John Calvin Commentary Psalms 89:38

"But thou hast cast off and rejected, Thou hast been wroth with thine anointed." — Psalms 89:38 (ASV)

But thou hast abhorred and rejected him. Here the prophet complains that because of the decayed state of the kingdom, the prophecy appeared to have failed to be fulfilled. Not that he accuses God of falsehood; but he speaks in this manner so that he may freely cast his cares and griefs into the bosom of God, who permits us to deal so familiarly with him.

It undoubtedly befits us to frame our desires according to the divine will; but a person who humbly laments being deprived of the tokens of divine favor cannot be said to pass beyond due bounds, provided he does not despair or rebelliously murmur against God. And we will later see that the prophet, when he blesses God at the end of the psalm, offers proof of tranquil submission, by which he corrects or qualifies his complaints.

Therefore, whoever that Rabbi was who maintained that it is unlawful to recite this psalm, he was led by a foolish and impious peevishness to condemn what God bears with in His children. In taking this liberty of expostulating with God, the prophet had no other aim than to more effectively resist distrust and impatience by unburdening himself in the divine presence.

Furthermore, the words, Thou hast abhorred and rejected him, if criticized according to the rules of the Greek and Latin languages, would be pronounced inelegant, for the most emphatic word is put first, and then another, less emphatic word is added. But as the Hebrews do not observe our manner of arrangement in this respect, the order adopted here is quite consistent with the idiom of the Hebrew language. The third verb contains the reason for this change on God’s part, teaching us that the king was rejected because God was incensed against him.

Some think that this is a recital of the mockery in which the enemies of the chosen people indulged—an opinion they adopt to avoid the difficulty of viewing this severe kind of complaint as uttered by the Church, which proved such a stumbling block to the Rabbi mentioned above that because of it he condemned the whole psalm. But it should be observed that the prophet speaks according to the common feeling and understanding of people, while at the same time he was fully convinced in his own mind that the king who had once been chosen by God could not be rejected by Him.

In the same way, we should understand what follows (Psalms 89:39) concerning the annulling of the covenant: Thou hast made the covenant of thy servant to cease. The prophet does not charge God with levity and inconstancy; he only complains that those notable promises of which he had spoken had, to all appearances, vanished and come to nothing. Whenever the faithful ask the question:

How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?
(Psalms 13:1; Psalms 44:23; Psalms 79:5)

They certainly are not to be understood as attributing forgetfulness or sleep to Him; they only lay before Him the temptations that flesh and blood suggest to them in order to induce Him to speedily help them in the weakness with which they are distressed. It is not then surprising, though the prophet, amidst such horrible desolation, was affected by the weaknesses to which human nature is so liable in such circumstances, and was thus prompted to assert that what God promised was far from being clearly realized.

When he saw all things going contrary to the Divine promise, he was not so steel-hearted as to remain unmoved at such a pitiable and confused spectacle. But coming freely into the Divine presence, he seeks a remedy so that he might not be swallowed up by sorrow, which would have been the case had he indulged in secret discontent and neglected this means of alleviation.

What is added at the end of the verse, Thou hast cast his crown to the earth, does not seem to apply to the time of Rehoboam, unless, perhaps, the dismemberment of the kingdom may be denoted by the casting of the crown to the earth. The statements made immediately after must necessarily refer to some greater calamity.

If this is admitted, the author of the psalm must have been a different person from Ethan, who was one of the four wise men mentioned in the sacred history (2 Kings 4:31). In such a doubtful case, I leave everyone to adopt the conjecture that appears to him the most probable.