Psalm 21:7 注釈

As the foregoing psalm was a prayer for the king that God would protect and prosper him, so this is a thanksgiving for the success God had blessed him with. Those whom we have prayed for we ought to give thanks for, and particularly for kings, in whose prosperity we share. They are here taught, I. To congratulate him on his victories, and the honour he had achieved (Psa 21:1-6). II. To confide in the power of God for the completing of the ruin of the enemies of his kingdom (Psa 21:7-13). In this there is an eye to Messiah the Prince, and the glory of his kingdom; for to him divers passages in this psalm are more applicable than to David himself. To the chief musician. A psalm of David.

The psalmist, having taught his people to look back with joy and praise on what God had done for him and them, here teaches them to look forward with faith, and hope, and prayer, upon what God would further do for them: The king rejoices in God (Psa 21:1), and therefore we will be thankful; the king trusteth in God (Psa 21:7), therefore will we be encouraged. The joy and confidence of Christ our King is the ground of all our joy and confidence. I. They are confident of the stability of David's kingdom. Through the mercy of the Most High, and not through his own merit or strength, he shall not be moved. His prosperous state shall not be disturbed; his faith and hope in God, which are the stay of his spirit, shall not be shaken. The mercy of the Most High (the divine goodness, power, and dominion) is enough to secure our happiness, and therefore our trust in that mercy should be enough to silence all our fears. God being at Christ's right hand in his sufferings (Psa 16:8) and he being at God's right hand in his glory, we may be sure he shall not, he cannot, be moved, but continues ever. II. They are confident of the destruction of all the impenitent implacable enemies of David's kingdom. The success with which God had blessed David's arms hitherto was an earnest of the rest which God would give him from all his enemies round about, and a type of the total overthrow of all Christ's enemies who would not have him to reign over them. Observe, 1. The description of his enemies. They are such as hate him, Psa 21:8. They hated David because God had set him apart for himself, hated Christ because they hated the light; but both were hated without any just cause, and in both God was hated, Joh 15:23, Joh 15:25. 2. The designs of his enemies (Psa 21:11): They intended evil against thee, and imagined a mischievous device; they pretended to fight against David only, but their enmity was against God himself. Those that aimed to un-king David aimed, in effect, to un-God Jehovah. What is devised and designed against religion, and against the instruments God raises up to support and advance it, is very evil and mischievous, and God takes it as devised and designed against himself and will so reckon for it. (3.) The disappointment of them: "They devise what they are not able to perform," Psa 21:11. Their malice is impotent, and they imagine a vain thing, Psa 2:1. (4.) The discovery of them (Psa 21:8): "Thy hand shall find them out. Though ever so artfully disguised by the pretences and professions of friendship, though mingled with the faithful subjects of this kingdom and hardly to be distinguished from them, though flying from justice and absconding in their close places, yet thy hand shall find them out wherever they are." There is no escaping God's avenging eye, no going out of the reach of his hand; rocks and mountains will be no better shelter at last than fig-leaves were at first. (5.) The destruction of them; it will be an utter destruction (Luk 19:27); they shall be swallowed up and devoured, Psa 21:9. Hell, the portion of all Christ's enemies, is the complete misery both of body and soul. Their fruit and their seed shall be destroyed, Psa 21:10. The enemies of God's kingdom, in every age, shall fall under the same doom, and the whole generation of them will at last be rooted out, and all opposing rule, principality, and power, shall be put down. The arrows of God's wrath shall confound them and put them to flight, being levelled at the face of them, Psa 21:12. That will be the lot of daring enemies that face God. The fire of God's wrath will consume them (Psa 21:9); they shall not only be cast into a furnace of fire (Mat 13:42), but he shall make them themselves as a fiery oven or furnace; they shall be their own tormentors; the reflections and terrors of their own consciences will be their hell. Those that might have had Christ to rule and save them, but rejected him and fought against him, shall find that even the remembrance of that will be enough to make them, to eternity, a fiery oven to themselves: it is the worm that dies not. III. In this confidence they beg of God that he would still appear for his anointed (Psa 21:13), that he would act for him in his own strength, by the immediate operations of his power as Lord of hosts and Father of spirits, making little use of means and instruments. And, 1. Hereby he would exalt himself and glorify his own name. "We have but little strength, and are not so active for thee as we should be, which is our shame; Lord, take the work into thy own hands, do it, without us, and it will be thy glory." 2. Hereupon they would exalt him: "So will we sing, and praise thy power, the more triumphantly." The less God has of our service when a deliverance is in the working the more he must have of our praises when it is wrought without us.

INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 21 To the chief Musician, a Psalm of David. This psalm was either written by David; and therefore called a "psalm of David"; or it was written, as it may be rendered, "for David", by some other person, on account of his victories and triumphs; or rather "concerning David" (s); that is, concerning the Messiah, the son of David, as Kimchi says some expound it; or concerning the Messiah, who is called David, Eze 37:24; and Jarchi observes, that their Rabbins interpret it of the Messiah; but, says he, it is right to explain it, moreover, of David himself, for an answer to the heretics (Christians) who err in it; and various passages in this psalm are by the Jewish writers understood of the Messiah; as "the King", in Psa 20:1 is in the Targum called the King Messiah; Psa 21:4 is in the Talmud applied (t) to him; Psa 21:3 are in Zohar (u), and in the Midrashes (w), interpreted of him; and many Christian writers understand the whole of him; which is right: though Theodoret thinks it was penned on the account of the health of King Hezekiah, and his restoration from his disease; which is not likely. (s) "pro Davide, vel de Davide", Vatablus. (t) T. Bab. Succah, fol. 52. 1. Vid. Nachman. disput. "cum fratre Paulo", p. 36. Ed. Wagenseil. (u) In Numb. fol. 68. 3. 4. (w) Midrash Tillim apud Viccars. in loc. & in Galatin. l. 3. c. 9. Bemidbar Rabba, fol. 212. 4. & 218. 1.

For the King trusteth in the Lord,.... That is, the King Messiah, as the Targum paraphrases it; he trusted in the Lord for his support and sustenance as man, for assistance and help in his time of trouble, and for deliverance out of it; he trusted in the Lord that he would hear him for himself, and for his people; and that he would glorify him with all glory, honour, majesty, and blessedness, before spoken of; see Psa 22:8; and through the mercy of the most High he shall not be moved; God the Father is the most High; Christ is called the Son of the Highest, and the Spirit the power of the Highest, Luk 1:32; there is mercy with him, which is a ground of hope and trust, in his people, and also in the Messiah; see Psa 89:28; and some versions make the mercy of the most High to be what the King Messiah trusts in, reading the words (b), "for the King trusteth in the Lord, and in the mercy of the most High"; but the accent "athnach", which distinguishes the propositions, will not admit of it; but the sense is, that because of the mercy, grace, goodness, and faithfulness of God in making and keeping his promises, Christ would not be and was not moved from his trust and confidence in the Lord; nor shall he even be removed from his throne of glory on which he sits; nor from the glorious and happy state in which he is: nor will it ever be in the power of his enemies to displace him; for these in time will be destroyed by him, as the following words show. (b) So Genebrard, Muis,

"For the King hopes in the Lord." For the King is not proud, but humble in heart, he hopes in the Lord. "And in the mercy of the Most Highest He shall not be moved" [Psalm 21:7]. And in the mercy of the Most Highest His obedience even unto the death of the Cross shall not disturb His humility.

For that reason you placed glory and great honor on him, and you gave him eternal blessing, because he hoped in the Lord and in his mercy he was not deeply disturbed.

"For." Above the Psalmist announced the exaltation of Christ the king; here he declares the merit of this: and this merit is that Christ, insofar as he is man, and every just person, places his hope in God alone: Jer. 17: "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and the Lord shall be his confidence." And therefore, because he hoped in the Lord, "he shall not be moved": Ps. 124: "Those who trust in the Lord," etc. Because hope in God is a firm foundation: 1 Mac. 2: "All who hope in him shall not be weakened." Therefore this is compared to an anchor. But it should be noted that there are three things that ought to move us to hope in the Lord. First, divine providence. A man does not usually hope in those to whom his care does not pertain. But our care pertains to God; therefore he says "he hopes in the Lord," whose task it is to govern. Second is mercy: Lk. 1: "His mercy is from generation to generation." Third is power; and therefore he says "of the Most High": Ps. 90: "He who dwells in the aid of the Most High."

The pious are led by the Psalmist to celebrate God's favor to the king in the already conferred and in prospective victories. The doxology added may relate to both Psalms; the preceding of petition, chiefly this of thanksgiving, ascribing honor to God for His display of grace and power to His Church in all ages, not only under David, but also under his last greatest successor, "the King of the Jews." (Psa 21:1-13) thy strength . . . thy salvation--as supplied by Thee.

The mediate cause is the king's faith, the efficient, God's mercy.

(Heb.: 21:8-9) With this strophe the second half of the Psalm commences. The address to God is now changed into an address to the king; not, however, expressive of the wishes, but of the confident expectation, of the speakers. Hengstenberg rightly regards Psa 21:8 as the transition to the second half; for by its objective utterance concerning the king and God, it separates the language hitherto addressed to God, from the address to the king, which follows. We do not render Psa 21:8: and trusting in the favour of the Most High - he shall not be moved; the mercy is the response of the trust, which (trust) does not suffer him to be moved; on the expression, cf. Pro 10:30. This inference is now expanded in respect to the enemies who desire to cause him to totter and fall. So far from any tottering, he, on the contrary, makes a victorious assault upon his foes. If the words had been addressed to Jahve, it ought, in order to keep up the connection between Psa 21:9 and Psa 21:8, at least to have been איביו and שׁנאיו (his, i.e., the king's, enemies). What the people now hope on behalf of their king, they here express beforehand in the form of a prophecy. מצא ל (as in Isa 10:10) and מצא seq. acc. (as in Sa1 23:17) are distinguished as: to reach towards, or up to anything, and to reach anything, attain it. Supposing ל to represent the accusative, as e.g., in Psa 69:6, Psa 21:9 would be a useless repetition.