Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1911-10-27

Jehovah. thou hast been favorable to
our land;
Thou hast brought back the captivity
of Jacob;
Thou hast covered all their sin.
Thou hast taken away all thy wrath:
Thou hast turned myself from the
tfierceness Of thine anger.
Turn us, o God of our salvation
And cause thine indignation against us
to cease.
wilt thou be angry with us forever?
Wilt thou draw out thine anger to all
generations?
wilt thou not quicken us again,
That the people may rejoice in Thee?
Show us thy mercy o jehovah,
And grant us thy salvation.
Il will hear what God Jehovah will
Speak, a
He will seek peace to His people,
And to His saints;
Surely His salvation. is nigh them that
That glory may dwell in our land"
Mercy and truth are met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed
each other;
Truth springeth out of the earth.
And righteousness hath looked down
from heaven.
Yea, Jehovah win give that which is
good;
And our land shall yield her increase,
Righteousness shall go before Him,
And shall make His footsteps a way to
walk in.
I have given this Psalm in the proper
literary style that we may the better UNI
derstand it. 1t consists of three parts
1.-The first a stanza of six lines setting
forth the great deliverance God had
wrought for His people, the second,
three stanzas (two of four lines and one
of six for the character of Hebrew
poetry makes it very elastic when COM
pared with English poetry, which set
forth the prayer that the exiles offer
ed and which God answered in giving
them the great denverance; the third.
two stanzas, of four lines each, further
describing the great deliverance and its
outgrowth. This arrangement of ideas,
balancing each other. or a pendulumlike
motion, is typical and characteristic OF
Hebrew poetry, as rhythm and rhyme
are characteristic of ours Knowing
that, it is easier to apprehend its inner
morning, the prayer here is Indicated
by quotation marks. Let us study the
song with this in view.
THE GREAT DELIvERANCE.
What a great cause for praise did those
exiles have. They had suffered as the
result of the nations sin. God had
warned them against idolatry from the
very first; even before they had entered
the land, He had spoken to them on that
very subject through Moses, and had told
them what He would DO if they should
forsake Him for idols. Time and again,
He had sent His prophets to warn and TO
win them; but they had not regarded
His words and had sinned beyond the
point of forbearance. As a result the
nation had been carried to Babylon.
But God had not forgotten nor for
saken them. In the fullness of time, as
He had spoken, He raised up Cyrus, and
Zerubbabel and Joshua and Ezra and Me-
hemiah, and restored the people to their
land and to the worship of the true God
They were once and for all cured of
idolatry. Their sins were forgiven and
they were given another chance.
What greater cause for praise could
they have had? How wonderfully gra-
cious God was to them In trying to ex-
press it, the psalmist almost exhausts
the language-forgiven iniquity, covered
sin. taken away wrath, turned away
from fierceness of anger This is not
tautology, for each expresses a different
phase of the truth. Iniquity and in
equality come from the same roots in
our language. God forgives the inequali-
ties, the iniquities. the failures of the
life TO be equal with the life He desires
us to have. Sin in the Hebrew means
to miss the mark. God covers the misses!
There is no bad record against us when
God covers our misses He also takes
away His wrath, which was perfectly
justified by our shortcomings, and turns
away the fierceness of His anger, which
otherwise would have consumed us ut-
terly
How could Israel have kept from sing
ing under these circumstances? But let
us not think OF this as only Israel's.
How great has BEEN Gods grace toward
u.s. How often we have missed the
mark, transgressed His commands. fail
ed to measure up to His will for us!
In spite of it all, how gracious He has
been. how tender how patient, how for
giving, Do you know the blessedness of
him whose fransgfesSiOn is forgiven.