Commentary on Psalms Volume 3 John Calvin
COMMENTARY ON PSALMS - VOLUME 3 to fixing our minds on the rock of his help. The similitude employed in the second verse is abundantly plain, teaching us, that as the continuous chain of mountains round about Jerusalem exhibits the appearance of walls, so God encompasses the faithful by his power, to ward off from them all harm. 523
Similar forms of expression are frequently to be met with in the Scriptures' God often promises to be a wall and a fore-wall to his people. But David, or whoever was the author of the psalm, proceeds still farther, showing under the figure of mountains the secret protection with which God defends his own people, to the end that the ignorant and feeble-minded who are still held down to the earth by their own dulness of understanding, aided by the sight of the mountains, may raise their minds upwards to the conception and contemplation of heavenly things.
Psalm 125:3-5
3. For the scepter 524 of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the just, lest the just should put faith their hands to iniquity. 4. Do good, O Jehovah to the good, and to those who are upright in their hearts. 5. But those who turn aside into their crooked paths, 525
Jehovah will make them walk with the workers of iniquity. But there shall be peace upon Israel.
3. For the scepter of the wicked shall not rest upon the lot of the just. This is, as it were, a correction of the preceding sentence. The Psalmist had said that the hand of God was extended on all sides to defend his Church. But as we are disposed to draw the divine promises to our own advantage, in the way of interpreting them as securing our exemption from all trouble, we are here warned that the guardianship of God does not secure us from being sometimes exercised with the cross and afflictions, and that therefore the faithful ought not to promise themselves a delicate and easy life in this world, it being enough for them not to be abandoned of God when they stand in need of his help. Their heavenly Father, it is true, loves them most
From the mountains or hills which surrounded Jerusalem, the Prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 11:3) represents it under the image of a "cauldron."
שבטIf this word be translated rod, then we understand the Psalmist to speak of the assaults of the wicked upon the righteous; but as the lot of the righteous evidently denotes their estates, possessions, etc.,שבטconsequently seems employed as the emblem of dominion, i.e. scepter. This notion ofשבטcomports better with that of[גורלthe word for the lot of]; and so the sense of the whole expression is, that the wicked shall not exercise dominion permanently over the righteous; the scepter of the wicked shall not rest," etc. — Phillips.
"Ou, se fourvoyent en leurs chemins obliques, ou, font fourvoyer." — Fr. marg. "Or, go astray in their crooked paths, or cause to go astray."