sees in spirit the just Ruler, who will one day arise from his seed, and take the throne of his kingdom for ever. These two lyrical and prophetic productions of David, the ripest spiritual fruit of his life, form a worthy conclusion to his reign. To this there is appended the list of his heroes, in the form of a supplement (ch. xxiii. 8-39); and finally in ch. xxiv. the account of the numbering of the people, and the pestilence which fell upon Israel, as a punishment for this fault on the part of David. This account is placed at the close of the books of Samuel, merely because the altar which was built to expiate the wrath of God, together with the sacrifices offered upon it, served to consecrate the site for the temple, which was to be erected after David's death, in accordance with the divine promise (ch. vii. 13), by his son and successor Solomon.
THREE YEARS' FAMINE. HEROIC ACTS PERFORMED IN THE WARS WITH THE PHILISTINES. — CHAP. XNI.
Vers. 1-14. Three Years' Famine. — A three years' famine in the land, the occasion of which, as Jehovah declared to the king, was Saul's crime with regard to the Gibeonites, was expiated by David's delivering up to the Gibeonites, at their own request, seven of Saul's descendants, who were then hung by them upon a mountain before Jehovah. This occurrence certainly did not take place in the closing years of David's reign; on the other hand, it is evident from the remark in ver. 7, to the effect that Mephibosheth was spared, that it happened after David had received tidings of Mephibosheth, and had taken him to his own table (ch. ix.). This is mentioned here as a practical illustration, on the one hand of the manner in which Jehovah visited upon the house of Saul, even after the death of Saul himself, a crime which had been committed by him; and, on the other hand, of the way in which, even in such a case as this, when David had been obliged to sacrifice the descendants of Saul to expiate the guilt of their father, he showed his tenderness towards him by the honourable burial of their bones.
Vers. l-6a. A famine, which lasted for three successive years, induced David to seek the face of Jehovah, i.e. to approach God in prayer and ask the cause of this judgment which had fallen upon the land. The Lord replied, u Because of Saul, and because of the house of blood-guiltiness, because he hath slain the Gibeonites." The expression "because of the house of blood-guiltiness " is in apposition to " Saul," and determines the meaning more precisely: u because of Saul, and indeed because of the blood-guiltiness which rests upon his house." ^oin n*3 signifies the house upon which blood that had been shed still rested as guilt, like DWn TJJ in Ezek. xxii. 2, xxiv. 6, 9, and DW B*K in Ps. v. 7, xxvi. 9, etc. Nothing further is known about the fact itself. It is simply evident from the words of the Gibeonites in ver. 5, that Saul, in his pretended zeal for the children of Israel, had smitten the Gibeonites, i.e. had put them to death. Probably some dissatisfaction with them had furnished Saul with a pretext for exterminating these Amoritish heathen from the midst of the people of God. — Ver. 2. In consequence of this answer from God, which merely indicated in a general manner the cause of the visitation that had come upon the land, David sent for the Gibeonites to ask them concerning the wrong that had been done them by Saul. But before the historian communicates their answer, he introduces an explanation respecting the Gibeonites, to the effect that they were not Israelites, but remnants of the Amorites, to whom Joshua had promised on oath that their lives should be preserved (vid. Josh. ix. 3 sqq.). They are called Iliuites in the book of Joshua (ch. ix. 7); whereas here they are designated Amorites, according to the more general name which is frequently used as comprehending all the tribes of Canaan (see at Gen. x. 16 and xv. 16). David said to the Gibeonites, " What shall I do for you, and wherewith shall I expiate" {sc. the wrong done you), "that ye may bless the inheritance (i.e. the nation) of Jehovah?" On the use of the imperative ISTO to denote the certain consequences, see Ewald, § 347. — Yer. 4. The Gibeonites answered, "I have not to do with silver and gold concerning Saul and his house" {lit. it is not, does not stand, to me at silver and gold with Saul and his house), i.e. I have no money to demand of Saul, require no pecuniary payment as compensation for the blood which he shed among us {vid. Num. xxxv. 31). The Chethib y is not to be touched, notwithstanding the W which follows. The use of the singular may be explained on the simple ground that the speaker thought of the Gibeonites as a corporation. "And it does not pertain to us to put any one to death in Israel " (sc. of our own accord). When David inquired still further, "What do you mean, then, that I should do to you?" they replied, "(As for) the man who consumed us, and who thought against us, that we should be destroyed (tt*]DtM without *3, subordinate to Wl0 like »"W*? in the previous verse"), so as not to continue in the whole of the territory of Israel, let seven men of his sons be given us, that we may crucify them to Jehovah at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of Jehovah." 'WV"HPK C"N is placed at the head absolutely (cf. Gesenius, § 145, 2). On crucifixion as a capital punishment, see at Num. xxv. 4, where it has already been observed that criminals were not impaled or fastened to the cross alive, but were first of all put to death. Consequently the Gibeonites desired that the massacre, which had taken place among them by the command of Saul, should be expiated by the execution of a number of his sons — blood for blood, according to Num. xxxv. 31. They asked for the crucifixion for Jehovah, i.e. that the persons executed might be impaled, as a public exhibition of the punishment inflicted, before the face of the Lord (yid. ver. 9), as the satisfaction required to expiate His wrath. Seven was a sacred number, denoting the performance of a work of God. This was to take place in Gibeah, the home and capital of Saul, who had brought the wrath of God upon the land through his crime. There is a sacred irony in the epithet applied to Saul, "chosen of the Lord." If Saul was the chosen of Jehovah, his actions ought to have been in accordance with his divine election.
Vers. 6&-10. David granted the request, because, according to the law in Num. xxxv. 33, blood-guiltiness when resting upon the land could only be expiated by the blood of the criminal; but in delivering up the members of Saul's house for whom they asked, he spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan and grandson of Saul, for the sake of the bond of friendship which he had formed with Jonathan on oath (1 Sam. xviii. 3, xx. 8, 16), and gave up to the Gibeonites two sons of Rizpah, a concubine of Saul (yid. ver. 11 and ch. iii. 7), and five sons of Merab the daughter of Saul, whom she had borne to Adriel of Meholah. The name of Michal, which stands in the text, is founded upon an error of memory or a copyist's mistake; for it not Michal, but Merab, Saul's eldest daughter, who was given to Adriel the Meholathite as his wife (1 Sam. xviii. 19). The Gibeonites crucified those who were delivered up to them upon the mountain at Gibeah before Jehovah (see the remarks ou ver. G). " Thus fell seven at once" The ChetMb ETC—', at which the Masoretes took such offence that they wanted to change it into EriynL", is defended by Bottcher very properly, on the ground that the dual of the numeral denotes what is uniformly repeated as if by pairing; so that here it expresses what was extraordinary in the event in a more pictorial manner than the Keri: " They fell sevenfold at once," i.e. seven in the same way. The further remark, " they were slain in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of the barley harvest," belongs to what follows, for which it prepares the way. The two Kens, nsni for Dili, and Hpnna for npnri? are needless emendations, npnri is an adverbial accusative (yid. Ges. § 118, 2). The harvest began with the barley harvest, about the middle of Nisan, our April. — Yer. 10. And llizpah took sackcloth, i.e. the coarse hairy cloth that was worn as mourning, and spread it out for herself by the rock — not as a tent, as Clericus supposes, still less as a covering over the corpses of those who had been executed, according to the exegetical handbook, but for a bed — "from the beginning of the harvest till water was poured out upon them (the crucified) from heaven" i.e. till rain came as a sign that the plague of drought that had rested upon the land was appeased; after which the corpses could be openly taken down from the stakes and buried, — a fact which is passed over in the account before us, where only the principal points are given. This is the explanation which Josephus has correctly adopted; but his assumption that the rain fell at once, and before the ordinary early rain, has no foundation in the text of the Bible. " And suffered not the birds of heaven to settle upon the corpses by day, or the wild beasts by night." Leaving corpses without burial, to be consumed by birds of prey and wild beasts, was regarded as the greatest ignominy that could befal the dead (sec at 1 Sam. xvii. •11). According to Deut. xxi. 22, 23, persons executed were not to remain hanging through the night upon the stake, but to be buried before evening. This law, however, had no application whatever to the case before us, where the expiation of
£uilt that rested upon the whole land was concerned. In this instance the expiatory sacrifices were to remain exposed before Jehovah, till the cessation of the plague showed that His wrath had been appeased.
Vers. 11-14. When this touching care of Rizpah for the dead was told to David, he took care that the bones of the whole of the fallen royal house should be buried in the burialplace of Saul's family. He therefore sent for the bones of Saul and Jonathan, which the men of Jabesh had taken away secretly from the wall of Beisan, where the Philistines had fastened the bodies, and which had been buried in Jabesli (1 Sam. xxxi. 10 sqq.), and had the bones of the sons and grandsons of Saul who had been crucified at Gibeah collected together, and interred all these bones at Zela in the land of Benjamin, in the family grave of Kish the father of Saul. 3JJ, to take away secretly. 1^"^^ 2rnp? from the market-place of Bethshan, does not present any contradiction to the statement in 1 Sam. xxxi. 10, that the Philistines fastened the body to the wall of Bethshan, as the rechob or market-place in eastern towns is not in the middle of the town, but is an open place against or in front of the gate (cf. 2 Chron. xxxii. 6; Neh. viii. 1, 3, 16). This place, as the common meeting-place of the citizens, was the most suitable spot that the Philistines could find for fastening the bodies to the wall. The Chethib Dvri is the true Hebrew form from n?n whereas the Keri D^?n is a formation resembling the Aramaean (cf. Ewald, § 252, a). The Keri D^ntrpQ ne*^ is correct, however, as D^^ps^ being a proper name, does not take any article. In J"ri2n Di*3 the literal meaning of Di"1 (day) must not be strictly pressed, but the expression is to be taken in the sense of "at the time of the smiting;" for the hanging up of the bodies did not take place till the day after the battle (1 Sam. xxxi. 8 sqq.). — In ver. 14 the account is abridged, and the bones of the crucified persons are not mentioned again. The situation of Zela is unknown (see at Josh, xviii. 28). After this had been carried out in accordance with the king's command, God suffered himself to be entreated for the land, so that the famine ceased.
Vers. 15-22. Heroic Acts performed in the Wars with the Philistines. — The brief accounts contained in these verses of different heroic feats were probably taken from a history of David's wars drawn up in the form of chronicles, and are introduced here as practical proofs of the gracious deliverance of David out of the hand of all his foes, for which he praises the Lord his God in the psalm of thanksgiving which follows, so that the enumeration of these feats is to be regarded as supplying a historical basis for the psalm. — Vers. 15-17. The Philistines had war with Israel again, "liy (again) refers generally to earlier wars with the Philistines, and has probably been taken without alteration from the chronicles employed by our author, where the account which follows was attached to notices of other wars. This may be gathered from the books of the Chronicles, where three of the heroic feats mentioned here are attached to the general survey of David's wars (vid. 1 Chron. xx. 4). David was exhausted in this fight, and a Philistian giant thought to slay him; but Abishai came to his help and slew the giant. lie was called Yishbo bench (Keri, Yishbi), i.e. not Yishbo at Nob, but Yishbobenob, a proper name, the meaning of which is probably " his dwelling is on the height," and which may have been given to him because of his inaccessible castle. lie was one of the descendants of Raphah, i.e. one of the gigantic race of Rephaim. Rapliali was the tribe-father of the Rephaim, an ancient tribe of gigantic stature, of whom only a few families were left even in Moses' time {vid, Deut. ii. 11, iii. 11, 13, and the commentary on Gen. xiv. 5). The weight of his lance, i.e. of the metal point to his lance, was three hundred shekels, or eight pounds, of brass, half as much as the spear of Goliath (1 Sam. xvii. 7); " and he was girded with new armour." Pottcher has no doubt given the correct explanation of the word flB^n; he supposes the feminine to be used in a collective sense, so that the noun (u armour," V73) could be dispensed with. (For parallels both to the words and facts, rid. Judg. xviii. 11 and Deut. i. 41.) "W?^% he said (sr. to himself), i.e. he thought. — Ver. 17. The danger into which the king had been brought in this war, and out of which he had been rescued solely by Abishai's timely help, induced his attendants to make him swear that he would not go into battle any more in person, v J*,?"0, administered an oath to him, i.e. fixed him by a promise on oath. n23n N?l, "and shalt not extinguish the light of Israel." David had become the light of Israel from the fact that Jehovah was his light (ch. xxii. 29), or, according to the parallel passage in Ps. xviii. 29, that Jehovah had lighted his lamp and enlightened his darkness, i.e. had lifted him out of a state of humiliation and obscurity into one of honour and glory. The light (or lamp) is a figure used to represent the light of life as continually burning, i.e. life in prosperity and honour. David's regal life and actions were the light which the grace of God had kindled for the benefit of Israel. This light he was not to extinguish, namely by going into the midst of war and so exposing his valuable life to danger. — Ver. 18 (compare 1 Chron. xx. 4). In a second war, Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Saph the Rephaite at Gob. According to 1 Chron. xxvii. 11, Sibbechai, one of the gibborim of David (1 Chron. xi. 29), was the leader of the eighth division of the army (see at ch. xxiii. 27). ^u;nr\ is a patronymic from TW^n in 1 Chron. iv. 4. The scene of conflict is called Gob in our text, and Gezer in the Chronicles. As Gob is entirely unknown, Thenius supposes it to be a slip of the pen for Gezer; but this is improbable, for the simple reason that Gob occurs again in ver. 19. It may possibly have been a small place somewhere near to Gezer, which some suppose to have stood on the site of el Kubab, on the road from Ramleh to Yalo (see at Josh. x. 33). The name Saph is written Sippai in the Chronicles. — Ver. 19 (yid. 1 Chron. xx. 5). In another war with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan the son of Yaare-Orgim of Bethlehem smote Goliath of Gath, whose spear was like a weaver's beam. In the Chronicles, however, we find it stated that " Elhanan the son of J air smote Lahmi the brother of Goliath of Gath, whose spear," etc. The words of our text are so similar to those of the Chronicles, if we only leave out the word DTiK, which probably crept in from the next line through oversight on the part of a copyist, that they presuppose the same original text, so that the difference can only have arisen from an error in copying. The majority of the expositors (e.g. Piscator, Clericus, Michaelis, Movers, and Thenius) regard the text of the Chronicles as the true and original one, and the text before us as simply corrupt. But Bertheau and Bottcher maintain the opposite opinion, because it is impossible to see how the reading in 2 Sam. could grow out of that in the Chronicles; whereas the reading in the
Chronicles might have arisen through conscious alteration orioinating in the offence taken by some reader, who recalled the account of the conflict between David and Goliath, at the statement that Elhanan smote a giant named Goliath, and who therefore altered n« *>nrbn JV2 into "ns *nrb rot. But apart from the question whether there were two Goliaths, one of whom was slain by David and the other by Elhanan, the fact that the conjecture of Bertheau and Bottcher presupposes a deliberate alteration of the text, or rather, to speak more correctly, an intentional falsification of the historical account, is quite sufficient to overthrow it, as not a single example of anything of the kind can be adduced from the whole of the Chronicles. On the other hand, the recollection of David's celebrated officer Elhanan of Bethlehem (ch. xxiii. 24; 1 Chron. xi. 26) might easily lead to an identification of the Elhanan mentioned here with that officer, and so occasion the alteration of wS> DK into *torbr\ n*3. This alteration was then followed by that of IV^ TIK into rrbs MK, and all the more easily from the fact that the description of Lahmi's spear corresponds word for word with that of Goliath's spear in 1 Sam. xvii. 7. Consequently we must regard the reading in the Chronicles as the correct one, and alter our text accordingly; since the assumption that there were two Goliaths is a very improbable one, and there is nothing at all strange in the reference to a brother of Goliath, who was also a powerful giant, and carried a spear like Goliath. Elhanan the son of Jairi is of course a different person from Elhanan the Bethlehemite, the son of Dodo (ch. xxiii. 24). The Chronicles have "RJP instead of Jairi (the reading according to the Chethib), and the former is probably the correct way of writing the name. — Vers. 20, 21 (cf. 1 Chron. xx. 6, 7). In another war at Gath, a Philistian warrior, who Had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot,1 defied Israel, and was slain by Jonathan the son of Shimeah, the brother of David (see at ch. xiii. 3). The Chethib pn is probably to be read pD, an archaic plural (" a man of measure:*,
1 Men with six fingers and six toes have been met with elsewhere. Pliny (h, nat. xi. 43) speaks of certain sedigiti (six -fingered) Romans. This peculiarity is even hereditary in some families. Other examples are collected by Trusen (Sitt<n, Gebriiuche, und Kranhheiten der alten ILbraer, pp. 198-9, ed. 2) and Friedreich (zur Bibel, i. 298-9).
or extensions:" de Dieu, etc.); in the Chronicles we find the singular n"ift instead. — Ver. 22 (cf. 1 Chron. xx. 8). This verse contains a postscript, in which the previous verses are summed up. The accusative njD"|KTIK may be explained from a species of attraction, i.e. from the fact that the historian had *H3* (ver. 21) still in his mind: " As for these four, they were born to Raphes" i.e. they were descendants of the Rephaite family at Gath, where remnants of the aboriginal Canaanitish tribes of gigantic stature were still to be found, as in other towns of the Philistines (vid. Josh. xi. 22). "They fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants." " By the hand of David " refers to the fact that David had personally fought with Yishbobenob (ver. 16).
In the following psalm of thanksgiving, David praises the Lord as his deliverer out of all dangers during his agitated life and conflicts with his foes (vers. 2-4). In the first half he pictures his marvellous deliverance out of all the troubles which he passed through, especially in the time of Saul's persecutions, under the image of an extraordinary theophany (vers. 5-20), and unfolds the ground of this deliverance (vers. 21-28). In the second half he proclaims the mighty help of the Lord, and his consequent victories over the foreign enemies of his government (vers. 29-46), and closes with renewed praise of God for all His glorious deeds (vers. 47-51). The psalm is thus arranged in two leading divisions, with an introductory and concluding strophe. But we cannot discover any definite system of strophes in the further arrangement of the principal divisions, as the several groups of thoughts are not rounded off symmetrically.
The contents and form of this song of praise answer to the fact attested by the heading, that it was composed by David in the later years of his reign, when God had rescued him from all his foes, and helped his kingdom to victory over all the neighbouring heathen nations. The genuineness of the psalm is acknowledged to be indisputable by all the modern critics, except J. Olshausen and Hupfeld,1 who, with hypercritic; scepticism, dispute the Davidic origin of the psalm on subjec tive grounds of aesthetic taste. This psalm is found in th Psalter as Ps. xviii., though with many divergences in singl words and clauses, which do not, however, essentially affect th meaning. Commentators are divided in opinion as to the reh tion in which the two different forms of the text stand to on another. The idea that the text of 2 Sam. rests upon a carelej copy and tradition must decidedly be rejected: for, on the on hand, by far the larger portion of the deviations in our tei from that of the Psalter are not to be attributed to carelessnes on the part of copyists, but are evidently alterations made wit thoughtfulness and deliberation: e.g. the omission of the ver first passage (ver. 1), "I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength; the change of *Wf yN (my God, my strength, or rock) int ^V \i?K (the God of my rock), as " the God of the rock" occui again in ver. 47 of the text before us; or the substitutio of nm (He was seen, ver. 11) for Kin (He did fly), etc. O the other hand, the original reading has undoubtedly been re tained in many passages of our text, whilst simpler and moi common forms have been substituted in that of the Psalms; e.<
whatever for calling in question the Davidic authorship of the psalm, an therefore the statement made in the heading; and, in fact, there is all tl more reason for adhering to it, because it is attested twice. The recurrem of the psalm as one of Davidic origin in 2 Sam. xxii. is of some weigh since not the slightest suspicion attaches to any of the other songs < sayings attributed to David in the second book of Samuel (e.g. iii. 33, 3 v. 8, vii. 18-29, xxiii. 1-7). Moreover, the psalm is evidently ancien and suited to the classical period of the language and its poetry. Ver. c is quoted as early as Prov. xxx. 5, and ver. 34 in Hab. iii. 19. The psali was also regarded as Davidic at a very early period, as the ' diaskeuasV \ the second book of Samuel met with the heading, which attributes tl psalm to David. No doubt this opinion might be founded upon ver. 51 and with perfect justice if it were: for if the psalm was not composed I David, it must have been composed in his name and spirit: and who cou' have been this contemporaneous and equal poet?" Again, after quoth
several thoroughly Davidic signs, he says at p. 96: " It is very obvious wil
how little justice the words of ver. 51, relating to 2 Sam. vii. 12-16, 2 29, have been pronounced Bpurious. Besides, the psalm can no more ha> concluded with lirtn^ (ver. 51) than with ver. 50; and if David refers I himself by Dame at (he commencement in 2 Sam. xxiii. 1, and in the midd in ch. vii. 20, why should he not do the same at the close?"
and in ver. 44, Bfort WOB^I for BW"A '*&&}, and several others. In general, however, the text of the Psalms bears the stamp of poetical originality more than the text before us, and the latter indicates a desire to give greater clearness and simplicity to the poetical style. Consequently neither of the two texts that have come down to us contains the original text of the psalm of David unaltered; but the two recensions have been made quite independently of each other, one for the insertion of the psalm in the Psalter intended for liturgical use, and the other when it was incorporated into the history of David's reign, which formed the groundwork of our books of Samuel. The first revision may have been made by David himself when he arranged his Psalms for liturgical purposes; but the second was effected by the prophetic historian, whose object it was, when inserting David's psalm of praise in the history of his reign, not so much to give it with diplomatic literality, as to introduce it in a form that should be easily intelligible and true to the sense.
Ver. 1. The heading is formed precisely according to the introductory formula of the song of Moses in Deut. xxxi. 30, and was no doubt taken from the larger historical work employed by the author of our books. It was probably also adopted from this into the canonical collection of the Psalter, and simply brought into conformity with the headings of the other psalms by the alteration of TJJ "1312 (and David said) into l&\ -\m ivb nw najA (« of David, the servant of the Lord, who spake:" Eng. ver.), and the insertion of nsttp? ("to the chief musician:" Eng. ver.) at the head (see Delitzsch on the Psalms). u In the day" i.e. at the time, "when Jehovah had delivered him" Deliverance u out of the hand of Saul" is specially mentioned, not because this was the last, but. because it was the greatest and most glorious, — a deliverance out of the deepest misery into regal might and glory. The psalm is opened by "i!?Nsl in both texts. — Vers. 2-4 form the introduction.
Ver. 2 Jehovah is my rock, my castle, and my deliverer to me;
My shield and horn of my salvation, my fortress and my refuge, My Saviour; from violence Thou redeemest me.
This introduction contains the sum and substance of th whole psalm, inasmuch as David groups the many experience of divine deliverance in his agitated life into a long series o predicates, in all of which he extols God as his defence, refuge and deliverer. The heaping up of these predicates is an expres sion both of liveliest gratitude, and also of hope for the future The different predicates, however, are not to be taken as h apposition to Jehovah, or as vocatives, but are declaration concerning God, how He had proved himself faithful to th Psalmist in all the calamities of his life, and would assuredh do so still. David calls God TH-f^ ^?? (my rock, and my castle in Ps. xxxi. 4 as well (cf. Ps. lxxi. 4). The two epithets ar< borrowed from the natural character of Palestine, where stee] and almost inaccessible rocks afford protection to the fugitive as David had often found at the time when Saul was pursuing him (yid. 1 Sam. xxiv. 23, xxii. 5). But whilst David tool refuge in rocks, he placed his hopes of safety not in their inac cessible character, but in God the Lord, the eternal spiritua rock, whom he could see in the earthly rock, so that he callei Him his true castle, y ^Pr^P (my deliverer to me) gives th real explanation of the foregoing figures. The y (to me) i omitted in Ps. xviii. 2, and only serves to strengthen the suffix " my, yea my deliverer." " My Rock-God" equivalent to, Go< who is my Rock: this is formed after Deut. xxxii. 4, wher Moses calls the Lord the Rock of Israel, because of His un changeable faithfulness; for zur, a rock, is a figure used t represent immoveable firmness. In Ps. xviii. 3 we find *!TO vtj "my God" (strong one), " my rock," two synonyms which ar joined together in our text, so as to form one single predicat of God, which is repeated in ver. 47. The predicates wind follow, " my horn and my salvation-shield" describe God a the mighty protector and defender of the righteous. A shieh covers against hostile attacks. In this respect God was Abra ham'fl shield (Gen. xv. 1), and the helping shield of Israe
(Deut. xxxiii. 29; cf. Ps. iii. 4, lix. 12). He is the " horn of salvation," according to Luther, because He overcomes enemies, and rescues from foes, and gives salvation. The figure is borrowed from animals, which have their strength and defensive weapons in their horns (see at 1 Sam. ii. 1). "My fortress:''1 misgab is a high place, where a person is secure against hostile attacks (see at Ps. ix. 10). The predicates which follow, viz. my refuge, etc., are not given in Ps. xviii. 3, and are probably only added as a rhythmical completion to the strophe, which was shortened by the omission of the introductory lines, u I love thee heartily, Jehovah " (Ps. xviii. 1). The last clause, " My Saviour, ivho redeemest me from violence" corresponds to isrnpjiK in the first hemistich. In ver. 4, David sums up the contents of his psalm of thanksgiving in a general sentence of experience, which may be called the theme of the psalm, for it embraces u the result of the long life which lay behind him, so full of dangers and deliverances." OT, " the praised one" an epithet applied to God, which occurs several times in the Psalms (xlviii. 2, xcvi. 4, cxiii. 3, cxlv. 3). It is in apposition to Jehovah, and is placed first for the sake of emphasis: "I invoke Jehovah as the praised one." The imperfects N"Ji?N and WJN are used to denote what continually happens. In ver. 5 we have the commencement of the account of the deliverances out of great tribulations, which David had experienced at the hand of God.
Ver. 5 For breakers of death had compassed me, Streams of wickedness terrified me.
7 In my distress I called Jehovah, And to my God I called;
And He heard my voice out of His temple, And my crying came into His ears.
David had often been in danger of death, most frequently at the time when he was pursued by Saul, but also in Absalom's conspiracy, and even in several wars (cf. ch. xxi. 16). All these dangers, out of which the Lord delivered him, and not merely those which originated with Saul, are included in vers. 5, 6. The figure "breakers or waves of death" is analogous to that of the " streams of Belial." His distress is represented in both of them under the image of violent floods of water. In the psalm we find niD v3n, " snares of death," as in Ps. cxvi. 3, death being regarded as a hunter with a net and snare (cf. Ps. xci. 3): this does not answer so well to the parallel vTO, and therefore is not so good, since HtfP v3n follows immediately. i>V^3 (Belial), usi lessness in a moral sense, or wortldessiiess. The meaning " mischief," or injury in a physical sense, which many expositors give to the word in this passage on account of the parallel u death," cannot be grammatically sustained. Belial was afterwards adopted as a name for the devil (2 Cor. vi. 15). Streams of wickedness are calamities that proceed from wickedness, or originate with worthless men. Cnp, to come to meet with a hostile intention, i.e. to fall upon (yid. Job xxx. 27). 53*3, the temple out of which Jehovah heard him, was the heavenly abode of God, as in Ps. xi. 4; for, according to vers. 8 sqq., God came down from heaven to help him.
Ver. 8 Then the earth swayed and trembled, The foundations of the heavens shook And swayed to and fro, because He was wroth. 9 Smoke ascended in His nose,
And fire out of His mouth devoured, Red-hot coals burned out of Him. 10 And He bowed the heavens and came down, And cloudy darkness under His feet.
Jehovah came down from heaven to save His servant, as He had formerly come down upon Sinai to conclude His covenant with Israel in the midst of terrible natural phenomena, which proclaimed the wrath of the Almighty. The theophany under which David depicts the deliverance he had experienced, had its type in the miraculous phenomenon which accompanied the descent of God upon Sinai, and which suggested, as in the song of Deborah (Judg. v. 4, 5), the idea of a terrible storm. It is true that the deliverance of David was not actually attended by any such extraordinary natural phenomena; but the saving hand of God from heaven was so obviously manifested, that the deliverance experienced by him could be poetically described as a miraculous interposition on the part of God. When the Lord rises up from His heavenly temple to come down upon the earth to judgment, the whole world trembles at the fierceness of His wrath. Not only does the earth tremble, but the foundations of the heavens shake ■ the whole universe is moved. En the psalm we have u the foundations of the hills" instead of il the foundations of the heavens" — a weaker expression, signifying the earth to its deepest foundations. The Hithpael B^j^J, lit. to sway itself, expresses the idea of continuous swaying to and fro. y> rnn ''3, "for it (sc. wrath) burned to him" it flamed up like a fire; cf. Deut. xxxii. 22, xxix. 19. " Smoke" the forerunner of fire, u ascended in His nose." The figurative idea is that of snorting or violent breathing, which indicates the rising of wrath. Smoke is followed by fire, which devours out of the mouth, i.e. bursts forth devouring or consuming all that opposes it. The expression is strengthened still further by the parallel: " red-hot coals come out of Him" i.e. the flame of red-hot coals pours out or Him as out of a glowing furnace (cf. Gen. xv. 17). This description is based entirely upon Ex. xix. 18, where the Lord comes down upon Sinai in smoke and fire. We are not to picture to ourselves flashes of lightning; for all these phenomena are merely the forerunners of the appearance of God in the clouds, which is described in ver. 10, " He bowed the heavens" to come down.??"W, which is frequently connected with Ijy, signifies cloudy darkness, or dark clouds. The substratum of this description is the fact that in a severe storm the heavens seem to sink down upon the earth with their dark clouds. The Lord draws near riding upon black thunder-clouds, " that the wicked may not behold His serene countenance, but only the terrible signs of His fierce wrath and punishment " (J. H. Michaelis).
12 He made darkness round about Him as pavilions, Water-gathering, thick clouds.
These three verses are a further expansion of ver. 10, and ver. 11 of ver. 10a. The cherub is not a personified earthly creature, for cherubim are angels around the throne of God (see at Gen. iii. 22). The poetical figure "riding upon the cherub" is borrowed from the fact that God was enthroned between the two cherubim upon the lid of the ark of the covenant, and above their outspread wings (Ex. xxv. 20, 21). As the idea of His " dwelling between the cherubim " (ch. vi. 2; 1 Sam. iv. 4; Ps. lxxx. 2) was founded upon this typical manifestation of the gracious presence of God in the Most Holy place, so here David depicts the descent of Jehovah from heaven as u riding upon cherub," picturing the cherub as a throne upon which Go appears in the clouds of heaven, though without therefor imagining Him as riding upon a sphinx or driving in a chariol throne. Such notions as these are precluded by the additio of the term *lVj, " did fly." The "flying " is also suggested b the wines of the cherubim. As the divine " shechinah" wa enthroned above the ark of the covenant upon the wings c the cherubim, David in his poetical description represents th cherub and his wings as carrying the throne of God, to expres the thought that Jehovah came down from heaven as the judg and saviour of His servants in the splendour of His divin glorv, surrounded by cherubim who stand as His highest sei vants around His throne, just as Moses in his blessing (Deu xxxiii. 2) speaks of Jehovah as coming out of myriads of H: holy angels. The elementary substratum of this was the win£ of the wind, upon which He appeared. In the psalm We hav tnsl, from ntj^ to soar (Deut. xxviii. 49; Jer. xlviii. 40), whic suggests the idea of flying better than K*W (He was seen' though the latter gives the real explanation. In vers. 12 an 13, the "cloudy darkness under His feet" (ver. 10b) is sti further expanded, so as to prepare the way for the descriptio of thunder and lightning in vers. 14 sqq. God in His wrat withdraws His face from man. He envelopes himself i clouds. The darkness round about him is the black thundei cloud which forms His hut or tent. The plural succoth: occasioned by the plural WJ3*3Dj u His surroundings: " it is use with indefinite generality, and is more probably the origin; term than iH3D in the psalm. The " darkness " is still furthe explained in the second clause, DV? ^1^0, water-gathering, ^I^V (air. Xcy.) signifies, according to the Arabic, a gatherin or collection. The expression used in the psalm is D?o HDW water-darkness, which, if not less appropriate, is at any rate nc the original term. D'PJP 'oy, clouds of clouds, i.e. the thicker clouds; a kind of superlative, in which a synonym is used bl shad of the same noun. — Ver. 13. The splendour of the divin nature enveloped in clouds breaks through the dark coverin in burning coals of fire. The coals of fire which burst forth, L which break out in flame from the dark clouds, are the lightnin which shoots forth from the dark storm-clouds in streams of fin
15 He sent arrows, and scattered them; Lightning, and discomfited them.
God sent lightning as arrows upon the enemies along with violent thunder, and threw them thereby into confusion. &*??> to throw into confusion, and thereby to destroy, is the standing expression for the destruction of the foe accomplished by the miraculous interposition of God (vid. Ex. xiv. 24, xxiii. 27; Josh. x. 10; Judg. iv. 15; 1 Sam. vii. 10). To the thunder there were added stormy wind and earthquake, as an effect of the wrath of God, whereby the foundations of the sea and land were laid bare, i.e. whereby the depth of the abyss and of the hell in the interior of the earth, into which the person to be rescued had fallen, were disclosed.1
Ver. 17 He reached out of the height, He laid hold of me; Drew me oat of great waters:
20 And led me out into a broad place; Delivered me, because He had pleasure in me.
1 In vers. 13-16 the text of the Psalms deviates greatly and in many instances from that before us. In ver. 13 we find w$ ^njl TO V\2V V2V for D* ^DX- The other deviations are inconsiderable. So far as the repetition of t^K *?n31 113 at the end of ver. 14 is concerned, it is not only superfluous, but unsuitable, because the lightning following the thunder is described in ver. 15, and the words repeated are probably nothing more than a gloss that has crept by an oversight into the text. The D^E) VSN in ver. 16 is an obvious softening down of the D"1 VQX of the text before us. In the other deviations, however, the text of the Psalms is evidently the more original of the two; the abridgment of the second clause of ver. 13 is evidently a simplification of the figurative description in the psalm, and 21 D^plB in the 15th verse of the psalm is more poetical and a stronger
The Lord stretched His hand from the height into the deep abysses, which had been uncovered through the threatening of the wrath of God, and drew out the sinking man. n?'^\ without TJ is used to denote the stretching out of the hand, and in the sense of reaching out to a thing (as in ch. vi. 6). E*3"i_ D^D (great waters) does not refer to the enemy, but to the calamities and dangers (waves of death and streams of Belial, ver. 5) into which the enemies of the Psalmist had plunged him. *JtPD*, from nc;0 (Ex. ii. 10), from which the name of Moses was derived, to whom there is probably an allusion made. As Moses was taken out of the waters of the Nile, so David was taken out of great (many) waters. This deliverance is still further depicted in more literal terms in vers. 18 sqq. W ^>%, my enemy strong, poetical for my strong enemy, does not refer to one single enemy, namely Saul; but, as the parallel " my haters " shows, is a poetical personification of all his enemies. They were stronger than David, therefore the Lord had to deliver him with an almighty hand. The " day of calamity" in which the enemy fell upon him (D*nj?: see at ver. 6) was the time when David wandered about in the desert helpless and homeless, fleeing from the pursuit of Saul. The Lord was then his support, or a staff on which he could support himself (vid. Ps. xxiii. 4), and led him out of the strait into the broad, i.e. into a broad space where he could move freely, because God had pleasure in him, and had chosen him in His grace to be His servant. This reason for his deliverance is carried out still further in what follows.
Ver. 21 Jehovah rendered to me according to my righteousness,
According to the cleanness of my hands He recompensed me.
22 For I have observed the ways of Jehovah, And have not wickedly departed from my God.
23 For all His rights are before my eyes; And ITis statutes, — I do not depart from them.
??D3 signifies to do to a person good or evil, like the Greek ev:»nd Hands wpuTTetv nvd. The righteousness and cleannness of lumds, i.e. the innocence, which David attributed to himself, were not perfect righteousness or holiness before God, but the righteousness of his endeavours and deeds as contrasted with the unrighteousness and wickedness of his adversaries and pursuers, and consisted in the fact that he endeavoured earnestly and sincerely to walk in the ways of God and to keep the divine commandments. \0 V£H, to be wicked from, is a pregnant expression, signifying to depart wickedly from God. ^^P, i.e. as a standard before my eye. In the psalm we find ^V B^ri, innocent in intercourse with the Lord, instead of v Dspn (see Deut. xviii. 13); and for the fact itself, David's own testimony in 1 Sam. xxvi. 23, 24, the testimony of God concerning him in 1 Kings xiv. 8, and the testimony of history in 1 Kings xv. 5. "WO, from mine iniquity, i.e. from the iniquity which I might have committed.
Ver. 25 Thus Jehovah repaid me according to my righteousness, According to my cleanness before His eyes.
27 Towards the genuine Thou showest thyself genuine, And towards the perverse Thou showest thyself crooked.
The motive for deliverance, which was expounded in vers. 21-24, is summed up briefly in ver. 25; and then in vers. 26 and 27 it is carried back to the general truth, that the conduct of God towards men is regulated according to the conduct of men towards God. The vav cons, in 3iiM expresses the logical consequence. ^23 is used instead of HJ, 133 in ver. 21, which is repeated in the psalm simply for the sake of variation. The truth that God treats every man in accordance with his conduct towards Him, is expounded in four parallel clauses, in which the conduct of God is expressed in verbs in the Hithpael, formed from the adjectives used to describe the conduct of men towards God. To the ^?n, the pious or devoted to God, He also shows himself pious; and innocent, blameless, to the DW "rtaij the man strong in innocence, who walks in perfect innocence. "03, a Niphal participle, from T}3, he who keeps himself pure, strives after purity of walk, 13nri, an anomalous contraction of "nann (Ps.), analogous to the formation of "133 for
1133. The form?BV\7\ for PriQnn? to show one's self perverse or crooked, is still more anomalous. God shows himself so towards the perverse, by giving him up to his perverseness (Rom. i. 28).
This general truth is applied in ver. 28 to the congregation of God, in the contrast which it presents of humble and haughty, and is expounded from the conduct of God, as displayed in the history of Israel, towards these two classes of men, into which the nation was divided. In the psalm, therefore, we find iTTlK ^ for which the simple 1 is substituted here, because the verse does not contain any actual reason for what goes before. ^y Dy? afflicted people, is used to denote the pious and depressed in the nation; D^"J, the high, i.e. the haughty, or godless rich and mighty in the nation. b*BB>fl is to be taken as a relative: whom Thou humblest (see Ewald, § 332, b; and for the thought, Isa. ii. 11). In the psalm the unusual mode of expression in the second clause is changed into the more common phrase, " Thou bringest down high, i.e. proud looks" (cf. Prov. vi. 17, xxi. 4, xxx. 13; Ps. exxxi. 1, etc.).
Ver. 29 commences the description of the help which David had already received from God in his conflict with the enemies of Israel, and which he would still receive.
The explanatory *3, with which the new description of the divine mercy commences, refers to the thought implied in ver. 28, that David belonged to the " afflicted people," whom the Lord always helps. As the Lord delivered him out of the danger of death, because He took pleasure in him, so lie also gave him power over all his enemies. For He was his lamp, i.e. He had lifted him out of a condition of depression and contempt into one of glory and honour (see at ch. xxi. 17), and would still further enlighten his darkness, i.e. " would cause the light of His salvation to shine upon him and his tribe in all the darkness of their distress" (Hengstenberg). In the psalm the verse reads thus: " For Thou lightest (makest bright) my lamp (or candle), Jehovah my God enlighteneth my darkness;" the bold figure " Jehovah the lamp of David" being more literally explained. The figure is analogous to the one in Ps.
xxvii. 1, " The Lord is my light;" whilst the form "TO is a later mode of writing 13. — Ver. 30. In the strength of his God he could run hostile troops and leap walls, i.e. overcome every hostile power. pHN, not from pn, to smash in pieces, but from p"i, to run; construed with the accusative according to the analogy of verbs of motion. — Ver. 31. He derives this confidence from the acts of God, and also from His word. PKH (God) is written absolutely, like "WSfH in Deut. xxxii. 4. The article points back to wK3. Jehovah is the God ('*?$), whose way is perfect, without blemish; and His word is refined brass, pure silver (cf. Ps. xii. 7). He who trusts in Him is safe from all foes. The last two clauses occur again in Agur's proverbs (Prov. xxx. 5). The thought of the last clause is still further explained in vers. 32 sqq.
34 He makes my feet like the hinds, And setteth me upon my high places;
There is no true God who can help, except or by the side of Jehovah (cf. Deut. xxxii. 31; 1 Sam. ii. 2). "fi¥, as in ver. 2. This God is " my strong fortress:" for this figure, comp. Ps. xxxi. 5 and xxvii. 1. ^n, strength, might, is construed with WD? by free subordination: u my fortress, a strong one," like T'y ipD (Ps. lxxi. 7; cf. Ewald, § 291, b). W for W, from Tin (vid. Ges. § 72; Olshausen, Gram. p. 579), in the sense of leading or taking round, as in Prov. xii. 26. God leads the innocent his way, i.e. He is his leader and guide therein. The Keri ^"H rests upon a misunderstanding. There is an important difference in the reading of this verse in Ps. xviii., viz. " The God who girdeth me with strength, and makes my way innocent." The last clause is certainly an alteration which simplifies the meaning, and so is also the first clause, the thought of which occurs again, word for word, in ver. 40a, with the addition of nsnpftp. rp*K or n?*K, the hind, or female stao\ is a figure of speech denoting swiftness in running. " Like the hinds:" a condensed simile for " like the hinds' feet," such as we frequently meet with in Hebrew (vid. Ges. § 144, Anm.). The reference is to swiftness in pursuit of the foe (vid. ch. ii. 18; 1 Chron. xii. 8). rtn, his feet, for 4jPi (my feet) in the psalm, may be accounted for from the fact, that David had spoken of himself in the third person as the innocent one. "My high places" were not the high places of the enemy, that became his by virtue of conquest, but the high places of his own land, which he maintained triumphantly, so that he ruled the land from them. The expression is formed after Deut. xxxii. 13, and is imitated in Hab. iii. 19. ^ is generally construed with a double accusative: here it is written with an accusative and?, and signifies to instruct for the war. nm, in the psalm nnm, on account of the feminine ^% is not the Niplial of nnn, to be broken in pieces, but the Piel of nm, to cause to go down, to press down the bow, i.e. to set it. The bow of brass is mentioned as being the strongest: setting such a bow would be a sign of great heroic strength. The two verses (34 and 35) are simply a particularizing description of the power and might with which the Lord had endowed David to enable him to conquer all his foes.
Ver. 36 And Thou readiest me the shield of my salvation, And Thy hearing makes me great. 37 Thou makest my steps broad under me, And my ankles have not trembled.
The Lord bestows the true strength for victory in His salvation. The shield of salvation is the shield which consists of salvation, of the helping grace of the Lord. V}ty for which we find in the psalm inuy, thy humility, i.e. God's condescending grace, does not mean " thy humiliation," but " thy hearkening" i.e. that practical hearkening on the part of God, when called upon for help, which was manifested in the fact that God made his steps broad, i.e. provided the walker with a broad space for free motion, removing obstructions and stumblingblocks out of the way. God had done this for David, so that his ankles had not trembled, i.e. lie had not been wanting in the power to take firm and safe steps. In this strength of his God he could destroy all his foes.
Ver. 38 I will pursue my enemies and destroy them, I will not turn till they are consumed.
40 And Thou girdest me with strength for war, Thou bowest mine adversaries under me.
41 And Thou makest mine enemies turn the back to me; My haters, I root them out.
The optative form n^H*? serves to make the future signification of ^TiN (in the psalm) the more apparent. Consequently it is quite out of the question to take the other verbs as preterites. We are not compelled to do this by the interchange of imperfects c. vav consec. with simple imperfects, as the vav consec. is not used exclusively as expressive of the past. On the contrary, the substance of the whole of the following description shows very clearly that David refers not only to the victories he has already won, but in general to the defeat of all his foes in the past, the present, and the future; for he speaks as distinctly as possible not only of their entire destruction (vers. 38, 39, 43), but also of the fact that God makes him the head of the nations, and distant and foreign nations do him homage. Consequently he refers not only to his own personal dominion, but also, on the strength of the promise which he had received from God, to the increase of the dominion of the throne of his house, whilst he proclaims in the Spirit the ultimate defeat of all the enemies of the kingdom of God. This Messianic element in the following description comes out in a way that cannot be mistaken, in the praise of the Lord with which he concludes in vers. 47-51. DTOKW, " I destroy them" is stronger than OffeW, " I reach them " (in the psalm). In ver. 39 the words are crowded together, to express the utter destruction of all foes. In the psalm &.?3NJ is omitted. ^")jrn for W) in the psalm is not a poetical Syriasm, and still less a "careless solecism" (Hupfeld), but a simple contraction, such as we meet with in many forms: e.g. ^S/Jip for *3Q?ND (Job xxxv. 11; cf. Ewald, § 232, b). The form nnn for nriro (m the psalm) is unusual, and the aphseresis of the 3 can only be accounted for from the fact that this much-used word constantly drops its J as a radical sound in the imperfect (see Ewald, § 195, c). The phrase *)"$ 7 HFITI is formed after Ex. xxiii. 27. u Giving the enemy to a person's back"
Ver. 42 They look out, but there is no deliverer; For Jehovah, but He answereth them not. 43 And I rub in pieces as the dust of the earth,
The cry of the foe for help is not attended to; they are annihilated without quarter. U'V"!, to look out to God for help (with 'N and pV; vld. Isa. xvii. 7, 8), is more poetical than U'^J'', "they cry" (in the psalm); and pN~isy3 is more simple than nTT'OB-?]/ 1^3 (in the psalm), " I crush them as dust before the wind," for the wind does not crush the dust, but carries it away. In the second clause of ver. 43, Ei?."!^. is used instead of DilpK in the psalm, and strengthened by Di'ipS. CpHS, from Pi?*], to make thin, to crush; so that instead of " I pour them out like mire of the streets which is trodden to pieces," the Psalmist simply says, aI crush and stamp upon them like mire of the streets." Through the utter destruction of the foe, God establishes the universal dominion to which the throne of David is to attain.
Ver. 44 And Thou rescuest me out of the strivings of my people,
By " the strivings of my people" the more indefinite expression in the psalm, " strivings of the people," is explained. The words refer to the domestic conflicts of David, out of which the Lord delivered him, such as the opposition of Ishbosheth and the rebellions of Absalom and Sheba. These deliverances formed the prelude and basis of his dominion over the heathen. Consequently *?5?tw (Thou preservest me to be the head of the nations) occurs quite appropriately in the second clause; and ^£^fy "Thou settest nic," which occurs in the psalm, is a far less pregnant expression. BV before *JJJHJ N? is used indefinitely to signify foreign nations. Toi king of Ilamath (ch. viii. 10) was an example, and his subjugation was a prelude of the future subjection of all the heathen to the sceptre of the Son of David, as predicted in Ps. lxxii. In ver. 45 the two clauses of the psalm are very appropriately transposed. The Ilithpael yjTirjJVj as compared with W£0\ is the later form. In the primary passage (Deut. xxxiii. 29) the Niphal is used to signify the dissembling of friendship, or of involuntary homage on the part of the vanquished towards the victor. |TN JJiOBv, " by the hearing of the ear" i.e. by hearsay, is a simple explanation of 1TX Jfl?5$Yj at the rumour of the ears (yid. Job xlii. 5), i.e. at the mere rumour of David's victories. The foreign nations pine away, i.e. despair of ever being able to resist the victorious power of David. ^H.? " they gird themselves" does not yield any appropriate meaning, even if we should take it in the sense of equipping themselves to go out to battle. The word is probably a misspelling of ^")IT, which occurs in the psalm, HH being a air. Xey. in the sense of being terrified, or trembling: they tremble out of their castles, i.e. they come trembling out of their castles (for the thought itself, see Micah vii. 17). It is by no means probable that the word "tin, which is so frequently met with in Hebrew, is used in this one passage in the sense of " to limp" according to Syriac usage.
In conclusion, the Psalmist returns to the praise of the Lord, who had so highly favoured him.
Ver. 47 Jehovah liveth, and blessed is my rock,
48 The God who giveth me vengeance, And bringeth nations under me;
49 Who leadeth me out from mine enemies, And exalteth me above mine adversaries, Delivereth me from the man of violence.
The formula nJ»"P~*n does not mean u let Jehovah live," for the word W would be used for that (yid. ch. xvi. 16, 1 Sam. x. 24), but is a declaration: " the Lord is living." The declaration itself is to be taken as praise of God, for " praising God is simply ascribing to Him the glorious perfections which belong to him; we have only to give Him what is His own " (Hengstenberg). The following clauses also contain simply declarations; this is evident from the word Q^iT, since the optative fr^ would be used to denote a wish. The Lord is living or alive when He manifests Ilis life in acts of omnipotence. In the last clause, the expression 7N (rock) is in- tensified into ")$] "W \i7K (the God of my refuge, or rock, of salvation), i.e. the God who is my saving rock (cf. ver. 3). In the predicates of God in vers. 48, 49, the saving acts depicted by David in vers. 5-20 and 29-46 are summed up briefly. Instead of ^1^, "He causes to go down under me," i.e. He subjects to me, we find in the psalm VQj " He drives nations under me," and ^BE instead of WtfD; and lastly, instead of Don B^K in the psalm, we have here t^ppn G^K, as in Ps. cxl. 2. Therefore the praise of the Lord shall be sounded among all nations.
Ver. 50 Therefore will I praise Thee, 0 Jehovah, among the nations, And sing praise to Thy name. 51 As He who magnifies the salvation of His king, And showeth grace to His anointed, To David, and his seed for ever.
Ver. 14 Jehovah thundered from the heavens, And the Most High gave His voice.
The grace which the Lord had shown to David was so great, that the praise thereof could not be restricted to the narrow limits of Israel. With the dominion of David over the nations, there spread also the knowledge, and with this the praise, of the Lord who had given him the victory. Paul was therefore perfectly justified in quoting the verse before us (ver. 50) in Rom. xvi. 9, along with Deut. xxxii. 43 and Ps. cxvii. 1, as a proof that the salvation of God was intended for the Gentiles also. The king whose salvation the Lord had magnified, was not David as an individual, but David and his seed for ever, — that is to say, the royal family of David which culminated in Christ. David could thus sing praises upon the ground of the promise which he had received (ch. vii. 12-16), and which is repeated almost verbatim in the last clause of ver. 51. The Chethib ^TO is the Hipliil participle rlfiOj according to Ps. xviii. 51; and the Keri?fa?D, " tower of the fulness of salvation," is a singular conjecture.
The psalm of thanksgiving, in which David praised the Lord for all the deliverances and benefits that he had experienced throughout the whole of his life, is followed by the prophetic will and testament, of the great king, unfolding the importance of his rule in relation to the sacred history of the future. And whilst the psalm may be regarded (ch. xxii.) as a great hallelujah, with which David passed away from the stage of life, these " last words " contain the divine seal of all that he has sung and prophesied in several psalms concerning the eternal dominion of his seed, on the strength of the divine promise which he received through the prophet Nathan, that his throne should be established for ever (ch. vii.). These words are not merely a lyrical expansion of that promise, but a prophetic declaration uttered by David at the close of his life and by divine inspiration, concerning the true King of the kingdom of God. " The aged monarch, who was not generally endowed with the gift of prophecy, was moved by the Spirit of God at the close of his life, and beheld a just Ruler in the fear of God, under whose reign blessing and salvation sprang up for the righteous, and all the wicked were overcome. The pledge of this wras the eternal covenant which God had concluded with him " (Tholuck: die Propheten und ihre Weissagungen, p. 166). The heading " these are the last words of David" serves to attach it to the preceding psalm of thanksgiving.
Ver. 1 Divine saying of David the son of Jesse,
Divine saying of the man, the highly exalted, Of the anointed of the God of Jacob, And of the lovely one in the songs of praise of Israel. 2 The Spirit of Jehovah speaks through me, And His word is upon my tongue.
This introduction to the prophetic announcement rests, both as to form and substance, upon the last sayings of Balaam concerning the future history of Israel (Num. xxiv. 3, 15). This not only shows to what extent David had occupied himself with the utterances of the earlier men of God concerning Israel's future; but indicates, at the same time, that his own prophetic utterance was intended to be a further expansion of Balaam's prophecy concerning the Star out of Jacob and the Sceptre out of Israel. Like Balaam, he calls his prophecy a E*U? i.e. a divine saying or oracle, as a revelation which he had received directly from God (see at Num. xxiv. 3). But the recipient of this revelation was not, like Balaam the son of Beor, a man with closed eye, whose eyes had been opened by a vision of the Almighty, but " the man who was raised up on high" ty, ad ver- bially "above" is, strictly speaking, a substantive, "height" used in an adverbial sense, as in Hos. xi. 7, and probably also ch. vii. 1G), i.e. whom God had lifted up out of humiliation to be the ruler of His people, yea, even to be the head of the nations (ch. xxii. 44). Luther's rendering, " who is assured of the Messiah of the God of Jacob," is based upon the Vulgate, " cui constitution est de Christo Dei Jacob" and cannot be grammatically sustained. David was exalted on the one hand as " the anointed of the God of Jacob," i.e. as the one whom the God of Israel had anointed king over His people, and on the other hand as " the lovely one in Israels songs of praise" i.e. the man whom God had enabled to sing lovely songs of praise in celebration of His grace and glory. WT = «TJ»? does not mean a song generally, but a song of praise in honour of God (see at Ex. xv. 2), like "top in the headings to the psalms. As David on the one hand had firmly established the kingdom of God in an earthly and political respect as the anointed of Jehovah, i.e. as king, so had he on the other, as the composer of Israel's songs of praise, promoted the spiritual edification of that kingdom. The idea of EN? is explained in ver. 2. The Spirit of Jehovah speaks through him; his words are the inspiration of God. The preterite 13* relates to the divine inspiration which preceded the utterance of the divine saying. 3 "O^, literally to speak into a person, as in Hos. i. 2. The saving itself commences with ver. 3.
Ver. 3 The God of Israel saith,
The Eock of Israel speaketh to me: A Ruler overmen, just, A Killer in the fear of God.
4 And as light of the morning, when the sun rises, As morning without clouds:
For He hath made mean everlasting covenant, Provided with all, and attested; For all my salvation and all good pleasure, Should He then not cause it to grow?
As the prophets generally preface their saying with " thus saith the Lord," so David commences his prophetic saying with " the God of Israel saith" for the purpose of describing it most emphatically as the word of God. He designates God " the
God" and " the Rock" (as in cb. xxii. 3) of Israel, to indicate that the contents of his prophecy relate to the salvation of the people of Israel, and are guaranteed by the unchangeableness of God. The saying which follows bears the impress of a divine oracle even in its enigmatical brevity. The verbs are wanting in the different sentences of vers.?>b and 4. " A ruler over men" sc. " will arise," or there will be. El S3 does not mean "among men," but " over men;" for 3 is to be taken as with the verb?$D, as denoting the object ruled over (cf. Gen. iii. 16, iv. 7, etc.). D*]^ does not mean certain men, but the human race, humanity. This ruler is " just" in the fullest sense of the word, as in the passages founded upon this, viz. Jer. xxiii. 5, Zech. ix. 9, and Ps. lxxii. 2. The justice of the ruler is founded in his u fear of God." DwK nST is governed freely by t^lD. (On the fact itself, see Isa. xi.' 2, 8.) The meaning is, " A ruler over the human race will arise, a just ruler, and will exercise his dominion in the spirit of the fear of God." — Ver. 4 describes the blessing that will proceed from this ruler. The idea that ver. 4 should be connected with ver. 3fr so as to form one period, in the sense of " when one rules justly over men (as I do), it is as when a morning becomes clear," must be rejected, for the simple reason that it overlooks Nathan's promise (ch. vii.) altogether, and weakens the force of the saying so solemnly introduced as the word of God. The ruler over men whom David sees in spirit, is not any one who rules righteously over men; nor is the seed of David to be regarded as a collective expression indicating a merely ideal personality, but, according to the Chaldee rendering, the Messiah himself, the righteous Shoot whom the Lord would raise up to David (Jer. xxiii. 5), and who would execute righteousness and judgment upon earth (Jer. xxxiii. 15). — Ver. 4 is to be taken by itself as containing an independent thought, and the connection between it and ver. 3 must be gathered from the words themselves: the appearance (the rise) of this Ruler will be u as light of the morning, when the sun rises" At the same time, the Messiah is not to be regarded as the subject to *ip3 "n"K (the light of the morning), as though the ruler over men were compared with the morning light; but the subject compared to the morning light is intentionally left indefinite, according to the view adopted by Luther in his exposition, " In the time of the Messiah it will be like the light of the morning." We are precluded from regarding the Messiah as the subject, by the fact that the comparison is instituted not with the sun, but with the morning dawn at the rising of the sun, whose vivifying effects upon nature are described in the second clause of the verse. The words CTO rnp are to be taken relatively, as a more distinct definition of the morning light. The clause which follows, " morning without clouds" is parallel to the foregoing, and describes more fully the nature of the morning. The light of the rising sun on a cloudless morning is an image of the coming salvation. The rising sun awakens the germs of life in the bosom of nature, which had been slumbering through the darkness of the night. " The state of things before the coming of the ruler resembles the darkness of the night" (Ilengstenberg). The verb is also wanting in the second hemistich. " From the shining from rain (is, comes) fresh green out of the earth." Ftij signifies the brightness of the rising sun; but, so far as the actual meaning is concerned, it relates to the salvation which attends the coming of the righteous ruler. "iDBD is either subordinate to FtfllD, or co-ordinate with it. In the former case, we should have to render the passage, " from the shining of the sun which proceeds out of rain," or " from the shining after rain;" and the allusion would be to a cloudless morning, when the shining of the sun after a night's rain stimulates the growth of the plants. In the latter case, we should have to render it " from the shining (and) from the rain;" and the reference would be to a cloudless morning, on which the vegetation springs up from the ground through sunshine followed by rain. Grammatically considered, the first view (I the second) is the easier of the two; nevertheless we regard the other (V the first) as the only admissible one, inasmuch as rain is not to be expected when the sun has risen with a cloudless sky. The rays of the sun, as it rises after a night of rain, strengthen the fresh green of the plants. The rain is therefore a figurative representation of blessing generally (cf. Isa. xliv. 3), and the green grass which springs up from the earth after the rain is an image of the blessings of the Messianic salvation (Isa. xliv. 4, xlv. 8).
In Ps« lxxii. 6, Solomon takes these words of David as the basis of his comparison of the effects resulting from the government of the true Prince of peace to the coming down of the rain upon the mown grass.
In ver. 5, the prophecy concerning the coming of the just ruler is sustained by being traced back to the original promise in ch. vii., in which David had received a pledge of this. The first and last clauses of this verse can only be made to yield a meaning in harmony with the context, by being taken interrogatively: " for is not my house so with God?" The question is only indicated by the tone (N? s3 = K?n *3: ch. xix. 23), as is frequently the case, even before clauses commencing with *6 {e.g. Hos. xi. 5, Mai. ii. 15: cf. Ewald, § 324, a). £"N? (not so) is explained by the following clause, though the *3 which follows is not to be taken in the sense of "that" Each of the two clauses contains a distinct thought. That of the first is, " Does not my house stand in such a relation to God, that the righteous ruler will spring from it?" This is then explained in the second: " for He hath made an everlasting covenant with me." David calls the promise in ch. vii. 12 sqq., that God would establish his kingdom to his seed for ever, a covenant, because it involved a reciprocal relation, — namely, that Jehovah wrould first of all found for David a permanent house, and then that the seed of David was to build the house of the Lord. This covenant is ^32 roviy, " equipped (or provided) with all" that could help to establish it. This relates more especially to the fact that all eventualities were foreseen, even the falling away of the bearers of the covenant of God, so that such an event as this would not annul the covenant (ch. vii. 14, 15). rrviOK^ " and preserved" i.e. established by the assurance that even in that case the Lord would not withdraw His grace. David could found upon this the certainty, that God would cause all the salvation to spring forth which had been pledged to his house in the promise referred to. "Ww3? " all my salvation" i.e. all the salvation promised to me and to my house. f srra, not " all my desire," but " all the good pleasure " of God, i.e. all the saving counsel of God expressed in that covenant. The ^ before vh is an energetic repetition of the ^? which introduces the explanatory thought, in the sense of a firm assurance: "for all my salvation and all good pleasure, yea, should lie not cause it to spring forth?"
Ver. G But the worthless, as rejected thorns are they all; For men do not take them in the hand. 7 And the. man who touches them
The development of salvation under the ruler in riglitcc and the fear of God is accompanied by judgment u the ungodly. The abstract 'Vs?2, worthlessness^ is stror than 'V.Y? B^j the worthless man, and depicts the godles: personified worthlessness. ^JE, m tne Keri 1SD3 the Hopha *na or T13, literally "scared" or hunted away. This epil does not apply to the thorns, so well as to the ungodly who compared to thorns. The reference is to thorns that men ] out, not to those which they avoid on account of their prick Dn?2, nn antiquated form for 2^3 (see Ewald, § 247, d). root them out, or clean the ground of them, men do not hold of them with the bare hand; but " ichocuer would to them equips himself (y&®[, se. i"1^, to l fill the hand' with a thing: 2 Kings ix. 24) with iron, i.e. with iron weapons, spear-shaft" (rid. 1 Sam. xvii. 7). This expression also reli to the godless rather than to the thorns. They are consur rn'J'3, " at (lie dwelling" i.e. as Kimchi explains, at the plac< their dwelling, the place where they grow. For D3W can mean "on the spot" in the sense of without delay. The bv ing of the thorns takes place at the final judgment upon ungodly (Matt. xiii. 30).
The following list of David's heroes we also find in 1 On xi. 10-47, and expanded at the end by sixteen names (v 41-17), and attached in ver. 10 to the account of the conqi of the fortress of Zion by the introduction of a special headi According to this heading, the heroes named assisted Ds greatly in his kingdom, along with all Israel, to make 1 king, from which it is evident that the chronicler intended this heading to justify his appending the list to the acco of the election of I >avid as king over all the tribes of Isi (1 Chron. xi. 1), and of the conquest of Zion, which follow i icdiately afterwards. In every other respect the two 1 agree with one another, except that there are a considerable number of errors of the text, more especially in the names, which are frequently corrupt in both texts, so that the true reading cannot be determined with certainty. The heroes enumerated are divided into three classes. The first class consists of three, viz. Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah, of whom certain brave deeds are related, by which they reached the first rank among David's heroes (vers. 8—12). They were followed by Abishai and Benaiah, who were in the second class, and who had also distinguished themselves above the rest bv their brave deeds, though they did not come up to the first three (vers. 18-23). The others all belonged to the third class, which consisted of thirty-two men, of whom no particular heroic deeds are mentioned (vers. 24-39). Twelve of these, viz. the five belonging to the first two classes and seven of the third, were appointed by David commanders of the twelve detachments into which he divided the army, each detachment to serve for one month in the year (1 Chron. xxvii.). These heroes, among whom we do not find Joab the commander-in-chief of the whole of the forces, were the king's aides-de-camp, and are called in this respect *By#n (ver. 8), though the term D^k;n (the thirty, vers. 13, 23, 24) was also a very customary one, as their number amounted to thirty in a round sum. It is possible that at first they may have numbered exactly thirty; for, from the very nature of the case, we may be sure that in the many wars in which David was engaged, other heroes must have arisen at different times, who would be received into the corps already formed. This will explain the addition of sixteen names in the Chronicles, whether the chronicler made use of a different list from that employed by the author of the books before us, and one belonging to a later age, or whether the author of our books merely restricted himself to a description of the corps in its earlier condition.
Vers. 8-12. Throes of the first class. — The short heading to our text, with which the list in the Chronicles also begins (1 Chron. xi. 11), simply gives the names of these heroes. But instead of " the names of the mighty men," we have in the Chronicles " the number of the mighty men." This variation is all the more striking, from the fact that in the Chronicles the total number is not given at the close of the list as it is in our text. At the same time, it can hardly be a copyist's error 1 "irep (selection), as Bertheau supposes, but must be attributal to the fact that, according to vers. 13, 23, and 24, these her< constituted a corps which was named from the number which it originally consisted. The first, Jashobeam, is call " the chief of the thirty" in the Chronicles. Instead of C>: (Jashobeam), the reading in the Chronicles, we have h( rotfa 3B* (Josheb-basshebeth), unquestionably a spurious vet ing, which probably arose, according to Kennicott's conjectu from the circumstance that the last two letters of Djn&" w< written in one MS. under FD^a in the line above (ver. 7), a a copyist took rDBG from that line by mistake for Dy. T correctness of the reading Jashobeam is established by 1 Clin xxvii. 2. The word ^fa3n? is also faulty, and should corrected, according to the Chronicles, into *Jtoarr|a (Bt hachmoni); for the statement that Jashobeam was a son ( descendant) of the family of Hachmon (1 Chron. xxvii. 2 can easily be reconciled with that in 1 Chron. xxvii. 2, to t effect that he was a son of Zabdiel. Instead of D*BWn B> (head of the thirty), the reading in the Chronicles, we have he HBvBfci can (head of the three). Bertheau would alter our te in accordance with the Chronicles, whilst Thenius proposes bring the text of the Chronicles into accordance with ou But although the many unquestionable corruptions in the vei before us may appear to favour Bertheau's assumption, 1 cannot regard either of the emendations as necessary, or ev warrantable. The proposed alteration of 1!w) is decidec precluded by the recurrence of "'Vrf? *^"1 in ver. 18, and t alteration of DTO] in the Chronicles by the repeated allusi to the DWj not only in vers. 15, 42, ch. xii. 4, and ch. xxvii of the Chronicles, but also in vers. 13, 23, and 24 of the chapl before us. The explanation given of W and EW?'* as sigi fving chariot-warriors, is decidedly erroneous j1 for the singui Pytfn is used in all the passages in which the word occurs signify the royal aide-de-camp (2 Kings vii. 2, 17, ID, ix.:
1 This explanation, which we find in Gesenins (Thes. and Lex.) a Bertheau, rests upon no other authority than the testimony of Origen, the effect that an obscure writer gives this interpretation of rptar<tTng} 1 rendering of JF9fc>i an authority which is completely overthrown by 1 writer of the gloss in Octatcuch. (SchleuBsner, Lex. in LXX. t. v. p. 33 xv. 25), and the plural D*B*W the royal body-guard, not only in 2 Kings x. 25, but even in 1 Kings ix. 22, and Ex. xiv. 7, xv. 4, from which the meaning chariot-warriors lias been derived. Consequently "'Bytfn t?6H is the head of the king's aides-de-camp, and the interchange of *BWn with the DH5WH of the Chronicles may be explained on the simple ground that David's thirty heroes formed his whole body of adjutants. The singular W is to be explained in the same manner as >0"?.3rl (see at ch. viii. 18). Luther expresses the following opinion in his marginal gloss with regard to the words which follow (foSJjn fo*T8 ™): « We believe the text to have been corrupted by a writer, probably from some book in an unknown character and bad writing, so that ore?" should be substituted for adino, and ha-eznib for eth hanitho;" that is to say, the reading in the Chronicles, " he swung his spear," should be adopted (cf. ver. 18). This supposition is certainly to be preferred to the attempt made by Gesenius {Lex.) and v. Dietrich (s.v, HV) to find some sense in the words by assuming the existence of a verb y}V and a noun i^y, a spear, since these words do not occur anywhere else in Hebrew; and in order to obtain any appropriate sense, it is still necessary to resort to alterations of the text. " lie swung his spear over eight hundred slain at oncer This is not to be understood as signifying that he killed eight hundred men at one blow, but that in a battle he threw his spear again and again at the foe, until eight hundred men had been slain. The Chronicles give three hundred instead of eight hundred; and as that number occurs again in ver. 18, in the case of Abishai, it probably found its way from that verse into this in the book of Chronicles. — Vers. 9, 10. " After him (i.e. next to him in rank) was Eleazar the son of JJodai the Ahohite, among the three heroes with David when they defied the Philistines, who had assembled there, and the Israelites drew near." The Chethib HI is to be read ^ifa, JJodai, according to 1 Chron. xxvii. 4, and the form nil (Dodo) in the parallel text (1 Chron. xi. 12) is only a variation in the form of the name. Instead of ■•nhK-ja (the son of Ahohi) we find 'nhsn (the Ahohite) in the who gives this explanation of rpiarxrocg: rov; -zrotpoc %upcc rov fSocai'Keco; oLptarspoiu rpirng uoipccg olp^ovrocg. Suidas and Hesychius give the same explanation (s.v. rpiara.rca). Jerome also observes (ad Ezek. xxiii.): " It is the name of the second rank next to the king."
Chronicles; but the J3 must not be struck out on that accoui as spurious, for " the son of an Ahohite " is the same as " tl Ahohite." For D*fcj P1b6b>3 we must read Dn'ajn nisfoa, accon ing to the Keri and the Chronicles. HBfrp is not to be altere since the numerals are sometimes attached to substantives: the absolute state (see Ges. § 120, 1). " The three heroes" a Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah (ver. 11), who readied tl first rank, according to ver. 19, among the heroes of Davi Instead of D^JjltpBS D3")n3 (when they defied the Philistines), v find in the Chronicles 'tfripfam DW DS3, "at Pas-dammim i.e. most probably Ephes-damnvim (1 Sam. xvii. 1), where tl Philistines were encamped when Goliath defied the Israelite Thenius, Bertheau, and Bottcher therefore propose to alter oi text so as to make it correspond to that of the Chronicles, ar adduce as the reason the fact that in other passages *TV1 construed with the accusative, and that Dt?? which follows, pr supposes the previous mention of the place referred to. Bi the reasons are neither of them decisive. *T?fl is not construe with the accusative alone, but also with? (2 Chron. xxxii. 17 so that the construction with 2 is quite a possible one, and not at variance with the idea of the word. QV again ma}' aL be understood as referring to the place, not named, where tl Philistines fought with the Israelites. The omission of IB before ^psp is more difficult to explain; and DTCvarn, which v find in the Chronicles, has probably dropped out after E^v rr The reading in the Chronicles DHOT D£2 (DDX3) is probably oni a more exact description of the locality, which is but obscure, indicated in our text by D^WpSS D?"^ '■> f°r these words affir: that the battle took place where the Israelites had once bet defied by the Philistines (1 Sam. xvii. 10), and where tin repaid them for this defiance in a subsequent conflict. Tl Philistines are at any rate to be regarded as the subject 1 ^DWj and these words are a circumstantial clause: the Phil Stines had assembled together there to battle, and the Israelite had advanced to the attack. The heroic act of Eleazar introduced with uhe arose." He arose and smote the Phil stines till his hand was weary and clave to his sword, i.e. Wi so cramped as to be stiffened to the sword. Through th Jehovah wrought a great salvation for Israel on that day, " an the people (the soldiers) turned after him only to plunder,'' s because he had put the enemy to flight by himself. V"jnK mty does not mean to turn back from flight after him, but is the opposite of ^ntjID IMS?, to turn away from a person (1 Sam. xv. 11, etc.), so that it signifies "to turn to a person and follow behind him." Three lines have dropped out from the parallel text of the Chronicles, in consequence of the eye of a copyist having wandered from ^DfcO MB7S in ver. 9 to DW^S ^BpXM in ver. 11. — Vers. 11, 12. The third leading hero was Shammah, the son of Age the Hararite (TJIJ is probably contracted from ^lIl1, ver. 33). He also made himself renowned by a great victory over the Philistines. The enemy had gathered together n*np? " as a troop" or in a crowd. This meaning of n>n (here and ver. 13, and possibly also in Ps. lxviii. 11) is thoroughly established by the Arabic (see Ges. Thes. p. 470). But it seems to have fallen into disuse afterwards, and in the Chronicles it is explained in ver. 13 by n??rpp, and in ver. 15 by HJIID. " On a portion of a field of lentils there," sc. where the Philistines had gathered together, the people (of Israel) were smitten. Then Shammah stationed himself in the midst of the field, and?/?T> "wrested it" from the foe, and smote the Philistines. Instead of DWJJ, lentils, we find in the Chronicles D'ntyb*
Vers. 13-17. To this deed there is appended a similar heroic feat performed by three of the thirty heroes whose names are not given. The Chethib D^EW is evidently a slip of the pen for ilBW (Keri and Chronicles). The thirty chiefs are the heroes named afterwards (see above at p. 491). As H65W has no article either in our text or the Chronicles, the three intended are not the three already mentioned (Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah), but three others out of the number mentioned in vers. 24 sqq. These three came to David in the harvest time unto the cave of Adullam (see at 1 Sam. xxii. 1), when a troop of the Philistines was encamped in the valley of Repliaim, and David was on the mountain fortress, and a Philistian post was then in Bethlehem. And David longed for water, and said, " Oh that one would bring me water to drink out of the well of Bethlehem at the gate!" The encampment of the Philistines in the valley of liephaim, and the position of David on the mountain fortress (FVTOSDa), render it probable that the feat mentioned here took place in the war with the Philistines described in cli. v. 17 sqq. Robinson could not discover any well in Bethlehem, "especially none * bv the gate/ except one connected with the aqueduct on the south" (Palestine, vol. ii. p. 158). "ltf#3 need not be understood, however, as signifying that the well was in or under the cate: but the well referred to may have been at the gate outside the city. The well to which tradition has given the name of " David's well " (cisterha David), is about a quarter of an hour's walk to the north-east of Bethlehem, and, according to Robinson's description, is " merely a deep and wide cistern or cavern now dry, with three or four narrow openings cut in the rock." But Hitter (Erdk. xvi. p. 286) describes it as "deep with clear cool water, into which there are three openings from above, which Tobler speaks of as bored;" and again as a cistern "built with peculiar beauty, from seventeen to twenty-one feet deep, whilst a house close by is pointed out to pilgrims as Jesse's house." — Ver. 16. The three heroes then broke through the camp of the Philistines at Bethlehem, i.e. the outpost that occupied the space before the gate, fetched water out of the well, and brought it to David. lie would not drink it, however, but poured it out upon the ground to the Lord, as a drink-offering for Jehovah. "Pie poured it out upon the earth, rendering Him thanks for the return of the three brave men" (Clcricus). And he said, "Far be it from me, O Jehovah, to do this! The blood of the men who went with their lives (i.e. at the risk of their lives)," sc. should I drink it I The verb nnirx is wanting in our text, but is not to be inserted according to the Chronicles as though it had fallen out; the sentence is rather to be regarded as an aposiopesis. njrp after *3 ncw *s a vocative, and is not to be altered into nirro according to the Nn?xp of the Chronicles. The, fact that the vocative does not occur in other passages after "9 n? r? proves nothing. It is equivalent to the oath njrp sn (1 Sam. xiv. 45). The chronicler has endeavoured to simplify David's exclamation by completing the sentence. DHl^S^ "for the price of tlidr souls" i.e. at the risk of their lives. The water drawn and fetched at the risk of their lives is compared to the soul itself, and the soul is in the blood (Lev. xvii. 11). Drinking this water, therefore, would be nothing else than drinking their blood.
Abishai, Joab's brother (see 1 Sam. xxvi. 6), was also chief of the body-guard, like Jashobeam (ver. 8: the Chethib,|B?$n is correct; see at ver. 8). He swung his spear over three hundred slain. " lie had a name among the three/' i.e. the three principal heroes, Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah. The following words, flBvBfrrjD make no sense. TW^n is an error in writing for DWB^rij as ver. 23 shows in both the texts (ver. 25 of the Chronicles): an error the origin of which may easily be explained from the word n^v^, which stands immediately before. " He was certainly honoured before the thirty (heroes of David), and became their chief, but he did not come to the three," i.e. he was not equal to Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah. *3n has the force of an energetic assurance: " is it so that" i.e. it is certainly so (as in ch. ix. 1; Gen. xxvii. 36, xxix. 15). — Vers. 20-23. Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, " Jehoiada the priest " according to 1 Chron. xxvii. 5, possibly the one who was " prince for Aaron," i.e. of the family of Aaron, according to 1 Chron. xii. 27, was captain of the Crethi and Plethi according to ch. viii. 18 and xx. 23. He was the son of a brave man, rich in deeds (*n is evidently an error for?\T\ in the Chronicles), of Kabzeel in the south of Judah (Josh. xv. 21). " He smote the two Ariels of Moab." The Arabs and Persians call every remarkably brave man Ariel, or lion of God (yid. Bochart, Hieroz. ii. pp. 7, 63). They were therefore two celebrated Moabitish heroes. The supposition that they were sons of the king of the Moabites is merely founded upon the conjecture of Thenius and Bertheau, that the word V.r1 (sons of) has dropped out before Ariel. " He also slew the lion in the well on the day of the snow," i.e. a lion which had been driven into the neighbourhood of human habitations by a heavy fall of snow, and had taken refuge in a cistern. The Chethib rrnxn and "INS are the earlier forms for the Keris substituted by the Masoretes ^WJ and "li^n, and consequently are not to be altered. He also slew an Egyptian of distinguished size. According to the Keri we should read rwnD B*K (instead of flK"jB 1^), "a man of appearance" i.e. a distinguished man, or a man of great size, av&pa bparov (LXX.); in the Chronicles it is simplified as iTTD J^N, a man of measure, i.e. of great height. This man was armed with a spear or javelin, whereas Benaiah was only armed with a stick; nevertheless the latter smote him, took away his spear, and slew him with his own weapon. According to the Chronicles the Egyptian was five cubits high, and his spear like a weaver's beam. Through these feats Benaiah acquired a name among the three, though he did not equal them (vers. 22, 23, as in vers. 18, 19); and David made him a member of his privy council (see at 1 Sam. xxii. 14).
Vers. 24-39. Heroes of the third class. — Yer. 24. "Asahel, the brother of Joab, among the thirty," i.e. belonging to them. This definition also applies to the following names; we therefore find at the head of the list in the Chronicles, D^Tin niafl, "and brave heroes (were)." The names which follow are for the most part not further known. Elhanan, the son of Dodo of Bethlehem, is a different man from the Bethlehemite of that name mentioned in ch. xxi. 19. Shammah the Harodite also must not be confounded with the Shammahs mentioned in vers. 11 and 33. In the Chronicles we find Shammoth, a different form of the name; whilst *"lVtflfl is an error in writing for *finn, i.e. sprung from Ilarod (Judg. vii. 1). This man is called Shamhut in 1 Chron. xxvii. 8; he was the leader of the fifth division of David's army. Elika of Ilarod is omitted in the Chronicles; it was probably dropped out in consequence of the homoioteleuton l|*PD!?« — Ver. 26. Ilelez the Paltite; i.e. sprung from Beth-Pelet in the south of Judah (Judg. xv. 27). He was chief of the seventh division of the army (compare 1 Chron. xxvii. 10 with 1 Chron. xi. 27, though in both passages "•Dpan is misspelt ^^n). Jra the son of Ikkesh of Tekoah in the desert of Judah (ch. xiv. 2), chief of the sixth division of the army (1 Chron. xxvii. 9). — Ver. 27. Abiezer of Anathotli (Anata) in Benjamin (see at Josh, xviii. 21), chief of the ninth division of the army (1 Chron. xxvii. 12). Mebunnai is a mistake in spelling for Sibbechai the Hushathite (compare ch. xxi. 18 and 1 Chron. xi. 29). According to 1 Chron. xxvii. 11, he was chief of the eighth division of the army. — Ver. 2^. Zalrnon the Ahohite, i.e. sprung from the Benjaminite family of Ahoah, is not further known. Instead of Zalrnon we find Ilai in the Chronicles (ver. 29); but which of the two names is the correct one it is impossible to decide. MdJtarai of NetopluJk: according to Ezra ii. 22 and Neh. vii. 26, Netophah was a place in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, but it has not yet been discovered, as J kit Nattif, which might be thought of, is too far from Bethlehem (vid. Rob. Pal. ii. p. 344, and Tobler, Dritte Wanderung, pp. 117-8). According to 1 Chron. xxvii. 13, Maharai belonged to the Judahite family of Serah, and was chief of the tenth division of the army. — Ver. 29. Cheleb, more correctly Clieled (1 Chron. xi. 30; or Cheldai, 1 Chron. xxvii. 15), also of Netophah, was chief of the twelfth division of the army. Ittai (Ithai in the Chronicles), the son of Bibai of Gibeah of Benjamin, must be distinguished from Ittai the Gathite (ch. xv. 19). Like all that follow, with the exception of Uriah, he is not further known. — Ver. 30. Benaiah of Phir'aton in the tribe of Ephraim, a place which has been preserved in the village of Ferata, to the south-west of Nablus (see at Judg. xii. 13). Hiddai (wrongly spelt Hudai in the Chronicles), out of the valleys of Gaash, in the tribe of Ephraim by the mountain of Gaash, the situation of which has not yet been discovered (see at Josh. xxiv. 30). — Ver. 31. Abi-Albon (written incorrectly Ahiel in the Chronicles) the Arbathite, i.e. from the place called Beth-haarabah or Arabah (Josh. xv. Gl and xviii. 18, 22) in the desert of Judah, on the site of the present Kasr Hajla (see at Josh. xv. 6). Azmaveth of Bahurim: see at ch. xvi. 5. — Vers. 32, 33. Eliahba of Shaalbon or Shaalbin, which may possibly have been preserved in the present Selbit (see at Josh. xix. 42). The next two names, l^iiT |D* Via and Tpri ns^ (Bneyashen Jehonathan and Shammah the Hararite), are written thus in the Chronicles (ver. 34), ''linn fcO&rja pft ^Jinn nm ':2: « Bnehashem the Gizonite,
Jonathan the son of Sage the Ilararite." The text of the Chronicles is evidently the more correct of the two, as Bne Ja shen Jehonathan does not make any sense. The only question is whether the form Dt?n '•pa is correct, or whether *33 has not arisen merely through a misspelling. As the name does not occur again, all that can be said is that Bne hashem must at any rate be written as one word, and therefore should be pointed differently. The place mentioned, Gizon, is unknown. HB^ for N3BH3 probably arose from ver. 11. Ahiarn the son of Sharar or Sacar (Chron.) the Ararite (in the Chronicles the Hararite). — Ver. 34. The names in 34a, EUphelet ben-Ahasbai ben-Hammaacathi, read thus in the Chronicles (vers. 35, 36): Eliphal ben-Ur; Hepher hammecerathi. We see from this that in ben-Ahasbai ben two names have been fused together; for the text as it lies before us is rendered suspicious partly by the fact that the names of both father and grandfather are given, which does not occur in connection with any other name in the whole list, and partly by the circumstance that 1? cannot properly be written with TOtf??, which is a Gentile noun. Consequently the following is probably the correct way of restoring the text, vnyran nsn "fifcT|3 ^S^«, Eliphelet (a name which frequently occurs) the son of Ur; Ilepher the Maachathite, i.e. of Maacah in the north-east of Gilead (see at ch. x. 6 and Deut. iii. 14). Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite, the clever but treacherous counsellor of David (see at ch. xv. 12). This name is quite corrupt in the Chronicles. — Ver. 35. Hezro the Carmelite, i.e. of Carmel in the mountains of Judah (1 Sam. xxv. 2). Paarai the Arbite, i.e. of Arab, also in the mountains of Judah (Josh. xv. 52). In the Chronicles we find Naarai ben-Ezbi: the latter is evidently an error in writing for ha-Arbi; but it is impossible to decide which of the two forms, Paarai and Naarai, is the correct one. — Ver. 36. Jigal the son of Nathan of Zoba (see at ch. viii. 3): in the Chronicles, Joel the brother of Nathan. Bani the Gadite: in the Chronicles we have Mibhar the son of Hagri. In all probability the names in the Chronicles are corrupt in this instance also. — Ver. 37. Zeleh the Ammonite, Nacharai the Beerothite (of Beeroth: see at ch. iv. 2), the armour-bearer of Joab. Instead of **&*, the Keri and the Chronicles have RB>3: the latter reading is favoured b\' the circumstance, that if more than one of the persons named had been Joab's armour-bearers, their names would most probably have been linked together by a copulative vav. — Ver. 38. Ira and Gareb, both of them Jithrites, i.e. sprung from a family in Kirjath-jearim (1 Chron. ii. 53). Ira is of course a different man from the cohen of that name (ch. xx. 26). — Ver. 39. Uriah the Ilittite is well known from ch. xi. 3. " Thirty ami seven in all." This number is correct, as there were three in the first class (vers. 8-12), two in the second (vers. 18-23), and thirty-two in the third (vers. 24-39), since ver. 34 contains three names according to the amended text.
For the purpose of ascertaining the number of the people, and their fitness for war, David ordered Joab, his commanderin-chief, to take a census of Israel and Judah. Joab dissuaded him from such a step; but inasmuch as the king paid no attention to his dissuasion, he carried out the command with the help of the military captains (vers. 1-9). David very speedily saw, however, that he had sinned; whereupon the prophet Gad went to him by the command of Jehovah to announce the coming punishment, and give him the choice of three different judgments which he placed before him (vers. 10-13). As David chose rather to fall into the hand of the Lord than into the hand of men, God sent a pestilence, which carried off seventy thousand men in one day throughout the whole land, and had reached Jerusalem, when the Lord stopped the destroying angel in consequence of the penitential prayer of David (vers. 14-17), and sent Gad to the king to direct him to build an altar to the Lord on the spot where the destroying angel had appeared to him (ver. 18). Accordingly David bought the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, built an altar upon it, and sacrificed burnt-offerings and thank-offerings, after which the plague was stayed (vers. 19-25).
This occurrence, which is introduced in the parallel history in 1 Chron. xxi. between David's wars and his arrangements for a more complete organization of the affairs of the nation, belongs undoubtedly to the closing years of David's reign. The mere taking of a census, as a measure that would facilitate the general organization of the kingdom, could not in itself be a sinful act, by which David brought guilt upon himself, or upon the nation, before God. Nevertheless it is not only represented in ver. 1 as a manifestation of the wrath of God against Israel, but in ver. 3 Joab seeks to dissuade the king from it as being a wrong thing; and in ver. 10 David himself admits that it was a grievous sin against God, and as a sin it is punished by the Lord (vers. 12 sqq.). In what, then, did David's sin consist? Certainly not in the fact that, when taking the census, "he neglected to demand the atonement money, which was to be raised, according to Ex. xxx. 12 sqq., from all who were numbered, because the numbering of the people was regarded in itself as an undertaking by which the anger of God might easily be excited," as Josephus and Bertheau maintain; for the Mosaic instructions concerning the atonement money had reference to the incorporation of the people into the army of
Jehovah (see at Ex. xxx. 13, 14), and therefore did not come into consideration at all in connection with the census appointed by David as a purely political measure. Nor can we imagine that David's sin consisted merely in the fact that he u entered upon the whole affair from pride and vain boasting," or that u he commanded the census from vanity, inasmuch as he wanted to have it distinctly set before his own eyes how strong and mighty he was" (Buddeus, Hengstenberg, and others);
for although pride and vanity had something to do with it, as the words of Joab especially seem to indicate, David was far too great a man to allow us to attribute to him a childish decs light in the mere number of souls in his kingdom. The census had certainly a higher purpose than this. It is very evident from 1 Chron. xxvii. 23, 24, where it is mentioned again that it was connected with the military organization of the people, and probably was to be the completion of it. David wanted to know the number of his subjects, not that he might be able to boast of their multitude, nor that he might be able to impose all kinds of taxes upon every town and village according to their houses and inhabitants, as Ewald maintains; but that he might be fully acquainted with its defensive power, though we can neither attribute to him the definite purpose " of transforming the theocratic sacred state into a conquering world-state" (Kurtz), nor assume that through this numbering the whole nation was to be enrolled for military service, and that thirst for conquest was the motive for the undertaking. The true kernel of David's sin was to be found, no doubt, in self-exaltation, inasmuch as he sought for the strength and glory of his kingdom in the number of the people and their readiness for war. This sin was punished. " Because David was about to boast proudly and to glory in the number of his people, God determined to punish him by reducing their number either by famine, war, or pestilence" (Seb. Schmidt). At the same time, the people themselves had sinned grievously against God and their king, through the two rebellions headed by Absalom and Sheba.