CHAPTER XIX.

PSALM CXXXII.

A Song of Degrees.

1. LORD, remember David, and all his afflictions;

Radak.

DAVID said this Psalm when he built the altar in the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite by the direction of Gad the prophet, and "offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the Lord and He answered him from heaven by fire." (1 Chron. xxi. 26.) And David "said, This is the house of the Lord God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel;" but until that day the site for the temple was not known. Yet Nathan the prophet had previously told him that he should not build the temple, but that his son Solomon should do so. And inasmuch as David had devoted himself to prepare for the erection of the * 2 Sam. vii.

temple, he asks, "Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions; and though I am not worthy to build, yet accept the intention for the deed; and remember all the trouble I have taken for its sake; for I have driven sleep from mine eyes in the multitude of my thoughts about it. I vowed and sware that I would not rest until I entered it; and I found no refreshment of spirit in my house, after that the house of the Lord was not to be built."

In support of this interpretation it should be observed that the Hebrew word for "afflictions" is akin to the word for "trouble" in 1 Chron. xxii. 14: "Now, behold, in my trouble I have prepared for the house of the Lord an hundred thousand talents of gold..." Rashi concurs in referring these expressions to the trouble that David gave himself to ascertain the place where the temple should

Rashi.

be built.

Aben Ezra.

By Aben Ezra, likewise, the Psalm is referred to the same period, when David and the elders of Israel were clothed in sackcloth on account of the plague that was among the people.* This writer, however, appears to consider that the

* 1 Chron. xxi. 16.

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99 afflictions of David arose in some degree from the difficulty of knowing where he should offer a sacrifice for the removal of the scourge; for "the tabernacle of the Lord, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of the burnt-offering, were at that season in the high-place at Gibeon, "* and were there

fore not immediately accessible to David.

The somewhat ambiguous form in the word for "afflictions" is, according to Aben Ezra,

to be taken for a noun derived from the

Pual formation of the root.

Except in the title, the Targum adds nothing to the Hebrew:

"A song which was sung upon the steps of the abyss. Lord, remember to David all his

affliction."

Targum.

The Psalm corresponds to the thirteenth step in the "degrees" of spiritual progress; and, as such, it speaks prophetically of the Advent of the Son of God. So the Latin Commentary that carries the name of S. Jerome takes it. Dionysius the Carthusian, however, represents it somewhat differently. According to him, it has a right to be the thirteenth

1 Chron. xxi. 29.

step, because it treats of the spiritual building of the house within the holy soul; and when this is adorned with virtues, then the house of Christ is built.

The Latin writers have a turn of meaning different to that given above, owing to the particular word upon which they had to comment. In place of "afflictions" they had "meekness," mansuetudo. As applied to the literal David, S. Augustine sees in the word a reference to his self-restraint,

S. Augustine.

upon those occasions when his enemy Saul was completely in his power. If by David we understand Christ, the word is an anticipation of that very character, which our Blessed Lord was careful to claim for himself, "I am meek and lowly of heart." It should be observed that the Christ is in the Old Testament not unfrequently called simply David, without apology, simile, figure, or explanation of any kind-nay, He is so called even in passages where the primary or historic sense of the name is absolutely inadmissible. When, for example, Ezekiel says, "And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even My servant David”— whom could he mean by David? Not, of course, the

successor of Saul: for he had been dead some four hundred years when Ezekiel wrote.

It might make modern Christians less reluctant to recognize the Christ when David is spoken of, if they remembered how many incidents in the life of David, too trivial for mention but for some ulterior significance in them, have counterparts in the life of our Lord, and are perhaps set down in Holy Scripture precisely because they were a rehearsal of parts in the great drama that was to follow in the Person of David's Son. Take by itself any one of those incidents in which it is possible to detect a foreshadowing of the Christ; and, though you might be surprised at the exactness of the parallel,-though you might even be willing to pay a compliment to the ingenuity of the adaptation,—yet you might shrink from calling it anything but a coincidence, in what you are content to believe is plain prosaic narrative. take a string of such analogies, and mark its cumulative effect upon your own mind. Observe how, at his very first introduction upon the divine page, David is represented as the keeper of his father's sheep :* how this fact is again and again insisted on,

* 1 Sam. xvi. 11.

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