John Calvin Commentary Psalms 94:12

"Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Jehovah, And teachest out of thy law;" — Psalms 94:12 (ASV)

Blessed is the man whom you have instructed, O God! The Psalmist now passes from the language of censure to that of consolation, comforting himself and others of the Lord’s people with the truth that, though God might afflict them for a time, He promoted their true interests and safety.

At no period of life is it unnecessary to remember this truth, as we are called to a continued warfare. God may allow us intervals of ease, considering our weakness, but He always keeps us exposed to calamities of various kinds. We have already noticed the audacious excesses to which the wicked proceed.

If it were not for the comforting thought that those whom God exercises with the cross are a blessed people, our condition would be truly miserable. We are to consider that, in calling us to be His people, He has separated us from the rest of the world to share in a blessed peace through the mutual cultivation of truth and righteousness.

The Church is often cruelly oppressed by tyrants under the guise of law—the very case of which the Psalmist complains in this psalm; for it is evident that he speaks of domestic enemies, pretending to be judges in the nation. Under such circumstances, a carnal judgment would infer that if God really concerned Himself with our welfare, He would never allow these persons to perpetrate such atrocities.

To prevent this, the Psalmist wants us to distrust our own ideas of things and to feel the necessity of that wisdom which comes from above. I consider the passage to mean that it is only in the Lord’s school that we can ever learn to maintain composure of mind and a posture of patient expectation and trust under the pressure of distress.

The Psalmist declares that the wisdom which would carry us forward to the end, with an inward peace and courage under long-continued trouble, is not natural to any of us but must come from God. Accordingly, he exclaims that those are the truly blessed whom God has accustomed through His word to the endurance of the cross, and prevented from sinking under adversity by the secret supports and consolations of His own Spirit.

The words with which the verse begins, Blessed is the man whom you have instructed, undoubtedly refer to chastisements and the experience of the cross, but they also include the gift of inward illumination. Afterwards, the Psalmist adds that this wisdom, which is imparted by God inwardly, is at the same time presented and made known in the Scriptures. In this way, he honors the use of the written word, as we find Paul saying that all things

were written for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope (Romans 15:4).

This shows from what source we are to derive our patience—the oracles of God, which supply us with grounds for hope for the lessening of our sorrows.

In short, what the Psalmist means is essentially this: Believers must, first, be exhorted to exercise patience, not to lose heart under the cross, but to wait submissively on God for deliverance. Second, they must be taught how this grace is to be obtained, for we are naturally disposed to abandon ourselves to despair, and any hope of ours would quickly fail if we were not taught from above that all our troubles must eventually result in salvation.

We have here the Psalmist’s testimony to the truth that the word of God provides us with abundant grounds for comfort, and that no one who rightly avails himself of it need ever count himself unhappy or yield to hopelessness and despondency. One mark by which God distinguishes the true from the false disciple is his being ready and prepared to bear the cross, and waiting quietly for the Divine deliverance, without giving way to fretfulness and impatience.

True patience does not consist in offering an obstinate resistance to evils, or in that unyielding stubbornness which was regarded as a virtue by the Stoics, but in a cheerful submission to God, based on confidence in His grace. For this reason, the Psalmist rightly begins by laying it down as a fundamental truth, necessary to be learned by all the Lord’s people, that the outcome of those temporary persecutions to which they are subjected is their being finally brought to a blessed rest after their enemies have done their worst.

He might have contented himself with saying that the truly blessed were those who had learned from God’s word to bear the cross patiently. However, so that he might more readily incline them to a cheerful acceptance of the Divine will, he added a statement of the consolation which tends to lessen the sorrow of their spirits.

Even supposing that a man should bear his trials without a tear or a sigh, yet if he champs the bit in sullen hopelessness—if he only adheres to such principles as these: “We are mortal creatures,” “It is vain to resist necessity and strive against fate,” “Fortune is blind”—this is obstinacy rather than patience. There is concealed opposition to God in this contempt of calamities disguised as fortitude.

The only consideration that will subdue our minds to a willing submission is that God, in subjecting us to persecutions, intends for us to ultimately be brought into the enjoyment of a rest. Wherever this conviction of a rest prepared for the people of God reigns—and of a refreshment provided amidst the heat and turmoil of their troubles, so that they may not perish with the world around them—this will prove enough, and more than enough, to lessen any present bitterness of affliction.

By evil days, or days of evil, the Psalmist might thus mean the everlasting destruction that awaits the ungodly, whom God has spared for a certain interval. Or his words may be interpreted as meaning that the man is blessed who has learned to be composed and tranquil under trials.

The rest intended would then be of an inward kind, enjoyed by the believer even during the storms of adversity. The scope of the passage would be that the truly happy man is he who has profited so much from the word of God as to endure the assault of external evils with peace and composure.

But as it is added, while the pit is digged for the wicked, it would seem necessary, in order to bring out the opposition contained in the two parts of the sentence, to suppose that the Psalmist rather commends the wisdom of those who believe that God afflicts them with the purpose of saving them from destruction and bringing them eventually to a good outcome.

It was necessary to state this second ground of comfort, because our hearts are inevitably affected with the most intense grief when we see the wicked triumph and no Divine restraint put upon them.

The Psalmist meets this temptation by appropriately reminding us that the wicked are left on earth just as a dead body is stretched out on a bed until its grave is dug.

Here believers are warned that, if they would preserve their constancy, they must mount their watchtower, as Habakkuk says (Habakkuk 2:1), and take a long-range view of God’s judgments.

They will see worldly men reveling in worldly delights, and if they extend their view no farther, they will give way to impatience.

But it would moderate their grief if they would only remember that those houses nominally for the living are, in fact, only granted to the dead until their grave is digged; and that, though they remain on earth, they are already destined for destruction.