Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/279

 love of the godly man God requites with confiding love, the entire submission of the upright with a full measure of grace, the endeavour after purity by an unbeclouded charity (cf. Psa 73:1), moral perverseness by paradoxical judgments, giving the perverse over to his perverseness (Rom 1:28) and leading him by strange ways to final condemnation (Isa 29:14, cf. Lev 26:23.). The truth, which is here enunciated, is not that the conception which man forms of God is the reflected image of his own mind and heart, but that God's conduct to man is the reflection of the relation in which man has placed himself to God; cf. 1Sa 2:30; 1Sa 15:23. This universal truth is illustrated and substantiated in Psa 18:28. The people who are bowed down by affliction experience God's condescension, to their salvation; and their haughty oppressors, god's exaltation, to their humiliation. Lofty, proud eyes are among the seven things that Jahve hateth, according to Pro 6:17. The judgment of God compels them to humble themselves with shame, Isa 2:11.

Verses 28-30
Psa 18:28-30 (Hebrew_Bible_18:29-31) The confirmation of what has been asserted is continued by David's application of it to himself. Hitzig translates the futures in Psa 18:29. as imperfects; but the sequence of the tenses, which would bring this rendering with it, is in this instance interrupted, as it has been even in Psa 18:28, by כּי. The lamp, נר (contracted from nawer), is an image of life, which as it were burns on and on, including the idea of prosperity and high rank; in the form ניר (from niwr, nijr) it is the usual figurative word for the continuance of the house of David, 1Ki 11:36, and frequently. David's life and dominion, as the covenant king, is the lamp which God's favour has lighted for the well-being of Israel, and His power will not allow this lamp (2Sa 21:17) to be quenched. The darkness which breaks in upon David and his house is always lighted up again by Jahve. For His strength is mighty in the weak; in, with, and by Him he can do all things. The fut. ארץ may be all the more surely derived from רצץ (= ארץ), inasmuch as this verb has the changeable u in the future also in Isa 42:4; Ecc 12:6. The text of 2 Sam 22, however, certainly seems to put “rushing upon” in the stead of “breaking down.” With [[Bible_(King_James)/Psalms|Psa 18: