(6) Great mountains.--See margin, and compare Psalm 80:10, "cedars of God." So too the rain is called "God's brook." The epithet not only implies greatness and dignity, but also has reference to God as Creator.
A great deep.--The reference, as usual, with the words deep, depth, is to the great abyss of waters, of which the seas were regarded as the surface.
The twofold comparison in this verse recalls Wordsworth's lines--
"Two voices are there: one is of the sea.
One of the mountains--each a mighty voice."
but while to the modern poet the voice is Liberty, to the ancient Hebrew it is Righteousness. The majesty of the hills has often suggested the supremacy of right over wrong--
"Thou hast a voice, great mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe."
The calm of the infinite sea has often soothed agitated souls. Hebrew poetry connected both immediately with God. the uplifted strength of the hills became an emblem of His eternal truth; the depth and expanse of the infinite sea of His outspread goodness and inexhaustible justice.
Verse 6. - Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; literally, like the mountains of God; and so Luther, Rosenmuller, Hengstenberg, Kay, Cheyne, and the Revised Version. According to the Hebrew idiom, this means "the very greatest mountains" - those which seem to stand the strongest and the firmest. Thy judgments are a greatdeep;i.e. such as man cannot fathom - unsearchable - past finding out. O Lord, thou preservest man and beast. The providential care of God for his creatures is another of his leading characteristics, and one especially deserving man's attention and gratitude. It is a form of his loving-kindness.
36:5-12 Men may shut up their compassion, yet, with God we shall find mercy. This is great comfort to all believers, plainly to be seen, and not to be taken away. God does all wisely and well; but what he does we know not now, it is time enough to know hereafter. God's loving-kindness is precious to the saints. They put themselves under his protection, and then are safe and easy. Gracious souls, though still desiring more of God, never desire more than God. The gifts of Providence so far satisfy them, that they are content with such things as they have. The benefit of holy ordinances is sweet to a sanctified soul, and strengthening to the spiritual and Divine life. But full satisfaction is reserved for the future state. Their joys shall be constant. God not only works in them a gracious desire for these pleasures, but by his Spirit fills their souls with joy and peace in believing. He quickens whom he will; and whoever will, may come, and take from him of the waters of life freely. May we know, and love, and uprightly serve the Lord; then no proud enemy, on earth or from hell, shall separate us from his love. Faith calleth things that are not, as though they were. It carries us forward to the end of time; it shows us the Lord, on his throne of judgment; the empire of sin fallen to rise no more.
Thy righteousness is like the great mountains,.... Or, "the mountains of God"; so called for their excellency, as the cedars of God, Psalm 80:10; or, as Gussetius (e) observes, the greatest and highest mountains, which are here meant, reaching above the clouds and the region of the air, are the pillars of the palace of God, and a part of it; and therefore called his mountains with great propriety, to which his righteousness is compared: that is, either the righteousness of God in the government of the world, which is sometimes like the high mountains, not to be reached and accounted for in the present state of things, though always is, and is immovable as they are; or the righteousness of God, by which he justifies sinners, which may be said to be as the mountains of God, because of the dignity of his person, who has wrought it out; and because of the clear manifestation of it, the Gospel, and so visible, as high mountains; and because of the immovableness and duration of it;
thy judgments are a great deep; both in a way of providence, many of them being at present not to be traced, though before long they will be made manifest; and in a way of grace, such as the choice of some, and the leaving of others, the rejection of the Jews, and the call of the Gentiles; see Romans 11:33;
O Lord, thou preservest man and beast; in a providential way, upholding each in their being, and supplying them with the necessaries of life: some understand this figuratively, of God's saving Jews and Gentiles, wise and unwise, and particularly those who, through humility and modesty, as Jarchi says, compare themselves to beasts, because of their ignorance and stupidity, Proverbs 30:2.
A great deep.--The reference, as usual, with the words deep, depth, is to the great abyss of waters, of which the seas were regarded as the surface.
The twofold comparison in this verse recalls Wordsworth's lines--
"Two voices are there: one is of the sea.
One of the mountains--each a mighty voice."
but while to the modern poet the voice is Liberty, to the ancient Hebrew it is Righteousness. The majesty of the hills has often suggested the supremacy of right over wrong--
"Thou hast a voice, great mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe."
The calm of the infinite sea has often soothed agitated souls. Hebrew poetry connected both immediately with God. the uplifted strength of the hills became an emblem of His eternal truth; the depth and expanse of the infinite sea of His outspread goodness and inexhaustible justice.
thy judgments are a great deep; both in a way of providence, many of them being at present not to be traced, though before long they will be made manifest; and in a way of grace, such as the choice of some, and the leaving of others, the rejection of the Jews, and the call of the Gentiles; see Romans 11:33;
O Lord, thou preservest man and beast; in a providential way, upholding each in their being, and supplying them with the necessaries of life: some understand this figuratively, of God's saving Jews and Gentiles, wise and unwise, and particularly those who, through humility and modesty, as Jarchi says, compare themselves to beasts, because of their ignorance and stupidity, Proverbs 30:2.
(e) Ebr. Comment. p. 66.