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 CHAOS

Those Dangerous Royals 2

By Aarti V Raman
 Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Dedication
Lena and Shane’s Playlist
A Request
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Forty-Nine
Fifty
Fifty-One
Nihaal
Fifty-Two
BURN
Ruthless Billionaires 2
A Thank You Note
About The Author
 Dedication

This book is dedicated to

Mom, my own true North.
And Doctor Krishnamoorthy Mama, who always believed in me and
expected pretty great things from me. I hope this suffices, Mama. Rest in
light.
Nate Dean Parsons, who said three words “Liz…you’re back” and pretty
much wrote Shane to life.
To all my faithful readers who’ve waited patiently for three years to see
what the Royals are upto.

Note: The initial draft of this book was written during the Great
Pandemic Lockdown of March 2020.
The rich, the famous, the royal. In the end, everyone bleeds red.
Don’t they, Princess Lena?
- Filthy Rich Vice

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand?
No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine
- MACBETH by William Shakespeare
Lena and Shane’s Playlist
Listen on Spotify

Coattails By BROODS

23 By Jimmy Eat World

Smoke By TENDER

When the Truth Hunts You Down By Sam Tinnesz

Jumper By Natalie Taylor

Silhouettes - From "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

Soundtrack By Of Monsters and Men

The Leavers Dance By The Veils

Here With Me By Daniel Blake

Yellow Flicker Beat By Lorde

Gasoline By Halsey

Starlight By Jai Wolf, Mr Gabriel

Bridges (feat. Fjøra) By Generdyn, FJØRA

To Belong By BROODS

Lucky Man By The Verve

 Given to Fly By Pearl Jam

This is the accompanying playlist for Shane and Lena’s epically

heartbreaking romance spanning almost a decade. It’s by turns sultry, sexy,

emotional, playful and dramatic. Much like this story you’re about to read. I
hope you enjoy the journey of Lena and Shane’s love as much as the music.

Xx

Aarti
 A Request

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for giving me the privilege of your time,

energy, and interest. I will try and earn it with Lena and Shane’s story. If
you enjoyed it and me, please do consider signing up for my juicy, newsy

The Writer Gal Letter. The first place where I share the most important
news, updates and developments first. Here’s the link to sign up: Yes, sign
me up!

Xx

Aarti

PS: Please do leave a teeny review at the end of reading Chaos.

 One

Seven Years ago

Shane had never been to Paris, the city of lovers.

Usually, Sagitta Consulting operated out of war-torn countries – Egypt,

Syria, Chad and Zambia to name a few. And, in the one year since Shane
had worked for Rowan, this was his first vacation.

He’d jumped in with Sagitta, to be with his best friend and partner,
Iceman, a quiet, blue-eyed giant of a man, right after he got his discharge

from the Marines after two tours of duty.

He didn’t want the time off. Didn’t want to go home and see his family.

Decompress. Assimilate.

He didn’t know how and it was too damn hard to learn.

He’d wanted the cleansing release of an assignment. The immediate

adrenalin thrill of a sanctioned kill. He wanted to work.

But, even Rowan Killain, the most demanding of bosses had seen how

close to the edge he was. So he was forced to take a mandated holiday.

In La fucking Paris.
 Shane curled his fingers into his bandaged palms inside his jacket

pocket. The bandage had freaked a little girl in the boulangerie he’d bought
a donut.

He’d tried to smile reassuringly at her but the girl’s mom had hugged

her closer and murmured something unflattering in French.

Shane had tipped his head and given up that particular battle.

He consulted his guidebook while finishing his donut and café breakfast

and discovered he was within walking distance of the Musee De

L’Orangerie – home to all eight of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies.

Shane was no great art lover, he was more at home looking at the
insides of a 1967 Shelby GT 500, seeing how the different parts of the

chassis were put together with elegant, almost bullet-like precision.

But, even he knew enough about art to know this was a once-in-a-

lifetime opportunity.

So, he walked the half a kilometer and wandered into the hallowed halls

of the small museum.

It was eerily quiet, even for a museum, with no foot traffic anywhere.

Just the steady whir of the air conditioner running at optimal temps to
preserve the paintings.
 He chanced into the first room that housed four of the wall
compositions and found it utterly deserted, save for one figure.

A woman.

~~~~~~

She sat on the oval bench, staring up at the painting titled Water Lilies –
Clouds, according to the guidebook.

Her hair was a deep, unforgiving black which absorbed the excellent

light in the room. She wore a violet jacket with gold epaulets. Her hands

were splayed on either side of her sides.

In a way, she matched the colors of the composition – done up in

Prussian blue, cerulean blue, teal and robin’s blue and a few other blues the

guidebook took great pains to mention.

Intrigued, Shane moved closer to inspect the painting and the woman.

The painting was…spectacular.

It took up a whole wall, curved to show it in perfect glory. The light

hitting each of the seventeen lilies scattered throughout the painting. Then
there were daubs of paint which masqueraded as clouds – white and blue

and pink and yellow – all of which, in a unique way, represented the sky.

Clouds was beautiful and magical, like the other seven paintings.
 Shane felt alive in a way he never was as he saw it, looking at a rare

creation from God that did some justice to the world he lived in.

“It makes you wonder,” the woman said. Her voice was adult – husky
and throaty like she’d just come from the backroom of a 1920s cigar salon.

Shane was shockingly aroused at the way it skated across his skin,

brushed into his ears.

“Wonder what?” he asked.

The woman turned her head and hit him with the most beautiful eyes

he’d ever see on a person. They matched the color of her jacket, a
combination of Monet’s best colors – blue and black turning a delicate

shade of purple, fringed by red-gold lashes.

Her lips were an unpainted pink, giving her an innocently erotic

contrast.

“If it’s possible to ever fall in love again.”

In that second, Shane wondered if she had crawled into his head.

Understood his deepest desires and given them name.

Even as recognition hit him like a punch to the gut.

“This one is not my personal favorite,” Shane said, knowing he should

not talk. Not say a word. Should incline his head and move the hell away.
 But he didn’t.

He talked. He stayed.

The woman’s eyes flared. “You don’t love Clouds? The happiest and

most hopeful of all the Water Lilies?”

“No.” Shane shook his head. He held out his injured hand. “Would you
like to see my favorite?”

The woman smiled, an adult smile in a young woman’s face, for that is

what she was. A young, imperious girl on the cusp of womanhood.

She gave him a narrow hand, still unmarked with age. She wore no
jewelry, just a slim silver bracelet with an amethyst charm. Swung her

coltish legs forward and stood up in the second he pulled her up.

She was smaller than he’d expected, smaller than her pictures. But it
made him feel protective, as if he should shield this delicate creature.

“This way…Your Highness,” Shane added, belatedly, walking her to

the other room.

~~~~~

“You know who I am then,” the princess said. “I suppose everyone

does.”
 The princess shook her mane of lustrous hair, and came to a stop next to
a painting.

Shane felt that action too in his gut. He controlled his expression with
effort. “You shouldn’t be alone, ma’am.”

The princess gave him a frank glance. It was full of explicit, sexual

interest. He was itchy in his skin because he liked it.

“I’m not. You’re here,” she said simply. “Besides, my guards are
outside. They know I like to come in here alone. Before the place opens for

business.”

Shane turned toward the painting because her eyes were eloquent.

Inviting. They freaked him the fuck out.

“Two Willows.” He nodded toward the painting helmed on each side by

a willow – done more in greens and yellows and browns – with leafy

tendrils catching the setting sun’s last rays while water lilies of every shade
floated in a pond between the trees.

“That’s my favorite.”

“It was my mother’s favorite, too.” The words were torn out of the

princess

Shane sucked in a shocked breath at the whispered confession.

 “She would always bring me to visit Monet whenever we came to Paris.
I think it’s why I wanted to study at the Sorbonne,” Lena continued quietly.

Shane’s heart ached at the haunted words. He didn’t think for a

moment. Just gave her hand a quick squeeze, of support and empathy.
“Your mother had excellent taste, Your Highness.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Call me Lena.”

Shane looked at her – her eyes suddenly huge in her pale face, brilliant

in the well-lit room. A painting come to life herself. This moment was

surreal in the extreme.

“I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” She was suddenly too close, closer than she’d been a

second ago. Close enough for him to see the grey flakes in the stunning blue
of her irises. Like pinpricks of light seeping through from her soul.

So close he just had to dip his head and meet her unpainted lips…

Shane felt dizzy. “It’s wrong.”

Her eyes dipped to his mouth, as if she could taste the words he’d just

uttered.

Shane wanted to swallow past the dryness of his throat.

 He wasn’t a horny teen anymore. He was almost thirty with a soldier’s

capacity for control.

No woman, no matter how fragile and gorgeous, had ever made him
forget who he was. He wasn’t about to start now with a freaking princess.

This was fucked up and unacceptable.

“Is wanting you wrong?” she asked quietly.

She looked to be under great strain – her slim shoulders bowing under

the weight of it. Her back, ramrod straight but still so delicate he imagined

he could see through to the bones keeping her upright.

And he thought, unkindly, of the headlines proclaiming her activities

over the last two years.

The parties. The unsavory boyfriends. Even more parties. The

desolation he’d always imagined he’d seen in her eyes, this ethereal

creature who was a world away from his own.

“You don’t want me,” he said, just as quietly.

He thought of the blood in his hands – metaphorical and literal. Of the

nightmares that never fully went away. Of the ringing in his ears which had
somehow, miraculously, quieted in her presence.
 “You don’t know me, Princess. You don’t even know my name. How

can you want something you don’t know?”

“How can you know what I want?” she retorted.

He gave her a small, brotherly (he hoped) smile and stepped way, way

back. “You know what? I’m going to leave you to enjoy your time with the
paintings. I’ll come see them with the rest of the general public.”

“Wait.” She was imperious, commanding as she snapped the order.

Shane kept going.

“Please.”

He paused, almost in mid-step. He called himself a fucking idiot at

doing so.

“I…,” he breathed, turning to look back at her.

“Do you have a name?” she asked, back within touching distance.

Because this was a dream and in a dream anything could happen. “Can you

tell me what it is?”

It was such a bad idea. The worst idea on the planet, continuing this
conversation. Continuing to even look at the princess.

Christ, he was a fool.

 “Shane,” he said slowly. Extending his hand so she could shake it. “My

name’s Shane McRae.”

He was surprised at what she did next.

She took his hand, the injured one. “May I?”

He nodded, enthralled despite his best intentions.

“How did you hurt yourself?”

I put my fist through my hotel wall because I woke up with the shakes.

Shane shrugged. “Slammed the bathroom door on my knuckles. My

middle name is clumsy.”

She kissed his fingertips. “Well, Shane Clumsy McRae.”

He felt the gesture in every erogenous zone in his body. Which made

zero sense considering she was years younger than him and way out of his

fucking league.

“It’s lovely to begin to know you.”

When she smiled with soft wonder at him, Shane knew he’d finally
begun to earn his call sign – Fool.
 Two

“Something’s wrong,” Lena murmured. She looked at her reflection, all

dolled up and nowhere to go. Her glued-on lashes were half an inch thick
and she’d daubed glittery purple shadow on her translucent lids. Her lips

were in pale, blush pink – a severe departure from her goth chick
appearance.

Even her clothes were different tonight. She wore a simple cream slip
dress with rounds of pearls in lieu of sleeves that fell artfully around the

curves of her arms, all the way to her elbows. She’d paired the dress with
stark black sheer stockings and chosen stylish army boots to finish the
outfit.

Her hair was in a Holly Golightly chignon that was beginning to prickle

her scalp, but it went with the hybrid emo-chick look she was going for.

This was her outfit to an after-party by an international atelier

branching into gender-fluid clothes and accessories. Fashion Week had just

concluded, successfully and the designer wanted the elusive Who’s Who of
Paris’s fabulous scene to grace the unveiling.
 She’d texted and asked Shane to come with her, their first “official”

outing in public after seeing each other in secret for the best summer of her
life.

He’d not said no, just sent her a simple smiley back in response.

She took that to mean yes. And dressed accordingly. After all, she was

now growing up. The specter of her mom’s tragic end, Xander’s reckless
flight into war, and Michael’s cementing into the Perfect Prince…her own

sense of displacement and loneliness…all of it had receded in the last

month.

In the days and nights she’d spent with a mysterious, insanely sexy

man. Who understood her.

That was the thing she loved about Shane. That he understood her.

Innately. He accepted her, as she was. She wasn’t a perplexing question to

him. She was the answer.

And he was hers.

Lena put a trembling hand over her jumpy stomach. Acknowledging the

real problem. Her own runaway, burgeoning feelings for Shane. More and

more, every day, she wanted to tell him how she felt.
 What he meant to her. How he’d saved her when they’d met at the
Museum L’Orangee.

And how, every date with him, every text and real conversation with

him, every kiss had fused all the broken, ruined pieces floating inside her
into a woman she was quite proud of now. How being loved by him was the

purest expression of joy she’d experienced in three damn years.

It was borderline pathetic, definitely un-royal, to give him all this power

over her.

But she knew, she just knew, Shane was one of the good guys. He’d

never hurt her deliberately.

Tremulous hope filled her body with a lightness she’d not felt in…ever.

Yes, loving Shane was a good idea. The best she’d ever had.

“Nothing’s wrong, dude,” she told herself grimly. “You’re just

nervous.”

The foyer doorbell of her penthouse apartment overlooking the Eiffel

rang shrilly.

~~~~~~

Lena grabbed her floor-length DVF faux-fur coat, gave herself one last

look in the mirror of her wreck of a bedroom and walked out. Her guards
were staying one floor below, so she had a modicum of privacy.

Besides, she and her many ‘beaus’ had pranced about in next to nothing

enough times, over the last three years, to embarrass the living hell out of
them. Her meager security detail gave her a healthy berth now. Of course,

all that would change now. For good.

Lena flung the door open and grinned in relief at Shane.

“I thought you weren’t going to come.”

Shane’s bloodshot eyes widened as he saw her. She struck a pose at the

doorjamb, outlining the curve of her hip, very visible in her sheer slip dress.
The stockings accentuating her slim thighs and going down to hug her

calves and ankles sensually.

“I can’t refuse a royal summons, can I?” He murmured.

Lena smiled, even though a pang of disquiet struck her heart. He didn’t
sound like himself. Intense but present. He sounded…alien.

“Well, come in then.” She held the door wide open and waited for

Shane to enter.

He did, taking care to not brush up against her.

His cologne, a woodsy, foresty-scent mingled with cinnamon trailed by

her. She felt a shiver of desire hit her midsection.
 Lena caught his hard wrist and arrested him mid-stride.

He gave her an enquiring look. “Yeah?”

“Aren’t you going to kiss me hello?”

Shane gave her a smile that did not reach his eyes and kissed the side of

her head. Taking care to not disturb her updo. He also, very deliberately,
dropped her fingers from his wrist.

“This is what you’re wearing to Marceu’s party?” Lena indicated

Shane’s unironed jeans and flannel shirt with a pea-coat ensemble. “It’s
very…” She pretended to think deeply. “Deconstructed trucker with a little
bit of brooding thinker thrown in.”

She grinned. “I love it. And so will Marceau.”

Shane went to the window overlooking the Eiffel, stuffing his hands in
his jeans pockets.

Lena felt another pang, sharper and more insistent. Something was
wrong. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.

“Shane, is all well?”

He extracted one hand from his pocket and held up his phone. “I got a

call.”

“From?”
 Shane showed her the screen. It was a photo of smiling woman, with
green eyes and laugh lines around a handsome mouth. She was holding a
single finger up, a tiny, piece of shit diamond ring glinted on it, rivaling for

brightness with the smile on her lips.

“Nancy,” Shane said. “My fiancé.”

Lena’s breath stopped for a second. Her hearing popped. She shook her
head to clear it.

“I’m sorry,” she said politely. “I did not hear you right. You said…”

“My fiancé,” Shane interrupted. “Nancy Costigan. She’s in Boston.

Studying to be a lawyer. Fourth year at BU.”

Lena licked dry lips, staring at him as if he was speaking Swahili. “I

don’t understand.”

Shane turned around then.

Lena knee’s almost buckled at the cold, almost cruel expression on his
handsome face. His eyes were bloodshot no more. They were filmed over

pieces of glass. Even his beautiful curly hair seemed to hold still in the
moment.

“I lied to you, Lena. I have a wonderful woman in Boston who’s

waiting for me to come home to her. I’ve made promises to her. Promises I
have to keep.”

A single breath trembled out of her. She felt giddy, unstable. “I see.”

Shane shook his head. “I’m sorry…I should have told you about her. I

should have never started this thing between us.”

“Thing?” she asked. Her ears still kept ringing.

He shook his head again and his adorably stubborn curl fell on his

forehead, accentuating the lines there. “I’m sorry, Helena. This is all sorts of
wrong and fucked up. I fucked up.”

“You fucked up.” Lena sounded crusty, as if she’d forgotten how to

speak. “We have to go out for a party. Our first official evening together. I

told my security detail about you. To prepare for you.”

Shane nodded, guilty panic sliding over his face. “I know. That’s why I

had to come over and explain to you…why…explain everything to you.”

“So, what now?”

He gave her a crooked, heartbreaker of a smile. “Now you boot me out

of your royal life. And forget I ever existed. If there’s any justice in the

world, you’ll find the most amazing man who…” He cleared his throat,

sliding his gaze away from her. “You’ll find someone better than me.”

“What if I don’t want anyone better? What if I want you?”

 ~~~~~

Lena made herself walk up to him on shaking legs. She tried to touch

his wrist, hold him but he disengaged himself with every action she took.
Until she stood, arms on her sides, staring up at him while her world caved

in on her.

All over again.

And she could do nothing but let it happen.

Her heart pounded with double speed in her chest, threatening to burst

out of her rib cage. And shatter at his unfeeling feet.

“Lena, you are the most incredible woman I’ve ever known,” he said
softly. “You’re better than the Party Girl Princess act you put on for the

world. Don’t waste your time with me, of all people.”

“A liar and a cheat, you mean.”

Shane nodded. “A liar. A cheat. A terrible asshole. I’m all of those

things and more. But what I am most is sorry. I’m so sorry, Lena. I should
never have spoken to you. I should have left you alone. You deserve so

much better.”

Lena took a huge gulping breath. “Don’t be sorry, Shane. Fix it. Choose

me. Please,” she begged. “Don’t leave me.”

 “Why do you want me so bad?”

“Because,” Lena told him the ugliest truth. “When I’m around you, I

don’t feel so broken.”

He took a shuddering breath and she felt a spurt of hope.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.” Shane shook his head so instantly, all the hope in

her died a quick and painless death. There was no doubt in him. None. He

had already made up his mind. This was just a message he’d come to
deliver.

He was already done with her.

She never had a chance.

Lena’s lips trembled, just once. She firmed them up in the next instant.

Swallowed the tsunami of tears threatening to rise up in her. She was

wooden, a doll of hurt feelings and renewed grief. Not a real, flesh and
blood person.

Dolls did not fall apart at the ending of a relationship.

“Why couldn’t you tell me this…before?”

Shane heaved out a pained sigh of a breath. “You’re an actual fucking

princess, Lena. How could I say no to you?”

 She closed her eyes, felt two hot, fat tears roll down her freshly-made

up cheeks. “Is that all I am to you? A princess? A conquest?”

He didn’t answer. Just leaned down to kiss her cheek once. “Be happy,”
he whispered with hot lips. “You deserve it, Lena.”

Lena broke. She turned to her side and tried to hold onto Shane. With

trembling, aching arms and legs.

But he was so much stronger than her, and he did not want her. This

man she so recklessly, foolishly loved. This fucking stranger who’d lied to
her with every word he spoke to her. Every kiss they shared.

He stepped way back from her.

“One day,” he said quietly. “You’ll thank me for ending this. One day

you’ll forget all about me.”

As Shane walked away from her empty, echoing apartment, his back

obscured by the tears she simply couldn’t contain within herself anymore,

she tried to hold onto the promise of his words.

One day, she would forget about him.

Until then, she’d hate him. With everything she was. For the hope he’d
killed in her.
 PS: I’d be a very bad host if I didn’t wish you an early happy

birthday, Your Highness. I hope it’s unforgettable :*.

 Three

NOW

Boston

“You want to know why I hate criminals, Anton?” Shane

yelled, as he jumped straight down from the second floor fire

escape. He did a tuck and roll so he landed on the balls of his feet

instead of shattering his ankle.

Anton screamed obscenities as he turned the corner and

disappeared from sight.

Shane took off after him, running full tilt as if he hadn’t just

jumped down twenty feet straight. He also took out his gun - a
sweet Smith & Wesson 500 - where he’d placed it behind his shirt.

He held the weighted gun in one hand, negligently, while

gravel and dust flew around him and gave chase to Anton Klosser.

Anton was a small-time drug dealer who’d pled guilty to two

accounts of dealing (one to minors) and one possession charge. But
because Anton was a two-bit dealer who worked for the Figueroa
gang, he’d been able to post bail in the Massachusetts County
Court. The Figueroa gang took care of their own.

Unfortunately, Anton had gotten stupid. Greedy.

So he’d decided to skip town and his bail before the next court-

mandated hearing date. Which, as it turned out, was the worst thing
Anton could do.

Since it meant a bail bondsman skip tracer would be hired to

ring Anton back.

~~~~~~

Shane rounded the corner and spied Anton running pell-mell

ahead.

They were in a relatively crowded residential area in South

Boston, a place that both Anton and Shane knew like the back of
their hands. The houses were not as bad as the projects just a few
streets over, but they were in dilapidated conditions with unkempt

lawns and unruly hedges.

 Anton jumped a hedge.

Shane chuckled, shook his head. And gave serious chase,

jumping over two of the hedges with ease. The balls of his feet
were already in forward motion, he was already running after the

drug dealer.

He aimed his gun at Anton’s head. He was about five hundred

yards away from Anton.

“Because you do the crime,” Shane said casually. “But you

never want to do the time.”

He gripped the handgun with both hands, rock-steady even as

he ran surefooted, like they were at the racing track at the reservoir,
instead of ducking into the shady alleys of South Boston.

Anton continued running but his hands were up, in the classic

gesture of surrender. “Don’t shoot me, man,” he yelled.

Shane ran on, straight as an arrow, gaining on Anton with every

passing second. He was close to a hundred yards and closing the

gap every time his feet touched ground.
 Anton screamed more obscenities and tried to run but backed
into a hedge he couldn’t vault over finally. He fell down with an
almighty crash.

Anton groaned on the ground, clutching his ankle. “I think I

twisted it, man.”

It was a testament to how normal such scenes were in this

neighborhood that not one head peeked out of curtained windows.

Shane stopped a feet away from Anton. “Get up.”

“I can’t. Please, don’t shoot me, man.” Anton was actually

crying by the time he’d finished his pleas. Whether this was from
actual pain or fear, Shane didn’t know.

“Why would I shoot you? I caught you.” Shane held his gun in
one hand and expertly flipped Anton to his back, where he slipped

a zip tie around Anton’s wrists and jerked the ends tight. Anton

screamed from the pain this time.

“You’re not a cop then?”

“Did I say I was a cop?”

 Anton shook his head while he was unceremoniously hauled to

his feet and dragged by the man who’d most definitely caught him

only due to sheer bad luck. “I guess I should’ve guessed you

weren’t a cop when you didn’t shoot me in the back before.”

“Yeah.” Shane muttered while he hauled his prisoner to a

waiting, aging Camry, parked in the next street.

He shoved Anton into the backseat with no finesse.

“When I shoot you, it’ll be two bullets straight into your heart,

buddy. And you won’t see me coming.”

He slid into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition on. The car
sputtered but didn’t start.

“Come on, love.” Shane caressed the steering wheel and turned
the key again. This time the sputtering ignition caught on and the

car roared to life.

“Fuck,” Anton’s disgust was palpable. “You’re a fucking

bounty hunter, aren’t you? You work for one of those bail
bondsmen.”
 ~~~~~~

Shane shot Anton a grin over his shoulder, as he put the shift in
first and the Camry slid gracelessly out of their parking spot. It was

cold as ice and just as mean.

“Fuck yeah, I do. You mess with Buddy McRae’s outfit and
you’ve got to deal with me, pal. And I am worse than any cop

you’ll ever meet.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because when I shoot, I shoot to kill.”

Anton fell silent at the promised threat in those simple words.

Just then, a wailing sound filled the car.

Anton looked around wildly. The bounty hunter extracted a

brick-like instrument. It was his phone. He pressed a button on the

screen and the ringing stopped.

“Who was that? Anton asked idly.

“Shut up,” the bounty hunter snapped.

 The ringing started again. It was an unearthly sound, like the

cry of a baby mixed with that of a wounded animal. The bounty

hunter cursed under his breath and jabbed more buttons on his
phone before tossing it in the back, next to Anton.

Anton gave it a sideways glance. This looked like a satellite

phone…one of those fancy instruments billionaires carried.

The bounty hunter punched gas on his car and Anton sullenly

gazed as the familiar streets of Southie sped by in the car.

“You need to change your absorbers,” he said at one point,

when the man negotiated a particularly high speed bump.

“I will, after I collect my fee for finding you.” The bounty

hunter grinned nastily at him through the rearview mirror.

When the hunter finally stopped the car at Buddy McRae’s

office just off the police precinct house on Beacon, Anton tried one
final time to make a dash for freedom as he opened the car door,

trying to rush past the bounty hunter head-side first.

Shane simply slammed the car door on his skull, twice.

 Anton slid into an unconscious heap on the backseat, bleeding

from a wound in his temple.

He sighed. “Dammit, Anton. I’d just gotten these seats cleaned

last week.” He dragged a lolling Anton out and yelled, “Hey

Buddy, look what I found in Southie.”

~~~~~~

Buddy McRae, Shane’s cousin and favorite drinking pal, came

out of his dingy office. “What did you do to him, cousin?”

“What did I do to him? What do you mean what did I do to

him?” Shane demanded. “I caught him. Like I said I would. Like

you wanted me to. Because he skipped out on a two hundred and

fifty thousand dollar bail. Why are you upset, man?”

“Yeah. I wanted you to catch him,” Buddy answered. “Alive.”

Shane sniggered. “Anton’s alive, Bud.”

He shoved the criminal onto his cousin and Buddy staggered

under the dead weight. “You take care of the paperwork. And send
this guy back to jail where he belongs. I’m going out for the next

one. Jesus Montoya, right?”

He pronounced the name correctly, with an inflection over the

‘u’ and h instead of j. “History of domestic abuse?”

Buddy shrugged Anton’s weight onto his shoulder.

He shook his head. “No. You’re not going anywhere. You’ve

been out every day for the last two weeks. And you’ve been
working all hours too. You’re benched, Shane. You’ll burn out if

you keep going like this.”

“I am fine, Bud. I am fine,” Shane insisted. “I used to be able

to stay up longer than this in the Corps and at Sagitta. I am not

close to burning out. I’d know if I was.”

He followed a beleaguered Buddy inside the office, which had

a letter missing and spelled McRa Bail Bonds. The pocket-

friendly bondsman for all your needs.

“We should change that sign,” Shane suggested. “It’s way too
nice for what you do.”
 Buddy shoved Anton to a chair who stirred awake, groaning.

“Look, I’ll clean up this mess here. You go home. Crash.

Drink. Do whatever,” he ordered his newest employee. “Don’t

show your face till next week. I need my other men to pull their

weight too. They’ve become sloppy since you showed up three

months ago.”

Shane shrugged, fisting his hands inside his jacket pocket at the
thought of going back to his three-bedroom apartment on the

cleaner side of Southie. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford a nicer

place, a high-seven figure penthouse on Beacon if he wanted to…

it’s just that Southie was home.

And he’d figured home would be good for him.

“I can’t help it if all your men combined are not as good at

catching escaped convicts as I am.”

Shane parked himself on the edge of Buddy’s office table - a

hopeless thing buried under police reports and case files, empty

coffee cups, Chinese takeout cartons and other detritus.

 “Yeah, they got families, man. They got lives.” Unlike you

hung unsaid between them.

“That’s not my problem.”

“Shane.” Buddy sat down in his office chair with a groan. “I

love you like a brother but get the fuck out of here. Visit your
mother in Nantucket if you have to. Stop working.”

He opened a drawer on his metal desk and extracted a fat

envelope. He placed it on the table. “This is incentive for you to

stop working.”

“Fuck you, Buddy.” Shane shot him the finger. “You know I’m

not in this for the money.”

His net worth had swelled astronomically in the last five years

because he was one of those anomalies – a smart soldier who used

computers to his advantage and could predict the future of crypto-

currency.

“Whatever you’re in this for, I need you to give it a rest.”

Buddy started typing on his ancient Charles Babbage-type
computer.

Shane considered arguing some more with him. But Buddy was
stubborn, like the rest of them sons of bitches McRae.

If he’d decided Shane was benched then Shane was benched.

Except, Shane knew what being idle was going to do to his

system. The shakes would come, followed by the nausea and the

bad thoughts.

Fuck. No.

His stupid phone, the regular one, buzzed again. As it had for

the last hour. He ignored it.

“Fine.” He picked up the envelope thick with cash – ten

percent of the two hundred and fifty Gs Anton’s bosses had posted

for him.

“If you want to play it that way.” He didn’t bother opening the

envelope, shoved it into his back pocket. It was going to go to the

nearest Army Veteran’s Shelter anyway.

“See ya never, Buddy.”

 “I’m sorry, Shane.”

Shane shrugged. “So am I.” Then he exited the office, feeling

raw and at loose ends.

~~~~~
 Hotel Montstratten

Zurich

Switzerland

“Here are the rules,” Laura said.

“There are going to be rules now? Rules you’ll lay down?” The

man in the three-thousand dollar Zegna suit in the half a million

euro pied-a-terre was mildly amused. He didn’t know contract

killers were so serious and…self-important.

“Yes,” Laura said. She held one hand up, with one finger out.

“Rule number one. No contact will be permitted with me once I

agree to take on the job. For any reason, whatsoever.”

“Why’s that?”

“Once I take on the job, I’ll be on the move, Mr. Kerber. On the

hunt. Which means any communication not directly pertaining to

the target is non-consequential. Also.” Laura leaned back in the
highly expensive and equally uncomfortable Philip Starck chair.
 Ian Kerber thought it over and nodded. “Fair enough. No
communication once you take on the job, which won’t be until I get
the all-clear that the blowback from Stein’s death has been dealt

with.”

Kerber named the CEO of an energy company in a tiny country

in Europe no one had ever heard of…yet. That was going to change

now that Laura was on the job.

“However, when I take on the job I will provide you with

regular updates, so you can rest assured.”

“That does reassure me.” Kerber smiled.

“Rule number two. The account I’ll be using for expenses

needs to stay topped up at two hundred and fifty thousand euros,
starting now. It’s the most common bank in all of Western Europe.”
Laura named the bank and the account number.

“Ensure that the minimum balance does not fall below the
agreed upon amount. This is beyond the agreed upon fee of thirty
million euros that was quoted at the first meeting. Fifteen mil now
and fifteen upon completion of the job.”
 “Okay,” Kerber said. “My partners and I can work with that.”

“Rule number three, and this is the most important rule of all.
No interference whatsoever. No matter what happens over the
course of the job.”

“I am afraid this one will be a little difficult for me and my

partners to follow.” Kerber tried hard not to squirm in his seat. “We
are on somewhat of a deadline here. And this means we need
something more than a vague threat like the one you’ve delivered,
Laura.”

Laura leaned forward. Placed the Colt 500 which had been
made to order, so it fit right in the palm of her hand like it was born
to, and pointed the barrel in Kerber’s direction. It was a casual
gesture.

It should not have made sweat pop out on Kerber’s temple,

considering his Triple A-rated security stood diligent guard around

the room, but it did.

Laura knew guards could be bought. As the Heinricksons had

learned to their dear cost. But not dear enough.
 “It’s not a vague threat, Mr. Kerber,” Laura said quietly. “I
assure you, by the time I am done, you’ll have exactly what you
need. Unlike the botched up job on Prince Alexander’s
kidnapping.”

“Which is?”

“Princess Helena Heinrickson. Dead. Destroyed. And the

monarchy of Stellangård near destruction.” Laura caressed the

trigger of the gun which lived almost permanently on a thigh

holster on her person. “Now, do we have a deal?”

~~~~~~

Kerber should have been reassured by the calm authority with

which Laura talked about killing off an entire family and

destabilizing a government not known for chaos and outside

interference.

But the things he’d heard about Melanie Laura were enough to
make him believe she could.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
had once great trees growing, the produce of centuries of
quiescence. It would be difficult to think, when looking at them, that
they would ever be torn up and whirled aloft in flame by a new
outburst. While continual peril and change may not foster
remembrance of God, continuous peace is but too apt to lull to
forgetfulness of Him. The psalmist was beguiled by comfort into
saying precisely what "the wicked said in his heart" (Psalm x. 6).
How different may be the meaning of the same words on different
lips! The mad arrogance of the godless man's confidence, the error
of the good man rocked to sleep by prosperity, and the warranted
confidence of a trustful soul are all expressed by the same words;
but the last has an addition which changes the whole: "Because He
is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." The end of the first man's
boast can only be destruction; that of the third's faith will certainly
be "pleasures for evermore"; that of the second's lapse from
dependence is recorded in ver. 7. The sudden crash of his false
security is graphically reproduced by the abrupt clauses without
connecting particles. It was the "favour" already celebrated which
gave the stability which had been abused. Its effect is described in
terms of which the general meaning is clear, though the exact
rendering is doubtful. "Thou hast [or hadst] established strength to
my mountain" is harsh, and the proposed emendation (Hupfeld,
Cheyne, etc.), "hast set me on strong mountains," requires the
addition to the text of the pronoun. In either case, we have a natural
metaphor for prosperity. The emphasis lies on the recognition that it
was God's work, a truth which the psalmist had forgotten and had to
be taught by the sudden withdrawal of God's countenance, on which
followed his own immediate passage from careless security to
agitation and alarm. The word "troubled" is that used for Saul's
conflicting emotions and despair in the witch's house at Endor, and
for the agitation of Joseph's brethren when they heard that the man
who had their lives in his hand was their wronged brother. Thus
alarmed and filled with distracting thoughts was the psalmist. "Thou
didst hide Thy face," describes his calamities in their source. When
the sun goes in, an immediate gloom wraps the land, and the birds
cease to sing. But the "trouble" was preferable to "security," for it
drove to God. Any tempest which does that is better than calm
which beguiles from Him; and, since all His storms are meant to
"drive us to His breast," they come from His "favour."
The approach to God is told in vv. 8-10, of which the two latter are a
quotation of the prayer then wrung from the psalmist. The ground of
this appeal for deliverance from a danger threatening life is as in
Hezekiah's prayer (Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19), and reflects the same
conception of the state of the dead as Psalm vi. 5. If the suppliant
dies, his voice will be missed from the chorus which sings God's
praise on earth. "The dust" (i.e., the grave) is a region of silence.
Here, where life yielded daily proofs of God's "truth" (i.e.,
faithfulness), it could be extolled, but there dumb tongues could
bring Him no "profit" of praise. The boldness of the thought that God
is in some sense advantaged by men's magnifying of His
faithfulness, the cheerless gaze into the dark realm, and the
implication that to live is desired not only for the sake of life's joys,
but in order to show forth God's dealings, are all remarkable. The
tone of the prayer indicates the imperfect view of the future life
which shadows many psalms, and could only be completed by the
historical facts of the Resurrection and Ascension. Concern for the
honour of the Old Testament revelation may, in this matter, be
stretched to invalidate the distinctive glory of the New, which has
"brought life and immortality to light."
With quick transition, corresponding to the swiftness of the answer
to prayer, the closing pair of verses tells of the instantaneous change
which that answer wrought. As in the earlier metaphor weeping was
transformed into joy, here mourning is turned into dancing, and
God's hand unties the cord which loosely bound the sackcloth robe,
and arrays the mourner in festival attire. The same conception of the
sweetness of grateful praise to the ear of God which was presented
in the prayer recurs here, where the purpose of God's gifts is
regarded as being man's praise. The thought may be construed so
as to be repulsive, but its true force is to present God as desiring
hearts' love and trust, and as "seeking such to worship Him,"
because therein they will find supreme and abiding bliss. "My glory,"
that wonderful personal being, which in its lowest debasement
retains glimmering reflections caught from God, is never so truly
glory as when it "sings praise to Thee," and never so blessed as
when, through a longer "for ever" than the psalmist saw stretching
before him, it "gives thanks unto Thee."
 PSALM XXXI.
1 In Thee, Jehovah, have I taken refuge: let me never be
ashamed;
In Thy righteousness deliver me.
2 Bend down Thine ear to me: speedily extricate me;
Be to me for a refuge-rock, for a fortress-house, to save me.
3 For my rock and my fortress art Thou,
And for Thy name's sake wilt guide me and lead me.
4 Thou wilt bring me from the net which they have hidden for me,
For Thou art my defence.

5 Into Thy hand I commend my spirit;

Thou hast redeemed me, Jehovah, God of faithfulness.
6 I hate the worshippers of empty nothingnesses;
And I—to Jehovah do I cling.
7 I will exult and be joyful in Thy loving-kindness,
Who hast beheld my affliction,
[And] hast taken note of the distresses of my soul,
8 And hast not enclosed me in the hand of the enemy;
Thou hast set my feet at large.

9 Be merciful to me, Jehovah, for I am in straits;

Wasted away in grief is my eye,—my soul and my body.
10 For my life is consumed with sorrow,
And my years with sighing;
My strength reels because of mine iniquity,
And my bones are wasted.
11 Because of all my adversaries I am become a reproach
And to my neighbours exceedingly, and a fear to my
acquaintances;
They who see me without flee from me.
12 I am forgotten, out of mind, like a dead man;
I am like a broken vessel.
13 For I hear the whispering of many,
Terror on every side;
In their consulting together against me,
To take away my life do they scheme.
14 And I—on Thee I trust, Jehovah;
I say, My God art Thou.
15 In Thy hand are my times;
Rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my pursuers.
16 Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant;
Save me in Thy loving-kindness.
17 Jehovah, I shall not be shamed, for I cry to Thee;
The wicked shall be shamed, shall be silent in Sheol.
18 Dumb shall the lying lips be made,
That speak arrogance against the righteous,
In pride and contempt.

19 How great is Thy goodness which Thou dost keep in secret for
them who fear Thee,
Dost work before the sons of men for them who take refuge in
Thee.
20 Thou dost shelter them in the shelter of Thy face from the plots
of men;
Thou keepest them in secret in an arbour from the strife of
tongues.
21 Blessed be Jehovah,
For He has done marvels of loving-kindness for me in a strong
city!
22 And I—I said in my agitation, I am cut off from before Thine
eyes,
But truly Thou didst hear the voice of my supplication in my
crying aloud to Thee.
23 Love Jehovah, all His beloved;
Jehovah keeps faithfulness,
And repays overflowingly him that practises pride.
24 Be strong, and let your heart take courage,
All ye that wait on Jehovah.
The swift transitions of feeling in this psalm may seem strange to
colder natures whose lives run smoothly, but reveal a brother-soul to
those who have known what it is to ride on the top of the wave and
then to go down into its trough. What is peculiar to the psalm is not
only the inclusion of the whole gamut of feeling, but the force with
which each key is struck and the persistence through all of the one
ground tone of cleaving to Jehovah. The poetic temperament passes
quickly from hope to fear. The devout man in sorrow can sometimes
look away from a darkened earth to a bright sky, but the stern
realities of pain and loss again force themselves in upon him. The
psalm is like an April day, in which sunshine and rain chase each
other across the plain.

"The beautiful uncertain weather,

Where gloom and glory meet together,"

makes the landscape live, and is the precursor of fruitfulness.

The stream of the psalmist's thoughts now runs in shadow of grim
cliffs and vexed by opposing rocks, and now opens out in sunny
stretches of smoothness; but its source is "In Thee, Jehovah, do I
take refuge" (ver. 1): and its end is "Be strong, and let your heart
take courage, all ye that wait for Jehovah" (ver. 24).
The first turn of the stream is in vv. 1-4, which consist of petitions
and their grounds. The prayers reveal the suppliant's state. They are
the familiar cries of an afflicted soul common to many psalms, and
presenting no special features. The needs of the human heart are
uniform, and the cry of distress is much alike on all lips. This sufferer
asks, as his fellows have done and will do, for deliverance, a swift
answer, shelter and defence, guidance and leading, escape from the
net spread for him. These are the commonplaces of prayer, which
God is not wearied of hearing, and which fit us all. The last place to
look for originality is in the "sighing of such as be sorrowful." The
pleas on which the petitions rest are also familiar. The man who
trusts in Jehovah has a right to expect that his trust will not be put
to shame, since God is faithful. Therefore the first plea is the
psalmist's faith, expressed in ver. 1 by the word which literally means
to flee to a refuge. The fact that he has done so makes his
deliverance a work of God's "righteousness." The metaphor latent in
"flee for refuge" comes into full sight in that beautiful plea in ver. 3,
which unsympathetic critics would call illogical, "Be for me a refuge-
rock, for ... Thou art my rock." Be what Thou art; manifest Thyself in
act to be what Thou art in nature: be what I, Thy poor servant, have
taken Thee to be. My heart has clasped Thy revelation of Thyself
and fled to this strong tower. Let me not be deceived and find it
incapable of sheltering me from my foes. "Therefore for Thy name's
sake," or because of that revelation and for its glory as true in men's
sight, deliver me. God's nature as revealed is the strongest plea with
Him, and surely that cannot but be potent and acceptable prayer
which says, Be what Thou art, and what Thou hast taught me to
believe Thee.
Vv. 5-8 prolong the tone of the preceding, with some difference,
inasmuch as God's past acts are more specifically dwelt on as the
ground of confidence. In this turn of the stream, faith does not so
much supplicate as meditate, plucking the flower of confidence from
the nettle of past dangers and deliverances, and renewing its acts of
surrender. The sacred words which Jesus made His own on the
cross, and which have been the last utterance of so many saints,
were meant by the psalmist to apply to life, not to death. He laid his
spirit as a precious deposit in God's hand, assured that He was able
to keep that which was committed to Him. Often had he done this
before, and now he does it once more. Petitions pass into surrender.
Resignation as well as confidence speaks. To lay one's life in God's
hand is to leave the disposal of it to Him, and such absolute
submission must come as the calm close and incipient reward of
every cry for deliverance. Trust should not be hard to those who can
remember. So Jehovah's past redemptions—i.e., deliverances from
temporal dangers—are its ground here; and these avail as pledges
for the future, since He is "the God of truth," who can never falsify
His past. The more nestlingly a soul clings to God, the more
vehemently will it recoil from other trust. Attraction and repulsion
are equal and contrary. The more clearly it sees God's faithfulness
and living power as a reality operating in its life, the more
penetrating will be its detection of the falseness of other helpers.
"Nothingnesses of emptiness" are they all to one who has felt the
clasp of that great, tender hand; and unless the soul feels them to
be such, it will never strongly clutch or firmly hold its true stay. Such
trust has its crown in joyful experience of God's mercy even before
the actual deliverance comes to pass, as wind-borne fragrance
meets the traveller before he sees the spice gardens from which it
comes. The cohortative verbs in ver. 7 may be petition ("Let me
exult"), or they may be anticipation of future gladness, but in either
case some waft of joy has already reached the singer, as how could
it fail to do, when his faith was thus renewing itself, and his eyes
gazing on God's deeds of old? The past tenses in vv. 7, 8, refer to
former experiences. God's sight of the psalmist's affliction was not
idle contemplation, but implied active intervention. To "take note of
the distresses of my soul" (or possibly, "of my soul in distresses") is
the same as to care for it. It is enough to know that God sees the
secret sorrows, the obscure trials which can be told to none. He
loves as well as knows, and looks on no griefs which He will not
comfort nor on any wounds which He is not ready to bind up. The
psalmist was sure that God had seen, because he had experienced
His delivering power, as he goes on joyfully to tell. The figure in ver.
8 a points back to the act of trust in ver. 5. How should God let the
hand of the enemy close round and crush the spirit which had been
entrusted to His own hand? One sees the greedy fingers of the foe
drawing themselves together on their prey as on a fly, but they close
on nothing. Instead of suffering constraint the delivered spirit walks
at liberty. They who are enclosed in God's hand have ample room
there; and unhindered activity, with the ennobling consciousness of
freedom, is the reward of trust.
Is it inconceivable that such sunny confidence should be suddenly
clouded and followed, as in the third turn of thought (vv. 9-13), by
plaintive absorption in the sad realities of present distress? The very
remembrance of a brighter past may have sharpened the sense of
present trouble. But it is to be noted that these complaints are
prayer, not aimless, self-pitying wailing. The enumeration of miseries
which begins with "Have mercy upon me, for——," has a hidden
hope tinging its darkness, like the faint flush of sunrise on clouds.
There is no such violent change of tone as is sometimes conceived;
but the pleas of the former parts are continued in this section, which
adds the psalmist's sore need to God's past and the suppliant's faith,
as another reason for Jehovah's help. He begins with the effects of
his trouble on himself in body and soul; thence he passes to its
consequences on those around him, and finally he spreads before
God its cause: plots against his life. The resemblances to Psalm vi.
and to several parts of Jeremiah are unmistakable. In vv. 9, 10, the
physical and mental effects of anxiety are graphically described.
Sunken eyes, enfeebled soul, wasted body, are gaunt witnesses of
his distress. Cares seem to him to have gnawed his very bones, so
weak is he. All that he can do is to sigh. And worse than all,
conscience tells him that his own sin underlies his trouble, and so he
is without inward stay. The picture seems exaggerated to easy-
going, prosperous people; but many a sufferer has since recognised
himself in it as in a mirror, and been thankful for words which gave
voice to his pained heart and cheered him with the sense of
companionship in the gloom.
Vv. 11, 12, are mainly the description of the often-repeated
experience of friends forsaking the troubled. "Because of all my
adversaries" somewhat anticipates ver. 13 in assigning the reason
for the cowardly desertion. The three phrases "neighbours,"
"acquaintance," and "those who see me without" indicate concentric
circles of increasing diameter. The psalmist is in the middle; and
round him are, first, neighbours, who pour reproach on him,
because of his enemies, then the wider range of "acquaintances,"
afraid to have anything to do with one who has such strong and
numerous foes, and remotest of all, the chance people met on the
way who fly from Him, as infected and dangerous. "They all forsook
Him and fled." That bitter ingredient mingles in every cup of sorrow.
The meanness of human nature and the selfishness of much
apparent friendship are commonplaces, but the experience of them
is always as painful and astonishing, as if nobody besides had ever
suffered therefrom. The roughness of structure in ver. 11 b, "and
unto my neighbours exceedingly," seems to fit the psalmist's
emotion, and does not need the emendation of "exceedingly" into
"burden" (Delitzsch) or "shaking of the head" (Cheyne).
In ver. 12 the desertion is bitterly summed up, as like the oblivion
that waits for the dead. The unsympathising world goes on its way,
and friends find new interests and forget the broken man, who used
to be so much to them, as completely as if he were in his grave, or
as they do the damaged cup, flung on the rubbish heap. Ver. 13
discloses the nature of the calamity which has had these effects.
Whispering slanders buzz round him; he is ringed about with causes
for fear, since enemies are plotting his death. The use of the first
part of the verse by Jeremiah does not require the hypothesis of his
authorship of the psalm, nor of the prophet's priority to the psalmist.
It is always a difficult problem to settle which of two cases of the
employment of the same phrase is original and which quotation. The
criteria are elastic, and the conclusion is very often arrived at in
deference to preconceived ideas. But Jeremiah uses the phrase as if
it were a proverb or familiar expression, and the psalmist as if it
were the freshly struck coinage of his own experience.
Again the key changes, and the minor is modulated into confident
petition. It is the test of true trust that it is deepened by the fullest
recognition of dangers and enemies. The same facts may feed
despair and be the fuel of faith. This man's eyes took in all
surrounding evils, and these drove him to avert his gaze from them
and fix it on Jehovah. That is the best thing that troubles can do for
us. If they, on the contrary, monopolise our sight, they turn our
hearts to stone; but if we can wrench our stare from them, they
clear our vision to see our Helper. In vv. 14-18 we have the recoil of
the devout soul to God, occasioned by its recognition of need and
helplessness. This turn of the psalm begins with a strong emphatic
adversative: "But I—I trust in Jehovah." We see the man flinging
himself into the arms of God. The word for "trust" is the same as in
ver. 6, and means to hang or lean upon, or, as we say, to depend on.
He utters his trust in his prayer, which occupies the rest of this part
of the psalm. A prayer, which is the voice of trust, does not begin
with petition, but with renewed adherence to God and happy
consciousness of the soul's relation to Him, and thence melts into
supplication for the blessings which are consequences of that
relation. To feel, on occasion of the very dreariness of
circumstances, that God is mine, makes miraculous sunrise at
midnight. Built on that act of trust claiming its portion in God, is the
recognition of God's all-regulating hand, as shaping the psalmist's
"times," the changing periods, each of which has its definite
character, responsibilities, and opportunities. Every man's life is a
series of crises, in each of which there is some special work to be
done or lesson to be learned, some particular virtue to be cultivated
or sacrifice made. The opportunity does not return. "It might have
been once; and we missed it, lost it for ever."
But the psalmist is thinking rather of the varying complexion of his
days as bright or dark; and looking beyond circumstances, he sees
God. The "hand of mine enemies" seems shrivelled into impotence
when contrasted with that great hand, to which he has committed
his spirit, and in which are his "times"; and the psalmist's recognition
that it holds his destiny is the ground of his prayer for deliverance
from the foes' paralysed grasp. They who feel the tender clasp of an
almighty hand need not doubt their security from hostile assaults.
The petitions proper are three in number: for deliverance, for the
light of God's face, and for "salvation." The central petition recalls
the priestly blessing (Num. vi. 25). It asks for consciousness of God's
friendship and for the manifestation thereof in safety from present
dangers. That face, turned in love to a man, can "make a sunshine
in a shady place," and brings healing on its beams. It seems best to
take the verbs in vv. 17, 18, as futures and not optatives. The prayer
passes into assurance of its answer, and what was petition in ver. 1
is now trustful prediction: "I shall not be ashamed, for I cry to
Thee." With like elevation of faith, the psalmist foresees the end of
the whispering defamers round him: shame for their vain plots and
their silent descent to the silent land. The loudest outcry against
God's lovers will be hushed some day, and the hands that
threatened them will be laid motionless and stiff across motionless
breasts. He who stands by God and looks forward, can, by the light
of that face, see the end of much transient bluster, "with pride and
contempt," against the righteous. Lying lips fall dumb; praying lips,
like the psalmist's, are opened to show forth God's praise. His prayer
is audible still across the centuries; the mutterings of his enemies
only live in his mention of them.
That assurance prepares the way for the noble burst of thanksgiving,
as for accomplished deliverance, which ends the psalm, springing up
in a joyous outpouring of melody, like a lark from a bare furrow. But
there is no such change of tone as to warrant the supposition that
these last verses (19-24) are either the psalmist's later addition or
the work of another, nor do they oblige us to suppose that the whole
psalm was written after the peril which it commemorates had
passed. Rather the same voice which triumphantly rings out in these
last verses has been sounding in the preceding, even in their
saddest strains. The ear catches a twitter hushed again and renewed
more than once before the full song breaks out. The psalmist has
been absorbed with his own troubles till now, but thankfulness
expands his vision, and suddenly there is with him a multitude of
fellow-dependants on God's goodness. He hungers alone, but he
feasts in company. The abundance of God's "goodness" is conceived
of as a treasure stored, and in part openly displayed, before the sons
of men. The antithesis suggests manifold applications of the
contrast, such as the inexhaustibleness of the mercy which, after all
revelation, remains unrevealed, and, after all expenditure, has not
perceptibly diminished in its shining mass, as of bullion in some
vault; or the varying dealings of God, who sometimes, while sorrow
is allowed to have its scope, seems to keep His riches of help under
lock and key, and then again flashes them forth in deeds of
deliverance; or the difference between the partial unfolding of these
on earth and the full endowment of His servants with "riches in
glory" hereafter. All these carry the one lesson that there is more in
God than any creature or all creatures have ever drawn from Him or
can ever draw. The repetition of the idea of hiding in ver. 20 is a true
touch of devout poetry. The same word is used for laying up the
treasure and for sheltering in a pavilion from the jangle of tongues.
The wealth and the poor men who need it are stored together, as it
were; and the place where they both lie safe is God Himself. How
can they be poor who are dwelling close beside infinite riches? The
psalmist has just prayed that God would make His face to shine
upon him; and now he rejoices in the assurance of the answer, and
knows himself and all like-minded men to be hidden in that "glorious
privacy of light," where evil things cannot live. As if caught up to and
"clothed with the sun," he and they are beyond the reach of hostile
conspiracies, and have "outsoared the shadow of" earth's
antagonisms. The great thought of security in God has never been
more nobly expressed than by that magnificent metaphor of the light
inaccessible streaming from God's face to be the bulwark of a poor
man.
The personal tone recurs for a moment in vv. 21, 22, in which it is
doubtful whether we hear thankfulness for deliverance anticipated as
certain and so spoken of as past, since it is as good as done, or for
some recently experienced marvel of loving-kindness, which
heartens the psalmist in present trouble. If this psalm is David's, the
reference may be to his finding a city of refuge, at the time when his
fortunes were very low, in Ziklag, a strange place for a Jewish
fugitive to be sheltered. One can scarcely help feeling that the
allusion is so specific as to suggest historical fact as its basis. At the
same time it must be admitted that the expression may be the
carrying on of the metaphor of the hiding in a pavilion. The "strong
city" is worthily interpreted as being God Himself, though the
historical explanation is tempting. God's mercy makes a true man
ashamed of his doubts, and therefore the thanksgiving of ver. 21
leads to the confession of ver. 22. Agitated into despair, the psalmist
had thought that he was "cut off from God's eyes"—i.e., hidden so
as not to be helped—but the event has showed that God both heard
and saw him. If alarm does not so make us think that God is blind to
our need and deaf to our cry as to make us dumb, we shall be
taught the folly of our fears by His answers to our prayers. These
will have a voice of gentle rebuke, and ask us, "O thou of little faith,
wherefore didst thou doubt?" He delivers first, and lets the
deliverance stand in place of chiding.
The whole closes with a summons to all whom Jehovah loves to love
Him for His mercy's sake. The joyful singer longs for a chorus to join
his single voice, as all devout hearts do. He generalises his own
experience, as all who have for themselves experienced deliverance
are entitled and bound to do, and discerns that in his single case the
broad law is attested that the faithful are guarded whatever dangers
assail, and "the proud doer" abundantly repaid for all his contempt
and hatred of the just. Therefore the last result of contemplating
God's ways with His servants is an incentive to courage, strength,
and patient waiting for the Lord.
 PSALM XXXII.
1 Blessed he whose transgression is taken away, whose sin is
covered,
2 Blessed the man to whom Jehovah reckons not iniquity,
In whose spirit is no guile.

3 When I kept silence, my bones rotted away,

Through my roaring all the day.
4 For day and night Thy hand weighed heavily upon me;
My sap was turned [as] in droughts of summer. Selah.

5 My sin I acknowledged to Thee, and my iniquity I covered not,

I said, I will confess because of my transgressions to Jehovah,
And Thou—Thou didst take away the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

6 Because of this let every one beloved [of Thee] pray to Thee in a
time of finding;
Surely when great waters are in flood, to him they shall not
reach.
7 Thou art a shelter for me; from trouble wilt Thou preserve me,
[With] shouts of deliverance wilt encircle me. Selah.

8 I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou
shouldest go;
I will counsel thee, [with] mine eye upon thee.
9 Be not ye like horse, like mule, without understanding,
Whose harness to hold them in is bit and bridle,
Else no coming near to thee.
10 The wicked has many sorrows,
And he who trusts in Jehovah—with loving-kindness will He
encircle him.
11 Rejoice in Jehovah, and exult, ye righteous;
And shout joyfully, all ye upright of heart.
One must have a dull ear not to hear the voice of personal
experience in this psalm. It throbs with emotion, and is a burst of
rapture from a heart tasting the sweetness of the new joy of
forgiveness. It is hard to believe that the speaker is but a
personification of the nation, and the difficulty is recognised by
Cheyne's concession that we have here "principally, though not
exclusively, a national psalm." The old opinion that it records David's
experience in the dark time when, for a whole year, he lived
impenitent after his great sin of sense, and was then broken down
by Nathan's message and restored to peace through pardon
following swiftly on penitence, is still defensible, and gives a fit
setting for this gem. Whoever was the singer, his song goes deep
down to permanent realities in conscience and in men's relations to
God, and therefore is not for an age, but for all time. Across the dim
waste of years, we hear this man speaking our sins, our penitence,
our joy; and the antique words are as fresh, and fit as close to our
experiences, as if they had been welled up from a living heart to-
day. The theme is the way of forgiveness and its blessedness; and
this is set forth in two parts: the first (vv. 1-5) a leaf from the
psalmist's autobiography, the second (ver. 6 to end) the
generalisation of individual experience and its application to others.
In each part the prevailing division of verses is into strophes of two,
each containing two members, but with some irregularity.
The page from the psalmist's confessions (vv. 1-5) begins with a
burst of rapturous thankfulness for the joy of forgiveness (vv. 1, 2),
passes to paint in dark colours the misery of sullen impenitence (vv.
3, 4), and then, in one longer verse, tells with glad wonder how
sudden and complete was the transition to the joy of forgiveness by
the way of penitence. It is a chart of one man's path from the
depths to the heights, and avails to guide all.
The psalmist begins abruptly with an exclamation (Oh, the
blessedness, etc.). His new joy wells up irrepressibly. To think that
he who had gone so far down in the mire, and had locked his lips in
silence for so long, should find himself so blessed! Joy so exuberant
cannot content itself with one statement of its grounds. It runs over
in synonyms for sin and its forgiveness, which are not feeble
tautology. The heart is too full to be emptied at one outpouring, and
though all the clauses describe the same things, they do so with
differences. This is true with regard to the words both for sin and for
pardon. The three designations of the former present three aspects
of its hideousness. The first, rendered ("transgression,") conceives of
it as rebellion against rightful authority, not merely breach of an
impersonal law, but breaking away from a rightful king. The second
("sin") describes it as missing a mark. What is in regard to God
rebellion is in regard to myself missing the aim, whether that aim be
considered as that which a man is, by his very make and relations,
intended to be and do, or as that which he proposes to himself by
his act. All sin tragically fails to hit the mark in both these senses. It
is a failure as to reaching the ideal of conduct, "the chief end of
man," and not less so as to winning the satisfaction sought by the
deed. It keeps the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it to the
hope, ever luring by lying offers; and if it gives the poor delights
which it holds out, it ever adds something that embitters them, like
spirits of wine methylated and made undrinkable. It is always a
blunder to do wrong. The last synonym ("iniquity") means
crookedness or distortion, and seems to embody the same idea as
our words "right" and "wrong," namely the contrast between the
straight line of duty and the contorted lines drawn by sinful hands.
What runs parallel with law is right; what diverges is wrong. The
three expressions for pardon are also eloquent in their variety. The
first word means taken away or lifted off, as a burden from aching
shoulders. It implies more than holding back penal consequences; it
is the removal of sin itself, and that not merely in the
multitudinousness of its manifestations in act, but in the depth of its
inward source. This is the metaphor which Bunyan has made so
familiar by his picture of the pilgrim losing his load at the cross. The
second ("covered") paints pardon as God's shrouding the foul thing
from His pure eyes, so that His action is no longer determined by its
existence. The third describes forgiveness as God's not reckoning a
man's sin to him, in which expression hovers some allusion to
cancelling a debt. The clause "in whose spirit is no guile" is best
taken as a conditional one, pointing to sincerity which confesses guilt
as a condition of pardon. But the alternative construction as a
continuation of the description of the forgiven man is quite possible;
and if thus understood, the crowning blessing of pardon is set forth
as being the liberation of the forgiven spirit from all "guile" or evil.
God's kiss of forgiveness sucks the poison from the wound.
Retrospect of the dismal depth from which it has climbed is natural
to a soul sunning itself on high. Therefore on the overflowing
description of present blessedness follows a shuddering glance
downwards to past unrest. Sullen silence caused the one; frank
acknowledgment brought the other. He who will not speak his sin to
God has to groan. A dumb conscience often makes a loud-voiced
pain. This man's sin had indeed missed its aim; for it had brought
about three things: rotting bones (which may be but a strong
metaphor or may be a physical fact), the consciousness of God's
displeasure dimly felt as if a great hand were pressing him down,
and the drying up of the sap of his life, as if the fierce heat of
summer had burned the marrow in his bones. These were the fruits
of pleasant sin, and by reason of them many a moan broke from his
locked lips. Stolid indifference may delay remorse, but its serpent
fang strikes soon or later, and then strength and joy die. The Selah
indicates a swell or prolongation of the accompaniment, to
emphasise this terrible picture of a soul gnawing itself.
The abrupt turn to description of the opposite disposition in ver. 5
suggests a sudden gush of penitence. As at a bound, the soul passes
from dreary remorse. The break with the former self is complete,
and effected in one wrench. Some things are best done by degrees;
and some, of which forsaking sin is one, are best done quickly. And
as swift as the resolve to crave pardon, so swift is the answer giving
it. We are reminded of that gospel compressed into a verse, "David
said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said
unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin." Again the three
designations of sin are employed, though in different order; and the
act of confession is thrice mentioned, as that of forgiveness was.
The fulness and immediateness of pardon are emphatically given by
the double epithet "the iniquity of thy sin" and by the representation
that it follows the resolve to confess, and does not wait for the act.
The Divine love is so eager to forgive that it tarries not for actual
confession, but anticipates it, as the father interrupts the prodigal's
acknowledgment with gifts and welcome. The Selah at the end of
ver. 5 is as triumphant as that at the close of ver. 4 had been sad. It
parts the autobiographical section from the more general one which
follows.
In the second part the solitary soul translates its experience into
exhortations for all, and woos men to follow on the same path, by
setting forth in rich variety the joys of pardon. The exhortation first
dwells on the positive blessings associated with penitence (vv. 6, 7),
and next on the degradation and sorrow involved in obstinate hard-
heartedness (vv. 8-10). The natural impulse of him who has known
both is to beseech others to share his happy experience, and the
psalmist's course of thought obeys that impulse, for the future "shall
pray" (R.V.) is better regarded as hortatory "let ... pray." "Because of
this" does not express the contents of the petitions, but their reason.
The manifestation of God as infinitely ready to forgive should
hearten to prayer; and, since God's beloved need forgiveness day by
day, even though they may not have fallen into such gross sin as this
psalmist, there is no incongruity in the exhortation being addressed
to them. "He that is washed" still needs that feet fouled in muddy
ways should be cleansed. Every time of seeking by such prayer is a
"time of finding"; but the phrase implies that there is a time of not
finding, and, in its very graciousness, is heavy with warning against
delay. With forgiveness comes security. The penitent, praying,
pardoned man is set as on a rock islet in the midst of floods,
whether these be conceived of as temptation to sin or as calamities.
The hortatory tone is broken in ver. 7 by the recurrence of the
personal element, since the singer's heart was too full for silence;
but there is no real interruption, for the joyous utterance of one's
own faith is often the most winning persuasive, and a devout man
can scarcely hold out to others the sweetness of finding God without
at the same time tasting what he offers. Unless he does, his words
will ring unreal. "Thou art a shelter for me" (same word as in xxvii.
5, xxxi. 20), is the utterance of trust; and the emphasis is on "my."
To hide in God is to be "preserved from trouble," not in the sense of
being exempt, but in that of not being overwhelmed, as the beautiful
last clause of v. 7 shows, in which "shouts of deliverance" from
trouble which had pressed are represented by a bold, but not harsh,
metaphor as ringing the psalmist round. The air is filled with jubilant
voices, the echoes of his own. The word rendered "songs" or
preferably "shouts" is unusual, and its consonants repeat the last
three of the preceding word ("shalt preserve me"). These
peculiarities have led to the suggestion that we have in it a
"dittograph." If so, the remaining words of the last clause would
read, "Thou wilt compass me about with deliverance," which would
be a perfectly appropriate expression. But probably the similarity of
letters is a play upon words, of which we have another example in
the preceding clause where the consonants of the word for
"trouble," reappear in their order in the verb "wilt preserve." The
shout of joy is caught up by the Selah.
But now the tone changes into solemn warning against obstinate
disregard of God's leading. It is usual to suppose that the psalmist
still speaks, but surely "I will counsel thee, with mine eye upon
thee," does not fit human lips. It is to be observed, too, that in ver. 8
a single person is addressed, who is most naturally taken to be the
same as he who spoke his individual faith in ver. 7. In other words,
the psalmist's confidence evokes a Divine response, and that brief
interchange of clinging trust and answering promise stands in the
midst of the appeal to men, which it scarcely interrupts. Ver. 9 may
either be regarded as the continuance of the Divine voice, or
perhaps better, as the resumption by the psalmist of his hortatory
address. God's direction as to duty and protection in peril are both
included in the promise of ver. 8. With His eye upon His servant, He
will show him the way, and will keep him ever in sight as he travels
on it. The beautiful meaning of the A.V., that God guides with a
glance those who dwell near enough to Him to see His look, is
scarcely contained in the words, though it is true that the sense of
pardon binds men to Him in such sweet bonds that they are eager to
catch the faintest indications of His will, and "His looks command,
His lightest words are spells."
Vv. 9, 10, are a warning against brutish obstinacy. The former verse
has difficulties in detail, but its drift is plain. It contrasts the gracious
guidance which avails for those made docile by forgiveness and trust
with the harsh constraint which must curb and coerce mulish
natures. The only things which such understand are bits and bridles.
They will not come near to God without such rough outward
constraint, any more than an unbroken horse will approach a man
unless dragged by a halter. That untamableness except by force is
the reason why "many sorrows" must strike "the wicked." If these
are here compared to "bit" and "bridle," they are meant to drive to
God, and are therefore regarded as being such mercies as the
obstinate are capable of receiving. Obedience extorted by force is no
obedience, but approach to God compelled by sorrows that restrain
unbridled licence of tempers and of sense is accepted as a real
approach and then is purged into access with confidence. They who
are at first driven are afterwards drawn, and taught to know no
delight so great as that of coming and keeping near God.
The antithesis of "wicked" and "he that trusteth in Jehovah" is
significant as teaching that faith is the true opposite of sinfulness.
Not less full of meaning is the sequence of trust, righteousness, and
uprightness of heart in vv. 10, 11. Faith leads to righteousness, and
they are upright, not who have never fallen, but who have been
raised from their fall by pardon. The psalmist had thought of himself
as compassed with shouts of deliverance. Another circle is cast
round him and all who, with him, trust Jehovah. A ring of mercies,
like a fiery wall, surrounds the pardoned, faithful soul, without a
break through which a real evil can creep. Therefore the
encompassing songs of deliverance are continuous as the mercies
which they hymn, and in the centre of that double circle the soul sits
secure and thankful.
The psalm ends with a joyful summons to general joy. All share in
the solitary soul's exultation. The depth of penitence measures the
height of gladness. The breath that was spent in "roaring all the day
long" is used for shouts of deliverance. Every tear sparkles like a
diamond in the sunshine of pardon, and he who begins with the
lowly cry for forgiveness will end with lofty songs of joy and be
made, by God's guidance and Spirit, righteous and upright in heart.
 PSALM XXXIII.
1 Rejoice aloud, ye righteous, in Jehovah,
For the upright praise is seemly.
2 Give thanks to Jehovah with harp;
With ten-stringed psaltery play unto Him.
3 Sing to Him a new song,
Strike well [the strings] with joyful shouts.

4 For upright is the word of Jehovah,

And all His work is in faithfulness.
5 He loves righteousness and judgment,
Of Jehovah's loving-kindness the earth is full.
6 By the word of Jehovah the heavens were made,
And all their host by the breath of His mouth.
7 Who gathereth as an heap the waters of the sea,
Who layeth up the deeps in storehouses.
8 Let all the earth fear Jehovah,
Before Him let all inhabitants of the world stand in awe.
9 For He, He spoke and it was;
He, He commanded and it stood.
10 Jehovah has brought to nothing the counsel of the nations,
He has frustrated the designs of the peoples.
11 The counsel of Jehovah shall stand for ever,
The designs of His heart to generation after generation.

12 Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah,

The people He has chosen for an inheritance for Himself.
13 From heaven Jehovah looks down,
He beholds all the sons of men.
14 From the place where He sits, He gazes
On all the inhabitants of earth:—
15 Even He who forms the hearts of them all,
Who marks all their works.
16 A king is not saved by the greatness of [his] army,
A hero is not delivered by the greatness of [his] strength.
17 A horse is a vain thing for safety;
And by the greatness of its strength it does not give escape.
18 Behold the eye of Jehovah is on them who fear Him,
On them who hope for His loving-kindness,
19 To deliver their soul from death,
And to keep them alive in famine.

20 Our soul waits for Jehovah,

Our help and our shield is He.
21 For in Him shall our heart rejoice,
For in His holy name have we trusted.
22 Let Thy loving-kindness, Jehovah, be upon us,
According as we have hoped for Thee.
This is the last of the four psalms in Book I. which have no title, the
others being Psalms i., ii., which are introductory, and x. which is
closely connected with ix. Some have endeavoured to establish a
similar connection between xxxii. and xxxiii.; but, while the closing
summons to the righteous in the former is substantially repeated in
the opening words of the latter, there is little other trace of
connection, except the references in both to "the eye of Jehovah"
(xxxii. 8, xxxiii. 18); and no two psalms could be more different in
subject and tone than these. The one is full of profound, personal
emotion, and deals with the depths of experience; the other is
devoid of personal reference, and is a devout, calm contemplation of
the creative power and providential government of God. It is kindred
with the later type of psalms, and has many verbal allusions
connecting it with them. It has probably been placed here simply
because of the similarity just noticed between its beginning and the
end of the preceding. The reasons for the arrangement of the
psalter were, so far as they can be traced, usually such merely
verbal coincidences. To one who has been travelling through the
heights and depths, the storms and sunny gleams of the previous
psalms, this impersonal didactic meditation, with its historical
allusions and entire ignoring of sins and sorrows, is indeed "a new
song." It is apparently meant for liturgical use, and falls into three
unequal parts; the first three verses and the last three being prelude
and conclusion, the former summoning the "righteous" to praise
Jehovah, the latter putting words of trust and triumph and prayer
into their mouths. The central mass (vv. 4-19) celebrates the
creative and providential work of God, in two parts, of which the first
extends these Divine acts over the world (vv. 4-11) and the second
concentrates them on Israel (vv. 12-19).
The opening summons to praise takes us far away from the solitary
wrestlings and communings in former psalms. Now
 "The singers lift up their voice,
And the trumpets make endeavour,
Sounding, 'In God rejoice!
In Him rejoice for ever!'"

But the clear recognition of purity as the condition of access to God

speaks in this invocation as distinctly as in any of the preceding.
"The righteous" whose lives conform to the Divine will, and only they
can shout aloud their joy in Jehovah. Praise fits and adorns the lips
of the "upright" only, whose spirits are without twist of self-will and
sin. The direction of character expressed in the word is horizontal
rather than vertical, and is better represented by "straight" than
"upright." Praise gilds the gold of purity and adds grace even to the
beauty of holiness. Experts tell us that the kinnor (harp, A.V. and
R.V.) and nebel (psaltery) were both stringed instruments, differing
in the position of the sounding board, which was below in the former
and above in the latter, and also in the covering of the strings (v.
Delitzsch, Eng. transl. of latest ed., I. 7, n.). The "new song" is not
necessarily the psalm itself, but may mean other thanksgivings
evoked by God's meditated-on goodness. But, in any case, it is
noteworthy that the occasions of the new song are very old acts,
stretching back to the first creation and continued down through the
ages. The psalm has no trace of special recent mercies, but to the
devout soul the old deeds are never antiquated, and each new
meditation on them breaks into new praise. So inexhaustible is the
theme that all generations take it up in turn, and find "songs
unheard" and "sweeter" with which to celebrate it. Each new rising
of the old sun brings music from the lips of Memnon, as he sits
fronting the east. The facts of revelation must be sung by each age
and soul for itself, and the glowing strains grow cold and archaic,
while the ancient mercies which they magnify live on bright and
young. There is always room for a fresh voice to praise the old
gospel, the old creation, the old providence.
This new song is saturated with reminiscences of old ones, and deals
with familiar thoughts which have come to the psalmist with fresh
power. He magnifies the moral attributes manifested in God's self-
revelation, His creative Word, and His providential government. "The
word of Jehovah," in ver. 4, is to be taken in the wide sense of every
utterance of His thought or will ("non accipi pro doctrina, sed pro
mundi gubernandi ratione," Calvin). It underlies His "works," as is
more largely declared in the following verses. It is "upright," the
same word as in ver. 1, and here equivalent to the general idea of
morally perfect. The acts which flow from it are "in faithfulness,"
correspond to and keep His word. The perfect word and works have
for source the deep heart of Jehovah, which loves "righteousness
and judgment," and therefore speaks and acts in accordance with
these. Therefore the outcome of all is a world full of God's loving-
kindness. The psalmist has won that "serene and blessed mood" in
which the problem of life seems easy, and all harsh and gloomy
thoughts have melted out of the sky. There is but one omnipotent
Will at work everywhere, and that is a Will whose law for itself is the
love of righteousness and truth. The majestic simplicity and
universality of the cause are answered by the simplicity and
universality of the result, the flooding of the whole world with
blessing. Many another psalm shows how hard it is to maintain such
a faith in the face of the terrible miseries of men, and the more
complex "civilisation" becomes, the harder it grows; but it is well to
hear sometimes the one clear note of gladness without its chord of
melancholy.
The work of creation is set forth in vv. 6-9, as the effect of the
Divine word alone. The psalmist is fascinated not by the glories
created, but by the wonder of the process of creation. The Divine
will uttered itself, and the universe was. Of course the thought is
parallel with that of Genesis, "God said, Let there be ... and there
was...." Nor are we to antedate the Christian teaching of a personal
Word of God, the agent of creation. The old versions and
interpreters, followed by Cheyne, read "as in a bottle" for "as an
heap," vocalising the text differently from the present pointing; but
there seems to be an allusion to the wall of waters at the passage of
the Red Sea, the same word being used in Miriam's song; with
"depths" in the next clause, there as here (Exod. xv. 8). What is
meant, however, here, is the separation of land and water at first,
and possibly the continuance of the same power keeping them still
apart, since the verbs in ver. 7 are participles, which imply continued
action. The image of "an heap" is probably due to the same optical
delusion which has coined the expression "the high seas," since, to
an eye looking seawards from the beach, the level waters seem to
rise as they recede; or it may merely express the gathering together
in a mass. Away out there, in that ocean of which the Hebrews knew
so little, were unplumbed depths in which, as in vast storehouses,
the abundance of the sea was shut up, and the ever-present Word
which made them at first was to them instead of bolts and bars.
Possibly the thought of the storehouses suggested that of the Flood
when these were opened, and that thought, crossing the psalmist's
mind, led to the exhortation in ver. 8 to fear Jehovah, which would
more naturally have followed ver. 9. The power displayed in creation
is, however, a sufficient ground for the summons to reverent
obedience, and ver. 9 may be but an emphatic repetition of the
substance of the foregoing description. It is eloquent in its brevity
and juxtaposition of the creative word and the created world. "It
stood,"—"the word includes much: first, the coming into being
(Entstehen), then, the continued subsistence (Bestehen), lastly,
attendance (Dastehen) in readiness for service" (Stier).
From the original creation the psalmist's mind runs over the ages
between it and him, and sees the same mystical might of the Divine
Will working in what we call providential government. God's bare
word has power without material means. Nay, His very thoughts
unspoken are endowed with immortal vigour, and are at bottom the
only real powers in history. God's "thoughts stand," as creation does,
lasting on through all men's fleeting years. With reverent boldness
the psalm parallels the processes (if we may so speak) of the Divine
mind with those of the human; "counsel" and "thoughts" being
attributed to both. But how different the issue of the solemn
thoughts of God and those of men, in so far as they are not in
accordance with His! It unduly narrows the sweep of the psalmist's
vision to suppose that he is speaking of a recent experience when
some assault on Israel was repelled. He is much rather linking the
hour of creation with to-day by one swift summary of the net result
of all history. The only stable, permanent reality is the will of God,
and it imparts derived stability to those who ally themselves with it,
yielding to its counsels and moulding their thoughts by its. "He that
doeth the will of God abideth for ever," but the shore of time is
littered with wreckage, the sad fragments of proud fleets which
would sail in the teeth of the wind and went to pieces on the rocks.
From such thoughts the transition to the second part of the main
body of the psalm is natural. Vv. 12-19 are a joyous celebration of
the blessedness of Israel as the people of so great a God. The most
striking feature of these verses is the pervading reference to the
passage of the Red Sea which, as we have already seen, has
coloured ver. 7. From Miriam's song come the designation of the
people as God's "inheritance," and the phrase "the place of His
habitation" (Exod. xv. 17). The "looking upon the inhabitants of the
earth," and the thought that the "eye of Jehovah is upon them that
fear Him, to deliver their soul in death" (vv. 14, 18), remind us of the
Lord's looking from the pillar on the host of Egyptians and the
terrified crowd of fugitives, and of the same glance being darkness
to the one and light to the other. The abrupt introduction of the king
not saved by his host, and of the vanity of the horse for safety, are
explained if we catch an echo of Miriam's ringing notes, "Pharaoh's
chariots and his host hath He cast into the sea.... The horse and his
rider hath He thrown into the sea" (Exod. xv. 4, 21).
If this historical allusion be not recognised, the connection of these
verses is somewhat obscure, but still discernible. The people who
stand in special relation to God are blessed, because that eye, which
sees all men, rests on them in loving-kindness and with gracious
purpose of special protection. This contrast of God's universal
knowledge and of that knowledge which is accompanied with loving
care is the very nerve of these verses, as is shown by the otherwise
aimless repetition of the thought of God's looking down on men.
There is a wide all-seeingness, characterised by three words in an
ascending scale of closeness of observance, in vv. 13, 14. It is
possible to God as being Creator: "He fashions their hearts
individually," or "one by one," seems the best interpretation of ver.
15 a, and thence is deduced His intimate knowledge of all His
creatures' doings. The sudden turn to the impotence of earthly
might, as illustrated by the king and the hero and the battle-horse,
may be taken as intended to contrast the weakness of such strength
both with the preceding picture of Divine omniscience and
almightiness, and with the succeeding assurance of safety in
Jehovah. The true reason for the blessedness of the chosen people
is that God's eye is on them, not merely with cold omniscience nor
with critical considering of their works, but with the direct purpose of
sheltering them from surrounding evil. But the stress of the
characterisation of these guarded and nourished favourites of
heaven is now laid not upon a Divine act of choice, but upon their
meek looking to Him. His eye meets with love the upturned patient
eye of humble expectance and loving fear.
What should be the issue of such thoughts, but the glad profession
of trust, with which the psalm fittingly ends, corresponding to the
invocation to praise which began it? Once in each of these three
closing verses do the speakers profess their dependence on God.
The attitude of waiting with fixed hope and patient submission is the
characteristic of God's true servants in all ages. In it are blended
consciousness of weakness and vulnerability, dread of assault,
reliance on Divine Love, confidence of safety, patience, submission
and strong aspiration.
These were the tribal marks of God's people, when this was "a new
song"; they are so to-day, for, though the Name of the Lord be more
fully known by Christ, the trust in it is the same. A threefold good is
possessed, expected and asked as the issue of this waiting. God is
"help and shield" to those who exercise it. Its sure fruit is joy in Him,
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