Commentary on Psalms - Volume 3 - Bible Study Guides

Comm on Psalms (V3)John Calvinnor of his providential government of the world in general, but only of the judgments which heexecutes amongst men. He calls the works of God great, and his thoughts deep, because he governsthe world in quite another manner than we are able to comprehend. Were things under our ownmanagement, we would entirely invert the order which God observes; and, such not being the case,we perversely expostulate with God for not hastening sooner to the help of the righteous, and tothe punishment of the wicked. It strikes us as in the highest degree inconsistent with the perfectionsof God, that he should bear with the wicked when they rage against him, when they rush withoutrestraint into the most daring acts of iniquity, and when they persecute at will the good and theinnocent; — it seems, I say, in our eyes to be intolerable, that God should subject his own peopleto the injustice and violence of the wicked, while he puts no check upon abounding falsehood,deceit, rapine, bloodshed, and every species of enormity. Why does he suffer his truth to be obscured,and his holy name to be trampled under foot? This is that greatness of the Divine operation, thatdepth of the Divine counsel, into the admiration of which the Psalmist breaks forth. It is no doubttrue, that there is an incomprehensible depth of power and wisdom which God has displayed in thefabric of the universe; but what the Psalmist has specially in view is, to administer a check to thatdisposition which leads us to murmur against God, when he does not pursue our plan in hisprovidential managements. When anything in these may not agree with the general ideas of men,we ought to contemplate it with reverence, and remember that God, for the better trial of ourobedience, has lifted his deep and mysterious judgments far above our conceptions.6 The foolish man shall not know them. This is added with propriety, to let us know that thefault lies with ourselves, in not praising the Divine judgments as we ought. For although the Psalmisthad spoken of them as deep and mysterious, he here informs us that they would be discerned withoutdifficulty, were it not for our stupidity and indifference. By the foolish, he means unbelievers ingeneral, tacitly contrasting them with believers who are divinely enlightened by the word and Spirit.The ignorance and blindness to which he alludes have possession of all without exception, whoseunderstandings have not been illuminated by Divine grace. It ought to be our prayer to God, thathe would purge our sight, and qualify us for meditation upon his works. In short, the Psalmistvindicates the incomprehensible wisdom of God from that contempt which proud men have oftencast upon it, charging them with folly and madness in acting such a part; and he would arouse usfrom that insensibility which is too prevalent, to a due and serious consideration of the mysteriousworks of God.7 When the wicked flourish as the grass. He points out, and exposes, by a striking and appropriatefigure, the folly of imagining that the wicked obtain a triumph over God, when he does not, it maybe, immediately bring them under restraint. He makes an admission so far — he grants that theyspring up and flourish — but adds immediately, by way of qualification, that they flourish, like thegrass, only for a moment, their prosperity being brief and evanescent. In this way he removes whathas been almost a universal stumbling-block and ground of offense; for it would be ridiculous toenvy the happiness of men who are doomed to be speedily destroyed, and of whom it may be said,that to-day they flourish, and to-morrow they are cut down and wither, (Psalm 129:6.) It will beshown, when we come to consider the psalm now quoted, that the herbs to which the wicked arecompared are such as grow on the roofs of houses, which want depth of soil, and die of themselves,for lack of nourishment. In the passage now before us, the Psalmist satisfies himself with usingsimply the figure, that the prosperity of the wicked draws after it the speedier destruction, as thegrass when it is full grown is ready for the scythe. There is an antithesis drawn, too, between the300