In the following article you will find a brief commentary on Psalm 5 that goes along with our Riverside Church Two Year Bible Reading Plan (Volume 1 & Volume 2). This plan will allow you to read the New Testament and Psalms once every year and the Old Testament once every two years.
The Blessedness of the Righteous
By Charles Simeon
DAVID, in speaking of the persecutions which he endured from Saul, represents them as accompanied with every species of malignity on the part of his oppressors: “There is no faithfulness in their mouth: their inward part is very wickedness: their throat is an open sepulchre: they flatter with their tongue.” This character we should have been disposed to limit to the agents of Saul: but St. Paul teaches us to consider it as descriptive of human nature generally, and to apply it, without exception, to every child of man. The fact is, that human nature is the same in all ages and places: and if it was so corrupt whilst under the immediate government of God himself, much more may it be expected to manifest similar corruption under circumstances less favourable for its control. Doubtless, to be reduced to a level with such abandoned men is very humiliating: but it is consoling to know, that if, on the one hand, we resemble them by nature, we, on the other hand, are partakers of all David’s privileges, as soon as ever we are renewed by divine grace. Under his great and accumulated trials, he was often filled with a holy and unutterable joy in God: and such joy is our portion also, if, like him, we place our confidence in God.[1]
[1] Simeon, C. (1836). Horae Homileticae: Psalms, I–LXXII (Vol. 5, p. 25). London: Samuel Holdsworth.
