The Prophet Aspireth After the Temple and Altar of God
Explanation of the Psalm
1 David, severely pressed by Saul, or tempted by demons, and having no human succor to fall back upon, appeals to God as a judge: “Judge me, O God,” for I have no one else to seek justice of but of you; “and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy;” and take cognizance of the charge brought against me by an unholy people. The Hebrew and the Greek imply, that he asks God not only to judge him, but to pronounce in his favor; and he further asks, “Deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man;” so judge my cause, that you will thereby deliver me from such men.
2 This verse is almost the same as the ninth verse of the last chapter. The meaning is, as you, “O my God, art my strength,” and in you alone I trust, why do you seem “to have cast me off;” and I, thus cast off, “go sorrowful,” “whilst the enemy afflicteth me?” a friendly mode of expostulation, arising from his thorough confidence in God, in which he complains of God’s allowing him to be so punished as if he had “cast him off” entirely.
3 This verse proves what a spiritual man was David, and that he was more concerned for his delivery from mortal sin and the loss of eternal life, than from any temporal troubles. For he says, “Send forth thy light and thy truth;” grant me the light of thy grace and thy mercy, thy truth, and thy faithfulness, “for they will conduct me” in my perilous pilgrimage, and “bring me unto thy holy hill,” the heavenly Jerusalem, “and into thy tabernacles,” into thine own house, where there are “many mansions” and many tabernacles for thy elect.
4 He tells us what he will do when he gets to the “holy hill,” just what all the others in possession of God’s house are doing, offering God their sacrifice of praise, as David says in Psalm 83, “Blessed are they that dwell in thy house, O Lord, they will praise thee forever and ever.” “I will go in to the altar of God” to offer up the sacrifice of praise; for the moment any one enters that house he becomes a priest, as we can infer from Apoc. 5, “Thou has made us to our God a kingdom and priests.” And I will not only go to thy altar, but I will go in to “God himself;’ I will appear before him as if I were brought into his most private apartment; “to God who giveth joy to my youth,” to the youth just acquired by me. For in heaven “our youth, like that of the eagle, shall be renewed;” and the Apostle says, Ephes. 4, “Till we all meet unto a perfect man unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.”
5–6 He tells more clearly what sacrifice he means to offer at the altar of God, when he shall have come into the tabernacle not made by hands, the eternal one in heaven. “I will give praise to thee on the harp;” I will praise thee by acknowledging thy mercies, thy justice, and all thy wonderful works, which praise shall not be confined to my lips, for my harp shall join them. The harp is figuratively introduced as an instrument in recording God’s praises, as in Apoc. 5, “Having each of them harps in their hands,” and in chap. 14, “And the voice I heard was that of harpers playing on their harps.” The remaining part of these has been explained in the latter end of the previous Psalm.