man that can play well;" lit., do good to play (1 Sam. xvi. 17). Saul's words would impress themselves on David's memory: an undesigned coincidence and proof of genuineness.

The first overt act in Saul's persecution of David was the attempt of the former to kill the latter with a javelin. David dexterously evaded the stroke, and slipped away out of Saul's presence; and the javelin buried itself in the wall. Saul that night sent messengers after his intended victim, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning. But, as Pharaoh's daughter saved Moses, so God raised a deliverer for David in the house of his deadly enemy: the daughter of Saul, Michal, who was now David's wife, warned her husband of her father's design against his life: "If thou save not thy life to-night, to-morrow thou shalt be slain" (1 Sam. xix. 11, etc.). This beginning of his long-continued wanderings to escape from Saul forms the fitting subject of THE FIFTY-NINTH PSALM.

The title intimates the occasion: Altaschith-i.e., destroy not. This maxim, drawn from Deut. ix. 26, “O Lord God, destroy not Thy people and Thine inheritance which Thou hast redeemed," was uppermost in David's heart amidst the persecutions which he endured: it embodies the spirit of the Psalms which it introduces (lvii., lviii., lix., and lxxv.): David could rightly pray to God, Destroy not me and Thy people; for I seek not to destroy my persecutors. In undesigned coincidence with this, the independent history informs us, that, though Saul had twice hurled his javelin to kill David, yet, when Abishai asked David's leave to "smite Saul with the spear to the earth at once," when in his power at Hachilah, David answered, "Destroy him not; for who can stretch forth his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless?" adding words signally prophetical, "The Lord shall smite him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall descend into battle, and perish" (1 Sam. xxvi. 9—11.

The title goes on, "Miktam of David;" i.e., secret revealed to David, namely, God's purpose of delivering him, which calls forth his praises: "When Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him." The Hebrew for "watched" () in

the title of the Psalm is, with undesigned coincidence, the same as in the independent history: "Saul sent to watch him" (1 Sam. xix. II).

,(הצילֵני)

The language of the Psalm itself also corresponds to that attributed to David in the history. As he says, "Deliver me" (), so in I Sam. xvii. 37, "The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, He will deliver me out of the hand of the Philistine." "Defend me," in the Psalm, is literally set me on high (). David uses the same expression in Ps. xx. I.: "The name of the God of Jacob defend thee;" lit., set thee on high. Its derivative, Misgab, "my defence" or "high place," appears in David's language in this Psalm (ver. 9, 17), as it does also in the history (2 Sam. xxii. 3), "Jehovah is my high tower."

The words (ver. 2, 3), "Save me from bloody men-they lie in wait for my soul,-the mighty are gathered against me," point to Saul and the minions whom he had sent to watch for and kill David at Michal's house. The Hebrew for mighty" (D) is the same radically as in ver. 9, “Because of his strength will I wait (literally watch) upon Thee;" and also ver. 16, 17. As Saul's emissaries, according to the title, "watched the house to kill him," so David "watched before God, that God might save him. Because of his enemy Saul's strength, David appeals to God's "strength" (the same Hebrew, ver. 17), and therefore anticipates the song of thanksgiving : "Unto Thee, O my strength, will I sing." There is an elegant play on similar sounds in the Hebrew: "I will wait upon Thee" (ver 9), "I will sing" (ver. 17. Azammeerah, Eshmorah). "Thy power" or "strength" becomes, through prayer, “my strength." As therefore, because of Saul's strength, my "watching" or "waiting" was unto Thee, so, on account of Thy strength" become "mine," my "singing" of praise will be "unto Thee."

How often the ungodly charge the righteous with the very evil of which themselves are guilty! Saul, when about to slay Ahimelech and the priests at Nob, alleged that they conspired with David in rising against him, "to lie in wait" (7):

(1 Sam. xxii. 8, 13. But it was Saul himself and his servants who lay in wait for David: "Lo, they lie in wait (the Hebrew is the same as in the history, Ps. lix. 3, 1) for my soul; not for my transgression, not for my sin." The transgression and the sin which he denies is not sinfulness in general, but the particular transgression against the king, and sin before God, of which Saul accused him. It is the same protestation of innocence, and, with the undesigned coincidence which confirms the genuineness both of the Psalm and the history, in the same words (transgression-sin, v) as he uses in his interview with Saul himself at Engedi: "See the skirt of thy robe in my hand; for in that I cut off the skirt of thy robe, and killed thee not, know that there is neither evil nor transgression in mine hand; and I have not sinned against thee." His "not destroying" (Altaschith) his foe, when in his power, proved the falsity of "men's words ": "David seeketh thy hurt" (1 Sam. xxiv. 9-12; comp. Ps. vii. 3, 4). “If I have done this," viz., the treason which Saul the Benjamite alleges; “If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me;" if I have, as Doeg and the courtiers allege, returned evil for good to one who was so kind to me, as was Saul: nay, on the contrary, "I have delivered" from Abishai and my men, at Engedi and Hachilah, "him that without cause (save jealousy) is mine enemy." It is not I, but he and his abettors, who are the "wicked transgressors," literally, [7] the "wicked men of perfidy," treacherously violating the law of brotherly love and justice: it is they who (as the parallel Psalm, xxv. 3) "transgress (literally, deal treacherously, habogedim) without cause" or provocation (Ps. lix. 5).

The fifty-ninth Psalm is divided into two parts (ver. 1-10, II-17) at the end of the tenth verse. Each part is divided by a 'Selah' into two sections, the former expressing prayer for the overthrow of the wicked and the deliverance of the Psalmist (1-5, 11-13); the latter, confident hope resting on the previous prayer (6—10, 14—17. The same simile (ver. 6 and 14) begins the second strophe of the first division and the second strophe of the second, marking their mutual rela

tion; it is that of dogs, unclean, half-starved, and ravenous, such as, without owner, prowl up and down in Eastern cities, ready to snatch greedily at any offal. It is the same simile which he used in Ps. xxii. 16, 20: "Dogs have compassed me;" "Deliver my darling (soul) from the power of the dog." Here, in Ps. lix. 6, he says of his foes, "They return at evening, they make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city;" i.e., they howl through hunger in the day, seeking food about the city in vain, then returning at evening to the point whence they started, disappointed of their prey. What David expresses as an assertion in ver. 6, he pronounces as their sentence of doom in ver. 14: "At evening let them return, let them make a noise like a dog, and go round about the city, let them wander up and down for meat, and grudge if [rather, stay all the night when (vayalinu ] they have not been satisfied." God makes men's own sin their punishment. (See Jer. ii. 19.) The sin of David's foes was restless thirst for his blood with insatiable cruelty they came tumultuously besieging David's house "at evening," as the independent history (1 Sam. xix. 11) informs us; foiled of their prey, they stayed all night, hoping "in the morning" to slay their victim; but through Michal's instrumentality, under God's providence, David realized his believing anticipation: "I will sing aloud of Thy mercy in the morning" (Ps. lix. 16). The morning of their expected triumph over him proved to be the morning of his thanksgiving for deliverance. How accurately the Psalmist's image of a “dog returning at evening, wandering up and down, not satisfied," and so "staying all the night," depicts prophetically Saul's doom. Threatened by the Philistines in Gilboa (1 Sam. xxviii.), the once brave warrior "was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled." In vain he sought counsel of Jehovah by dreams, by Urim, and by prophecy. He had put away the only friend who had been his champion against the Philistines. He had slain the priests by whom he might have received direction from Jehovah in his distress. Now therefore he must wander up and down, at nightfall,-the same time of day as his emissaries had sought David's life

in Michal's house,-and in disguise seek counsel of another woman, a witch,-one of the very class whom once he had proscribed,—and hear through her his coming death on the morrow, from the same prophet who had at the first pronounced his deposition by Jehovah from the throne. Surely God repays men in kind. The transgressor's "sin finds him out." In hell the restless passions of sinners shall be their never-resting scourges. The flame of cruel lust shall ever burn without a drop of water to quench it. (Rev. xiv. II; Luke xvi. 24). The coincidence of words and facts between the history and the Psalm is so little studied, that no one would at first observe it; yet so real, that no one can doubt it when pointed out. Such a coincidence could never be the work of a forger.

David's prayer was fulfilled to the letter: "For the sin of their mouth (Saul's and his courtiers' charge of treason against David) let them even be taken in their pride, and for lying." Saul's pride could not brook that David's exploits should be praised as above his (1 Sam. xviii.); hence sprang the enmity which proved his ruin.

Saul's fate resembled that of the Jews who persecuted David's antitype, Messiah; hence the language expressing the doom of Saul's family antitypically foreshadows that of apostate Israel: "Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by Thy power; consume them in wrath" (ver. II, 13); i.e., slay not the race, whilst Thou consumest those of them hostile to the Lord's Anointed. Such was the doom of Saul's house. As they gathered themselves against David (ver. 3), so were they "scattered" (1 Sam. xxxi.; 2 Sam. iv., xxi.). Such also was that of the Jewish nation for rejecting Messiah. Whilst the race is preserved as a monument of God's justice now, and of God's mercy hereafter (Rom. xi.), hundreds of thousands have been destroyed from age to age. The survivors are the living witnesses of God's punitive righteousness, like their prototype Cain, “fugitives and vagabonds in earth," bearing the brand of the murder of the Holy One whithersoever they go (Ps. cix. 10, 15). With