Psalms 34:22

Psalms NO CONDEMNATIONPsalm 34:22 . These words are very inadequately represented in the translation of the Authorised Version. The Psalmist’s closing declaration is something very much deeper than that they who trust in God ‘shall not be desolate.’ If you look at the previous clause, you will see that we must expect something more than such a particular blessing as that:-’The Lord redeemeth the soul of His servants.’ It is a great drop from that thought, instead of being a climax, to follow it with nothing more than, ‘None of them that trust in Him shall be desolate.’ But the Revised Version accurately renders the words: ‘None of them that trust in Him shall be condemned .’ There we have something that is worthy to follow ‘The Lord redeemeth the soul of His servants,’ and we have a most striking anticipation of the clearest and most Evangelical teaching of the New Testament. The entirely New Testament tone of these words of the psalm comes out still more clearly, if we recognise that, not only in the latter, but in the former, part of the clause, we have one of the very keynotes of New Testament teaching. When we read in the New Testament that ‘we are justified by faith,’ the meaning is precisely the same as that of our text.

Thus, however it came about, here is this Psalmist, David or another, standing away back amidst the shadows and symbols and ritualisms of that Old Covenant, and rising at once above all the mists, right up into the sunshine, and seeing, as clearly as we see it nineteen centuries after Jesus Christ, that the way to escape condemnation is simple faith. Let us look at both of the parts of these great words. We consider- I. The people that are spoken of here. ‘None of them that trust in Him’-I need not, I suppose, further dwell upon the absolute identity shown by this phrase between the Old and the New Testament conceptions; but I should like to make a remark, which I dare say I have often made before-it cannot be made too often-that, whatever be the differences between the Old and the New, this is not the difference, that they present two different ways of approaching God. There are a great many differences; the conception of the divine nature is no doubt infinitely deepened, made more tender and more lofty, by the thought of the Fatherhood of God. The contents of the revelation which our faith is to grasp are brought out far more definitely and articulately and fully in the New Testament. But in the Old, the road to God was the same as it is to-day; and from the beginning there has only been, and through all Eternity there will only be, one path by which men can have access to the Father, and that is by faith. ‘Trust’ is the Old Testament word, ‘faith’ is the New.

Psalm 34:22 . The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants — That is, their lives, or their persons, from the malicious designs of all their enemies, from the power of the grave, and from the sting of every affliction. He keeps them from sinning in their troubles, which is the only thing that could do them a real injury, and keeps them from despair, and from being put out of possession of their own souls. None that trust in him shall be desolate — Or, comfortless; for they shall not be cut off from communion with God. And no man is desolate, but he whom God has forsaken, nor is any man undone till he is in hell. Instead of, shall be desolate, in this and the preceding verse, the margin reads, shall be guilty; as the word יאשׁמו , jeshemu, here used, is frequently and properly rendered. Indeed, it includes in it both the idea of guilt and the punishment incurred thereby. Now, they that in the way of true repentance, living faith, and new obedience, trust in the Lord, are both rescued from guilt and the punishment to which it had exposed them. It may not be improper to observe here that, as this is another of the alphabetical Psalms, every verse beginning with a distinct letter of the Hebrew alphabet, except the fifth, which includes two letters; so this verse is a kind of detached sentence, added, as in Psalms 25., beyond the alphabet, perhaps in order that the Psalm might end with a promise rather than a threatening.