s, who
had so much of terror that they must awake their Master, but so much of
trust that His awaking was enough. He pleads with God, as in former
psalms, against his enemies, in words which go far beyond the occasion,
and connect his own deliverance with the judgments of God over the whole
earth. He plaintively recalls his homelessness and his sorrows in words
which exhibit the characteristic blending of hope and pain, and which
are beautifully in accordance with the date assigned to the psalm. "My
wanderings dost Thou, even Thou, number." He is not alone in these
weary flights from Gibeah to Ramah, from Ramah to Nob, from Nob to Gath,
from Gath he knows not whither. One friend goes with him through them
all. And as the water-skin was a necessary part of a traveller's
equipment, the mention of his wanderings suggests the bold and tender
metaphor of the next clause, "Put my tears in Thy bottle,"--a prayer for
that very remembrance of his sorrows, in the existence of which he
immediately declares his confidence--"Are they not in Thy book?" The
true office of faithful communion with God is to ask for, and to
appropriate, the blessings which in the very act become ours. He knows
that his cry will scatter his foes, for God is for him. And thus once
again he has risen to the height of confidence where for a moment his
feet have been already planted, and again--but this time with even
fuller emphasis, expressed by an amplification which introduces for the
only time in the psalm the mighty covenant name--he breaks into his
triumphant strain--

"In God I praise the Word;
In JEHOVAH I praise the Word:
In God I trust, I do not fear:--
What shall man do to me?"

And from this mood of trustful expectation he does not again decline.
Prayer has brought its chiefest blessing--the peace that passeth
understanding. The foe is lost to sight, the fear conquered conclusively
by faith; the psalm which begins with a plaintive cry, ends in praise
for deliverance, as if it had been already achieved--

"Thou hast delivered my life from death,
(Hast Thou) not (delivered) my feet from falling,
That I may walk before God in the light of the living?"

He already reckons himself safe; his question is not an expression of
doubt, but of assurance; and he sees the purpose of all God's dealings
with him to be that the activities of life may all be conducted in the
happy consciousness of _His_ eye who is at once Guardian and Judg