PSALM VI.

THE CHASTISEMENT OF LOVE.

No more fitting plaint could be put into the lips of any pious sufferer than this pathetic strain from the harp of Israel — especially when sung to one of the minor tunes of our time-honoured Scottish Psalter. " Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray." Nay, adds Matthew Henry, " let him sing this psalm " —

"Lord, in Thy wrath rebuke me not;

Nor in Thy hot rage chasten me.

Lord, pity me, for I am weak:

Heal me, for my bones vexed be.''

Calvin, in his last painful illness, tried to do so. He uttered no word of complaint unworthy of a Christian man, but, raising his eyes to heaven, he would say, in the language of verse 3, " O Lord, how long-—? " leaving his unfinished prayer in the sudden silence of this arresting aposiopesis. The deepest notes in human experience are minor notes. Down in the human heart are chords of music, truer, richer, and more spontaneous than all the major and popular melodies by which a modern civilisation has tried to cheat us. They are like the minor tones in external Nature —

"Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighbouring ocean

Speaks, and, in accents disconsolate, answers the wail of. the forest."

The wail of the forest, the disconsolate accents of ocean, the monotonous chant of the waterfall, the bleating of flocks among the hills, and the weird-like call of the moorfowl among the heather — all these seem to be pervaded with a suggestion of autumn's sadness; and we are made to feel that the nearer we get back to Nature the more appropriate become the minor tunes and plaintive melodies of these penitential psalms. The elegy, the wail, the dirge, are not the lowest form of musical composition; and as the Hebrew Psalter is a faithful transcript of the human heart in all its moods, pious sufferers have continued to come to this song-book of ancient Israel, and have drawn from its strains of penitence and devotion a comfort which is Divine. In the present psalm there are three keywords which may help to elucidate its teaching,

1. Chastisement.

"Neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure.''

The Psalmist is face to face with the truth which has played so large a part in the discipline of the world, that "whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth." He does not rail against chastisement as such. He knows that Jehovah chastens, sometimes in love, and smites that He may save. Every true child of the Kingdom, therefore, may well kiss the rod that smites him; for while no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Still there is chastening and chastening. The Psalmist did not believe that all Divine punishment or reproof was intended for reformation. There might be visitations of God in just anger — visitations which could only be regarded as tokens of the Divine alienation and wrath. And while the devout sufferer was quite willing to submit to the former — to the chastisement of love — he does shrink appalled from the severity of the latter, and exclaims, like Jeremiah, "O Lord, correct me, but with judgment: not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing ": or with Christina Rossetti —

"Wilt Thou accept the heart I bring,

     O gracious Lord and kind,

To ease it of a torturing sting,

     And staunch and bind?

 

Or if Thou wilt not yet relieve,

     Be not extreme to sift:

Accept a faltering will to give,

     Itself Thy gift."

The resignation and shrinking contained in a cry like this forecast the awe-inspiring alternatives of Gethsemane. "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt." If a Father's hand wield the rod, I will try to kiss the rod that smites me; but, O Lord, chasten me not in Thy hot displeasure, for I could not endure the severity of the blow.

And then, as if to suggest the reflection that the chastisement had been carried too far already, he spreads out his wretchedness in the sight of God's great pity, and paints it in all the sad colouring of the autumn. "I am Withered away" — as a flower. The scorching winds of adversity have blown across my garden; the biting frosts of hostility have nipped my foliage in the bud; or like a fragile flower bereft of the rain and sunshine, I trail my faded blossoms in the dust. Yea, "my bones are vexed." By a slight variation in the figure, he points to the Influence of his calamity upon the physical framework of the body. His very bones which are the strength and stability of the bodily frame are shaken or agitated with terror as the result of his inward perplexity. And "my soul also is sore vexed/' In soul, no less than in body, I am like a bruised reed: and instead of there being any alleviation of my suffering the leaden hoofs of adversity would trample me still further into the mud. Until at last, with something like reproach in his voice, he lifts his eyes to the infinite Personality which seemed so callous to his suffering, and exclaims, " And Thou, O Lord, how long —?" Is this an action worthy of Thee, O Lord, to allow a poor, bruised reed to be broken utterly, or the dying, smouldering flax to be utterly quenched? Is this an attitude in keeping with Thy manifold mercy, or a discipline at all in harmony with the gracious chastisement of Thy love? "O Jehovah, how long —?" And then his heart fails him for words, the unfinished petition being left in the eloquence of its incompleteness. He has spread out his state of misery in the presence of Divine compassion, and then with this abrupt, half-broken cry, "How long," he leaves it with God.

This is what all devout souls may aspire to do. Deeply conscious of the chastening hand of their God upon them, they may creep up to the Divine footstool and raise their eyes to heaven, like wounded animals crawling up to the feet of their master and looking up into his face with great eyes of pain. Their suffering is a deep they may never hope to fathom, but they can bring it into the presence of Him who is both justice and love, and believe that in the plenitude of His mercy He will not only bring forth their righteousness as the light, but cause the flower which was trailing its blossoms in the dust to unfold once more its petals in the sunshine. This is the deeper meaning of the Divine chastisement of love: it is big with the promise of what may yet be.

2. LOVINGKINDNESS.

"0 save me for Thy lovingkindness' sake."

This is the Psalmist's perfect plea when thinking on the possible mitigation of his pain. He falls back with confidence on Jehovah's covenant love. For the love of God in choosing and blessing Israel is the theme and joy of all the sacred writers. He delights in mercy. He is ready to forgive. He keeps not His anger for ever. Let Him be true, then, to His own nature! Let His self-revelation in act be consistent with the inner graciousness of His motive I For, to give another turn to the Psalmist's thought, would not the Divine lovingkindness be deprived of a part of its legitimate praise if the present prayer of the singer should be left unanswered? His physical vigour, as already noted, was drooping and fading away like a flower. It was being impaired by the severity of his afflictions; and unless it could be delivered from the secret causes of its decay, what hope was there that it would be continued in the land of the living at all? It would die, and be given over to the gloomy abode of the dead; and then the days of praising God's mercy would once and for all be ended.

"For in death there is no remembrance of Thee:

In Sheol who shall give Thee thanks?"

It is clearly implied in this plea, that the Psalmist believed that Jehovah cared for men's praise. And why not? God is love — compassionate and eternal love; and praise on the part of man is simply the proof that this love of God has been responded to. Joy in men's praise, therefore, is but joy in men's love, and joy in men's love is but the recognition that God's love for them has not been manifested in vain. Hence the Psalmist prays for freedom from trial, not as an end in itself, but as a means to a further end — the end of celebrating the mercy of Jehovah in the land of the living. He longs to escape as a bird from the darkened cage of adversity, that he may rise and sing in the sunshine of the Divine favour. Freedom from affliction is not everything: it is freedom that we may praise — freedom that we may come, as in another psalm, and say: —

"I'll bring burnt-offerings to Thy house,

     To Thee my vows I'll pay,

Which my lips uttered, my mouth spake,

     When trouble on me lay."

Alas, the feeling of dejection depicted in verses 6 and 7 is sufficient evidence that this earnest cry for freedom has not as yet been answered. The sense of his own misery again wins the mastery. And instead of soaring aloft as the eagle, the strong wings of his hope seem to be struck with paralysis, and it flutters down into the valley below, where, overpowered by the consciousness of its own hapless condition, it has no reassuring thought of the Divine nearness at all. In these two verses the name of God is not even mentioned, and the manifestations of his sorrow are so excessive that we find it difficult with our undemonstrative Western temperaments to give him credit for the anguish conveyed in his words. Not only did he set his bed afloat with his unmeasured weeping, but he melted his couch and wasted away his eyes until they became " bleared and dim like those of an old man." And all this because of his enemies — all this because of those, who, taking advantage of God*s chastening hand upon him, were exulting in his calamity, and longing for his utter ruin. It is a dark picture; but it proves to be the darkness which precedes the dawn. With this sombre reflection, he gathers up all that can be said of his grievous and bitter trial, and prepares the way for the sudden burst of sunshine with which this penitential psalm concludes.

3. Deliverance.

"The Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping."

Lux in tenebris is the one descriptive phrase that can really do justice to the change effected in this man's experience. Immediately, like a flash of light, the conviction has come to him that the eloquence of his tears has been heard in heaven. A great confidence, begotten by the Spirit of God, has visited his soul, and he knows as by the certainty of a Divine inspiration that his time of bitter weeping is at an end. He uses the perfect tense — what the Hebrew grammarians call the " perfect of certitude '*; for while his bodily disease is not yet lifted, and while the dark prison walls of hostility are not yet removed, a whisper from the eternities has visited this man's spirit, and he knows that the hour of his Divine deliverance has already struck. None of his detractors are aware of the swift advance of the dawn, but the voice of the dawn is already in his heart, and he can gaze at the hilltops now being flushed with the coming glory, and say, "The Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping."

This song of penitence, therefore, like all sanctified affliction, has ended in the assurance of God's covenant love. It began differently. Like a mountain stream it was turbid and broken at the first, but gradually it has calmed and cleared as it flowed, until now, at the close, it loses the voice of its weeping in the assurance of the Divine compassion, just as the flowing streamlet is stilled in the fulness of the sea. It began with the chastisement of love, and ends with the drying of every tear; and in view of these facts, enemies can do nothing. He that is for us is infinitely more than they who may be against us. Therefore —

"Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity;

For Jehovah hath heard my prayer,"

Ye workers of iniquity! Is it right for us to speak of our detractors in that way? and especially to add, as in verse 10, " Let them all be ashamed and sore vexed: let them return and be ashamed suddenly" (A.V.). Even to modify this grim desire by taking the verbs as simple futures, and rendering with the R.V.: — " All mine enemies shall be ashamed and sore vexed," is, in no sense, a sentiment in keeping with the spirit of redeeming love. From this point of view, Professor Duhm is probably correct when he says that "for reading at a Christian sick-bed, this psalm is not suitable." In the school of Jesus we are taught to give our enemies a place even in our prayers. "Pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." Hence if any one would use the phraseology of this psalm to-day, it must be in a very different sense from that of the Psalmist. " Let them be ashamed and sore vexed " — not in the sense of destruction, but of moral reformation.

" Let them return, and be ashamed suddenly," as their blinded eyes are opened to the patience and tenderness of the Divine love; until bowing in submission to Him who is the Anointed of the Father, they may pass at last with us, from the minor melodies of these penitential psalms to the higher symphonies of heaven. That is the worldwide charity as taught in the Christian Evangel. The Lord give us grace thus to dry our tears!