Psalms 34:7

Psalms 34:7

I. It is generally supposed that the "angel of the Lord" here is to be taken collectively, and that the meaning is that the "bright-harnessed" hosts of these Divine messengers are as an army of protectors round them that fear God. But I see no reason for departing from the simpler and certainly grander meaning which results from taking the word in its proper force of a singular. For us the true Messenger of the Lord is His Son, whom He has sent, in whom He has put His name, and whose own parting promise, "Lo, I am with you always," is the highest fulfilment to us Christians of that ancient confidence, "The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him."

II. Whatever view we adopt of the significance of the first part of the text, the force and beauty of the metaphor in the second remains the same. If this Psalm were indeed the work of the fugitive in his rocky hold at Adullam, how appropriate the thought becomes that his little encampment has such a guard. (1) The vision of the Divine ever takes the form which our circumstances most require. David's then need was safety and protection. Therefore he saw the encamping Angel, even as to Joshua He appeared as the Captain of the Lord's host, and as to Isaiah in the year that the throne of Judah was emptied by the death of the earthly king was given the vision of the Lord sitting on a throne, the King eternal and immortal. (2) Learn, too, from this image, in which the Psalmist appropriates to himself the experience of a past generation, how we ought to feed our confidence and enlarge our hopes by all God's past dealings with men. (3) Note, too, that final word of deliverance. This Psalm is continually recurring to that idea. All the writer's thoughts were engrossed and his prayers summed up in the one thing deliverance. He is quite sure that such deliverance must follow if the angel presence be there. But he knows, too, that the encampment of the Angel of the Lord will not keep away sorrows, and trial, and sharp need. So his highest hope is, not of immunity from these, but of rescue out of them. And his ground of hope is that his heavenly Ally cannot let him be overcome.

A. Maclaren, Weekday Evening Addresses,p. 29.

If, as we are told, the repentance of a single sinner adds sensibly to the enjoyment of the angelic host, and if these splendid creatures are but "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation," may we not think that, whatever the tarnish which the Fall brought on our nature, redemption has invested that nature with a majesty and beauty altogether unrivalled? A high place man's must be if creatures whom we are wont to reckon the highest are employed on his guardianship, and that they are thus employed is established by the words of the text.

I. This verse may be connected with a passage in the Gospel of St. Matthew: "In heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven." Theirangels angels, it would seem, which are specially entrusted with their care and guardianship.

II. What is to be learned from the encouraging declaration of the text? It is a fair deduction from the general representation which the Scripture gives of the ministration of angels that there are what are termed guardian angels; that nations, and perhaps even individuals, are entrusted to the protection of one or more spirits. When, stretched on his deathbed, Jacob blessed Ephraim and Manasseh, he spoke of the angel which redeemed or delivered him from all evil; and this would appear to convey as the patriarch's idea that some one angel had accompanied him in his wanderings, commissioned by God to watch over and assist him. So when the damsel Rhoda brought in word to the assembled disciples that Peter stood at the gate, the tidings seemed too good to be true, and the disciples said, "It is his angel." They undoubtedly thought that Peter was specially under the guardianship of one angel, and that this one angel had come with directions concerning his well-being.

III. What the Bible asserts as fact, reason must assent to as altogether possible. There is a greater resemblance to the association of life, and therefore a stronger appeal to the best sympathies of our nature, when we are told that each individual has his own ministering angel, engaging individually his watchfulness, than when we are informed that we share, in common with the rest of our species, the good offices of the company of spirits. If there be any motive to the avoiding sin and the pursuing holiness in the remembrance that the eyes of illustrious beings, eager for our welfare, are ever upon us, assuredly such motive will derive strength from the belief that one of these beings has attended us from our very birth, and that now, so far as his pure nature is accessible to grief, we shall cause him deep pain, in return for all his exquisite carefulness, if we yield to temptation and walk contrary to the commandments of God.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2901.

References: Psalms 34:7. H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Children's Bread,p. 126; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,4th series, p. 94.