Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more?
The psalmist prays, and no answer comes. Out of that silence rises a run of questions aimed at God's character. Commentators treat this verse as the first of them, and they read it as the symptom of a soul in trouble. (The writers quoted here use an older translation, which reads "cast off" where the ESV has "spurn.")
The whole verse belongs to a sequence, and one writer counts them out before asking what to do with them:
Nothing but prayer, earnest continued prayer, suited him. But prayer seems unanswered. Then comes the dark cloud of unbelief about to wrap itself around his soul. … Six questions (verses 7-9) rise quickly in his mind. How shall they be answered?
The word "Lord" here is a title, not the covenant name of Israel's God. That choice shapes what the question can appeal to.
Here the "Lord" is not "Jehovah," and the covenant Name does not appear until this question has its answer. Covenant they cannot plead: the answer has to come from what God is in Himself, not from relationship, which is the very thing in question. But the "Lord" (Adonai), He in whose hand all power is, has in effect cast off when that power no longer acts for them. Will He cast off, then, "forever" (leolamim, "for the ages")? … A temporary forsaking would not be opposition, for chastening means present interest and future blessing. Was this, then, chastening, or a giving up of the favour He had once shown?
You might expect his searching of his own heart to end in distrust of himself. It ended somewhere worse.
Verses 7, 8 and 9 reveal that he was entangled in a loss of all confidence in God. He argued in his mind from himself to God, from his feelings to God's feelings; and this of course is the principle of law and not of grace. He felt that if he had shamefully slipped away from God, God would be likely to cast him off.
When self fills the whole view, God does not disappear. The soul looks at Him through the wrong lens.
Self is the one subject that fills the thoughts. So when the soul remembers God, He is no longer its light and confidence. He becomes the one who disturbs it, because the soul sees Him through a burdened conscience.
God's people are low, and their own failure put them there. One writer traces the questions that rise from it, and how they end.
He saw that they were undergoing the chastening of the Lord. But, he asks, will the Lord, because of their failure, cast them off for ever? Has the failure of His people withered up the mercy of God? … Can the breakdown of man alter the grace of God, or "shut up His tender mercies?" The psalmist raises these suggestions only to dismiss them. They cannot stand.
One writer answers the question with a distinction. Being knocked down is not the same as being abandoned.
Does God not cast off those who are His? Not one of us who have believed could say that. Cast down we may be, and often are, and good for us too, for "God comforts those who are cast down" (2 Cor. 7:6), but cast off, never; God cannot deny Himself. He cannot be false to His word. … "Can a woman forget her nursing child? … Yes, they may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands" (Isa. 49).
Three verses later the psalm turns. The psalmist names his own state, and one writer weighs the name he chooses.
He puts the matter with great brevity — "And I said, This is my infirmity" (v. 10). He had clearly been viewing it as a virtue. It was as though there was something pious, and almost holy, in this constant moaning over his own failures. But now he became conscious that it was by no means a virtue but a weakness. This was a great discovery, for it broke the spell that self-occupation had cast over his mind.
What replaces the questions is not an argument but a memory, and a chosen one.
He sees where the suggestion came from. The idea that God's people could be cast off rises out of the weakness of his own mind. That mind had judged God's ways towards His people by the way they had acted towards Him. So he stops these thoughts and, instead of recalling his own experiences and the years of ancient times, he now remembers "the years of the right hand of the most High," "the works of the Lord," and His "wonders of old."
- Cause. Self-searching held too long does not produce humility. It breeds doubt about God. The psalmist argued "from his feelings to God's feelings," which is law, not grace.
- Covenant. The question uses the title of God's power, not His covenant name. So the psalmist cannot plead relationship. The answer must come from what God is in Himself.
- Chastening. God's people were low through their own failure. The psalmist raises the idea of permanent rejection only to dismiss it. Man's breakdown cannot alter God's grace.
- Contrast. Cast down, often; cast off, never. God cannot deny Himself or be false to His word.
- Cure. Name the mood right: "this is my infirmity" — weakness, not piety. Then switch your memory from your own years to the years of God's right hand.
Hath his loving-kindness ceased for ever? hath [his] word come to an end from generation to generation?
The psalmist is in the dark, and his prayer brings no answer. The silence turns his questions away from his own trouble and toward God — has love run dry, and has God's word failed?
Verse 8 does not stand alone. It sits in the middle of a rapid series that one writer counts out and leaves hanging, unanswered for the moment.
Then comes the dark cloud of unbelief about to enwrap his soul. Let him express his thoughts in his own words. "Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will He be favourable no more? Is His mercy clean gone for ever? Does His promise fail for evermore? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He in anger shut up His tender mercies?" Six questions thus rise rapidly in his mind. How shall they be answered?
The questions come out in a rush, and their target is not himself.
Here are six questions, all casting reflections upon God. You will find that is the spirit in the world around. People seize on all the disasters that have come on the civilized world and use them as an excuse to blame God. Here Asaph really does doubt the Lord.
The first half asks whether God's love has an end. The asking is itself the argument against it.
In his next two questions the psalmist weighs his evidences. The divine loving-kindness, can that be at an end — exhausted? is the fountain of love dried up? This is of course an impossibility; and he is arguing that it is an impossibility. And yet, when people apply it to themselves, how many are tempted to believe it! How many accept the idea that some sin cannot be pardoned, even for the person who honestly turns to God about it and would take refuge in the blood of Christ! But no. Against this stands, as its complete denial, the unfailing word of divine inspiration: "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses from all sin." Here is no limit, and who shall make one?
Behind the question lies failure: has the people's sin used up what God had to give?
Has the failure of His people withered up the mercy of God? Will God fail to carry out His promises because His people have sinned? Can the breakdown of man alter the grace of God, or "shut up His tender mercies?" The psalmist raises these suggestions only to dismiss them as impossible.
Most read the second half as being about promises. Some commentators press for a wider word, and say it makes the question heavier.
It is "His word" that is in question, not "His promise"; and this makes it much more weighty. God has been glad to give us His word, and giving it is itself "loving-kindness"; so the two halves of the verse fit together. He has written Himself out on the page of Scripture — He has let us see His heart and His mind... The blessing all this brings me rests on one thing: His nature never changes. I can be sure that I will find Him, for myself, the very same God He has been to others. If He were changeable, unpredictable, or limited, I could argue nothing and find comfort in nothing.
One writer separates favour from mercy, then shows that the second question touches God's truthfulness.
Favour, or grace, is the positive giving of blessing, while mercy is the compassion shown when someone is in need. Can we imagine God ceasing to show mercy when a person is in desperate need? But the suggestion that God's Word (not just His promise) would fail forever is even more serious! This strikes straight at God's very nature. Is He true or not? No — His Word will not fail for a moment, let alone forever!
Where does such a question come from? Not from evidence, but from the man's own condition.
What is the man doing? He begins to judge God by his own miserable experiences. He doubts God. Will the Lord cast off for ever? Where is there anything to give the smallest hint of such a disaster as that?... He doubts God because of what he finds in his own wretched heart.
The psalm does not stay here. The questions break when the psalmist looks back at what God has done.
Can he think that God has given him up, and he one of His people! This brought God Himself into his mind. How could it be all over with him? It was his own weakness; and he turns back to the years of the right hand of the Most High... He, their God, became the source of his thoughts, not his own state towards Him.
One event settles it: God once rescued this people by sheer power.
God's intervention of old on behalf of Israel is a lesson to be studied right on to the end. Redemption by power that nation once experienced. Could God drop those whom He has redeemed? Impossible. By redeeming power at the Red Sea, God became their God, and they became His people.
- Doubt. Trouble turns his questions away from himself and toward God. Six of them, each casting a shadow on God's character.
- Mercy. The first half asks whether the fountain of love has run dry. Commentators call that impossible. The same fear grips anyone who thinks his sin is too great to pardon.
- Word. Some read the second half as wider than "promise". If God's word could fail, His nature would change. Then nothing He said to anyone else could comfort me.
- Source. The questions rise from no evidence at all. They come from a man judging God by his own heart and his own miserable experience.
- Cure. He calls it his own weakness. He stops reading God through his own state and remembers redemption. God cannot drop those He has redeemed.
Hath God forgotten to be gracious? or hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies? Selah.
Asaph's prayer has turned into a run of questions aimed at God Himself. This verse is the sharpest of them. The issue is no longer his trouble but whether God's character has changed.
Verse 9 does not stand alone. It belongs to a run of six questions, and each one puts God, not the psalmist, on trial.
This was the effect with Asaph. It raised a whole host of questions — not about himself, but about God. ... Here are six questions, and every one of them casts blame on God. You will find that is the spirit in the world around. People seize on all these disasters in the civilized world and use them as an excuse to blame God. Here Asaph doubts the Lord.
To ask whether God has forgotten is to ask whether He is still God. And to ask whether anger has closed off His mercy assumes that His anger works the way a man's anger works.
To take up this third set of questions is again to bring God's nature into question (v. 9). Is it possible for God to forget? Is He God, or not? Has He become so angry that He has shut off every chance of showing the tender mercy that marks Him? Men can get so angry that they lose control of themselves. God's anger is always consistent with His love. He loves good, so He is angry with whatever attacks good. His anger is wholly wise, because it is anger against evil, and so it acts for good. It always has in view the greatest good of believers.
The very name the psalmist uses for God here answers his doubt.
He asks, "Has El — the Supreme One over evil in holy power — forgotten to be gracious?" This is "the El who does wonders" (vv. 9, 14), the Redeemer of His people (v. 15).
Asaph had already worked out why things were so low. His people had failed, and God was correcting them. His questions now measure God's grace by that failure.
In the end the psalmist saw that the low state of God's people was the result of their own failure. He saw that the Lord was disciplining them. But, he asks, will the Lord cast them off for ever because of their failure? Has the failure of His people dried up the mercy of God? Can the breakdown of man alter the grace of God, or "shut up His tender mercies?" The psalmist raises these suggestions only to dismiss them as ideas that cannot stand.
The anger Asaph fears turns out to be proof of the love he doubts.
Here then is the point of the argument: it is God Himself we can trust, whatever the present circumstances... Should we let any circumstances at all argue weakness in Him? "Has He shut up (contracted) in anger His compassions?" No, be sure of it. His very anger is the effect of love itself. Throw yourself on His love, and this anger will not harm you. His discipline will only purify and bless.
In verse 10 Asaph stops finding fault in God and names his own condition. Older translations read there, "This is my infirmity" — this is my weakness.
In verse 10 Asaph seems to jolt awake, like a man waking out of sleep, and he says, "This is my infirmity." Perhaps, until then, he had been thinking that all this focus on himself, and the misery that went with it, was very godly and very right. There are dear Christians who live in inward misery. In a way, they pride themselves on it. If they were not miserable, they would begin to be miserable because they were not miserable. The fact is that all this sort of thing is our weakness. It is a great thing to call things by their right names. This is WEAKNESS, and not godliness!
So what settled the doubt? Asaph looked back at what God had already done.
What God did for Israel long ago is a lesson worth studying right to the end. That nation once knew redemption by power. Could God drop those whom He has redeemed? Impossible. By redeeming power at the Red Sea, God became their God, and they became His people. Light now breaks in on him in his trouble (13-20), and we hear no more of doubts about his God.
There is also a difference in how he was praying, and it decided everything.
Note, there is a difference between "crying with the voice to God," and "communing with one's own heart": while the latter went on, his spirit was overwhelmed; the former was self-renunciation and owned dependence, and God gave ear to the cry. All that passed previously within, though genuine, produced trouble... Before, the resources of our own heart were judged from; now, the manifested favour and resources of God.
- Six questions. The verse belongs to a run of six questions, and all of them cast blame on God rather than on the one asking them.
- Nature questioned. To ask whether God forgot is to ask whether He is God; His anger, unlike man's, never escapes His love.
- El who does wonders. The psalm gives that same name to the God who works wonders and redeems. The title itself answers the question.
- Weakness, not piety. In verse 10 Asaph names his misery for what it is. Brooding over yourself is weakness dressed up as devotion.
- Remember, then rest. Asaph looked back at the redemption God had already worked. Light broke in, and his doubts are never heard again.