Verse 1 "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue …" Socrates reports of one Pambo, an honest, well meaning man, who came to his friend, desiring him to teach him one of David's psalms; he read to him this verse. He answered: this one verse is enough if I learn it well. Nineteen years after, he said that he, in all that time, had hardly learnt the lesson.
Samuel Page
Verse 2 "I was dumb with silence, I held my peace …" If thou hold thy peace, God speaks for thee; and if God speaks for us, it is better than we can speak for ourselves.
Christopher Sutton
Verse 3 "My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue." "Musing" is a commendable practice when it is done in the right spirit, and we could do with musing and less amusing in our Christianity today. The people of Judea who went out to the wilderness to listen to John the Baptist "mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ or not," and good John Bunyan, too, followed the practice as he "sat by the fire" in his house, "musing on my great wretchedness," as he says. But there is a musing that is not wholesome, and David indulges in that harmful musing here. In his own time of affliction, he looks around him and sees that the wicked are prospering while he is cast down. And as Spurgeon puts it, "While his heart was musing it was fusing, for the subject was confusing." "Why do the wicked prosper?" is a question that very often afflicts the minds of the Lord's own people and unless their musing on such a question is directed towards the Lord and His providences, then, "the fire" will "burn," as in David's case. But, "then spake I with my tongue," he says, "Lord make me to know mine end …" And once his musing takes on this eternal flavour, the fire dies and he rests in the Lord, and His providential dealings with him.
Verse 5 "… mine age is as nothing before thee …" David might truly have said, Mine age is short in respect of Methuselah's age – said to be nine hundred and sixty-nine years, or Mine age is very short in comparison to the age of the world, or Mine age in this world is exceeding little compared to the duration of the other world to come, or Mine age is scarcely anything before the angels, whose duration began with this world. But all these are far short of his comparison which he here maketh of his age with God who is eternal, both from everlasting to everlasting.
Nathaniel Hardy
Verse 6 "Surely every man waketh in a vain show …" Every carnal man walks in a vain show, and yet how vain he is of his show of vanity! He labours all his life for the profit of riches, and yet in death his riches will not profit him. He that views an ox grazing in a fat pasture, concluded that he is but preparing for the day of slaughter.
William Secker
Verse 8 "Make me not the reproach of the foolish…" Doubt not this; that of all the bitter agony that will be the portion of the lost soul, not the least will be the bitter reproaches and derision of those evil companions who have seduced him to his ruin … "For that morsel of meat to have sold thy birthright! For that fleshly pleasure of a few days to have bartered thine eternal jewel! For a few grains of yellow earth to have missed the city with streets of gold! O fool, beyond all folly! O madman, beyond all insanity! Truly we have need to pray with all earnestness, "Make me not the reproach of the foolish."
Origen
Verse 9 "I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou dids't it." I know not a better illustration of what the feelings of a saint should be, in the hour of bitterness, than the case of Richard Cameron's father. The aged saint was in prison "for the Word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." The bleeding head of his martyred son was brought to him by his unfeeling persecutors, and he was asked derisively if he knew it. "I know it, I know it," said the father, as he kissed the mangled forehead of his fair-haired son, "it is my son's, my own dear son's! It is the Lord! Good is the will of the Lord, who cannot wrong me or mine, but who hath made goodness and mercy to follow us all our days."
H. Bonar
Verse 12 "I am a stranger … and a sojourner …"A stranger is one that has his abode in a foreign country, but a sojourner is one who intends not to settle, but only passes through a place. So is the child of God with regards to this world.
Thomas Manton
This Page Title – Gleanings from the Psalms – Psalm 39 The Wicket Gate Magazine "A Continuing Witness". Internet Edition number 79 – placed on line July 2009 Magazine web address – www.wicketgate.co.uk |