Psalm 89:1f
‘”I will sing of the mercies of the Lord, for ever!… Mercy will I keep…, for evermore!…. I will make…his (the king’s) throne to endure like the days of Heaven!”… But You have cast off and abhorred…. You have made his glory to cease…. The days of his youth, You have shortened! You have covered him with shame!… Lord, will You hide Yourself for ever?… Remember how short my time is!… What man is he that lives, who shall not see death? Shall he deliver his (own) soul from…the grave?…. Blessed be the Lord, for evermore! Psalm 89:1-52.
Calvin comments: “‘I will sing of the mercies of Jehovah, for ever!’… The design of the Prophet…was to fortify the minds of the godly…, so that…they might with confidence hope for the…establishment of the Kingdom…. ‘I will keep My mercy to him, for ever!’… God frequently repeats that He had set up the Kingdom of David with the express design of establishing it for ever…. There being nothing under Heaven of long continuance, ‘the days of Heaven’ is an expression employed to denote everlasting duration…. This prophecy cannot have its full accomplishment in any, till we come to Christ….
“‘But You have abhorred and rejected him.’ Here the Prophet complains, that in consequence of the decayed state of the Kingdom, the prophecy appeared to have failed…. ‘You have shortened the days of his youth’…. The Prophet…does not speak exclusively of any one individual, but compares the state of the Kingdom to the life of man…. God caused the Kingdom to wax old and finally to decay, before it reached a state of complete maturity…. Resembling that of a young man who, while yet increasing in strength and vigour, is carried away by a violent death before his time….
“‘O Jehovah, will You hide Yourself for ever?’… He tacitly intimates that all will be well, as soon as God is pleased to look upon His chosen people with a benignant countenance…. ‘Remember how short my time is!’… The Prophet, the more effectually to move God to commiseration, lays before him the brevity of human life…. If we receive no taste of the divine goodness, it will seem that we have been created in vain….
“God has created men, and placed them in the world…. As His goodness extends itself even to the cattle and lower animals of every kind, it cannot for a moment be supposed that we who hold a higher rank in the scale of being than the brute creation, should wholly be deprived of it…. The course of our life…is so brief…. The end for which men were created, was that they should enjoy God’s bounty in the present world…. If God does not make haste to bless them, the opportunity will no longer be afforded when their life shall have run out…. ‘What man shall live, and shall not see death?’ This verse contains a confirmation…concerning the brevity of human life…. No man is privileged with exemption, from the dominion of death….
‘Blessed be Jehovah, for ever!’… The Prophet, after having freely bewailed the calamities of the Church, now…breaks forth into the language of praise…. The design of the writer was to assuage the greatness of his grief…, so that he might entertain the livelier hope of deliverance!” I will sing of the mercies of the Lord unto all generations! Will you too? Blessed be the Lord, for evermore!
