Similar is the commiseration we extend (let the shores of this Refuge Island of ours bear testimony) to the hapless patriot or the fallen monarch. These may have been hurled from positions of influence or pinnacles of glory more by their crimes than by their misfortunes. The revolutionary wave that swept them from their country or their thrones may have been a just retribution for misrule; but it is their hour of adversity! They have seen better and more auspicious times. Pity for the fallen knocks, and never knocks in vain, at the heart of a great nation's sympathies.
Such was David's position at this time: Denied the sympathy of others, his own soul is filled with recollections of a far different past. The monarch of Israel, the beloved of God, the idol of his people; now a fugitive from his capital--his palace sacked--his crown dishonoured--wandering in ignoble exile--a wreck of vanished glory!
But it is not these features of his humiliating fall on which his mind mainly dwells. It is not the thought of his sceptre wrested from his grasp--his army in mutiny--his royal residence a den of traitors--that fills his soul with most poignant sorrow. He is an exile from the House of God! The joy of his old Sabbaths is for the time suspended and forfeited. No more is the sound of silver trumpets heard summoning the tribes to the new moons and solemn feast-days! No more does he behold, in thought, the slopes of Olivet studded with pilgrim tents or made vocal with "songs in the night!" No more does he see the triumphant procession wending up the hill of Zion--timbrel and pipe and lute and voice celebrating in glad accord the high praises of God;--"the singers in front, and the players on instruments behind,"--he himself, harp in hand, (the true father of his people,) leading the jubilant chorus, and Jehovah commanding upon all "the blessing, even life for evermore!"
How changed! To this Sabbath-loving and Sabbath-keeping King nothing but the memory of these remained. "_When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holy-day._"
Jerusalem was the pride and glory of the Jew. Wherever he went, he turned to it as to his best and fondest home. The windows of Daniel's chamber were "open _towards Jerusalem_." With his eye in the direction of the holy city, "_he kneeled upon his knees three times a-day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime_." (Dan. vi. 10.) Jonah was in the strangest of prisons. "The depths closed round about him, the weeds were wrapped about his head, and the earth with its iron bars." From "the belly of hell" he sent up his cry to God. "I am cast out of thy sight, yet I will look again _toward thy_ HOLY TEMPLE." (Jonah ii. 2.) Captive Israel are seated, in mute despondency, by the willowed banks of the streams of Babylon. The Euphrates (an ocean river compared with the tiny streams of Palestine) rolled past them. The city of the hundred gates rose, like a dream of giant glory, before their view, with its colossal walls, and towers, and hanging gardens. Yet what were they in the eyes of these exile spectators? _Shadows_ of greatness in comparison with the city and temple of their fathers amid the hills of Judah! When their oppressors demanded of them a Hebrew melody, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion," they answered, through hot tears of sorrowful remembrance, "_How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?_" (Ps. cxxxvii. 4.) So it was with David now. As a bird taken from its home in the forest and placed in a cage, refuses to warble a joyous note--beats its plumage against the enclosing bars, and struggles to get free,--so he seems to long for wings that he may flee away to the hallowed eaves of the sanctuary, and be at rest!