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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Psalms 73:23 - 73:23
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But he does not thus deeply degrade himself: after God has once taken him by the right hand and rescued him from the danger of falling (Psa 73:2), he clings all the more firmly to Him, and will not suffer his perpetual fellowship with Him to be again broken through by such seizures which estrange him from God. confidently does he yield up himself to the divine guidance, though he may not see through the mystery of the plan (עֵצַה) of this guidance. He knows that afterwards (אַחַר with Mugrash: adverb as in Psa 68:26), i.e., after this dark way of faith, God will כָבֹוד receive him, i.e., take him to Himself, and take him from all suffering (לָקַח as in Psa 49:16, and of Enoch, Gen 5:24). The comparison of Zec 2:12 [8] is misleading; there אַחַר is rightly accented as a preposition: after glory hath He sent me forth (vid., Köhler), and here as an adverb; for although the adverbial sense of אחר would more readily lead one to look for the arrangement of the words ואחר תקחני כבוד, still “to receive after glory” (cf. the reverse Isa 58:8) is an awkward thought. כבוד, which as an adjective “glorious” (Hofmann) is alien to the language, is either accusative of the goal (Hupfeld), or, which yields a form of expression that is more like the style of the Old Testament, accusative of the manner (Luther, “with honour”). In אַחַר the poet comprehends in one summary view what he looks for at the goal of the present divine guidance. The future is dark to him, but lighted up by the one hope that the end of his earthly existence will be a glorious solution of the riddle. Here, as elsewhere, it is faith which breaks through not only the darkness of this present life, but also the night of Hades. At that time there was as yet no divine utterance concerning any heavenly triumph of the church, militant in the present world, but to faith the Jahve-Name had already a transparent depth which penetrated beyond Hades into an eternal life. The heaven of blessedness and glory also is nothing without God; but he who can in love call God his, possesses heaven upon earth, and he who cannot in love call God his, would possess not heaven, but hell, in the midst of heaven. In this sense the poet says in Psa 73:25 : whom have I in heaven? i.e., who there without Thee would be the object of my desire, the stilling of my longing? without Thee heaven with all its glory is a vast waste and void, which makes me indifferent to everything, and with Thee, i.e., possessing Thee, I have no delight in the earth, because to call Thee mine infinitely surpasses every possession and every desire of earth. If we take בָּאָרֶץ still more exactly as parallel to בַּשָּׁמַיִם, without making it dependent upon חָפַצְתִּי: and possessing Thee I have no desire upon the earth, then the sense remains essentially the same; but if we allow בארץ to be governed by חפצתי in accordance with the general usage of the language, we arrive at this meaning by the most natural way. Heaven and earth, together with angels and men, afford him no satisfaction - his only friend, his sole desire and love, is God. The love for God which David expresses in Psa 16:2 in the brief utterance, “Thou art my Lord, Thou art my highest good,” is here expanded with incomparable mystical profoundness and beauty. Luther's version shows his master-hand. The church follows it in its “Herzlich lieb hab' ich dich” when it sings -
“The whole wide world delights me not,
For heaven and earth, Lord, care I not,
If I may but have Thee;”
and following it, goes on in perfect harmony with the text of our Psalm -
“Yea, though my heart be like to break,
Thou art my trust that nought can shake;”
(Note: Miss Winkworth's translation.)
or with Paul Gerhard, [in his Passion-hymn “Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld der Welt und ihrer Kinder,”
“Light of my heart, that shalt Thou be;
And when my heart in pieces breaks,
Thou shalt my heart remain.”
For the hypothetical perfect כָּלָה expresses something in spite of which he upon whom it may come calls God his God: licet defecerit. Though his outward and inward man perish, nevertheless God remains ever the rock of his heart as the firm ground upon which he, with his ego, remains standing when everything else totters; He remains his portion, i.e., the possession that cannot be taken from him, if he loses all, even his spirit-life pertaining to the body, - and God remains to him this portion לְעֹולָם, he survives with the life which he has in God the death of the old life. The poet supposes an extreme case, - one, that is, it is true, impossible, but yet conceivable, - that his outward and inward being should sink away; even then with the merus actus of his ego he will continue to cling to God. In the midst of the natural life of perishableness and of sin, a new, individual life which is resigned to God has begun within him, and in this he has the pledge that he cannot perish, so truly as God, with whom it is closely united, cannot perish. It is just this that is also the nerve of the proof of the resurrection of the dead which Jesus advances in opposition to the Sadducees (Mat 22:32).