1._Do ye indeed speak righteousness? _In putting this question to his enemies, by way of challenge, David displays the boldness of conscious rectitude. It argues that the justice of our cause is demonstratively evident when we venture to appeal to the opposite party himself; for were there any groun... [ Continue Reading ]
2._Yea, rather, in heart ye plot wickedness. _In the former verse he complained of the gross shamelessness manifested in their conduct. Now he charges them both with entertaining wickedness in their thoughts, and practising it with their hands. I have accordingly translated the Hebrew article אף, _a... [ Continue Reading ]
3._They are estranged, being wicked from the womb. _He adduces, in aggravation of their character, the circumstance, that they were not sinners of recent date, but persons born to commit sin. We see some men, otherwise not so depraved in disposition, who are drawn into evil courses through levity of... [ Continue Reading ]
4._Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder _(348) He prosecutes his description; and, though he might have insisted on the fierceness which characterised their opposition, he charges them more particularly, here as elsewhere, with the malicious virulence of their d... [ Continue Reading ]
6._Break their teeth, O God! in their mouth _(354) From this part of the psalm he assumes the language of imprecation, and solicits the vengeance of God, whose peculiar prerogative it is to repel oppression and vindicate injured innocence. It is necessary, however, that we attend to the manner in wh... [ Continue Reading ]
8._Let him vanish like a snail, which melts away _The two comparisons in this verse are introduced with the same design as the first, expressing his desire that his enemies might pass away quietly, and prove as things in their own nature the most evanescent. He likens them to _snails, _(355) and it... [ Continue Reading ]
9._Before your pots can feel the fire of your thorns. _Some obscurity attaches to this verse, arising partly from the perplexed construction, and partly from the words being susceptible of a double meaning. (357) Thus the Hebrew word סירות,_siroth, _signifies either_a pot _or _a thorn. _If we adopt... [ Continue Reading ]
10_The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance _It might appear at first sight that the feeling here attributed to the righteous is far from being consistent with the mercy which ought to characterise them; but we must remember, as I have often observed elsewhere, that the affection whic... [ Continue Reading ]
11._So that a man shall say, Verily there is a reward. _We have additional evidence from what is here said of the cause or source of it, that the joy attributed to the saints has no admixture of bad feeling. It is noticeable from the way in which this verse runs, that David would now seem to ascribe... [ Continue Reading ]