(Heb.: 34:8-11) This praise is supported by a setting forth of the gracious protection under which God's saints continually are. The מלאך יהוה, is none other than He who was the medium of Jahve's intercourse with the patriarchs, and who accompanied Israel to Canaan. This name is not collective (Calvin, Hupfeld, Kamphausen, and others). He, the One, encampeth round about them, in so far as He is the Captain of the host of Jahve (Joshua 5:14), and consequently is accompanied by a host of inferior ministering angels; or insofar as He can, as being a spirit not limited by space, furnish protection that covers them on every side. חנה (cf. Zechariah 9:8) is perhaps an allusion to מחנים in Genesis 32:2., that angel-camp which joined itself to Jacob's camp, and surrounded it like a barricade or carrago. On the fut. consec. ויחלּצם, et expedit eos, as a simple expression of the sequence, or even only of a weak or loose internal connection, vid., Ewald, 343, a. By reason of this protection by the Angel of God arises (Psalm 34:9) the summons to test the graciousness of God in their own experience. Tasting (γεύσαστηαι, Hebrews 6:4., 1 Peter 2:3) stands before seeing; for spiritual experience leads to spiritual perception or knowledge, and not vice versa. Nisi gustaveris, says Bernard, non videbis. David is desirous that others also should experience what he has experienced in order that they may come to know what he has come to know, viz., the goodness of God.

(Note: On account of this Psalm 34:9, Γεύσασθε καὶ Ἴδετε κ. τ. λ., Psalm 33 (34) was the Communion Psalm of the early church, Constit. Apost. viii. 13, Cyril,. Catech. Myst. v 17.)

Hence, in Psalm 34:10, the call to the saints to fear Jahve (יראוּ instead of יראוּ, in order to preserve the distinction between veremini and videbunt, as in Joshua 24:14; 1 Samuel 12:24); for whoso fears Him, possesses everything in Him. The young mature lions may sooner lack and suffer hunger, because they have no prey, than that he should suffer any want whatsoever, the goal of whose striving is fellowship with God. The verb רוּשׁ (to lack, be poor, once by metaplasm ירשׁ, 1 Samuel 2:7, root רשׁ, to be or to make loose, lax), elsewhere used only of men, is here, like Psalm 104:21 בּקּשׁ מאל, transferred to the lions, without כּפירים being intended to refer emblematically (as in Psalm 35:17; Psalm 57:5; Psalm 17:12) to his powerful foes at the courts of Saul and of Achish.

Psalm 34:16 Parallel Commentaries

face

Leviticus 17:10 And whatever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eats any manner of blood...

Leviticus 26:17 And I will set my face against you, and you shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you...

Jeremiah 44:11 Therefore thus said the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will set my face against you for evil, and to cut off all Judah.

Ezekiel 14:7,8 For every one of the house of Israel, or of the stranger that sojournes in Israel, which separates himself from me...

Amos 9:4 And though they go into captivity before their enemies, there will I command the sword, and it shall slay them...

to cut

Psalm 10:16 The LORD is King for ever and ever: the heathen are perished out of his land.

Job 18:17 His remembrance shall perish from the earth, and he shall have no name in the street.

Proverbs 10:7 The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot.

Ecclesiastes 8:10 And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy...

Jeremiah 17:13 O LORD, the hope of Israel, all that forsake you shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth...