John Gill Commentary Psalms 27

The Lord [is] my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear ?
&c.] The Targum in the king of Spain's Bible explains it, "the Word of the Lord is my light"; and so Ainsworth cites it; that is, Christ the eternal Word, in whom "was life, and that life was the light of men", (John 1:4) ; and the psalmist is not to be understood of the light of nature and reason, with which the Logos, or Word, enlightens every man that comes into the world; nor merely in a temporal sense, of giving him the light of prosperity, and delivering him from the darkness of adversity; but of the light of grace communicated to him by him who is the sun of righteousness, and the light of the world; and by whom such who are darkness itself, while in an unregenerate state, are made light, and see light; all the light which is given to men at first conversion is from Christ; and all the after communications and increase of it are from him; as well as all that spiritual joy, peace, and comfort they partake of, which light sometimes signifies, (Psalms 97:11) ; and which the psalmist now has an experience of; enjoying the light of God's countenance, and having discoveries of his love, which made him fearless of danger and enemies: and such who are made light in the Lord have no reason to be afraid of the prince of darkness; nor of the rulers of the darkness of this world; nor of all the darkness, distress, and persecutions they are the authors of; nor of the blackness of darkness reserved for ungodly men; for their light is an everlasting one, and they are made meet to be partakers of the inheritance with the saints in light: and the more light they have, the less fear;

and what made the psalmist still more fearless was, that Christ was his "salvation"; by the light which the Lord was to him, he saw his need of salvation, he knew that his own righteousness would not save him; he was made acquainted with the design and appointment of the Lord, that Christ should be salvation to the ends of the earth; he had knowledge of the covenant of grace, and faith in it, which was all his salvation, (2 Samuel 23:5) . Salvation was revealed to the Old Testament saints, in the promises, sacrifices, types, and figures of that dispensation; and they looked through them to him for it, and were saved by him, as New Testament believers are; and they had faith of interest in Christ, and knew him to be their Saviour and Redeemer, as did Job, and here the psalmist David: and such who know Christ to be their salvation need not be afraid of any person or thing; not of sin, for though they fear, and should fear to commit it, they need not fear the damning power of it, for they are saved from it; nor of Satan, out of whose hands they are ransomed; nor of the world, which is overcome by Christ; nor of the last enemy, death, which is abolished by him; nor of hell, and wrath to come, for he has delivered them from it;

the Lord [is] the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid ?
meaning not of his natural life, though he was the God of his life, who had given it to him, and had preserved it, and upheld his soul in it; but of his spiritual life: Christ is the author of spiritual life, he implants the principle of it in the hearts of his people, yea, he himself is that life; he lives in them, and is the support of their life; he is the tree of life, and the bread of life, by which it is maintained; and he is the security of it, it is bound up in the bundle of life with him, it is hid with Christ in God; and because he lives they live also; and he gives unto them eternal life, so that they have no reason to be afraid that they shall come short of heaven and happiness; nor need they fear them that kill the body and can do no more; nor any enemy whatever, who cannot reach their spiritual life, nor hurt that, nor hinder them of the enjoyment of eternal life.

When the wicked, [even] my enemies and my foes, came upon
me
They are wicked men, men of malignant spirits, and evildoers, who are the enemies and foes of the people of God, and who hate them with an implacable hatred, and do everything they can to distress and afflict them; and such enemies David had, who were many and mighty.

And these "came upon" him, or "approached against" him ^F3 , they drew near to him to make war with him, as the word signifies ^F4 ; they attacked him in an hostile manner; and their view was, as he says,

to eat up my flesh ,
as they eat bread, (Psalms 14:4) ; to devour him at once, to make but one morsel of him, to destroy his life, to strip him of his substance, to take away his wives and children, as the Amalekites at Ziklag, (1 Samuel 30:1–6) ;

they stumbled and fell ;
the Lord put stumbling blocks in their way, and retarded their march, and hindered them from executing their designs; and they fell into the hands of David, and were subdued under him, or fell by death; and these past instances of divine goodness the psalmist calls to mind, to keep up his heart and courage, and animate and strengthen him against the fears of men, of death and hell.

FOOTNOTES:

• F3: (yle brqb) "cum appropinquaverint adversum me", Pagninus; so Gejerus.
• F4: "Belligerantibus contra me", Junius & Tremellius; so Piscator & Ainsworth.

Though an host should encamp against me
An host of the ungodly, as the Targum; though ever so many of them, even ten thousands of them, as in (Psalms 3:6) ; should beset him on every side;

my heart shall not fear ;
for not only the angels of the Lord encamped about him, as they do about all that fear the Lord; but salvation was appointed for walls and bulwarks about him; yea, the Lord himself was a wall of fire around him, and he was kept as in a garrison by the power of God;

though war should rise against me :
in all its terrible shapes:

in this [will] I [be] confident ;
either in this war, in the midst of it; or in this that he had expressed, (Psalms 27:1) ; that the Lord was his light, his salvation, and the strength of his life; so the Jewish writers ^F5 : or as others ^F6 , in this one thing, desired in (Psalms 27:4) ; but either of the former senses is best, especially the latter of them. Saints need not be afraid, though there is a war within them between the flesh and spirit; and though without are fightings with Satan and his principalities and powers; since they may be confident of victory, and that they are more than conquerors, through Christ that has loved them.

FOOTNOTES:

• F5: Jarchi, Kimchi, & Aben Ezra in loc.
• F6: Some in Aben Ezra in loc.

One [thing] I have desired of the Lord
Not to be returned to Saul's court; nor to his own house and family; nor to have an affluence of worldly riches and honours; but to have constant abode in the house of the Lord; an opportunity of attending continually on the public worship of God; which is excused and neglected by many, and is a weariness to others, but was by the psalmist preferred to everything else; he being now deprived of it, as it seems;

that I will seek after ;
by incessant prayer, until obtained; importunity and perseverance in prayer are the way to succeed, as appears from the parable of the widow and unjust judge;

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life :
not in heaven, Christ's Father's house, where he dwells, and where the saints will dwell to all eternity; though to be clothed upon with the house from heaven is very desirable; rather, in the church of the living God, which is the house of God, and pillar of truth, where true believers in Christ have a place and a name, and are pillars that will never go out; but here the place of divine worship seems to be meant, where the Lord granted his presence, and where dwelling the psalmist counted the greatest happiness on earth; he envied the very sparrows and swallows, that built their nests on the altars in it; and reckoned a day in it better than a thousand elsewhere; and to have the privilege of attending all opportunities in it, as long as he lived, is the singular request he here makes: the ends he had in view follow;

to behold the beauty of the Lord ,
or "the delight [and] pleasantness of the Lord" ^F7 ; to see the priests in their robes, and doing their office, as typical of Christ the great High Priest; and the Levites and singers performing their work in melodious strains, prefiguring the churches in Gospel times, singing to the Lord with grace in their hearts, and the four and twenty elders, and one hundred and forty four thousand, with the Lamb on Mount Zion, singing the song of redeeming love; and all the tribes and people of Israel, assembled together to worship God, representing the church of Christ as a perfection of beauty, having the beauty of the Lord upon her, and made perfectly comely through his comeliness;

as it is a most delightful sight to see a company of saints attending Gospel worship, meeting together to sing, and pray, and hear the word, and wait upon the Lord in all his appointments; to see them walking in the faith and fellowship of the Gospel, and according to the order of it; this is next to the desirable sight of the bride, the Lamb's wife, in the New Jerusalem state, having the glory of God upon her:

moreover, it was a pleasant sight to a believer in those times to behold the sacrifices of slain beasts, which were figures of the better sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; to which may be added other things that were to be seen by priests; as the ark of the Lord, which had the two tables in it, typical of Christ, the fulfilling end of the law for righteousness; and the table of shewbread, which pointed out Christ the bread of life, and his perpetual intercession for his people; and the golden candlestick, a type of the church, holding forth the word of life to others; with many other things, which, with an eye of faith, the saints of those times could look upon with delight and pleasure:

also the presence of the Lord may be intended by his beauty, than which nothing is more desirable to the people of God, even to behold his smiling countenance, to see his face, and enjoy his favour, and to have fellowship with him, and with one another; and particularly the beauty and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ may be designed, represented by the Shechinah, or glory, which filled both the tabernacle and the temple; who being the brightness of his Father's glory, and fairer than the children of men, and altogether lovely and full of grace, is a very desirable object to be beheld by faith;

and to inquire in his temple ;
to seek the face of the Lord, to consult him in matters of difficulty and moment; to search after the knowledge of divine things, and to ask for blessings of grace, for which he will be inquired of by his people, that he may bestow them on them.

FOOTNOTES:

• F7: (hwhy Menb) "amaemotate, Jehovae", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Gejerus; so Ainsworth; "suavitatem Jehovae", Cocceius, Michaelis.

For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion ,
&c.] This, with what follows, is given as a reason why the psalmist desired to dwell in the house of the Lord; because he considered it as a pavilion or booth, as the word ^F8 signifies in which he should be hid by the Lord, in times of trouble and distress, either through the heat of persecution, or of inward anxiety of mind, caused by the working of a fiery law; the allusion being, as some think, to the shepherd's tent or booth, into which he sometimes takes a poor sheep, and protects it from the scorching heat of the sun at noon: and of such use is the tabernacle of the Lord; see (Isaiah 4:6) ;

in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me ;
alluding either to the tents of generals of armies, who receive into them those whom they would protect from the insults and injuries of others; or rather to the most holy place in the tabernacle, called the secret place, (Ezekiel 7:22) ; typical of Christ, the hiding place of his, people, in whom their life is hid, and where it is safe and secure;

he shall set me up upon a rock ;
where he would be above and out of the reach of his enemies; meaning Christ, comparable to a rock for its height, he being higher than the kings of the earth, than the angels in heaven, than the heavens themselves, and much more than the sons of men; see (Psalms 61:2) ; and for shelter and safety, he being a munition of rocks, a strong tower, a place of defence, and rock of refuge; and for firmness, solidity, and strength, he being able to bear the whole weight of the building of the church, and every believer laid upon him; and for duration, he being more immovable than rocks and mountains; so that such who are set up upon him are in the most safe and secure state imaginable.

FOOTNOTES:

• F8: (hkob) "in tugurio suo", Junius & Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius, Michaelis.