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1,2.
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The Lord... was on our side. This was the promise
implicit in the name of the special child “Immanuel” — God
is with us (Isa. 7:14; 8:8,10). Of course this would be the Messiah; but as
an earnest of Judah’s promised deliverance from her enemies, another child
would be born in the days of Ahaz, to whom the prophecy was first given. In
fact, the child would be his son by the godly Abijah (2 Chron. 29:1),
most likely still unmarried (a “virgin” who would, after her
marriage to Ahaz, conceive!) when Isaiah spoke to Ahaz. The name of this special
child would echo the great promise of “Immanuel”:
“Hezekiah” means “Yahweh will take hold to help us”, or
“Yahweh is on our side”. The deliverance from the Assyrian threat,
which this child would mediate, would be the greatest preview of the deliverance
to be wrought in the last days by his seed in David’s line, the greater
“Immanuel”.
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2.
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When men rose up against us. The men who rose up to
bring calamity upon Israel — the Assyrian host — are described by
four pictures in this psalm: an earthquake (v. 3), a flood (vv. 4,5), wild
beasts (v. 6), and crafty hunters (v. 7).
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3.
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Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was
kindled against us. The armies of Sennacherib were so large, and their
advance so devastating, and their rounding up of captives so comprehensive, that
it was as though the earth had opened up and swallowed its victims alive (Psa.
56:1,2; 57:3). But just as with the intimidating band of Korah who rose up
before Moses and Aaron (Num. 16:2,3), the fate with which they threatened the
righteous became their fate instead (vv. 32,33).
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4,5.
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Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone
over our soul: then the proud waters had gone over our soul (Psa. 42:7;
69:1,2). Through the sacred page flow two very different streams. The raging
torrent, the seasonal river overflowing its banks, is used by Isaiah as a figure
for the advancing Assyrians (Isa. 8:7,8). Its waters roar and are troubled, but
in their tumultuous course the wild waters come at last against the immovable
height of Zion (Psa. 125:1): “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no
further” (Job 38:11). For here, beneath Zion’s hills, flows another
stream which is the secret of her survival. It is not harsh and overpowering;
its waters go softly (Isa. 8:6) through the rock-hewn channels of
Hezekiah’s conduit (2 Kings 20:20) into the pool of Siloam (John 9:7). In
times of siege it brings life to thirsty watchmen on Zion’s walls. In its
silent, unerring, and precise course it symbolizes the sure and certain purposes
of God. Its whispering waters speak in a still, small voice of the blessing of
faith in the Lord (cp. Psalms Studies, Psa. 46, Par. 2).
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6.
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Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey to
their teeth. The Gentile enemies of Israel are pictured as wild beasts, as
in Daniel and elsewhere. Lions especially figure considerably in Assyrian
sculpture and bas-reliefs (cp. Jer. 50:17). And the general figure is a very
familiar one in the pages of the psalms.
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7.
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Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the
fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. This figure (also found in
Psa. 10:9; 91:3; Prov. 6:5) stresses the relative weakness of Israel and the
cunning of her enemy. But Israel’s eyes are ever toward the Lord: He is
the One who plucks her feet out of the net (cp. Psa. 25:15 with
123:2).
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Though this psalm may have been written by David,
relating to his wilderness escapes from Saul, it is amazingly fitting to
Hezekiah’s circumstances. We see this especially in this verse, for which
there is a striking parallel in Assyria’s own archives. The cylinder, or
prism, of Sennacherib (housed today in the British Museum) has the following
statement:
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“Hezekiah himself like a caged bird, within Jerusalem,
his royal city, I shut in.”
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It is to be expected that a boastful monarch would insist that
only his successes be recorded; and so the prism has nothing to say of the
mighty stroke against Sennacherib’s confederacy, nor of his final retreat
from Judah and Jerusalem. However, these setbacks for the northern colossus are
substantiated from other secular histories. By God’s hand, the
“cage” was “opened” and the “bird” Hezekiah
set free!
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8.
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Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and
earth (121:1,2; 134:3). The natural man, like Ahaz, looks inward for
the cleverness to deliver himself from danger; and when this fails he looks
outward to other men, other political combinations, stronger armaments
and higher walls. The spiritual man, like Hezekiah, looks upward, to the
God who created all things.
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