John Calvin Commentary Psalms 9

I will praise the Lord. David begins the psalm in this way, to induce God to help him in the calamities with which he was now afflicted. As God continues His favor towards His own people without intermission, all the good He has until now done to us should serve to inspire us with confidence and hope, that He will be gracious and merciful to us in the future.

There is, indeed, in these words a profession of gratitude for the favors which he has received from God; but, in remembering His past mercies, he encourages himself to expect help in future emergencies; and by this means he opens the gate of prayer. The whole heart is understood as an upright or sincere heart, which is opposed to a double heart.

Thus he distinguishes himself not only from gross hypocrites, who praise God only with their lips outwardly, without their hearts being in any way affected, but also acknowledges that whatever he had until now done which was commendable proceeded entirely from the pure grace of God.

Even irreligious men, I admit, when they have obtained some memorable victory, are ashamed to defraud God of the praise which is due to Him. But we see that as soon as they have uttered a single expression in acknowledgment of the assistance God has afforded them, they immediately begin to boast loudly and to sing triumphs in honor of their own valor, as if they were under no obligations whatever to God.

In short, it is pure mockery when they profess that their exploits have been done by the help of God; for, after having made an offering to Him, they sacrifice to their own counsel, skill, courage, and resources. Observe how the prophet Habakkuk, representing one presumptuous king, wisely reproves the ambition common to all (Habakkuk 1:16).

Indeed, we see that the famous generals of antiquity, who, upon returning victorious from a battle, desired public and solemn thanksgivings to be decreed in their name to the gods, had no real intention of honoring their false deities. Instead, they only abused their names under a false pretext, thereby obtaining an opportunity to indulge in vain boasting, so that their own superior prowess might be acknowledged.

David, therefore, with good reason, affirms that he is unlike the children of this world, whose hypocrisy or fraud is revealed by the wicked and dishonest distribution they make between God and themselves, claiming for themselves the greater part of the praise they pretended to ascribe to God.

He praised God with his whole heart, which they did not; for it is certainly not praising God with the whole heart when a mortal man dares to appropriate the smallest portion of the glory God claims for Himself. God cannot tolerate His glory being appropriated by a creature, even in the smallest degree; so intolerable to Him is the sacrilegious arrogance of those who, by praising themselves, obscure His glory as much as they can.

I will tell of all thy marvellous works. Here David confirms what I have already said: that he does not speak in this psalm of only one victory or one deliverance. For he proposes for his meditation, in general, all the miracles God had wrought on his behalf.

He applies the term marvellous not to all the benefits he had received from God, but to those more significant and memorable deliverances which exhibited a bright and striking manifestation of divine power. God would have us acknowledge Him as the author of all our blessings; but on some of His gifts He has engraved more evident marks to awaken our senses more effectually, which are otherwise, as it were, asleep or dead.

David’s language, therefore, is an acknowledgment that he was preserved by God, not by ordinary means, but by the special power of God, which was conspicuously displayed in this matter, since He had stretched out His hand in a miraculous manner, and beyond the common and usual way.

I will rejoice and exult in you. Observe how the faithful praise God sincerely and without hypocrisy when they do not rest on themselves for happiness and are not intoxicated with foolish and carnal presumption, but rejoice in God alone; this is nothing else than to seek the substance of their joy from the favor of God, and from no other source, since perfect happiness consists in it.

I will rejoice in you. We ought to consider how great the difference and opposition is between the character of the joy that people endeavor to find in themselves and the character of the joy that they seek in God. David, to express more forcibly how he renounces everything that might captivate or occupy him with vain delight, adds the word exult. By this, he means that he finds in God such a full and overflowing abundance of joy that he does not need to seek even the smallest drop elsewhere.

Moreover, it is important to remember what I have previously observed: David calls to mind the testimonies of divine goodness that he had formerly experienced, in order to encourage himself with greater alacrity to open his heart to God and to present his prayers before Him. One who begins his prayer by affirming that God is the great source and object of his joy fortifies himself beforehand with the strongest confidence in presenting his supplications to the Hearer of prayer.

While my enemies are turned back. In these words he assigns the reason why he undertakes to sing the praises of God: namely, because he acknowledges that his frequent victories had been achieved, not by his own power, nor by the power of his soldiers, but by the free favor of God.

In the first part of the verse, he narrates historically how his enemies were defeated or put to flight; and then he adds what faith alone could enable him to say: that this did not take place by the power of man or by chance, but because God fought for him and stood against them in the battle.

He says, they fall, and are put to flight At Thy Presence. David therefore acted wisely when, upon seeing his enemies turn their backs, he lifted up the eyes of his mind to God, in order to perceive that victory flowed to him from no other source than from the secret and incomprehensible aid of God.

And, doubtless, it is He only who guides the simple by the spirit of wisdom, while He inflicts madness on the crafty and strikes them with amazement—who inspires with courage the faint and timid, while He causes the boldest to tremble with fear—who restores to the feeble their strength, while He reduces the strong to weakness—who upholds the fainthearted by His power, while He makes the sword fall from the hands of the valiant—and finally, who brings the battle to a prosperous or disastrous issue, just as He pleases.

When, therefore, we see our enemies overthrown, we must beware of limiting our view to what is visible to the physical senses, like ungodly men, who, while they see with their bodily eyes, are yet blind; but let us instantly recall this truth: that when our enemies turn back, they are put to flight by the presence of the Lord.

The verbs, fall and put to flight, in the Hebrew, are in the future tense, but I have translated them in the present because David anew presents to his own view the goodness of God which had formerly been manifested towards him.

The Psalmist proceeds a step further in the 4th verse, declaring that God stretched forth his hand to give him help, because he was unrighteously afflicted by his enemies. And surely, if we desire to be favored with the assistance of God, we should ensure that we fight under his standard.

David, therefore, calls him a judge of righteousness, or, which is the same thing, a righteous judge; as if he had said, God has acted towards me according to his ordinary manner and constant principle of action, for it is his usual way to undertake the defense of good causes.

I am more inclined to render the words, You sit a just judge, than to render them, O just judge, you sit, because the form of expression, according to the first reading, is more emphatic. The import of it is this: God at length has assumed the character of judge, and has gone up into his judgment seat to execute the office of judge.

On this account he glories in having law and right on his side, and declares that God was the maintainer of his right and cause. What follows in the next verse, You have destroyed [or discomfited] the wicked, belongs also to the same subject. When he beholds his enemies overthrown, he does not rejoice in their destruction, considered simply in itself; but in condemning them on account of their unrighteousness, he says that they have received the punishment which they deserved.

Under the name of nations he means that it was not a small number of ungodly persons who were destroyed, but great armies, indeed, even all who had risen up against him from different quarters. And the goodness of God shines forth the brighter in this, that because of the favor which he bore to one of his servants, he did not even spare whole nations.

When he says, You have blotted out their name for ever, it may be understood to mean that they were destroyed without any hope of ever being able to rise again, and devoted to everlasting shame. We could not otherwise discern how God buries the name of the ungodly with themselves, if we did not hear him declare that the memory of the righteous shall be for ever blessed (Proverbs 10:7).

O you enemy, desolations have come to an end for ever. This sixth verse is explained in different ways. Some read it interrogatively, viewing the letter ה, as a mark of interrogation, as if David, addressing his discourse to his enemies, asked whether they had completed their work of devastation, just as they had resolved to destroy everything. For the verb תמם, tamam, sometimes signifies to complete, and sometimes to put an end to anything. If we take it in this sense here, David, in the language of sarcasm or irony, rebukes the foolish confidence of his enemies.

Others, reading the verse without any interrogation, make the irony still more evident. They think that David describes, in these three verses, a twofold state of affairs: first (verse 6), he introduces his enemies persecuting him with savage violence and persevering with determined obstinacy in their cruelty, so that it seemed to be their fixed purpose never to desist until the kingdom of David should be utterly destroyed; and second (verses 7 and 8), he represents God as seated on his judgment-seat, directly opposite them, to repress their outrageous attempts.

If this sense is accepted, the copulative, in the beginning of the seventh verse, which we have translated and, must be rendered by the adversative particle but, in this way: You, O enemy, sought after nothing except slaughter and the destruction of cities; but, finally, God has shown that he sits in heaven on his throne as judge, to set in order the things that are in confusion on the earth.

According to others, David gives thanks to God because, when the ungodly were fully determined to spread universal ruin around them, he put an end to their devastations. Others understand the words in a more restricted sense, meaning that the desolations of the ungodly were completed because God, in his just judgment, had made the calamities and ruin they had devised against David fall upon their own heads.

According to others, David, in the sixth verse, complains that God had, for a long time, silently permitted the miserable devastation of his people, so that the ungodly, being left unchecked, wasted and destroyed everything as they pleased. In the seventh verse, they think he adds for his consolation that God, nevertheless, presides over human affairs.

I have no objection to the view that first, it is ironically described how dreadful the enemy's power was when they put forth their utmost efforts; and next, contrasted with it, is the judgment of God, which suddenly brought their proceedings to an abrupt end, contrary to their expectation.

They anticipated no such outcome, for we know that the ungodly, although they may not presume openly to deprive God of his authority and dominion, yet run headlong into every excess of wickedness, no less boldly than if he were bound with fetters. We have noted an almost similar manner of speaking in a preceding psalm (Psalms 7:13).

This contrast between the power of the enemies of God and his people, and the work of God in disrupting their plans, clearly illustrates the wonderful nature of the help he granted to his people. The ungodly had set no limit for themselves in doing mischief, except for the utter destruction of everything. At first, complete destruction seemed imminent; but when things were in this state of confusion, God appeared in a timely way to help his people.

Therefore, whenever nothing but destruction is all we can see, wherever we may turn, let us remember to lift up our eyes to the heavenly throne, from where God observes all that is done on earth. In the world, our affairs may have been brought to such a desperate point that there is no longer hope for them; but the shield with which we should repel all the temptations that assail us is this: that God, nevertheless, sits as Judge in heaven.

Indeed, when he seems to take no notice of us and does not immediately remedy the evils we suffer, we should realize by faith his hidden providence. The Psalmist says, in the first place, God sits for ever, by which he means that however high the violence of men may reach, and although their fury may burst forth without measure, they can never drag God from his seat.

He further means by this expression that it is impossible for God to abdicate the office and authority of judge; a truth which he expresses more clearly in the second clause of the verse, He has prepared his throne for judgment, in which he declares that God reigns not only to make his majesty and glory supremely great but also to govern the world in righteousness.