Psalm 60:6
God has spoken from His sanctuary: "I will triumph! I will parcel out Shechem and apportion the Valley of Succoth.
Sermons
A Psalm of DefeatJ. Stalker.Psalm 60:1-12
Assurance in PrayerC. Short Psalm 60:1-12
Despondency and its AntidoteW. Forsyth Psalm 60:1-12
A War-Song of IsraelCanon Scott Holland.Psalm 60:6-9














There are heights and depths in the Divine life. We may pass quickly from the one to the other. When at the height of triumph we may be brought low. When in the depths of despondency we may be raised up. This psalm speaks of despondency. We see -

I. HOPE RISING IN THE MIDST OF DESPONDENCY. (Vers. 1-4.) We are apt to fix our mind on our trials. They bulk large. They press us sorely. We dwell upon their grievousness. We shrink from their effects, bewildered and dismayed (ver. 3). Besides, we are too ready to think of our trials as judgments. Our sins make us afraid. God seems to be visiting us in wrath, instead of mercy. But this is our infirmity. As we turn to God with humility, hope rises in our hearts. God is not against us, but for us. If he visits us with trials, it is for our good. His banner over us is still the banner of love.

II. FAITH IN GOD'S PROMISES SUSTAINING THE SOUL IN DESPONDENCY. (Vers. 5-8.) The words of Moses, Samuel, and Nathan had sunk deep into the psalmist's heart. He remembered them, and was comforted. How much more reason have we to say, "God hath spoken in his holiness"! We have not only the words, that David had, but many words besides - not only the words of prophets and apostles, but the words of him of whom it was said, "Thou hast the words of eternal life." The Holy Scriptures are rich in promises (2 Peter 1:3, 4; 2 Corinthians 1:20). We may take one and another to the throne of grace, and say, "Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope. This is my comfort in my affliction" (Psalm 119:49, 50). Two rabbis, it is said, approaching Jerusalem, observed a fox running up the hill of Zion. Rabbi Joshua wept, but Rabbi Eliezer laughed. "Wherefore dost thou weep?" asked Eliezer. "I weep because I see what is written in the Lamentations fulfilled: 'Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it'" (Lamentations 5:18). "And therefore do I laugh," said Eliezer; "for when I see with my own eyes that God has fulfilled his threatenings to the letter, I have thereby a pledge that not one of his promises shall fail, for he is ever more ready to show mercy than judgment."

III. PRAYER TO GOD GAINING THE VICTORY OVER DESPONDENCY. (Vers. 9-12.) There are great things promised, but how are they to be performed? If we had to do with man, we might have doubts and fears. But we have to do with God, and he is both able and willing to fulfil his word. Remembering his character and his works, we rise above all desponding and depressing influences. Committing ourselves to the keeping of the Lord of hosts, we go forth to the fight with brave hearts. "Jehovah-Nissi" is our watchword, and we are able to say, "Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (l Corinthians 15:57). - W.F.

God hath spoken in His Holiness; I will rejoice, I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth.
In this war-song we are given the key to the whole story of Jewish development as the interpretation of life — that interpretation which has, through Christ, received its verification as the universal method by which religion becomes a practical force in the world. Leek at it. First, how real, how practical, how concrete it all is. It is not selfish, personal trouble about which he is vehement. He is one with his people, and it is their distress which is his. And then, secondly, these disasters cannot be for him blind accidents. They are not the cruelties of some ruthless fate, or the mere victories of force, accident, fate. God's will is the sole, paramount interpretation of every incident, and there can be no other. "Thou also hast been displeased." That is the only reasonable account of the matter. And then, after that, in that thought lies his hope. If God has done it, and done it for correction, then God can also undo it, and undo it He surely will, He, by His own right hand. Who but He? The people — broken, shattered, bruised, and drunken — they cannot heal themselves. They cannot restore themselves to their old soundness and strength. Their sin has wrecked their power to be as they were. They can but recognize the hand of God that broke and scattered them. God can do the rest. Their renewal, their recovery, must be all His act, and He will be sure to do it, because He has smitten that He may heal. What other motive could He have? And then out of that thought the psalmist passes on to the martial outburst which is so charged with the spirit of Ascensiontide. Israel, if she is to recover, we say, must throw herself altogether on the prevenient help of God, "God has spoken in His holiness." That is what precedes. He and no other has taken the great step on which all depends. God has planned for Himself already an organized kingdom, and each spot, and each district, and each centre is selected and named. And this highland chief, this king, this servant of His, has been shown it all. He has been told exactly what is in God's mind. Now, surely we can feel the very touch of an Ascension flame in the old words. This poise of the soul — this spiritual situation in which the believing soul for ever finds itself wherever it would act in God's name — this mode and method of all religious faith wherever it be found — these have been caught for us here: these have been fixed. They are wholly and utterly the same to-day for us as they were for that border-chief in his warfare with Edom. Just to rehearse the succession of his thoughts and of his prayers with our mind. First, Ascensiontide summons us to look out, as he did, beyond the circuit of our own private affairs, and to take our place amid the rank of the people of God, and to identify ourselves with His historical kingdom. Look at Christ's Church as it fares in the world. That Church is the creation of His royalty. There He has set His name, and with her lies our lot. Her interest, her fortune, her fears, her distress, all are ours. We are committed to her, so that our very faiths are interwoven one with another. If she is in strength we are strong, and if she is burdened we are weak with her weakness. Look out on her. How goes it? Alas, far us as for him, the same spectacle. God has cast us out. God has scattered us abroad. God's hand is in it. And, if God's hand is in it, then God's mind is behind it. God acts for a purpose, and that means for a purpose unrelinquished and invincible, towards which He is ever pressing on; if it cannot be by victory, then by penalty, by discipline. What is that purpose? Ascensiontide is our answer. Then it was that God spoke out in His holiness. He revealed His whole intention. He clothed Himself in His righteousness. What was it to be? Oh, with the psalmist let us exult, for God in His exultation, lifting His Son to His throne on high, pronounced that in Him, the Beloved, He would claim the entire world for Himself. Every nation was to be a province of His kingdom, who was to be King of kings and Lord of lords. "I will rejoice," he cried, as he saw it himself. So our King, aware of all the purposes of God, cried aloud to His great apostle in the vision, saying, "I am He who was alive and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore. And I hold in My hand the keys of death and hell. I will rejoice, for I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine, and Ephraim is the strength of my head, and Judah is my law-giver." So the cry of the ascended Lord rings out over the whole, asseverating its perpetual claim. "Mine," for instance, "is the intellect in its exquisite skill, in its courage, in its profundity; mine is science in its patience and its truth; mine is art; mine is the whole world of feeling, emotion, passion; mine is marriage in all its inexhaustible magic; mine is the home in the honour of motherhood, the crown of children; mine is the heart with its sorrows and its joys; mine is the will with the force of its unresting efforts; mine is man. To everything in him I allot function and duty and service and liberty and gladness. Ephraim is the strength of my head, and Judah is my lawgiver." Nor can He, the Victor, stop at the borders of His kingdom of grace. Still that kingdom must grow, must expel wrong, injustice, lust, misery, cruelty. These yet hold their own in the high rocks and fastnesses of the hills of Edom — in their castles and cities in the rich coasts of the Philistines. And these must yield; these must break. God has promised it. He has set the name of Jesus over everything that is named, and He must reign until He subdue all things unto Himself.

(Canon Scott Holland.)

People
Aram, David, Edomites, Joab, Manasseh, Psalmist, Syrians
Places
Jerusalem
Topics
Apportion, Divide, Division, Exult, Exultation, Glad, Holiness, Holy, Measure, Measured, Mete, Parcel, Portion, Rejoice, Sanctuary, Shechem, Spoke, Spoken, Succoth, Triumph, Vale, Valley
Outline
1. David, complaining to God of former judgment
4. now upon better hope, prays for deliverance
6. Comforting himself in God's promises, he craves that help whereon he trusts

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Psalm 60:4-6

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Library
Moab is My Washpot
What does Moab represent to you and to me? We are the children of Israel by faith in Christ, and in him we have obtained by covenant a promised land. Our faith may cry, "I will divide Shechem, and mete out the valles of Succoth." All things are ours in Christ Jesus; "Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine." Now Moab was outside of Canaan. It was not given to Israel as a possession, but in course of time it was subdued in warfare, and became tributary to the Jewish king. Even thus our faith overcometh
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 17: 1871

That we must not Believe Everyone, and that we are Prone to Fall in Our Words
Lord, be thou my help in trouble, for vain is the help of man.(1) How often have I failed to find faithfulness, where I thought I possessed it. How many times I have found it where I least expected. Vain therefore is hope in men, but the salvation of the just, O God, is in Thee. Blessed be thou, O Lord my God, in all things which happen unto us. We are weak and unstable, we are quickly deceived and quite changed. 2. Who is the man who is able to keep himself so warily and circumspectly as not
Thomas A Kempis—Imitation of Christ

Dialogue i. --The Immutable.
Orthodoxos and Eranistes. Orth.--Better were it for us to agree and abide by the apostolic doctrine in its purity. But since, I know not how, you have broken the harmony, and are now offering us new doctrines, let us, if you please, with no kind of quarrel, investigate the truth. Eran.--We need no investigation, for we exactly hold the truth. Orth.--This is what every heretic supposes. Aye, even Jews and Pagans reckon that they are defending the doctrines of the truth; and so also do not only the
Theodoret—The Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret

Vehicles of Revelation; Scripture, the Church, Tradition.
(a) The supreme and unique revelation of God to man is in the Person of the Incarnate Son. But though unique the Incarnation is not solitary. Before it there was the divine institution of the Law and the Prophets, the former a typical anticipation (de Incarn. 40. 2) of the destined reality, and along with the latter (ib. 12. 2 and 5) for all the world a holy school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the soul.' After it there is the history of the life and teaching of Christ and the writings
Athanasius—Select Works and Letters or Athanasius

Psalms
The piety of the Old Testament Church is reflected with more clearness and variety in the Psalter than in any other book of the Old Testament. It constitutes the response of the Church to the divine demands of prophecy, and, in a less degree, of law; or, rather, it expresses those emotions and aspirations of the universal heart which lie deeper than any formal demand. It is the speech of the soul face to face with God. Its words are as simple and unaffected as human words can be, for it is the genius
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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