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The shield, and the sword, and the battle.

4 Thou art more glorious and excellent, O Zion, Than the mountains of prey.

5 The stout-hearted are spoiled;

They sank into sleep;

And none of the men of might have found their hands. 6 At thy rebuke, O God of Jacob,

Both the rider and horse are cast into the sleep of death.

7 Thou, even thou art to be feared;

And who may stand in thy sight when thou art

angry

?

8 Thou didst cause judgment to be heard from heaven; The earth feared and was still,

9 When God arose to judgment,

To save the oppressed of the earth.

10 Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee; The remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.

11

Vow, and pay unto the Lord your

God.

Ver. 4. "Thou art more glorious," &c. This resembles the sentiment of Isaiah ii. 2: "And it shall come to pass, in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of [above-N.] the mountains," &c. These coincidences have led some critics to suppose that these two psalms were written by Isaiah. "The mountains of prey," i. e. the mountains occupied by their enemies. Zion was the place where God dwells; the other mountains were the abode of wild beasts. A. C.

Ver. 6. From 2 Kings xix. 35 we learn that the destruction of Sennacherib's army occurred in the night, and when the survivors woke, in the morning, they saw on all sides the dying and the dead.

Let all that be round about him bring presents unto

him that ought to be feared;

12 Who casteth down the spirit of princes; Who is terrible to the kings of the earth.

PSALM CXVI.

HEZEKIAH'S SICKNESS AND RECOVERY.

THE story of Hezekiah's sickness and recovery is told in Isaiah xxxviii.

There are several coincidences between this psalm and the prayer of Hezekiah, as related by Isaiah. The narrative form, "I said," "I found," &c., is similar in both; the ninth verse of the psalm is the reverse of the eleventh of the prayer, the one being uttered after recovery, and the other during the sickness.

PSALM CXVI.

1 I LOVE the Lord, because he hath heard my voice, And my supplications;

2 Because he hath inclined his ear unto me;

Therefore will I call upon him as long as I live. 3 The snares of death compassed me,

And the pains of the

grave seized upon me;

I found trouble and sorrow.

4 Then called I upon the name of the Lord:

"O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver me!"

5 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;

Yea, our God is merciful.

6 The Lord preserveth the simple;

I was brought low, and he helped me. 7 Return unto thy rest, O my soul !

For the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. 8 For thou hast delivered my soul from death,

Mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. 9 I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living. 10 I believed, although I said,

"I am greatly afflicted."

11 I said in my haste, "All men are liars."

12

What shall I render unto the Lord, For all his benefits towards me? 13 I will take the cup of salvation, And call upon the name of the Lord. 14 I will pay my vows unto the Lord, Now in the presence of all his people.

15 Precious in the sight of the Lord

Is the life of his pious worshippers.

Ver. 10. "I believed," &c., i. e. I did not cease to place confidence in God."I am greatly afflicted." This is the substance of the first five verses of Hezekiah's prayer in Isaiah.

Ver. 11. "All men are liars," i. e. disappoint the hopes that are placed in them. All reliance on human aid is vain. N.

Ver. 15. "Precious in the sight of the Lord," &c. In the common version follows, "is the death of his saints"; i. e. God counts the death of his people too costly to be lightly or gratuitously suffered. In this interpretation of the verse, both Professors Noyes and Alexander agree. The former substitutes the word "life" in his version, as better adapted to convey the meaning of the passage.

16 O Lord, truly I am thy servant;

I am thy servant, and the son of thy handmaid;
Thou hast loosed my bonds.

17 I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
And will call upon the name of the Lord.
18 I will pay my vows unto the Lord,
Now in the presence of all his people;
19 In the courts of the Lord's house,
In the midst of thee, O Jerusalem!
Praise
ye the Lord!

PSALM LXIX.

PERSECUTION AND IMPRISONMENT OF JEREMIAH.

ABOUT one hundred years after the deliverance of Judah from Sennacherib's army, the Chaldeans, under Nebuchadnezzar, invaded the country, took Jerusalem, stripped the temple of its treasures, and carried the king and many of the chief people into captivity. Eleven years after this, Zedekiah, the king, drew on himself another invasion; and at this time the prophet Jeremiah, foreseeing the ruin that would follow a hopeless resistance, recommended submission. This led his enemies to impeach his patriotism; and he had many enemies among the rich and powerful, one cause of which

Ver. 16. "The son of thy handmaid," i. e. thy servant or slave, as in the parallel line. The children of a female slave belonged of right to her master. N.

we learn from the thirty-fourth chapter of his prophecy, ver. 8 and foll., as follows.

The law of Moses commanded that all Hebrew slaves should go free after six years' service; but the masters had evaded the merciful provision of the law, and held their slaves in permanent bondage. The earnest rebukes of Jeremiah, and the approach of the Chaldean army, had induced them to comply with the law, and let their slaves go free. But when the army of the invaders was withdrawn for a time, under an alarm that the Egyptians were advancing against them, the masters, thinking all danger from the enemy over, reduced their freed-men to servitude again (Jer. xxxiv. 11). Jeremiah remonstrating, he was cast into a loathsome dungeon, the floor of which was wet earth, affording no resting-place for his body, nor firm standing for his feet. See Jer. xxxviii. To this circumstance he seems to allude in ver. 2 and 14 of the Psalm.

The easy conquest of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans may be accounted for, in part, by the fact that the poorer part of the people were in a state of slavery, and, having nothing of their own to defend, cared little about repelling the enemy; feeling that it was to them only a question of a change of masters. In fact, they were better off after the capture of the city, for we read (Jer. xxxix. 10), that "Nebuzaradan left of the poor of the people, which had nothing, in the land of Judah, and gave them vineyards and fields."

There are passages in this psalm, as in Jeremiah's prophecy, of vindictive imprecation against his enemies. We are not called upon to justify these, but must re

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