forth His power, and
exalt His name by delivering His servant. What lofty conviction that his
cause was God's cause, that the Divine honour was concerned in his
safety, that he was a chosen instrument to make known God's praise over
all the world!--and what self-forgetfulness in that, even whilst he
prays for his own deliverance, he thinks of it rather as the magnifying
of God, than as it affects himself personally!

The second part continues the closing strain of the former, and
describes the plots of his foes in the familiar metaphor of the pit,
into which they fall themselves. The contemplation of this divine
Nemesis on evil-doers leads up to the grand burst of thanksgiving with
which the psalm closes--

(7) Fixed is my heart, O God! fixed my heart!
I will sing and strike the harp.[K]

(8) Awake, my glory! awake psaltery and harp![L]
I will awake the dawn.

[K] Properly, "sing with a musical accompaniment."

[L] Two kinds of stringed instrument, the difference between which is
very obscure.

If the former part may be regarded as the evening song of confidence,
this is the morning hymn of thankfulness. He lay down in peace among
lions; he awakes to praise. He calls upon his soul to shake off slumber;
he invokes the chords of his harp to arouse from its chamber the
sleeping dawn. Like a mightier than himself, he will rise a great while
before day, and the clear notes of the rude lyre, his companion in all
his wanderings, will summon the morning to add its silent speech to His
praise. But a still loftier thought inspires him. This hunted solitary
not only knows that his deliverance is certain, but he has already the
consciousness of a world-wide vocation, and anticipates that the story
of his sorrow and his trust, with the music of his psalms, belong to the
world, and will flow over the barriers of his own generation and of his
own land into the whole earth--

(9) I will praise Thee among the peoples, O Lord,
I will strike the harp to Thee among the nations.

(10) For great unto the heavens is Thy mercy,
And to the clouds Thy truth.

These two mighty messengers of God, whose coming he was sure of (ver.
3), will show themselves in his deliverance, boundless and filling all
the creation. They shall be the theme of his world-wide praise. And
then with the repetition of the refrain the psalm comes round again to
supplication, and dies into silent waiting before God till He sha