Commentary on Psalms - Volume 3 - Bible Study Guides

Comm on Psalms (V3)John Calvinidiom of the Hebrew language, an assertion, the accuracy of which no Hebrew scholar will admit.Nor is it necessary to bring forward any such quibbles to excuse God; for, when he blinds thereprobate, it is sufficient for us to know that he has good and just causes for doing so; and it is invain for men to murmur and to dispute with him, as if they sinned only by his impulse. Althoughthe causes why they are blinded sometimes lie hidden in the secret purpose of Deity, there is not aman who is not reproved by his own conscience; and it is our duty to adore and admire the highmysteries of God, which surpass our understanding. It is justly said that “God’s judgments are agreat deep,” (Psalm 36:6.) It would certainly be highly perverse to involve God in a part of the guiltof the wicked, whenever he executes his judgments upon them; as, for example, when he executesthe judgment threatened in the passage before us. The amount is, that the wicked are plunged intoa deep gulf of wickedness by the just vengeance of Heaven, that they may never return to a soundunderstanding, and that he who is filthy may become still more filthy, 94 (Revelation 22:11.) Let itfurther be observed, that I do not explain the righteousness of God as denoting the righteousnesswhich he bestows upon his chosen ones in regenerating them by his Holy Spirit, but the holinessmanifested in the life which is so well-pleasing to him.28. Let them be blotted out from the book of the living. 95 This is the last imprecation, and it isthe most dreadful of the whole; but it nevertheless uniformly follows the persevered in impenitenceand incorrigible obduracy of which the Psalmist has spoken above. After having taken away fromthem all hope of repentance, he denounces against them eternal destruction, which is the obviousmeaning of the prayer, that they might be blotted out of the book of the living; for all those mustinevitably perish who are not found written or enrolled in the book of life. This is indeed an impropermanner of speaking; but it is one well adapted to our limited capacity, the book of life being nothingelse than the eternal purpose of God, by which he has predestinated his own people to salvation.God, it is certain, is absolutely immutable; and, further, we know that those who are adopted to thehope of salvation were written before the foundation of the world, (Ephesians 1:4;) but as God’seternal purpose of election is incomprehensible, it is said, in accommodation to the imperfectionof the human understanding, that those whom God openly, and by manifest signs, enrols amonghis people, are written. On the other hand, those whom God openly rejects and casts out of hisChurch are, for the same reason, said to be blotted out. As then David desires that the vengeanceof God may be manifested, he very properly speaks of the reprobation of his enemies in languageaccommodated to our understanding; as if he had said, O God! reckon them not among the numberthe Jews,’ i e., permitted them. So Exodus 12:23, ‘And shall not suffer (the Hebrew hath , give) the destroyer to come in; theChaldee reads , ‘permit,’ and the LXX. ἀθήσει, to the same sense. So Psalm 16:10, ‘Thou shalt not suffer ( , again, give) thyHoly One to see corruption.’ And so , give wickedness, is no more than permit: for so it is ordinary with God, as a punishmentof some former great sin or sins, though not to infuse any malignity, yet by withdrawing his grace, and delivering them up tothemselves, to permit more sins to follow, one on the heels of the other, and so to be so far from reforming and amending asdaily to grow worse and worse, to be more obdurate, and so finally never to enter into God’s righteousness; i e., into that wayof obedience required by him, and which will be accepted by him, or (as , in the notion of mercy, may signify being appliedto God) into his mercy, so as to be made partakers of it.” A fuller statement and illustration of Calvin’s views on this point isgiven in his Institutes, Book I. chapter 18.94 In the French version, the two last verbs of the sentence are put in the future tense, by which the idea conveyed is somewhatmodified: “En sorte qu’ils ne retourneront jamais, a bon sens, et celuy qui est ord, deviendra encore plus ord.” — “So that theyshall never return to a sound understanding, and he who is filthy will become still more filthy.”95 “This phrase,” observes Bishop Mant, “which is not unusual in Scripture, alludes to the custom of well ordered cities, whichkept registers, containing all the names of the citizens. Out of these registers the names of apostates, fugitives, and criminals,were erased, as also those of the deceased: whence the expression ‘blotting,’ or ‘erasing names from the book of life.’”44