Gleanings in the Psalms

(Psalm 26)

Verse 1. "Judge me, O Lord; for I have walked in mine integrity …" A good cause, a good conscience, and a good deportment, are good grounds of appeal to God.

Ingram Cobbin

Verse 2. "Examine Me, O Lord, and prove Me; Try my reigns and my heart." The psalmist uses three words, "examine," "prove," "try." These words are designed to include all the modes in which the reality of anything is tested; and they imply together that he wished the most thorough investigation to be made. He did not shrink from any test.

Albert Barnes

Verse 4. "I have not sat with vain persons …" There is a necessary commerce with men in buying and selling, or as the apostle says "We must needs go out of the world." But do not voluntarily choose the company of the wicked. The company of the wicked is very defiling … "They were numbered among the heathen and learned their works." If you mingle bright armour with rusty, the bright armour will not brighten the rusty, but the rusty armour will spoil the bright. Pharaoh taught Joseph to swear, but Joseph did not teach Pharaoh to pray.

Thomas Watson

Verse 5. "I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked." Wheresoever we perceive any people to worship God truly after His Word, there we may be certain the Church of Christ to be, unto the which we ought to associate ourselves, and to desire, with the prophet David, to praise God in the midst of His Church. But if we behold, through the iniquity of time, congregations to be made with counterfeit religion, otherwise than the Word of God doth teach, we ought then to say again with David "I have hated the congregation of evil doers; and will not sit with the wicked." In the Revelation, the Church at Ephesus is highly commended, because she tried such as said they were apostles and were not, and therefore they would not abide the company of them. Further, God commanded His people, but the mouth of His prophet Amos, that they should not seek Bethel, where idolatry was used.

John Philpot (martyr). Burnt at Smithfield 1551

Verse 6. "I will wash my hands in innocency: so will I compass thine alter, O Lord." If greatness might have privileged … David was a king. But let not great men put too much trust in their greatness; the longer the robe is, the more soil it contracts: great power may prove to be the mother of great damnation. And as for purity, there's a generation that say that they have no sin in them, but they deceive themselves, there is no truth in them. Christ's own apostle, stout Thomas, failed in the faith of His resurrection: Peter (whose chair is now the pretended seat of infallibility) denied his Master: David, "a man after God's own heart," hath need of washing; and who can say, I am pure in the sight of God?

Isaac Bargrave

Verse 7. "That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy wondrous works." (1) The believer's calling – A publisher: "I will publish …" (2) The author selected – The Lord: "Thy …" (3) The manuscripts published – All; "all thy wondrous works." (4) The mode of advertising – Witness and preaching: "tell," and "The voice of thanksgiving."

Hints to the Village Preacher

Verse 8. "Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house –" "I have in my congregation," said a venerable minister of the gospel, "a worthy, aged woman, who has for many years been so deaf as not to distinguish the loudest sound, and yet she is always on of the first in the meeting. On asking the reason of her constant attendance (as it was impossible for her to hear my voice), she answered: "Thought I cannot hear you, I come to God's house because I love it, and would be found in His ways; and He gives me many a sweet thought upon the text when it is pointed out to me: another reason is because there I am in the best company, in the more immediate presence of God, and among His saints, the honourable of the earth. I am not satisfied with the serving God in private; it is my duty and privilege to honour Him regularly in public." What a reproof to those who have their hearing and yet absent themselves from the Lord's house on the least pretence.

K. Arvine

Verse 9. "Gather not my soul with sinners …" Bind me not in the same bundle with them, like the tares for the fire.

Verse 12. "My foot standeth in an even place …"