This "land beyond the Jordan" derives an imperishable
interest from being the exile retreat of the Sweet Singer of Israel in the
most pathetic period of his chequered life and reign. There is no more
touching episode in all Hebrew history than the recorded flight of David from
his capital on the occasion of the rebellion of Absalom and the defection of
his people. Passing, barefoot and weeping, across the brook Kedron, and thence
by the fords of Jericho, he sped northwards with his faithful adherents, and
found a temporary shelter amid these remote fastnesses.
Minds of a peculiar temperament have often found it a
relief, in seasons of sadness, to give expression to their pent-up feelings in
poetry or song. Ancient as well as modern verse and music abound with striking
examples of this—"Songs in the Night," when the mouldering harp was taken down
from the willows by some captive spirit, and made to pour forth its strains or
numbers in touching elegy. David's own lament for Jonathan is a gush of
intensified feeling which will occur to all, and which could have been penned
only in an agony of tears.
It was a spirit crushed and broken with other, but not less
poignant sorrows, which dictated this Psalm of his exile. May we not imagine
that, in addition to the tension of feeling produced by his altered fortunes,
there was in the very scene of his banishment, where the plaintive descant was
composed, much to inspire poetic sentiment? The alternate calm and discord of
outer nature found their response in his own chequered experiences. Nature's
Aeolian harp—its invisible strings composed of rustling leaves and foaming
brooks, or the harsher tones of tempest and thunder, flood and waterfall—awoke
the latent harmonies of his soul. They furnished him with a keynote to
discourse higher melodies, and embody struggling thoughts in inspired numbers.
In reading this Psalm we at once feel that we are with the Minstrel King, not
in the Tabernacle of Zion, but in some glorious "House not made with
hands,"—some Cathedral whose aisles are rocky cliffs and tangled branches, and
its roof the canopy of Heaven!
Let us picture him seated in one of those deep glens
listening to the murmur of the rivulet and the wail of the forest. Suddenly
the sky is overcast. Dark clouds roll their masses along the purple peaks. The
lightning flashes; and the old oaks and terebinths of Bashan bend under the
tumult of the storm. The higher rivulets have swelled the channel of
Jordan—"deep calls to deep"—the waves chafe and riot along the narrow gorges.
Suddenly a struggling ray of sunshine steals amid the strife, and a stray note
from some bird answers joyously to its gleam. It is, however, but a
gleam. The sky again threatens, fresh bolts wake the mountain echoes. The
river rolls on in augmented volume, and the wind wrestles fiercely as ever
with the inhabitants of the forest. At last the contest is at an end. The sky
is calm—the air refreshed—the woods are vocal with song—ten thousand dripping
boughs sparkle in the sunlight; the meadows wear a lovelier emerald; and rock,
and branch, and floweret, are reflected in the bosom of the stream.
As the royal spectator with a poet and painter's eye is
gazing on this shifting diorama, and when Nature is laughing and joyous again
amid her own teardrops, another simple incident arrests his attention. A
deer, hit by the archers or pursued by some wild beast on these "mountains
of the leopards," with hot eyeballs and panting sides, comes bounding down the
forest glade to quench the rage of thirst. The sight suggests nobler
aspirations. With trembling hand and tearful eye the exiled spectator awakes
his harp-strings, and bequeaths to us one of the most inspiring musings in the
whole Psalter. The 23d has happily been called "the nightingale of the
Psalms;" this may appropriately be termed "the turtle-dove." We hear the
lonely bird as if seated on a solitary branch warbling its "reproachful
music," or rather struggling on the ground with broken wing, uttering a
doleful lament. These strains form an epitome of the Christian life—a diary of
religious experience, which, after three thousand years, find an echo in every
heart. Who can wonder that they have smoothed the death-pillow of dying
saints, and taken a thorn from the crown of the noble army of martyrs!