Psalms 144:5

I consider this to be connected with my present subject. For in his wonder at the knowledge of God the Word coming to people, the psalmist is astonished beyond measure at the love by which he descends from his divinity, and lessens his natural majesty and reckons the human race worthy of bearing him. So here he prays, saying, "Lord, bow the heavens and descend." While in the seventeenth psalm [LXX] it is written, "And he bowed the heavens and descended, and it was dark under his feet. And he rode on cherubim and flew, he flew on the wings of the winds," wherein there is a prophecy of his ascension from earth to heaven. And when there is a fit opportunity I will show that we must understand the descent and ascension of God the Word not as of one moving locally, but in the metaphorical sense that Scripture intends in the use of such conventional terms.

The psalmist is a witness of this matter when he says, "All have gone astray together; they have become worthless." And Christ's prophets, praying for help, said, "Lord, bow down your heavens and descend"; not that he might change the places in which all things are now located but that he might take on the flesh of human weakness for our salvation. Paul says the same thing: "How, being rich, he became poor for our sakes, that by his poverty we might become rich." And he came to the earth and proceeded as a man from the virgin's womb, which he sanctified. Confirming by this process the interpretation of his name, Emmanuel, that is, "God with us," he began in a marvelous way to be what we are and did not cease to be what he was. He assumed our nature in such a way as not to lose what he himself was.

"Lord, bow Thy heavens, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke." The Body of Christ, the humble David, full of grace, relying on God, fighting in this world, calleth for the help of God. What are "heavens bowed down"? Apostles humbled. For those "heavens declare the glory of God;" and of these heavens declaring the glory of God it is presently said, "There is neither speech nor language, but their voices are heard among them," etc. When then these heavens sent forth their voices through all lands, and did wonderful things, while the Lord flashed and thundered from them by miracles and commandments, the gods were thought to have come down from heaven to men. For certain of the Gentiles, thinking this, desired even to sacrifice to them. ...But they commended to these the Lord Jesus Christ, humbling themselves, that God might be praised; because "the heavens" were "bowed," that "God" might "come down." ..."Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke." So long as they are not touched, they seem to themselves great: they are now about to say, "Great art Thou, O Lord:" the mountains also are about to say, "Thou only art the Most Highest over all the earth."

Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down,.... The heavens, which the Lord has made, and where he dwells; and which are under his influence, and he can cause to incline or bow at his pleasure: and which literally may be said to bow, particularly the airy heavens, when these are filled with clouds heavy with rain, and hang low, ready to fall upon the earth, and being rent, let down showers on it: and mystically may design storms of wrath gathering over the heads of ungodly men, and revealed from heaven against them.

Smoke - As Sinai did at thy glorious appearance, Exod. xix, 18. This is a figurative and poetical description of God's coming to take vengeance upon his enemies.