Commentary on Psalms - Volume 3 - Bible Study Guides

Comm on Psalms (V3)John Calvinfilled with sorrow, that we can contain no more. 388 They add, in the following verse that they weremade a strife to their neighbors This admits of being explained in two ways. It means either thattheir neighbors had taken up a quarrel against them; or that, having obtained the victory over them,they were contending about the spoil, as is usually the case in such circumstances, each being eagerto drag it to himself. The former interpretation, however seems to be the more suitable. The peoplecomplain that, whereas neighborhood ought to be a bond of mutual goodwill, they had as manyenemies as neighbors. To the same purpose is their language in the second clause, They laugh atus among themselves; that is to say, They talk among themselves by way of sport and mockery atour adversities. To encourage and stir themselves up to repentance, they ascribe all this to thejudgment of God, in whose power it is to bend the hearts of men. Since we are all at this daychargeable with the same sins, it is not surprising that our condition is in no degree better than wastheirs. But the Holy Spirit having inspired the prophet to write this form of prayer for a people whofelt their condition to be almost desperate, it serves to inspire us with hope and boldness, and toprevent us from giving up the exercise of prayer, under a consciousness of the greatness of ourguilt. The seventh verse is a repetition of the third; and this repetition is undoubtedly intended asa means of surmounting every obstacle. God did not here intend to endite for his people a vainrepetition of words: his object was to encourage them, when bowed down under the load of theircalamities, boldly to rise up, heavy though the load might be. This ground of support was oftenpresented to them; and it is repeated the third time in the concluding verse of the psalm.Psalm 80:8-138. Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt: thou hast expelled the heathen, and planted it. 9.Thou hast cleansed the ground before it: thou hast rooted its roots, and it hath filled the land. 10.The mountains were covered with its shadow, and its branches were like the cedars of God. 389 11.It extended its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the river. 390 12. Why then hast thou broken388 “There cannot,” says Bishop Horne, “be a more striking picture of Zion in captivity! Her bread is dipped in tears; and hercup is filled to the brim with them: no time is free from grief and lamentation!”389The LXX. read this verse as follows. Εκάλυψενὄρη ἡ σκιὰ αὐτὢς, καὶ αί ἀναδενδράδες αὐτὢς τὰς κέδρους του Θεοῦ “Theshadow thereof covered the hills, and the branches thereof [covered] the cedars of God.” The LXX. seem to have read , casah,covered, instead of , cossu, were covered With this agree the versions of the Syriac, Arabic, and Vulgate; and this is the readingadopted by Hare, Houbigant, Lowth, and Horsley. “Is it an extravagant image of a flourishing vine,” says Lowth, “to say, thatit climbed up even the highest cedars, spread itself along the branches, and covered the very top of them?” “The image,” saysMerrick, “may, I think, well be allowed in the description of an allegorical vine, which is represented as stretching out herbranches unto the sea, and her boughs unto the river; especially when compared with what Kaempfer says of some foreign vines.‘Maximum proventum vites tribuunt, quae nulla jutae cultura palmites per summa spargunt fastigia arborum.’ — AmoenitatExot Fascic 2, Relat 9, Section 2, page 390. The author of the History of the Piratical States of Barbary (published in 1750)informs us that some of the vines near Algiers ‘climb to the tops of very lofty trees, and, extending themselves to others, formnatural bowers,’ page 163. And Beverley, in his History of Virginia, (page 116, ed. 2d,) affirms that he has seen great treescovered with single vines, and those vines almost hidden with grapes. [...] The vine’s covering the cedars, in the Psalmist’sdescription, might be intended to suggest an idea not only of its extent, but also of its sovereignty, (agreeably to what Musculuswrites on the place: ‘Operti fuerunt montes umbra ejus, et ramis ejus cedri Dei: Ponit haec de potentia regni Israelitici,’ etc.,)as a Greek poet has, from this very circumstance, represented the vine as the mistress of the trees. (Nonnus, Dionysiac L. 12,278, 279.”)390 The sea — the river — i.e., the Mediterranean, which was the Western, and the Euphrates, which was the Eastern boundaryof Palestine. The Divine promise respecting the extent of the territory of the chosen people runs in these terms, (Deuteronomy180