Commentary on Psalms - Volume 3 - Bible Study Guides

Comm on Psalms (V3)John Calvindeigned no longer to account them as his flock. The verb , zanach, signifies to reject and detest,and sometimes also to withdraw one’s self to a distance. It is of no great moment in which of thesesenses it is here taken. We may consider the amount of what is stated as simply this, that wheneverwe are visited with adversities, these are not the arrows of fortune thrown against us at a venture,but the scourges or rods of God which, in his secret and mysterious providence, he prepares andmakes use of for chastising our sins. Casting off and anger must here be referred to the apprehensionor judgment of the flesh. Properly speaking, God is not angry with his elect, whose diseases hecures by afflictions as it were by medicines; but as the chastisements which we experience powerfullytend to produce in our minds apprehensions of his wrath, the Holy Spirit, by the word anger,admonishes the faithful to acknowledge their guilt in the presence of infinite purity. When, therefore,God executes his vengeance upon us, it is our duty seriously to reflect on what we have deserved,and to consider, that although He is not subject to the emotions of anger, yet it is not owing to us,who have grievously offended him by our sins, that his anger is not kindled against us. Moreover,his people, as a plea for obtaining mercy, flee to the remembrance of the covenant by which theywere adopted to be his children. In calling themselves the flock of God’s pastures, they magnifyhis free choice of them by which they were separated from the Gentiles. This they express moreplainly in the following verse.2. Remember thy congregation, which thou hast possessed of old. 214 Here they boast of havingbeen the peculiar people of God, not on account of any merit of their own, but by the grace ofadoption. They boast in like manner of their antiquity, — that they are not subjects who have comeunder the government of God only within a few months ago, but such as had fallen to him by rightof inheritance. The longer the period during which he had continued his love towards the seed ofAbraham, the more fully was their faith confirmed. They declare, therefore, that they had beenGod’s people from the beginning, that is, ever since he had entered into an inviolable covenantwith Abraham. There is also added the redemption by which the adoption was ratified; for God didnot only signify by word, but also showed by deed at the time when this redemption was effected,that he was their King and Protector. These benefits which they had received from God they setbefore themselves as an encouragement to their trusting in him, and they recount them before him,the benefactor who bestowed them, as an argument with him not to forsake the work of his ownhands. Inspired with confidence by the same benefits, they call themselves the rod of his inheritance;that is to say, the heritage which he had measured out for himself. The allusion is to the customwhich then prevailed of measuring or marking out the boundaries of grounds with poles as withcords or lines. Some would rather translate the word , shebet, which we have rendered rod, bytribe; but I prefer the other translation, taking the meaning to be, that God separated Israel fromthe other nations to be his own proper ground, by the secret pre-ordination which originated in hisown good pleasure, as by a measuring rod. In the last place, the temple in which God had promisedto dwell is mentioned; not that his essence was enclosed in that place, — an observation which hasalready been frequently made, — but because his people experienced that there he was near athand, and present with them by his power and grace. We now clearly perceive whence the peoplederived confidence in prayer; it was from God’s free election and promises, and from the sacredworship which had been set up among them.214 Archbishop Secker thinks that this verse may be read thus: “Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased, hastredeemed of old; the tribe of thine inheritance; this mount Zion,” etc.98