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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 34:7 - 34:7
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(Heb.: 34:8-11) This praise is supported by a setting forth of the gracious protection under which God's saints continually are. The מַלְאַךְ יהוה, is none other than He who was the medium of Jahve's intercourse with the patriarchs, and who accompanied Israel to Canaan. This name is not collective (Calvin, Hupfeld, Kamphausen, and others). He, the One, encampeth round about them, in so far as He is the Captain of the host of Jahve (Jos 5:14), and consequently is accompanied by a host of inferior ministering angels; or insofar as He can, as being a spirit not limited by space, furnish protection that covers them on every side. חֹנֶה (cf. Zec 9:8) is perhaps an allusion to מַֽחֲנִים in Gen 32:2., that angel-camp which joined itself to Jacob's camp, and surrounded it like a barricade or carrago. On the fut. consec. וַֽיְחַלְּצֵם, et expedit eos, as a simple expression of the sequence, or even only of a weak or loose internal connection, vid., Ewald, §343, a. By reason of this protection by the Angel of God arises (Psa 34:9) the summons to test the graciousness of God in their own experience. Tasting (γεύσαστηαι, Heb 6:4., 1Pe 2:3) stands before seeing; for spiritual experience leads to spiritual perception or knowledge, and not vice versa. Nisi gustaveris, says Bernard, non videbis. David is desirous that others also should experience what he has experienced in order that they may come to know what he has come to know, viz., the goodness of God.
(Note: On account of this Psa 34:9, Γεύσασθε καὶ Ἴδετε κ. τ. λ., Ps 33 (34) was the Communion Psalm of the early church, Constit. Apost. viii. 13, Cyril,. Catech. Myst. v 17.)
Hence, in Psa 34:10, the call to the saints to fear Jahve (יְראוּ instead of יִרְאוּ, in order to preserve the distinction between veremini and videbunt, as in Jos 24:14; 1Sa 12:24); for whoso fears Him, possesses everything in Him. The young mature lions may sooner lack and suffer hunger, because they have no prey, than that he should suffer any want whatsoever, the goal of whose striving is fellowship with God. The verb רוּשׁ (to lack, be poor, once by metaplasm יָרַשׁ, 1Sa 2:7, root רשׁ, to be or to make loose, lax), elsewhere used only of men, is here, like Psa 104:21 בִּקֵּשׁ מֵאֵל, transferred to the lions, without כְּפִירִים being intended to refer emblematically (as in Psa 35:17; Psa 57:5; Psa 17:12) to his powerful foes at the courts of Saul and of Achish.