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Psalm 89

God’s Covenant with David

A Maskil of Ethan the Ezrahite.

I will sing of your steadfast love, O L ord, forever;

with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations.

I declare that your steadfast love is established forever;

your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.

You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one,

I have sworn to my servant David:

‘I will establish your descendants forever,

and build your throne for all generations.’ ” Selah

Let the heavens praise your wonders, O L ord,

your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones.

For who in the skies can be compared to the L ord?

Who among the heavenly beings is like the L ord,

a God feared in the council of the holy ones,

great and awesome above all that are around him?

O L ord God of hosts,

who is as mighty as you, O L ord?

Your faithfulness surrounds you.

You rule the raging of the sea;

when its waves rise, you still them.

You crushed Rahab like a carcass;

you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.

The heavens are yours, the earth also is yours;

the world and all that is in it—you have founded them.

The north and the south—you created them;

Tabor and Hermon joyously praise your name.

You have a mighty arm;

strong is your hand, high your right hand.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne;

steadfast love and faithfulness go before you.

Happy are the people who know the festal shout,

who walk, O L ord, in the light of your countenance;

they exult in your name all day long,

and extol your righteousness.

For you are the glory of their strength;

by your favor our horn is exalted.

For our shield belongs to the L ord,

our king to the Holy One of Israel.

Then you spoke in a vision to your faithful one, and said:

“I have set the crown on one who is mighty,

I have exalted one chosen from the people.

I have found my servant David;

with my holy oil I have anointed him;

my hand shall always remain with him;

my arm also shall strengthen him.

The enemy shall not outwit him,

the wicked shall not humble him.

I will crush his foes before him

and strike down those who hate him.

My faithfulness and steadfast love shall be with him;

and in my name his horn shall be exalted.

I will set his hand on the sea

and his right hand on the rivers.

He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father,

my God, and the Rock of my salvation!’

I will make him the firstborn,

the highest of the kings of the earth.

Forever I will keep my steadfast love for him,

and my covenant with him will stand firm.

I will establish his line forever,

and his throne as long as the heavens endure.

If his children forsake my law

and do not walk according to my ordinances,

if they violate my statutes

and do not keep my commandments,

then I will punish their transgression with the rod

and their iniquity with scourges;

but I will not remove from him my steadfast love,

or be false to my faithfulness.

I will not violate my covenant,

or alter the word that went forth from my lips.

Once and for all I have sworn by my holiness;

I will not lie to David.

His line shall continue forever,

and his throne endure before me like the sun.

It shall be established forever like the moon,

an enduring witness in the skies.” Selah

But now you have spurned and rejected him;

you are full of wrath against your anointed.

You have renounced the covenant with your servant;

you have defiled his crown in the dust.

You have broken through all his walls;

you have laid his strongholds in ruins.

All who pass by plunder him;

he has become the scorn of his neighbors.

You have exalted the right hand of his foes;

you have made all his enemies rejoice.

Moreover, you have turned back the edge of his sword,

and you have not supported him in battle.

You have removed the scepter from his hand,

and hurled his throne to the ground.

You have cut short the days of his youth;

you have covered him with shame. Selah

How long, O L ord? Will you hide yourself forever?

How long will your wrath burn like fire?

Remember how short my time is—

for what vanity you have created all mortals!

Who can live and never see death?

Who can escape the power of Sheol? Selah

Lord, where is your steadfast love of old,

which by your faithfulness you swore to David?

Remember, O Lord, how your servant is taunted;

how I bear in my bosom the insults of the peoples,

with which your enemies taunt, O L ord,

with which they taunted the footsteps of your anointed.

Blessed be the L ord forever.

Amen and Amen.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

49. O Lord! where are thy former mercies? The prophet encourages himself, by calling to remembrance God’s former benefits, as if his reasoning were, That God can never be unlike himself, and that therefore the goodness which he manifested in old time to the fathers cannot come to an end. This comparison might indeed make the godly despond, when they find that they are not dealt with by him so gently as he dealt with the fathers, did not another consideration at the same time present itself to their minds — the consideration that he never changes, and never wearies in the course of his beneficence. As to the second clause of the verse, some interpreters connect it with the first, by interposing the relative, thus: — Where are thy former mercies which thou hast sworn? In this I readily acquiesce; for the sense is almost the same, although the relative be omitted. God had given evident and indubitable proofs of the truth of the oracle delivered to Samuel; ⁵⁵⁹⁵⁵⁹ “Sur les asnes et chevaux, et autres bestes brutes.” — Fr. “To asses and horses, and other brute beasts.” and, therefore, the faithful lay before him both his promise and the many happy fruits of it which had been experienced. They say, in truth, that they may with the greater confidence apply to themselves, whatever tokens of his liberality God had in old time bestowed upon the fathers; for they had the same ground to expect the exercise of the Divine goodness towards them as the fathers had, God, who is unchangeably the same, having sworn to be merciful to the posterity of David throughout all ages.

50. O Lord! remember the reproach of thy servants. They again allege, that they are held in derision by the ungodly, — a consideration which had no small influence in moving God to compassion: for the more grievous and troublesome a temptation it is, to have the wicked deriding our patience, that, after having made us believe that God is not true in what he has promised, they may precipitate us into despair; the more ready is he to aid us, that our feeble minds may not yield to the temptation. The prophet does not simply mean that the reproaches of his enemies are to him intolerable, but that God must repress their insolence in deriding the faith and patience of the godly, in order that those who trust in him may not be put to shame. He enhances still more the same sentiment in the second clause, telling us, that he was assailed with all kind of reproaches by many peoples, or by the great peoples, for the Hebrew word רבים, rabbim, signifies both great and many

Moreover, it is not without cause, that, after having spoken in general of the servants of God, he changes the plural into the singular number. He does this, that each of the faithful in particular may be the more earnestly stirred up to the duty of prayer. The expression, in my bosom, is very emphatic. It is as if he had said, The wicked do not throw from a distance their insulting words, but they vomit them, so to speak, upon the children of God, who are thus constrained to receive them into their bosom, and to bear patiently this base treatment. Such is the perversity of the time in which we live, that we have need to apply the same doctrine to ourselves; for the earth is full of profane and proud despisers of God, who cease not to make themselves merry at our expense. And as Satan is a master well qualified to teach them this kind of rhetoric, the calamities of the Church always furnish them with matter for exercising it. Some take bosom for the secret affection of the heart; but this exposition seems to be too refined.

51. With which thy enemies, O Jehovah! have reproached thee. What the Psalmist now affirms is, not that the wicked torment the saints with their contumelious language, but that they revile even God himself. And he makes this statement, because it is a much more powerful plea for obtaining favor in the sight of God, to beseech him to maintain his own cause, because all the reproaches by which the simplicity of our faith is held up to scorn recoil upon himself, than to beseech him to do this, because he is wounded in the person of his Church; according as he declares in Isaiah,

“Whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed; and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 37:23)

That wicked robber Rabshakeh thought that he scoffed only at the wretched Jews whom he besieged, and whose surrender of themselves into his hands he believed he would soon witness; but God took it as if he himself had been the object whom that wicked man directly assailed. On this account also, the prophet calls these enemies of his people the enemies of God; namely, because in persecuting the Church with deadly hostility, they made an assault upon the majesty of God, under whose protection the Church was placed.

In the second clause, by the footsteps of Messiah or Christ is meant the coming of Christ, even as it is said in Isaiah 52:7,

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!” (Isaiah 52:7)

The Hebrew word עקב, akeb, sometimes signifies the heel; but here, as in many other passages, it signifies the sole of the foot. Others translate it the pace or step, but this gives exactly the same sense. There can be no doubt, that footsteps, by the figure synecdoche, is employed to denote the feet; and again, that by the feet, according to the figure metonomy, is meant the coming of Christ. The wicked, observing that the Jews clung to the hope of redemption, and patiently endured all adversities because a deliverer had been promised them, disdainfully derided their patience, as if all that the prophets had testified concerning the coming of Christ had been only a fable. ⁵⁶⁰⁵⁶⁰ “De la revelation faite a Samuel.” — Fr. And now also, although he has been once manifested to the world, yet as, in consequence of his having been received up into the glory of heaven, he seems to be far distant from us, and to have forsaken his Church, these filthy dogs scoff at our hope, as if it were a mere delusion.

⁵⁵⁹ “Sur les asnes et chevaux, et autres bestes brutes.” — Fr. “To asses and horses, and other brute beasts.”

⁵⁶⁰ “De la revelation faite a Samuel.” — Fr.