Psalms 141:5

The just shall correct me in mercy, and shall rebuke me. 'Whom the Lord loves he corrects, and he chastises every son whom he receives.' Blessed is he who is corrected here: 'the Lord will not requite twice for the same thing.' It is a great wrath of the Lord, when here he is not angry with us: for he reserves us like a calf for the slaughter. For to Jerusalem he says: 'Many are your sins and many your iniquities, therefore I will not be angry with you.' That is, when you were only an adulteress, I was jealous over you as one who loves you; but when you had many lovers, I despised you, and I will not be angry with you. Just as a man is jealous over his wife when he loves her; but if he is not jealous, he hates her, and does not attain to the words of him who says: 'I will visit their iniquities with a rod.' And again: 'And I will not visit their daughters when they have committed fornication.' The just shall correct me in mercy, and shall rebuke me. Set here some teacher, or father, or physician. If a physician sees rotten flesh in a body, and says, What is that to me? know that he is cruel. But if he cuts it away, and applies the cautery, he is merciful: because he saves the man. Likewise a teacher too, if he lets the boy go, and does not demand discipline of him, he hates him. But if he demands it, and like a physician heals him; what is thought to be harshness is clemency. And Ahab is reproved by the Lord concerning Naboth, when he killed him, and took his vineyard, and shed innocent blood. Elijah the prophet was sent to him, who said: 'You have killed, and moreover you have taken possession.' At once, stricken in conscience, he bowed down his neck and his eyes: and this an impious king, and clothed in purple. And afterward Scripture says that he went and put on sackcloth beneath the purple. […]

And again, he quotes as words of David, "Let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head," when David has been speaking of the flattery of the smooth speaker deceiving with false praise, so as to lead the head of the man praised to wax great with pride. And this meaning is made manifest by the words immediately preceding in the same psalm. For he says, "Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness; and let him reprove me: but the oil of the sinner shall not break my head." What can be clearer than this sentence? what more manifest? For he declares that he had rather be reproved in kindness with the sharp correction of the righteous, so that he may be healed, than anointed with the soft speaking of the flatterer, so as to be puffed up with pride.

Break - Not hurt, but heal and greatly refresh me. Calamities - In the calamities of those righteous persons who reproved him. When they came into such calamities as those wherein he was involved he would pity them and pray for them.

We are here taught how to receive the reproofs of the righteous and wise. We must desire to be reproved for whatever is amiss in us, or is done amiss by us: "Lord, put it into the heart of the righteous to smite me and reprove me. If my own heart does not smite me, as it ought, let my friend do it; let me never fall under that dreadful judgment of being let alone in sin." 2.

Let the righteous smite me, it shall be a kindness,.... Or, "smite me in kindness" (a). In love; in a loving and friendly manner, which makes reproofs the more agreeable and effectual.

Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness. He prefers the bitters of gracious company to the dainties of the ungodly. He would rather be smitten by the righteous than feasted by the wicked. He gives a permit to faithful admonition, he even invites it—"let the righteous smite me." When the ungodly smile upon us their flattery is cruel; when the righteous smite us their faithfulness is kind.

Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness. He prefers the bitters of gracious company to the dainties of the ungodly. He would rather be smitten by the righteous than feasted by the wicked. He gives a permit to faithful admonition, he even invites it—"let the righteous smite me." When the ungodly smile upon us their flattery is cruel; when the righteous smite us their faithfulness is kind. Sometimes godly men rap hard; they do not merely hint at evil, but hammer at it; and even then we are to receive the blows in love, and be thankful to the hand which smites so heavily. Fools resent reproof; wise men endeavour to profit by it. And let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break ray head. Oil breaks no heads, and rebuke does no man any harm; rather, as oil refreshes and perfumes, so does reproof when fitly taken sweeten and renew the heart. My friend must love me well if he will tell me of my faults: there is an unction about him if he is honest enough to point out my errors. Many a man has had his head broken at the feasts of the wicked, but none at the table of a true hearted reprover. The oil of flattery is not excellent; the oil so lavishly used at the banquet of the reveller is not excellent; head breaking and heart breaking attend the anointings of the riotous; but it is otherwise with the severest censures of the godly: they are not always sweet, but they are always excellent; they may for the moment bruise the heart, but they never break either it or the head. For yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities. Gracious men never grow wrathful with candid friends so as to harbour an ill feeling against them; if so, when they saw them in affliction, they would turn round upon them and taunt them with their rebukes.

THIS is a very difficult passage in the original and it is hard to fix its meaning with absolute certainty. However, it is no business of mine, at the present, to go into the various interpretations which have been given, for I am aiming at something else. I am, for my immediate purpose, quite content with the authorized version.

THIS is a very difficult passage in the original and it is hard to fix its meaning with absolute certainty. However, it is no business of mine, at the present, to go into the various interpretations which have been given, for I am aiming at something else. I am, for my immediate purpose, quite content with the authorized version. The meaning given to the passage by our translators is this—David says although the righteous man should rebuke him most sternly so as to strike his conscience and bring before him his wrong-doing—and even though he should do this with considerable severity, yet he would not be displeased with him. He would love him all the better, be thankful to him for having acted so faithfully, and he would prove his love by continuing to pray for his reprover, should the good man at any time be overtaken by calamity. David would always give his honest censor a warm place in his prayers. Now, if this is the meaning, and I think it is, it shows us that David was in the habit of praying for the saints. If he had not been, he would not have said that even in their calamities his prayers should go up for them. He had made it his daily custom to bring before his God in his private prayers the names of God's righteous ones, or else, I say, he would not have made the remark that even if some of them should rebuke him and reprove him sternly, he still would continue to pray for them. Our subject this morning shall be the high duty of intercession, a duty all too little regarded in these days. We shall speak upon it, first, as the text would lead us to do, in reference to saints, and, secondly, we shall urge it upon you on behalf of sinners. I. First, then, we have to speak upon the duty of INTERCESSORY FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD. To arrange our thoughts in some order we will take for our first keynote the word obligation.

Let the righteous smite me - This verse is extremely difficult in the original. The following translation, in which the Syriac, Vulgate, Septuagint, Ethiopic, and Arabic nearly agree, appears to me to be the best: “Let the righteous chastise me in mercy, and instruct me: but let not the oil of the wicked anoint my head. It shall not adorn (יני yani, from נוה navah) my head; for still my prayer shall be against their wicked works.” The oil of the wicked may here mean his smooth flattering speeches; and the psalmist intimates that he would rather suffer the cutting reproof of the righteous than the oily talk of the flatterer. If this were the case, how few are there now-a-days of his mind! On referring to Bishop Horsley, I find his translation is something similar to my own: - Let the just one smite me, let the pious remove me. Let not the ointment of the impious anoint my head. But still I will intrude in their calamities.

Let the righteous smite me - This verse is exceedingly difficult and obscure (compare the margin); and there have been almost as many different opinions in regard to its meaning as there have been commentators on the psalm. A large number of these opinions may be seen in Rosenmuller in loc. DeWette explains it, “I gladly suffer anything that is unpleasant from my friends, that may be for my good; but the wickedness of my enemies I cannot endure.” The Septuagint and Latin Vulgate render it, “Let a righteous man correct me with mercy, and he will work convictions in me; but let not the oil of a sinner (for this shall still be my prayer) anoint my head at their pleasure.” “Thompson’s translation.” According to this, the sense would be, “If the righteous smite me with severity of words I shall take it as an act of kindness and benevolence; on the other hand, the bland words of a sinner, smooth as oil, which wound more than sharp arrows, may God avert from me.” Or, in other words, “I had rather be slain by the severe words of the righteous than anointed by the oily and impious words of the wicked.” The sense proposed by Hengstenberg (Com. […]