Psa 86:3-4 | TDavid | STEP | EXPOSITION Verse 3 . Be merciful unto me, O Lord. The best of men need mercy, and appeal to mercy, yea to nothing else but mercy; they need it for themselves, and crave it eagerly of their God as a personal requisite. For I cry unto thee daily. Is there not a promise that importunity shall prevail? May we not, then, plead our importunity as an argument with God? He who prays every day, and all the day, for so the word may mean, may rest assured that the Lord will hear him in the day of his need. If we cried sometimes to man, or other false confidences, we might expect to be referred to them in the hour of our calamity, but if in all former times we have looked to the Lord alone, we may be sure that he will not desert us now. See how David pleaded, first that he was poor and needy, next that he was the Lord's set apart one, then that he was God's servant and had learned to trust in the Lord, and lastly that he had been taught to pray daily; surely these are such holy pleadings as any tried believer may employ when wrestling with a prayer hearing God, and with such weapons the most trembling suppliant may hope to win the day. EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS Verse 3 . Be merciful unto me . Lest any should by the former words, ("I am holy",) suspect him to be a merit monger, he beggeth mercy with instancy and constancy of request. --John Trapp. Verse 3 . I cry unto thee daily . A great difference between saints and sinners in prayer is that sinners who pray at all, pray only when they are in trouble, whereas saints cry daily unto God. Compare . --William S. Plumer. HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS Verse 3 . -- Importunity. When she pleads -- "daily". How she pleads -- "I cry". To whom she pleads -- "unto thee". For what she pleads -- "be merciful". Verse 3 . -- I will cry daily for pardoning, sanctifying, assisting, preserving, providing and guiding mercy. --William Jay.

Psalms 86:3-4

EXPOSITION

Verse 3. Be merciful unto me, O Lord. The best of men need mercy, and appeal to mercy, yea to nothing else but mercy; they need it for themselves, and crave it eagerly of their God as a personal requisite.

For I cry unto thee daily. Is there not a promise that importunity shall prevail? May we not, then, plead our importunity as an argument with God? He who prays every day, and all the day, for so the word may mean, may rest assured that the Lord will hear him in the day of his need. If we cried sometimes to man, or other false confidences, we might expect to be referred to them in the hour of our calamity, but if in all former times we have looked to the Lord alone, we may be sure that he will not desert us now. See how David pleaded, first that he was poor and needy, next that he was the Lord's set apart one, then that he was God's servant and had learned to trust in the Lord, and lastly that he had been taught to pray daily; surely these are such holy pleadings as any tried believer may employ when wrestling with a prayer hearing God, and with such weapons the most trembling suppliant may hope to win the day.

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 3. Be merciful unto me. Lest any should by the former words, ("I am holy",) suspect him to be a merit monger, he beggeth mercy with instancy and constancy of request. --John Trapp.

Verse 3. I cry unto thee daily. A great difference between saints and sinners in prayer is that sinners who pray at all, pray only when they are in trouble, whereas saints cry daily unto God. Compare Job 27:10. --William S. Plumer.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 3. -- Importunity.

Verse 3. -- I will cry daily for pardoning, sanctifying, assisting, preserving, providing and guiding mercy. --William Jay.

EXPOSITION

Verse 4. Rejoice the soul of thy servant. Make my heart glad, O my Maker, for I count it my honour to call myself again and again thy servant, and I reckon thy favour to be all the wages I could desire. I look for all my happiness in thee only, and therefore unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. As the heliotrope looks to the sun for its smile, so turn I my heart to thee. Thou art as the brazen serpent to my sick nature, and I lift up my soul's eye to thee that I may live. I know that the nearer I am to thee the greater is my joy, therefore be pleased to draw me nearer while I am labouring to draw near. It is not easy to lift a soul at all; it needs a strong shoulder at the wheel when a heart sticks in the miry clay of despondency: it is less easy to lift a soul up to the Lord, for the height is great as well as the weight oppressive; but the Lord will take the will for the deed, and come in with a hand of almighty grace to raise his poor servant out of the earth and up to heaven.

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS

Verse 4. Rejoice the soul of thy servant, etc. As I have not found rest in anything created, I have raised up my soul on the wings of thought and desire to thee my Creator. Love bears one's soul up; and it has been truly said, that the soul is more where it loves, than where it actually is. Thought and desire are the wings of love; for he that loves is borne on to, and abides in, what he loves, by thinking constantly on, and longing for, the object of his love. Whoever truly, and from his heart, loves God, by thinking on him and longing for him lifts up his soul to God; while, on the contrary, whoever loves the earth, by thinking on and coveting the things of the earth, lets his soul down to its level. -- Bellarmine.

Verse 4. Unto thee, Lord, do I lift my soul. If thou hadst corn in thy rooms below, thou wouldest take it up higher, lest it should grow rotten. Wouldest thou remove thy corn, and dost thou suffer thy heart to rot on the earth? Thou wouldest take thy corn up higher: lift up thy heart to heaven. And how can I, dost thou say? What ropes are needed? What machines? What ladders? Thy affections are the steps; thy will the way. By loving thou mountest, by neglect thou descendest. Standing on the earth thou art in heaven, if thou lovest God. For the heart is not so raised as the body is raised: the body to be lifted up changes its place: the heart to be lifted up changes its will. --Augstine.

Verse 4. Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift my soul, intimates that he had brought himself to the Lord as a living sacrifice, even as the heave offering in the tabernacle -- to show that it belonged to God and to his altar, and, that man had no part in it -- was lifted up by the hands of the priests. --Benjamin Weiss.

Verse 4. -- I lift up my soul. It denotes the devotion, fervency, heartiness, and sincerity of his prayer; the doing of it with a true heart, the lifting up of the heart with the hands unto God, Lamentations 3:41; or by way of offering unto the Lord, not the body only, but the soul or heart also; or as a deposition committed into is hands. --John Gill.

Verse 4. Lord. Here, and in all the verses in this psalm where ynda Adonai, occurs, many MSS read hwhy, Yehovah. The Jews, out of reverence to the incommunicable name Jehovah pronounce ynda where hwhy is in the text. It is, therefore, not improbable that hwhy is in the true reading in all these places. --Note to Calvin in loc.

HINTS FOR PASTORS AND LAYPERSONS

Verse 4.