Psalm 17

Notes

Ver. 1. Prayer is called meditation, because our requests ought to be seriously considered before we present them to God. It is called a lifting up of our souls, and pouring out of our hearts, because our requests must be the earnest desires of our soul. It is called supplication, seeking, knocking, inquiring, to denote the humility and earnestness of our petitions. It is represented as a crying, sighing, groaning, and breathing, to signify our great pressures and necessities, and the great earnestness of our desires after relief. It is represented as a looking to, talking with, and taking hold of God, to denote the humble familiarity, importunate earnestness, and patient resignation necessary therein. From the gestures used in it, it is represented as a bowing, kneeling, falling down, or standing before God; and, from its acceptableness to God, it is represented as odours or incense.

Ver. 1. Hear the right. A prayer for God to hear the right, the absolutely right, can never be the prayer of a sinner, who must ever cry, 'God be merciful.' It is the prayer of 'Jesus Christ the righteous,' 'who knew no sin,' and who ever liveth to make intercession for us on the ground of his perfect righteousness. C.

Ver. 3. It is manifest from the scope of this whole psalm that the enemies to whom the author refers had, like Job's friends, charged him with some secret crimes. He repudiates the charge. He calls upon God, the searcher of hearts, to examine and try him, so as to testify to his innocence. The psalmist does not presume to declare his purity before God; he does not speak of personal holiness. He refers simply to the charges brought against him by reckless persecutors. P.

Ver. 13. Disappoint him, cast him down. Disappoint the malice of Satan and his agents, cast down their power, a prayer to which it is not easy to discover how either infidelity or sentimental Pharisaism can object. C.

Ver. 15. The psalmist here contrasts his hopes and aspirations with those of the mere worldling. He does not rest his happiness on temporal things. He looks beyond earth to a heavenly inheritance and home. The presence and favour of God can alone satisfy him. He hopes for and believes in a participation in the divine nature and graces. The doctrine of a future state and of a resurrection is here clearly shadowed forth. P.

Reflections.—Happy are they who, when traduced by men, have the testimony of a good conscience to their uprightness before God: his providence will manifest injured innocence at last! And happy are they who in all their trials improve God's word as their preservative from evil; and who, assisted by his gracious influence, watch over their heart, their tongue, their feet, cleaving to that which is good, and abhorring that which is evil! But not the strongest saint hath a fund of grace to support himself, without constant supplies from Jesus Christ our living fountain. And a deep sense of our own weakness and insufficiency is the surest way to be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Every saint walks in a slippery path, where many watch for his halting. He ought therefore always to watch and pray that he faint not. Our salvation is by faith, and is of infinite love from first to last. In vain Satan rages against those who put all their trust in God. No luxurious, proud, active, crafty, or cruel devourers shall ever pluck them out of his hand. Trials are God's sword and hand, by which he corrects his people, or manages, in his providence, as is best. And how wretched are the wicked in all affluence and wealth, as these things without God become their everlasting misery! But happy are they who through their much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God! Happy they whose transient views of God, and imperfect likeness to him, issue at last in endless and immediate vision of him, and in perfect conformity to his image!