Here, in this Psalm, it is not solitariness as to trial, but judgment that is in question, that the Lord might be with Him—this between His soul and God. Trials existed-His life was smitten down to the ground-His Spirit was overwhelmed within Him, and His heart desolate-but judgment could not be met by man, " No flesh living could be justified." This is, indeed, just what we have learned by the Holy One entering into it, and He showed this very necessity of all. And the Spirit in the Lord's Remnant expresses just their sense of this, and He, bearing it as their representative, "was heard in that he feared." Still it drove His Spirit for Israel—for Israel here it is that is in question, and that in the truth of their latter-day position, oppressed and having enemies, see verse 5—to the Lord as His resource, for the communion with Him was uninterrupted and unbroken. On the Cross, vicariously, the Lord did enter into judgment, but that is just what makes all the rest true for Israel, and that only as purging. Thence direction is sought, teaching, deliverance, guidance, and the cutting off of enemies, for He was Jehovah's Servant.
This then is the Psalm of judgment, and Messiah's, and the people's part in it, is very plain, and how He could plead this for them, and they by His Spirit in them. The cry is founded on God's faithfulness and righteousness, not on theirs; as regards the servant's condition—there was no entering into condition. This, I repeat, was just what Christ proved in the atonement-righteousness is pleaded in all His relationship with Jehovah—and then, cutting off His enemies is mercy, and only mentioned as to this, which puts mercy clearly in a new place—riddance of the earth, that there may be a land of uprightness, and an earth of peace through the peaceable fruits of righteousness, and they that trouble gone, in mercy. Psa. 140, then, enters into the position of the righteous generally in the latter-day, in presence of the enemy of the Spirit of Christ. Psa. 141 gives His thoughts before the Lord in the midst of the people in that case. In Psa. 142, He finds there are none—He is left alone. Psa. 143 is the question with the "Lord" as His servant, through the available intercession of Christ—the presence of the Spirit of Christ in the Remnant, thus brought before the Lord alone, with the consequent direct supplication from verse 7 to the end.
This Psalm is the Spirit of Christ putting the Remnant, with whom He identifies Himself, and in them the nation, on mercy and guidance—in a word, on the new covenant in grace—instead of judgment for what they were, which is confessed, "none could stand." This is done as in the midst of enemies, and looking for help only to Jehovah in mercy, as well as personal acceptance and guidance. Former power in deliverance is referred to. It is the affiance of the new covenant.
5. But how must this verse have drawn out the soul in the thought of what now was! But it was a soul athirst after God; and "heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Blessed be God! And in taking up the power of the new covenant, how must His soul have gone through the depth of the old in order to it, in the knowledge of that delight of the Lord in them, which set up the new, and the bitter sorrow before Him of that Countenance—all in the power of the holiness of the broken covenant of it! Oh! depth, depth! How marvelous are Thy ways, 0 Jesus! Jesus, the Lord!
We must take Jehovah's delight, if we see Christ Jehovah in that delight—Yea! He loved the people, and, as again declared in Balaam, and then in all the holiness of Mount Sinai the state of them, the world, and the same Jesus, made under the law, knowing that delight, and all this in the power of divine love to the world, all this in Jesus—all seemingly frustrated—all, and much more than this, especially the holiness and the love known in Himself, and broken and borne as if He broke it—then shall we know something of the depth, in our feebleness. Oh! may we learn its truth! The Jewish truths do but show the glimpse of it, as done circumstantially amongst them. We enter into the power of it, but in deliverance in effect; see John's Gospel, thus bringing it out. Blessed be Jesus the Lord, our Master—God, our Savior!