I rejoice at thy word,
As one that findeth great spoil (Psa 119.162).
Some choice experiences of this fleeting life are useful as similes to describe the feelings of truly pious souls with respect to God’s dealings with them. In the very nature of things, the physical illustrations must of necessity fall short of their spiritual counterparts, yet because we can more easily relate to the former, they are useful for pointing us in the right direction, helping us grasp the saint’s blessedness even if we have not yet experienced it ourselves, or only to a small degree.
King David, the human writer of Psalm 119, had much experience on the battlefield. Is there any place in this world, any circumstance in which the fallen sons of Adam find themselves, that exposes men to more misery than that? From the beginning, armed conflict has been attended with great suffering. To quote General Sherman, “War is hell”—not literally, but perhaps the nearest thing to hell on earth.
This human reality readily came to Paul’s mind when he would brace young Timothy for the hardships of the Christian ministry. “Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier” (2 Tim 2.3-4).
And what are the hardships of war? We might rather ask what hardships are wanting! Deprivation of every kind. Hunger, thirst, extremes of heat and cold. Sometimes soldiers suffer quarters that are not fit for the worst of criminals, much less for patriots, and other times, they have no quarters at all, but only the last resort of collapsing, exhausted, on the ground. Anxiety, frustration, and fears. Blood, sweat, and tears. Anger, righteous and otherwise. Constant annoyances like so many gnats always swarming. Fevers, nausea, and vomiting. Frequent and serious injuries, with death on every side. No sleep for days, or only fitful sleep for a couple hours a night. Weariness that goes down into the very bones. No one lives on pins and needles like a soldier. The daily mandate to kill or be killed tempts to insanity even, or perhaps especially, the noblest soul. All these things have been experienced by soldiers from the earliest times.
It will help us, as civilians ordinarily shielded from most of these troubles, at least from the chronic intensity with which a soldier suffers them, to dwell upon them for a while, that we might appreciate all the more the analogy David the warrior presents in his text.
“Spoil” is a loaded term. Ordinarily it refers to plunder taken from an enemy in war. In a military situation, spoil can represent the sudden supply of desperately needed sustenance and resources, as well as the reward of victory. When the conflict has been justified, it is no small part of sweet justice, giving the villains what they deserve for their crimes. Great spoil is a boon to the body and spirit. It eases pains and somewhat repays the losses suffered.
This was no mere theory with David. We have in Scripture an exciting account of what we may call the Ziklag incident. David had legitimately received this city to be his own from King Achish (1 Sam 27.6). David and his men, with their wives and children, had settled there, finding some refuge from the wholly-unjustified persecutions orchestrated by King Saul.
One day David and his soldiers returned home from battles only to find that the Amalekites had attacked beloved Ziklag, burning down their houses and kidnapping their wives and children (1 Sam 30). Even David’s family was captured. The whole army was distressed, and there was talk of stoning him.
But despite the fact that they were depleted and demoralized, there was work to do. Regardless of how they felt, there was nothing else to do but retrieve the treasures they had lost. It was the Lord’s command, and he promised them success. They had to pursue the plunderers.
Some of the details about what happened next have been lost to us, but in an amazing way Providence led them to the enemy. The Amalekites were exuberant over their newfound fortune, and engrossed in eating and drinking and dancing, they were hardly prepared for a fight. In one of the most inspiring acts of manly fortitude and courage ever, David and his men killed nearly all of them and recovered everything that had been taken away—their loved ones, every one of them unharmed, and also all the flocks and herds.
When the adrenaline subsided and the rush of war was transformed into the peace of victory, imagine the relief of these warriors! How many husbands had thought for sure that they lost their wives forever! And their little sons and daughters, who can put a price on them? David along with his sturdy men all went from the depths of despair to the heights of happiness in one day.
Now if you have been able to enter into their experience vicariously, if you have felt something of their emotions in all this, you are ready to grasp better what David had in mind by these words in the Psalter.
He sings of one that “findeth great spoil.” The spoil of war. And not just the standard valuables left behind by the vanquished, but “great spoil,” like this on the day of that famous Amalekite defeat. “‘Treasure’ well expresses the meaning of the word.”1
Further, David chooses a verb to put us in the very moment: “findeth.” Actually in the Hebrew it is a participle. “As one finding abundant spoil” (YLT) it could be rendered, that is, in that fleeting, blissful moment of the discovery itself. “It’s like finding a great fortune,” one translates. If you could bottle such a happiness and sell it, you would soon be a millionaire.
Friends, people everywhere are in search of joy like this. Some think to find it in material things, some in physical pleasures, some in achievement, some in the acquisition of power and influence, some in romance and family relationships, and still others in asceticism and mysticism. Some of these approaches are understandable because they do have potential to put us in a state of mind which rises to the wonderful experience of elation.
However, both Scripture and real life teach us that whatever happiness we may find in these things is rare and fleeting. Also, they can leave a malaise, an unpleasant aftertaste if you will, or to use another analogy, a debilitating hangover.
What was it that occasioned the joy of which David boasts? What great treasure did he publish and recommend to all who heard him? The answer is something the world never dreams.
Given that this is Psalm 119, it is no surprise to learn that it was none other than Holy Scripture. “I rejoice at thy word,” he confesses in the language of prayer to God. Calvin comments,
By these words he intimates that his greatest joy was derived from the word of God, to which no gain however desirable could at all approach. From this we learn that he was contented with the word of God as a thing in which was all his delight, and in which he found solid felicity; which could not be, but, in the way of his first withdrawing his heart from all depraved desires. Nor is it wonderful [surprising] to find David placing the whole sum of a happy life in the word of God, in which he well knew the treasure of eternal life to be included and offered to him by means of free adoption.2
True Christians have had it confirmed in our experience that the Bible with God’s blessing has the power to make our hearts leap for joy. During days of profound study of and meditations upon the biblical text, Jonathan Edwards famously wrote in his diary,
The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness; to be with God, and to spend my eternity in divine love, and holy communion with Christ. My mind was very much taken up with contemplations on heaven, and the enjoyments there; and living there in perfect holiness, humility, and love; and it used at that time to appear a great part of the happiness of heaven, that there the saints could express their love to Christ. . . . Heaven appeared exceedingly delightful, as a world of love; and that all happiness consisted in living in pure, humble, heavenly, divine love.3
We proclaim that the Word of God is the greatest treasure on earth. He who discovers it to be so by faith will enter into unspeakably great and eternal happiness. Believing this will always prompt us toward Scripture to our blessing. This was David’s design, and it remains God’s. Amen.
Notes:
1 UBS Handbook, in loc.
2 Commentary, in loc.
3 Memoirs, chapter one, “Birth—Parentage.”