midst of the congregation will I praise Thee," viz., in the assembly of the elect, hereafter completed in number; "My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation," viz:, all Israel when the whole nation shall turn to the Lord (Rom. xi. 26-32; 2 Cor. iii. 16), and when the high ideal of the perfect liturgy described in Ezekiel's closing chapters shall be realized; and then, as the fruit of Israel's restoration, “All the ends of the world shall remember, and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee;" so giving effect to the original promise to Abraham (Gen. xii. 3), "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." (Compare also verse 30, “A seed shall serve Him,” with Isa. liii. 10, "When Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed.")

The imagery in the TWENTY-THIRD PSALM is precisely such as we should expect, presuming that the David of the independent histories (1 and 2 Sam. and I Chron.) is the author of the Psalm. "The Lord is my Shepherd" is the natural expression of one to whom the Lord had said, "I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people Israel" (2 Sam. vii. 1, 8). The time, too, was precisely such as the Psalm (ver. 2, "He leadeth me beside the waters of quietnesses"), probably written long after, presupposes, "when the king sat in his house, and the Lord had given him rest round about from all his enemies." The place also was appropriate to the imagery of the Psalm-Palestine, a rocky and sandy country in part, where the sun dries up the streams, and where the shepherd needs to search out for the sheep "green pastures" and the "still waters" (Hebrew, "the waters of quietnesses"). Moreover, the Hebrew for "leadeth" (, nahal,) expresses gentle and gradual guidance, the gracious Shepherd accommodating Himself to the strength of the sheep on the one hand reminding us of Jacob (Gen. xxxiii. 14), “ I will lead on softly, according as the cattle that goeth before me, and the children, be able to endure;" on the other hand pointing on to Jesus, "A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment unto

victory;" "He spake the word unto them, as they were able to hear it" (Mark iv. 33; compare John xvi. 12, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now").

The night watches of a shepherd suggested the imagery of PSALM VIII. 3, "When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained." It was whilst shepherds kept watch over their flocks by night that the glory of the Lord shone round them, near the same Bethlehem of David, and the angels announced the glad tidings of the birth of the Divine Son of David (Luke ii.).

Preachers have sometimes misapplied verse 4, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," as if it implied that death to the believer is but a shadow without a substance. The truth is, the phrase is a Hebraism for the blackest darkness, "the death-gloom," an image for a position surrounded by perils and deaths. (Compare Ps. xliv. 19.) Such was David's position when hunted by Saul, and at his first stay with Achish. Nor does the Lord's "rod" mean here, as some may think, the rod of affliction; for comfort, not chastening, is what God's child needs in passing through the deathdarkness. The "rod" was used by the owner in counting his sheep, which were therefore said to pass under the rod" (Lev. xxvii. 32; Jer. xxxiii. 13). It was the believing realization of Sonship that sustained Messiah in the hours of blackest darkness, when the Father hid His face because of our sins laid on Him. How many in their season of densest gloom have been "comforted" by Jehovah's assurance that "I know my sheep, and am known of mine," "My sheep shall never perish-none is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand" (John x. 14, 28, 29). The "staff" supports the weak, and wards off hostile. beasts from the sheep. In coincidence with this in the Psalm, David in the history "took his staff in his hand," in going against Goliath (1 Sam. xvii. 37, 40).

In the same passage David alludes to the Lord's having "delivered him out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear," with which fact the language in PSALM XXII.

13, 21, well accords: "They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening roaring lion. Save me from the lion's mouth." The tender care with which he had guarded his father's sheep, and rescued a lamb of the flock out of the lion's mouth, as recorded in the history, naturally suggests the assurance expressed in the Psalm, that the good "Shepherd of Israel" (Gen. xlix. 24) would save him from "fear of evil," and from the lion that seeketh whom he may devour, especially in the believer's season of the blackest darkness.

Another coincidence, evidently undesigned, between Psalm xxiii. and the history, appears in comparing verse 5, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies," with 2 Sam. xvi. 1, 2, 14; xvii. 27-29. David, in fleeing before Absalom, reached Mahanaim. It was the most critical time in that almost successful rebellion. The whole nation, excepting a trusty few, were on Absalom's side; David was never more "weak-handed" (verse 2) "in the presence of his enemies." Ziba had refreshed him and his "weary" people with bread, raisins, summer fruits, and wine, on this side of Jordan, temporarily. If the transjordanic Gileadite chiefs had withheld supplies, " the people, hungry, weary, thirsty, in the wilderness," must have fallen away from him. But "God can furnish a table in the wilderness" (Ps. lxxviii. 19); and He disposed Shobi, probably brother of the very Hanun, king of Ammon, whom he had so lately chastised as an enemy (2 Sam. x. 1, xii. 30), and son of the elder Hanun, David's friend; Machir of Lo-debar, the kindly entertainer of Mephibosheth, and therefore friendly to David, because of David's kindness to the royal cripple (ix. 4); and Barzillai the Gileadite of Rogelim, a highland chief, the friend, probably, of his exile in Saul's time, to provide amply for his wants; so that figuratively "his cup ran over." Therefore he confidently believes "Goodness only" (N)—nothing but goodness—“and mercy shall follow me all the days of my (transitory) life" here; whilst my enemies "follow" me for evil, God "follows" me with good; " and I will dwell" (not as a sojourner as here) "in the house of Jehovah for ever."

Moreover, David's anointing in the midst of his brethren, by the Lord's direct mission (1 Sam. xvi. 13), would make such an indelible impression, that instinctively he would recount it in the Psalm among the Lord's greatest tokens of favour: "Thou anointest my head with oil."

A difficulty has been suggested as to David's reign. Is it not improbable that Israel, in the early part of Saul's reign, should have been so reduced in power by the Philistines, that "there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel? for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears "* (1 Sam. xiii. 19); and yet under David and Solomon the kingdom suddenly rose to a grandeur and extent exceedingly great, and then as suddenly and completely collapsed at the death of the latter. Overshadowed by the mighty world powers, Egypt and Assyria, between which Israel lay, and which so long contested for the supremacy of the East, how could the Holy Land rise at a bound to a position of pre-eminence for fifty years among the mighty ones of the earth? But the analogy of similarly sudden elevations in Eastern history, such as that of Babylon, Media, Persia, and of conquerors, as Timur, Yengis Khan, and Nadir Shah, show that Israel's rise is nothing improbable and unprecedented. Moreover, the monuments of Egypt and Assyria, recently deciphered, remarkably confirm Scripture; for they show that just at the time of David's conquest and Solomon's empire, both Egypt and Assyria were exceptionally weak. After the reign of Rameses III. (1200 B.C.), Egypt ceased its aggressions towards Syria, and remained on the defensive until the accession of Sheshonk, or Shishak, (990 B.C.,) who, as Jeroboam's ally, assailed Rehoboam. Assyria, too, which had extended her empire to the valley

* It is curious that Pliny (xxxiv. 14) writes of Rome under Porsena, king of Clusium, "In federe quod expulsis regibus populo Romano dedit Porsena, nominatim comprehensum invenimus, ne ferro nisi in agriculturâ uterentur." "In the league granted by Porsena to the Roman people after the expulsion of the kings, we find an express condition that they should not use iron save in agriculture."

of the Orontes, and threatened Israel, became an unaggressive power in the Syrian direction till about B.C. 880. As the Rev. G. Rawlinson well says, " For a Jewish empire to arise, it was necessary that Egypt and Assyria should be simultaneously weak. Such simultaneous weakness is found for the hundred and ten years between 1100 B.C. and 990 B.C. And exactly into this interval falls the rise of the Jews to power under Saul and David, and the establishment of their empire under Solomon."

As the twenty-third Psalm antitypically expresses Christ's realization in Paradise of the Father's shepherd-like care, already vouchsafed in the valley of death's darkest gloom, and His anticipation of heaven, so the twenty-fourth Psalm describes His actual ascension thither. The type David's bringing up of the ark to Zion, the seal of the establishment of His kingdom, and the Antitype's ascension to the heavenly mount as "the King of Glory," will, with GOD's help, afford matter for profitable meditation.

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