Commentary on Psalms Volume 2 John Calvin (continued)
COMMENTARY ON PSALMS - VOLUME 2
1. O God! we have heard with our ears. The people of God here recount the goodness which he had formerly manifested towards their fathers, that, by showing the great dissimilarity of their own condition, they may induce God to alleviate their miseries. They begin by declaring that they speak not of things unknown or doubtful, but that they related events, the truth of which was authenticated by unexceptionable witnesses. The expression, We have heard with our ears, is not to be considered as a redundant form of speech, but one of great weight. It is designed to point out that the grace of God towards their fathers was so renowned, that no doubt could be entertained respecting it. They add, that their knowledge of these things was handed down from age to age by those who witnessed them. It is not meant that their fathers, who had been brought up out of Egypt, had, a thousand and five hundred years after, declared to their posterity the benefits God had conferred upon them. The import of the language is, that not only the first deliverance, but that also the various other works which God had wrought from time to time in behalf of his people, had come down, as it were, from hand to hand, in an uninterrupted series, even to the latest age. As, therefore, those who, after the lapse of many ages, became witnesses and heralds of the grace which God had exercised towards this people, spake upon the report of the first generation, the faithful are warranted in saying, as they here do, that their fathers have declared to them that which they certainly knew, because the knowledge of it had not been lost by reason of its antiquity, but was continually preserved by the remembrance of it from the fathers to the children. The sum of the whole is, that God had manifested his goodness towards the children of Abraham, not only for ten or twenty years, but that ever since he had received them into his favor, he had never ceased to bestow upon them continued tokens of his grace.
2. Thou hast expelled the heathen with thy hand. This is an illustration of the preceding verse: for the inspired writer had not yet expressly referred to that work of God, the fame of which had been preserved by their fathers. He therefore now adds, that God with his own hand expelled the heathen, in order to plant in their room the children of Abraham: and that he wasted and destroyed them, that he might increase and multiply the seed of Abraham.
He compares the ancient inhabitants of the land of Canaan to trees; for, from long continued possession of the country, they had, as it were, taken
"Ascavoir, nos peres." — Fr. marg. "That is, our fathers." The reading in our English version is, "and cast them out," namely, the heathen. But Calvin's rendering seems to be more suitable to the genius of the Hebrew poetry, and it also agrees with the meaning of the original. "The whole metaphor," says Dr Geddes, "is taken from the vine, or some other luxuriant tree. In our common version, 'and cast them out,' the parallelism is lost, and the beauty of the sentence disappears." The Hebrew verb here used is generally applied to the germination of plants, or to the shooting and spreading forth of branches. God caused his chosen people to spread abroad, to cast or shoot forth like the branches of a vine.