Psalm 119 (145 of 190 notes)

134. Deliver me from the oppression of man. David had tasted all the bitterness of this great evil. It had made him an exile from his country, and banished him from the sanctuary of the Lord: therefore he pleads to be saved from it. It is said that oppression makes a wise man mad, and no doubt it has made many a righteous man sinful. Oppression is in itself wicked, and it drives people to wickedness. We little know how much of our virtue is due to our liberty; if we had been in bonds under haughty tyrants we might have yielded to them, and instead of being confessors we might now have been apostates. He who taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” will sanction this prayer, which is of much the same tenor, since to be oppressed is to be tempted. So will I keep thy statutes. When the stress of oppression was taken off he would go his own way, and that way would be the way of the Lord. Although we ought not to yield to the threatenings of men, yet many do so; the wife is sometimes compelled by the oppression of her husband to act against her conscience; children and servants, and even whole nations have been brought into the same difficulty. Their sins will be largely laid at the oppressor’s door, and it usually pleases God ere long to overthrow those powers and dominions which compel people to do evil. The worst of it is that some people, when the pressure is taken off from them, follow after unrighteousness of their own accord. These give evidence of being sinners in nature. As for the righteous, it happens to them as it did to the apostles of old—“Being let go, they went to their own company.” When saints are freed from the tyrant they joyfully pay homage to their King.