Commentary on Psalms - Volume 3 - Bible Study Guides

Comm on Psalms (V3)John Calvinthe purpose of maintaining and cherishing their confidence in him, they exercise themselves inmeditating in good earnest upon his benefits; and that then they yield to him an unfeigned anddevoted obedience. We may learn from this, that the true service of God begins with faith. If wetransfer our trust and confidence to any other object, we defraud him of the chief part of his honor.8. And that they might not be as their fathers, a rebellious and provoking generation. ThePsalmist here shows still more distinctly how necessary this sermon was, from the circumstancethat the Jews were exceedingly prone to revolt from God, if they were not kept in subjection bypowerful restraints. He takes it as a fact, which could not be questioned, that their hearts were inno respect better than the hearts of their fathers, whom he affirms to have been a treacherous,rebellious, crooked and disobedient race. They would, therefore, immediately backslide from theway of God, unless their hearts were continually sustained by stable supports. The experience ofall ages shows that what Horace writes concerning his own nation is true every where: —“Ætas parenturn, pejor avis, tulitNos nequiores, mox daturosProgeniem vitiosiroem.”Odes, Book III. Ode vi.“The age that gave our fathers birth,Saw them their noble sires disgrace:We, baser still, shall leave on earthThe still increasing guilt of our degenerate race.”Boscawen’Translation.What then would be the consequence, did not God succor the world which thus proceeds fromevil to worse? As the prophet teaches the Jews from the wickedness and perverseness of theirfathers, that they stood in need of a severe discipline to recall them from the imitation of badexamples, we learn from this, how great the folly of the world is, in persuading itself that theexample of the fathers is to be regarded as equivalent to a law, which ought, in every case, to befollowed. He does not here speak of all people without distinction, but of the holy and chosen raceof Abraham; nor does he rebuke a small number of persons, but almost the whole nation, amongwhom there prevailed excessive obstinacy, as well as perverse forgetfulness of the grace of God,and perfidious dissimulation. He does not mention merely the fathers of one age, but he comprehendsa period stretching back into a remote antiquity, that persons may not take occasion to excusethemselves in committing sin, from the length of time during which it has prevailed. We musttherefore make a wise selection from amongst the fathers of those whom it becomes us to imitate.It being a work of great difficulty to remove the disposition to this perverse imitation of the fathers,towards whom the feeling of reverence is naturally impressed on the minds of their successors, theprophet employs a multiplicity of terms to set forth the aggravated wickedness of the fathers,stigmatising them as chargeable with apostasy, provocation, treachery, and hypocrisy. These arevery weighty charges; but it will be evident from the sequel that they are not exaggerated. The word, hechin, which I have rendered directed, is by some translated established, but in my opinion,the meaning rather is, that God’s ancient people always turned aside from God into crooked by-paths.Also, in what follows, instead of reading whose spirit was not faithful towards God, some read141