《Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers – Psalms (Vol. 1)》(Charles J. Ellicott) Commentator

05 Psalm 5
Introduction

V.

Psalms 5:7 makes the inscription to this psalm suspicious. (See Note.) The address, “my king,” also denoting the theocratic relation of Jehovah to His people, seems more natural in. an invocation supposed to come from the entire faithful Israel—an invocation for help against the idolatrous part of the nation now in power, and preparing, if not actually beginning, persecution. The psalm is therefore rightly assigned to the troublous times of the later monarchy, possibly the reign of Manasseh. The bitterness of possible estrangement from the Temple and its services makes itself visible enough here, in feelings natural to this period. It is plain that when Psalms 5 was composed the adherents of Jehovah’s religion were the objects of dislike and calumny.

The parallelism is marked and well sustained.

Title.—Properly, to the leader on the flutes or to the precentor, with flute accompaniments. (See Note to inscription, Psalms 4)

Nehiloth.—Properly, nechîlôth: that is, bored instruments. The LXX., followed by the Vulg., translate, “on behalf of the heiress,” i.e., according to Augustine, “the Church;” but this is founded on a wrong etymology. Some Rabbins, deriving from a Chaldee word meaning “a swarm of bees,” make it refer to the multitudes reciting the psalm; others to the humming or hoarse sound of the musical accompaniment; others to a particular tune, “the drones.” Of the use of flutes in the religious services of the Hebrews we have proof in 1 Samuel 10:5, 1 Kings 1:40, Isaiah 30:29. Possibly the plural form may indicate the double flute. (See Bible Educator, ii. 89.)

Verse 1

(1) Meditation.—From a root cognate with the word translated meditate in Psalms 1:2, with primary sense of mutter or murmur. Here “whispered prayer,” in contrast to “words” in first clause, and to “voice of my cry” in the next. It echoes clause 1: “while unto thee will I pray” corresponds to “meditation.”

Verse 3

(3) The daily morning sacrifice sees the Psalmist in the Temple. The word “direct,” or, better, prepare, is the same employed in Leviticus 1:8; Leviticus 1:12; Leviticus 6:12, of the priest laying out the wood for the sacrifice, or the parts of the offering itself, and suggest that the author may himself have been a priest. The word “offering” should be supplied, instead of “prayer.” Henry Vaughan’s fine hymn—

“When first thine eyes unveil, give thy soul leave

To do the like”—

was probably suggested by this verse.

Look up.—The Hebrew is from the root which forms “Mizpeh,” or “watch-tower.” The psalmist looks up for the answer to his prayer as the seer on his tower (Habakkuk 2:1) looked up for his inspiration. The usual attitude of prayer in the East was then, as now, either standing or prostrate, the hands lifted up or spread out (Exodus 9:33; Psalms 28:2; Psalms 134:2; Psalms 141:2). To raise the eyes was not so usual. Virgil, describing the capture of Cassandra by the Greeks, makes her look up, but only because her hands were bound.

“Ad coelum tendens ardentia lumina frustra,

Lumina—nam teneras arcebant vincula palmas.”

Verse 4

(4) Neither shall evil.—Better, the wicked man is not thy guest. For the same thought, see Psalms 15; and for the opposite, of God coming to dwell with the godly, Isaiah 57:15.

Verse 5

(5) Foolish.—Literally, shiners—i.e., displayers of self; or, perhaps, self-praisers, boasters.

Shall not stand.—As distinguished men before kings (Proverbs 22:29); as angels in the court of the heavenly King (Job 1:6).

Verse 6

(6) Leasing.—See Psalms 4:2.

Bloody.—Margin, literally, of bloods and deceit. So LXX. and Vulg.

Verse 7

(7) House . . . temple.—These words must certainly be taken literally, and not, as Hupfeld suggests, metaphorically, or in a spiritual sense with reference to Psalms 5:4. The reference to worship hardly allows the rendering palace, though the derivation of the Hebrew word permits it. No doubt either explanation is possible; but neither would have been suggested but for the title to the psalm; and it is clear (see General Introduction) that historical exactness was not regarded in affixing the psalm-titles.

Worship.—Literally, prostrate myself towards, as in 1 Kings 8:29; Psalms 28:2. (Comp. Daniel’s attitude of prayer towards Jerusalem, and that of the Moslems now towards Mecca.)

Verse 8

(8) Enemies.—Literally, those watching for, or lying in wait. Aquila and Jerome both give “those lying in ambush.” God’s guidance and protection would enable the good man to avoid their snares, and to walk straight in the way of righteousness. To walk in God’s way is to walk in safety.

Verse 9

Verse 10

(10) Destroy.—Literally, make or count guilty.

Transgressions.—Literally, revolts, thus being in close synonymous parallelism with the next clause. Or else, as in margin and in ancient versions, LXX., Vulg., and Syriac, “Let them fall from their counsels:” i.e., “let their plots fail.”

On the imprecations in the Psalms see General Introduction, 6.

Verse 11

(11) Rejoice.—From root meaning primarily bright. Proverbs 13:9 : “The light of the righteous rejoiceth.”

Shield.—Heb., tsinnah. The long large shield fit for a giant (1 Samuel 17:7; 1 Samuel 17:41), which could protect the whole body.

Luther, when asked at Augsburg where he should find shelter if his patron, the Elector of Saxony, should desert him, replied, “under the shield of heaven.” The image is finely elaborated in Browning’s Instans Tyrannus:—

“When sudden—How think ye the end?

Did I say without friend?

Say, rather, from marge to blue marge,

The whole sky grew his targe

With the sun’s self for visible boss;

While an arm ran across

Which the earth heaved beneath like a breast

Where the wretch was safe pressed.

Do you see? Just my vengeance complete.

The man sprang to his feet.

Stood erect, caught at God’s skirts, and prayed—

So I was afraid.”

06 Psalm 6
Introduction

VI.

The end of this plaintive poem seems to belong to a different situation from the beginning. At first it sounds like a voice from a bed of sickness, of sickness likely to terminate fatally. But at Psalms 6:8 the tone changes. We hear no longer of sickness; but of enemies and wicked men, and prayer gives place to deflance and triumph. Can then the sufferings described in the former part be of the soul instead of the body? In any other than Hebrew literature we should answer in the negative. But with such passages as Isaiah 1:5-6 before us we feel that no picture of physical pain and disease is too vivid or too personal to express moral evil. Rightly, therefore, has the Church made this the first of the penitential psalms. As the personality of the writer is thus merged we need not attempt to recover it. Perhaps he intended it not only to be merged, but lost in the collective application to the suffering faithful in Israel. The Exile period best suits this confession of national sin. The rhythm is fine and well sustained.

Title. For chief musician and Neginoth, see introduction to Psalms 4 “Upon Sheminith,” Heb., upon the Shemînîth, comp. title to Psalms 12 Margin, on the eighth, which has been very variously understood, and still waits for a satisfactory explanation.

Verse 1

Verse 2

(2) I am weak.—Properly, wither, or waste with disease, or languish, as in Hosea 4:3; Isaiah 16:8.

Vexed.—So LXX. and Vulg. Literally, affrighted. (Comp. Virgil’s gelidusque per ima cucurrit Ossa tremor.)

Verse 3

(3) But thou, O Lord, how long?—Comp. Psalms 90:13. This is “belief in unbelief.” Domine quousque was Calvin’s motto. The most intense grief, it was said, could never extract from him another word. In its national form this faith amid despair is shown in Zechariah 1:12. (Comp Revelation 6:10.)

Verse 5

(5) For in death.—As in Psalms 30:9, the sufferer urges as a further reason for Divine aid the loss Jehovah would suffer by the cessation of his praise. The Israelite’s natural dread of death was intensified by the thought that the grave separated him from all the privileges of the covenant with God. (Comp. Isaiah 38:18.) There can be neither remembrance of His past mercies there, nor confession of His greatness. The word translated grave, in exact parallelism with death, is sheôl, or underworld, in the early conception merely a vast sepulchral cave, closed as rock-tombs usually were by gates of stone or iron (Isaiah 38:10; Job 17:16). The derivation of the word is disputed, but the primary meaning appears to have been hollowness. It occurs sixty-five times in the Bible, and is rendered in the Authorised version three times “pit,” and then with curious impartiality thirty-one times “grave,” and as many “hell.” When it ceased to be merely a synonym for “grave,” and began to gather a new set of ideas we cannot ascertain. It was before the time of which we have any contemporary records. But it acquired these new ideas very slowly. Sheol was for a very long time only a magnified grave, into which all the dead, bad and good alike, prince and peasant, went; where they lay side by side in their niches, as the dead do in the loculi of eastern tombs now, without sense of light or sound, or any influence from the upper world (1 Kings 2:2; Job 30:23; Psalms 89:48). It is something more than death, put it is not life. The “sleep of death” expresses it. As in Homer’s Hades, the dead are men without the minds or energies of men—“soulless men; so the dead in the Hebrew conception are rephaim, that is, weak, shadowy existences. Indeed, the Biblical representation is even less tolerable than the Greek. Homer’s heroes retain many of their interests in the living world; they rejoice in the prosperity of their friends—their own approval or disapproval makes a difference to those still on earth—and, apart from this continued connection with the upper air, they had gone to a realm of their own, with its sovereign lord, its laws and customs, its sanctions, and penalties. Not so in the Jewish belief—“the dead know not anything”; “there is no wisdom in sheol.” It would be of no use for God to show any wonders among those incapable of perceiving them (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10; Psalms 88:10). They have passed altogether from all the interests and relations of life, even from the covenant relation with Jehovah. (Comp. Isaiah 38:18; Psalms 115:17.) How the Hebrew conscience, helped, possibly, by the influence of foreign ideas, gradually struggled into a higher light on these subjects, belongs to the history of eschatology. The fact that Psalms 6 reflects the earlier undeveloped doctrine, is an argument against any very late date for it.

Verse 6

(6) I water my couch with tears.—Comp. Odyssey, xvii. 102:

“Say, to my mournful couch shall I ascend?

The couch deserted now a length of years,

The couch for ever watered with my tears.”—

Pope’s trans.

Orientals indulge in weeping and other outward signs of emotion, which Western nations, or, at all events, the Teutonic races, try to suppress or hide.

Verse 7

Verse 8

(8) Depart from me.—After the night of sorrow comes the morning of revived faith and confidence, if not of joy. The poet can turn to address his maligners with the assurance that God has heard his prayer, which in his agony he poured out, as he feared at the time, into deaf and unsympathising ears.

Verse 10

(10) Let all mine enemies.—Better rendered either by the present or future. The Psalmist with the eye of faith sees the answer to his prayer.

Return—i.e., retire discomfited and in failure.

“My enemies shall all be blank, and dasht

With much confusion: then grow red with shame;

They shall return in haste the way they came,

And in a moment shall be quite abashed.”—

Milton’s trans.
07 Psalm 7
Introduction

VII.

In this psalm we seem to be once more on sure historical ground. It not only breathes the feeling when David and his outlawed band were daily evading the snares laid for them by the emissaries of Saul, but seems to refer pointedly to the two most romantic incidents in all that romantic period—the chance encounter of pursuer and pursued—(1) In the cave of En-gedi, and (2) (if the two are not the same under different versions) in the wilderness of Ziph (1 Samuel 24, 26); at least, no other recorded incidents in the Bible fall in so well, either as occasions for its composition or as illustrations of its spirit. We can readily imagine that there would be men (for Cush, see Note to Title) who would turn even these instances of David’s generosity into occasions of slander against him, and that he would pour out his feelings under such unjust provocation in song.

Against this must be noticed the occurrence of an Aramaic word in Psalms 7:9, which suggests a late date for the poem.

The poetical form is uncertain.

Title.—Shiggaion is either a variation of Higgaion (Psalms 9:16), and means generally, as the LXX. render it, “poem or psalm;” or it is derived from shâgah, to wander, and denotes a wild passionate ode—cantio erratica, as some of the old expositors describe it. The Greeks called such a composition Dithyrambic. Gesenius makes it simply “a song of praise.” “Cush,” or Kush, cannot be identified. The mistake of the LXX. in writing it Chus has led some to connect it with the Hebrew name for an Ethiopian, and to regard it as a nickname, “the blackamoor.” The fact of the tribal relation with Saul is quite enough to allow us to conjecture that Cush was some person high in favour with that monarch, servilely eager to injure David.

Concerning the words.—This is better than the margin, “business,” since Psalms 7:4 shows that the author’s indignation arose from some calumny of him.

Verse 1

(1) In thee do I put my trust.—Or, in thee have I taken refuge.

Verse 2

(2) Lest he tear.—The poet turns from the thought of his enemies generally to the one who has just made himself conspicuous. Such a change from plural to singular often occurs in the Psalms. (Comp. Psalms 41:5-6.)

Rending it in pieces.—The LXX., followed by the Vulg. (so too the Syriac), take the verb in its primitive sense of “snatch away,” and translate, “there being none to redeem or deliver.” So Milton: “Tearing, and no rescue nigh.” Notice the comparison of human enemies to beasts of prey—a reminiscence of the lion and the bear of his youth, so constantly present to David. (Comp. Psalms 3:7; 1 Samuel 17:37.)

Verse 3

(3) This—i.e., this with which I am charged—the Benjamite’s slander.

If there be iniquity.—A comparison with 1 Samuel 24:12-13, and still more 1 Samuel 26:18, shows how closely this psalm is connected with the two notorious instances of David’s magnanimous and generous conduct towards Saul.

Verse 4

(4) Yea, I have—i.e., on the contrary, so far from returning evil for good, I have returned good for evil. With allusion, there can be little doubt, to the incidents referred to in the last Note. From metrical reasons, and also to avoid the abruptness of the change of construction, Ewald conjectures that two clauses have dropped out of the text, and restores as follows—

“If I have rewarded evil unto him that dealt friendly with me

(And cunning unto him that was at peace with me,

Yea, if I have not rewarded his soul with good).

And delivered him that without cause is my enemy.”

Milton’s translation gives yet another colour to the passage—

“If I have wrought

Ill to him that meant me peace,

Or to him have rendered less,

And not freed my foe for nought.”

The conjecture of a corruption of the text is supported by the rendering of the LXX. and Vulg., and a very slight change gives the probable rendering: “If I have returned evil to him that dealt friendly with me, and injured my enemy without cause.”

Verse 5

(5) Let the enemy.—Better, let an enemy.

Persecute.—Literally, burn. (See Note on Psalms 10:2.)

Tread.—Used of a potter treading the clay (Isaiah 41:25); of the trampling of horses (Ezekiel 26:11); of a herd trampling down their pasture (Ezekiel 34:28).

Dust.—Either as Psalms 22:15, “the dust of death,” and if so, then khabôd’.

Honour must be the soul or life, as plainly in Psalms 16:9; Psalms 57:8, where the Authorised Version has “glory.” The parallelism is in favour of this. On the other hand, to lay one’s honour in the dust is a common figurative phrase. Shakespeare, K. Hen. VI., i. 5, “Now, France, thy glory droopeth to the dust”; and Coriol. iii. 1, “And throw their power in the dust.”

Selah.—See Note on Psalms 3:2. This is one of the places which suggest its interpretation as a direction to the music, to strike up with passion and force.

Verse 6

(6) In the rapid succession of abrupt utterance of feeling in ejaculations, we see the excitement of the poet’s mind.

Of the rage.—Better, against the rage, unless we may correct to “in thy rage.” The LXX. and Vulg. read, “in the ends of,” which Jerome explains as meaning, “exalt thyself by making an end of my enemies.” Syriac, “Be thou lifted up upon the necks of my enemies.”

And awake for me.—Better, arranged in two petitions: yea, awake for me; prepare the judgment. There is some difficulty about the syntax of the last clause, but the imperatives suit the parallelism of the context better than the past tenses.

Verse 7

(7) So shall.—This clause is also in the optative: “let the communities of peoples be gathered round thee.”

For their sakes.—Rather, over or above it, as in LXX. The poet has a vision of judgment. Jehovah summons the nations, arranges them at His tribunal, and then returns to His high throne to preside. This explanation is more consonant with the context (see next verse) than to suppose the judgment to have taken place between the two causes of the verse, and the departure of God into the height “as a victor after battle” (Delitzsch), or “in proof of His supremacy as judge” (Ewald). This picture of arraigned nations is certainly in favour of the view which makes the psalm the expression of the feelings of the community rather than of an individual.

Verse 8

(8) The Lord shall.—Better, Jehovah judgeth the nations. Everything is complete, and the work of judgment begins. The poet prays that his sentence may be according to his own consciousness of righteousness and integrity. Of this plea of innocence Jerome says, “David could not say this; this properly belongs to the Saviour, who was sinless.” Others think it is the ideal Israel, which stands before Jehovah’s tribunal. But we may compare Job’s protestations of innocence, and his persistent demand for a trial. David (if he is the author) refers naturally to his innocence of the charge calumniously brought against him. As between Saul and himself, his conduct had been blameless.

Verse 9

(9) Establish.—Literally, let him stand erect.

For the righteous God trieth.—Better, thou trier of hearts and reins, thou just God. The Hebrew word translated try is used, like it, for testing metals (Psalms 12:6; Proverbs 17:3).

Verse 10

(10) My defence.—Literally, as in margin, my shield is upon God. (Comp. Psalms 62:7, “In God is my salvation,” where the Hebrew is as here, “God is my shield-bearer.”) Another explanation appears in Milton’s translation—

“On God is cast

My defence, and in Him lies,

In Him who both just and wise,

Saves the upright at heart at last.”

Verse 11

(11) God judgeth.—The two clauses answer to each other; so the margin, “God is a righteous judge, and God avengeth every day.” LXX., “God is a just judge, and strong and longsuffering, not letting loose his anger every day.” Vulg., “Still is he not angry with the wicked?” Syriac, “God is the judge of righteousness. He is not angry every day.” It has been proposed to read véal—“and not”—instead of veél—“and God”—conformably to these versions, but unnecessarily.

Verse 12

(12) If he turn not.—The Hebrew is doubly idiomatic. Translate surely (see Hebrews 3:11, with Note in New Testament Commentary), He will again whet His sword. It is true that the verb to turn in the sense of repetition usually precedes the other verb immediately, without, as here, any other words intervening.

Bent.—Literally, trodden, showing that the foot was used by the Israelites to bend the bow, as by archers now. (Smith’s Bible Dictionary, “Arms.”)

Verse 13

(13) Instruments of death.—That is, deadly weapons.

Against the persecutors.—Literally, for those burning; so LXX. and Vulg. The meaning appears to be, “His arrows he makes into fiery arrows”—i.e., tips them with fire, by wrapping them in burning tow. Latin, malleoli. (Comp. Ephesians 6:16, with Note, in New Testament Commentary.) Milton’s “rattling storm of arrows barb’d with fire,” refers to the same custom.

Verse 14

(14) Behold, he travaileth.—The poet’s thought recurs to the calumniator, whose sin has deserved all this Divine wrath, and he sees the truth that God’s judgments are not arbitrary, but follow naturally on sin as its consequence. The verb “travaileth” gives the general figure, which is elaborated in the two clauses which describe the stages of conception and pregnancy. (For the image, comp. Job 15:35.)

Verse 15

(15) Pate.—A word retained from Coverdale’s translation, and common in the Elizabethan age. In Shakespeare it is frequent—

“My invention

Comes from my pate,

As bird-lime does from frieze.”

For the moral, comp. 1 Samuel 25:29.

Psalms 7:15-16 are quoted by Eusebius of the overthrow of Maxentius by Constantine, with special reference to the fact that in preparing a bridge of boats he had prepared the means for his own destruction.
08 Psalm 8
Introduction

VIII.

This psalm has been aptly called a lyric echo of the first chapter of Genesis. There is no reason to doubt the traditional ascription to David. This exquisite little poem is a record of his shepherd’s days, when, under the midnight sky of Palestine, brilliant with stars, he mused on things deep and high, on the mystery of the universe and man’s place in it, his relation to the Creator on the one hand, to the rest of creation on the other.

The form of the poem is perfect and yet simple. A spontaneous burst of praise to the Creator of the glorious world is followed by the inevitable feeling of the insignificance and weakness of man, compared with the majestic march of the shining worlds above him. But like a flash of light comes the claim of kinship with the Author of them all, and a twofold proof of this heavenly origin: the lisping tongues of infants, which can impose silence on those who impiously question it; and the sovereignty man asserts by his superior endowments over the rest of living creation.

Title.—Upon Gittith. (Comp. Psalms 81, 84) The LXX. and Vulg. render, “for the wine-presses,” as if the word were gittôth; and this has been explained to refer either to the festivities of the vintage time, or to the prophecies which describe how the nations would be trodden down as in a wine-press. Another derivation makes it a kind of flute, from a word meaning “to hollow out.” But the most probable and now generally accepted explanation connects it with Gath, the Philistine town. A Talmudic paraphrase for “upon Gittith” is “on the kinnor which was brought from Gath.” According to this, it was a Philistine lute, just as there was an Egyptian flute and a Doric lyre. Others think it refers to a particular tune, perhaps the march of the Gittite guard (2 Samuel 15:18).

From a comparison of the three psalms so inscribed, it cannot be a title having any reference to the subject.

Verse 1

(1) O Lord our Lord.—Jehovah our Lord. For the first time in the Book of Psalms the personal feeling is consciously lost sight of in a larger, a national, or possibly human feeling. The poet recognises God’s relation to the whole of mankind as to the whole material creation. Thus the hymn appropriately lent itself to the use of the congregation in public worship, though it does not follow that this was the object of its composition.

Excellent.—The LXX. and Vulg., “wonderful.” Better, great or exalted.

Who hast set . . .—The. translation of this clause is uncertain. It must be determined by the parallelism, and by the fact that the poet, in Psalms 8:4, merely expands the thought he had before expressed. There is plainly some error in the text since it is ungrammatical. The proposed emendations vary considerably. The ancient versions also disagree. The Authorised Version may be retained, since it meets all the requirements of the context, and is etymologically correct; though, grammatically, Ewald’s correction, which also agrees with the Vulg., is preferable, “Thou whose splendour is raised above the heavens.” The precise thought in the poet’s mind has also been the subject of contention. Some take the clause to refer to the praises raised in Jehovah’s honour higher than the heavens, a thought parallel to the preceding clause; others, to the visible glory spread over the sky. Others see an antithesis. God’s glory is displayed on earth in His name, His real glory is above the heavens. Probably only a general sense of the majesty of Him “that is higher than the highest” (Ecclesiastes 5:8), and “whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain” (1 Kings 8:27), occupied the poet’s mind.

Verse 2

(2) Babes and sucklings.—Better, young children and sucklings. A regular phrase to describe children from one to three years old (1 Samuel 15:3; 1 Samuel 22:19). The yonek, or suckling, denotes an earlier stage of the nursing period (which, with Hebrew mothers, sometimes extended over three years, 2 Maccabees 7:27, and on Talmudic authority could not be less than two years) than the ôlel, which is applied to children able to play about on the streets (Jeremiah 9:21; Lamentations 4:4). (See Dr. Ginsburg on Eastern Manners and Customs: Bible Educator, i. 29.)

Ordained strength . . .—At the first glance, the LXX. translation, as quoted in Matthew 21:16 (see Note, New Testament Commentary), “Thou hast perfected praise,” seems to be correct, from a comparison with Psalms 29:1, where strength translates the same Hebrew word, and plainly means homage. This expresses, doubtless, part of the thought of the poet, that in a child’s simple and innocent wonder lies the truest worship; that God accomplishes the greatest things and reveals His glory by means of the weakest instruments—a thought which was seized upon by our Lord to condemn the want of spirituality in the scribes and Pharisees. But the context, speaking the language of war, seems to demand the primitive meaning, stronghold or defence. The truth which the Bible proclaims of the innate divinity of man, his essential likeness to God, is the principal subject of the poet; and in the princely heart of innocence of an unspoilt child he sees, as Wordsworth saw, its confirmation. “Trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God who is our home.” Such a proof is strong even against the noisy clamour of apostate men, who rebel against the Divine government, and lay upon God the blame of their aberration from His order. “His merry babbling mouth provides a defence of the Creator against all the calumnies of the foe” (Ewald). Others think rather of the faculty of speech, and the wonder and glory of it.

The avenger.—Properly, him who avenges himself.

Verse 3

(3) When I consider.—Literally, see, scan.

Ordained.—Or, as in margin, founded—i.e., created, formed; but the English word aptly introduces the idea of order in the kosmos. Comp.:—

“Know the cause why music was ordained?

—SHAKESPEARE.

In our humid climate we can hardly imagine the brilliance of an Eastern night. “There,” writes one of a night in Palestine, “it seems so, bearing down upon our heads with power are the steadfast splendours of that midnight sky;” but, on the other hand, the fuller revelations of astronomy do more than supply the place of this splendour, in filling us with amazement and admiration at the vast spaces the stars fill, and their mighty movements in their measured orbits.

Verse 4

(4) Man . . . son of man . . .—The first, possibly, with suggestion of frailty; the second to his life derived from human ancestry. The answer to this question must always touch the two poles, of human frailty on the one hand, and the glory of human destiny on the other. “O the grandeur and the littleness, the excellence and the corruption, the majesty and the meanness, of man.”—Pascal.

The insignificance of man compared to the stars is a common theme of poetry; but how different the feeling of the Hebrew from that of the modern poet, who regrets the culture by which he had been

“Brought to understand

A sad astrology, the boundless plan

That makes you tyrants in your iron skies,

Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes,

Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand

His nothingness into man.”—TENNYSON: Maud.

And yet, again, how far removed from the other pole of modern feeling, which draws inanimate nature into close sympathy with human joy or sorrow, expressed in the following words:—“When I have gazed into these stars, have they not looked down upon me as if with pity from their serene spaces, like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man?”—Carlyle.

Verse 5

(5) The Hebrew poet dwells on neither of these aspects, but at once passes on to the essential greatness of man and his superiority in creation, by reason of his moral sense and his spiritual likeness to God. Another English poet sings to the stars:—

“’Tis to be forgiven

That, in our aspirations to be great,

Our destinies o’erleap their mortal state,

And claim a kindred with you.”

—BYRON: Childe Harold.

But the psalmist looks beyond the bright worlds to a higher kinship with God Himself.

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.—Literally, thou makest him want but a little from God: i.e., hast made him little less than Divine. We should read, however, instead of “for thou,” “and thou hast made,” &c. The Authorised Version follows the LXX. in a translation suggested doubtlessly by the desire to tone down an expression about the Deity that seemed too bold. That version was adopted in his quotation by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 2:6-7). (See Note in New Testament Commentary.) Undoubtedly the word Elohim, being used to express a class of supernatural beings, includes angels as well as the Divine being (1 Samuel 28:13; Zechariah 12:8). But here there is nothing in the context to suggest limitation to one part of that class.

Crowned.—Or, compassed.

Verse 6

(6) The poet continues, in a rapturous strain, to complete the cycle of animated nature, and to describe man’s kingship over all other created beings. For St. Paul’s expansion of the thought, and elevation of it into yet a higher sphere, see 1 Corinthians 15:27.

Verse 8

(8) And whatsoever passeth.—This is more poetical than to render “the fish of the sea who pass,” &c.

Paths of the seas.—Comp. Homer’s ὑγρὰ κέλευθα. The repetition of the first thought of the poem, binding’ the contents together as in a wreath, is the one touch of art it displays.