ANALYSIS OF THE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOURTH PSALM

The people of God, newly eseaped from some great danger, acknowledge it, and celebrate God as their Deliverer.

I. The psalmist begins abruptly, as is usual in pathetical expressions.

1. "If it had not been the Lord:" and so deeply was he affected with a sense of God's goodness, and the narrowness of the escape, that he repeats it: "Unless the Lord," &c. Nothing else could have saved us.

2. "Now may Israel say;" the whole body of the Jewish people may well acknowledge this.

3. "When men rose up:" when they were all leagued against us as one man to destroy us; and, humanly speaking, our escape was impossible.

II. This danger and escape the psalmist illustrates by two metaphors: - 1. The first is taken from beasts of prey: "They had swallowed us up quick." They would have rushed upon us, torn us in pieces, and swallowed us down, while life was quivering in our limbs.

This they would have done in their fury. The plot was laid with great circumspection and caution; but it would have been executed with a resistless fury.

2. The second similitude is taken from waters which had broken through dikes, and at once submerged the whole country: "The stream had gone over our soul;" the proud waters, resistless now the dikes were broken, would have gone over our soul-destroyed our life.

III. He next acknowledges the deliverance.

1. "We are not given a prey to their teeth." 2. It is the blessed God who has preserved us: "Blessed be God," &c.

As this deliverance was beyond expectation, he illustrates it by another metaphor, a bird taken in, but escaping from, a snare.

1. We were in "the snare of the fowler." 2. But "our soul is escaped." 3. And the fowler disappointed of his prey. The disappointment of Haman was, in all its circumstances, one of the most mortifying that ever occurred to man.

IV. He concludes with a grateful acclamation. 1. "Our help is in the name of the Lord." In open assaults, and in insidious attacks, we have no helper but God; and from him our deliverance must come.

2. This help is sufficient; for he made the heaven and earth; has both under his government; and can employ both in the support, or for the deliverance, of his followers.

Or, take the following as a plainer analysis: - I. 1. The subtlety of the adversaries of the Church in laying snares to entrap it, as fowlers do birds, ver. 7.

2. Their cruelty in seeking to tear it to pieces, as some ravenous beasts of prey do; or, as mighty inundations that overthrow all in their way, ver. 3-6.

II. The cause of this subtlety and cruelty: wrath and displeasure, ver. 3.

III. The delivery of the Church from both, by the power and goodness of God, ver. 1, 2, 6, 7.