9 I have preached righteousness in the great con gregation; * Behold thou knowest, O Jehovah, I have laid-no-restraint-upon my lips. 10 I have not kept thy righteousness hidden in my heart, Thy faithfulness and thy salvation I have pro claimed ; I have not concealed thy tender love, And thy truth, in the great congregation. -11 Lay thou no restraint, O Jehovah, upon thy tenderness to me; Let thy tender-love and thy truth ever preserve me. 12 Truly, evils crowded upon me, till they were beyond number; My iniquities [D] overtook me, till I could not endure the sight; *The congregation of the universal church, collected from the general mass of the whole human race, in opposition to the particular congregation of the Jewish people. They were more than the hairs of my head, and my heart failed me. 13 Jehovah was pleased to deliver me; Jehovah hastens to my help. 14 They who seek my life to destroy it * Shall be brought-to-shame, and covered-with blushes all-together; They who delight in my hurt, Shall be driven-back, and put to confusion. 15 They shall immediately go off with their-due-disgrace + [E] Who say to me, aha! aha! * This Psalm is no prayer for deliverance from dangers threatened, but a song of thanksgiving for dangers past, or at least prophetically described as past. "Their-due-disgrace." Due,-this I take to be the force of the pronoun suffixed to the noun "disgrace." ORACULAR VOICE. 16 All who seek thee, shall rejoice and be glad in thee; The lovers of thy salvation shall ever say, Mag nified be Jehovah. MESSIAH. 17 Although I am helples and poor, * [F] Jehovah [G] thinketh of me; My helper and my deliverer art thou, PSALM XLI. A PRAYER OF THE MESSIAH IN HIS HUMILIATION. 1 Blessed is he who giveth attention † to him that is reduced to poverty; [A] In the evil day Jehovah shall deliver him. * 18 MSS. and 8 printed editions of Kennicott's collation. "Blessed is he who is not offended in me.” 2 May Jehovah guard him, and keep him alive, Let him be blessed in the land, And give him not up [B] to the will of his enemies. 3 May Jehovah give him strength upon the couch of languor; [C] Thou hast made all his bed in his sickness. 4 For me, I have said, O Jehovah, have pity upon me, O heal my soul. Surely I bear blame before thee. [D] 5 My enemies wish me evil; "When will he die and his name perish?" 6 If any one come to see me, he talks deceitfully;* His heart of itself conceiveth some-base-surmise; t He goeth abroad and uttereth it. * Many of the Jews who visited our Lord, came to him with insidious designs. + Literally, "his heart gathereth iniquity (*) to itself." The iniquity which the heart of the deceitful visitor gathereth, I take to be base suspicions engendered in it, of its own malignity. 7 All they that hate me whisper all-together against me, To myself they impute my calamity.* 8" Some cursed thing + presseth heavily upon “ him, "And when he is once down, he will rise no "more." 9 Even my own familiar friend, in whom I put confidence, Eating of my bread, has practised the greatest treachery against me. [F] 10 But thou, O Jehovah, have pity upon me, And raise me up, that I may requite them. 11 By this I know that thou takest-delight in me, Because my enemy will not triumph over me. * They consider my afflicted state as a judgement upon me for my own sins. +"Some cursed thing," i. e. the crime which they supposed to be the cause of the divine judgement upon him. |