ne eyes;
nevertheless Thou heardest the voice of my supplication" (ver. 22). And
rising, as was ever his manner, from his own individual experience to
the great truths concerning God's care of His children, the discovery of
which was to him even more precious than his personal safety, he breaks
forth in jubilant invocation, which, as always, is full of his
consciousness that his life and his story belong to the whole household
of God--

(23) O love Jehovah, all ye beloved of Him!
The faithful doth Jehovah preserve,
And plentifully repayeth the proud-doer.

(24) Courage! and let your heart be strong,
All ye that wait for Jehovah!

[M] Confusion (Perowne), distrust (Delitzsch), anguish (Ewald),
trepidation (Calvin). The word literally means to sway backwards and
forwards, and hence to be agitated by any emotion, principally by fear;
and then, perhaps, to flee in terror.

The glow of personal attachment to Jehovah which kindles in the trustful
words is eminently characteristic. It anticipates the final teaching of
the New Testament in bringing all the relations between God and the
devout soul down to the one bond of love. "We love Him because He first
loved us," says John. And David has the same discernment that the basis
of all must be the outgoing of love from the heart of God, and that the
only response which that seeking love requires is the awaking of the
echo of its own Divine voice in our hearts. Love begets love; love seeks
love; love rests in love. Our faith _corresponds_ to His faithfulness,
our obedience to His command, our reverence to His majesty; but our love
_resembles_ His, from which it draws its life. So the one exhortation is
"love the Lord," and the ground of it lies in that name--"His
beloved"--those to whom He shows His loving-kindness (ver. 21).

The closing words remind us of the last verse of psalm xxvii. They are
distinctly quoted from it, with the variation that there the heartening
to courage was addressed to his own soul, and here to "all who wait on
the Lord." The resemblance confirms the reference of both psalms to the
same epoch, while the difference suits the change in his circumstances
from a period of comparative danger, such as his stay at Adullam, to one
of greater security, like his residence in Ziklag. The same persons who
were called to love the Lord because they were participant of His
loving-kindness, are now called to courage and manly firmness of so