(A Song of degrees. Of David.) Jehovah, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in great matters, and in things too wonderful for me.
In this song David tells the Lord what is not in him: no proud heart, no raised eyes, no reaching after matters beyond his size. How does anyone reach that state, and what counts as a thing "too high"?
This is not a boast made to onlookers.
Notice first that David speaks to the Lord and before Him. Under His all-searching eye he says, "My heart is not haughty." … Nothing speaks so clearly of a powerful work of grace in the soul as having humility. It is the sure product of the sanctifying power of the truth. So it is the unfailing sign of growing likeness to Christ. To get down ever lower is to get morally ever closer to Him.
(Older translations read "haughty" and "lofty eyes" where the ESV has "lifted up" and "raised too high.")
The two phrases name two different faults. Each looks in a different direction.
The exercises of his soul mark the godly man with lowliness that makes nothing of self. They mark him with meekness that gives place to others. So the natural haughtiness of the heart, which makes everything self, is judged. The lofty eyes that look down on others are condemned.
David was not a mild man by nature. This psalm records what grace worked into him.
We shall see too in Psalm 131 that real exercise of soul subdued his passions. It was like the process of weaning: painful but necessary. Yet grace carried it through until his soul was as a weaned child. "Lord, my heart is not haughty nor my eyes lofty." This is after God's own heart: "a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." These traits of divine life are lovely, but they give no ground for boasting.
Commentators read the last line as refusing to run the world, and refusing to demand explanations God has not given.
The humble soul is marked by an absence of reasoning. He is content to leave the management and outcome of everything in the hands of the Lord. He would not govern his circumstances if he could, nor does he wish to probe into second causes. Instead he connects everything with the Lord's ordering. He waits quietly before Him, satisfied with all His arrangements. How many lose the ground of dependence! They are eager to break into these great matters and explain things that are too high for them.
Another writer links this restraint to a chastened spirit.
With a chastened spirit the soul stops occupying itself with things God has not revealed. Such things are too wonderful for it to understand.
Ignore this verse, and you take on work God never gave you.
There are great matters which are far too high for us and which the Lord holds in His own hands. He carries on His own work. He directs His testimony and preserves it when necessary. He orders and controls His servants. However, when well-meaning men try to do these things, they take up what they were never asked to do. They usually end up failing in what God did intend them to do!
David said this truly. Only one Person said it perfectly.
Only He could say He was without the pride of the natural heart. Only He could disclaim every scornful look. None but Himself could invite the gaze of the Searcher of hearts, saying, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty." What a lesson this is for His saints. If ever anyone walked this earth in our human form who was entitled to a lofty bearing and to take its great matters in hand, it was He who voluntarily accepted the lowest place, and who said, "I am gentle and lowly in heart."
The psalm also looks ahead. What David says for himself, Israel will one day say together.
One day Israel's pride will be humbled to acknowledge and receive the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Then their attitude will change for good, as this psalm shows us. It will turn from proud self-exaltation to lowly submission and faith in the living God. This is not just an outward change, but a change of the heart (v. 1). What a contrast to Israel's condition for centuries past!
- Weaned, not wired. David was not born calm. Grace subdued him through real exercise of soul, so the psalm is testimony, not boasting.
- Weaned from pride. A haughty heart makes everything self. Lofty eyes look down on others. Both must go before anyone can say this verse honestly.
- Weaned from control. "Things too high" are the matters God keeps in His own hands, and the things He has not revealed. They are His to manage and explain, not ours.
- Weaned for usefulness. Those who grab at work never assigned to them usually fail at the work God did assign.
- Weaned like Christ. The one Person entitled to a lofty bearing took the lowest place. One day a humbled Israel will make the same confession from the heart.
Surely I have restrained and composed my soul, like a weaned child with its mother my soul within me is as a weaned child.
Psalm 131 is short, and this verse holds its central picture: a small child resting against its mother, no longer crying to be fed. Commentators read it as a soul that has stopped grasping. They ask two questions of it: what does such a soul give up, and how does anyone reach that calm?
David's calm had a history behind it. One writer sees two stages in it, and notes what disappeared:
In verse 2 David shows us that in his case a weaning process followed the humbling process. Before, he had been like an unweaned child. Such a child keeps longing for what it wants, and frets because it is not satisfied. Now his soul was even as a weaned child. He had been set free from the fascinations of former days, and he "restrained and composed" his soul, as another translation puts it. His fretfulness was all gone. Even when he did not get all he wanted, calmness of spirit marked him.
Weaning does not send the child away. It still lies where it always lay, and that is the point of the comparison:
An unweaned child may play happily with others. Yet put it with its mother, and it loses all its restraint and composure. The weaned child can be with its mother, calm and settled. It no longer feels the special pull that once ruled it, because it now knows other sources of food and satisfaction. Just in this way the soul is weaned from the world and the old loves connected with the world.
So where does the calm come from? One commentator traces it to redemption, and to what fills the heart afterwards:
God has redeemed them from all their sins and delivered them from the enemy's power. The Lord Himself has become the portion of their hearts. As they enjoy this satisfying portion, they are weaned in practice from everything else. It is the same with believers now. Let them once discover what Christ can be to their hearts, and give Him first place there... and every attraction this world can offer will lose its power. So weanedness is the result of enjoying Christ Himself.
David does not only describe his state. He says he quieted his own soul, and that carries a warning:
A weaned child will still long for its usual food, above all at the start. In the same way the believer will often be tempted to fall back on his old enjoyments, unless the power of the Spirit keeps him on guard. Israel did this in the wilderness, always craving the "meat pots" of Egypt.
Who can break a will like that? Not the person himself:
Psalm 131 brings in a point of the highest importance. It matches what Christians know as liberty... Breaking the human will is work that God alone can carry through. Many have tried to subdue their sinful desires through monastery life and other strict systems of self-denial. Every one of them met with disappointment, and perhaps ended in despair... How is this to be reached? By death! Christ has been in the waters of death and dried them up for His people; otherwise no one could know deliverance.
Some writers hear these words first in the mouth of Christ, and only then in ours. They also say what being weaned really means:
How true, word for word, all this is of the eternal Son of the Father in His human nature, God's lovely man on earth! But when we ask whether it is just as true of His disciples, our own hearts rebuke us... He learned obedience through the things He suffered, and He also walked the path of real separation — the One who was not of this world, the heavenly Stranger. Whether the world attracted Him or distracted Him, He quieted Himself as a child weaned from its mother. Someone who is really weaned, we should notice, is not simply cut off from what once fed him. He has lost his old taste for it, and gained a new taste for the solid food that brings growth.
One writer recommends this psalm to people troubled by God's ways rather than by worldly desires:
Some people would never take common ground with the unbeliever. Yet they are still troubled by doubts about some of God's ways in His government, and about the solemn question of eternal punishment. We would urge them to study that lovely little Psalm 131, and to drink in its spirit.
- Weaned, not starved. The craving goes, not the mother; the child rests where it once cried.
- Weaned by fullness. Christ enjoyed as the heart's portion drains the old attractions of their power.
- Weaned by God alone. Strict self-denial has never broken a human will; only God can do that work.
- Weaned and watchful. The state must be kept; old appetites return unless the Spirit guards the soul.
- Weaned like Christ. He lived these words as no one else has, through every attraction and distraction — and our own hearts rebuke us.