Paraphrase Upon the Books of the Psalms, Book 5 · Psalm 147
The Hundred Fourty Seventh Psalm.
‖HallelujahPraise ye the Lord. The hundred fourty seventh Psalm (which is divided into two by the Greek and Latine, &c.) is a solemn forme of magnifying God in his works of power and mercy, and seems to have had for its title the close of the former Psalme, Hallelujah, and to have been composed after the returne from the Captivity, v. 2.
1. PRaise ye the Lord: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant, and praise is comely.
Paraphrase. Many motives there are to excite and stirr up all to the magnifying the name of God. 'Tis a piece of service most acceptable in his sight; 'tis to them that performe it most pleasant and delightfull, and that which best becomes us to pay to him, and him to receive and expect from us, who have our whole being from him.
2. The Lord doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the out-casts of Israel.
3. He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
To this we are farther ingaged by his present deliverances: for though Jerusalem and the Temple of God there, the state and Church, have been sadly wasted; yet hath God been pleased to returne our captivity, to recollect our dispersions, and restore us to our homes and his Temple, the chearfull performance of his divine service, and so to refresh and revive us, to cure the diseases and wounds, to remove the sorrows of our souls.
4. He telleth the number of the starrs, and calleth them all by their names.
So likewise his omniscience and omnipotence exact our acknowledgments and adorations. The starrs of heaven, which are so impossible to be numbred by us, Gen. xv. 5. that they are compared and joyned with the sand which is upon the sea shore for multitude, Gen. xxii. 17. are not only numbred, but particularly known by God, what powers, qualities, influences there are in every one of them; and as they were all by a word or expression of his will first created, so are they perfectly at his command, and at the least beck or call of his, as souldiers at the directions of their General, the whole host of them immediately obeys and doth whatsoever he pleases.
5. Great is our Lord, and of great power: ‖of his understanding there is no number or computation foreignhis understanding is infinite.
Thus infinite and boundless is the power, the knowledge, and the providence of God, which is to us absolutely incomputable.
6. The Lord lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground.
And these doth he exercise constantly for the support and relief of all humble-minded men, for their spiritual advancement in strength and grace, which to them peculiarly he affords in greatest abundance: but for all proud obdurate sinners, which perversely resist him, he is resolved to resist them, and subdue them, and magnify his power in their destruction.
7. †Begina.Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving: sing praises upon the harp unto our God,
8. Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.
9. He giveth to theb. beast his food, and to the young ravens that cry.
O then let us all with tongues and instruments of Musick, with all the solemnest expressions of our hearts, celebrate those divine excellencies of his, his power, his wisdome, his goodness, and his providence. And here it will be very considerable, how in a series and succession of wise and gracious disposals, he provides for the wants of all creatures here below, especially of those that are otherwise most helpless: he gathereth a multitude of watery clouds into regions of the aire, that those may distill and drop down moderate showrs upon the higher and drier parts of the earth, which have no other supply but that of raine; and by so doing he provides grass for those wilder beasts that feed on those mountainous parts, and are not beholden to the care of man, as other beasts of the field, sheep and oxen, &c. are, and consequently would, without this special provision of his, be utterly destitute. And by the like way of providence it is, that the young broods of Ravens, which as soon as they are hatcht are forsaken and left destitute by the old ones, yet by some secret undiscernible contrivance of Gods (whether by dew falling into their mouths when they gape, or by flyes in the aire, or wormes bred in their nests, or by some other constant, though secret, course of divine providence) are sufficiently furnished with necessaries of life by God, out of his unexhaustible treasury, their wants are considered by him, and certainly supplied (see Job xxxviii. 41.) and are emblems of his special protection and sollicitude for those which humbly and faithfully depend on him, when they have no means to provide for themselves. See Matth. vi. 25, 26.
10. He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh no pleasure in the legs of a man.
11. The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy.
In like manner, 'tis not the strength or agility of horse or man, the military prowess or other humane excellencies, which recommend a man to God, or have any pretense of right to challenge any victories or prosperous successes from him; but the fear of God, a constant obedience to his commands, and an affiance and trust and dependance on him, not by any tenure of merit in our selves, but only of free undeserved mercy in him, is that which hath the assurance of acceptance from him, and is blest with more eminent prosperities from him, than all other intellectual, or corporal, or even moral excellencies without this.
12. Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion.
13. For he hath strengthened the barrs of thy gates; he hath blessed thy children within thee.
14. He maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the†fat foreign finest wheat.
At the present the whole Kingdome and Church of the Jews are most eminently obliged to acknowledge and magnify the great power and mercy of God, who hath now restored peace & plenty & all kind of prosperity unto both, & not only so, but confirmed their security unto them, fortified them against all fears of hostile invasions.
15. He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth: his word runneth very swiftly.
16. He giveth snow like wooll: he scattereth the hoar frosts like ashes.
17. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold?
18. He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.
And this as a work of the same omnipotent power which continually shews it selfe to all the men in the world in some instance or other. They that have not such signal miraculous deliverances or rescues, have yet other most convincing evidences of his divine power and providence, which by the least word spoken, or appointment given, immediately performes the most wonderfull things. Of this sort there is one vulgar, but yet wonderfull, instance, in the coming of great frosts and snows, and the vanishing of them again: whensoever he pleases, without any visible mediate cause of it, we have great snows, that descend silently, and within a while lie in a great thickness as a fleece of white wooll upon the ground, and no skeep is more warmely clad than the earth is by this means. At another time the frost comes, and scatters but a few ashes as it were upon the surface of the earth, and yet by that means the whole surface of the earth and waters is congealed into a firmeness as strong as Crystal, able to bear any the greatest weight, and upon the face of the ground a multitude of small pieces of ice are scattered, like morsels of bread, without any appearance of moisture in them; and the severity of this cold so great, that no man can either resist the force of it, or long support it. And when both the earth and waters are thus crusted, and no humane means can dissolve it, God doth but send out a warme southerly wind, and, as at a word speaking, the snow and the frost immediately melt, and come down in full streams of water upon the valleys. A thing very observable, and sufficient to make known a divine power and providence to all men in the world.
19. He sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel.
20. He hath not dealt so with‖every foreign any nation: and as for his judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord.
But his mercies and dispensations unto his Church and people of the Jews are infinitely above the proportion and weight of these. He hath made known his will to them, given them very many admirable laws and ordinances, moral, and judicial, and ritual. And herein have they the priviledge and advantage above all other nations in the world, who were not vouchsafed such illustrious revelations of the will of God as they, till the Messias, promised to all nations, and not onelyonly to the Iews, should come, and take down the partition, and bring all in common into one pale, and make known to every creature what was before given to the Iews peculiarly, and adde more divine precepts of inward purity, and more clear revelations of most transcendent celestial promises, then the Iews themselves had formerly received. For this and all other his infinite goodness and mercy, blessed be the name of the Lord for evermore.
Annotations Psalm CXLVII.
V. 7. Sing] The Hebrew foreign,foreign which the Interlinear renders Respondete, may here deserve to be considered. The theme foreign signifies either to begin, or answer in speaking or singing, and so may here in lauds, be appliable either to the Praecentor that begins the hymne, or to them that follow, and take up the counterpart. In the first sense it is that foreign to answer (by which it is ordinarily rendred) is sometimes used where there is no precedent speech to which any reply should be made, and so simply signifies to speak, and not to answer, see Mar. ii. 14. So Exod. xv. 21. of Miriam 'tis said, foreign, we read, she answered them, Sing ye to the Lord; but it should be, She began to them in the song. The Lxxii. duly render it, foreign, she began to them. So Num. xxi. 17. Israel sang this song, Spring up, O well foreign. The Lxxii. again read, foreign, begin. And so here, foreign, not Answer, but Begin to the Lord in confession or acknowledgment of his power and mercy. And so here follows, sing praises upon the harpe. The Praecentor beginning with the voice, it was ordinary for the instruments to follow to the same tune, and key.
V. 9. The beast] How foreign foreignin this and other places is to be rendred, and how it critically differs from foreign living creature, is not resolved among the Hebrews. That which is most generally received from Genebrard and Mercer and others is, that foreign signifies a tame beast, such as are usefull among men either for work or food, as Oxen, Sheep, &c. and that foreign foreignsignifies a wild beast: and to this the Lxxii. here incline, which render foreign, and the Latine jumentum, by which the tame beasts are signified, those that are usefull among men: and so Psal. cxlviii. 10. foreign wild beasts are set to render foreign the living creatures, and foreign or juments for foreign. But this of the Lxxii. their rendring is of no force, because though they doe most frequently render foreign by foreign, yet ofttimes also they render it by foreign wild beast. And generally where they do so, the context shews that wild beasts are peculiarly meant by it. So Deut. xxviii. 26. thy carcass shall be food for the fouls of the aire, foreign and to the beasts of the earth, foreign say the Lxxii. that must be to the wild beasts of the earth, for such only feed on the flesh of men or other creatures. So Deut. xxxii. 24. I will send the teeth of beasts upon them; foreign is the Hebrew word, and foreign the Greek, and must necessarily be interpreted not of the tame, but wild beasts. See 1 Sam. xvii. 44. Isa. xviii. 6. Jer. vii. 33. xvi. 4. xix. 7. and xxxiv. 20. but especially Job xl. 10. Behold now foreign, we retein it in our English Behemoth, but it is resolved to signify the greatest of wild beasts, the Elephant; and then by way of interrogation, will he eate grass as an oxe? directly to distinguish him (and so the word foreign here) from the tamer beasts, the one &c. such as eate grass and hay, whereas the Elephant is said to feed on the Palme-trees, the trunk and fruits of them, and when those are wanting, their roots, which he diggs up. From these evidences it is manifest, that though foreign signify not in all places peculiarly the wild beasts, yet that signifying all indifferently, it is by the context to be resolved to which sort it belongs, either wild or tame, in any particular place. And then it may here be worth observing, that the circumstances confine it (contrary to the Lxxii. their rendring) to the wild beasts, such are those which dwell upon the mountains here (as elswhere in the woods, or forest, or wilderness) the tamer being more properly beasts of the field. And of these peculiarly is this passage of the Psalmist to be understood, how God by his special providence prepares food for those which have no other care taken for them. Beasts that live among men, are by men taken care of, they inrich the ground with manure, and with water from springs and rivers, and till the ground, and that brings forth corne for the use of these cattel as well as men: But the wild beasts that live upon the mountains, and in woods and desert places, are fed onelyonly from the heavens: the rain that from thence distills inricheth those dry hills, and maketh grass to grow there, which else would not, and so God giveth to these wild beasts their food after the same manner of divine providence, as in the end of the verse, he is said to provide for the young ravens. Of which saith Aristotle, Hist. Animal. l. vi. foreign the Crow or Raven exposeth and forsakes her young ones when they are not able to help themselves, and must certeinly perish, if God by his special care did not provide for them. See Valesius de Sacrâ Philosoph. p. 317. This therefore being the clear designe of these two verses, 8. & 9. spent only on these two instances, the wild beasts & young ravens, which agree in this, that they are left destitute of all provision but what God sends them (as a shower of Manna) as it were immediately from heaven; it is yet quite deformed by the vulgar reading of it, taken out of some copies of the Lxxii. which at the end of v. 8. after the mention of the grass upon the mountains, adde foreign, and her be for the service of men, of which there is no least footstep in the original (nor place in the due rendring of the words as there they lye) nor yet either in the Chaldee or Syriack, and of which therefore we may certainly resolve, that it was taken in by some ignorant Sciolus from Psal. civ. 14. where we finde those words, and from the copies of the Lxxii. once corrupted, derived to the Latine and Arabick, &c. Of foreign Abu Walid saith, that it is spoken of foure-footed living creatures, yet so as that it sometimes comprehends birds also, which must be discerned by the place. Not unlike is the explication of the Arab. Lexicon, Al Kamus, of foreign, viz. that it is any foure-footed living thing, although of such as are in the water, or perhaps any living creature indifferently without distinction, i. e. any irrational living creature; but Bahmah from the same root is restreined to lambs and kids.