7 The law of the Lord is good, giving new life to the soul: the witness of the Lord is certain, giving wisdom to the foolish.
How long, you simple ones, will foolish things be dear to you? and pride a delight to the haters of authority? how long will the foolish go on hating knowledge? Be turned again by my sharp words: see, I will send the flow of my spirit on you, and make my words clear to you.
And that from the time when you were a child, you have had knowledge of the holy Writings, which are able to make you wise to salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus. Every holy Writing which comes from God is of profit for teaching, for training, for guiding, for education in righteousness: So that the man of God may be complete, trained and made ready for every good work.
For this reason, putting away all dirty behaviour and the overweight of evil, take into your souls without pride the word which, being planted there, is able to give you salvation. But be doers of the word, and not only hearers of it, blinding yourselves with false ideas. Because if any man is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man looking at his natural face in a glass; For after looking at himself he goes away, and in a short time he has no memory of what he was like. But he who goes on looking into the true law which makes him free, being not a hearer without memory but a doer putting it into effect, this man will have a blessing on his acts.
For this reason I have greater love far your teachings than for gold, even for shining gold. Because of it I keep straight in all things by your orders; and I am a hater of every false way.
Keep these words, which I say to you this day, deep in your hearts; Teaching them to your children with all care, talking of them when you are at rest in your house or walking by the way, when you go to sleep and when you get up. Let them be fixed as a sign on your hand, and marked on your brow; Have them lettered on the pillars of your houses and over the doors of your towns.
If we take the witness of men to be true, the witness of God is greater: because this is the witness which God has given about his Son. He who has faith in the Son of God has the witness in himself: he who has not faith in God makes him false, because he has not faith in the witness which God has given about his Son. And his witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who has not the Son of God has not the life.
I have seen that nothing on earth is complete; but your teaching is very wide. <MEM> O what love I have for your law! I give thought to it all the day. Your teaching has made me wiser than my haters: for it is mine for ever. I have more knowledge than all my teachers, because I give thought to your unchanging word. I have more wisdom than the old, because I have kept your orders.
<Maschil. Of Asaph.> Give ear, O my people, to my law; let your ears be bent down to the words of my mouth. Opening my mouth I will give out a story, even the dark sayings of old times; Which have come to our hearing and our knowledge, as they were given to us by our fathers. We will not keep them secret from our children; we will make clear to the coming generation the praises of the Lord and his strength, and the great works of wonder which he has done. He put up a witness in Jacob, and made a law in Israel; which he gave to our fathers so that they might give knowledge of them to their children; So that the generation to come might have knowledge of them, even the children of the future, who would give word of them to their children; So that they might put their hope in God, and not let God's works go out of their minds, but keep his laws;
And when he has taken his place on the seat of his kingdom, he is to make in a book a copy of this law, from that which the priests, the Levites, have in their care: And it is to be with him for his reading all the days of his life, so that he may be trained in the fear of the Lord his God to keep and do all the words of this teaching and these laws: So that his heart may not be lifted up over his countrymen, and he may not be turned away from the orders, to one side or the other: but that his life and the lives of his children may be long in his kingdom in Israel.
He gives witness of what he has seen and of what has come to his ears; and no man takes his witness as true. He who so takes his witness has made clear his faith that God is true.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Psalms 19
Commentary on Psalms 19 Matthew Henry Commentary
Psalm 19
There are two excellent books which the great God has published for the instruction and edification of the children of men; this psalm treats of them both, and recommends them both to our diligent study.
To the chief musician. A psalm of David.
Psa 19:1-6
From the things that are seen every day by all the world the psalmist, in these verses, leads us to the consideration of the invisible things of God, whose being appears incontestably evident and whose glory shines transcendently bright in the visible heavens, the structure and beauty of them, and the order and influence of the heavenly bodies. This instance of the divine power serves not only to show the folly of atheists, who see there is a heaven and yet say, "There is no God,' who see the effect and yet say, "There is no cause,' but to show the folly of idolaters also, and the vanity of their imagination, who, though the heavens declare the glory of God, yet gave that glory to the lights of heaven which those very lights directed them to give to God only, the Father of lights. Now observe here,
In singing these verses we must give God the glory of all the comfort and benefit we have by the lights of the heaven, still looking above and beyond them to the Sun of righteousness.
Psa 19:7-14
God's glory, (that is, his goodness to man) appears much in the works of creation, but much more in and by divine revelation. The holy scripture, as it is a rule both of our duty to God and of our expectation from him, is of much greater use and benefit to us than day or night, than the air we breathe in, or the light of the sun. The discoveries made of God by his works might have served if man had retained his integrity; but, to recover him out of his fallen state, another course must be taken; that must be done by the word of God. And here,
In singing this we should get our hearts much affected with the excellency of the word of God and delivered into it, we should be much affected with the evil of sin, the danger we are in of it and the danger we are in by it, and we should fetch in help from heaven against it.