure it in ability. When I consider with myself the many favours--undeserved favours--Thou hast vouchsafed unto me, and consider withal how little use, how ill use I have made of them all, though I know I have justly deserved Thy rebuking, yet my hope is still Thou wilt add this favour also, not to rebuke me in Thine anger. (Sir Richard Baker.)
Angry chastening deprecated
If Thy chastening be intended for reforming or for polishing, what wouldst Thou do with indignation, that tends to abolishing? (Sir Richard Baker.)
Rebuke combined with anger
Thy rebuking, O God, is to me as thunder, but Thine anger is as lightning; and is it not enough that Thou terrify my soul with the thunder of Thy rebuking, but Thou wilt also set this flax of my flesh on fire with the lightning of Thine anger? Thy rebuking of itself is a precious balm, but mixed with anger turns to a corrosive. (Sir Richard Baker.)
God’s anger terrible
A certain king, being once very sad, his brother asked what ailed him. “Oh, brother,” he said, “I have been a great sinner, and am afraid to die and appear before God in judgment.” His brother only laughed at him for his melancholy thoughts. The king said nothing, but in the dead of night sent the executioner to sound his trumpet before his brother’s door, that being the signal for a man to be led out to execution. Pale and trembling, his brother came in haste to the king and asked to know his crime. “Oh, brother,” said the king, “you have never offended against me; but if the sight of the executioner be so dreadful, shall not I, who have grievously offended God, fear to be brought before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ?”
Angerless reproof often quite effective
There was a boy at Norfolk Island who had been brought from one of the rougher and wilder islands, and was consequently rebellious and difficult to manage. One day Mr. Selwyn spoke to him about something he had refused to do, and the lad, flying into a passion, struck him in the face. This was an unheard of thing for a Melanesian to do. Mr. Selwyn, not trusting himself to speak, turned on his heel and walked away. The boy was punished for the offence; and, being still unsatisfactory, was sent back to his own island without being baptized, and there relapsed into heathen ways. Many years afterwards Mr. Bice, the missionary who worked on that island, was sent for to a sick person who wanted him. He found this very man in a dying state, and begging to be baptized. He told Mr. Bice how often he thought of the teaching on Norfolk Island; and when the latter asked him by what name he should baptize him, he said, “Call me John Selwyn, because he taught me what Christ was like that day when I struck him; and I saw the colour mount in his face, but he never said a word except of love afterwards.” Mr. Bice then baptized him, and he died soon after. (Life of Bishop John Selwyn.)
The difference between a cross and a curse
David deprecates not God’s rebukes or corrections, but that He would not rebuke him in His anger. It is tree there is a great similitude between a curse and a cross, and oftentimes God’s children have been deceived thereby, and through His hard handling of them have judged Him to have become their enemy; but indeed there is a great difference. And to the end ye may know whether they come from the hands of a loving God or no, consider these marks and tokens.
1. If they lead thee to a consideration of thy sin, which is the ground and cause of them, so that thou lookest not to the instrumental or second cause, but to thyself, the cause of all, they come from the hand of a loving God.
2. If they make thee leave off to sin and reject it, they come from a loving God.
3. If under thy cross thou run unto God, whom thou hast pierced, that He may deliver thee, and not say with that godless King Jehoram, Why should I attend any more upon the Lord? they come from a loving God.
4. The Cross worketh in the godly a wonderful humility and patience, so that they submit themselves under the hand of the living God, that they under it may be tamed, and from lions be made lambs. The wicked either howl (as do dogs that are beaten) through sense of their present stroke, or if they be humbled and seem patient, it is perforce as a lion which is caged and cannot stir. (A. Symson.)
The anger of God as pure as His mercy
But alas, those persons did not consider the difference betwixt the qualities that are in our sinful nature, and the essential properties which are in God; for He is angry and sins not. His anger is as pure as His mercy, for His justice is His anger, but our anger is mixed with sin, and therefore evil. (A. Symson.)
God’s anger against sin
God will be angry at nothing in His creatures, but only sin, which bringeth man to destruction; for as if a father saw a serpent in his child’s bosom, he would hate the serpent notwithstanding his love to the boy: so we are God’s children, He loves that which He made of us, our body and soul, and hates that which the devil hath put in us, our sin. (A. Symson.)
Neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure.
A revengeful God the creation of a guilty conscience
There are two knowledges of God; the one is the absolute, the other is the relative. The former comprehends God as He is, embraces the Infinite; the other comprehends only glances of Him, as He appears to the mind of the observer. There is but one being in the universe who has the former knowledge, and that is Christ. “No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him.” David’s idea of God here was relative. He represents the Eternal as He appeared to him in the particular state of mind which he experienced. We make two remarks on his idea of God’s “hot displeasure.”
I. It was generated in a guilty conscience by great suffering. The writer of this Psalm was involved in the greatest distress both in body and in mind.
1. That he was conscious of having wronged his Maker. His conscience robes infinite love with vengeance.
2. He was conscious of having deserved God’s displeasure. He felt that the sufferings he was enduring were penal inflictions, and he justly deserved them. Had his conscience been appeased by atoning love, the very sufferings he was enduring would have led him to regard the great God as a loving Father disciplining him for a higher life, and not as a wrathful God visiting him in His hot displeasure. God is to you according to your moral state.
II. It was removed from his guilty conscience by earnest prayer. His prayer for mercy is intensely importunate. “O Lord, rebuke me not in Thine anger,” etc. “Have mercy upon me, O Lord.” “O Lord, heal me.” “O Lord, deliver soul,” etc. What is the result of his prayer? “Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping,” etc. True prayer does two things.
1. Modifies for the better the mind of the suppliant. It tends to quicken, to calm, to elevate the soul.
2. Secures the necessary assistance of the God of love. One great truth that comes up from the whole of these remarks is that man’s destiny depends upon his moral state, and that no system can effectually help him, that does not bring his heart into a right relation with God. So long as God appears to him burning with hot displeasure he must be in an agony like that which the Psalmist here describes. The mission of Christianity is to bring men into this happy relation. (Homilist.)