A Commentary on the Book of Psalms: Psalm 43 — The Church Commemorates Former Favors, and Present Afflictions: Under Which She Prays for Succor
15–16 He now describes the effect of his being so derided and jeered at; it quite confused and confounded him. During the whole of my persecution “my shame was before me;” it was always staring me in the face, and encompassing me all round like a veil, and all this confusion was caused by “the voice of him that reproacheth and detracteth me;” by those who called me a fool for worshipping one that had been crucified; and an impious person for not worshipping the gods; falsely reproaching me with infanticide, incest, and similar crimes; and he explains who these were that so charged him when he adds, “at the face of the enemy and the persecutor,” all done by his enemies. Such confusion and shame, however, would not appear to apply to the holy martyrs, when it is written, “he that shall be ashamed of me, the Son of man will be ashamed of him when he shall come in his majesty and that of his Father,” Luke 9; and again, “He that shall acknowledge me before men, the Son of man will acknowledge him when he shall come with his holy Angels in the glory of his father.” The Lord does not prohibit shame and confusion when it does not prevent the acknowledgment of, or adherence to the truth. He censures those only who are so overcome by shame as not only not to acknowledge Christ, but even to deny him; and the following verse proves that it is not of such persons he speaks here.
17 Having related the favors of the Almighty to the fathers of old, and his desertion and abandonment of them in latter times, the prophet, speaking in their person, asserts that their sins cannot be alleged as a cause for treatment so different, and says, “All these things have come upon us,” we have suffered all these persecutions and troubles; and, however, “we have not forgotten thee,” we have not forsaken you to worship other gods. The term, “forgetting God,” is not infrequently applied to idolatry in the Scripture, as in Psalm 105, “They changed their glory into the likeness of a calf that eateth grass. They forgot God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt;” and in Deuteronomy 32, “They sacrificed to devils and not to God. Thou hast forsaken the God that begot thee, and hast forgotten, the Lord that created thee;” and in this very Psalm, “if we have forgotten the name of our God, and if we have spread forth our hands to a strange god.” They then insist that they did not worship any other god; and, therefore, they say, “We have not forgotten thee, and we have not done wickedly in thy Covenant;” that is to say, we have not only not acknowledged other gods in forgetfulness of you, but we have not even “done wickedly in thy covenant,” the covenant you struck with us for our observance on Mount Sinai. And thus they protest that they neither deserted God, nor transgressed his law.
18 They repeat the same, in different terms, to establish their innocence more fully; for they say, when we did go with you we did so cordially, we neither turned back nor deserted you.
19 The latter part of this verse should be read first, thus, “The shadow of death hath covered us, for thou hast humbled us in the place of affliction,” which means that we have been immersed in the depth of miseries.
20–21 They now prove, by the testimony of God himself, that they did not forget him, as they already stated; for they say, “If we have forgotten the name of our God, and if we have spread forth our hands to a strange god,” that is, to pray to him, “shall not God search out these things?” Most certainly he will, and find out all, “for he knoweth the secrets of the heart.” He will certainly find out that we did not forget his name, “because for thy sake we are killed all the day long.” They conclude by asking God to put an end to the persecution, because they are daily put to death and tormented by reason of their adherence to him; “We are counted as sheep for the slaughter,” butchered every day like so many sheep, who are incapable of offering any resistance.
22 While your business is thus being done, and your servants are suffering so much in doing it, why are you silent, as if you were asleep, and were not cognizant of it? “Arise from sleep;” act as they do who rise from their sleep, and begin to see what they did not see before; “arise” to help us, “and cast us not off” from your favor “to the end,” to the consummation, until, through your assistance, there shall be an end to the persecution. St. Paul alludes to this passage in Rom. 8, where he says, “Who then shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation? or distress? or famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecutions? or the sword? As it is written: For thy sake we are put to death; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
23 He goes on with the same prayer, using two other metaphors. He drew one from sheep in the preceding verse, and now he takes one from the aversion of God’s face; and the other from his forgetfulness; neither of which can, properly, be applied to God. God, however, is said to turn away his face, as if he did not see our wretchedness, when he does not help us; and he is also said to forget when he does not succor the needy and the troubled, as if he altogether forgot them.
24 Continuing the same prayer, and knowing that the prayer of the humble is most grateful to God, he now says, that he has humbled himself to such a degree, that he can humble himself no more. He who prays while he stands, can humble himself by kneeling; and he who prays in that position, can humble himself still more by prostration; but when once so humbled, he can go no further. Now, one can be humbled in mind and body even to the earth: in mind, if he truly reflect, and understand, and acknowledge that he is mere dust, in the language of Abraham, who said, “I will speak to my Lord, I, who am but dust and ashes:” in his body, if he prays prostrate on the earth, as Matthew and Mark relate of our Lord. If Luke says he prayed on that occasion, on his knees, it only shows that he began the prayer on his knees, and concluded it in a prostrate position. The petitioners here pray in both positions, for they say, “For our soul is humbled down to the dust; our belly cleaveth to the earth.” Acknowledging ourselves to be dust, our bellies in prostration have adhered to the earth, while he prayed in that position.
25 He now adds the last and most efficacious reason for moving God to deal mercifully with his people; and that is, to save his name from further blasphemy. “Arise, and help us,” in this our trouble; “and redeem us;” that is, deliver us, “for thy name’s sake;” that it may no longer be blasphemed, but glorified; and, as “thou hast sold thy people for no price,” redeem them now without any price; not for our deserts, but “for thy name’s sake;” through your mercy and kindness. For the better understanding of this, we will now discuss a few points that naturally present themselves to the reader.
The first is, how it happens that the speakers in this Psalm complain of being punished, without having in anywise offended; while other saints generally attribute their persecutions to their own sins. Daniel, for instance, speaking of the captivity in Babylon, says: “We have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, and have revolted; and we have gone aside from thy commandments and thy judgments.” And the three holy children thrown into the fiery furnace, from which they were miraculously delivered by God, confess to him as follows: “For thou hast executed true judgments in all the things that thou hast brought upon us and upon Jerusalem the holy city; for we have sinned, and committed iniquity, departing from thee; and we have trespassed in all things.” Such also is the language of the Machabees: “For we suffer thus for our sins.” The answer is, that God suffers his people to be persecuted by reason of their sins; but the inspired writers and speakers use different language, and different forms of speech. Sometimes they assume the person of the more infirm members, (“for we are one body, and members one of another,”) and charge themselves with the sins of their brethren, just as the tongue would charge itself for sins committed by the other members. Sometimes they speak in the person of the saints and of the perfect, who suffer grievously in the common persecution caused by the sins of others. Thus the Scriptures do not contradict each other, for Daniel and the Machabees spoke in the person of the infirm members; the persons speaking in this Psalm do it in their own proper, holy, and sanctified persons.
The second question. When God persecutes the wicked, why does he punish the innocent along with them? The answer is: when the innocent so suffer, they are not persecuted, but tried; and God wishes, by a severe trial, as if by “the fire of the fining pot,” or “the fan of the floor,”
so to purge his Church, and to make it appear who are the true, who are the false believers, who the gold, who the brass, who the grain, who the chaff; as the Apostle says, Rom. 5, “Patience worketh trial;” and in Wisdom 3, we read, “God hath tried them, and found them worthy of himself; as gold in the furnace he hath proved them.”
Question the third. Why, then, do the saints complain of persecution, and pray for a speedy termination of it? We are ordered to endure tribulation, not to love it; and nobody loves what he is merely bound to tolerate, though he may love the act of toleration; for though he may rejoice in the toleration of any thing, he would prefer not being called upon to tolerate it. With that, persecutions and temptations are dangerous, and the victory over them being uncertain, the saints must not be too confident, or rely too much on their own strength.
A fourth question. Why does God sometimes pour down so many favors on his people, and enable them to master their enemies; and at other times deprive them of all such favors, and allow them to be subdued and conquered by their enemies? To let all see that the gifts of Providence come from himself alone, and not from the evil spirits, or by chance. He, then, gives these gifts to his friends when he deems it expedient; but, for fear they may cling to or adhere to them, and take up with a stable for a house, with an exile for their country, he often takes them from them, as we have explained at length in the beginning of Psalm 41.