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Ver. 6. I am weary with my groaning] I have laboured therein even unto lassitude. There must be some proportion between our sin and our sorrow. A storm of sighs, at least, if not a shower of tears; some sorrow is above tears, some constitutions are dry and will not yield tears, and in such case dry sorrow may be as available as wet. She that touched the hem of Christ’s garment only was as welcome to him as Thomas, who put his fingers into the print of the nails. All the night make I my bed to swim] So one hour’s sin brought many nights’ pain. Did we but forethink what sin will cost us we dare not but be innocent. Transit voluptas, manet dolor. Nocet empta dolore voluptas, Desire passes, grief remains. Desire hurts with empty grief. But today, saith a reverend writer (Bishop Pilkinton on Nehemiah 1:4), weep a man may not, for disfiguring his face; fasting is thought hypocrisy and shame; and when his paunch is full, then, as priests with their drunken nowls said matins, and belched out, Eructavit cor meum verbum, with good devotion as they thought; so he blusters out a few blustering words, and thinks it repentance sufficient, &c. Another descants thus upon the text. As in Sicilia there is fons solis, the fountain of the sun, out of which at midday, when the sun is nearest, floweth cold water; at midnight, when the sun is farther off, floweth hot water: so the patriarch David’s head is full of water, and his eyes a fountain of tears, who, when he enjoyed his health as the warm sunshine, was cold in confessing his sins; but being now visited with sickness, his reins chastising him in the night season, he is so sore troubled, and withal so hot, and so fervent, that every night he washeth his bed, and watereth, nay, even melteth, his conch with tears, &c. A third makes this good note upon these words: The place of David’s sin, his bed, is the place of his repentance, and so it should be; yea, when we behold the place where we have offended we should be pricked in heart, and there again crave his pardon. As Adam sinned in the garden, and Christ sweat bloody tears in the garden. Sanctify by tears every place which we have polluted by sin; and let us seek Christ Jesus in our bed, with the spouse in the Canticles, who saith, In my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loved, Song of Solomon 3:1. I water my couch with my tears] By couch some understand that whereon David lay in the day time for ease and refreshing, the same perhaps which David arose off when he beheld Bathsheba washing herself; where began his misery, 2 Samuel 11:2. Others take it for his pallet, his under bed, which he also watered by the abundance of his penitent tears. Ainsworth rendered it, I water or melt my bedstead. These are all excessive figurative speeches, to set forth the greatness of his grief and the multitude of his tears. Weeping becomes not a king, saith Euripides. But King David was of another mind, and so was he who said, Faciles motus mens generosa capit (Ovid). Tears, instead of gems, were the ornaments of David’s bed, saith Chrysostom.
Ver. 7. Mine eye is consumed] Heb. gnawn, moth eaten. That eye of his that had looked and lusted after his neighbour’s wife is now dimmed and darkened with grief and indignation, he had wept himself almost blind; as it is stated of Faustus, the son of King Vortigern by his own daughter, that he wept himself stark blind for the abominable incest of his parents (Prideaux’s Introduct. to Hist. p. 289). It waxeth old] Or, Is sunk in my head. Doth not do its office, but is become like an old dusty window that lets in little light. A heavy affliction to those whose eyes have been loop holes of lust and windows of wickedness, the remembrance whereof is a thorn to their blind eyes, and puts them to grievous pain, especially when their enemies shall have got it by the end, as David’s had his ill pranks, and spared not to lay it in his dish.
Ver. 8. Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity] What a strange change is here all of a sudden! Well might Luther say, Oratio est hirudo animae, Prayer is the leech of the soul, that sucks out the venom and swelling thereof. Prayer, saith another, is an exorcist with God, and an exorcist against sin and misery. The prophet Isaiah calleth it a charm, Isaiah 26:16, because it lays our soul distempers, and, like David’s harp, drives away the evil spirit that is upon us. Pray, therefore, when out of order, though not so fit to pray; fall upon the duty, by David’s example here, and that will further fit thee for the duty. Thy leaden lumpish heart, cast into this holy fire, will heat and melt. Quoties me oratio, quem pene desperantem susceperat, reddidit exultantem et praesumentem de venia? saith Bernard: How oft hath prayer found me despairing almost, but left me triumphing and well assured of pardon! The same in effect saith David here, “Depart from me,” &c. What a word is that to his insulting enemies, Avoid, come out, vanish! These be words used to devils and dogs, but good enough for a Doeg or a Shimei. And the Son of David shall say the same to his enemies when he comes to judgment. For the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping] Tears then have a voice (as well as blood hath), and God hath an ear for them. And as music upon the waters soundeth farther and more harmoniously than upon the land, so do prayers joined with tears: Portae lachrymarum ne sint clausae, let not the wounds of godly sorrow be ever so healed up in us but that they may bleed afresh upon every just occasion (R. Obad. Gaon in Psalms 6).
Ver. 9. The Lord hath heard my supplication] And thereby sealed up sweetest love to my soul; as Ahasuerus afterwards did to his Esther, by granting her request. But how knew David, and how doth many another man in like sort know that God hath heard his prayer, though as yet no visible return appeareth? I answer, This he may know, 1. By a cast of God’s pleased countenance. 2. By the testimony of his own conscience, Philippians 4:6,7, and by the assurance of faith, which saith to a man, as the angel once did to Cornelius, Thy prayers are heard and answered. Of Luther we read, that having been once wrestling hard with God by prayer for the prosperous proceeding of the Reformation in Germany, about which there was a general meeting of the states at that time, he came leaping out of his closet with Vicimus, Vicimus, in his mouth, that is, We have prevailed, we have got the day. God sometimes answereth his people before they pray, sometimes while they are praying, as here, and sometimes after they have prayed, but sooner or later they shall be sure of it. The Lord will receive my prayer] He hath, and, therefore, he will. This is the language of faith, this is the triumph of trust.
Ver. 10. Let all mine enemies be ashamed] When they see all their hopes of my death and downfall disappointed. Let them return] Retrocedant et in terrain cadant, saith the Arabic interpreter, Let them go backward, and fall to the earth. Some make this a prayer, some a prophecy; it comes all to one. And be ashamed suddenly] Let them be doubly ashamed, or deboshed, and that in a moment. These sudden and still revenges are very terrible. God usually premonisheth before he punisheth, but not always. Now as blessings, the more unexpected the more welcome; so judgments, the more sudden the more grievous. Shiggaion of David] i.e. David’s delight or solace, say some; his mixed song, or synodee, say others. Which he sang unto the Lord] He could sing away care, and punish his reproachers with a merry contempt, as knowing his own innocence; the property whereof is to throw off slanders, as Paul did the viper; yea, in a holy scorning, it laughs at them, as the wild ass doth at the horse and his rider. Concerning the words of Cush the Benjamite] Which some take to be some cousin and courtier of Saul’s, who had falsely accused good David (far from any such thought, Psalms 131:1) of affecting the kingdom, and seeking Saul’s life. See 1 Samuel 24:10. But I rather understand, with the Chaldee paraphrast, Saul’s self, who was of Kish, and of Jemini, 1 Samuel 9:1, and that, by a disguise of name, he is called Cush the Benjamite, that is, an Ethiopian, because of his obstinate impenitence, according to Jeremiah 13:23. So Amos 9:7, rebellious Israel is to God as Ethiopia. Professors shall be as deep in hell, and deeper than Turks and infidels, because of their dissembled sanctity, which is double iniquity. Wrath shall be upon the Jew first, Romans 2:9; and when the foul sinner goes to hell what shall become of the fair professor? may such be asked, as are both in one. In the Ethiopian is nothing white but his teeth; so in a hypocrite, &c.