Psalm 13:2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall my enemy be exalted over me? The literal rendering of this verse brings before us the folly of mere plan making. David is taking counsel in his own soul: inventing plans of self-deliverance; making up schemes of daily life and programmes of service and progress. He no sooner makes one plan than it is displaced by another. His schemes follow in quick succession, but the second always amends the first, and both give way to the third, and he finds that in much scheming is much disappointment; it brings sorrow into his heart daily. By day he is mocked by harassing thoughts; by night he reverses all his plans in dreams; and in the morning he awakes to forget both day and night in some new vision of possible self-deliverance. Thus the mind, left to itself, is self-tormented; being limited in range, it is continually checking its own conclusions, and hesitating as to its own purposes. How true it is, "Without Me ye can do nothing." This is what Jesus Christ said to His disciples, and we feel it to be true in our own souls when we endeavour to invent plans for ourselves, and to make our will into a kind of divinity. It is curious to observe, too, how the Psalmist continually mixes up the right view and the wrong one, and how he is certain to fail into the wrong view the moment he turns away his complete attention from the living God. In this verse he occupies the wrong standpoint when he is wondering how long his enemy is to be exalted over him. When a man is truly living in God he has no time to think about his enemy, nor any disposition to consider what that enemy will do. God occupies the whole soul with equal vividness at every point, and dominates in gracious sovereignty over every beating pulse and living thought. (Joseph Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? |
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